Universal laws
Allow me, dear readers, to amend my assertion of last week blaming on old age a reflexively prejudicial contrast of the present with memories of the past. What may or may not be true of the aging process must be tempered by an overarching law of the universe, i.e. entropy. We are safe in observing disorder, chaos, degradation as we go through life. Civilization does decline and fall. In this regard, I find myself harking back to my metaphor of the pendulum, gauging the increase of its amplitude by the culture wars, which in turn are the measure of our decline.
Excessive pressure to the right, so blatantly exercised, is now quite easy to see. A shrinking demographic of white men brazenly wields power to overthrow democracies all over the world in the name of “freedom,” for themselves alone, freedom that is from everyone else. Aware that they are way out of step with public opinion, they have been sly, subtle, scheming, lying their way onto the courts and using the algorithmic poison of social media to anoint their demagogues.
But the pendulum is ruled by another law of the universe, Newton’s third: to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So as far as the amplitude is pushed to the right it will also increase to the left. If you have read my first essay in Ruminata, dear readers, you will be alert to how many excesses on the left in the culture wars relate to sexuality, a very hot topic among humans. When such excesses catch the attention of moderates, they play into the hands of the rightwing. I daresay the left has the stronger claim to humanity, and thus I am loathe to call out extreme liberality. Still I am assured when some columnists do so in my daily newspaper. My own views hew close to opinion polls. Abortion should be legal, for example, within some reasonable limits. But still more inflammatory are the issues involving homosexuality. Curious to me in this tribe is a blindness to their own media success, making their lifestyle not only acceptable but attractive even to small children. Surely sex education might await their development. Primum non nocere.
Pandemic hangovers
Hereabouts, we do not see people wearing masks anymore; even old people have been shamed out of it. We have been vaccinated after all, over and over, and it is summer, not a stressful time for the immune system. Now though we begin to hear about RSV, which we must not confuse with the common cold; but where has this RSV been hiding all my life? I know of no one having died of it, but what do I know? I know that as much as we yearn to imagine that the pandemic is past, and that our lives can and will now return to the sense of normalcy we once enjoyed, there is much that has not been restored and possibly never will be, starting with a relentless paranoia about any proximity with fellow humans.
Each of us, needless to say, could make a long list of the changes. Shopping in stores, long on its way to oblivion in any case, saw the coffin nailed shut by online retailers. In stores that do remain, gaps on the shelves reveal the continued unreliability of the supply chain. Are factories struggling? Truckers? Explanations are dubious at best. In every economic sector staffing shortages converge with excessive demand. “Pandemic revenue” it is being called. At the same time global trade is softening. Chinese goods, which for so many years offered relatively good quality at a low price, while diabolically undermining domestic manufacture, are now resembling the shoddy output of postwar Japan. Merchants scramble to find other sources in Asia or in India, not a quick fix. Then there are the much lamented restaurants closed for good.
But these are just the economic changes. As real if less visible is the emotional toll. The long period of critical isolation pushed any old person tending in that direction into dementia. The natural born introvert experienced a short-lived euphoria, and now suffers a chaotic society of pandemic avengers. As for that sense of normalcy once enjoyed, consider it a curse of age to remember what was - and to contrast the present prejudicially.
Dickens in America
I am compelled to write another post on the subject of the biography of Charles Dickens by his friend John Forster, compelled I say because I have come to 1842, the year Dickens visited America, where at the age of thirty he already had an enormous following. He traveled in the old colonies for six months, during which time, despite the transatlantic distance, he and Forster maintained their correspondence, their letters coming by way of whatever steam vessel could make it across the ocean. Having promised his publishers a report of his American adventure, he kept notes which were then published upon his return to England, entitled simply American Notes. Forster supplied much of the content from the letters he received, but quotes till more in the biography.
I was struck by the following passage concerning the future of the former English colonies, struck by its prescience: “I tremble for a radical coming here, unless he is a radical on principle, by reason and reflection, and from a sense of right. I say no more on that head… save that I do fear that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty will be dealt by this country, in the failure of its example to the earth.”
Dickens abhorred slavery alike with all enlightened people of the time, and the nascent restiveness of the slave states already presaged a civil war. But in the above statement, Dickens leaped several chess moves beyond that conflagration. He foresaw Mr. Trump, a radical without principle, without reason or reflection, nor any sense of right, who now has in this thrall a once respectable conservative political party; and if their authoritarian urge toward minority rule is allowed to hold sway, it will most surely be “the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty,” example to the world of how democracy must fail. Most sickening to me is the diabolical hypocrisy of this movement to claim theirs is the side of liberty. For whom? White Christian men, a steadily shrinking, hence desperate, demographic.
Teaching history
Readers will recall my writing here how I managed pandemic isolation through the influence of the celebrated and prodigious Victorian author Charles Dickens. Having accumulated a number of the novels on my Books app, and as well acquiring a taste for Victorian syntax, I went in search of a biography of the great man, at first settling for a volume of his letters. Many of these were addressed to John Forster, and upon learning that Forster survived Dickens and wrote his biography, that is the one I latched onto.
John Forster was Dickens’s very closest friend and confidante. They met as young men when both were in the newspaper business in London. They were the same age, and while Forster was better educated, he held the utmost admiration for his friend’s genius. Dickens swore his enduring friendship when Forster, in reviewing Charles’s first novel, praised it not for mere literary excellence but for the reality of its characters. That was what mattered most of all to the author, and was the very thing that won for him the instant devotion of the reading public. After that, Forster writes in the biography without boasting, he saw everything Dickens wrote before the public did. Needless to say this biography gives precious insight into the novels, and includes Dickens’s own words from the letters.
I raise this topic in reference to the rightwing brouhaha regarding how to teach history. The best method surely to grasp its context and perspective is the read history, by which I mean the great literature of centuries past, dreadfully neglected, even ignored, in our schools as irrelevant to modern people. By no means is this the case. The evils of English society portrayed in Dickens’s work are indeed the same arising today: treatment of the poor, indifference of the upper classes, harsh laws, and the grinding injustice of sluggish courts. The word salad of a modern school board or new text book, whether sauced with red or blue, cannot compare. Dickens lived that age of which he wrote. Historians only pick and choose from the chaos of data. Compare theirs with the vivid depictions written by Dickens of the French Revolution or the Lord Gordon Riots in his two historical novels. His stories weave through all the levels of a rigidly stratified society, weighed down with a court system clogged by generations of excess. Is Bleak House not a history book? In America there were Hawthorne, Irving, Twain, Steinbeck. Are those now for the fire?
The wren's nest
Surely after this unwonted summer there will be global consensus that humans must cut greenhouse gases and provide for the needs of eight billion of us without fossil fuels, understanding at the same time that eight billion is a moving target. There are a few hopeful signs for the future of clean energy, and even in my small village the number of EV chargers has grown. But so has the traffic, unfortunately, though we are a mere crossroads amid neighborhoods that have resisted development for generations. No fast food here! As I wrote last week, in future we will need to cross the equator to escape summer. Going north will not do, unless one wants to share an ice floe with a polar bear.
But I take a rest from my doomsday picket, standing my sign against the back porch, to tell you about the wren’s nest. The house wren is a cavity nester, and is known at times to build a number of nests in order to entice a female with his wealth of real estate. But should there be a shortage of tree cavities, often the case in suburbia, his second choice will be a flower pot. This summer it was a pot of petunias, one of a pair, hanging outside my back porch. The neighborhood is home to a growing deer herd. Indeed, this year one of the does had twins, the most beguiling energetic creatures one can imagine; and as you may know, summer flowers are a special treat for these ungulates, which will serve to explain the need for hanging pots. I procured the baskets at a farm market, and they were brimming with pink and white petunias. It is not the first time the resident wren decided one of these would make an excellent nest site; and while in the past I have evicted him before there were eggs, this year - what with the tumultuous weather and other untoward perils for birds - I gave the wren a break. He built his nest, the couple took up residence, the petunias died in due course. I lifted the basket once to check the nest, and there was one baby wren, newly hatched, but no more eggs.
The parents fed the chick dutifully, and finally on the last Sunday in July the nestling raised his head as the parents encouraged him to try his wings. I was called away that day, and when I returned the chick had fledged. I hope the fledgling did well, that he did not fall into the jaws of a fox or the beak of a merlin. Nevertheless, in civilization, we transgress in forgetting how merciless are Nature’s laws.
Ruined!
A favorite saying of my late cousin Lucille was, “I’ve lived too long!” She was just shy of eighty when she passed, an age she was known to dread. I can hear her now as I live to see the fruition of dystopian predictions. A familiarity with history is some reassurance, albeit slight and subjective, because dystopia is not new under the sun. How many Brits, for example, remember what they learned about the Lord Gordon Riots of 1780? Raise your hands. How many have read Barnaby Rudge? Let’s see. The latter, first of just two historical novels by Charles Dickens, the second being A Tale of Two Cities, deals with that violent Protestant uprising against a proposal to weaken anti-Catholic laws. But Dickens in his inimitable manner focuses on the irrationality and feverish rise of the spreading violence, truly astonishing to me in a likeness to our times more than two centuries hence. His insight into the dynamics of a mob, the psychology and motivation of the group and of its members, is acute. At the same time the humanity the comes across in everything he wrote is intense. Poor old John Willet, benighted landlord of the popular Maypole pub, is literally dumbfounded when the establishment which was his life is trashed by the mob, led by a disgruntled former employee out to settle scores. In an hour’s time he is ruined. In our time there is plenty of political violence, as our civilization relapses into the tribal state; but it is not alone the uprisings and wars destroying the peace. The same causes of that dysfunction are bringing an ominous acceleration of far more damaging natural disasters: the killing heat, turning the planet to a tinderbox readily ignited in the storms; flash floods from those same uncommon storms. How many people, families, businesses, have now been brought to sudden ruin by wildfire, floods, enemy missiles? and moved to cry with John Willet, “If they’d only had the goodness to murder me!” But we live on, to die from heat. Survivors will be any who are able to cross the equator twice a year, fleeing summer.
The President and the King
With NATO representatives gathered in Vilnius, surely I must take a break from questions of existential threat, though the Ukrainian President, in conference with Mr. Biden even as I write, would undoubtedly differ, desperate as he is for help to save his country. If Ukraine joined the alliance at this time, however, all members would be obliged to mobilize; troops would march. Deja vu all over again. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that every Ukrainian falling under the Bear’s paw, even were he to grovel, will be ground to dust.
I was so pleased that Mr. Biden’s first stop along the way was my native land, there to meet with our newly crowned King Charles. Were they not splendid reviewing the royal guards together at Windsor Castle! The President is a bit taller, but the King is younger, albeit by little, his realm ancient, the US in contrast an off shoot, a relative upstart, and lately disturbingly unstable. An aspect of this youthful instability surely is ageism, showing up in Mr. Biden’s unaccountably low approval ratings.
He shows the common signs of age: the white hair, somewhat stooped posture. Add to these his very soft voice and occasional sign of a stammer he has struggled with since youth, and too many Americans assume he is ready for the dustbin. His performance at this NATO conference gives the lie to that. He is the consummate diplomat. He has connections and long experience. His achievements at home are no less stellar, particularly given an ignorant handful of radicals in the congress bent on subverting him. A truly galling aspect of this ageism afflicts younger voters, who shun politics as a dirty business they want nothing to do with. Some among these are well educated and articulate, perfect candidates if only some wealthy partisan would find them out. So then, what do Americans want for a leader if neither an old man nor a young one? I know! a celebrity, an entertainer, an influencer! God save the King - his colonies may yet need him.
The big picture
When I met up with Anna in the courtyard recently, she cajoled me about last week’s jeremiad on the blog, not on its merits but for leaving readers in a state of hopeless despair, despite her being Cassandra to my Jeremiah in that jolly duo she defames. If you are not familiar with that high priestess of Apollo, my dears, do check out her most salacious tale. In my defense, I explained to her as I have to you my basic reasons for keeping a blog.
These days anyone, and I daresay everyone, can start a blog; and in most cases they do so to tell their own personal story, with others perhaps seeking to become “influencers,” an abominable coinage for an abominable phenomenon. I want this blog to give exposure to novel ideas on current topics, and in this venture I apply an inclination I have always brought to my thinking and writing, i.e. to step back from the subject thereby bringing the bigger picture into focus. In contrast, our newspapers and other sources strive to be on the scene and giving us the scoop, up close and personal. Thus with our noses pressed to our screens, we see every small tear in the social fabric, stark divisions between races, political views, genders, any issue concerning sex - do read my essay! This pixelated vision of the world has been rendered extremely dangerous under the microscope of social media. The machines that control this microscope may be intelligent, but they are not conscientious. They do what they were made to do: catch our eyes. The best way to do that is to inspire outrage.
The big picture is of all humankind, having bested nature except for its own, coalescing into a world beyond its control, with the smooth cream that once was society now in a violent churn and breaking up once again into curds and whey. What are we to do then, Cassandra? Given the sorry state of the planet, our questions may already be moot, but for one: are we Calhoun’s mice?
The eight billion
Reader alert! I am about to belabor the obvious. You must grant your forbearance, however, because this phenomenon is blatantly obvious, evidenced by conditions that dominate the daily news and weigh upon our daily lives. Yet the facts of the matter are little known and never remarked. Here they are then: The global population first reached the benchmark one billion in 1804; it is now over eight billion, with China and India together accounting for approximately a quarter of that. The source of this information is the Wikipedia article “World Population,” for which that impressive and invaluable resource cites in turn chiefly the United Nations.
My good friend, Anna, whom I often meet in the courtyard of our village and who contributes that item in the weekly blog, has in so doing defamed us on occasion as that jolly duo, Cassandra and Jeremiah, for our annoyingly persistent prophecies of doom. But if such we are, those predictions are late. In the context of the millennia of human existence, that explosion from one to eight billion occurred in the blink of an eye. Consider then, I beg you, those added billions, who can be expected to continue proliferating, as to their needs: food, shelter, water, and for these and more, fuel, if not oil then wood - all the forests on the planet. Fuel requires combustion, which has byproducts. How could anyone have been so naive, knowing what we know, as to imagine that the smoke of that many fires would not soon have extreme planetary effects?
Now to clinch this jeremiad - and my reputation - there is nothing we can nor could do to save the planet. True, in some nations birth rates are declining, but reduction in the rate of growth does not mean decline in numbers, which will continue to increase. In the meantime, moreover, look at what other sources of our doom the changing climate has set upon us: arable land turned to desert, consequent famine, and hordes without food or water fleeing, desperate for relief, to other countries that cannot possibly absorb their numbers. The enormous struggle to survive triggers the mechanisms of evolution: survival of the fittest, the test for which is war. But even the winners will burn, the forests turned to tinder: Canada? For God’s sake!
RMS Titanic
Bolted into a small titanium vessel with no escape hatch, taken hundreds of miles out to sea and dropped into the water. A burial at sea? No indeed! A billionaires’ jaunt to examine the wreckage of the Titanic, in a submersible that became a very expensive coffin for five. Has the RMS Titanic, ill-starred ship of the White Star Line, not claimed enough lives? Must we have the filthy rich taking jolly good field trips, at great cost and risk, just to view her remains? My first response to this macabre news was to take to my seiza bench and purge my mind of the ghastly thought that anyone of sound mind would volunteer to have himself sealed into what was clearly a potential casket and lowered two miles under the ocean.
I then pondered recent entries in Dokusan, my friend Anna’s ongoing dialogue with Archangel concerning Buddhist beliefs as they apply to our journey through this life. If you do not follow Dokusan, Readers, you might reconsider. Relative to our universal, inevitable mortality, you will find the ideas especially useful in this secular, modern world. For example, why in spite of death as a certainty, do we have the feeling we have always been alive and always will be? This paradoxical intuition is one of a few that persist due to their ultimate truth, but these in turn rely on deeper realities of self and time, which are not what we take them for. All sentient life is an expression of one self, yet we must acknowledge that only human consciousness has the capacity to know its own nature. That is the reason we should safeguard this bodily configuration as best we can for as long as we can, and why we should not risk its sacrifice on a pointless adventure.
Of course, we all die eventually, so why not roll the dice for the chance to brag? And there you have it: the better part of wisdom is humility. When you tout your ship as unsinkable - or your submarine as dernier cri - you shake your fist at nature. Will we never learn?
Grow up!
If you are the manufacturer or retailer of a product, there is no more ideal a customer than an infant, and barring that improbability, an infantile adult with good credit. It has long been standard practice in marketing to play upon the most alluring traits of the infant, specially the lack of discipline and consequent inability to delay gratification. The food industry takes this practice further in calculating a scientific proportion of fat, salt, or sugar to make a product addictive. Of course economies thrive on consumerism in the modern world, particularly in free nations. After a century or two, however, many generations of infantilizing the populace, what have we wrought?
As the adults are infantilized, persuaded in the Peter Pan mythology, their children have a head start in the process. Soon irrespective of age, children are having children, and the development of successive generations is arrested at ever earlier levels. Surely we now see the end result in that most consumer centered nation of all, and hear it in the whining of the MAGA leader as he steps off his private jet liner to shouts of enthralled minions. He is so mistreated! Add guns to the deadly brew and we have juveniles unable to defer the gratification of their felonious impulses. In other words, decline and fall.
There are studies and literature concerning the insidious ploys of advertising, even calls to ban targeting children. But I have not observed any consideration of the ripple effects in society, where the few remaining adults must remain in hiding. Consider then: the infant loves to play, which translates into the supremacy of sports. Damn the news of the world, give me the scores! The helpless infant is naturally self-centered, given the survival instinct. Maintaining this trait, he becomes the grownup infant refusing any small sacrifice for the common good. Totally dependent, the infant needs no financial competence, and is never persuaded to acquire it. Just pay the minimum, and forget saving for the future. Sadly, many of today’s youth have no example of a mature adult, and do not even aspire to be one. Still I do not paint them all with the same brush. After all in sixteenth century England, Edward VI became king at age nine, already accomplished in the classical disciplines of Latin and Greek.
As the twig is bent
In my essay, “Marriage and Children,” published in the collection Ruminata, I touched upon the sad fact that many parents regardless of their initial intentions are seen to follow the pattern of their own childhood, making the same errors as their own parents. Indeed unless one has been blessed with enlightened parents, they had best stay out of the business altogether rather than pass on a family curse. Lately I am noticing instances of long estrangement between parents and their adult offspring: a father has not spoken to his son in twenty years; a mother has no contact with her daughter or grandchildren. Often the parties involved cannot explain the alienation, though those close to them frequently observe that perhaps the two are “too much alike.” As they say, “the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
In my opinion such drastic severing of natural ties is evidence that the most damning influences on the developing psyche do not arise from parenting styles, but rather from the imprint of a parent’s unacknowledged personality traits. Many people may be blind to their own negative characteristics and have neither the insight nor the courage to consider them. Some traits of this kind are true disorders: narcissism, addiction, phobias. Others such as racial, cultural, or religious biases are just as readily passed to impressionable children. Yet the more subtle, repressed attributes are the more damaging for being hidden in artifice. The woman who thinks herself easy going is intolerably overbearing to deal with; a man whose conversation is full of sarcasm believes he is a comic and highly tolerant. But a child knows snark; it is incessant disparagement.
Now here’s the rub: the child grownup may dissociate permanently upon crossing a threshold of sufferance. But “as the twig is bent, so grows the tree,” according to Alexander Pope. That same grown up child can have been molded in the parental image, imbibed the intolerance or the artifice of innocent carping, with the outraged and befuddled parent now become the victim of blowback.
Artificial “intelligence”
As the wizards of high tech dip their toes and advance ever further, if timidly, into the deep and murky waters of artificial intelligence, the rest of us cannot but shudder at the prospects of disruption and havoc they propose to wreak upon us, all the while assuming they alone will be clever enough to escape. But even now, before this next leap, I am impressed with our dependency, eagerly embraced, upon the thinnest of reeds, the mere gossamer threads of computers and internet. How little it takes - a blink of the power supply, a glitch of obsolescence or incompatibility - to hear the dreaded announcement, “The computers are down.” Yet the phone company, formerly the most hidebound of institutions, records my voice so that they know me when I say, “My voice is my password,” though now it can be forged. The bank, wanting to be seen among the front ranks of the revolution by dispensing with human tellers, has me sign in with a scan of a QR code via smart phone.
I have been warning since the early days of the PC, just three decades ago even now, of the vulnerability of these systems; and the internet then was “not quite ready for prime time,” as one salesman famously remarked. Satellites can be shot down, power grids sabotaged. The watchword from the beginning was BACKUP. We can but hope. Now we see the early days of AI. As an example, my dishwasher, just a year old, has a very sensitive control panel that apparently has been taught to adhere to strict and precise protocols. When I violated one of these by opening the door while it was still drying, interrupting the cycle, I was alerted by a sound now typical of machines from Asia, not beeping or grinding, but a melodic “deedlee” with an upward cadence. Following the rules, I canceled what remained of the cycle, which gesture was insufficient for this smart aleck. Thereafter I was chastised at least twice a day by a recital of deedlees, one every sixty seconds for an hour. This problem was solved only when I went online and got the protocol for muting the obstreperous monster. Now Mr. Deedle makes no sound at all.
Celebrity culture
Our bonnie Prince Harry and his fetching wife are not safe on any shore from the reckless pursuit of the paparazzi, and their tense encounter in New York brought to mind not only his mother’s tragic death but the curious and unnatural phenomenon of celebrity culture. The tendency of multitudes to latch on to certain idols - singers, actors, sports figures in particular - is passing strange in its extreme, and bleeds society, like the Count himself, to the exhaustion of resources. What parent of preteen daughters would balk at $900 to take them to see Taylor Swift? Yet the politician who dares suggest that raising taxes might help reduce the deficit dooms his career. Of course, Taylor Swift is a talented singer-songwriter, is she not? How would we know when nothing she writes or sings consists of more than three notes, that is when it is not merely pulsatile intoning of feminine rhymes? The still more hallowed Beyonce is still more primitive, being in essence a living fertility goddess.
What is it in human nature to account for this propensity? I see two strains: first the servility of a social species. The human population is like a global dog pack, always attempting to single out its strongest member to lead, with superiority tried by largely physical traits, such as sexiness, muscle, length and color of hair, though wealth and status are also factors. Once the pack sniffs out such characteristics, they are prepared to grovel, to roll over and expose the jugular, to sacrifice their credit rating for the merest glimpse of the anointed one. The dark side of this idolatry is based in jealousy. People who join in such worship internalize the values, emulate the leader. But at the first slip of said leader, they are quick to turn the pack. Worship becomes anger, servility turns to ferocious brutality. Our British tabloid press is an exemplar, hounding and skewering any celebrity who gives them an opportunity. King Charles I lost his head when he fell from grace. The following century, unnumbered of the French liege lords met the same fate and well deserved. Celebrities today deserve neither the worship nor the backlash from a pack of hounds that has forgotten what makes a true leader.
Illiberal
My original reason for this blog was to inform curios friends of what I was writing and thinking. It has been some years since then, and now a further aim often is to present ideas or opinions on current affairs or life in general that I do not encounter in other sources; and somehow I never run out of such ideas. Each of the essays in my latest book, Ruminata, for example, reflects novel thoughts on the wide variety of their subject matter. Lately, however, I have been at times surprised by affirmation of my thoughts in an article or editorial. Last week in my morning paper, The Post, there was an example by the Black author and occasional contributor, Theodore Johnson, calling out the illiberalism on both extremes of the political and cultural spectrum. Readers will easily identify the echo of my posts here using the metaphor of a pendulum. My point in this comparison is that pushing the amplitude of the swing to one extreme sends it to an equal extreme the opposite way, while to those of us poor souls who stand in the middle, the pendulum strikes like the blade of a guillotine, decapitating us and leaving us no voice in the matter.
Mr. Johnson expresses with much clarity that the excesses of the right wing are easily and justifiably decried, given that these zealots are brutally frank as to their beliefs and intentions - except, we should add, where lies better serve those intentions. But he observes that zealots on the left have also become illiberal, and that while seeming perhaps more righteous, their intolerance must be acknowledged as the like imposition of extremism on non-believers. There should be common ground, for instance, between exposing prepubescent children to issues of adult sexuality and having an age-appropriate answer for their curiosity regarding a classmate who has two daddies. What is needed, in other words, if not more liberalism, is at least more liberality in society, broader minds not narrower, tolerance of our differences. Instead - if you will please read my essay on tribalism - we march in lockstep in search of enemies to hate, ways to “own the libs,” at the expense of all that was once “good and holy.”
“Existential”
Last week in The Post, Charles Lane had a column decrying the overuse of “existential threat,” a phrase intended to hype whatever it modifies, which intent is being subverted by said overuse. There is an “existential threat” to democracy, for example, likewise to the planet. Extreme partisans hurl the phrase at their opponents like verbal grenades, while as time goes by these are increasingly unlikely to explode upon anyone’s ears. Lane would like us to stifle our dalliance with “existential” and leave the noun “threat” to stand on its own.
To some extent I would agree with him, except that words have meaning; and I find in writing the challenge is to find just the right word to convey what one means. I learn from the dictionary that existential comes to us from Late Latin by way of Danish and German. No wonder it sounds so highfalutin! As an adjective, it is defined as “based on observation or experience,” a synonym for “genuine, indisputable.” Anyone of these synonyms would suit just as well to describe threat in most contexts, leaving existential for more serious purposes, such as “of, relating to, or affirming existence.” I would argue that readers or listeners today do not hang on these fine points, however, but are now supplying another meaning. To modern people, an “existential threat” is one that endangers the very existence of something, and when that thing is important to us, the phrase gets our attention.
When it is bandied about by a post-Soviet dictator as an excuse for his aggression, the response is derision. But when a significant minority in a prominent Western democracy is persuaded that to curtail the rights of certain groups they find personally offensive, and to ensure that these groups are impeded from voting, that minority has met the definition of “existential threat.” No synonym will do in this context, Mr. Lane.
Long live the King!
There will undoubtably be throngs of people come to see the coronation of King Charles III - citizens and foreign visitors alike - not to mention media from every imaginable outpost on the planet, to cover all the associated hoopla. After all, at one time the sun literally never set on the British Empire - until figuratively it did. Still the monarchy, personified in the royal family, goes on despite critics. For all their carping about pomp and circumstance and wealth, these modern day Roundheads, I do believe, harbor a certain pride, particularly on ceremonial occasions, that their country is still up to snuff, indeed the envy of the world when it comes to putting on a show.
How to account, however, for the persistent affection of the English for their monarchy, as continuous over centuries as the institution itself? Chiefly I would say it is that continuity, accompanied through so many generations with a mutual loyalty between the royal family and the citizenry. The former survived Runnymede, albeit at the sacrifice of absolute power, and ancient scandals compared with which modern ones pale. Consider Henry VIII, for example, and his daughter, bloody Queen Mary I. And it survived Cromwell’s Commonwealth.
I would be remiss on the historic occasion of a third King Charles being crowned if I failed to mention, especially for readers not familiar with that beloved Scotsman Sir Arthur and his immortal Sherlock Holmes, the most apropos of those mystery stories, “The Musgrave Ritual.” You can catch a dramatization of it on YouTube, the Granada series, of course, that starred Jeremy Brett, whose biography is to be had on this website. The tale tells of a Musgrave who was a prominent Cavalier of Charles I, and who was entrusted with the broken remnants of the royal crown. He has left only a puzzling catechism to his descendants describing the whereabouts but not the treasure itself, which is only found out by an overqualified butler who dies in search of it. Holmes solves the mystery, and pieces together the broken diadem, explaining at the end, “What we have here, gentlemen, is none other than a relic of the crown of the ancient kings of England.” Long live the King!
Obviously!
As I was working on the essays in Ruminata, and even as I write for the blog, I frequently have occasion to observe that I have been belaboring the obvious. A recent example is my post “The terror of guns.” When year after year of mounting gun violence in America adds to that haunting parade of slaughtered children, it should be obvious that those with the power to enact reasonable restrictions on firearms have no intention of doing so but instead, along with their constituents, persist in holding the majority hostage. They must have a reason, all lame excuses notwithstanding; yet all we hear after each incident are the useless, sickening, wailing cries of “Why? Why?”
In the titular essay of Ruminata, “The Sexual Theory of Everything,” I propose a novel idea that goes some way in explaining irrationality in homo sapiens, namely that the agenda of the sperm drives that of the man, whether or not he is aware of it. The idea is obvious through one fact alone, which is the male position on abortion: They all have to be born; they do not all have to live. Belaboring the obvious, please note the congruence of anti-abortion views in those who enshrine the AR-15.
But how is it that we can be as blind as mole rats to things staring us in the face? The answer to that is itself obvious, which is that “obvious” is in the eye of the beholder. Anyone with even a rudimentary grounding in science, for instance, may be called upon to belabor proven facts to a fundamentalist who has no faith in the scientific method and will argue that his God revealed different information only to his prophets, some of whom wrote it down - obviously. I will give one more example, which will also address the world’s bewilderment concerning extremism and division in America, of all places. The true likelihood is obvious: America began as disparate colonies of European nations, breaking those ties over a paltry tea tax. It is now dissolving back into its original condition of disparate states - to everyone’s misfortune.
Ravages of age
The eighteen essays in my new book, Ruminata, cover a variety of topics. You can read about them here on the website and even read excerpts. If they seem to lean a bit heavily towards old age, you will excuse me for writing about what I know, but further for recalling that in youth, when there was no need to think about it, I did not - and I should have. Thus the essay, “Aging,” is subtitled, “What You Were Never Told.” Even among family members, the subject of aging may seem awkward. No one wants to appear nosy, or intrusive, or insulting; and in any case many people do not want to admit to the ravages of age. So the old ones passed on without my appreciating their experience of the process, and with every year that goes by I have more to learn about it. Even my older brother is now gone, with whom I commiserated daily. In the end, given his early dementia, I was the only one left to answer his calls.
He had arthritis as do I and as did our mother, but when she complained of pain, I would never have thought to ask how she would rate it on a scale of one to ten. In reality it can be a twenty. I have long wondered why old people walk bent over, first resorting to a cane, then a walker, then graduating to a wheelchair. Sciatica has given me the answer: when one stands up straight, the inflamed sciatic nerve shoots an intense aching pain down to the ankle, relieved only by bending forward - or leaning on a cane. So much for the Upright Walker I saw advertised; when one needs a walker it is because he no longer can stand upright.
An important reason for my publishing Ruminata was to offer such advice to younger generations. Their elders will relate to it; they may benefit. These days, sadly, the young people may make the fatalistic mistake of assuming they will not live to old age. I will ask Anna to repeat here a bit of poetic wisdom that was posted on the blog some time ago. Entitled “Like Trees,” it begins, “We die like trees…” Find it at the top this week under “The Carriage Lamp.”
Rome 476
As Donny now stands accountable - for the first time in his life - indicted for one of countless crimes for which he has evaded the law and all principles of justice, America joins the many banana republics having brought their corrupt leaders or fallen dictators to court; and I am brought to a sad question: Is this how Romans felt in 476 when their last emperor was deposed by a barbarian king? Not that the courageous prosecutor in New York is a barbarian, au contraire. He has no tribe of Goths with bludgeons to back him up, but the truculent state of the world today foreshadows decline and fall, the kind of tremors Romans must have begun to experience in their far-flung provinces.
A third world war I do believe would be the end of us, and while commentators and analysts are reticent about using the term, I see clear signs of Fascism on the right, especially here in the States. In a new book, The Undertow, author Jeff Sharlet exposes this condition as a slow civil war, and calls out the increasingly blatant glorification of violence, close upon the unreasoning embrace of victimhood. Deja vu. Elaborating in a recent interview, he went beyond glorification to suggest there is a sickening relish in the execution of this violence, and instant martyrdom for those acolytes apprehended. Reports of this “divisiveness” are numerous from all sources, attended most often by grim prophecies. But surely divisive is far too mild a term for it. This is that fracturing that the Romans saw and that has eventually brought down every civilization.
I am seeing a bigger picture, another aspect, relating to my post a few weeks ago, “Fear of God,” on the surprising decline of fertility in China. When I note that birth rates are going down in other developed nations, I am put in mind of the experiment long ago by John Calhoun (John B. not John C.). In his “mouse universe,” collapse was brought about not by the numbers of mice but by the stress of overcrowding. The mice stopped reproducing, and they all died, doubtless after a terminal convulsion of violence.
“To a Mouse,” Robert Burns (1785): But Mouse, you are not alone/ In proving foresight may be vain/ The best laid schemes of mice and men/ Go oft awry!
Everything Everywhere All at Once
It will come as no surprise to my readers when I say I do not go to movies. The film industry, I have long believed, bears a heavy weight of guilt in the degradation and corruption of our culture by its fondness for graphic sex, violence, and gore, such that I refuse to support it by my patronage, even for a G-rated flick. Thus I have not seen the Oscar-winning film “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” though I must say the title is oddly relevant to the modern world, especially post-pandemic. While it is billed as science fiction, descriptions of the plot suggest comedy, but the Wikipedia article got it right, i.e. “absurdist.” From what I gather it takes up the notion of parallel universes, and the story involves beings able to move among them, with evil intent of course.
Now as for the post-pandemic relevance of that titular phrase: no sooner had effective vaccines been approved and distributed than great hordes of people swarmed out of their confinement like bats out of hell, overwhelming airlines that had lost experienced pilots, and air traffic control likewise; despite boarded up stores and shuttered factories, they wanted Everything Everywhere All at Once, until a lack of longshoremen and truckers found cargo ships from the Far East, unable to offload, cluttering the Pacific for months. You get the idea.
But even before we were all plunged off that viral cliff, what aspect of modern life had not come to be best described as Everything Everywhere All at Once? Just look at any so-called “newsfeed” on a Facebook page, with its ads and posts and frenetic videos flying at your face. Or consider the average email box, the address of which has been cadged wherever one has clicked in the browser and is now stuffed daily with useless memoranda from Everywhere All at Once. Turn on the real news of the world and you have not escaped: crises of climate, weather, the economy, the national debt, wars and rumors of wars. Everything Everywhere All at Once! Don’t need to see the movie.
The terror of guns
One reason I follow the news, grim as it is these days, and read the daily paper is in order that I may avoid boring you, dear friends, with tropes on any given subject, but offer a perspective I have not et come upon. Indeed, after I have written about something I more often see the idea pop up elsewhere, not that I credit my influence; but born in 1945, I often find myself ahead of the curve, now better described as a tsunami.
Thus to the matter of guns in America, a colossal crisis that positions this powerful country in the eyes of the world on the edge of a precipice and a plunge into anarchy. After yet another slaughter of babes in school and ensuing response of photos, crosses, hearts, and teddy bears, the sickening cant of news media of “thoughts and prayers,” and authorities “searching for a motive,” as though any disturbed juvenile needs a motive to kill, a thoughtful column by Paul Waldman was in the Post. He pointed to the fact of liberal successes on social issues, making for a more open society, the very thing that conservatives abhor. Only on the matter of gun laws does the rightwing prevail, obstructing any and all reasonable restrictions, and of late even refusing to justify their untenable position. Waldman concludes with this: “Our terror is their achievement.”
Terror is the playing field of dictatorship, and this observation of Mr. Waldman is the first inkling I have come upon of my own view that the politics of guns is not simple obstinacy, not malfeasance but deliberate dereliction with the aim of creating a reign of terror. The legislators standing in the way of sound laws are far from conservative; they are cold blooded killers who want your children to die horribly, want you to live in fear. Consider: it is their only route to overcome the will of the majority, which in their view is decadent and sinful, to install in its place a theocracy, sharia law, with their chosen overlord atop.
(For the bigger picture, see “The Tribal Mindset” in my latest book, and bear in mind the fall of Rome took 200 agonizing years.)
Algorithms
I go out for coffee in the mornings, making the rounds of the cafes; but much earlier, after breakfast, I sit with a twelve ounce pot of tea and the morning newspaper. The tea is Bigelow’s Earl Grey, which is stronger than Twining’s and has delightful tag lines, my favorite - for obvious reasons - being “steeped in tradition since 1945.” I deplore the fact that print newspapers now struggle to survive as the hive mind turns en masse to digital. Even an institution as venerable as The Washington Post curtails sections of the daily editions, with Style and Metro often down to two sheets of newsprint.
To my mind the myriads now relying solely on the internet for news are missing more than a genial companion to their breakfast tea, the reason easily summed up in one word - algorithms. An algorithm is guided by the user’s clicks or taps to deliver more of the same content. And aren’t they becoming so clever! Artificial intelligence is spreading like wild fire. But the algorithm is not reading your mind. Click on the nude Venus of Urbino painted by Titian in the sixteenth century and the next offering may be erotic videos; respond to that and the algorithm extrapolates that you night like child pornography. The machine has no inkling of your tea character.
In contrast, the daily newspaper has the potential to surprise: what columnists are featured today; what letters are the advice mavens fielding; what will be Spiderman’s next adventure; will the legislators get over themselves and raise the debt ceiling or implode the global economy by their malfeasance. But the newspaper has unheralded adjunctive benefits. Rather than suffocating in your own news silo, you learn what other people regard as newsworthy and what are prevailing trends and opinions outside your cocoon. The paper, moreover, is the only source, as far as I can ascertain, for the times of moonrise and set, for stargazers like myself; and that pile of old papers makes an excellent weed barrier in the vegetable garden. Quod erat demonstrandum.
“Social media”
Any devotees of Facebook who happen to discover my website may wonder why no links. While I do have a presence there, many friends have by now dropped their engagement for various reasons uniformly tinged, however, with some degree of trepidation. I went on fb, using my pen name, in 2015 when I published Conjuring Archangel. Hoping to connect with others interested in Buddhism, the subject matter of the book, I sought and joined Buddhist groups. I understood and accepted that any sales pitch was unwelcome, but reasoned that if I posted something of interest and attached an eye catching photo, my pen name might come to be recognized. Over time I learned what I might have known: as in any established religion, adherents of Buddhism harbor views as firmly set as cement mixed with sand and water; and most any person with a spiritual bent will adhere to an established religion, not as a seeker of truth but more as consumer, demanding their needs be satisfied on the Jumbotron.
My second book, a biography of British actor Jeremy Brett, fared much better on fb, where he has many fan groups. These have been supportive of the book, and some group members are my fb besties. My new book, Ruminata, just out last autumn, I am loathe to put on the site. In recent years, perhaps in response to major controversy, Facebook has become impossible to navigate. The appearance of my pages fluctuates in kaleidoscopic fashion. I am pushed to buy ads or boost posts, but on some pages I find no way to post. Try to move, and I find myself on business.facebook, a whole other URL and no way to get back. What will a visitor see, clicking on a link? No way to know. In my view the self-described "disrupters" of our computer age have nowhere been more intrusive and destructive than in the so-called "social media." Some adepts have been enabled to flourish grotesquely, amplifying a wealth gap already grotesque. Many argue that fb and others have knit the world together. Examine that fabric closely, say I. It is gossamer.
Fear of God
In the morning Post today was an article about a drastic decline of fertility in, of all places, China, one of the two nations with a population over one billion, the other being India. A disaster for older generations, any drop in the human population is a boon for the planet. The article attributes this drop in the birth rate to the pessimism of young people about their future. Golly, Xi, they’re not buying your propaganda! This interesting development is apropos of my post two weeks ago on the supposed advantages of dictatorship in governing a large population. Any such advantage evaporated with the fear of God; a chieftain might depend on thunderbolts to control the behavior of his small tribe. Today even Chinese bots can’t do it. Control is the key word.
In prehistoric tribes, our species did not differ greatly from packs of other social animals. The strongest males prevailed as leaders, and their power was abetted by the aforesaid thunderbolts. Civilizations arose with the coalescence of tribes, facilitated through conquest and terror. God was still feared, and even seen to be embodied in the ruler. But our modern God is much kindlier. How then to control the behavior of individuals for the good of society? Particularly as populations explode exponentially, control slips out of the hands of leaders and governments, and a balance of salutary behaviors tips to depravity, along with ever more ways to go astray, ranging from the criminal to the bizarre, the unnatural, the licentious.
It is intriguing in a morbid sort of way to observe how the young adults react to these depressing conditions, even in the authoritarian countries that see the most desperate repression. Case in point, China, where they delay marrying and even then abstain from having children. Unable to express themselves without fear of ghastly reprisal, they engage in “quiet quitting,” to send a message of disengagement. But the Western democracies, heirs to the ideals of ancient Greece, do not get off scot free. Here we see all the signs of reversion to the tribal state of hatred, division, and most terrible - the fundamentalist God. Mega-storms? Carbon emissions? No, God is angry! Behave yourselves!
Who do you think you are?
Since taking up the writing life when I retired ten years ago, everyone to whom I have mentioned it confides that they have always wanted to do likewise. There is an idyllic concept of a writer’s life as free and easy days, sitting with pen and paper or at the computer, idle mornings frequenting cafés. What’s not to love? I try to explain that writing can be tedious work unless one has been instilled from a young age with a love of words, and of stringing them together into phrases, and the phrases into sentences. In other words, writing is a craft; a writer is a “wordsmith.” The lifestyle is attractive to be sure, and I acknowledge that I would have preferred to make it my profession. But as there is no financial security, one needs to have a day job.
What has surprised me as I have pursued this course, even presuming to publish my own books, has been the reaction of those very people who want to be writers themselves. Their opprobrium towards anyone who tries to be a writer is ironical. If they regard the wannabe writer as a greedy egotist, why would they be desirous of entering a field where they would be so automatically branded? They will of course claim to respect successful writers, those I find whose names on the book cover are larger than the title. Truth be told, any author who reaches that level of notoriety will have a stable of youngsters producing the books - or these days a robot.
There is a mystique surrounding the term author which may account for the impression of pomposity arising from its appropriation. Here is the immortal Charles Dickens on the subject in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers: In a garden party to which are invited only people who are celebrated for their accomplishments, “There were half a dozen lions from London - authors, real authors, who had written whole books, and printed them afterwards - and here you might see ‘em walking about, like ordinary men, smiling, and talking - aye, and talking pretty considerable nonsense too, no doubt with the benign intention of rendering themselves intelligible to the common people.” If you love words, you want to know exactly what they mean. The definition of author is “the writer of a literary work, such as a book.” Pomposity not required. Who do you think you are? Who do you need to be?
Democracy vs. autocracy
One hardly knows these days what to worry most about. Should it be climate change, bringing mega-drought that threatens the food supply? Recession or worse from the continuing strains of the pandemic and now a costly war? Or perhaps that war itself, which is sounding more and more like world war three? Take your pick; it’s a feast for a worrier! Extreme weather is a daily reminder of climate change, inflated prices of a possible recession, and of war, a Napoleon wannabe popping up like a deranged muskrat. President Biden’s speech from Warsaw was impressive, shades of Churchill, as opposed to the puny Putin’s fantasies. The world is not fooled about his unprovoked aggression and the brutality of its execution. No, by no means. As Biden implied, the huddled masses will always yearn to breathe free.
Yet in some quarters even well meaning people will make the case that given the burdensome scale of overpopulation democratic governance has become unworkable, that an autocratic regime is now the only practical means to provide for and to control society. Refer back to Plato’s Republic for Socrates ideal of philosopher kings. Even he was not the least sanguine about the reality. Human history makes amply clear that autocrats have never shown either a taste nor the the ability for governance. They are tyrants wanting only to conquer, subjugate, and exploit. For awhile China was convincing with its example of mercantile communism, but inevitably in such an atmosphere megalomania will surface. Thus Xi Jinping, president for life.
I have raised this subject before on the blog; but unfortunately as time passes it is increasingly relevant, and if modern people become incapable of self government, we are doomed to a future under the surveillance of Big Brother. In my experience of democracy I take hope, because there seems always to emerge a consensus in the electorate keeping the nation on a stable path. Today though, propaganda is cheap and ubiquitous, and who knows what devils may arise and prevail.
Absolutely!
Despite having observed that outrage is the quickest path to fame, I have tried to avoid hot button issues on the blog since taking up the writing life. Defending the moderate view, the middle road, gets you absolutely nowhere. (If you are paying attention, click on the heart!) I confess to some misgiving therefore in posting last week on the subject of gender dysphoria in the young, a bloody battle in the culture wars. In such battlefields today, we dig deep trenches of opinion and give no ground.
Most people are not good listeners. I am a good listener because my mother was half Irish, and every quotidian event in life became a story. I had practice, long practice! As a writer I have had occasion to note that neither are most people careful readers. They will skip the introduction, where you have diligently explained your adherence to moderation. Indeed, by simply raising a topic, they will see you as the enemy, never reading what you had to say. Here we see the very reasons that nance escapes them.The distinguishing of subtle variation is too tedious for modern people. How much easier to latch on to an absolute opinion or belief and close the mind to others. These absolute ideas, moreover, are personal, seeming to be vindicated by one’s own history and experience: My childhood was thus, so of course that is the universal experience; my history is such, and so it must absolutely apply to every living person.
For all the head-scratching about divisiveness in human intercourse, this phenomenon of absolutism must be recognized as an important factor, subordinate nonetheless to the tribal mindset aroused by sharing the planet with more than eight billion fellow humans. In a context of so many unique individuals, a spectrum of any contemplation propels us toward mathematical infinity - and the smaller scale of the tribe entices irresistibly.
Dysphoric, or not
While my high opinion of my local paper, The Washington Post, has recently been known to falter, I can always trust that someone on the staff will soon write something to redeem that institution in my eyes. This week it was Megan McArdle writing on the subject of gender dysphoria and the extreme positions in the uproar it has raised with respect to pubescent children. She begins by acknowledging that in seeming to equate the extremity of opposing sides she risks an onslaught of brickbats. In other words she takes the middle ground and proceeds to illuminate the matter with a perspective I have not seen from anyone else. In so doing she exposes, intentionally or not, a generalized suspicion of modern-day parents, either as ignorant bigots or panic-stricken hysterics rushing to intervene at the earliest signs of puberty.
In her column, McArdle goes on to say that “everyone seems far more confident than they should be, given how weak the available research is.” Then she describes that weakness, quoting one Finnish researcher that “a child is not a small adult.” The conclusion, attributed to that same researcher, is that “emerging identities may not be as stable, or their grasp of the consequences as firm, as trans adults, who are of course fully capable of making their own decisions.”
In my day, gender dysphoria was simply known as puberty, and any perceived anomalies on what is now recognized as a gender spectrum might be anticipated to go away. Historically, this was true for a “significant fraction” of such cases, as McArdle also observes. The only thing she does not speak to, and which, being based on a personal inference, you will read nowhere but here, is the “cool factor.” Not long ago, homosexuality was regarded as a sin and a crime. Thanks to modern science, there is now a cultural enlightenment that has allowed a persecuted minority to come out of the closet and into the mainstream, where their signature style and creativity have a visible impact, especially in the media - an influence that surely is not lost on a child entering the chaos of puberty - dysphoric by definition.
The pendulum
Several essays in my new book Ruminata aim to defend the middle ground in socio-political matters, and I daresay the last elections here in the States were reassuring that a middle still exists. In this space, I have posted more than once on the metaphor of a pendulum, and here I go again. I am put in mind of the carnival ride that will swing the rider as on that pendulum from one gravity-defying extreme to the other for the thrill of that weightless feeling on either end and the rush between. That thrill corresponds to the motivation of any extremest fighting for his tribe in the battlefield, the legislature, or in the street. It would appear that all such activists perceive human society as a zero sum game: the only way for my tribe to win is for yours to lose; I cannot have more until you have less.
The attitude is ill-conceived, of course, since society is benefitted by everyone’s participation, the sum thereby increased. Inequity of long-standing, though, naturally breeds impatience, and here is where the metaphor should - but rarely does - advise the movement. When the pendulum is pushed to the extreme in one direction the increased amplitude guarantees an equal swing the other way, and at some point the carnival ride turns deadly. Both sides must seek a point of balance with the middle for society to work like a well regulated clock.
In terms of politics the extreme right, with the help of media, has discredited itself as the party of treachery, lies, and autocracy. The leftwing in what it conceives as self-evident righteousness answers with its own brand of imbalance, its own cards in the zero sum game: if my tribe has been disadvantaged by you, then it is my turn to disadvantage yours. Who is the better for that? The attempt instead has an ironical effect of justifying and inflaming critics. Schooled by history, one must bear in mind that the extremes on either end are and will ever be prepared to freeze the pendulum as soon as they have control.
A dangerous game
With an economy recovering from the pandemic, trying to stem the resulting inflation, shortages and supply chain chaos, and dealing at the same time with the irruption of megalomania in Europe and Asia, this is not the time to threaten default of the global reserve currency. Only a very reckless or puerile individual would even entertain such a thought, but just so is the cadre of firebrands now controlling the US Congress, with the world looking on, thinking if these deadbeats are the voters’ choice to represent them, America is no longer a safe investment. Will a recession result? No, it will mean a worldwide depression not seen in a century. Even bitcoin, the prize tulip of the financial sector, is measured against the dollar.
This and other shenanigans began generations ago with the likes of Newt Gingrich, their malignant influence spreading ever since, yet never called to account as far as I can ascertain in popular media. Surely this may be seen as a case of the emperor’s new clothes: facts reveal the nakedness of motives, but not wanting to appear divisive we refer only to mere differences of legitimate opinion. This time, should the juveniles on Capitol Hill decide to pull the rug out from under all global markets - just to see what will happen - those original purposes of anarchy will be laid bare.
An even better example making my point is the matter of gun control here in the States, where there is a broad consensus, including a majority of NRA members, in favor of sensible regulations. Yet those hard right legislators, having somehow invincible job security, stand obdurate in the face of carnage unique in the world. Their excuses are tissue thin while their true motives are plain as a pike staff. Anarchy, the seeds of which they continue to sow, will lead to dictatorship, their sole purpose all along. Nevertheless, aside from the fatuous thoughts and prayers, all we hear expressed here and from around the world is puzzlement. Why is nothing done about a plague of mass shootings?
America is in sore need of an orator who will stand up and point to the obvious. The small number of people who make the laws do not shrink from the bloody massacre of innocent children, the more the better. The emperor is as naked as the day that he was born!
I had professional help creating my author website, which you may now visit at: www.wgreychampion.com. Bookmark it! Still, when my wonderful designer, Melissa, on the staff at Luminare Press in Eugene, Oregon, cut me loose to manage it myself, confident that I would find my way around the Dashboard, I spent many afternoons over the holidays in that effort. Despite over three decades experience with computers, I have never been able to keep up; and now the industry, particularly the internet, appears to evolve at breakneck speed, morphing daily. Social changes that have come as a result have been far reaching and, I would argue, sinister. Yet whenever I reflect on these evils of the digital age, I am forced to wonder now it might have been otherwise.
I confess, and surely my readers know well, that I tend to harp on the subject of overpopulation. Consider though how eight plus billion people on the planet could possibly be managed without the aid of computers. There are critics of the modern revolution, of course, intent upon their aching nostalgia for the old ways. What they overlook, intentionally or not, is just how much smaller the population was even in their own lifetimes, since population grows exponentially. It has been estimated that it took over 200 thousand years for the human population to reach one billion, in 1804. By 1930 it was two billion. So those born since then have seen their species explode by six billion - four fold. In their youth highways did not require six lanes in each direction to be passable. A doctor could give time and attention to each patient and even call on them at home. Today they are allotted fifteen minutes per appointment, and a computer will give the diagnosis, the remedy, and call in a prescription, without reference or experience of a real human body.
Several essays in my new book Ruminata attempt to describe for younger people a time they could not have known; but rest assured I do not deceive myself: we are all now but cells in an evolving social organism, governed by algorithm.
Now slowly the hordes of travelers mobbing airports increase year after year, while the poor souls being crushed must surely put one in mind of boiling frogs. Please refer to the Wikipedia article on that age old metaphor for unexpected guffaws. The truth is, depending on how slowly the temperature is increased, a frog may allow itself to be boiled alive; and the metaphor is often used to warn against the gradual acceptance of the unacceptable. That wonderful fellow, Buttigieg, who heads the transportation department, scolds the airlines for their unacceptable behavior; yet we see with our own eyes that people continue to buy tickets and flock to airports expecting every time to board a plane irrespective of past experience. The frogs are not jumping - they are accustomed to the heat.
Global warming is a far more dangerous example, notwithstanding the naive idea that people would be sufficiently alarmed to take mitigating action before it was too late. No indeed! Regardless of how often their home has been blown away, flooded, burned to the ground, or sucked up in a tornado, they vow to rebuild, even lauded for their tenacity. The average person must live to a ripe old age even to notice that storms are more frequent and more damaging. His grandchildren will have grown used to it.
The Christmas season
The Christmas season in a word has been taxing, more so than ever, pre or post pandemic: physically, with temperatures so low Anna and I could not even meet in the courtyard to commiserate; and mentally as the highly infectious cloud of viruses hung over renewed expectations of jolly gatherings, said cloud notwithstanding. Here in the States, despite rising respiratory infections and deaths, vaccination rates are underwhelming, especially for the booster shots and even among vulnerable populations. Most of the old people I see have apparently decided to dance with the Grim Reaper, back to claim those he missed! Surely statisticians could tell us how long it will be before every soul in our 300+ million population has been touched by a personal loss to covid.
For myself, I am having a natural if poignant nostalgia for Christmas in the old country, after settling for Zoom calls these several years. I would dearly love to see the home farm, my nephew and family, my old friend who would meet me in Matlock on Christmas for dinner at High Tor, where I was assured a room for the night. Many of the airlines have recouped to some degree; but still come accounts of airports inundated with hordes of stranded passengers, and a new word is coined - flightmare.
Aside from Christian origins of the day - the story of legend, its observance variously practiced over the centuries and around the world, the spirit of giving it intends to engenderer, discussed here recently - the possibility of ever again enjoying that Dickensian Christmas glorified by the inestimable fellow in both his personal and his literary lives, is as dead as Jacob Marley. Why then do we continue to burden ourselves with this expectation?
Upon years of reflection, I have come to believe we do not make Christmas for ourselves but for others. Sadly we mostly fail in this attempt with the result that no one, excepting children, is made merry. The saving grace, however? Christmas at least hauls us out of our rut for a stirrup cup of wassail before we are plunged into the long, cold winter!
What's it all about?
In the Sherlock Holmes tale called "The Naval Treaty," the famed detective, reflecting upon the bloom of a moss rose, lapses into the following reverie, "There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner." He then offers the beauty of flowers as assurance of the goodness of Providence. It is an odd interruption of the text, and screen writers wanted to omit it from the television version, but Jeremy Brett, the star, insisted it remain. Apart from Conan Doyle's embrace of spiritualism later in life, I wonder if this passage reveals some familiarity with Spinoza, that meticulous reasoner and much maligned Jew of the seventeenth century.
My friend Anna and I, while not scholars of Enlightenment philosophers, have been discussing Spinoza lately, as he seems to have been the most truly enlightened of them. The strictures of the Abrahamic religions forced even the greatest of Western minds to go to tortuous lengths to protect their beliefs. Thus Spinoza was condemned as an atheist, though denying the charge. He reasoned that God exists, not as a separate being, but as one with his creation. In some ways his writings prefigure modern science, for example the agency of nature to create itself through evolution. To him nature and God were synonymous. But science has of course gone much further in demonstrating the essence of matter to be void. Therein lies the basic problem: Sir Arthur again, in "The Cardboard Box,"What is the meaning of it, Watson? What object is served by this circle of misery, violence, and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, and that is unthinkable."
When I came upon the teachings of Zen master Suzuki, I gave up the baroque convolutions of Western philosophy, in the realization that much deeper layers of reality come to us neither by science nor reason, but through revelation. Of course God is not a being, nor are any one of us, but what then makes us human? What gives us those spiritual qualities we call "Godlike"? I have never found this spelled out in Buddhist literature, but I would warrant it may be inferred in Spinoza's Ethics: That human capacity of spirit, the Godlike traits, belong to the universal mind, the ultimate reality. It stands to reason.
All atwitter
Well hasn't that poor boy Elon stirred up a hornet's nest by acquiring that enormously popular, arbitrarily influential Twitter app? To start with, who could have imagined a site with a tiny bird as an icon, upon which users are said to "tweet," would be considered anything but fanciful? And yet somehow those millions of tweeting, tiny birds have brought us to the verge of a very deep philosophical conundrum, i.e. the nature of "reality." What is truth, indeed, what is fact and what fiction? Not since the meticulous Rationalism of Spinoza has the issue been so contentious. But reality is layered, with the perceptible being uppermost. We trust our perceptions; seeing is believing. Science augments our perceptions with the microscope and the telescope. These we also trust, and on these layers Newtonian laws still hold. The quantum layer defies these laws, and the "weirdness" of quanta breaks with our logical brains. Yet well before this layer those who failed high school science, thus having no faith in the scientific method, will surely fail the true-false Twitter exam as well, and are easily recruited into the torch and pitchfork army.
In today's era of robots and AI making it so easy to manipulate our perceptions of reality, and the subtlety of propaganda to inflame tribal passions, the idea that social media like Twitter should be the go-to place to spread outright lies is downright pernicious. Unless one is posting about an experiment at the Large Hadron Supercollider, the plain facts about important issues are available at that layer of reality where we live out our lives, and that includes advances in science that have held up to careful scrutiny, like the effects and efficacy of vaccines. Perhaps before he goes any further, Master Elon should study the wiki method utilized by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. There you have an amazing resource of knowledge, curated by volunteers expert in the subject article. Really, Musk, your staff can call out the lies!
Presentism
In the preface to my new book, Ruminata, recently released, I remark upon the unfortunate circumstance of the young generation's dismissiveness of the old, expressing my hope that some among them may read my essays with a more open mind. In the tribal societies, through which we evolved over the great expanse of our history and prehistory, a great strength of the small kinship group was the reverence for elders, precisely because they were the store of knowledge and experience needed for survival. The unbecoming arrogance of many young people today, so obvious in the media which they dominate, is not only graceless but dangerous. By no means do I disparage the entire cohort, among whom are as many who are thoughtful, worthy people. May they be the ones to stand for public office in the near future!
In his monthly reflection, which appears in the Parish Magazine, the Reverend Mark Bratton, rector of Saint John the Baptist Church in Berkswell, England, wrote recently in defense of certain Biblical passages that seem to justify the practice of slavery. In the piece he uses the term "presentism," an attitude toward the past dominated by present day ideas. This is the very pitfall for a young generation that I would characterize as dangerous, when ignorant of history they have not its context, causing them to condemn the primitive past for being primitive and weighing it against their own righteous views. Should we not rather celebrate the progress of mankind toward greater tolerance and humanity?
What is lost in such a blinkered view is a legitimate appreciation of what in modern times we yet owe the past, even the primitive past. The Reverend Doctor Bratton points to Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which addresses common relationships including master and slave, advising obedience. In other writings, Paul strongly decries slavery, but in the context of Imperial Rome the fate of a disobedient slave could well have been crucifixion. Do we condemn Saint Paul, and change the name of that London cathedral? Do we banish the name of Christopher Columbus, who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with three small wooden boats expecting to find India? Ridiculous, yet an ironic victory for all those who still believe the earth is flat.
The spirit of giving
In my first book, Conjuring Archangel, and based on my conviction that the ancient rabbi Jesus was a closet Buddhist, the wondrously wise and generous Archangel tells his disciple Anna a tale of the virgin birth which he heard from Tibetan sources. Referring to Jesus as "the bodhisattva of the unfortunate venue," he relates that this intensely compassionate spirit was precipitate in his reincarnation, choosing for his mother the woman Mary without realizing she not only was not pregnant, she was still a virgin. Long story short, messenger angels had to be sent, and thereafter for millennia the birth of this remarkable being has been celebrated. Whatever it was he embodied, we surely must count the compassionate heart of Buddhism.
My latest book, Ruminata, recently released, includes an essay called "Potlatch: The Culture of Gifts," potlatch being a tribal practice requiring precise equivalence of gift exchange. Notable among tribes of the Pacific Northwest, it might involve rival chieftains each attempting to bankrupt the other. My essay points to the tawdry commercialization of Christmas that has us weighing the value not only of material items but also the relationships with which we attempt to match them. In other words, as potlatch Christmas becomes travesty, a grotesque imitation of the goodwill intended. But we cannot help ourselves.
If in the exchange of Christmas presents we find a gift received falls short of the one given, a suspicion arises, unspoken surely and perhaps unconscious, that somehow we have fallen in that person's esteem. On the other hand, if our own gift falls short, we sense alarm that next year a greater expectation could bankrupt us in the potlatch. For the true spirit of giving, reread "The Gift" by O. Henry, famed for his ironical endings. A poor young man struggling to find a Christmas gift for his young wife, sells his watch to buy hair combs, while she in like spirit sells her hair to buy him a watch chain. The essence, you see, is sacrifice.
Creativity
I am often struck by the unhappy destiny awaiting a creative young person in the modern world. In childhood they will demonstrate a gift of some kind: they are musical, or athletic, or have a flair for drama; and their education and training will go off in that particular direction, in the tacit assumption that as an adult they will sustain themselves in that arena. In reality, most will eventually become teachers or coaches unless they end up in a fast food joint or a desk job.
It is hard to fathom why a society would perpetuate such cruelty, producing a plethora of concert level violinists, for example, at a time when orchestras and their audiences are shrinking. But writing, it seems to me, has become the most common pitfall. Universities churn out multitudes of young writers, each a unique individual having something to say and wanting to be heard. They go forth proclaiming their uniqueness in lyrical prose and prosaic poetry, only to face the hard truth that every creature born is just as unique and that in the literary world the lightning bolt of stardom strikes but few. The lucky ones might get by writing crime or romance novels, religious tracts, children's books or cookbooks, the only sorts of things of interest to most other people - and the rest will become teachers.
Is there any conceivable way then for the talented person growing up in this world to preserve that creativity from being obliterated? Along with a day job, that person must be able to continue expressing that creativity even knowing it will receive no attention. Take your fiddle outside to the roof, like Tevye. Write for future archeologists, who just might unearth your manuscript as they mine the ruins of our civilization. Write because you are a writer.
Losing control
Results of the election will not be certain for awhile, and surely there has been enough ranting and raving on the subject anyway. Unfortunately, the process tends to expose the truth that we may do what we will, to paraphrase Einstein, but we do not will what we will, that being driven by forces in our nature, in this case the tribal mindset.
If we live to old age, we realize the slow loss of control that attends a weakening body. With spinal problems we turn to a cane or walker. With arthritis we no longer can do many things for which we once could use our bare hands, but must reach for that most valuable of tools, a pliers. Along with such disabilities many things escape our control: the lawn, the shrubs, the trees, the stacks of books and papers, expired medications, neglected foodstuffs that draw the indomitable pantry moth. And then one day a young descendent enters the house and is heard to remark, "It's time for the bulldozers!"
Here we must observe that to lose control is a deep fear triggering, depending on the degree, the survival instinct in any living creature; and beyond anyone's control is the loss of one's peers in old age, after watching as each declines, sickens, and dies. Thus slowly with discernment and percipience we begin to feel the sense of that final loss of control, when "the angel with his darker draught draws up to thee."
As early results from the elections trickle in, there are rays of hope that restore my faith in the American electorate, which may be awakening to the dangers of stoking the tribal instincts. Only through the freedom to vote may the will of the people be known, but today around the world we witness new maneuvers in the authoritarian playbook, even in America, to subvert that will. Surely our greatest fear should not be death, but the far greater loss of subjugation.
The Titanic
Halloween is past but with elections a week off, monsters and devils linger here, scarcely deterred by All Saint's Day. Indeed the fiery rhetoric rivals a Guy Fawkes bonfire. Glad as I might be to be rid of the acrimonious political ads, as I sit in the courtyard with my friend Anna relishing the autumn weather, I have a sense that we are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, to exploit that overused analogy. But what are we to do, Cassandra and I? The assembled essays in my new book, Ruminata, address the very problems that will prevent its receiving attention. The essay "Communication" decries the internet as a Tower of Babel where a cacophony of innumerable voices compete for their unintelligible screams to be heard. "Decline and Fall" has the subtitle, "The Tribal Mindset," finding which to be inherent in human nature and exposed in times of crisis and instability to the detriment of civilizations throughout human history. Foremost of all, the first essay in the book, "The Sexual Theory of Everything," explains why homo sapiens, with the Devil's own brain allowing him to escape the laws of nature, remains forever bound to the primal one. Alike with all other animals he will never refrain from reproducing at will, indeed polluting the planet to the extent of eliminating all life forms.
These problems are fundamentally irremediable because if mankind is irrational and at the same time has escaped the mill wheels of natural selection, he cannot evolve. But he will escape - into fiction, where we are replaced by robots, or a miracle of eugenics gets the better of Mother Nature. Our best hope is to go deeper to the ultimate reality - the Buddhist dharma. That essay is also in my book.
As for Anna and I, we will be in the courtyard awaiting the last call to the lifeboats...
A bridge too far
The subtitle of my new book, Ruminata, is the title of the first essay, "The Sexual Theory of Everything," that being in essence that we define life itself as the ability for self replication. The sex drenched culture, therefore, does not shock me nor does the current gender obsession surprise me. Heaven knows and history shows my native Britain has long been guilty of both. The problem here in America, I believe, lies in its puritanical roots, still deep in the soil and bearing toxic weeds in parts of the country. The Puritans came to these shores after all for the freedom to define sin by their own lights and to punish sinners in their own barbaric ways.
In modern times we thought the sex act had been freed up by birth control and women's rights. Not for the Puritans! Gender identity is an even touchier matter, bearing a prejudice older than antisemitism. After all, if you define life as self replication, gay people may be regarded as a threat to species survival, irrespective of overpopulation. By no means will the admonition to "go forth and multiply" be quashed, not unless homo sapiens become sapient. Nonetheless come the champions of diversity into the fray, "Let us start with the school children, before the epigene for gender identity has been influenced by the hormones of puberty; allow them to decide whether they want to be male or female." Mind you tolerance is a virtue that does much credit to a parent or teacher who, in their behavior, models it for their young charges. However, to attempt to codify this or any virtue through rules and laws is to invite a political backlash far more damaging than the prejudice itself. When it comes to their children, parents are positively desperate, even the most tolerant having qualms about the possibility of homosexuality in their own - democracy be damned. Civil rights, anti-discrimination - by all means. Pronoun police? A bridge too far, Auntie.
The state of the world from our village
Autumn being our favorite season, my friend Anna and I frequently meet in the courtyard, while the weather continues deliciously amenable. These days, though, we jest our conversation has become "Cassandra meets Jeremiah," I daresay justifiably. Even in our small village we begin to see the effects of global deterioration in various arenas. While our two small grocers scramble to keep us supplied, the produce shelves can remain empty until afternoon. Are the trucks late, or were the citrus groves devastated by the last hurricane? Grapefruit, for example, has been known to come from South Africa. Sudden enormous popularity can fall upon certain products for whatever random reason, causing them to fly off the shelf. Neither the factories nor stores seem able to anticipate the pirouettes of the herd. The favored vitamin C, 1000 milligrams timed release, will be found nowhere while other versions and brands languish and expire.
An unprecedented phenomenon of this post-pandemic era is what I am calling voluntary unemployment. Stores, restaurants, airlines, any public agency you can name, including police, schools, health care facilities, all are in dire need of staff, while the unemployed are not in the least eager to rejoin the workforce, even as prices rise. The shortage of staff then places an extreme burden on the few workers thus in danger of burnout. My theory, in the absence any other, is that the deprivations of the pandemic have lowered expectations and thereby the standard of living. We learned to appreciate our old clothes, to live well enough without attending every sporting event and rock concert, taking the whole family at a cost of thousands. But in the democracies, a fatalistic electorate stands ready to punish whosoever it deems blameworthy. "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"
Beginner's mind
Hard to avoid politics when every topic converges on it, even the weather; however, with age still more dire concerns crowd out all others. The next screening, the next blood test has the increasing chance of turning your life upside down and robbing you of that most blessed attribute, the indeterminate lifespan. As long as you have that you can plan ahead, without it you may as well stop flossing.
But of course there is more to it. The aging process comes on slow, one joint at a time, and the big challenge is avoiding the high dudgeon of incessant aggravation. In youth, a person has zero appreciation for the body. It functions; his thumb does what he needs it to do. His back supports him without pain, even allowing him to bend, stoop, lift, turn with ease. And as age slowly erases these abilities, the memory of that youthful state is borne as a curse. Then at the same time the grand youthful passions that once blazed unobscured by reality now smolder like the embers of an autumn bonfire. The thrill is gone, the zest, the joy; one finds himself, cursing fate and pummeling inanimate objects.
But wait, you say, what about the practice of Buddhist medication? Here is my thought, children: Zen mind is beginner's mind. It is easy to have beginner's mind when one is a beginner. Very shortly however, the inexorable process of discrimination sets in, teaching the beginner what is good and what is bad. This process, of course, is indispensable for survival, but leads eventually to rigid attitudes, tastes, biases. Thus the question is how to restore beginner's mind in old age, which is at once humbling and instructive. We must learn to recognize and appreciate that all dichotomies we have experienced perforce have this in common: they are transcendent. In this epiphany the grand passions are transmuted.
Election season
The mudslinging is no more disgusting than the tens of millions spent on incessant attack ads, literally repeated every thirty seconds. I hardly see how inducing nausea in viewers can be expected to win their votes, but that is election season here in my adopted country, now in full swing. In this midterm contest, a normally insignificant event, the stakes are colossal. The results will reveal the extent to which the party of autocracy has hold of the election process. If that party adds the legislature to its bag, where it already cossets the judiciary, the government will grind to a halt. That is the tyrant's modus operandi: You do not need bureaucrats: your patriarch will take care of you. In return I require everything you produce and all you own, including your women and your first born son.
Welcome back to feudalism. As bad as it would be for the American superpower, this turn of events would precipitate global catastrophe. Consider: If Putin had been allowed to retain his most fawning puppet in the White House, can there be any doubt that he would have easily crushed Ukraine, without any resistance? Indeed, if he can hold out until 2024, he may have another chance; and once he has swallowed Ukraine, the NATO countries will be easy game, America having turned its back. So it seems the fate of the world hangs with those independent suburban women on election day.
Were it not for the troubled airlines, without even pilots to man all the accustomed flights, I surely would have booked one to fly home post-election. I suppose I could sail across on the QE2, if I didn't fear its being a plague ship. For that matter, is Britain a refuge with the facile Liz Truss at the helm? I suspect she has been studying the inimitable Mitch McConnell, evidence the echo of "trickle down" in the target of her tax cuts. But this is not a political blog, my dears. I promise a different topic next week!
The fig leaf
With the rising success of populist autocrats has come a clear consensus that democratic governance is endangered around the world. Nonetheless, we must observe a most curious, ironical phenomenon: sham elections. Why does the tyrant who has won power through whatever nefarious means seek the impression of validation as the peoples' willing choice? Surely such efforts signal a deep root of democracy in the global order that took hold over the past two centuries. Why else would the dictators need to claim, from under such a threadbare fleece, that they lead a democracy?
Go back before the Great War to study the old social order in Europe, when immense wealth and power were still concentrated in the upper classes by virtue of family inheritance. The working people, the servant class, the poor lived at the mercy of those aristocrats, deemed unassailably their superiors, who had education, centuries-old family estates, and the influence such wealth was seen to rightfully bestow. That there followed injustice, inequity, deprivation, grinding poverty without legitimate recourse is portrayed in the novels of more enlightened authors of the day, who as it turns out had greater influence on history than that of wealth. Perhaps I am not the first to reflect that Bleak House was not only the charming abode of the story but rather symbolic of British society of the day - indeed bleak. Take the character Jo, who "knows nothink," sweeps the street to survive, and lives in a wretched place with the queer name of Tom-All-Alone's, or the poor brick makers and their abused wives. In the Chancery Court, find the "insolence of law's delay," three hundred years after Shakespeare.
In those long ago, premodern eras, kings had "divine rights." Kaiser Wilhelm did not need permission to send his army into Belgium and start a world war. Why then does Putin, the wannabe czar, require the fig leaf of a coerced vote to usurp the east of Ukraine? I daresay that despite a persistent strain of despotism in humankind, democracy, promising liberty and justice for all, has left a righteous impression.
Ruminata published!
My essay collection, Ruminata, is now published and available online in soft cover or ebook. Those of you who read and enjoy this weekly blog will likewise enjoy the essays, but I hope to reach out with this book to more people, as I feel it explains the several confounding perplexities of the global crises we now are forced to witness. It does so with what are surely novel ideas.
Many have written and spoken, since the 1950s in fact, about the ill effects of human overpopulation. Yet the subject of a "population bomb" very shortly had more eyes rolling in disdain than eyebrows raised in alarm, particularly among those unfamiliar with the term "exponential." I was quite young at that time, and have searched ever since for any commentary addressing the question of why, given those clearly deleterious effects, the species continues to multiply as robustly as ever. Over the years I came to believe that despite a unique ability to reason we are driven to reproduce alike with all other animals because reproduction is the teleologic root defining life.
The evidence mounts even in the irrational backlash against any and all efforts to alleviate the pollution of our numbers. Ill-fated, homo sapiens long since escaped the natural controls of evolution. Now we see the inevitable consequences and will continue to suffer them. We are obviously not sapient. With the means to control procreation available for many generations, large swaths of the populace refuse and even condemn them. If they are obeying God, why is he grinding them so exceedingly fine?
Let me assure you all, nonetheless, that Ruminata is not a jeremiad. There are lighter topics - my observations on the phases of life, all of which I have now experienced firsthand. There is nostalgia and humor. Grab a cup of tea or a glass of port and curl up with this book. I promise a good read!
Bleak House
Bleak House was not bleak at all, apart from the "growlery" of its master, John Jarndyce. From the viewpoint of his ward, Esther Summerson, it was salvation and refuge; and I was heartbroken when in the end her guardian forfeits his claim upon her affections to a younger man. But as for heartbreaking, I should say nearly, for Dickens was not one to break hearts; he manages to disappoint one's expectations in the gentlest, most understanding way. Indeed, his Jarndyce was described by author Vladimir Nabokov as "one of the best and kindest human beings ever described in a novel."
It was thanks to the pandemic that I discovered several Victorian novels that I had overlooked in my education. They are a delicious distraction; and while Bleak House is very long, I was saddened to finish it. If you are familiar with it, you know that the court case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a litigation over two versions of a will that has dragged on for generations ruining many lives in the process, is peripheral to the story. Dickens uses it to skewer the British legal system and the legal profession with his hilarious satire. When he brings the Chancery case to a close by the discovery of a more recent will, the result is eerily modern: the entire estate has been eaten up in court costs!
Bleak House has been considered by many to be Charles Dickens's best novel, written in mid-career at age forty. Despite its length, I determined I should have a hard copy on my self, and so on the wing of Amazon it appeared. This volume, put out by Compass Circle, manages to keep to 395 pages by using the 8.5 by 11 inch format. On the copyright page, the publisher finds it necessary to include the following statement: "This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations as it would if it were written today." Good god, are the children learning nothing of history, allowed instead to retain the perspective of infancy and to hold it as both sacrosanct and universal? We're done for!
To the Queen!
When she was born, the Creator broke the mold. There have been none, nor can we expect a like, to equal her. Her steel was forged in the war, but her iron was as ancient as the white cliffs of Dover. Make no mistake, it was she, in colorful suits and hats to match, who was the Iron Lady. Much has been said about the anachronism of monarchy in the modern world, the foolishness of a figure head with no power. The late Queen of England, with her dignity, graciousness, and wisdom, beautiful for all her 96 years, personified the higher human values that outweigh mere power. In so doing she won over legions of her subjects, in Britain and across the Empire, by her manifest value.
That value, I daresay, is a primary benefit of tribe. A hereditary monarch is the leader of a tribe, the living representative of an ancient family; and simply in that representation, capable of engendering unity with the cohesive emotion of belonging. We think of tribes as primitive and barbarous in contrast to the evolved gentility of civilization, pointing as I have myself to the decline and fall of the latter with the resurgence of the former. But in truth the species homo sapiens is primitive and barbaric, whether tribal or civilized, and uniquely among other species barbaric toward our own kind.
My argument has always been that we would do well, in escaping past failures, first to acknowledge our inherent nature, and second to devise a way to incorporate the strengths of tribalism into modern society. Look to the Queen for cues. A tribe should stand for the highest of human values: freedom not slavery, compassion not hatred, justice not vengeance. As for King Charles III? God save him from the fate of Charles the First!
Stuart's meadow
If memory serves, when I started this blog, at least ten years ago, the first post was on the subject of Mr. Stuart's meadow. Stuart was a neighbor who lived in the original farmhouse surrounded by five acres of what was formerly a large farm. His acreage could not then be subdivided because it could not support a septic system - it did not "perc." Mr. Stuart was a scientist and an eccentric, married to an attorney. He fancied himself a naturalist, and would buy live crickets to feed the Martins flocking to his Martin houses, which stood in the open field. He was, however, such a neglectful parent that gossip had it his youngest daughter had threatened his life. She had not fallen far from the tree, you see.
Five acres was quite a large property for such a family, and it turned out that Mr. Stuart never had any intention of mowing it. Neighbors complained to the county, but as there is no homeowners association that might enforce covenants, local authority could do nothing. Mrs. Stuart, being a lawyer, made the case that they preferred to leave the land as a meadow by allowing nature to take its course.
In consequence, nature did indeed take its course, which if Stuart had had any serious acquaintance with natural history, he would have foreseen. A natural meadow is rare on the eastern coast of North America, which is naturally forested. Sure enough tree saplings were coming up, in short order growing to mid-height - a low growth forest that is habitat for specific bird species such as the Indigo Bunting. Those trees destined to be taller kept growing until, long after the Stuarts were gone, we had a forest, choked by wild vines, yet refuge for all manner of wildlife - deer, fox, owls, and hawks. When the modern world caught up with us with its water, sewer, and gas lines, the fate of Stuart's meadow was sealed. It was divided into three parcels, and in came the bulldozers, making short work of the trees. The jolly good fun we have had for so many years over Stuart's "meadow" will be no more!
By the lakes
My week in the near-north was thankfully refreshing, with cool breezes off Lake Chautauqua and comfortable accommodations at the Harbor Hotel. It was not Maine, and I do hope some glimmer of sanity will soon be restored to air travel. Mayor Pete has made a start. A road trip of nearly 900 miles in my old Bentley was a stretch, I daresay!
The area is just north of Pennsylvania, and still has an aura of the unredeemed rustbelt - shuttered factories with broken windows, trailer parks and ubiquitous prefab houses. These conditions gave insight into the anger of the working class and its fevered hankering for a dictator. The Lake is just eighteen miles long, and as my first day was rainy, I chose to drive around its perimeter, which is dotted with small villages, one of which is Chautauqua itself and the historical institution, founded in 1874 for the education of Sunday school teachers. I was hoping simply to drive through the surrounding community, which was preplanned in its early days. At the gate I was told I would need to purchase a pass, so I parked at the Welcome Center. As there was a line to get a pass, I approached a window above which in all caps was the word INFORMATION. To my inquiry as to the price of a pass, the dispirited clerk replied, "I'm not authorized to give that information." I did not wait in line, but moved on to the humble town of Bemus Point for lunch.
As my adventure continued, that incident came to epitomize the region, including nearby Lake Erie, going far in my opinion to explain why it remains unredeemed. An unaccountable scarcity of signage gives an unwelcoming impression, discouraging the economic opportunity tourism might otherwise offer. Without my Waze app I likely would not have found even the Lake Erie State Park, and as for the unmarked hiking trails, I was glad I always pack a compass! Stingy with information, the locals wait instead, I suppose, for the savior they have been raised to expect.
A curious incident
I will be headed north this coming week, though this post will not appear until I return, at which time I am sure to have adventures to report. I am not going to Maine, unfortunately, as I am not prepared to sleep at the airport waiting my turn to board a plane. Driving from here to Maine, without making a labor of it, would take two days up and two back, so I have decided on a one day drive to western New York's Chautauqua Lake in hopes that proximity to the Great Lakes will afford at least some respite from the infernal swamp air around the nation's capital. Making matters still more piquant, to say the least, my summer reading is Bleak House.
Meanwhile, my next book, Ruminata, is beset as with a comedy of errors, none of which have been the fault of the publisher. The latest curious incident was not "the dog in the nighttime" but my print proof left in "the mail room." Having arrived at a nearby Amazon facility, it was left there and reported "delivered." Now Customer Support has a most amiable and artificially intelligent robot with whom one may chat, and this chatbot was indeed smart enough to discover that a driver updated the tracking prematurely. Being that sagacious, the machine surely would message the mail room that a package still waited delivery - one would assume. No, no! Days later when I actually spoke with a living human, someone in either the subcontinent or a Pacific island call center, I was informed that no one would be sent to locate the wayward package. The publisher was reimbursed and has reordered.
Such dysfunction is not isolated today but a clear sign we are on the slippery slope of the cliff.
Retrospective
I will soon have a look at the print proof of Ruminata, the last proof before it becomes available to the public. Some of the essays in this collection were drafted decades ago; most are more recent. The book was ready to publish in 2019, but as I was searching for the right publisher, the industry - indeed nearly all commerce - closed down when the global pandemic struck. Late last year, at last, I contracted with Luminare Press, and they began production this year. They have been most patient with my ineptitude and in spite of it have produced a lovely thing, if I may so observe.
Surely it is time to break out the champagne, and I shall, if not without a certain poignancy. As I have always said, my aim in writing at this stage of life is only to reach people - those who might share my views, or benefit in some way through their influence. Anyone who writes to make money, now as never before, is after fool's gold. Yet as I follow the news of the day, I wonder if this book is coming too late, retrospective. A common thread in the essays, as in this blog, is the effect of human overpopulation. The pandemic was one such effect, striking right on time in 2020 when a major crisis had been predicted. It will be followed by other diseases with the same increasing frequency as destructive weather events. Then there is the tribal mindset, the theme of one essay that also pops up in others. Just when we should be cooperating to spare ourselves the worst consequences of our heinous dereliction, we move to polar extremes and break up into tribal violence, which reaction was equally predictable given the utter denial of our own nature. Indeed the first essay goes to some length in explaining just why we have never, despite our cleverness, been able to control our numbers. Its title is the boo's subtitle: The Sexual Theory of Everything."
Perhaps a retrospective might have some benefit after all. Break out the champagne, Cassandra, at least you may say you told them the Achaeans were hiding in that wooden horse!
Writing history
The writing of history is at best a difficult and fraught endeavor, often suspect of subjective bias however neutral and objective its intent. Yet this sad fact is inherent to the job, hence unavoidable. The writer must begin with facts, which for any era of the past will be innumerable; and even the facts will depend on a writer's sources - and resourcefulness. Sifting through such a mountain of data may be compared to editing film footage in creating a story, except in that case the drama is an armature for the topiary. The story of history may be in the eyes of the beholder; therefore history should be told, ideally, with as much neutrality and transparency as possible, so that where judgements are made, reasons for them are clear.
When I was a schoolboy, history was a dull subject indeed, involving rulers, wars, battles, and all with their specific dates, upon which students were tested. When I came to university, by contrast, I was blessed to have a most enlightened professor of world history. Knowing perhaps that we already grasped all the dates of rulers, wars, and battles, he focused his course on describing for us what it was like to live in those days, for all classes of people, whatever their beliefs or levels of knowledge. History came alive in his class, and we were made to think how different or own times were from eras long past.
Today even as the planet grows more uninhabitable and the cream in the churn of society separates into the buttery clumps of tribes, many seem hellbent on revising that history to make their own tribe its heroes. Obviously there must be some discretion in depicting the past with any objectivity, and that discretion, where narratives collided, should be judicious. That judiciousness in turn will be founded in a humble understanding that standards and practices, now abhorrent to modern sensibilities, were socially acceptable in times long past, based on how people lived. Like the "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," you had to be there.
The appeal of tyranny
Many books are being written these days about how democracies fail, and about how they are now failing. I wrote last week about the dangerous situation here in the States, but as in all such worldly matters, I feel compelled to stand back to see the bigger picture, the view of Earth from space, a globe always light on one half and dark on the other. I believe we must first ask ourselves why people who enjoy the freedoms of democracy would choose to sacrifice them. What earthly reason could there be for millions of Americans to grovel to Mr. Trump and persist in returning his toadies to the Congress, guaranteeing the subversion of their own stated opinions?
Surely the reason should now be obvious: That beautiful planet Earth is facing enormous challenges of the kind that require concerted action, which is next to impossible in a democratic system, at least in a timely enough manner to make a difference. The widespread frustration becomes fertile ground for demagoguery. The strong man can fix it, but will he? What is the tyrant's answer to a climate crisis? To convince his supporters that the crisis is fake, made up by their ancient enemies. Are we fed up with gun violence, the mass shootings of innocents? He will give us guns to defend ourselves. And the price for these wonderfully, gratifying, and soothing fantasies is small, unless you are a member of a persecuted minority or a woman carrying the spawn of a rapist.
The facts that coastal cities are subjected to frequent flooding, rivers are washing away whole towns, and half of North America is quickly turning into desert, are not at this time sufficient to move a mesmerized electorate. Not even the unending decimation of little children by troubled young men will do that. No, here I regret to report it is the concern over public school curricula that may, with supreme irony, spur voters in the exactly wrong direction, holding the line for the extreme right. Nothing riles those suburban moms so much as a threat to expose their prepubescent offspring to the idea of gender fluidity, unless it would be to besmirch the excellent reputations of once venerated white men of history!
Midterms
The good news from my homeland is that the Conservative Party has recovered from its dalliance with Boris and his Brexit tomfoolery. Here in the States, on the other hand, the extreme right wing party remains in thrall to a confidence trickster, an exceedingly dangerous condition threatening far greater havoc than our Mr. Johnson ever had within his power. With midterm elections coming in November, I do believe the fate of the American experiment lies now in the hands of independent voters.
The political divide here is not only ideological, though that is a chasm, it has become geographical as the population has self-segregated according to party. Hence the red states and the blue, neither of which unfortunately are completely contiguous. The Texas GOP would like to secede from federal authority, and many of its neighbor states would join, but the major cities within their borders, as liberal as all urban communities, would become ghost towns. Still, geography is not the main barrier. Each polar extreme of this divide yearns to control the whole country and everyone in it. The Republican party has now made it abundantly clear that they are happy to ignore the will of the majority and to rule as a minority. At least the opposite party still abides by laws and honors election results.
Now what about the swing voters? National polls have been consistent for a long time on two issues: a majority of Americans are in favor of common sense gun regulations; and they hold the view that abortion should be legal up to a given point in a pregnancy. The Republicans have played their hand so forcefully that they may finally face a backlash this autumn. Their treacherous installation of a cabal of radical Puritans on the high court is sending the nation back to Colonial times. Surely independents will realize that with the acolytes of Cotton Mather seated for life the only recourse now is a Democratic legislature. If not, my next ticket home will be one way.
Memory
I have observed here before, and I am far from alone in so observing, how the cruel isolation of the pandemic plunged many older people who were leaning in that direction, over the cliff of dementia. Many of these, like my late brother John, were forced into assisted living, if they were fortunate enough to find it and could afford it. With a certain degree of memory loss it becomes impossible to function independently. When you cannot remember what you just ate for lunch or to whom you were just talking on the phone, it is a sad and frustrating state of affairs. That the individual is thereby thrust into the experience of timelessness is hardly viewed as a gift by the victim, even one who may previously have striven to live in the moment.
The faculty of memory, however, can be a double-edged sword. It does indeed bind the story of our life in defiance of the ultimate, timeless reality, giving us the apparently irrefutable idea of a stable personhood. With age often the oldest of memories are more retrievable than recent ones, and they gain the patina of age, return to us in fond moments of nostalgia. But just there is the sharper edge. This world and our lives along with it are in constant flux, and that change follows the law of entropy toward decline. Our memories of happy times, already glossed over to appear more pleasant than they were, bring entropy into focus. The present will rarely seem in contrast as happy as the past, and nostalgia will always be painful in the realization that past experience as we recall it cannot be reproduced.
But then in the wake of this pandemic heaven only knows what experiences we will never have again. It wasn't elders alone who went off a cliff; businesses, restaurants went over the cliff of bankruptcy. Some large stores survive online, giving Amazon a headache; but the abandonment of black-and-mortar is leaving retail wastelands. Brother John was upbeat despite these gathering troubles, in the assurance that at age 80 he would not be here much longer - rest his soul!
Grief and consolation
I hope readers caught Anna's discussion with Archangel last week concerning the poem "Immortality." The Dokusan is still there. Archangel remarks how a true sentiment may wane, becoming mere sentimentality in the minds of many. There is counsel in that not to dismiss the latter without closer examination as to the ancient wisdom of forbears. But responses to grief are personal and various. Some people recoil at well-intended gestures of consolation, and those would abhor the poem in question: "My loved one is dead and gone, and I neither seek nor find comfort in nature!" The attitude is a stubborn indignation towards perceived reality, and it explains why Buddhism is the smallest of world religions.
There is a Zen story of a poor monk whose humble dwelling is invaded by a thief. Having nothing else to give, the monk hands over the shirt from his back. When the thief has gone, he looks out the window, and seeing a magnificent full moon, avows, "I wish I could give him the moon!"
This beautiful old poem of consolation, which you will still find under "The Carriage Lamp" below, gives us the moon, not in exchange for a dear person sorely missed, but in affirmation that even in the glory of our inexpressible uniqueness, we are each and all part and parcel of an even greater reality, transcendent and timeless, to which nature is testament. This ultimate nature, like the moon, is in a constant flux, which it behooves us to accept, patiently, because we are of the same nature, changing minute by minute, imperceptibly. Surely our world is full of decay and discord: the winds and rain are polluted; the fields of grain are being bombed. As Sherlock says in The Sign of Four, "There are difficulties, but there are always difficulties." In The Naval Treaty, Conan Doyle gives Holmes a puzzling soliloquy on the goodness of providence in which he reflects on a moss rose saying, "We have much to hope from the flowers."
You can't get there from here
I wrote my essay on the difficulties of modern travel before the pandemic, indeed some years before. It is included in Ruminata, the collection soon to be published, and my offer stands if you want to read it. A sample copy of "Travel: You can't get there from here" may be had with an email request. I felt the hardships of travel were extreme even when I wrote the essay, but my misgivings in this matter, as in several other essay topics, were prophetic. To fly anywhere, we have for decades now been subjected to the absurd indignities of security screening. Dysfunctional airlines test our patience and forbearance with delays and cancellations that become the norm. Passengers are stuffed into planes like sardines, and crowded airports turn into campgrounds. Travel by car means braving roads decayed by age, neglect, and extreme weather. Where there is repair, the relentless traffic makes the situation impossible. And don't get me started on cruises! Even pre-covid, the giant ships were over-sized petri dishes for spreading disease.
All of these activities were abruptly suspended in 2020, and the future was uncertain, dependent entirely on our collective response to a global pandemic, the first in 100 years. Then early last year came the great blessing of vaccines against the scourge of covid. The results with respect to travel, while entirely predictable, have been curious. It has been like floodgates were opened: where roads were not actually flooded, they were suddenly choked with traffic; where planes were not grounded by super storms, flights were cancelled for want of pilots.
The effect on people such as myself, like Henry James, with a foot on each side of the pond, has been tantamount to exile. Thanks only to the satellites was I able to see my brother on FaceTime before he died. I will not even fly to Maine this year to escape the mid-Atlantic heat, having every expectation that last year's hordes will be still greater. What can I say, Cassandra? You blew it with Apollo.
Jubilee!
Wasn't our Elizabeth the Queen of Drollery having tea with Paddington Bear on the occasion of her Platinum Jubilee! After the inimitable celebration, who would dare suggest that the British monarchy should be abolished? The troops, the uniforms, the horses, the hoopla! Four days of it! No, no, no, there will always be an England as long as our hereditary monarch occupies the throne. When that is no longer true, civilization itself will be done for. To be sure, the monarchy does not enjoy a hundred percent approval by the British. Some propose a half measure of supporting the royal family while eliminating the ages-old institutions. It would be like turning Sir Winston out to pasture without his cigars - or his cats. Truly I think critics are missing the point, or indeed many points.
The defaming of history is popular these days, and certain of our English monarchs over a very long history have been worthy of notoriety. Yet in 1215 we gave the world the Magna Carta, limiting the powers of the king, and over centuries these limits expanded until today the English monarchy - its pageantry, pomp, and ceremony - is at least the symbol of that long and grand history, if short on political power. As an island nation, England mastered the seas and created a global empire upon which famously "the sun never set." To its colonies came English customs, laws, language, and indeed an early example of global trade. The fact that the rights of female heirs have long been recognized in relation not only to the royal family but as well in laws of inheritance suggests an unusual legacy of equity and justices in contrast to authoritarians, monarchical or otherwise.
Are we British stiff necked, out of touch with the modern insistence on the casual, the profane, the slovenly? Queen Elizabeth II epitomizes propriety, in her hat, her suit, and her bag, her perfect speech and manners. But just observe, if you will, the mimicry of the ladies' hats at the Kentucky Derby, their mint juleps aside. Long live the Queen!
"A flight of angels see thee to thy rest!"
Those of us who accept modern science, its researches and discoveries, surely will show a natural inclination for the tenets of Buddhism, the one world religion that continues consistent with those discoveries. When it comes to the sombre questions of life, other religions offer pure fancy. Your post mortem destiny, for example, is in heaven, or hell depending on past conduct. In contrast the followers of Buddha, like myself, look for the ancient master's "path on which there is no coming and going." The problem is that even as we search for this path we are walking it - toward a sequence of elusive and illusory destinations.
Last week my older brother reached that final destination which we are told awaits us all in the sangsara. Having been moved from assisted living to the hospice wing of skilled nursing in the residence where he lived, he died of a heart attack precipitated by renal failure. As he suffered from dementia, dialysis was not an option. My brother lived with bipolar disorder, and self medicated, typically, for the periods of deep depression with alcohol. In his last years, he showed the classic end stage of the bipolar personality, including the alcoholic dementia, which however was not far advanced when he died.
He had been only a year in assisted living, and he and I had many a conversation on the serious matters of life and afterlife, in which his thoughts bespoke a kind of enlightenment not uncommonly seen in a disordered mind. Because his memory had become like a sieve, refusing to hold the least thing that had just happened, he experienced perforce the ultimate reality of timelessness. It was disconcerting of course, even though he always knew time to be an illusion. Not officially Buddhist, he believed, like most of that sect, in reincarnation, and like many did not want to be reborn. So I told him all about the Tibetans, who claim an ancient and intimate knowledge of the afterlife. Now I can only hope that his enlightened ideas may be sufficient to spare him the bardo of rebirth - if it exists.
"Tess" is still relevant
As I wait for word from my publisher about a final proofread of Ruminata, I continue to catch up on the Victorian novels. Given the lingering languor of pandemic inertia, readers may begin to note an echo of that now ancient rhetoric in m writing. Old as they are one might imagine that the classic books are now irrelevant. The settings, the customs are quaint - rural villages, country fares, the London social season of the upper classes. But the stories, the dramas of human life, are the eternal ones, and in this respect even the most modern, sophisticated person must grant that nothing has changed. Plus ça change, plus le meme chose. I would give Thomas Hardy first place among those classical authors, being as he was as much a poet and philosopher as a novelist, and a harsh critic of Victorian society. His ability to smack the reader full in the face with a pivotal scene remains without equal: in Jude, for example, when the common law wife returns to their rented room and finds her three children dead, killed in a murder-suicide by the eldest.
As for evidence of our inexorable human nature, however, consider Tess. When she reveals to her beloved Angel shortly after their wedding that she had been raped by the scalawag d'Urberville, Angel's reaction is stunningly contemporary. She was the victim, that much must be acknowledged, but the attitude that immediately falls upon the poor boy like a shroud is described by Hardy with piercing insight. Not alone that she is indelibly stained by the sin of another, he looks upon her then as a different person.
A theme that runs through various of my essays concerns those aspects of our nature that we are stuck with, having escaped the influence of natural selection, and the cycles we perpetuate in our failure to deal with those aspects. The bigger picture is the paradoxical nature of reality itself, which we must embrace on the path to enlightenment: things change without changing; life ends without ending; time passes without moving. Read Hardy's short stories in Life's Little Ironies.
To be a writer
This week, dear Readers, I am eager to share with you some thoughts and experiences as a writer, journalist, and novice in publishing. To be a writer is to court jealous rancor, because everyone alive thinks they want to be a writer. Should they once try to write, unless they sincerely love words and very much enjoy stringing them together in sentences to convey precise meanings, they would find it to be tedious in the extreme and quickly abandon the effort. Nevertheless, many young people nowadays go for the MFA in writing, some even retaining the obsolete delusion that they will thus someday earn a living. Even Conan Doyle practiced medicine before he was able to earn more by writing. Very few have ever been successful, which today is signaled when the author's name on the cover is larger than the title.
Success of that nature has never been my aim, even after retiring, when I began publishing. I write for the joy of it and publish what I feel will contribute something important that I have not seen widely disseminated. My aim is to communicate and to reach out, and if that effort succeeds with but one person that soul is enough. Now for a caveat! Reaching people in today's world requires the internet, which has become a very dangerous terrain. I have a Facebook page under my pen name, and last week I "boosted" a post offering a sample essay from my upcoming book, Ruminata. This went well at first, reaching 994 people in the targeted English speaking countries. Midway the location had changed to Bangladesh, and the post had reacher 23 thousand young men, each of whom you may be sure is an aspiring hacker.
The same offer is still available to you, Readers. Unless you are from the subcontinent, I will respond!
Elon, my dear boy
Master Elon, as I am inclined to refer to him despite his impressive credentials and accomplishments, is exposing a peculiar naiveté regarding his Twitter pipe dream, more characteristic of a juvenile. However, the mind of a genius ofttimes is seen to fixate on a single subject while oblivious to all else. An intelligent, educated person may thus at the same time be unobservant and thoughtless. Elon appears not to have noticed that political discourse no longer involves rational people discussing two sides of an issue. If he does buy Twitter, therefore, it will become Propaganda Central. But his naiveté goes even deeper where he has failed to appreciate the subtle techniques of propaganda, and this failure is astonishing in a man of business, because those are the same techniques taught in marketing courses. In the latter instance, there are mostly innocuous commercial aims, while propaganda seeks only power, to manipulate and control large numbers of people. Every despot on the globe will know just where to post his fusillades to reach the most vulnerable audience, and will be further assured that algorithms will kick in to enhance the effect upon proven suckers for his specific brand of click bait. Elon does not know this? Or does he? Perhaps his SpaceX enterprise is his vehicle for returning to the planet from which he comes.
If he is enamored of Twitter, though, perhaps he should consider the queer things of which real birds are capable, even our everyday, backyard birds. Once again I have a male bird beating his head against the windows of the house in an obsessive attempt to challenge his own reflection. I have seen this behavior in robins, but this one is a male cardinal; it only occurs in the mating season likely due to hormonal excess. I surmise that Elon will likewise demur once summer's reality sets in.
The long shot
I am not a fan of horse racing; yet with the Irish gene in my family tree, I cannot but notice, at least the big events: the Ascot, and here in the States, the Kentucky Derby - and I love horses. We have always had them on the home farm. Even now a few are there enjoying a pampered old age. In the bad old days we would ride to the hounds after the foxes, before the hunt was banned. The foxes could be a terrible nuisance on a farm when they were numerous, but we humans do tend to take things to extremes to the detriment of other species. Foxes are coming back now though. Here on the outskirts of Washington, on the lawn of a property vacant for some years, I often see them frolicking or even asleep in the sunny grass. My neighbor, the retired doctor who feeds the wild birds, says the foxes keep the squirrels down "something beautiful!"
But foxes are beside the point. The Derby at Churchill Downs on 7 May had everyone talking, whether or not they were aficionados. The winner, Rich Strike, was a late entry when another was withdrawn, and he was the fractious one at the starting gate who had to be loaded twice. There were twenty horses, and they went off at a fast clip. Rich Strike was in the middle of the pack, when in the stretch his jockey took to the rail, and the horse took off like a bat out of hell. Leaving the favored contenders in the dust, he won the race against 80 to one odds. His trainer fainted away in the paddock, and even I was nonplussed simply watching the telecast. But the horse was not finished. He would not settle down, attacking the pony whose dégagé role was only to guide, attempting to bite him on the neck. The pony's rider and the jockey on Rich Strike were at pains to avert injury.
This horse was angry, going to show, if ever it had to be shown, that of course animals have emotions. A horse race is not only about lineage, breeding, nor even training. This beautiful young colt taught us the mettle of heart and soul, and he is likely never to have to run that fast again.
Hegemony of the sperm
Each crisis in the mounting number of them that we face as a planet and a species was predicted. The only surprising aspect to old folks like myself is that we are still alive to witness the horrors and endure the decline. Any idea that the race would somehow save itself has been credulous, and where it lingers even now is insanely delusional, for one reason, and that is addressed in the first essay of my upcoming book Ruminata, on the cover of which you will read the first sentence: "The world is not ruled by men; it is ruled by sperm." Had we ever been able to control our numbers there might have been hope. Instead over millennia we cleverly learned to evade all checks upon us. Exponential growth came to a population with no clue about the word A world of a million people explodes to a billion. A world of eight billion squared? To the tenth power? There exists no disaster, natural or manmade, that will ever overcome that exponent.
Yet the most confounding, galling aspect of the matter, even sadder for being equally predictable, is the response of so many rulers and their legions of acolytes. Bent upon forbidding any rational measure that might benefit us, they contrive to ensure the perpetuation of exponential growth. By no means may any pregnancy be ended; the fetus, the embryo, the zygote, all must be protected by law. Surely you see in that progression of lunacy that the next would be the sperm - QED. Since every conceptus must be a person born, we may now forget about every other crisis. As the resulting population will need resources, we will dig even more coal, drill for more oil. Climate be damned, we have our orders from God himself - in writing - and when there is no food? Their god will only laugh.
Gone forever
This week my friend Anna and I met in the courtyard on a very blustery day; and huddling for shelter by the optician"s window, reflected on things that have been changed forever by the pandemic. Of course, at our age forever equates to whatever brief time remains to us, so young people should not buy in to our pessimism. Some changes are clear: the closing of restaurants, for example. A favorite in our community is shutting up after 90 years, though it was failing before the crash. Another, which I consider the best French restaurant in town, has kept to a high standard and continues to serve a loyal clientele. Other obvious changes: more mothers leaving the work force and home schooling children; more dads skipping the commute to work from home; online shopping eclipsing the malls. More subtle changes are psychological. Gone forever: feeling safe inside a store or restaurant; casual banter with acquaintances; flying from crowded airports in crowded planes.
At this point in the discussion, I began to feel like a lemming racing beside his fellows toward the unseen precipice. Why? Because that unseen danger is the real crisis, namely our food supply. Years of drought make tinder of arable fields. If they do not burn in record setting wildfires, they are deliberately scorched in the insanity of wars. In poor countries, there will be famine, and everywhere, even now, will be shortages. I am not sanguine about our ability to arrest these monstrous disasters, not when even at this time, when cooperation is of the essence, violence erupts instead. Moreover, we will never address let alone stop the inexorable cause at the root these matters, which is our relentlessly growing numbers. Some may believe that when the autocratic cabal succeeds in its rise to global domination, discipline will be enforced. They are ignorant of history. "Apres moi le deluge!"
The true stakes
With the fragile fortunes of Ukraine lies the fate of post-Soviet Eurasia, as the new Russian czar endeavors to clawback his empire; indeed expect Mr. Putin to declare himself the next Holy Roman Emperor. Meanwhile the democratic nations of the West, in fear of all out world war, try to believe that the stalwart Ukrainians, outnumbered ten to one, will be able to hold back the Russian army given enough military armaments. Some even attempt to rationalize the Russian aggression with the distorted idea that Russia requires a buffer zone of tyrannical puppet states to protect itself from the armies of NATO countries.
After the last of two hugely destructive and expensive world wars, NATO was created with the very purpose of defending its members from invasion, and the prescience of its founders is proven indeed by Putin's insane power grab. Since that last war Europe has seen unity: Germany has not invaded France; France has not invaded England; America has not invaded Canada to liberate its English speakers from the Quebecois. And no one has invaded Russia. The liberal democracies are peaceful and prosperous, enjoying the blessings of freedom. But standing back from the current dire situation, I am seeing one even more sinister. Arising in those prosperous democracies is that ages old segment of humanity that craves tyranny, and that it is outnumbered by the freedom lovers has never mattered. In the American Revolution, loyalists fled to Canada to remain under the protection of the king. Can such people not see that whatever protection or largesse emanates from the all-powerful dictator comes at the sacrifice of their own power? The true stakes in Ukraine are not pieces of territory but freedom against tyranny, the struggle erupting in blood and death. Surely this is a recurrence of the deepest rift in human society, signaling imminent collapse.
Gender fluidity
A warning! I am about to make an assertion that will seem absurd, but which I will then explain in the manner of Sherlock Holmes by revealing the chain of inferences to show it is not absurd but "absurdly simple." The peculiar term "gender fluidity" that now enjoys currency results from the invention of modern birth control methods. Now the chain of inferences: Before the advent of the aforesaid methods, the potential consequence of a casual sex act was so damaging as to require the mitigation of severe social proscriptions, up to and including Papa's shotgun. Thus when the fear of these consequences was removed, such casual encounters became common, even regarded as a kind of trial run for a possible marriage. Subsequent generations have come to conflate sexual attraction with love. Here it must be noted that the human species is hyper-sexed; how else to explain our numbers? I daresay the average human male can be sexually aroused by many things - animate, inanimate, or imaginary. Love, however, is an entirely different emotion, for which St. Paul gave the best definition to the Corinthians. The link from reliable birth control to the dawn of "gender fluidity" is in our confusion.
That homosexuality is a fact of nature cannot be disputed. Yet in my experience with those who have realized this identity, emerging from the confusion of adolescence, they have learned not to mistake sexual attraction for love, a point that was not appreciated by some straight people in the matter of gay marriage. Surely there is a gender spectrum. But while individuals may know from a young age their place on that spectrum, the notion that in puberty any person may choose the unique spot that matches a confusion of primal passions is not only absurd but needless. To expose an entire generation of pubescent children to the concept, moreover, is to do them a disservice. I may be misinterpreting this trendy phrase, but then so will many others, and the greater danger is that authoritarians will seize upon the inflammatory issue as a dagger to pierce the heart of liberal democracy.
The next book and an offer
The final manuscript of my coming book, Ruminata, edited and reviewed, is now back at Luminare Press, where the next stage of production is interior design. My hope is that it will be available by summertime - in all formats on all devices, even the actual hands of readers. I have warned the lovely ladies of Luminare, including the marketing guru, Sue Campbell, of my ineptitude with the internet, but these days few can truly appreciate the extent of it. As evidence, I wanted to edit the text box above this weekly post to announce the new publication. Alas, the edit screen now shows the "html" language interspersed with text. Shame on me for not undertaking to learn the machine's language! And so this post will need to serve for the time being.
The audience for the essays in Ruminata will, I foresee, be the same as this blog. If you are reading this, you likely fit the profile: an older person, college educated, who reads books and newspapers and has an interest in politics, religion, and world affairs. Earlier versions of a few of the essays have appeared below under "Pages." These I will remove, replacing them with the table of contents for the upcoming book. Should any one of the titles pique your interest, you may request a copy by email. Consider it a preview of the book, and please do not hesitate to inform like minded friends of the offer. A link to my email is above, and here is another: wgreychampion@verizon.net
I have learned from this process that the typical modern essay is in effect a short memoir written in the lyrical prose now taught by English professors in graduate schools. In contrast, my essays tend to be contentious, though I try my best to hold the moderate position - to stand at the center of the pendular amplitude. By no means are they all of this nature, as you will see from the variety of the subject matter.
Deja vu
I learn on Facebook that the Reverend Doctor Mark Bratton, current Rector of Saint John the Baptist C. of E. in Berkswell, England, has been named Honorary Canon of Coventry Cathedral. Despite the modest, unassuming manor he conveys in his parish role, the Reverend has a long and distinguished resumé. His doctorate is in medical ethics, about which he has authored two books, and he also keeps a weekly blog. My readers will be familiar with my connection to Berkswell through my biography of its native son, Jeremy Brett. I will be eternally grateful to members of the parish, without whose aid I could not have written More Than an Actor; and I shall have a warm spot in my heart for Berkswell as long as ever that organ shall beat.
Even before this news, the horrors of war in Ukraine aroused thoughts of Coventry Cathedral, which was bombed by the forces of an earlier madman in November 1940, a gratuitous, inappropriate act of destruction upon the geographic and spiritual heart of England. The Gothic structure dated from the fourteenth century, and the ruins have been preserved, including the spire, which miraculously survived. A new, modern cathedral was built in the late 1950s and consecrated in 1962. Now on our nightly news the scenes, the hells capes, of Ukrainian cities burning cannot but remind us that there is no escape from such wars for mankind, despite our best efforts to ensure lasting peace; and the ghastly specter arises that the cities of Europe may burn again - Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, London, even Coventry. Yet we must be thankful for good souls like Reverend Bratton, whose example assures us that humanity is not godforsaken - no, by no means!
Unravelling
Last week in the Dokusan, my friend Anna expressed her sense that the world is unravelling, just as the older generation is about to leave it. There are many reasons for that impression: a changing climate creating extreme weather events, storms, floods, drought; a pandemic promising an unending struggle with viral mutations; and now a serious new war once again raising the threat of mutual annihilation. Indeed while it is not new, there has arisen the pervasive, persistent stress of uncertainty.
A notable aspect of this seemingly sudden unravelling, I beg to observe, is our surprise, suggesting the effects of a long period of relative peace, generations in fact. True, after World War II, there came a Cold War with the Soviets, an era of nuclear threat and bomb shelters. But the Cold War ended. Cities around the world mushroomed, with tall new buildings scraping the sky. Technology spurted ahead, bursting boundaries. Now, again in Europe, we watch in helpless desperation as these cities are so rapidly reduced to rubble.
What happened? Anna is led to observe that the world is always unravelling, that change is the paradoxical constant. I would add that in those tides of change, we are the ones who are intractable, accounting for the cycles of history. Because we flourish in peacetime, we enjoy complacency. It is human nature, to the several aspects of which we are stubbornly blind. Granted we have striven toward a world order for centuries, from Teilhard's idealistic vision to Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, which was supplanted by the United Nations in 1946. The latter is a queer construct - a hen house that serves for the fox's den, and therein lies the conundrum: how to reconcile any world order with our immutable characteristic - megalomania. It is against madmen that we shall ever need to arm ourselves.
A devil's mirror
To my fellow moderates who may have caught last week's post, I must follow up with nuanced caution regarding the now frequent criticism of false equivalency. It is the Devil's practice to turn his magic mirror around and insinuate that his critic is just as evil, a favorite trick of Mr. Putin for example; and we are easily confounded by that magic mirror, especially as human society in an advanced civilization has slowly come unmoored from standard and stable values of what is right or wrong, just or unjust. We are forced to look for nuance just when fewer of us are capable of such insight. The Devil will retort that there never were such values, but in answer we have history. Did you know that centuries ago charging interest on a loan was viewed as usurious? As late as the nineteenth century, advertising a product was regarded as unethical. But now here we are, most of us, adrift in the tides of history, that we neither know nor control.
Into the resulting maelstrom sails the most unlikely figure of Mr. Zelensky, president of Ukraine, whose stalwart courage has been both clarifying and unifying to the overindulged Western democracies. In his country's untoward predicament, what becomes crystal clear is our common and natural yearning for individual freedom. The autocrats of the world and their benighted followers view this yearning itself as a danger to community and use every means to stamp it out, thus to control the individual's behavior, even his mind. Thanks to technology, China is on its way to realizing that dystopian existence. Might the tyrants be right? Is freedom incompatible with comity? No indeed, just the opposite.
In a free society, no matter the crime or corruption that may arise, there is an attendant quest for justice. The evil may look the same in the Devil's mirror, but it is not equivalent. Under tyranny there is njo requirement for justice. A truly human society, unlike a pack of animals, requires freedom. The Chinese have forgotten LaoTzu and Confucius: the wisdom of balance, the blessing of moderation.
Fate of the moderate
Everyone despises a moderate, and if you, dear reader, are not among those of whom this may be said, you may instead be counted in the ranks of an endangered species. Able to see all shades of grey, a true moderate is appreciative of nuances with which others have no patience, but to the contrary will heap with derision, blind to any except the starkest tints. That such a great percentage of the global population has been swept up by extreme ideology is surely our most egregious modern tragedy: the extremist drowns out all opposition in order to seize and hold power by force or by corrupt means, so that again, through sheer terror, the masses of humans are ruled by the ruthless few.
Digital media have amplified this phenomenon enormously, having discovered great profits in the arousal of anger and the promotion of demagoguery. These are appeals to the lowest instincts in our inherent nature. Hand in hand with fear, anger plays into the survival instinct, while the successful demagogue seduces with the fatherly promise of protection. Such are the roots of extremism on either side of the pendulum.
In the middle facing the worst of all dangers sits the moderate, his bonafides resting in the simple fact that he is attacked from all sides. Even the self-styled moderate will thrash him for any slight deviation of viewpoint, reasoning that if he is to the right of me he is rightwing, and likewise to the left of me. In plain words, "you are either with me or you are against me." But the moderate contends always with extremism itself, navigating a safe course through the Strait of Messina, its mythical monsters on either side. A moderate electorate has been the backbone of democracy since ancient times, curbing leaders who go too far. Without that backbone, where are we?
A test for civilization
Before sending the manuscript of essays out to Luminare Press, I added one about the tribal mindset with the title, "Decline and Fall." I am hopeful the book, Ruminata, will be published by early summer. In the meantime, are we not witnessing the most stark example of resurgent tribalism thus far? To wit: the territorial imperative; a barbaric attack by the most wanton tribal bully, from the east no less, doubtless a descendent of Attila; a circling of wagons among the aggrieved in renewed tribal unity. I refer of course to the new Russian czar, now bent on conquest and subjugation of his neighbors. As Russian soldiers, armed to the teeth, invaded Ukraine, one was heard to complain, "We don't know who to shoot! They all look like us."
This observation is at once instructive and suggestive. Might we say that it refutes the tribal mindset? No, Watson, deduce! The soldier reveals that he would be more comfortable killing someone who was more obviously of another tribe. But his remark is suggestive of something far more interesting. If this conflict is the first serious test of our modern civilization versus the barbarians, is it possible that for the first time in human history civilization will survive? Just maybe human society has grown so intricate, so integrated that this time it will not be pulled apart - because "the all look like us."
The phenomenon is reminiscent of Teilhard's concept of "coalescence," small units coming together to form larger ones: atoms to molecules, to cells, organisms, societies, and finally civilizations, which he believed advance upward in a spiral toward one world. Today we hear of a global order. Past claims of the kind have proven naive; and if such a world should come about, how would the multitudes be governed? We must keep a wary eye on China and India, each with over a billion souls already.
Two sides
Was it not a cheerful sight to see the Ukrainian people line the streets of Kyiv waving Russian flags to greet their Russian conquerors with such enthusiasm? No? Wait. They were clogging the streets in a mass, desperate exodus. I will venture to say that most people do not relish the idea of relinquishing their freedoms, their rights, any and all recourse to justice, to live in fear at the mercy of a ruthless despot. Yet so many people do live in just that state, perhaps a majority of the world's eight billion.
We might trace this circumstance to our animal origins, seeing that packs or troops of other social species will be led by the dominant male, who rules by force and is likewise overthrown. In human tribes over millennia strength equated with leadership, and eventually age and birth were valued giving us hereditary kingship. Ever larger populations thus were subjected to what were so often capricious and cruel rulers. But why now, in a modern world?
Clearly there exists a large portion of the population that is intensely desirous of an absolute power to control every other person. They scornfully spurn the liberal values of self-determination, human rights, rule of law, disdaining such ideas as thin gruel. How could the hordes of inferior classes and races be expected to behave themselves properly? No, no, no! They must be whipped into shape, forced to work and to serve their superiors. These ideologues of despotism always believe they will be in that ruling class, enjoying its advantages and shielded from the horror of tyranny. They are always wrong. Absolute power cannot reside in a class of people, as in "the peoples' republic," the quintessential irony. It will always coalesce upon the alpha baboon, and woe be to his worshipful sycophants.
These are the two ideologies perpetually at war in human society. For lovers of freedom yearning only to be left in peace, there is much at stake; for the others, more - much more - than they can imagine.
The "H" words
In the slow decline of a great civilization - and yes, they all decline, and yes, it appears we will not be the exception - a long period of complacency gives way to commensurate and ever more frequent shocks. The year 2020 gave us the most serious by far. For so many years a view of the planet from space would see it continually abuzz with planes carrying people from one continent to another, even unto the most remote areas. They carried pathogens, and sooner or later one would most certainly evolve that would find a human species absent any immunity. But not now, maybe later, after my vacation.
For many decades there was no major war, not a global war. It was the "end of history," some fancied, epitomizing arrogance. Nations that enjoyed this peaceful period together with the added blessing of liberty and self-determination were the most complacent of all. Surely the human genome was rid forever of megalomania. What man would want to conquer the world? And yes, it is always a man, suggestive regarding that gene. Thus ignorant of history, people took their freedoms for granted. Were they not codified into law? Were the laws not given by God himself, inviolable? Now as the cream of commonality separates into a lumpy tribalism, despots salivate watching for an easy feast. Suddenly "hard power" comes back into favor, and we must be prepared for more serious shocks.
Of this sad state of affairs there are many signs. Perhaps the most troubling is what seems to me the ebbtide of humor, possibly a natural result of years behind our plague defenses. But of course there is nothing humorous about mass death, no way to laugh at this disease that kills by slow suffocation. Gallows humor aside, I contend that humor requires some glimmer of hope, however faint; thus I rejoice in the metaphor of the tide since its ebb will always reverse, in this case returning the synchrony of those two "H" words.
Imagine that!
Imagination is a very valuable characteristic in this life. Indeed those with an abundance tend to succeed prodigiously whatever their filed of endeavor. We may easily cite the great artists: Michaelangelo, DaVinci, Bach, Beethoven. But we must also include Einstin, Maxwell, and before them Newton, Descarte. Clearly imagination is an essential ingredient of genius. Of what use is it, however, to the rest of us? Surely we may do just as well with no imagination, yet some capacity for it is often advantageous. Murphy's Law, for example. To the extent that we can imagine the consequences of what may go wrong, we will be better prepared, because whatever can go wrong will, according to Murphy. When we endure adverse conditions, we may avoid despair if we are able to imagine the lives of those who suffer more. In many instances, imagination is a large part of empathy. On the other hand it may check our enthusiasm if we form a hasty conclusion that the grass is greener just over the fence, whether it be a new job or a new mate.
Sadly, I believe too many people learn to stifle imagination, having been criticized perhaps for being too "fanciful." These are the unvaccinated in the covid wards explaining, "I never imagined!" Rip Van Winkles slumbering in the mountain hollows. One should be prepared to consider, to imagine, anything that may be possible. According to Sherlock Holmes, the creation of a very imaginative writer, if we can eliminate whatever is impossible, the one possibility remaining must be the truth. Holmes's success in crime solving famously involved his imagination, superior to that of any Scotland Yard inspector. And he was never "too timid in drawing inferences," as he accused Watson of being. My good friend Anna conjures her spirit guide and guardian, assigning him, over his objections, the lofty rank of Archangel. I assure you she is not insane; she just has a rather fertile imagination!
Deja vu
Isn't our beauty of a prime minister, Master Boris, having a time of it, caught flouting the covid restrictions he imposed on everyone else? I suspect he got religion after he succumbed to the disease. Now he apologizes, deflects calls for this resignation, and is deaf to the charge of shamelessness. But we Brits are past masters of the unseemly, surpassed only by our American descendants. I was alerted to an article in The Atlantic, for example, with the headline "The Anti-vaccine Right Brought Human Sacrifice to America." Parallels with ancient rituals of this kind are indeed alarming. What worries me, however, is the truculent mood rising all over the world, aggravated by pandemic frustration. Just such a mood is known to presage a great war, of which military mobilization is the first sign. Sure enough, the disingenuous Mr. Putin has a noose of armaments and troops surrounding his neighbor Ukraine, for the security of Russia he claims. Of course he does not fear an invasion by NATO. His real fear is the infiltration of Western notions of freedom, human rights, and self determination, spoiling the stranglehold he enjoys over his population. It is the existential dread of every despot. The truth is that no border is wide enough to contain this influence. Once Ukraine is under the thumb, he will require for his safety Poland, Germany, France, and it will be deja vu - all over again.
Many commentators observe that dictators around the world are watching and linking arms in a brotherhood of tyrants. The response of the free world is therefore critical, and tragically in doubt where two great democracies have seen fit to elect "'useful fools" like The Donald and BoJo the Clown. In the States, a good portion of the electorate yearns for a dictator, being ignorant of history and never having felt the jackboot of absolute power. Britain is all set; we still have our monarchs.
Murmuration
I left you last week, Readers, with the idea of your identity in other sentient beings, and I must explain that the notion came to me in childhood when my fascination with wild birds took root, or should I say flight. I liked nothing better than to set off over a field or into a wood with my binoculars to sit and watch and listen, and to give each different kind of bird a name. Though I am an early bird in the morning, I was never able to rise early enough to be a serious birder; but when a wild bird would perch near me, close enough to observe with some intimacy, I felt a strong consciousness of memory, a sense of holding that round branch in tiny claws. Had I been a bird in a former life, I fancied? Then much later, after the epiphany of Suzuki's Zen, it struck me that this was the intuition of identity, not memory.
"But I am nothing like a bird," you declaim. Forthwith a bit of evidence, i.e. murmuration. That lovely word refers to flocking behavior in certain birds, especially starlings, who are seen in complex synchronous flight. The phenomenon has been studied and the algorithm developed. In schools of fish the behavior is called shoaling, and yes, it is seen in humans, at times intentional: "the wave" at sporting events, for example, or synchronized dancing. Psychology studies mob behavior, sociology the hive mind. Indeed, what other mammal behaves so much like an insect?
Now, while hoping not to overtax your credulity, I will apply this factor to our present predicament with respect to shipping. No sooner had a lockdown frozen global commerce due to a public health disaster than the human murmuration began - on the internet. But for the airlessness of outer space up there with the satellites, one might have heard the murmur: millions, perhaps billions of people ordering online, everything from food and clothing to furniture and appliances, while ensconced in their homes safe from th virus. Now much of it sits on cargo ships clogging ports. Perhaps it will keep us awhile until the day soon to come when there is nothing to ship, nor even to be bought.
More on self
If sixty is the age of wisdom, as the Chinese say, then seventy is the age of futility. One then enters a phase when the probability of dire occurrence becomes a daily concern, throwing real doubt on the future. As the joke goes, we stop buying green bananas. Today, entering a third year of a global pandemic, this very cloud has enshrouded everyone, from the tiniest infants, and bringing mortality into sharp focus, along with the question of an afterlife. Even if one believes in reincarnation, that would only be an extension of the karmic experience; perish the thought, and be sure to read The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I try earnestly to avoid harping on any single theme in the blog and becoming tedious. Heaven knows we are all immersed in daily covid reports. Together with Anna's Dokusan, posts for the past two weeks have centered on Buddhist principles of selfhood. Still at some risk to your attention, I must clarify "egolessness," informed by Julian Barbour's The End of Time. Read no further than the introduction to find his description of his cat leaping from a porch rail to chase a squirrel. The motion of the cat appears perfectly fluid, yet this brilliant if heterodox mathematician reveals it is really a rapid sequence of minutely distinct frames as in a film, and in each frame is a new and different cat. He then delves back into the history of science to the time when Newtonian laws, given their supreme usefulness, conquered all other ideas, chiefly the belief by Newton's opponents in a static universe. He then proceeds to prove exactly what Buddha realized under the Tree of Wisdom: that all reality comes forth anew each instant from "the womb of Tathagata." The universe is static and timeless, and we each come forth new. The thread of identity is held together by memory alone.
With no mention of Buddha, inexcusably, Barbour leaves us hanging. I will not, but rather proffer your deepest intuition of oneness. In the eyes of other sentient beings lies your identity. You are not one with this creature - you are this creature - one, transcendent, singular.
Acceptance
Last week's Dokusan gave me food for thought, as I hope it did you, my dear readers. Anna and Archangel spoke of the growing need for acceptance: the ravages of age for elders, and now for those and all others the terrible circumstance of a pandemic. They discussed the fear that one might reach a limit, cross some uncertain threshold, to his ability to accept the compounding of such dreadful stress, especially when it is caused by indomitable forces over which an individual has no control; and control is the issue here. Every sentient being has the survival instinct that engenders a fear of losing control. Yet the natural progression of aging brings a long and growing list of indomitable forces robbing us of control; and today a human population of more than seven billion is threatened by global crises, including the pandemic, that may already have passed tipping points into that category of indomitable.
As individuals, we each have our own limits to what is sufferable, delineated to a great extent by personal circumstance. Hospital workers, for example, have faced unimaginable duress now going into a third year of the pandemic. Some of these and others in critical occupations have been driven to despair and to suicide. Among my own family and friends, the isolation of these years has seen the acceleration of senile dementia.
What then of our mind's defenses? In a word, perspective. The young generation has a long enough perspective to foresee a time when they may again mingle with fellow humans sans the fear of contagion, may even gain political power to influence and mitigate those global crises. The perspective of an old person, more so now than ever, is a philosophy of futility: why worry about that which you can by no means control? But there is a limit even there, and Archangel in last week's post conveys the ultimate acceptance: that of egolessness. In the end, forced to accept indomitable karma and to suffer the insufferable, we must swallow that "red hot iron ball," the Dharma. Yes, there is bliss!
Publishing's brave new world
After researching dozens of independent hybrid publishers in search of a home for my essay collection, Ruminata, I am about to entrust it to Luminare Press in Eugene, Oregon. It is a leap of faith to a small company of ten women, headed by its founding editor, Patricia Marshall, a remarkably dynamic and venturesome woman. The group has put out any number of very fine books in their ten years of existence, earning the recommendation of the Alliance of Independent Authors. Reputation aught to be the watchword for hybrid publishers, as those who accept any manuscript proffered, regardless of merit, eventually fall to the status of vanity press.
What appears to have sprung up since I first published in 2015 is the idea of self-publishing services, now offered by a plethora of new companies. For a person with some degree of technical competence, it is in fact easy to publish a book. Indeed I suspect that many young grad students have taken a course in the subject. For any who have not, especially at an age when mortality nears and the future may be short-lived, the services aforementioned may be helpful. I find, however, that a majority of the new companies are not publishers but educators. They will instruct you how to do it yourself; they will "walk you through it." The process involves not only editing but formatting the cover and pages, creating files to upload for the digital version, obtaining an ISBN number, and more. I confess I am too old for that!
I learn in today's Post that in 2010 a survey by Google found 130 million books in print. My essay on communication deals with this modern explosion, making the internet a colossal haystack. No wonder one needs a search engine, but can the one particular needle be found? My impression is that many writers are young people hoping to escape a life in the corporate cubicle. But 130 million competitors? Put your manuscript on a thumb drive, drop it in a bottle, cork it and throw it in the ocean. That's what I am going to do!
Gone too far
The political situation here in the States is a reflection of a concurrent global pandemic: the sickness of democracy and the rising poison of despotism. Tyrants in every dank sewer of the world link arms in solidarity against any measure to weaken them. They are not ideologues but parasites, their only aim domination for their own criminal purposes. Into this fray, of all the most unlikely institutions, steps the local school board of a nearby Virginia county. Parents are attending board meetings to complain that American history is being taught with a leftist slant emphasizing race and especially slavery. Violence erupted on occasion, and naturally with the ubiquity of modern media, incidents "went viral."
There can be no doubt, of course, that slave labor enabled America to tame a continent and grow to become the economic engine that it is. Yet that is not to say its history is evil unalloyed. A true history should not be taught as ideology, but rather as a perspective on what life was like for people living in those times. But history class is not the real issue at all, which is instead how the rightwing will exploit reasonable parental concerns to political advantage. Independent voters in swing states, in that stage of life when children are their top priority, will not be considering the danger to democracy when they vote for the demagogue who pledges that education will be restored to schools and indoctrination banned.
I return to the amplitude of the pendulum: When partisans on one side swing to an extreme point, partisans on the other feel justified in swinging equally far to the opposite pole, and no one is left to hold the center. A vacancy came up on that school board, not surprisingly, and a man stepped up who had once been a member. Upon taking the post, he was moved to remark, "I am not ashamed of being an old white man." There could be no better measure of just how far the left has drifted.
Managing
As predicted, and for that matter like all living things since time immemorial, the coronavirus is evolving, presenting vulnerable humans with ongoing challenges from mutant strains. Th latest, dubbed omicron, we are incessantly informed is "highly transmissible," though perhaps not as deadly as prior strains. Early on from my reading of viral epidemiology, I learned that a virus will commonly grow less virulent over time, because the deadliest will die off with its victims, leaving greater opportunity for the weaker versions. In any case, as we enter a third year of this struggle, we are painfully aware of just now long this will take. Evolution is a slow process, and the medical experts now advise that even those vaccinated must prepare to "coexist with covid." How's that for an uplifting slogan!
Come to think of it, at my age like all my peers, at least those of my acquaintance, we already manage a growing accumulation of chronic problems. The protocols of personal maintenance now take up the better part of my mornings, to my chagrin. There are the teeth, the eyedrops, the skin care, the pills, to name only those that are mentionable. Thus continuing to wear a well fitted face covering and to avoid our fellow man, literally "like the plague," is only another thing to remember, though if you depend on eyeglasses you will be blind with a mask.
Nonetheless, in their efforts to avoid cortisone shots or major surgery, old people may become most adroit in the day to day handling of irksome conditions that persist interminably. My late Aunt Ethel wielded a mean cane when she was not leaning on it. Fellow theatre goers had best to stay clear of her! With arthritis nearly universal after age 65, and back pain, the cane should become the common accessory it once was; and as for the coronavirus, one should not write off the elderly for coping power.
Christmas carol
I could write about the local school board brawls that oddly have risen to the level of international infamy; but it is Christmas in a week, a season of good cheer deserving of mention, even in pandemic year two when good cheer may be hard to muster. Children naturally have an easier time with that on account of Santa Claus, though I do wish parents would return to a careful reading of Clement Moore's delightful poem. Santa was a jolly old elf, and his sleigh was drawn by eight tiny reindeer. My Irish mother's excitement at this time of year lives on in me, long past childhood; and our favorite story was Dickens's Christmas Carol. Dickens himself, I learn from his letters, was called upon to read aloud his ingenious tale every year, over several evenings to large gatherings of appreciative fans. I read the original, but I also love the musical "Scrooge" with a lively score by Leslie Bricusse, who died this year at a ripe old age. All the Christmas music is a balm to me, and I am ready to fall on my knees when I "hear the angel voices!"
Yet as to its religious significance, we can thank the Romans and their co-optation of heathen traditions in their far-flung empire for making this holy day equally a celebration of winter, which also appeals to me as a Druid. With the growing season past, the trees can have a rest, and I see the long dark nights also as a blessing of peace.
I will not pretend, however, that the pandemic has not drained considerable pleasure from the observance of Christmas, when even despite vaccines we cannot go into a restaurant without fear of flow patrons and worry over ventilation. This is a second year, moreover, when I will not be traveling to the old country to spend Christmas in Matlock with my old friend as the news is dire indeed - and it is a long flight.
Great man, great loss
Even readers of this blog, who must know the I am a fan of The Washington Post, will yet be unable to imagine my shock, horror, and sadness when I picked up the paper to find, on the front page beneath the fold, an obituary of Fred Hiatt, who for decades was editor in chief of the opinions pages. He died 6 December of a sudden heart attack at the age of sixty-six. Though I had not known him personally, I felt immediately that I had lost a close and trusted old friend. Over the years I formed the conclusion that by guiding The Post on the straight path of journalistic integrity past the Scylla and Charybdis of political extremes, he made of the institution not only the world class paper it had always been but the premier journal in the nation, a position formerly held by the New York Times, seemingly by default.
For all his writing skill and impeccable judgement, Hiatt was an unassuming person. I doubt that many readers bothered to learn his name; he seldom wrote with his byline. But when I began to notice that the lead editorial would invariably say just what I was thinking on whatever the topic, I realized that I must be of one mind with Fred Hiatt, which is not to say that he would simply endorse a given bias. On the contrary, unlike journalists in the polarized echo chambers that now predominate, he was a true moderate, as am I, and thus one of an endangered species.
That is the loss I fear with a sinking heart. Where is the equal to this man's brilliance and integrity? Is there a Homer to stay the course through the Strait of Messina, or will The Post run aground with all the rest? There are many bright lights among the columnists at The Post, and the one I discern as nearest to the capabilities of his late boss and mentor, if I may so observe, is Eugene Robinson, whom I would love to see assume a larger role. But we can only wait, read - and hope.
The swear word
Since being disappointed by a second publisher declining may manuscript of essays, I am again researching so-called "indie" presses, especially those of the hybrid model who screen a work before offering to publish it. The process of research is tedious and slow despite several websites now online to help, a good one being the Alliance of Independent Authors, which gives a list of 35 presses and rates their quality and reliability. To foster a decent reputation a hybrid publisher should steer clear of godawful writing; so with each prospective publisher, I sample books they have produced.
I am noticing a trend in fiction, even when well written, of peppering the text with the F-word, though obviously this only aims for realism, since the obscenity is ubiquitous at all levels of society. We must extrapolate this from Bob Woodward's book Fear, where he transcribes recorded interviews with several of Mr. Trump's henchmen, who apparently without the F-word would be rendered mercifully speechless.
The prevalence of this vulgar expletive is both curious and troubling. Language is important, and the words a person chooses have both definition and connotation, leaving an impression on the listener. What impression is being sought then by the many people who use this profanity so casually as to strip it of all meaning but for the connotation of a brutish bestiality? Indeed it is used as if there were no other verbs or participles in the English language. Perhaps in today's world we should infer that there is some social penalty for a failure to use this obligatory argot.
These are the curious aspects of the phenomenon. The troubling part is this: In any language, curse words are related to the taboos of the society and are used to demonstrate intense emotion. Swearing reveals that a person is under such stress as to overwhelm any inhibition. Even in may lifetime it was taboo to take the name of God in vain. Today the sin is abbreviated - OMG! Surely the F-word has for so long been such a common, everyday word that it has lost all power of taboo and thus any useful purpose. What then is left to us? The primal scream?
Giving thanks
The marking of one day a year as a national holiday for the express purpose of giving thanks is clearly a beneficent practice. Most people need to be reminded periodically that sincere gratitude is the most secure basis of happiness in life, even in the recent years of such dire conditions and depressing news. In timely fashion, articles have appeared here on or before Thanksgiving Day enumerating the many blessings for which we may still be grateful, topping the list being vaccines against a new and deadly virus. The number of deaths in the US continues to climb, and there can be no doubt it will soon exceed a million. Too many cavilers will assert that a million souls from a population of over 300 million is but a small percentage. Aside from being stunningly cold-hearted, this view overlooks the special case of so many dying at roughly the same time of the same disease, taking with them untold others who might have lived had not medical resources been monopolized.
The pandemic impacted the older generation not only in killing so many outright, but also by accelerating the aging process, including physical and mental diseases, through neglect and isolation. As years add up to a steady accumulation of pains and disabilities, depression, after all, is common. Now with a familiar world suddenly vanishing, one is apt to hear an old person lament that he or she has lived too long and would just as soon live no longer in such an alien, complex place.
That brings up the question of the ages: when to call it quits, forgo the primrose path of cancer treatment, for example. Personally, I feel that so long as a person can enjoy the simple pleasures, life is worth living: one's cup of tea, the radiant warmth of the sun, a favorite piece of music, or of pie. Sadly there are some who will never feel grateful for such "humble pie." Humility is the handmaiden of gratitude, just as arrogance goes hand in hand with ignorance. Count ourselves blessed then if we are not among those.
Autocracy, Inc.
I follow the Atlantic on my news app and never fail to read anything by Anne Applebaum. Her latest article is "The Bad Guys Are Winning." It is well reported, of course, and very scary to anyone who cherishes freedom. She portrays a kind of global crime syndicate, calling it Autocracy, Inc., that accounts for the current success and persistence of such regimes in Russia, China, Belarus, Venezuela, Cuba, to name a few. The most frightening and sickening observation in the article is that these autocrats, by supporting one another, are able to sneer at sanctions and discount the condemnation of the free world, in blatant pursuit of wealth and power at the expense of their populations. They care not a jot if their nations become failed states; in other words they are unabashed parasites.
Thus do the floodgates of barbarism burst open, accelerating the process of decline and fall. By killing the host, after all, a parasite seals its own fate. Applebaum goes on to decry the naive attitude of Americans that "it can't happen here." It can and it is: consider the millions of Americans already embracing autocracy for their own immoral or misguided reasons; and on the other side, those who regard the nation as evil to its core and irredeemable in any case. Democracy be damned then! To these the writer holds up the example of plain citizen activists, living under a tyrant's thumb and braving torture and death in the face of intolerable injustice, without recourse of laws.
The autocrats do not like each other but see personal advantage in banding together. Sooner or later, however, just like warring Mafia families, they will fall back into the tribal state. Where will that leave the rest of us, any who survived? What is 2+2? Save yourself! Say "5!"
Transcendent!
My friend Anna and I are relieved that our favorite season has finally arrived, albeit in mid-November. As she has reported from the courtyard, October weather came in September and vice versa; bur now that the deciduous trees reveal their colors, they do not disappoint. Juxtaposed among the maples are flaming red and jubilant yellow, even better where they blend into diaphanous coral. In such natural glory abides the transcendence of which Archangel speaks in Dokusan with Anna. And we see it not only in nature but also in feats of human creativity, the output of J. S. Bach, for example, not to speak of science, mathematics, engineering. Anna will immediately cite fractal geometry, connecting math with nature's analogs.
Last week's Dokusan, in the persistent efforts of the indefatigable Archangel, gives the best yet articulation of the inexpressible Buddhist truth; and I have prevailed upon Anna for that reason to have it stay on the blog awhile longer. Buddha's truth jumps the nihilist abyss that science gave us upon failing to find any materiality at the quantum level. Yes, matter is void but it is not nil. The void is imageless, but is easily refracted by consciousness into myriad images, easily as light, because it is light. Therefore your "mortal soul" is light, and not mortal. The difficulty of this truth for most people is in the paradox: the many are one, including the sorely afflicted, isolated self we foolishly cherish. Ironically, science also came upon paradox, which it aptly dubbed "quantum weirdness."
With regard to that transcendence, however, telling of the true character of void, an admonition: For all of it we judge as good and glorious, there is a counterweight we see as evil, whether in nature or in humans. It is the necessary consequence of our dual perceptions. But the axioms in our brains tend impervious, so go read and reread that Dokusan until the meaning dawns. Then walk out under those transcendent trees!
Aftermath
With considerable trepidation, I must observe that it is not only climate change that is accelerating at a rate never seen, but as well all else in our lives, and that suddenly. The precipitous global shutdown in response to the pandemic pushed us all off a cliff, with especially dire consequences for both the young and the old. Three elders in my own family, including my brother, slipped into dementia. School children, disoriented by unnatural new routines, struggle with depression or behavior issues. Going on two years later is the future any brighter?
The vaccines have of course been enormously helpful, but they are not a panacea. Large pools of the unvaccinated around the world, and even in some developed countries, leave open the possibility of new viral strains. People are still scared to death, even those vaccinated, especially if they are among the vulnerable groups. In some ways the aftermath of mass vaccination has seemed harder than lockdown, when we languished in our homes, suiting up like hazmat workers to go out - only for bare essentials, if they could be found. Now suddenly we are free again, and we learn what businesses, restaurants, theaters, did not survive - gone for good. Consumers flood back, but not workers. Schools open, but teachers and bus drivers quit. Professional offices, shuttered for months, scramble to catch up, also deluged with clients or patients all coming back at the same time. Staff shortages are everywhere, and the phenomenon creates a negative feedback loop, when those intrepid - or foolish - souls who do return to work break under the strain and leave.
Choke points are not only at the ports, and it may be years before they clear. So no, the future does not look brighter. With the convergence of global warming and plague, the future is more uncertain than ever. Our patience is tested, and we must learn to move into that future without the surety with which we were heretofore deluded.
Algorithm
The latest furor over Facebook, occasioned by the well-documented disclosures of an insider, has been highly elucidating. Since my first book came out in 2015, I have attempted to reach readers on this platform who might have a common interest, with very limited success, due chiefly to the fact that I find the site unfathomable. Now I know why. What has been revealed is that those clever engineers at FB, with their magical algorithms, have a penchant for experimentation, along with the largest aggregation of lab animals in history. No wonder whenever I open FB there is some new rule, wrinkle, or format, which I despair of learning as it will surely be replaced by tomorrow. Wondering why, with such powerful computers, my list of a scant 400 friends cannot be alphabetized, I find the time wasted grossly outweighs the value of the site.
Apparently my naiveté of this social medium is matched or exceeded by that of the world's legislative bodies, who only now begin to understand the business model, namely to prolong the engagement of users so that paying advertisers can have at them, learning what they like and bombarding them thereafter with their wares. I believe the term is "targeted demographics," though I myself never mastered it.
Lo and behold - and here again my warnings of the tribal mindset intrinsic to human nature are vindicated - the most powerful tool to prolong engagement is anger. Write a post on FB ranting and raving about some outrage, real, exaggerated, or fabricated, that has been committed by another tribe and it is more likely to "go viral," bringing you all the attention you could want. One might feel sorry for the sorcerer's apprentice who cast this spell without knowing how to reverse it, except that he continues culpable in his alleged innocence. Perhaps his advertisers could sell enough wares without the anger emoji stoking tribal sentiment into a fury. Put your engineers on it, Markie boy, and while you're at it, teach them the alphabet.
Isolation
A friend of mine, knowing of my strong preference for classical English literature and last year's marathon reading of Charles Dickens, suggested I read Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell one of the women authors promoted by Dickens in his magazine "Household Words" and one he especially admired. I followed this friend's advice and read Cranford, which reveals that Dickens's admiration was reciprocal, the book being something of a Dickens pastiche. While the story starts out seeming a tad pedestrian, the reader is soon engrossed in the tangled affairs of that fictional English village.
When I finished Cranford, I went looking for others of Gaskell's works and discovered that she wrote a biography of Charlotte Brontë, a contemporary, at the request of the family. The book is informative as only a writer with firsthand knowledge can make it; but not confining herself to the biographical, Gaskell is thorough with respect to history of the time and place, namely the West Riding of Yorkshire in the early nineteenth century. As I read, I recall those rugged moorlands, the blasted heath that has produced many a Heathcliff, and it occurs to me that human societies have ever been small and clannish, preferring their isolation and resistant to any civilizing influence. The educated Tory clerics who came among them in the West Riding in those days, including Reverend Brontë, who was Irish into the bargain, did not have an easy time of it when parishioners joined the Luddites in violent protest against mechanization in mills and factories that robbed them of livelihood.
Throughout history we witness how easily isolated communities fall back into tribes; the veneer of civilization is thin indeed, and religion and education are twisted into tools of tribalism. By no means has the internet relieved that isolation to a meaningful degree. Thus we must now be alert when public emotions heat, be ready to choose a tribe - and hope we may choose with courage, not in fear. History is our teacher.
All together now!
I have reviewed the eighteen essays that will make up my next book, softening the more polemical themes that reflected their youthful origins, but I am working on a new one on the tribal mindset which must be added before I send the manuscript off to Page Publishing. The more I work, the more I think, the more I see just how elucidating the pandemic has been. From the beginning, of course, many commentators have observed the several weaknesses highlighted by it - political, social, economic. Especially stark has been the greater impact on the lower socio-economic levels, making their later vaccine hesitancy all the more ironic and puzzling. Now, in our second year of this grotesque situation, a most baffling aspect is the supply chain debacle, worse now than last year: dozens of cargo ships waiting along coastlines to be unloaded, a dearth of longshoremen to move the shipping containers, likewise truckers to transport goods. Could it be that too great a number of these workers have died? So much for global trade if you can't get it here from there.
Surely there are many factors, but personally I think of thresholds, about which I have frequently written here. So many of our problems in modern times boil down to numbers, one in particular being seven plus billion people on the planet, and counting, pandemic aside. In the States there are more than 300 million of us, a good many belonging to the so-called baby boom, postwar generation. These grandparents are internet savvy, as are their children and grandchildren. They all turn to it for entertainment, for social interaction, for solace I presume, and for commerce. If a certain brand of casual pants is dropped by the clothing stores, these folks will automatically go to Mr. Bezos to find a pair in just the right color and size, and a button on the back pocket. Today when a random grocery item is suddenly gone from the store shelf, Amazon will find it somewhere in the world, and ship it free. When millions, nay billions, of people begin to crowd the same route at the same time, a threshold is crossed and the route becomes impassable. One wonders how many neatly packed boxes in how many shipping containers on how many stalled cargo ships contain one box of someone's favorite breakfast cereal.
Helpless
A theme running through various of the essays I am readying for publication is the extent of change I have witnessed over a long life. As I review the manuscript now, in pandemic year two, I am struck by our increasing sense of helplessness in contrast to prior generations, who were ever aware of their agency. Hitler? We will defeat him if it takes our last dollar, pound, or franc! Today we are so far along the road to a primative tribal state that leaders even in the most advanced nations are ready to burn the global economy on the partisan altar, and gleeful at the prospect.
Yet today's problems are indeed deeper, and in many respects we are in fact helpless. A virus cannot be fought with a nuclear bomb, though experimentation in the field of virology into so called "gain of function," an effort to get ahead of the next bug to jump species, may turn into our version of the Manhattan Project - and spell our doom. As for the climate, it is my opinion that even the experts secretly believe it is already too late, but then why would we think we are exempted from extinction?
We may keep this all in perspective, however, by stepping away from the planet. Look to the sky, the infinity of space, or in the other direction to the cells of your own body. Nature proffers myriad intimations of a transcendence we commonly ignore. Th brain wants to label it infinity, but your deepest intuitions tell you that infinity is absurd. Truer than infinity is timelessness. Master Joshu was asked if the dog has buddha nature, and he answered no, an emphatic "Mu!" in Japanese. The dog does not have buddha nature - here is the dog and there buddha. The dog is buddha, as are you, child of buddha nature. The rest is mist in Platonia; read Julian Barbour, if you dare.
Convergence of crises
As I follow the news in my morning paper, news of the world and especially my native land of England, conditions are indeed dire. Britain's foolish insistence on the divorce from Europe has only served to amplify the impact of the pandemic, while here in the States the most inexplicable contingent of the anti-vaxers are the health care workers, who witness the horrors of this disease every day, exposed to it as no other group, yet can turn down the one protection from it.
But the big picture is the convergence of crises: a global pandemic, effects of climate change, political turmoil. The common denominator is a human population of over seven billion. To vaccinate even a small proportion of that number, when the most populous countries are too poor to provide for vaccine distribution, is the next thing to impossible. With such a large pool of the vulnerable the virus has ample opportunity to mutate a more deadly strain, and for that matter a different virus might exploit the situation, resulting in the denouement of the species. Such phenomena have the capacity to snowball rapidly We cannot assume we have time on our side, which is especially true of climate concerns.
Drought is turning many areas of the planet to desert, and when and where rain comes, it falls not in drops but in buckets that swell the rivers, washing away all vestiges of human habitation. Summer temperatures rise so high that wild fires rage uncontained. Wherever Earth becomes uninhabitable, people will be still more crowded together, which brings me to the Mouse Universe, the experiment of John Calhoun on the effects of over crowding. The only restraint on his rodent population, which started with six individuals and grew to 2200, was space. The colony then became what he called a "behavioral sink." All normal interactions stopped, and all the mice died. The immigrants now coming in waves are climate refugees looking for space - and it is running out.
Brouhaha
As anticipated, my manuscript of essays was "declined" by Mad Creek Press at Ohio State University. This determination took five months, but it was six before I bothered to check on Submittable. Yes, that is the website publishers now use, sparing us rejection letters which formerly aspirants might eventually use as wallpaper. It was worth a try surely, though the market for essays is saturated with young female grad students, carrying on most lyrically about their innermost thoughts and lives - a kind of erudite Facebook. I will likely take the essays to Page Publishing being familiar and happy with their process. As I observe what goes on in the world, moreover, I am keen to publish, even knowing I regrettably take on the role of Jeremiah.
The current brouhaha here in the States over abortion is a fine example of a matter I address in the essay on misogyny and the first essay, "The Sexual Theory of Everything." Since mankind is certainly not guided by reason, what might it be that motivates us? Clearly it must be hormonal, the germ cells, otherwise the species would not have overpopulated to the extent of exhausting planetary resources. These men claiming such great love for the unborn in their anxiety to stop abortion are driven by the fear that any conceptus of their own might be terminated. All fetuses therefore must be born; they do not have to live. And if are born in poverty, hated by their mothers and becoming psychopaths, what is it to the sanctimonious?
The irony lies in history. Prior to the twentieth century, all reproductive issues, including abortion, were left to women. The medical profession got involved only to prevent women from dying. A fetus was not a person; it needed first to be born, when he or she could then be baptized and given a name. How very unnatural we have since become, and how ugly the backwardness even in such an advanced nation as America!
Pandemic travels
And so as promised my report from the shores of Frenchman Bay, the far reaches of Maine, the last civilized outpost south of Caribou and the timber lands: Let me hasten to assure you that the rocky coast is withstanding erosion, the sea roses are laden with ripening hips, the sky and the air continue incomparably pleasant. As for civilization, however, it has suffered hard knocks, which I can summarize briefly. Consumers, vaccinated from the viral plague, have come roaring into the marketplace; the workforce has not. Results are astonishing. With respect to food, all the menus have changed from my many prior visits, and the quality seems to suggest that chefs have given way to cooks. While Maine has the perfect climate for growing fine lettuces, what was passing for lettuce in salads was more like a coarsely chopped kale, the only alternative being the now ubiquitous arugula. At the premier lodging - the historic Inn on the shores of the bay - the continental breakfast was reduced from its former Dickensian opulence to a grab-and-go.
Thankfully there were no cruise ships in the harbor disgorging their hordes, yet the town was so crowded none of the restaurants were taking reservations, but for the Reading Room at the aforesaid Inn. At the popular Jordan Pond, where popovers at the Pond House are a big draw, along with their exceptional tea blend, there was an hour wait to get lunch on the porch. The place was beyond crowded - it was swarmed. Likewise the regional jets that make the nonstop flights to Portland and back were packed in the manner of sardine cans. I puzzled the while what could be causing the crowds: fewer flights for want of attendants? Or might these passengers be globe-trotting refugees roughing it in Maine when they had intended to vacation in Mongolia?
Thus travel in the pandemic second year: dispiriting. It is not a question of how long can we wait, but of how long society can endure these hard knocks. We begin to see what may survive - and what may well be gone for good.
New Puritans
No less a journalist than the inestimable Anne Applebaum has written a daring article for the Atlantic based on her new book entitled New Puritans, by which she refers to modern social media mobs meting swift, ad hoc punishment on persons seem to have offended a new unspoken moral code. Her thoroughly researched piece is daring in that it invites the wrath of such a mob upon herself. The careers and thus lives of victims have been ruined in this way much as they were in the era of the Puritans in colonial America. Applebaum begins the book in fact with a quote from Hawthorne on the fictional Hester Prinne.
These modern puritans are also exercised over sexual behavior, though not solely. An offense may also relate to racial or gender bias. The ensuing process is commonly extra-judicial, because the target has committed not a crime but a sin; and an allegation is all the chum needed for the sharks to attack. Applebaum stresses that her intent is not to weigh the merits of accusations, but to question the fairness of a deeply troubling phenomenon. As social standards change over time, it may be appropriate to take laggards to task. But subject them to the horror of shunning? Deprive them of the means of livelihood? Surprising from her researches is that most of the media mobsters are left leaning as are their targets, perhaps representing for cultural and educational institutions a ritual purification. And there is no statute of limitations. A person's adolescent folly is fair game.
What is not alluded to in this article is the age of those who set the tumbrels rolling. A certain yuppie demographic is implied, but surely we must suspect that young people, empowered by their tech savvy, are exercising a delusion of superiority - with unseemly relish. Youth, however, is a tribe in which membership inevitably expires.
You can't get there from here
I look forward, albeit with some trepidation, to my sojourn in Maine next week, an annual pilgrimage I have missed only in times of extreme crisis. One was following the 11 September attack, the other last year's pandemic paralysis. The trip is a brief respite from summer's heat here in the mid-Atlantic, relatively speaking, since summers everywhere - Maine included - are quickly growing more intense. It is a short flight, masks on, and everyone vaccinated, one hopes. Will flights be cancelled, and can a person get through security in time to catch one?
An essay in my manuscript collection is titled "Travel: You Can't Get There From Here." It describes how various modes of travel have changed in my lifetime and the sorry state of it in today's overpopulous world. But if domestic travel has become daunting, given pandemic hurdles, I am particularly disinclined to fly overseas, causing me to wonder if I will ever see the old country again.
My older brother is there in one of the nicer care homes in Harrogate, and my nephew goes up from London to see him occasionally. We are all in phone contact, of course; God bless technology. My brother's mental status, however, has deteriorated to the extent that, except for the distant past, nothing is held in memory. He will forget that his son ever visits him, and forget that he and I have spoken as soon as the call ends. Fortunately, he still is able to take notes about his daily activities and contacts, but then he must remember to read the notebook to remind himself. Yet we often have deep discussions about life and, at our age, the afterlife, and while his condition is discomfiting, he agrees it draws near to the ultimate timeless reality. I reassure my brother that even if the marks of individuality fade away, his basic good nature will endure! And so to Maine - I will take notes.
A social species
The cogency of my essay on the tribal mindset presses upon me, with its resurgence in Afghanistan blanketing the news as I write. The term "tribal," in fact, appears in the coverage with increasing frequency. One commentator interviewed, retired Lt. General H. R. McMaster, even characterized this moment as the struggle of civilization against the barbarians. There is ample reason, after all, for that region to be referred to as "the graveyard of empires."
There can be no doubt, moreover, that the tribe self-styled as Taliban are bloodthirsty fanatics, nor that despite their hirsute, backwoods image, they dominate the global opium market. While their numbers are but a small fraction of the other tens of millions of Afghans, those others will soon coalesce around their own regional warlords, and intramural violence will resume as it has since the species descended from the trees. This particular nation has struggled mightily for at least a hundred years to join modern civilization, but Islam will have none of it, preferring the swift justice of beheading or stoning - as demanded by Allah.
My point is that this tribalism is in the makeup of all social species. Human tribes are scarcely different than dog packs, not in their relative size nor in their behaviors, the one important difference being that humans are able to kill their own. In our personal lives we all experience the tribal mindset as children in the schoolyard. There is the loneliness, the forming of small cliques, the security of belonging, the conformity enforced by the need to belong, even if it involves cruelty to others. This innate behavior attenuates in a civilized society as individuals mature. But the collapse of civilization is as inevitable as its rise, and it is a process we do not control.
From the tribal state, tribes coalesce, with one dominating, and civilization evolves. In time civil society becomes too civilized; the merging of disparate tribes crosses thresholds of inclusion: "Include women? Never!" "Include black people? No, no!" "Include those people? Circle the wagons!" Soon thereafter we all revert to barbarity.
Pronouns
Global warming is accelerating, with doomsday coming some ten years before formerly anticipated, and our signal is climate change - extremes of heat, fires and floods. I do believe, personally, that the summer heat inflames not only the body but the human psyche as well. It becomes a season when people go about seeking violence or at least discoed, and they are as flammable as tinder burning through drought stricken fields.
I offer the as a plausible explanation for a prodigious piece of silliness taking place in a local jurisdiction involving a school teacher refusing to address a transgender child by the child's preferred pronoun. Clearly this is a case of officials striking a hornet's nest with a cricket bat. The poor young teacher invokes religious beliefs as his defense, but this verbal diktat is not a sin against God. It is a crime against the English language, and the question should be left to English teachers, grammarians, Merriam and Webster.
Perhaps there are too few pronouns in the English language, but there would never be sufficient for the infinite points on the gender spectrum. Wherever gender is unclear, the male pronouns were always the standard default. To my knowledge this common practice was never viewed as causing offense. Today individuals, even in prepubescence, able to identify as outside of the prosaic genders, have latched onto the third person plural as their pronoun of choice; and in the context of a person whose gender is intentionally not revealed "they" may be used. Consider, however, the burden for teachers attempting to communicate in this dialect. If the teacher, for example, does not see "Billy," what is he to say? "Where is/are they?"
School officials, humorless and addlepated, really should stay out of the summer sun.
Losing oneself
The Dokusan that follows my blog post each week always gives food for thought about the much deeper aspects of our lives, especially for anyone who has yet to form their own conclusions about such matters. Last week as an example, the discussion brought up our notion, when the body malfunctions, that it is betraying us, which in turn exposes the misconception that whoever or whatever we are can be separated from the body. Indeed, when our physical condition becomes in extremis we are overcome with a terrifying desperation to escape the body. Most people, if and when they consider the likelihood of such events, foreclose their dread with a conviction that a "soul" or something of their individual nature does leave the body in the end. But this nearly universal idea is benighted.
The body is of the same material as all perceived reality, which science reveals, in its most minute inspection of matter, has no substance at all. In effect then, the body is this immaterial "soul," nothing inhabits it or leaves it. But for some reason, even knowing the limitations of our senses, we stubbornly refuse to admit how horribly perception deludes us. If, therefore, there exists no entity that escapes the bodily suffering, however extreme, no spirit, apart perhaps from its enlivening consciousness, then clearly we must use that consciousness while we are able to realize the ultimate truth of who we are.
Some will assert that the long predicted epidemic of dementia is upon us, and in my own circles of family and friends it has surely begun. My older brother is now in assisted living due to his memory loss, which will gradually worsen. As brain function declines and the synapses flicker off, I hear the refrain that "I am losing myself." As a Buddhist I can only infer that what is being stripped away is the idea of individual persona that reigns supreme and unchallenged from birth. Our individuality is ephemeral; the self is transcendent and cannot be lost. If we make it our mission to realize this true self, perhaps we may say in the end, "I am becoming myself."
Clever people
One needs to have been born before 1970 to remember a time when the world was not dominated by the clever people. Such people were required in the professions, but otherwise were not regarded as being of much use. They were the geeks, the eggheads, the outcasts in high school, wall flowers at the prom, if they went at all. Nor was college more hospitable for them, their status far below the quarterbacks, the cheer leaders, and the frat boys. But then the computer was invented, and those clever ones who invented it demonstrated how useful they could be, as indispensable in fact as their invention. Typists hastened to learn "word processing," bookkeepers broke their heads over "database" and "spreadsheet," to keep up.
The clever people, however, were not finished. What else might they conjure with those megabytes, the elaborate coding of zeroes and ones? The internet! spawn of the global positioning system, in turn the brainchild of the US military. One's computer could now connect to this world wide web via the phone lines, and soon thereafter through the cable that brought television signals. Businesses large and small hustled after the now resplendent geeks to create their own websites, hoping to outwit the competition, as that old thick Yellow Pages gathered dust and soon was no more.
Predictably, the computer was hybridized with television, at once freeing consumers from the tyranny of cable companies and lifting the cleverest people to heights of wealth far outstripping the last Gilded Age. With great wealth came vicious competition among the tech giants, fueling a perpetual race toward more innovation and increasing complexity. And what has been the upshot of this dominion of the clever? The problem with ensnaring the world in internet dependency is that most people are not clever, a fact that the clever ones never have considered nor will consider. Even among the legions they must hire for customer support a goodly proportion are not clever. Thus have the clever connived to make of society a Gordian Knot that even they will never be keen enough to unravel.
Moderation
I must say I am not sanguine about Ohio University Press accepting my essay collection for publication because on each of a variety of topics the views I espouse are moderate, and in the current polarized culture nothing is more despised than moderation. The reason, I suspect, is that partisans cannot recognize any views as truly temperate, in other words, you are with us or against us. Thus if I receive any feedback on my manuscript, I am fully prepared for wanton opprobrium. I will nevertheless proceed with it, as I am too old to wait patiently for rejection slips.
No doubt some of my weekly blog posts likewise touch a nerve for some readers, last week's, for example, where I insinuated that the celebration of diversity and inclusion in the leftwing of society may be fanning the dangerous fires of tribalism. Defenders of the celebratory camp will argue that they see no other way for so many disparate cultural, religious and racial groups to live together in peace. If they are right and I am also correct, then we have uncovered the very reason that any civilization will eventually decline and fall; and thus we can by no means escape the present downward trajectory of our own. But as a Buddhist, I offer one humble suggestion.
In recent times, people more and more have segregated themselves by identity. They have their tribal regions, their own chieftains, political party, shamans. Demographically they all belong to a minority group, each broadcasting their "pride": white supremacy, black power, gay pride, now one I recently saw in a Starbucks poster, disability pride. Surely I am not remiss in proposing therefore that for such diverse groups truly to live together peacefully what is most needed is not pride but humility.
The road to hell
I am feeling even more apocalyptic than ever this morning, having begun research for an essay on the tribal mindset and the role it has played in the collapse of civilizations past. Then adding to my gloom, the old house I wrote of recently in the post about trees was being demolished when I drove by. Upon my return only the chimney was standing. I am struck with a sudden clarity that this destruction brings the end of an era and a changing of the guard, from the white, patrician class with their horses and dogs, the fox hunts, the country clubs, to a community of polyglot cosmopolitans.
Times must change, of course, but is it also inevitable that we look upon the old days with jaundiced eyes? Those patricians held beliefs that today are regarded as backward: that "a woman's place is in the home," that a poor man should "pull himself up by his bootstraps," that parents who "spare the rod, spoil the child," and furthermore "children should be seen and not heard." How then should we judge them? Were they uniformly evil? Did they leave no positive achievements? Or should we rather see the larger scope of history in which their lives still reflected the nineteenth century. That century, moreover, was more enlightened than ones prior. Indeed widen out still further and it is clear that the barbarism of our species is unequal in nature when it comes to violence against our own kind.
The tribal mindset is not really interested in historical truth, only in aggrandizement of the tribe and condemnation of others. Even people with the best of intentions to right historical wrongs fail to acknowledge that two wrongs do not make a right. Their intentions pave the way to hell as they start dividing people by skin color, turning Dr. King's dream into a nightmare: No need to judge a man "by the content of his character;" depending on our tribe, we can see that by his skin color.
The demolition required no fire or explosion, only the giant claw of the excavator reducing the old place to rubble. Good riddance, some will say.
Breeding
In my essay collection Ruminata is one titled "Breeding: Know the dog." Among the points I make is that we accept the evidence of inbred traits in animals, even as to behavior and temperament. If we need a guard dog, we look for a terrier breed; if there are children in the family, we want a spaniel or a Labrador. But we resist the idea that humans might be born with inherent tendencies, though some are persuaded by having children: the first will be irrepressible; the second quiet and shy. Then they get to school, and pack behavior erupts; they form tight cliques, at least one of which will be led by a playground bully. A naturalist will observe similar behavior in other social species, not only dogs but also many primates.
People will object that humans are smart enough to overcome any inborn traits that become problematic. Are we not supremely rational beings? No, even a cursory look at history shoots down that notion. Indeed pick up any daily newspaper today to find what is now our most conspicuous of native proclivities, and that is the tribal mindset, which will be the title of my next essay, and of which I have written here on the blog as a menace to society through erosion of its foundation.
Disturbing as are the signs of this cyclical phenomenon, more so is the denial, the blind naiveté of society. Mountains of paper and oceans of ink are being consumed on books and articles attempting to analyze the attraction of "populist" demagogues, the strange ignorance and irrationality of loyal adherents. The same idealistic analysts bow at the altar of inclusivity and diversity. Quantifying quotas by demographics, they are unmindful that they do the work of the demagogue in separating the tribes. It is only the tyrant who knows that tribal loyalty can eventually be roused in any human breast. As to those who consider civilization the evil, I offer - Afghanistan.
Lungs of the planet
Between the coronavirus and extremes of weather, amplified to even greater extremity by global warming, one may be forgiven for believing that nature is making a concerted effort to snuff the human species; and the threshold beyond which we no longer have remedial options was crossed long ago. For all the browbeating and upbraiding, however, the sad truth is that we have never possessed a capacity to control our fate because of our own nature, to which we are blind and which is by no means sapient. We do not will what we will. Yet those who write, like myself, continue the endeavor, where we are still allowed, to persuade fellow citizens of reason.
When it comes to climate change, there are indeed great minds at work on strategies, and some, such as Bill Gates, have money. His recent book on the subject, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, is informative of little known or under appreciated facts. Most people will think immediately of automobiles and power plants burning fossil fuels, though there are worse offenders. Few people think of trees, considered to be "the lungs of the planet" for their primary role in absorbing carbon dioxide. Thus if only we could preserve our forested regions, and indeed plant more trees, weaning society from polluting fuels might be less daunting.
But many people appear to be positively hostile toward trees. I am reminded of this most rudely by two properties near me that have changed hands recently. In front of one a permit for demolition was posted. Well, the house had been neglected and in disrepair. The first move, however, was to take down a half dozen tall old trees. The tree crew must have left a few calling cards, because soon trees were coming down on the property catercorner, also with new owners. A whole row of evergreens is now gone. No doubt these new people are totally unmindful of the fact that the trees they destroyed were doing more to save the planet than the expensive electric cars they flaunt. Blind as moles - but that's human nature.
Extreme tribes
Here in the States, the great melting pot of the world, I am afforded the dubious advantage of witnessing the devolution of civilization back to the tribal condition. Euphemistic catch phrases like "identity politics" and "majority minority" simply describe the primitive state in which the species existed for millions of years of prehistory.While I encounter more and more references to "tribe" and tribal," the irony is that most people neither see nor understand what is happening as the society they take for granted unravels mercilessly. To watch this process, observe the extremes of left and right, seemingly opposite, yet each side has its Caudillo, all equally tyrannical, because extremity is circular. Proceed in either direction and you become your enemy by feeding his arguments. The tyrant is the chieftain and his attempted domination of rival groups inexorably gives rise to tribal warfare, or as we prefer to say "violent protest."
The conservative wing having gone so ridiculously far to the right, it is now incumbent upon the left, in accordance with Newton, to move equally far in the opposite direction, in the process viewing the context of history through a modern lens. Consequently they see "the last best hope" for democracy as inherently evil, founded uniquely on the practice of slavery. The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt had no slaves? The Romans did not enslave all those they conquered? Not until 1833 did Britain abolish slavery, just a bit ahead of America.
By far the saddest thing to watch in this tortuous decline is the way the middle is slowly pulled apart, each person daring to defend reason stretched on the rack. In a Congressional hearing recently, General Mark Miley, head of the Joint Chiefs, defended a course at West Point on the subject of racial history, saying it is in fact important for future military leaders to understand the country they are sworn to serve. But neither he nor his interlocutors appreciate the tribal mindset. A young person entering West Point is unlikely to be indoctrinated by the "woke" dogma. No, by no means! The attempt is more apt to backfire.
What changes
I trust my hope is not vain that followers of this blog will read the Dokusan, in which my friend Anna and her spirit guide Archangel discuss the most fundamental matters bearing upon our lives, such as the nature of time and the inferences relative to the nature of self. Since sending my essay collection off to Mad Creek Books in March, one of three new essays I have written is on the subject of self - the title, "Who Are You?" and subtitle "Who Do You Think You Are?" The first was the profound question of Bodhidharma to the Emperor of China, the second posed by an impudent school friend in my younger years, who subsequently did me the favor of moving to Australia!
Our lives are usually far too busy to think about such questions or to notice slow, accumulating changes in ourselves until we have passed through some few phases of the cycle. A crisis, however, such as the pandemic we are enduring, may indeed open our eyes and our minds. All along, as we sat in front of computers, summoned friends on FaceTime, bore day after day confined to quarters, we had pause to wonder just how this isolation was changing us; and now in the space of little over a year rather than decades it is obvious that changes have been relatively sudden and dramatic. Inhibition has become a habit as I foresaw at the start in this very space. A mirror tells us that aging has accelerated, or is that impression due to the long hair? My friend Anna claims I now resemble pictures of Charles Dickens in his later years. Having read a few of his longer novels over this period, perhaps I am channeling him.
Thus for those of us who have not as yet been swept away by its deadly spread, hiding in unnatural seclusion from all other people, the viral pandemic has been instructive, chastening. The faster pace of perpetual change shows that we are not the same from one instant to the next. Change creates time - an illusion - and time in turn creates self - another illusion. The true self comes forth ever anew - in a timeless state.
Allies and colonials
I am confident that Mr. Biden will have a warm welcome in Europe and Britain after the recent anomaly of an American dictator, and one of the tinpot variety; and I do so look forward to his meeting with our beloved Queen, doubtless giving an inspiring contrast to the travesty of Trump's visit. Here in the States, however, the fracture into tribal groups has not abated. A once proud party of conservative thinkers is thoroughly radicalized by a method that can only be described with the now quaint term "brainwashing." This phenomenon appears to be so entrenched that were this not the twenty-first century one might easily conclude that in the southern states all those who did not die of covid, for want of submitting to vaccination, have fallen victim to an epidemic of ergotism. In any case, in that region a substantial minority of people are done with democracy - if it requires them to surrender their God given power to rule over, or better still eliminate, the inferior tribes.
A long and very interesting essay in The Atlantic, written by George Packer, summarizes his upcoming book, Last Best Hope: American in Crisis and Renewal. He describes not two factions but four, each with its very different version of the nation. These are Free America, being the libertarians; Smart American, the urban intelligentsia; Real American, the atavistic rural and small town dwellers; and Just America, viewing the country through the lens of race and contending it is unjust, pure evil, unalloyed and irredeemable. Thorough in his explanation of how each viewpoint came to be, the author begins to persuade us of the validity of these disparate national narratives. But then come the skewers, and he deftly reveals how each faction has undermined that validity as it festers toward the radical.
Let us hope that the Western democracies allied can again face down these and other threats from extremists. However, should it turn out that America does prefer a monarch, perhaps Prince Charles would agree to govern the erstwhile colonies!
Birth rates
Anyone following this blog knows that I blame human overpopulation for all the ills that beset the species and the planet. Scroll through the Past Posts and you will find one describing the experiment of John Calhoun on overcrowding in the 1950s, and other entries on the ever increasing population. The first essay here under Pages gives my theory on just why those rising numbers did not stop when we developed the means to abate them.
But hold the presses! Now the cry goes up that data from around the world indicate lower birth rates, below the replacement level even in the US; and this unusual condition, we are assured, spells certain calamity, that being low growth. The argument is that for the economy to grow and for society to flourish there must be a constant increase in population, and the prop defending this assertion is the inference that without an ever larger number of young people there will be no one to take care of the old.
I for one have never quite understood this idea. With the population at a certain number, if there were enough people to ensure the needs of society, including elder care, would not a more or less stable rate around replacement maintain that condition? Before the population in the States crossed over 300 million was society not being well served at some lower number? Why then must the economy grow ad infinitum?
Reportedly the happiest people in the world are the Finnish, and the reason I am sure has nothing to do with population. Their idea of happiness is very unlike other people's, who think mostly of their comforts and material possessions. The Finns have the good fortune of being satisfied with what they have, and that is truly happiness. Were that to catch on we might relax - and stop growing!
Cicadas
With the tweeter-in-chief sidelined and vaccines allowing us to emerge safely from a long hibernation, now comes a great emergence in the natural world that commands our attention. Here in the mid-Atlantic region the periodic cicadas are out of the ground to fulfill the last stages of their 17-year life cycle. It is quite the biblical visitation, though entirely innocent of consequence, and it is peculiar to this geographical area. In my native England there is but one species of cicada, inhabiting the New Forest, which is not new at all, and that insect has not been seen in two decades.
My American friend Anna has witnessed these North American cicadas four times, and as a child was entranced with them - their red eyes, cellophane wings, and six spindly legs. I have seen them at least twice before. The first time I did not recognize the early sign of their rising, when in late winter the lawn under an old maple tree was being dug up each night by raccoons. Worried for the tree roots, I resorted to covering the ground with poultry netting held down with stakes. Upon the arrival of the cicadas, of course, I understood the excavating raccoons. Apparently the nymphal stage of the insect is especially appealing. This year the raccoons were joined by foxes and squirrels, while I simply kept sowing more grass seed.
Perhaps it is the strangeness and infrequency of this phenomenon that brings out strange behaviors in humans, such as the puerile dares to eat the bugs by every weather guy on air. We are warned about the loud noise of the brood, which I do not find so. The sound is a background drone from the high tree tops with the hollow timbre of the wood block in the percussion section. Surely humans can relate to a species that defers reproduction until age seventeen, a very long life for an insect. But that's it for the cicadas; then they die. What better symbol for the cycle of death and rebirth?
Chauvinism
I am not a fan of chauvinism of any variety. The term, which derives from the name of a character in a French play in 1881, is synonymous with jingoism. The character, Nicolas Chauvin, was excessively patriotic and devoted to Napoleon. However, chauvinism is also defined as " undue partiality or attachment to a group or place." By this broader definition, chauvinism may bear upon any of the myriad ways the human race is divided - race, gender, religion, ad nauseam.
My distaste for chauvinism is based on its arrogance. Unlike Sherlock Holmes I do consider modesty a virtue, since any prideful assertion of superiority over others reveals an ignorance of human limitations. Indeed, ignorance is the handmaiden of arrogance. As populations, formerly homogenized into a reasonable suspension of minority groups, are now separating rigidly - the butter fat churned from the milk by multiple forces - chauvinism is on the rise. Of course, all right-thinking people applaud diversity and equally the opportunity to learn about the cultures and neglected histories of their neighbors. Nowhere is this enlightened attitude more in evidence than here in Washington, DC, where monuments and museums spring up like so many fungi: Added to the original Smithsonian are now the African American Museum, the American Indian Museum, Museum of Women in the Arts, and surely more to come.
The intent in spreading knowledge and raising awareness is to increase tolerance of each minority group, which if successful benefits us all. But push that pendulum toward chauvinism and minorities devolve into tribes. One has only to visit the Holocaust Museum to appreciate the dark side of tribalism and to realize the potential for depravity in human nature.
What tree?
As my older brother, whose case I described last week, has slowly lost his memory, in particular its short-term aspect, he is forced into a state of mindfulness that others struggle to achieve. Albeit with considerable anxiety over the loss, he lives in the moment, forgetting in the very next whatever transpired. Most people find they are too distracted to focus on the present even with meditation. Much as genius may be associated with mental illness, the latter may closely resemble enlightenment, with the caveat that mental disorder is experienced as suffering, enlightenment as liberation.
In Anna's last Dokusan with Archangel, they deliberated once more the philosophy of solipsism, basically the idea that the only sureties we have in this life can only be what is in our own minds. In laymen's terms, "It's all in your head." Anna decries, correctly in my opinion, the contortions to which Western philosophy resorts in its stubborn evasion of the key question: Who is this person alone in the forest whose mind is solely responsible for the sound made by the falling tree? It is the logical question that will occur to anyone who failed epistemology, and it is evaded because of our unquestioned brief that each person's unique individuality is the sum total of self. Thus there is my self, my mind, quite apart from and outside everyone elses. Unable to imagine any other reality we totally miss the truth.
With the growing number of people falling victim to Alzheimer's and other dementias, we are apt to hear the tragic refrain, "I am losing myself." Losing the memory of who one was invites the inference that our concept of self is the accretion of memories, a karmic and temporal locus of individual attributes; when all along, born into the chaos of this world, we have been forced to ignore our true reality: self is not me or mine, opposite you and yours, but singular, timeless, transcendent. Self is One - who cannot be lost.
The blindspot
Adding to a mood disorder my older brother has exhibited throughout his adult life are now memory deficits, the result of brain damage from two serious falls and exacerbated by the isolation into which we have all been plunged by the pandemic. As his mind has slipped demonstrably and at age 80 can be expected to continue deteriorating, he has now moved to a continuing care home and will receive assisted living services. Unfortunately, because of covid, he will be in quarantine for his first two weeks, only serving to intensify his fear and loneliness.
When I took it upon myself to write the biography of British actor Jeremy Brett, one major reason was his ultimately fatal struggle with manic depression. I sought to illuminate the experience of a person with any kind of mental disorder, and the incorrigible blindspot the rest of us have to that experience. Perhaps it goes back to Descartes' error, the subject of Dr. Damasio's book of that title, the idea that mind and body are separate. But no, I believe that idea, which Descartes expounded in his philosophy, expresses an attitude that had become all but inexorable in our nature - long before Descartes.
To lose control of one's mind is the ultimate loss of control, thus the ultimate terror. Our common blindspot in this regard is a barricade against that possibility. Unable to face that such a thing can happen, we find a way to convince ourselves it is impossible - against all contrary evidence. My brother, calling from quarantine in his new home, could not remember where he was and would forget what I told him as soon as the call ended. Patiently I just kept repeating to him the name of the home and why he had moved there. Others, even medical professionals, are amazed at such a memory deficit. They are not so afflicted, and deny any possibility that they might ever be. Blind!
Parts of speech
In the first of many weekly Sherlock Holmes stories in The Strand magazine, Holmes receives a mysterious letter which he hands to Watson to see what he can deduce. To Watson's deductions, the great detective then adds the sender's ethnicity, observing, "Only a German would be so discourteous to his verbs." Sure enough, their new client turns out to be the king of Bohemia, whose escapades threaten a scandal. I must say I share Holmes's implicit affection for the English language; and while acknowledging the unique merits of other languages, I believe its distinct advantages are what so often make English the default.
Readers will understand, then, how the trendy abuses of the mother tongue might grate on my ears. One such category has words that, for no good reason, have leaped into a new part of speech. The words "text" and "message," for example, were perfectly good nouns forced into double duty as verbs by the ubiquity of the cell phone. Of course, "to text" or "to message" are shorter ways to say "send a message by text," and greater facility is one of those advantages of English. Naturally these changes immediately enter the dictionary, which being online need no longer be a tome of a thousand pages. Balancing the nouns turned verbs are verbs being used as nouns. Granted the verb "reveal" has been technically correct as a noun, but one scarcely ever heard the usage until reality television took hold of entertainment, allowing producers to bypass the expense of actors and writers. The less awkward word "revelation" had always been good enough.
Verbs may have traditional noun forms - deduce, deduction - and others are acceptable to be used as they are, including "influence." One may influence others, or have an influence. But now thanks to the radical sway of social media we must add to the lexicon the verbal abomination "influencer," which I would define as a young, meritless person who has succeeded in monetizing his or her Brobdingnagian ego - now there's a word for you!
Know-it-alls
In my now 76 years, I have known a few individuals - fortunately not many - who feel they must always be right and will therefore brook no objections. It is a most curious turn of mind - for being uncurious, not to mention conceited. No one is omniscient. We may be knowledgeable about our own job and activities, but remain largely ignorant beyond that. Personally, I like to signal any uncertainty with conditional phrases, such as "to my knowledge" or "in my recollection." I am indeed curious about a variety of subjects in which I would not presume to claim expertise. A favorite fact-checking resource in my writing is Wikipedia, which provides long entries on innumerable subjects, giving its sources and external links and cautioning where needed when an entry is incomplete or questionable.
But those obstinate know-it-alls must not be confronted with facts, lest one invite an intensely heated argument bordering the threshold of violence. Indeed my sympathy goes out to those caught in the trying position of having to deal with such unreason. When on a rare occasion I have been called upon to advise the poor victim my suggestion has been to yield, because argument is futile, and let come what may when reality delivers its own consequences. My opinion further allows for subterfuge where possible and dictated by circumstance.
What goes into the makeup of an individual so convinced of his or her infallibility is a matter for psychiatry. Could it be inherited narcissism? Insecurity embedded in childhood? I suspect that many such people have been raised as only children or eldest child, thus imbued at an impressionable age with a haughty attitude and great expectations, though not all persons thus situated in life have the trait. As for the rest of us - last of three or fifth of ten - I recommend an indifferent shrug and Hakuin's response: "Is that so?"
Apollo's priestess
Surely the ancient Greeks had one of the more peculiar pantheons of any human civilization before or since. They seem to have viewed the gods as a kind of royal family with superpowers; yet these royals, despite their powers, were afflicted with some of the worst of human frailties. The god Apollo comes to mind, whose arrows rained down a plague on the Greeks over the Trojan War. Now, in ancient Troy, a daughter of King Priam became a priestess of Apollo. Uncommonly beautiful, she caught the eye of this god, who fell passionately in love with her. Her name was Cassandra.
As in most legends or myths, especially those involving romance, there are various versions of the story; but in keeping with our modern sensibilities, I believe the woman. Cassandra, having sworn an oath of priestly celibacy, did not succumb to Apollo's advances; he persisted, bestowing upon her the gift of prophecy as an inducement. Again she refused. Holy Mount Olympus! How could she resist him, a god, beautiful and powerful? But she did, and apparently the gift of prophecy is irrevocable. A wrathful, disappointed Apollo punished her with the curse that no one would ever believe her prophecies. Thus it was she alone who knew that Greek soldiers would be hiding inside the Trojan Horse, but her fellow citizens ignored her warnings - and lost the war!
Mine, typically, is a question which to my knowledge has never been raised, though it might have come up as the subject of a doctoral thesis in the antiquities department: what would Apollo's reaction have been if Cassandra had broken her vow as his priestess and submitted to him? Not having a doctorate from the department of antiquities, I cannot even imagine what punishment he might have devised for her, though I would assert that I might legitimately characterize it, whatever it was, as hypocrisy.
Being destroyed
My friend Anna, who does the courtyard post, cautions that the blog is becoming a weekly Jeremiad. But then she has taken to referring to herself as Cassandra. More on that next week. She is right of course. Since early last year I can think of no aspect of life that has not been affected by the global pandemic. At that time, as I researched publishers for my next book, I worried that much of the subject matter had suddenly been rendered either obsolete or irrelevant. I even added a preface to discuss that possibility. It certainly appeared that the many consequences of over population I have foreseen and described in my writing had transpired already. Warnings were too late. The delicate ecological balance of life on this planet approached thresholds: apocalyptic climate change, and exhaustion of vital resources. Even then, however, it was clear to some - yet few - that nature's first recourse would by the White Horse of pestilence.
Had not modern civilization blazed the trail for this very horse? With great feats of engineering connecting the world - canals, bridges, ports - a global population became interdependent. People left the farms and crowded together in cities where buildings scraped the skies. The possibility of war was effectively eliminated by the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation. Society flourished, safe and prosperous, to the point that people in the most advanced nations were able to hop a plane or a ship to any place on Earth whenever the fancy struck them.
Seeing a world map showing covid infections, I could not but notice that the advanced countries of the world are the ones hit hardest by this disease. The continent of Africa stood out by its low number of cases per million of population, though that could reflect under-reporting. Depending on how one defines it, civilization is what is being destroyed by the pandemic, not the species homo sapiens. The modern civilized society opened wide the floodgates of limitless opportunity to any and all microbes - the seeds of its own destruction.
Your turn, Cassandra!
Darwinian
Since the election here was finally decided, in spite sedition, and we have been relieved of the tweeting fool, the scribes of outrage who skewered him in such an articulate fashion are on a well-earned vacation; thus I am reduced to the advice columns in the morning Post. Now March has gone out obediently like a lamb - a wet lamb - while April has fooled us by roaring in with March winds and commensurate wind chills. But April is notoriously the "cruelest month." No sooner have the cherry trees decided to open their delicate pink and white blossoms then heavy rains bring down whatever blooms were about to fall, and beneath the tree it appears to be raining pink petals. And flowers are not the only ones disconcerted. The wild shifts between storm and sun, the extremes of vacillating temperatures, raise the daily conundrum of what to wear. We may spend a good half hour deciding which coat will keep us comfortable so as to defend the all important immune system.
We have all been schooled for more than a year now by public health experts in the battle between immunity and our worst natural enemy, the microbes, especially how a new variety of virus can and has caught us totally off guard. Science raced to perfect a vaccine, and succeeded laudably, but the war is not won. In fact as millions are vaccinated, giving them a false sense of security, the danger grows. With the coming of warm weather, they will mingle again and travel. The old and vulnerable, who were first to be immunized, will be eager to reunite with their children and their children's children. They will forget about asymptomatic spread, which no lesser than Dr. Fauci confessed was his biggest surprise about this disease. Moreover, with the most susceptible people now protected leaving mainly the young and strong, the more robust strains of the virus will become dominant due to natural selection. Really, let's make Darwin compulsory reading!
Pendulum redux
I have submitted my manuscript of eighteen essays to Mad Creek Books, an imprint of Ohio University Press, for their series "21st Century Essays." It is entitled Ruminata: "The Sexual Theory of Everything" and Other Apostasies. Since some of the essays do tweak the shibboleths of modern political correctness, I am not sanguine about its acceptability. The review process will not likely be long, but it was worth a try. As far as essays go, I discern two types of writers: those with credentials in their field writing about that narrow subject; and young aspirants having earned the Masters in Fine Arts and hoping to make a living doing something they enjoy without having to teach the craft to others. These latter write informal essays in the writerly style learned from their professors. For the old curmudgeon simply offering the lessons of lifelong experience there are no independent publishers, though perhaps "The Sexual Theory of Everything" on the cover might possibly hook a reader or two.
Of course tweaking shibboleths these days is a dangerous business, given the persistent intensification of tribal extremism. I keep revisiting the analogy of the pendulum. What the extremist invariably misunderstands is that the opposite of his extreme is not the other side of the pendular amplitude. What is the opposite of extremes would be the middle, the moderate view, decried for its alleged impurity and smothered to the point of extinction.
As a pendulum swings the middle of its path is the point of stability, where gravity weighs most heavily. At either end of the swing there is considerable energy - pushing in the opposite direction.
Tea ceremony
The long, indefinite era of this global pandemic feels to me in some ways like a protracted Japanese tea ceremony, the aim of that ancient ritual being to observe it each time with exactitude. Thus in our second year now the days pass, each one the same as the last, finally blurring together. Creating a peaceful atmosphere for contemplation of Zen poems and sayings, the tea ritual conveys to my mind the reality of change, since no matter how hard one strives for that exactitude he cannot but notice slight differences from one ceremony to another. This suggests to us that even things appearing never to change are really changing minutely all the time. So, like the weather here in the Washington, DC, area if you don't like it just wait a minute.
As for the virus, it changes easily whenever a vulnerable human provides the opportunity. It might die out as a result, inexplicably. In some cases, like the SARS epidemic, it becomes so deadly that its victims die before they can spread it further. Change is the constant, and so we must be resilient, adapting as our species does so well. The pandemic brought very sudden, shocking changes, to which many of us adjusted with our own daily tea rituals; and we have sunk so far down in these ruts that we will be loathe to come up again if we even retain the strength to do so, because ritual is comforting. The trick is to notice that each cup of your Bigelow Earl Grey is somehow different from the last, thereby realizing that all circumstances change.
Paradoxically, ritual induces an impression of timelessness - even as we may observe the inevitable change that causes the illusion of time.
Royals
Given all the commentary in The Post this week about Oprah's interview of Prince Harry and his American wife, I feel obliged to weigh in. I did not watch it all myself, but I understand the lass Meghan reported being surprised that she was expected to curtsy when greeted by the Queen. My, my, how far they have drifted, these colonials! And I have shared the dream of Conan Doyle that we would rather grow closer.
I cannot decide what aspect of the business is most depressing: Is it a failure to appreciate the long history of the British monarchy, and the respect naturally accorded its leading representative? The presumption that any traditional gestures of that respect, unless for the benefit of cameras, may be ignored by modern people? No, the real scandal here is the incessant, noxious role of the tabloid press in Britain, somehow free to sully any person they choose to defame, leaving the filthy paw prints of the Murdoch family. Meghan was chum in shark-infested waters, and Harry of all people surely could not have been naive on that score. It they are concerned about public perception, the Royal family is by no means well served in treading so lightly.
For me, further dispiriting is the effacement of tradition by each succeeding generation of the modern era, more pronounced than in former times; and in that enterprise it has been a race to the bottom between the US and its mother country. The first "angry young man" after all was a British playwright, and both cultures had their share of punk rockers in the 1960s and 70s. Up against all that obligate casualness is our dear Queen Elizabeth in her suits and dresses, the proper jewels and gloves, the hand bag, and the hats. When she goes, what will be left? In America there are women who still wear hats; they are the Black church ladies. Oh, the irony!
Family tree
I have had occasion recently to consult the family tree, assisting my nephew and his wife in finding a name for their latest addition to it, a baby girl. Going back two centuries, I came up with fifteen names, though of course there are lots more depending on how close or distant the relationship. My great-grandfather was thrice a widower, so there were half siblings.
Doubtless descended of Druids from the ancient Forest of Arden, I am overly fond to trees: their size and strength, their graceful branching, the seasonal contribution of both the evergreen and the deciduous in the temperate zones. The family tree is perfectly analogous: from an ancient trunk, rooted as far back in time as one is able to determine, growing and branching out year after year, old branches thickening, twigs becoming branches and new twigs sprouting. Family trees would make an immense forest covering the Earth, with a very tangled canopy indeed.
Amazing to contemplate, however, is the incalculable number of individuals who have come and gone in human history and prehistory, numerous as the saying goes, as the sands of the Ganges, or perhaps more aptly the dead, falling leaves of autumn. We are not the trees but the leaves, coming and going in greater numbers each season as the trees grow taller, branching wider. We tend not to consider these things, which seem only natural, though in cases of mass death, as in this pandemic, we make efforts to portray the vast number in a way that brings it home. Still, surprising are the absurd things we accept: that we are born on a certain day, ride the river of time and then die. And the true things we find absurd: that we have always existed and always will - our intuition of the timeless reality. So, what's in a name?
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A worse crisis
I will never forgive Bill Gates for inflicting the world with the Microsoft operating system and forcing rival Apple to veer off into smart phones, where it has of course done superbly, thank you very much. But I must admit, the man has subsequently done considerable good with his obscene wealth. Is it guilt over the Windows case, which his company won despite the obvious infringement it represents on the Apple OS? All that, nevertheless, is now water gone under the bridge and over bridge the dam.
Mr. Gates and his foundation have over the years been active in global issues, especially world poverty and health, contributing the benefit of their experience in the current challenge of this historic pandemic. Now he has written a book about the gravest of all challenges - the climate crisis. In an interview on the subject, he posited the year 2050 as a realistic target for the world to rollback the greenhouses gases and save both ourselves and the planet. He enumerated the dire consequences he foresees in our failure to act boldly: coastlines redrawn by rising seas; persistent floods and fires; droughts turning arable land into desert. All these effects, which he doubtless explains at greater length in his book, will lead inevitably to growing hordes of climate refugees.
Ever the optimistic visionary, he observes that we have a good start on the transportation requirement with electric vehicles, and on energy utilities with renewable sources. Now, he points out, we must focus our best innovative minds on other polluting industries, the largest being manufacturing, especially steel and cement. Naturally he was challenged by the interviewer, Judy Woodruff, on the immense scope of the problem. But Mr. Gates has earned his optimism, having made a fortune on a computer system hatched over a weekend by a friend in his garage.
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True or false
As civilization once again declines and we are drawn into the whirlwind of resurgent tribalism, we should expect a natural if sickening loss of faith in hard facts; and as innumerable commentators observe, the internet stokes this chaos with lightning speed. Tribes will believe what their chieftains tell them, which will be whatever is in their own interests, and lies quickly spread will be chiseled in stone. One is reminded of Chapter 24 in the Gospel of St. Matthew: "Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars." The chapter is known as the Olivet Discourse, given by Jesus to his disciples on the Mount of Olives, and also, suggestively, the Little Apocalypse, as it describes "the end of the age."
But today's weird, chaotic controversies over what may be considered "true" obscure the deep history of that very question, whether in science, religion, or philosophy, a branch of which latter is epistemology, the study of knowledge itself. A friend of mine who had the misfortune of taking a class in epistemology in college relates with chagrin that the final exam had one exercise: to write an essay about the window in the room. The one student to earn an "A" wrote simply, "What window?" No lesser a scientist than Brian Greene in his Fabric of the Cosmos questions whether anything, in light of the Uncertainty Principle, can be said to exist.
The Buddhist sutras deal at length with the nature of reality, especially at the ultimate level, because our thinking minds - the "mind system" - deludes us about it; and Buddha came upon this insight without benefit of an electron microscope. But he drew the line at "the horns of a hare." The limits of knowledge stop at different levels. The Sherlock Holmes method states that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. The limit for science is that objective study will always exclude the subject. But the Buddhist dharma, so consistent with modern science, simply must be the truth - because nothing else is.
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The wall
When talk of the pandemic is so universal, it is difficult to write about anything else. The disease stalks every human on the planet, until any other topic seems superfluous, even the peculiar weather patterns which evidence a danger even greater. This week in The Post there was an article about "covid fatigue," a condition many of us, perhaps most, are now suffering. An analogy was made of "hitting the wall," as marathon runners experience at a point near the finish of the race, usually around mile twenty I believe it said. In the case of the pandemic, the wall is that point when we suddenly realize it is interminable, implying that it may never end.
As with other unwelcome circumstances of this nature - imprisonment, disability, loss of a spouse - the common reaction is panic, desperation, a sense of being trapped with no escape. The measures offered up in facing this wall are weak tea when the enemy is fear: distract yourself; see a therapist; exercise. (Well, in a marathon that's what you are doing!) But our instinct is otherwise; it is to surrender, and I would posit that it is correct. To struggle against that over which you have no control only amplifies the fear and fatigue. Do not surrender to these, but rather to the slow inexorable pace of change, believing the ultimate truth that nothing remains the same even for an instant.
Imagine you are floating on a river, too exhausted to swim to the shore. You may be carried into an eddy that will drop you on the riverbank, or you may be carried out to sea and drown. For the moment simply float. To those who say, "We can't give up," an easy rejoinder, "Can we not?"
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Devilish
The situation is bleak, the horizon dark and murky. In Israel, vaccinations against the raging plague are going well, yet Israel's leader cautions nonetheless that this is a race between vaccination and mutation; and I would add, in light of that, the odds are very much against us. The virus can mutate readily whenever it replicates. That instability is the reason RNA lost out to DNA in the earl evolution of life; and of course when a mutation confers some advantage it will be passed along and become the dominant strain. This virus uses our lung cells to multiply and spread, so more infection equates to more mutation. It is positively diabolical.
Charles Darwin was among the first and most prominent to intimate that nature needs no divine agency, that what we observe has come about through a process of cause and effect over vast periods of time. The idea is difficult to accept because of the complexity and magnificence of nature, especially when perception is enhanced by astronomy or microscopy; however, this grandeur and majesty only reflect the transcendent essence of things, which we find is unitary in nature.
But what about the Devil? Surely there is some evil influence behind the terrible fates that befall us. Well, there is agency in nature, but not of a sort we are familiar with. We expect it to be guided by an intelligence similar to our own, arising in a creature with a nervous system and a brain; then we are befuddled to learn that trees, without such organs, communicate with their neighbors through their roots. For that matter there are the unicellular organisms and even single cells in the body that function independently of a brain, most evidently the ones that go rogue and produce tumors, including treasonous immune cells. No, no, the agency of nature is neither divine nor diabolical; it is simply karma, cause and effect. We behave according to our nature - and so does the virus.
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Decline and fall
What are we to make of 89-year old Rupert Murdoch, my fellow countryman, jumping back into the fray to double down on his determination to destroy the civilized world before he leaves it? But then what are we to make of the scores of modern day Vandals yearning for those dark, medieval days when barbaric tribesmen nipped at the heels of Rome? To find the unpronounceable names of those many primitive tribes search "Vandals" on Wikipedia. The loudest voices these days scream about freedom, but their frequency is a wide spectrum: on one end are populations under the rule of brutal tyrants, and on the other pure anarchists chafing under the rule of law - against their rights to rape and pillage no doubt. For most of us the constraints of civilization are far outweighed by its advantages: peace, prosperity, the advancement of knowledge, and of course Starbucks, where we will soon be able to get a vaccination with our latte. What's not to like?
Well. (As George Will would say in his distinctive manner.) The singular fact that accounts for a cyclical descent of human society into tribalism lies in the math, i.e. a difference between millions and thousands. The human species lived in a tribal state for millions of years, while civilized society came about a mere number of thousands ago. The kinship bond is genetic, and it is still so strong in many individuals that they sacrifice all reason in its service.
This fact of human nature clarifies what we see in the madness, the intransigent divisions in the world today. Its tap root is not ideology at all, but rather the fellow feeling, the exhilarating sense of tribal cohesion as the mob gathers under emblematic standards. Our downfall may be hastened by this rampaging virus, but history teaches it will take centuries. Begin worrying when you see the heads of leaders from the enemy tribe hoisted on those standards.
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Stop the world
At long last there came a happy day in Washington, the sun shining on smiling faces, and the world breathed a sigh of relief as the new president promptly reversed the country's aberrant course toward isolationism. Even opposition leaders appeared ready at last to get some long neglected work done. Surrounding this occasion has been a proper and explicit condemnation of right-wing media for feeding lies to vulnerable audiences and of unprincipled leaders playing along to the debasement of facts. The most worrisome portent, however, raised doubt about the saving grace I mentioned last week, and that was the effect of these same influences in radicalizing veterans and active military, the very tools of an actual coup d'état.
Listening to news of world affairs, we have every reason these days to be overwhelmed and too often horrified. So turn it off and meditate! I often encounter people who say they would like to practice meditation yet find it impossible to clear their minds. But this is a misunderstanding of the practice, especially with respect to the Zen school. It is indeed impossible to stop the brain from its persistent wandering, but we can observe how thoughts arise and turn our attention away to focus on sensation - the sounds in the room, the view from the window.
Suzuki referred to thoughts as "mind weeds," and much as one pulls weeds in the garden, we sit pulling weeds. They can serve a purpose, contrasting a mind full of thoughts with one alert to the present. We do not sit to sort through thoughts nor to stew in emotions. We sit to steep in the experience of a clear mind, which is the source of intuition and of inspiration. Just sit, don't sort; steep, don't stew. At the least it will lower your blood pressure; and you will carry on - smiling!
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Birds and other creatures
Writing as I do from the suburbs of Washington, DC, it is hard not to focus on what is being called "fortress city," and which threatens to become the Fort Sumter of another civil war as soon as next week. But I have a stubborn tendency of looking for the big picture, so that such matters, horrifying and incredible as they appear close up, may be seen as pieces of that picture, individual threads of a vast and complex web. I would prefer to write about the Painted Bunting, wafted northward on a now common southerly wind to make an appearance aside the nearby C&O Canal; but what has this anomalous sighting to do with politics?
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True believers
Apart from the pandemic, the other subject now impossible to ignore is the Trumpian politics in the States, which only yesterday erupted in the most egregious invasion and profanation of the US Capitol. The District's Guard units, which have to be called cup by the president, finally were activated by the vice president, but only after the damage was done. When protesters are against him, Trump is willing to call in all four branches of the military, but he will not stop armed civilians rioting in support of him; these he calls "very special people."
Charles Lane's column in The Post the day before nailed it by reminding us of Orwell's 1984, in which protagonist Winston Smith succumbs, after torture, to counting four fingers held in front of him as five. What Orwell's book makes clear, the columnist writes, is that the power to make another person believe what literally cannot be true is "the ultimate form of domination." But the Trump base so called - a term serving as noun and adjective - did not need to be tortured, not given sophisticated modern techniques of brainwashing by clever, opaque media platforms.
Trump's charisma was in no way adequate to account for his political ascendence absent the rightwing media bullhorn - those radio talk shows and the Murdoch menace. Still the saving grace for America is that this week's debacle at the Capitol falls short of a coup d'état in one crucial aspect: it was not abetted by the military. I hardly think those private militias would ever succeed against the superior power of a standing army, the very problem faced by freedom lovers in dictatorships around the world. No, no, most Americans still know the value of their freedoms, especially the right to vote. It remains only for those paranoid Trumpians to be dislodged from the halls of power.
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Freedom from fear
On last week's blog, my friend Anna argued with herself as to whether there can be any freedom from fear; and Archangel set her straight on the matter. The reason this possibility may seem so doubtful to us is that the task of cultivating a fearless state of mind is long and recondite - difficult, not impossible. It must involve nothing less than the gradual realization that axioms about oneself and the world into which one was born are not ultimately true. Unfortunately, it is the suspicion of the ultimate truth which mortals dread the most, driving them into the ranks of primitive religions since time immemorial. Ironically, only on the path to ultimate truth does the perspective on that freedom we seek dawn, and a glorious dawn it is. We become, in the words of an ancient Master, "a great warrior with a mighty sword."
As a tool of the survival instinct, fear is embedded in the configuration of the brain and can be aroused to various degrees from terror to mere anxiety depending on neurochemical reactions in the amygdalae. But regardless of the level, fear is an uncomfortable emotion, even in its least manifestation as inhibition, the thing now gripping nearly every individual in the human population, while concurrently under appreciated by politicians.
I daresay the greatest contributor to the economic effects of the pandemic, notwithstanding lock downs and other restrictions, is inhibition. Those who are not strictly speaking terrified of catching Covid may be to some extent inhibited from doing ordinary things: getting a haircut, shopping in a store, going to a restaurant, a theatre, or to church. Their reluctance seems a small thing, but its scope is global and it will linger. Fear will be overcome; inhibition becomes a habit.
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Christmas missed
As I wrote here recently there is scarcely an aspect of our lives that has not been upended by the pandemic. I have not visited the home farm at all this year, for example, but have relied on my manager, who confers with me regularly. Readers will recall that my annual summer sojourn in Maine had to be cancelled, and I cooled off instead in the nearby Appalachians. But now comes the holiday season and with both the US and the UK continuing to reel under the surging virus, it is the saddest of all, especially for those like myself who savor the familiarity of traditions, the comfort of family and friends.
After many years of meeting my oldest friend in Matlock for Christmas dinner at historic High Tor Inn, I sorely missed him and our always jovial marking of the occasion. But Derbyshire was in "Tier 3," meaning very high alert, with all inns and restaurants closed. High Tor, for which the Inn is named, is a craggy limestone formation that looms over the town of Matlock. Various rooms of the Inn occupy space under eaves, with skylights affording views of surrounding hills. Slopes down to the River Derwent become ethereal in the river fogs rising at twilight or dawn. It is indeed a scenic spot and the innkeepers most hospitable.
My friend and I are in touch, of course, by phone, by email. We concur that we both have aged a good ten years in this year now passing. Will we live to meet again in Matlock? People commonly ignore the implications of mortality, as I also wrote in that post two weeks ago, but it is not a failing. Rather it is the deep intuition, too illogical to be acknowledged, that time is not real. The temporal experiences are mere phantoms of potentiality, as vaporous and shifting as those river fogs. Then break out the Frangelico - I could go for a Nutty Irishman!
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Smart machines?
Surely it is time for modern man to consider that his smart machines have gotten out of control. They are designed to observe our behavior, learn what we like and serve up more of it. My smart phone, of its own volition, puts together a number of my photos in a slide show, sets it to music, then notifies me that I have s memory to view, I presume in order to demonstrate its untold abilities. The root of such computer powers, and their danger, appears to be the algorithm, a term that seeped from its origins in mathematics into all walks of life. Basically it refers to any process involving a given set of steps to reach a given result, but as it is applied in today's world it can be variously defined.
With the advent of the world wide web, it became possible, in some cases necessary, to surveil individuals using computers or cell phones. The mega-data thus collected can be used by search engines and social media platforms to create algorithms capable of sorting us by any characteristic, a function that is enormously attractive to advertisers. Does anyone else alive remember wondering back in the 1990s how a business would be able to make money on the web? Facebook was sure to fail!
No, by no means. Facebook users, now equal to the combined populations of India and China, bare their souls on its pages with little concern, until recently, for their privacy. Advertisers can target an audience by age, education, hobbies, interests, and more. Yet worse than the human inputs are the algorithms ever at work in the background monitoring each user, learning his or her patterns so as to assign a very specific category. We are lumped together with those exactly like us and divided from all others. And still worse, even Facebook admits that the ill effect of this sorting, given its mega scale, is now beyond the control of any number of human employees. QED. But I am summoned: Mycroft has a memory I should view.
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The odds
Given the gravity of the news these days there is nothing one might write about that is not in some way impacted by the raging pandemic. As anticipated, the cold, dry weather has brought spiking numbers of cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and most indicative, positivity rates. No surprise, of course: any respiratory pathogen has a better chance when our airways are dried by the air we breathe, and the energy needed to maintain body temperature leaves less for the immune system. The fact that local and state authorities are reluctant to reinstate closures is a troubling sign, suggesting that they fear grave economic danger - to businesses and to their own coffers. Pervading the air like the aerosolized viral droplets is a sense that we are about to go over a cliff, the name of which we dare not even speak: depression. If national treasuries are able and willing to bolster their economies, it will be the supreme test of modern monetary theory, of which I have written here before. If they are not, we will surely relive the 1930s.
Aside from a sodality of epidemiologists who saw this coming, the rest of us have been brought up short. Nothing was happening until suddenly a tsunami of very sick people descended on hospitals. But the experience has at least been clarifying of a core knowledge we possess, while ignoring as irrelevant: that each moment, each event of our lives could be the last. We play the odds, knowing that accidents happen, diseases strike, only now legions of people unexpectedly have seen their last holiday season, their last sight of home or other beloved place or beloved person; and we are forced to acknowledge that the odds have shortened for each of us.
Thus we learn what we should never forget: to experience each day with "beginner's mind" as if it were the first, because it may be the last.
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A hermitage
Curiouser perhaps than Sherlock's "incident of the dog in the nighttime" may be the emergence of new terms for the epochs of history: BP and AP, for before pandemic and after. The latter, I surmise, will be difficult to ascertain. At what point is this virus no longer a threat to most people? My money is on 2030, but who is even betting? There is considerable conjecture, however, about what will be changed forever.
It is easier at this point simply to note the distortions, great and small, in our lives. We learn that the human reaction to plague has been uniform throughout recorded history, and uniformity characterizes our new lives - monotonous, deprived of contrast. When life was busy with appointments, meetings, always someplace to go, a quiet day might be appreciated as such in contrast. With nowhere to go, the home is a hermitage - not such a bad thing after all. A hermitage is a place of retreat from the constant distractions of society in order to clarify one's priorities and to focus on the ultimate realities. When Bodhidharma went to China, he retreated to a mountain monastery and meditated for nine years facing a wall.
This condition, moreover, is hardly unfamiliar to old people, now entreated to stay home whether or not stores are open. For many in old age it is only thanks to the old fashioned newspaper on the doorstep or in the driveway that one can be sure what day of the week it is. Now young and old alike fall prey to these risible signs of aging, especially as the days are indistinguishable. There are not different days; there is one day, and that come to think of it is a very profound observation, epitomizing the true timeless state. Our thoughts may go to the past or the future, but consciousness never strays from the one present moment, which paradoxically, appearances notwithstanding, is never exactly the same.
That is what I will ponder in my hermitage!
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Apollo's Arrow
I am reading a most instructive book about the pandemic and about pandemics in general called Apollo's Arrow, by epidemiologist Nicholas Christakis. the title being a reference to Homer's Iliad in which Apollo uses his arrows to inflict a punishing plague on the Greeks. The book gets a bit technical in parts concerning the science of epidemiology, but also explains the common and persistent human reactions in a manner more clear than I personally have read or heard from anyone.
For example, the failure to understand "exponential." When an epidemic begins, it appears for some weeks that nothing is happening, until quite suddenly very sick people in great numbers begin to show up at emergency rooms. And this can happen sooner if the initial infection occurs in a popular person rather than a recluse. Obviously one person has a number of contacts and each of those likewise and so on, such that a highly infectious pathogen is easily and widely spread. Then there is the phrase "flattening the curve," referring to the graph of case counts. Wishful thinking causes people to assume that after a lockdown has reduced the spread - flattened the curve - the pandemic is over. Of course it is not. Controlling case numbers through the now familiar public health measures serves to postpone deaths, which would otherwise overwhelm and soon collapse the health care system. The pandemic will only be checked when the population acquires "herd immunity," another concept that somehow eludes understanding.
Herd immunity is reached when a certain percentage of the population has ben exposed or infected sufficiently to have developed antibodies. This will happen if the pathogen is allowed simply to run amok in society, or it may be enhanced through vaccination - the more seemly and less deadly route. Without vaccination three million people in the US alone would die before there was a natural herd immunity. These explanations offered by Christakis are simple and persuasive - to anyone but the willfully ignorant. Let's hope the media world will take them up.
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Villages
In this process of adapting to an atypical and prolonged practice we have come to know as "social distancing," it appears to me that at least some gloss is wearing off the urban lifestyle. The young people, fleeing the sterile suburbs, and often I suspect the self-absorbed generation of their parents, had transformed the cities into throbbing youth mecca with at least one bar and one restaurant - or several of each - on every block. They are too young still, I believe, either to appreciate or to assess overcrowding. We must realize by now, after all, that such an ability is not native to us. But now confined by the invisible spread of a deadly pathogen to the four walls of a city apartment they must yearn for more of that distance required for safety from one another. Not that they are prepared to forsake the comradely of the barstool for the boredom of the cul-de-sac, but some are thinking about it. I detect some discussion below the radar analyzing the relative merits of urban and suburban. Most children are generations removed from any but these two alternatives. I am not.
There were once and still are villages. They were the crossroads of commerce for neighboring farms when there were still neighboring farms. They were places where one was forced to know his neighbors lest they gossip about him at the local pub. The village combined the salutary benefit of community with the pernicious effects of homogeneity. Today we see a dangerous rift between the cities and the farm villages, with the latter written off and left behind by civilized society. Naturally they fester in medieval ignorance. In my view the cause of this danger is summed up in one word: bandwidth.
But I see hopeful signs in villages closer in that have not been isolated. There venturous young people are setting up small shops, - bakeries, restaurants locally sourced, yes, by neighboring farms - determined to make a living at least adequate to the simple village life, even if for now the local pub is a 7-Eleven.
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Crises
Where to start, given the panoply of crises the world is facing! My last post was written before Mr. Biden sailed past Trump in votes, both popular and electoral; but my point in that post is still cogent: witness the white tribe of the silverback beating their chests in fury, fully convinced of their paranoid delusions. The numbers are against them: a conspiracy widespread enough to defeat Trump would also have unseated his henchmen in Congress. No indeed, the tribes are still at war, and the inbred tribesmen of the Appalachian hollers will never forsake their Mitch, head of the Office of Circumlocution, where they practice "how not to do it."
Turn then to the surging virus once again threatening Europe with lockdowns and hitting the US hardest of all. With the supreme irony of profound ignorance, Trump seeded the swing states with his super-spreading rallies, his devotees going forth infected into the hamlets on the fruited plains, where hospitals are few and far between and doctors scarce. The US is also unusually prone now to climate upheaval: incessant burning in the West from drought and intensifying heat; weekly tempests spinning off the coast of Africa, each landing a gut punch to the Gulf coast - speaking of irony!
These are all serious matters of course, causing terrible suffering which cannot be allowed to exhaust our compassion. Yet they are not ultimately important. I take heart from a favorite story in which a Zen master is the guest of a wealthy man who is obsessed with his prize chrysanthemums. In the middle of the night the master, having observed his host abusing the gardener on account of the flowers, goes out with a sharp sword and decapitates them. Next morning, to his host's shock and outrage, the master replies, "Even weeds like these grow rank if not cut," upon which the wealthy man is instantly enlightened. Affairs of this world? Only weeds!
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The big picture
It was all over the newspaper this morning: relief at the likely defeat of bad boy Trump, when all votes are counted, but dismay that his party was not repudiated. A contrarian complained that "the elites" were still clueless, which aroused nightmare visions of China's Crimson Revolution, when the rivers ran red and there were rumors of cannibalism. Make no mistake: there is a much bigger picture here than Trump and his henchmen, or even of political division; and thoughtful minds have considered it, books have been written. The Pax Americana has been crumbling for generations, and as when any civilization begins to fall what oozes from the cracks are the tribal passions. An early sign was the self segregation within society according to identity - political, racial, religious. Thus the tribes have their territories, which enabled Mr. Trump, due to the stubbornly vestigial electoral college.
The global pandemic has accelerated this decline, and a worldwide depression that may well be a consequence could prove to be the coup de grace. The decline of civilization, though, is inevitable being entropic. Just look around this world at the ruins of our predecessors. We have had hope recently that technology might be our salvation, bringing news and knowledge to the far corners. Instead it provides a megaphone to the most extreme and primitive, and I venture to say there is probably more bandwidth now on the Dark Continent than in the hills of Kentucky.
To witness this collapse mixes outrage with anguish, but we must understand that tribal divisions are not about policy or governance, not even about winning and losing. They are about intoxicating states: belonging, destroying. The rivers in China ran red with the blood of those "elites," and China lost its best minds. Now the West descends into tribal barbarity. "Then sir, prepare for war."
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Tribes
A frequent theme in my writing is tribalism. It comes up in several of the essays, for example, and the thrust of my argument is that every civilization, in weakening the tribal bonds, sows the seeds of its later destruction in the resurgence of tribal barbarity. Why this should be so clearly is because those bonds have been sustaining, and so far no civilization has come upon an adequate replacement. A sign of this is the oft remarked alienation of individuals in modern society, as in the notorious incident of the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City, for which the term "bystander effect" was coined soon after.
But this alienation is by no means unique to cities. It affects suburbs of low population density, where people may live for decades without knowing their neighbors. The courtyard post today is an illustration, and it is no reflection on my friend Anna, who has remarked herself that she knows her neighbor's dogs better than her neighbors. These days alienation has spread to cyberspace where it is magnified. Thus people become wrapped in the cocoon of their favorite social medium with "friends" who are perfect strangers. Add to that a historic pandemic diverting as much human contact as possible online to stop the spread of disease, and we have fertilized the already fertile ground for populist demagoguery.
Witness the easy appeal of the demagog's unctuous rant to the crowd of his aggrieved followers, gathering in tight throngs, scornful of contagion. He is one of them, chieftain of their tribe, vowing to defeat their enemies. The thrilling euphoria of this tribal experience has inhabited the brain stem from prehistory and is all the stronger for having lay dormant so long. Will it be conquered by the wunderkinds of Facebook or Twitter? I am not sanguine but will be encouraged if or when we no longer check boxes describing our skin color.
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Science vs. religion
The Grim Reaper is surely having a great harvest this Halloween season. Even the young have cause to reflect on their mortality, which in normal conditions would be much too far distant to warrant consideration. More alarming than even the pandemic itself is the astonishing revelation that a large segment of society rejects science, most notably in America of all places. We should recall, however, that America was colonized by religious zealots fleeing persecution. Western religions have been the perennial enemies of science, so we must never forget that a Dark Age lurks always at our backs.
From ancient times, through inquiry and experiment, science has been the repository of all we know about the world we live in. For the most part, in their innocent curiosity, its practitioners have been honest and objective, sufficiently at least to acknowledge limitations. In modern times they approach the very limit I have written of in these posts: that logically the ultimate nature of reality cannot be observed simply because the observer remains outside of his subject. Therefore, reality must be an all encompassing singularity.
But the fact of this limitation does not change the validity of science, nor does the incapacity of the flat-Earthers to accept obvious facts, like the existence of microbes invisible to the naked eye, with an amazing new ability to destroy lung cells. When the facts of science prove inconvenient, the modern religionist turns to his God for solace, ignorant or forgetful of the latter-day role of religion in reinforcing social sanction with a fear of God's wrath. This pious person looks for the easy solace of fantastical belief, which rarely hold up under he grinding of karma existence. True solace requires a clear minded penetration of reality to that objective limit of modern science, and beyond to the subjective intuitions of the ultimate reality - it is hard won.
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Indies
Investigating independent publishers - so-called indies - which I might consider next year for my essay collection, I am appalled by the extraordinary advance of self-publishing in the book world. Not only are writers using self-publishing services, they are tech savvy enough to forego any such service, many of them then expanding from their own work to publish that of others, often to a niche market. The upshot is that not only are there far more writers than readers, there are tens of thousands more indies popping up every year, while the old line publishers, the ones who long ago gave up accepting any risk to their bottom line, are fading rapidly.
How then do the librarians, the book worms, sift through the resulting haystack of books? Apparently they have come to rely on an authors credentials, reviews, and awards. These criteria are reasonable, surely; a writer with an MFA might at least know how to punctuate dialogue. But then in times gone by that could be expected of anyone who passed high school English. An author can pay for reviews these days, or hire an agent who has connections; however, all promotional efforts are costly. No author can expect to recover what he spends in the effort to gain attention.
What bothers me is the feedback loop: readers will only take notice of a book that someone they judge credible has already noticed, and that is how the potential spectrum of work is narrowed by the restrictive criteria. One sees this obvious result in the catalogs of these indie publishers. Missing is any book suggesting that the publishers simply liked it, credentials notwithstanding. I am able to resist despair, however ironically, via the viral example: one need only touch a single person to have untold effect.
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Unreasonable
There is something terribly disconcerting about the absence of reason in our fellow man: the internal inconsistencies, the abandonment of explanation or rationalization. Reason is our strong suit, our strongest tool for survival, unrivaled by any other animal. We have the syllogistic capacity; we deduce from evidence; we have confidence in conclusions that have been adequately proven. As rational beings, we can accept that some few of us, given the wide variation of individual abilities, may be lacking in brain power and thus weak in reasoning ability. However, coming upon people otherwise of high intelligence, who are blinkered nonetheless from believing a rational assertion, we are confounded. As an example, if a deadly virus that attacks the lungs is airborne, it should seem reasonable to use any means to keep it out of one's lungs, and if people are gathering in a large group without face coverings, one might reason that joining them is a big risk.
But just read Predictably Irrational - there is a whole science to it. The handling of finances is a major arena, and ignorance about interpreting statistics, which subject in my opinion should be required in every secondary school. A growing number of parents, for example, would accept a high risk of measles, which once killed many hundreds a year, as opposed to the totally unsubstantiated claim that vaccination might cause autism.
What can it be that flies in the face of reason? There are many facets of human psychology that strive against reason, often subconsciously. Religious feelings are one, especially of a fundamentalist nature. Mental laziness is not uncommon, more prevalent in today's indulgent consumer society. Then our all important, rarely acknowledged tribal fervor will not be foresworn. This, in the course of history, we give up rationalizing - and go to war.
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Old and older
I am old. All my friends are old. Even those younger than myself are already old. None of them, fortunately, has so far succumbed to covid-19. Yet I must report that among old people, those who have not died of this virus are going down physically and mentally, or at least psychologically. Particularly in nations that have not seriously addressed the pandemic, there has ben a long neglect of chronic or degenerative maladies, with uncertain consequences that may not be remediable. Medical practices are shut up like fortresses, closed to new patients and unwelcoming of the old if they lack the technical resources for the virtual visit. Thus uninterrupted by engagements of any sort, the days run together and memory is unmoored. Easily distracted, one becomes absent minded. Suddenly the practice of mindfulness takes on a great urgency.
Old age of itself strips away a good deal from individuals, slowly but surely: the hair, the teeth, ease of movement, quickness of mind, relevance to society, and of course relatives and friends who may predecease us one by one. Because of this harsh reality, all the religions of the world urge that we avoid clinging to the temporal things in favor of the eternal. Thus the pandemic may be seen as clarifying. Having abruptly stripped us of even the simplest pleasures - enjoying the cafes in the morning, a restaurant in the evening, the company of friends, or for that matter doctors, without the interface of a screen - there remains little left to which we might cling. Not that the young are less burdened by this disaster; but if they are careful, they may expect to see the end of it, which cannot be said of those already nigh on to eternity.
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Math and life
I have forgotten, if I ever knew, the math that proves an asymptotic relationship of a curved line to a straight, such that a point on the curve approaches the straight line infinitely while never touching it. But math aside, "asymptote" is a fine word, coming from the Greek; it means "not meeting," and the concept inspires metaphor. Anna used one in Dokusan some weeks back to describe how on the curve of life we seem to get closer and closer to the straight line of death, never reaching it, so that at the point of death the delusion of life simply evaporates. The Dokusan of last week discussed how our casual disregard of morality until it is fast upon us is not foolish at all, but signifies one of those illogical intuitions that in reality tell us the ultimate truth: no one is born; no one dies.
These are profound thoughts, pointing to the enlightenment we seek in meditation. Now though, I am seeing another metaphor relevant to our lives in this world. As points moving on the curve of life, we seem to approach that straight line, which might represent any calamitous event: a pandemic, bankruptcy, a chronic degenerative illness. The closer we get to the calamity the more dire the situation seems, but then we fall prey to a fallacy; let us call it the fallacy of the asymptote. We begin to believe that conditions cannot get any worse, that some decisive event will interrupt that course, that our plight - insufferable and excruciating already - cannot become more so without killing us. Would that it were so! Looking around the world it is obvious that conditions can and do grow worse for people who are still living - with any number of dire afflictions. Religious people reassure themselves with the Biblical tenet that God will not burden us with intolerable suffering. Then there must be a Devil.
However, in life as in math, we might just possibly reverse course!
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Head for the hills
My annual sojourn in Maine had to be canceled, as my friend Anna reported last week. The state was requiring anyone coming from points south of New York to quarantine for two weeks. That was dispiriting enough, but upon reflection, the problem with vacationing anywhere these days will be the food: what restaurants are open, are they safe, where will you go to eat your carry-out? Thus accepting these now ubiquitous hurdles, I searched about for a place where I could at least enjoy cooler, cleaner air, and I settled upon Skyland Lodge on the Skyline Drive. I had been there many, many years ago; and given the strangulation of government services in the interim, I did not know what to expect. On the whole the Park Service has done well. The Lodge is rustic as ever, but rooms have been refurbished and each balcony still commands a westward view overlooking the lights of Luray, the county seat, and mountains beyond.
As expected, food was the problem. Under pandemic conditions, formerly mediocre dining room fare was execrable, and a snack bar, now called a grab-and-go, was poorly stocked. However, I very soon had scouted out a camp store up the road at Big Meadow that provided plenty of conveniences worth grabbing. The air was free and cool, the weather fair. If clouds came down, they merely hugged the hills in soft fog. Sunsets were gorgeous to watch from the balcony with a glass of port or cup of herbal tea. I scaled Stony Man to its rocky top, with mists swirling about the hills. I marveled at the variety of wildflowers - yellow daisies mingling with goldenrod, and forest floors carpeted in delicate white ones.
The rural environs one travels through to reach the park were instructive. The sad little towns are nearly snuffed out by relentless crises besetting farmers - extreme weather, the opioids, trade uncertainties. The country folk - detached from the global internet, their information silos readily filled with lies - are the fertile ground of the populist demagogue. They do not seek leadership; they crave salvation.
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Weather
With all the weather indices persistently breaking records across the planet, punishing storms and diabolical fires devastating human habitation, I nonetheless find a ray of hope in the climate activism among the younger generations. As their elders wring their hands in despair, bred of convenient indolence, the young have as yet the spark of good sense to realize that we are obliged to do whatever we can for as much effect, however small, that may have. Sources of renewable energy should be supported until they grow to become the preferable alternative. Most of all, the nations of the world must be of one accord in cooperating as best they are able toward these goals.
Here in the States, however, a continental nation of more than 300 million, every summer sees an outbreak of the favorite obsession, the Civil War. In the fevered atmosphere of this plague year, the unrest is especially dangerous. But I personally do not see the country breaking up again in such manner. It will divide not north and south but rather east and west. States east of the Mississippi River will become the Tropical States of America, TSA, and to the west, the Desert States, DSA; and the war will not be about race, but about water, matters of race having become moot when cities are engulfed by fire of by flood.
The question for us now, though, is whether it is already too late, not so much in terms of irreversible damage, but of younger leaders coming to power. With the right leadership, damage done might be mitigated by new inventions or research. As to why younger people are not elected to office, the problems vary among nations. But in general for democracies worldwide, electoral processes are now having the perverse result of eliminating competent persons of proven leadership ability in favor of anyone who is entertaining. Progress on this front needs to accelerate at least as fast as the melting of the polar caps.
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Audacity
In the Dokusan of late, Anna and Archangel have wrestled with the knotty problem of what selfhood truly is. A phrase from last week sticks in my mind: "the self you intuit while misperceiving." It struck me how really audacious we are in perceiving ourselves to be discreet, individual beings, when in truth our bodies are a contrivance of multiple organ systems: digestive, cardiovascular, limbic, pulmonary, musculoskeletal, neuronal, and no doubt others beyond my layman's knowledge. We presume upon these systems to function and cooperate properly, even though from the beginning they conspire to take turns betraying us.
I say from the beginning, yet obviously these treacheries become more common with age. My principal complaint has been the ever popular low back strain. The trickery of the process is described to perfection by Thomas Hardy in his novel Woodlanders. "On many a morrow after wearying himself by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had risen from his bed fresh as usual... and confident in the recuperative powers of his youth, he had repeated the strains anew. But treacherous Time had been only hiding ill results when they could be guarded against, for greater accumulation when they could not. In his declining years the store had been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms..."
Audacious, I say, to think we are discreet individuals, and yet there is that undeniable, ineffable intuition of selfhood. The common alibi is that an individual soul temporarily inhabits a bodily shell. The intuition is true, the alibi is not. The body, readily reducible to ashes, is equally as metaphysical as any idea of a separable soul. Thus the self - timeless - is inseparable from a timeless universe. QED.
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Imprisoned
My old friend Anna, who introduced me to free classic books on my iPhone, enticed me into reading Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, one of his serialized novels. Its plot centers on the youngest daughter of William Dorrit, who is imprisoned in the Marshalsea, a debtor's prison and the very one that held the author's own father, forcing him to leave school and go to work at the age of eight. That childhood experience made a deep impression on Dickens with respect to prisons and the plight of the poor working classes.
The theme of imprisonment is a thread running through the whole of this long work. It opens in a prison cell in Marseilles shared by two unsavory characters, who do not reappear until later in the story. But staying in Marseilles, we meet a group of travelers quarantined together before they are allowed to enter England - sound familiar? Some of them become friends. Finally we come to the Marshalsea and the Dorrit family. Mr. Dorrit, being of a gentlemanly nature, is now known as the Father of the Marshalsea, and has been there twenty years, accepting the advice of the jailor who admitted him, that he should then feel free: free of creditors hounding him, free of bills and financial concerns. His wife dies and his youngest daughter devotes herself to his happiness and well being, convinced he is a better man than he appears to the rest of us.
The tenor of this book - of confinement, prison walls - reverberates in sympathetic resonance with the way we are caused to feel in this condition of plague. Restriction and reduced circumstances drag on, and adaptable as we are, we adapt, like prisoners. Whatever part of the world we were formerly able to embrace is shrunken; the walls close in, energy and initiative attenuate, slaves of the invisible turnkey. But bless his heart! Dickens gives us a happy ending.
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Behemoths
Two economists whom I follow in The Post are Robert Samuelson, who has a weekly column on the editorial page, and Steven Pearlstein, now a professor at George Mason University, who contributes articles to the business section on occasion. Samuelson, author of The Great Inflation, tends to focus on behavioral economics - how expectations impact personal financial decisions - and on the burden inflicted on the young by entitlement programs allowed to mushroom with the increase of an elderly population. Pearlstein frequently challenges modern dogma on subjects ranging from globalization to government outsourcing, but his favorite peeve is the long-standing neglect of antitrust enforcement in the US.
These two gurus, I venture to say, have mostly been in general agreement on most matters relating to their field, that is until recently when CEOs of the world's high tech behemoths were lined up via Zoom to be interrogated by a Congressional committee. The man from Google had particular difficulty attempting to defend their predatory market behavior. Pearlstein reacted with a long article outlining quite specifically how revised laws might successfully rein in the internet giants.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Samuelson was the cautious, probably wiser, head. In his column, he first observed that the apparent consensus as to a serious cyberattack rates its probability too low to register, which aught naturally to raise comparison with long-held views of a global pandemic. He goes on to note that such an attack would make this current experience seem child's play: all of our internet dependencies disrupted; bank accounts, financial markets, supply chains, communication, utilities. His caution concerns whether breaking up the large companies we now depend on would leave none adequate to the task of defending against such an attack. He does not, however, rule out government regulation. Personally, I have always believed that certain sectors of the economy are too vital to be left to market whims, including transportation, communication, and nowadays - cyberspace.
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Relevance
The confluence of crises that have brought about our terrible plight these days is indeed confounding: climate change causing aberrant weather patterns that have tropical air masses settling farther north than ever before; a viral pandemic, the forecast of which was blithely ignored; and here in the States, political turmoil that is unprecedented, serving to exacerbate the trouble. An arrogant, willful ignorance is exposed, together with its ugly root in malevolent media sources. Only heaven knows where this is going, but there will be countless books written about this time - many already published perhaps - describing, explaining, recording the facts, or telling personal stories. One wonders about the relevance of these analyses, the shelf life of such publications.
If a vaccine subdues the virus in a year, if the young generation steps up to the levers of power, in so doing uniting the world in mitigating the emission of greenhouse gases, crises abated and calm be restored, then those wonderfully current books being eagerly rushed into market will gather dust. If as others predict, these crises slowly gather steam, their effects reverberating through many generations, then the history recorded will be compulsory reading for a long time to come: How did it happen that a generation missed out on childhood and an adequate education? Why did the seas rise to cover many small islands in the Pacific and even coastal cities? How did the human population, after reaching over seven billion, dwindle by a third?
The matter of relevance is personal at the moment, as I am completing a collection of my essays, which are of a topical nature. As society goes over a cliff, certain themes are instantly obsolete. I hope at least in a post-apocalyptic time, they may shed light on the pre-apocalypse. I can always throw it in a water-tight dispatch box onto the rising seas - for any extraterrestrial visitors.
Humans are distinguished in their adaptability, their resilience. Even Darwin understood that those traits more than physical strength define fitness to survive. Thus in just a few months, scores of people have adapted to telework, students to online learning. Mothers who have lost jobs, or are simply worried about contagion in daycare, may well have adapted to the role of stay-at-home mom. Retired people have adapted to FaceTime, Skype and Zoom, otherwise filling the day with walks or gardening. So even when the shops, the offices, the schools, the child care all reopen, this universe of highly adaptable consumers will retain some degree of inertia, heightened by inhibition, and the capstone of inhibition is epidemic contagion.
To walk into a grocery store, of all places, in mask and gloves and everyone else likewise shielded, keeping a distance or repelling off each other as in an inverse magnetic field, is sufficient to inhibit the most stalwart extrovert. As for shops and restaurants, the anxiety attendant upon such precautions robs them of the pleasure which had always been the larger part of what they offered. Air travel? All those hours on a plane without food or water? It was bad enough as it was!
I am loathe to write once more about the state of the world in this pandemic, which has received saturation coverage for months now. Daniel Defoe should have the last word on that. He ends his book on the subject with "a coarse but sincere stanza" thus characterized by the journalist himself:
A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand
Souls away; yet I alive!
Just how do we get on in the face of such realities? A Buddhist takes refuge in the Dharma, which is truth or reality, but reality in all its layers, most beyond perception. At the deepest layer of our perceptions, their duality - the wonderful and the horrible - is encompassed in "big mind," which we witness unfolding in each moment. It is easy enough for us to see this unfolding in nature, and in that regard I was delighted with Anna's observation last week that the perfect example must be the prolific singing of her perennial summer guest, the catbird. In the spontaneous and unrehearsed performance of this creature we do indeed hear "the unfolding of big mind," in the words of Suzuki Roshi. With infinite creativity, the catbird holds forth unprompted and incessantly.
From the time people moved into dwellings, perhaps before, we have held ourselves increasingly aloof from nature, studying it in order to protect ourselves from it. But sooner or later we are forced to admit that we are part of the nature we observe unfolding. This occurs whenever we cross thresholds the breach of which nature cannot bare. Sadly even our inclination toward such violations is the unfolding of big mind.
Under normal conditions of human society, individuals are inclined to accept that there are others better educated than themselves or to some degree more intelligent. In the age of kings, common people regarded the monarch as superior by virtue of birth, and sometimes he was. This admirable humility serves nations well, as it may allow the best minds to take the lead. Extreme danger however - the smoldering flame of revolutions - lies in the self destructive anger of ignorant people. One need only recall the Cultural Revolution that purged Chinese society of its finest minds, binging decades of oppression and brutality.
As horrifying as that example was, perhaps equally sad may be the shameful, embarrassing fate of the United States, where anti-establishment, anti-government extremists have slowly taken the wheels of power by the most cynical means, installing finally the most arrogant, uninformed, proudly incompetent leader in history. An obsolete electoral system gave him this position, but his minions in Congress represent perfectly the ruinous ignorance of their constituents.
Ignorant people are easily manipulated, and the opposite may also be said: those susceptible to manipulation are in some way ignorant, though they be educated professionals tuning in to talk radio while enduring a gridlocked commute. There you have the toxic brew - anger added to ignorance. Malign actors are using the most potent intoxicant to make this Kool-Aid, and that is anger. Victims become blind even to their own best interest. The coronavirus has only begun to fester in the heartlands of North America, and the economic effects will be even worse, lasting many years. Will enough survivors be sufficiently humbled to foreswear the demon rum of anger? Or will the destructive anger of the ignorant bring on the modern equivalent of torches and pitchforks?
Changed forever
To witness a prophecy already unfolding before our eyes inclines us to believe it will continue predictive. Thus I suspect the inestimable Dr. Fauci, as diplomatic as he is astute, has upon his bookshelf A Journal of he Plague Year, from which I quoted in the last post. The good doctor does not hesitate in his certainty that there will be a second wave of illness in the fall worse than the first, just as there occurred in London in 1665. Just after that peak, however, deaths began to fall off dramatically, as recorded in weekly parish mortality bills. What was then thought to be God's mercy was presumably what we now call "herd immunity," which I begin to think may be related to predator satiation. If that may be said of us, then humans have adapted to microbes in the manner of cicadas, emerging at regular intervals in overwhelming numbers.
Now we start to hear prognosticators assert that this global crisis will change human society forever, will even change our behavior. Such arrogance, in my opinion, is rooted in a faulty assumption that our superior brain power - to learn, to adapt, to reason - causes us to behave rationally. If that were true, cultures around the world would allow women to control family size. We would neither become extinct, nor would we overpopulate. As to behavior, our motivations are the same as other creatures, arising from and inborn nature.
No, we will not be changed. As in London when fear of the plague subsided, "It must be acknowledged that the general practice of the people was just as it was before, and very little difference was to be seen. Some, indeed, said things were worse, that the morals of the people declined from this very time." Sadly we have just enough brain power to know it is we ourselves who sow the whirlwind.
Through the looking glass
Call me Alice. Does it not feel that we have fallen down a rabbit hole to Wonderland, where the March Hare is late, the Mad Hatter and the Door Mouse take tea perpetually because the clock has stopped at teatime? Or perhaps we have slipped Through the Looking Glass onto a chessboard, where we are but pawns in the war between Red and White Queens, and Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee tweet Jabberwocky, then insinuate that we are only figments in a dream of the Red King sleeping under a tree. Oh, the parallels! I for one, as I write, often worry that I have forgotten all nouns, not to speak of adjectives, perhaps having lost myself in the wood "where things have no names."
When only weeks ago we were enticed to visit theaters, movie houses and sports arenas, to book our cruises on floating cities and our flights to exotic vacation spots, suddenly we are constrained by edict to keep in our homes for a time uncertain, emerging only for the essentials of life, what may be left of them, and then on such forays to mask our faces, glove our hands, and keep as much distance as possible between ourselves and others. Such behavior on the part of a preeminently social species can only describe life on the other side of the mirror. Were further proof needed, there is now the rule that, to protect bus drivers, passengers will enter by the back door and sit in the back of the bus. Rosa, save me a seat!
Lest you infer that I complain about social distancing, I will quote A Journal of the Plague Year, in which I have now bookmarked at least thirty pages: "People have the plague when they know it not, and they likewise give it to others when they know not that they have it themselves; and in this case shutting up the well or removing the sick will not do it, unless they can go back and shut up all those that the sick had conversed with, even before they knew themselves to be sick, and none knows how far to carry that back, or where to stop; for none knows when or where or how they may have received the infection, or from whom." That was London in 1665. The plague peaked in the months of August and September.
Signs of hope
There are now some few signs of hope with regard to this global pandemic: a promising vaccine at Oxford, already in clinical trials, as they had long been working on vaccines to subvert the coronaviruses; existing drugs being tried as possible treatments, such as intravenous famotidine and even nicotine patches, but stopping short of the bleach and disinfectant cocktail. (Well, at least the bloke would be out of his misery in short order, though morphine is more merciful.) As these developments are covered ad nauseam in the nightly news, I will use this space for a metaphorical sign of hope.
The clematis is a perennial flowering vine, which returns from winter dormancy with lovely flowers for the spring. My home here in the States, for more than forty years now, had a well-established clematis vine when I purchased it. The vine grows by the back porch and each year reliably displays its gorgeous purple blooms. At first I attempted to prune out dead wood in late winter, but as it is hard to distinguish a living branch from a dead one, I gave that up. Instead it is possible to cut the vine in half before it buds, when it will spring back vigorously and flower on schedule.
I was tardy in that exercise last year, and a gust of March wind blew down the trellis, twisting the clematis into a tangle. It was not uprooted, so after installing a new trellis - a sturdy, white, latticed thing - I did my best to tie the vine in place. Summer passed, and even at its end the clematis was not thriving. Sadly I accepted that I might have to replace it, but I held off. Patience is invaluable to a gardener. This year March was warm and when the vine showed signs of budding, I pruned it as before. Then came April rains. Lo and behold, that ancient clematis is finally taking to its new station in life with gusto! Thus when my American friend and protege Anna speaks of her village outpost replacing the courtyard as her new station in life, I can say with somewhat equivocal gusto, "So be it!"
Supply chains
Please note that there is at least one positive side effect to the terrible disease running rampant, and that is to instill a modicum of humility even in those to whom it was previously alien, evidence of which our poor PM in the UK. It is no surprise, of course, that the stark political divide some of us have lamented for years is accentuated by conditions as dire as we now endure. The current donnybrook is reminiscent of Jack Benny's conundrum when confronted by the question, "Your money or your life?" If socioeconomic paralysis is our only means to fight an unknown pathogen, then so be it; we certainly do no want countless fellow citizens dying in the streets. But starvation also kills, and here we are walking a fine line, a sword's edge indeed, which brings me to a concept as widely unappreciated as it important: supply chains.
Societies that have for generations enjoyed the luxury of the supermarket are commensurately ignorant of the complex web of warehouses, processing plants and distributors that bring them products from farms and factories. These supply chains are vital in feeding the world, not withstanding the trendy "farm to table" idea. Enter a supermarket today under the conditions of commercial lockdown and what you see is clear evidence of serious disruption. Supply chains are breaking, even in nations with the most reliably abundant agriculture. When the USA cannot feed its own population there has been a colossal failure of leadership.
Yet fitting the crisis comes a colossal man, celebrity chef José Andrés, preaching that "food security is national security." For some time now, feeding the world has been more a matter of distribution than production, and Chef Andrés, a pillar of a man in all respects, really knows supply chains!
And so, your money or your life? "I'm thinking! I'm thinking!"
Agency
A good many books have been written about the probability of a modern plague such as the one now afflicting us. In fact the second President Bush was inspired by these predictions in the early years of the century to institute federal programs aimed at national preparedness. Then came the Tea Party movement, incubated in the hinterlands - make no mistake - by the patient wiliness of rightwing media. These same parsimonious legislators today have signed on to an authorization of more than two trillion dollars - penny wise and pound foolish!
Now each day brings articles and opinion pieces attempting to analyze the reasons why the world, particularly the larger nations, were in no way prepared for a pandemic of this scope. One such item appears in National Geographic written by science journalist Robin Henig, author off A Dancing Matrix. She has followed the subject for decades and cites several prominent virologists who have pointed to a convergence of factors the results of which should have long been obvious: rapid urbanization; an impinging of the human population on wild habitat, and the burgeoning of international air travel. Karma pure and simple, but why does the human mind with its great reasoning power resist this concept?
Repelled by the idea that things just happen for no reason, humans look for the same intelligence in nature that they themselves exhibit, and so "intelligent design," for example, is more acceptable than random mutation. But then they are confounded to learn that trees and other plants, having no spinal cords or brains, communicate with each other, modifying their chemistry according to signals. Humans do things with deliberate intention, but in nature intention is urged by causes and conditions. Therein lie the real reasons for whatever happens, which we reject due to an incapacity to appreciate their enormous intricacy. A virus does not intend to kill you, but it has agency.
The dismal science
Now that disaster has struck the global economy, as naysayers have predicted since Nixon went to China, we had better familiarize ourselves with MMT. You may be forgiven if you have no acquaintance with Modern Monetary Theory. As I understand it, the idea is that governments, having abandoned the gold standard, should allow themselves to print as much money as is needed at any given time, and that fears of consequent inflation are misguided. The argument is that runaway inflation, such as occurred in prewar Germany, would simply be controlled by raising taxes and issuing bonds, thereby shrinking the money supply. But the real world is not so simple, and clearly its modern leaders, whether in the liberal democracies or the harshest dictatorships, are lacking even in common sense let alone intelligence. The real world is Mitch McConnell and his do-nothing acolytes.
This macroeconomic monetary theory has been debated for awhile since it originated in the early years of the past century, when it was known as chartalism. The problem is that there has been no way to test it without risking the dangers of hyperinflation. Anyone old enough to recall the 1970s and the evil days of double digit inflation will be leery of MMT, though imbalance in the direction of deflation is equally dangerous. How very remarkable then that a pandemic is thrusting us into a compulsory demonstration project of this very theory!
Because as a race we seem unable to sustain an adequate degree of preparedness for any crisis, even when they begin to strike with growing frequency, our only means to combat a new virus is to suspend commerce until it is on life support along with a goodly portion of the populace. But closing restaurants, theaters, and stadia was not enough. Now we are told to keep a distance from one another and to mask ourselves when going for food. These measures leave an inescapable impression that a great invisible cloud, a miasma of virus, hangs over us that we take in and expel with each breath. That impression is sure to linger, dampening the economy indeterminably.
What to eat
I anticipated that there might be shortages of food and other household necessities, but as a consequence of trade wars, including the British version known as Brexit, not due to a nearly global effort at virus suppression. Of course, as I wrote here two weeks ago, a pandemic has been in the offing. If not for the recent, dangerous rise in anti-establishment populist leaders, modern health care system, already under strain, might have been better able to face the challenge, without the need to choke off all human interaction.
As for the shortages, a tendency for hoarding is only part of it. The main cause is the open ended nature of the crisis. We are advised to stock up with two weeks of supplies. What then? What if we go to replenish that supply only to find the store shelves empty of depleted? If a member of the household falls ill and is quarantined, the full two week"s supply will then be needed. Thus we continue to screw up our courage and venture out to walk the grocery aisles. "Once more into the breach!"
We make a dangerous mistake to look for precedents in history. There are none. Humanity has never been this integrated globally. There have been deadly plagues that killed millions, and our advantage today is the knowledge of microbes; but the destruction of this pandemic to a global economy will surely be something never seen before, and the usual fallbacks - on central banks, bailouts, or the freehanded printing of currency - may not work. Creative solutions will be needed.
Meanwhile, I am pleased to report that my lawn is greening up with clover, chickweed and wild mustard. Clover, I learn, is high in protein but is more palatable seasoned with the wild mustard leaves. Dandelion is versatile, but don't eat the buttercups - they're poison!
Crowds
There is nothing like an abrupt emergency, slamming on the brakes of normal life, to bring out the extremes of human nature: compassionate sacrifice on the one hand, for example, and irrational hoarding on the other. No amount of assurance, for one thing, will dissuade people from racing to empty store shelves of toilet paper, not even the fact that the looming threat is a respiratory disease. Quite suddenly we are obsessed with the epidemiology of this illness, while an incessant hammering of certain words and phrases already grates on the nerves: social distancing, shelter in place, lockdown. Meanwhile, I am caused to ponder another peculiar human trait that is so taken for granted as to be forever unremarked: it is the tendency not only to tolerate but to revel in crowds, the larger the better.
Personally, I have always practiced social distancing as a matter of temperament, and I am happy in the shelter of my place; but apparently most other people enjoy being crowded together. Might they be the grandchildren of Woodstock, raised on myths about the Age of Aquarius? The famed rock festival of 1969 attracted 400,000 people to wallow in sewage for three days. The crowd that assembled in Las Vegas, again to hear rock music but ending in massacre - did no one look up at the sky scraping hotels and think that they were like fish in a barrel? The largest gathering of people though is the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that draws over a million Muslims, at high risk of being crushed to death in a stampede.
We have grown accustomed to large crowds in the tens of thousands attending concerts of pop music idols or sporting events. A football stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, holds over 100,000, twice the capacity of the Roman Coliseum. We marvel at these numbers; they amaze when they should alarm. Consider the sight and the sound of such events, and be brutally honest about what dreadful similes come to mind. Yes? I dare not say!
Unforeseen?
In my last post I used the phrase "agency without intention" to describe the similarity of patterns in nature. It is the most basic definition of karma, and it is precisely what we observe in this viral pandemic sweeping the world, which was not unforeseen despite the assertion of president Trump. Just as the stock market was long overdue for a serious correction, conditions ripening to bring a conflagration of disease have been apparent to anyone with a modicum of knowledge and foresight.
I did not study science, but at a layman's level I read about those areas that promise to further my understanding of ultimate matters. Science studies nature and finds patterns, or perhaps imposes a preconceived pattern upon nature. What I find most curious is the similarities one may observe in nature among disparate phenomena. For example, why is it that the structure of an atom, with an electron orbiting a nucleus, suggests the same pattern seen in stars and planets? Another example may be seen in the flow of water, studied by hydrology for such applications as flood prediction. Similar to flowing water are patterns observed in the flow of traffic on a superhighway, or the movement of a herd of sheep. The most stunning example, however, is what is called the self similarity of fractals, which are ubiquitous in nature.
"Fractal" is a term coined by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, whose book The Fractal Geometry of Nature is definitive on the subject. We observe the self similarity of fractals in numerous phenomena: the veins in a leaf that mimic the branching patterns of the tree itself; the structure of a snowflake or of frost crystals. But as to why similarities occur between and among such diverse realms science cannot say. Typically, people tend to see the hand of a Creator as the only possible explanation for nature's intricate magnificence, blind to the illogic. A Creator apart from his creation must himself have been created, and ad infinitum back and back through a hall of mirrors. Moreover, there is no need to postulate a Creator of a timeless universe.
What we witness in nature is far more subtle: agency without intention, steered only by causes and conditions, just as water finds its way through a rocky river bed. And there is this: whereas in mathematics a fractal has self similarity over infinite scale ranges, fractals in nature are limited to finite scales. "What then, did the hand of the Potter shake?"
Life, death, and intuition
An old and dear friend of mine died unexpectedly a month ago in hospital. A bit older than myself, he was just shy of eighty and not in the best of health. Close upon receiving a cancer diagnosis, he was taken mercifully by a sudden stroke. We shared a dread of that long period of languishing now endured by so many before death, and our conversations on the subject always put me in mind of the old Zen master who would not give up his garden in spite of infirmity. When his monks thought to thwart him by hiding his tool, he refused to eat until they were returned. No work, no food!
I believe most people never really consider how they would face a terminal illness. They go about their lives as though expecting never to die. Misers will cling to every penny reasoning that their wealth will need to last for eternity. There is uncertainty, of course, as to when and how each person will die, but also considerable naiveté about the process. My best references are two: How We Die, by Sherwin Nuland, MD; and more recently Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich. The average person does not appreciate the degree of insult a body can endure while still maintaining consciousness, nor the length of time such conditions can last. Many falsely assume death will surely come to release them from what is unbearable.
Nevertheless, reality at one level yields ironic truth at another. In my reading, study and meditation, I have come to the conclusion that it is in our most illogical intuitions that the ultimate reality lies. In spite of contradictory evidence, we live with an intuitive sense that we always have lived and always will, and that time does not exist. These intuitions are the paradoxical truth that makes Buddhism such a hard sell, but that are our only real hope of liberation.
Primal drives
I have written here before, many times even, of the unique capacity of the human species to kill our own kind seemingly without inhibition. We only need to be persuaded that the other person is either a mortal threat or is not actually human at all.Then in spite of this amazing talent, we not only escaped the inevitable extinction that would have befallen any other species, we prosper to the extent of threatening the planet upon which our continued survival depends. All of which is to belabor the obvious. What is not obvious to most of us is that in every other respect we are no different from other animals.
Which brings me to the sensitive subject of sexuality, especially ticklish for humans. In the mating phase of life, animals are driven by primal forces to attract the opposite sex. They are not conscious of these forces nor of the teleology of resultant behaviors. The male bird-of-paradise, for example, is hard wired for the courtship dance peculiar to his species, which in fact has evolved in minute detail by virtue of sexual selection. He displays the most extravagant plumage for the occasion, but his female counterpart has the power of choice. Moreover, he has no need to know why he is flaunting his sexuality. Likewise for humans, who may think they know what they are doing, but have no real appreciation for root causes.
In modern culture there is a curios and dissonant admixture of licentiousness and prudery, with men falling afoul of the latter in recent years, especially old men, who have more sins for which to answer. We cannot be held responsible for the primal drives, but even lacking instinctual inhibitions we are accountable to society for our behavior. This may put me on shaky ground in these times, but I will assert that both genders should reflect on their conduct in relation to one another and to rein it in - lest they assign that burden to the other.
Passions
There can be no doubt that as humans we are thinking beings. Our senses are continually bombarded with stimuli; and our consciousness, waking or sleeping, puts forth a smoke plume of thought. To extinguish this plume and observe the mind in alert stillness is the aim of meditation. This practice of contemplative observation may also bring insight concerning thought process, for example, passions.
Most people surely have passionate ideas on a variety of subjects - political, religious, personal - and like that smoke plume, their thoughts can loop and curl from one to the other in the course of a conversation, during which a good listener will be persuaded that each topic is a matter of the utmost importance. Some few individuals exhibit monomania, an extreme passion focused on one object.
Obviously, with a glance at history, a changing panoply of passions has loomed over us at any given time, for good or ill. A passionate interest in medical research can lead to cures for disease, for example, or a passion for sport may produce an outstanding athlete. But other sorts of passions flare up with distressing frequency. Consider Louis XIV of France, whose earthly passions were unbounded. Persuaded in old age that he might still save his soul, he decided to purge the nation of the Calvinist Huguenots. They must either convert to Catholicism or flee the country upon pain of hideous execution. But even those who fled, some to Canada, might be pursued by zealous clerics not content to be rid of them but bent on punishing them for their apostasy.
We need to view the passions of the moment in the context of the myriad souls who have gone before, also believing their passions were of the utmost importance. Of course, if you were a Huguenot caught between a passionate friar and the ruthless Iroquois warriors, the belief was appropriate!
A longer perspective
On occasion I carry a cane with a silver handle. It helps take the weight off my back when standing, but that is not the only reason I carry it. While it conceals neither a sword nor a pistol, it may still be used as a weapon, and it aids in reaching items on high shelves. As I age I find the cane also elicits helpful gestures of assistance from younger people who take it to be a sign of debility. There are a few benefits to aging aside from senior discounts. Another such is surely a long perspective on history, a period of which one has lived. In my case that period has been one of considerable and rapid change.
My personal firsthand contact with history goes back to the nineteenth century through grandparents who were born then and teachers in childhood, many of whom were maiden ladies deprived of marital options by the Great War. The perspective I have from those dear people now gone, added to my impression from historical record, is that for centuries young people grew up emulating their elders in an eagerness to be considered adults. The boys wanted to wear long pants, ties and proper hats, the girls silk stockings and lipstick. Impatiently straining at the bit, they waited to enter the adult world of working, deriving, smoking, drinking. Suddenly, it seems to me, all that changed.
Sometime in the last century we went through the looking glass. Clever marketing nurtured the infantilization of the consumer, until today instead of the young eager for the trappings of adulthood, adults eagerly emulate the youth. There is a tremendous discontinuity between generations never seen before. Treasured heirlooms of china, silver, crystal, art works are rejected by the heirs and are thrown out with the garbage; old standards and values are disdained. In their defense, today's young people also face unprecedented encumbrances, and they are wonderfully creative. But along with that creativity comes the frightful arrogance of the unseasoned.
Thunder of hooves
So what now? I have cited here more than once the predictions of Straus and Howe, based on their theory of historical cycles, that the year 2020 will bring a major crisis of some kind. Will it be pestilence, famine or war? The odds in favor of any of these are increasing, or it may be a trifecta - win, place and show. Place your bets! In China the first horse is loose and running roughshod through Wuhan. While sycophant appointees here in the States assert there is no risk, medical experts in the know warn that the new coronavirus could result in a global pandemic, if for example, it hits a country without facilities for screening or quarantine.
Back in the old country, Boris is promising a bright future for a Britain untethered, while the Irish wait in a limbo of apprehension that a chimerical border will again hobble trade. On the dark continent, all three horses run neck and neck. Drought is enough to cause famine; then war and pestilence, in a dead heat, smooth the track for the fourth steed - the pale horse of Death.
But the most dangerous crisis is creeping up on us, like sewage in a clogged drain, in a country that has long been the beacon of freedom and justice to the world. Its rulers and their minions have sold the soul of the nation to the Devil, who is a very clever fellow, a master of disguise taking on the mantle of God's chosen one. Then he seduces: You will pay no taxes, since there is no longer a need for government; you will make millions on the stock exchange, which might be enough for medical care when you are in extremis; I will keep the unwashed invaders out of your sight, and there will be peace, even if war breaks out among our former friends. Defend Israel? I never liked my son-in-law anyway!
Going to the dogs
Before I ever noticed it mentioned in the press, I was talking about tribalism for many years. The civilized world, after all, was cosmopolitan, tolerant, society integrated. We had surely left that primitive state behind us. Now look where we are: nowhere are the craven tribal instincts more conspicuous than in the rightwing party of the United States, the Republicans. Trump is their man and for that fact alone, ipso facto, he can do no wrong. Any offense against him is an offense against the People, and the offender must accept his fitting humiliation. All must grovel before the Sun King!
This phenomenon, dangerous as it doubtless may be, is fascinating in the way that hideous things are. It exposes certain unsavory traits in human nature, typical of social species and in common with our canine companions. Foremost of these is a willing servility, slavishness toward power and wealth. Those of us who have enjoyed freedom and self rule long enough to take them for granted cannot fathom that the natural state of man is akin to a pack of dogs. Along with idolatry of the strong leader there is contempt for the weak and poor, and for self, all of whom are the more easily sacrificed. The dogs were unleashed in Germany in the 1930s. Now again the wolves are at the door, aided and abetted by modern technology.
Wolves have a certain instinct that evolved and as a result spared them from extinction. When two of them fight, the weaker one is permitted a gesture of surrender, rolling on his back to expose his neck to the victor, whose killer instinct is thereby inhibited. Unfortunately, the human species cannot count on such saving grace.
Unraveling
The inference to be drawn from my last post is that we need not unravel the complex web of cause and effect that seems to bind us, individually and collectively. The forces of karma are at once phantasmic and inescapable, a paradox revealed through any long, deep gaze into reality. Today those forces are deconstructing that complex web we would unravel. Clear for all to see, the world is unravelling. Let me hasten to deflect the false equivalence of "what-about-ism," which would counter that apocalyptic forecasts have been commonplace throughout history. Of course that is true, but in modern history the one fact that is ignored has no equivalent from one moment to the next: it is the exponential growth of human population.
The impact on climate is now obvious and likely irreversible: continual flooding of coastal cities and islands, increasingly violent hurricanes and tornados, drought and subsequent wildfires. People displaced again and again will resort to trailers, then to tents, then underground bunkers, where they will live like prairie dogs. And that is but one aspect of the matter. The sociopolitical impact is also evident. Dire conditions will naturally evoke strong tribal instincts, and the pack will follow the alpha male, no different from baboons.
How will it end? I begin to believe it will not be a whimper but a bang - apologies to T. S. Eliot - and it will not be nuclear but financial, presaged by the near depression of the last decade. The concurrence of expensive natural disasters with the surrender of self rule to rapacious demagogues has bred a fatal nonchalance toward fiscal discipline. National debt? Print more money. Disaster relief Print more money. Widespread starvationtion? Let them eat cake! Awash in this sea of dubious currency, good times are rolling. When the bottom drops out? Study those edible wild plants!
God's dice
It was my inclination to look for the big picture, to dig for the deepest root of matters, which led me to the Buddhist path decades ago; and once on this path I have been ever more disturbed that most people, like plankton on a great ocean, bob at the surface of reality, insistent until their last breath that there can be nothing more important or more real than the affairs of this world and of their personal lives. Surely they have an emotional attachment to their religious beliefs, but I have seen none in whom these beliefs are solid or durable, not since the ascent of modern science.
In The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Kapra, I first came upon the overlap of science with Buddhism. At the subatomic level Mother Nature trumped even Albert Einstein, who famously insisted, "God is not playing at dice." He wrestled with quantum weirdness until he died, still contending that quantum mechanics was incomplete. And he was right. Quantum mechanics blew holes in the old Newtonian laws, suggesting there were different rules for the very small and the very large; and the effort to reconcile this unnatural state continues to this day, with one intriguing ray of light on the horizon. That is where Buddhism comes in: the reconciliation lies in timelessness. The implication of this idea is a static universe that encompasses all potentiality - past, present and future. It is the Womb of Tathagata.
Worldly affairs impact us, often forcefully, and there appears no escape from the miasma. Here again Buddha intervenes with the assurance of bliss, but there is a fearsome requirement. In realizing the ultimate nature of this miasma, one faces his own ultimate nature. Science insinuates it is nihilistic; in Buddhism it is transcendent. So turn off the news alerts, take a deep breath and just listen. God won't mind, and Jesus was a bodhisattva.
After the fox!
I have alluded here before to my neighbor, a retired doctor, who appears to be devoting his retirement to manning the bird feeders. He is most generous in this endeavor, filling them every morning year round, and happy to feed not only birds but all the local wildlife. Naturally there are squirrels, tending to hog the larger feeders, while birds flock to smaller ones affixed to a window. Deer also come and can go through a whole day's seed in short order. Neither is my neighbor averse to predators, who take advantage of such a congregation of prey. He reports an occasional merlin, also called a sparrow hawk, the nemesis of birds for its stealth and speed. The large hawks do not stalk the feeders, preferring small rodents.
The most illustrious of my neighbors predatory guests, by any measure, are the foxes; and this winter there is an especially beautiful one, with thick red fur, black legs and ears, white on its tail and about the face. Uncommonly for bird lovers, my neighbor and I agree that the food chain, with its relative few predators at the top, is required in nature to balance populations. Disturbing as it may be for humans to watch the kill, there is a twin benefit, particularly in winter. In Darwinian terms, the fittest predator is enabled to survive, while at the same time the unlucky prey is spared slow death by starvation, cold or disease.
Though a frightful death by predation is surely among the most feared by humans, I daresay a quick death would be preferred by many; but in our pursuit of immortality we seem to have foreclosed the option. For individuals unfortunate enough to have lived too long, there awaits a period of slowly languishing in abject misery with no discernible escape until the mercy of death outsmarts health care professionals. And we think nature is cruel?
The writing life
When I retired from my profession in order to take up writing more seriously while there remained some years to my life expectancy, I decided to use a pen name. At my age I do not need to be taken seriously, but I want my writing to have a chance without being defeated by preconception. The result, after six years now, have been curious, especially among friends and family who do know me. One old friend, upon reading my first book, Conjuring Archangel, on the subject of Buddhism, made a special trip across three states to defend Christianity from my critique. Others have ignored my writing, even the blog, which I started as a way to answer their questions about what I was up to.
Having now some exposure to the internet and social media - Facebook, Goodreads, and the like - I suspect this disdainful reaction to writers is not uncommon. Even if the work itself is beloved, the author often is regarded with suspicion. Dead authors are merely irrelevant, while contemporary writers, having some how made their way into print, are painted with one brush: money grubbing hawkers of books. Another reason for this attitude might be jealousy. I have never met a person who did not envy the writing life, believing that he too could write a book. They fail to realize that the tedium of writing must be overcome by a deep love of the process - choosing words, building sentences. And in the end, I find, the real skill is not the writing but the rewriting.
I try not to take personally the near total lack of feedback, but I cannot but wonder if it is my style. Being English, I do love the language, the classical authors - Dickens, Hardy, Conan Doyle - and the way they could string phrases together in a long but perfectly coherent sentence. I choose words that best express my meaning, while not sending the average reader to the dictionary; I use the subjunctive case and the old default male pronouns; I use no expletives. Just call me a stodge, but I see the motive for my pen name has so far been vindicated.
The old country
After a pre-Christmas visit with my nephew and his family in London, I made my way to the home farm in Yorkshire, where the weather has been warm and damp, salutary for the new hayfields and remaining cattle. Following a period of drought, no one is complaining. Christmas day I kept to tradition, meeting my old friend at High Tor in Matlock, overlooking the River Derwent. We had a lovely meal, finishing it with an Irish coffee, in honor of our common if distant roots.
Over this stimulating cup, we shared our anxieties about the nation's future. Comparing British politics with the American version, various analogies came to mind: rugby to hockey; boxing to Xtreme Sports; 3-D chess to Monopoly. In this last election, as I have written here before, the Brits surely were given a choice of evils. My friend and I agreed on two words upon which this chap Boris may stumble: supply chains. When shipments from Europe have to go through customs, he and I both envision the kind of shortages Britain endured during and after the war. We laughed wickedly imagining how the Irish will react!
In the twilight, we stepped out into a chilly fog and strolled down Dale Road window shopping. Passing the clock shop brought to mind my post of last year on the subject of extremism, inspired by the pendulum clock and its metaphorical amplitude. I stayed at the inn Christmas night, where there always seems to be a room for me, so that I could make my way to Manchester today for the flight back across the pond. So here I am at the airport, having already suffered the various indignities of tight security, when I receive a message from Anna, prescient as ever, suggesting that I add an essay on travel to my collection. She and I are old enough to remember the heyday of commercial flight. Today? Well... good idea, my friend!
Speaking of a funeral
In may recent posts touching upon the sensitive political conditions worldwide, I have attempted to convey the gravity of the situation; and there last week on the floor of the House of Representatives stood the Speaker, the perfect symbol in funereal black. I fear, however, that the average person is not feeling it, ignorant that what he stands to lose is his own individual freedom. Regardless of political persuasion, if his resort is to the concentration of absolute power in a despot, no degree of devotion and kowtowing to the tyrant will ensure his safety. Worst of all, as he is carted off to the gulag, no laws to protect him, his fate unknown either to himself or his loved ones, he will be aware that he has brought this on himself.
Here in the States there is a dangerous ignorance of history that results in a vexing naiveté. Unlike Europe, none of the terrible wars of the twentieth century was fought here, giving the current generation a false sense that such things cannot and will never happen here. Yet now their own electoral system has installed a leader who is not only a burglar domestically but whose puerile interactions with other nations is quickly upending the Pax Americana that has benefited the world for 75 years. Anything is now possible.
The House Speaker's black garb was not the only telling visual in the chamber that day. There on the Republican side, clear for all who would see, sat the tribe of white men assembled in defense of their Dear Leader. Many who got up to speak, moreover, spoke with a Southern drawl, thus revealing the real root of this strange business: the Confederacy will rise again - on the backs of a New York mafia boss and a Russian secret agent.
Putinism
As much as I try to avoid political subjects on this blog, the current state of world affairs makes that next to impossible. Britain has just had yet another ballot, choosing between two evils; and now if Boris wants to crash out of the EU, the UK may learn the value of free trade - the hard way. Meanwhile, our North American colony struggles under the most vulgar and obstreperous leader surely in all its history. But the puzzling thing about this latter business is the ardent support of his party, as elected Republicans contort their erstwhile policies, from free trade to balanced budgets, once fervently held. Commentators are in chaotic consternation, unwittingly reiterating Republican buzz words ad nauseam in their fevered critiques. The argument that this political squabble is a simple domestic matter does not fly. It is geopolitical, and the Republicans are strategic.
I have come across just two editorials that offer the larger perspective. One was by E. J. Dionne, among The Post's finest minds. He makes the point that as the white tribe diminishes demographically, it becomes desperate to secure its power to rule as a minority, and to install its agenda in a manner that is protected for generations to come. Liberal democracy does not serve this end, and so must be destroyed by any and all means necessary.
The second column was by Greg Sargent, who writes for The Post online. He cites foreign policy scholar David Rothkopf, and raises the frightening specter of what Rothkopf calls "Putinism," describing it as a worldwide movement uniting nationalist, authoritarian leaders "against Western liberal democracy, the rule of law, international institutions and the commitment to empiricism in the face of disinformation." That last phrase should chill us to our bones; we are watching as "the last best hope of earth" is crushed under the tyrant's jackboot.
King of America
As I write, the most boorish of world leaders, surely in all of history, is bumbling about London at the NATO gathering. It is not Macron nor Trudeau nor even Boris, and certainly not our dear Elizabeth, who has won the crown of England with grace and dignity since 1953. What a presence she is, the very symbol of history in an age under threat of forgetting. No, it is the new king of America, Donald I. What irony!
Current news of the world, especially the rise of populist dictators, surprises me, until I pick up the morning Post, where the editorial analysis of astute columnists makes it all as predictable as it is sickening. One column characterizes the populists accurately as street fighters. The opposition? Lawyers, whose Talmudic deliberations may be suitable - even useful - in peaceful times, but are a certain danger in the street against thugs. Another writer points to the great distance now obvious between the average working people and the lawyerly elites, feeding the anger that is fertile ground for despots. Explaining this anger, the columnist points out that the elite classes engender the big ideas and grand schemes that workers are expected to turn into reality, and only in the working class is there hard experience of reality.
What sickens me most about this rift is its congruity with China's Cultural Revolution, during which that nation purged a generation or more of its finest minds. They were tortured and killed, and according to rumor, cannibalized. An image sticks in my mind from a long ago documentary of a Chinese peasant bearing a human leg over his shoulder. And King Donald asserts we are no better.
Why the owl?
I must explain why there is now a Snowy Owl fixing an intense gaze on readers from the masthead of this blog. For one thing, I am a lover of birds, particularly the raptors, and within that branch most especially the owls. They are crepuscular, silent, fast and discerning, the natural symbol for inherent wisdom. Not being a night owl myself, I did not take this photo but purchased it on ThinkStock. It is stunning, I daresay. But the reason I installed it here has to do with Facebook and its wrenches.
Each week I post headlines from the blog on Facebook, hoping to catch the eyes of readers. A convenient link to the blog appears automatically, on the left side of which Facebook, in its weird algorithmic fashion, contributes a blurry image of wrenches. As useful as this social media site may be in circulating information, its workings are as mystifying and impregnable as the darkness of Egypt. Try as I might I could not find a way to eliminate the ugly yet persistent wrenches. I noted that other Facebook users had the same problem with their blog links, though at least one had escaped it; but none of these persons had a clue why the image would or would not appear.
I sent messages to Facebook Help without response; then it finally occurred to me that the answer might lie with Blogger. Now I must tell you, readers, that compared with all other IT corporations - Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft - Google is God almighty. As soon as I had uploaded this arresting image of the Snowy Owl, the hideous wrenches vanished, and so far have not reappeared on new posts. Curiouser and curiouser, contrary to what one might naturally imagine, the owl did not replace them. But no image beats those weird tools hands down!
Modernism: But is it art?
As an old fashioned romantic, I recognize that I am out of sync with modernism and its resolute, studied ugliness. This unfortunate fact becomes apparent as I work on my essay collection, one title of which is "Modernism: But is it art?" Proponents of all things modern will argue that ugly is a four letter word and will trot out the old saw that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. True enough, but my rejoinder is that art in all its forms is an important means of communication, and further that the now rarefied fine arts, failing at communication, have lost their stature, while the vacuum leaves only vulgarity.
Another lame excuse for modernism is that it is inspired by the ugliness of modern times, so that its ugliness is the only conceivable response from anyone with creative sensibilities. The answer to this sorry defense is evident in even a cursory glance at history. For the ugly reality of our ancestors, look only to the Middle Ages. Then consider the old masters, whose works and abilities dwarf those of any modern artist. No, when Beethoven, in all his physical trials, could write his last and glorious symphony, setting within it Schiller's ode to human brotherhood, how can we blame ugliness on external factors?
The human spirit has potential for great beauty or great ugliness, and the ability to know the latter when we encounter it. Granted that the state of the world at this writing is more dangerous than it has been in a century, with the ugly specter of tribalism spreading like the very wild fires it has spawned. Especially now, it does not behoove us to contribute to the ugliness, the vulgarity, but to hold fast to that beauty of spirit most urgently, against the insidious weapons of propaganda and brainwashing.
Am I a hopeless romantic? Happy Thanksgiving!
The climate
I am back from the old country, as my friend Anna likes to call it, only to find I have brought the cold of Yorkshire back with me to the States, where the mid-Atlantic is beset by an early winter. But I am glad I returned, since Yorkshire is seeing snow and floods. The weather whiplash is indeed global, and while the British are believed to be hearty by nature, there are limits, or thresholds as I like to call them. Humans having breached one of them with our accelerating impact on the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, are now visited with the destructive consequences of a changing climate.
Earnest and urgent calls go up around the world to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and indeed wonderful new technologies offering alternative energy sources are coming, if belatedly. Wind and solar farms spring up where possible and practical; yet considering the enormity of the challenge, all these efforts, well-intentioned as they doubtlessly are, surely amount to arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. With the possible exception of the ravages of the Black Plague, the human population of the planet has never decreased in recorded history. There will always be more people requiring more resources in the form of energy and food. But nature itself will respond as it is even now, and the climate crisis will be far worse than the plague.
Our only hope unfortunately is improbable: that women around the world will be granted reproductive rights. That will never do!
Regime cleavage
Following up on last week's post concerning the sorry state of democracy in the world today, I saw an article in Politico reporting on the studies of political scientists on that very subject. They addressed a phenomenon identified in that field and referred to as "regime cleavage," describing persuasively how Western nations are approaching that dangerous state. In short, when the fever of political polarization goes unchecked, it reaches the point where both sides are willing to defy traditional institutions, ignore the rule of law, declaring that the end justifies and and all means. As the opposing tribes wage war, power shifts from one to the other in what is called "political careening." Then comes the coup. Chile is cited as an example, where General Pinochet was installed as the dictator in the 1970s.
I have long taken the point of view that tribal instincts dominate the limbic system in the human brain, ever ready to subvert the learned behaviors required by civil society. We are accustomed to seeing tribalism in places like Afghanistan or Somalia, viewing such places as "failed states." In the Western hemisphere, certain countries in Central America, even Mexico, are reaching that condition when drug lords and their cartels come to rival the power of national governments. But when we witness the established and successful Western democracies under threat of such an extremity, it is confounding. What can people be thinking who would trample centuries-old law and institutions? For what? Destroy respect for the law and your version will also be ignored. Chaos will reign.
Unfortunately, this is a process of unreason, and I venture to say, looking at the big picture, what we may be observing is a regression to feudal society, which may emerge, as in medieval Europe, with the collapse of central power. These failed states where populations are at the mercy of warlords and criminal elements are the harbingers. Fill the moats! Raise the drawbridges!
A lasting democracy
I have never been one to follow professional sports; in fact at the moment I am reviewing my essay concerning the various perils of excessive fandom. Nonetheless I can understand the hoopla here in Washington over the World Series, with tonight's game spelling victory or defeat for the home team. Week after week of wall-to-wall coverage of the tournament by local stations, however, had me turning to another channel, where I happened upon an interview of Noah Feldman, Harvard law professor with degrees from Yale and Oxford, and a writer on religious and political themes. He was speaking about his biography of James Madison, soon to be released in a print edition. Naturally well-spoken given his background, he impressed me by an unusual grasp of the big picture in world affairs.
He explained the current rise of populist autocrats as follows: With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was thought that democracy had bested communism, but it was capitalism that had prevailed, and as China has demonstrated, capitalism does not require democracy. His wisdom, uncommon for a man not quite fifty, was that liberal democracies should stop emphasizing economic strengths, the "chicken in every pot" cliche, when their real forte resides in human values - freedom, justice, tolerance - and the stability they generate, social and economic.
He went on to talk about the founding fathers of the US and their great concern to construct a lasting democracy by anticipating potential pitfalls. Madison, one of the lesser celebrated of them despite his major impact, played a pivotal role in framing the Constitution, and believed it would ensure a sturdy government, which could survive even a rogue president. He observed just one mortal threat to future democracy, that being a loss of integrity in the people themselves.
The body
A few weeks ago I wrote here about the essay I was working on titled "The Phases of Life: What's it all about?" I have since moved on to the epilogue of the book, which will be called Ruminations: Fundamental Enquiries, but I continue to ponder this last phase and the long perspective it opens up. Starting from the end point - the ashes in the closet waiting to be scattered, the body reduced to its constituent elements - then looking back over what may often be a long period of decline, the obvious impression is that life is all about the body: fear of bodily harm as a helpless child; fulfillment of primal drives in adulthood; grasping for material resources to insure the comfort and continuance of the body. The idea seems positively salacious at first glance, but that is only because we believe we know the body.
We view the body as mechanical: integrated systems, hung on an armature of bone and secured by a membrane of skin. We see it as something gross and entertain the hopeless notion that our mind will be able to escape it. That is the Cartesian error. Consciousness arises in the body and is the glimmering of mind. Th body is the mind. On the surface, consciousness tells us that the body is an object, albeit animated. But it is easily rendered inanimate with a blunt or a sharp instrument, and a corpse is just an object - an abysmal conclusion to be sure. It is that glimmering of mind, however, that may give us a rare look at the deeper truth, even without a microscope or a telescope or a particle accelerator. The body is just an object, but an object is not just an object. Chew on that, children!
More on generations
The way different generations are delineated and named has always been a mystery to me, and I confess I lose track after the baby boom, which was evident by it size. Following them came Generation X, taking the name from a novel with that title, and then the Millennials when a new century arrived. As arcane though the matter is, generations are of historical importance, and I often reflect on just how they come to be distinctive as a group. In this regard I have recently observed that the young people are all having babies at the same time, apparently having made a concerted, simultaneous decision. There are news reports of a dozen nurses in one hospital pregnant at once, and a fire station where all the men's wives are expecting. Here is no greater proof that we are related to monkeys!
How to account for it? This generation grew up with a strong peer orientation, relying on one another, disconnected from elders. They go their own way and do their own thing, be it yoga, bocce, or the urban lifestyle. They maintain into adulthood the culture of their schooldays, exemplified by their chant-like, pulsatile music. Naturally taking their cues in life from the peer group, not unlike the murmuration of a bird flock, they will reproduce when the time comes.
The historical significance of this subject is the theme of the 1990's book Generations, the foundation of what became known as the Strauss-Howe theory after its authors. They posited that observable cycles of history have predictive value, an attractive idea if problematic. Of interest to me is that the cause of these cycles, as they saw it, is the distinct nature of generations. They defined four different types that repeat in an eighty year pattern. It may compare with looking for shapes in the clouds, but intriguingly today's young people fit the mold of a "civic" generation: pragmatic, optimistic team players. Unfortunately, according to this theory, their fate is to be foot soldiers in a coming war.
Wrathful deities
It is hard to ignore what goes on in the world today: the wealthiest and most powerful nations becoming a League of Autocrats, omnipotent as the ancient kings and emperors, smothering any freedoms of self-governance won by the multitudes over centuries and unleashing upon them barbaric cults of terrorism unequalled since the Dark Age. I am caused to envision the "wrathful deities," said by the Tibetans to terrify the unenlightened after death. This remarkable, ancient belief is written in "The Great Liberation Through Hearing," known in the West as "The Tibetan Book of the Dead." If the deceased has not been enlightened in life, a reading of this scripture over his body by a holy lama provides his last chance - through hearing it.
The first postmortem vision is of the peaceful deities, whom the soul is entreated to recognize as arising in his mind from "intrinsic awareness." If he fails to catch on, he is visited by the wrathful deities, dreadful, bloody creatures, whom he is likewise enjoined to see as chimera, with the beautiful instruction, "Do not be afraid, O child of buddha nature!" Failing this last chance to see all things as "of the mind itself," he is condemned to reincarnation.
Surely it is curious that the cycle of rebirth is considered in the East as a curse, while in the West as a great opportunity. The Asians have it right, knowing as they do that the idea of dislocated islands of egoism adored in the West as selfhood is the very root of human misery. Still, even the enlightened man must navigate this phantasmagoria while he lives and breathes. For him as for aspirants on the Path there is only the example of the great masters for guidance in dealing with those wrathful deities - so hard to ignore.
Layers of reality
At times overwhelmed by the din of the "mouse universe" our world has become, (see Past Posts), I have resort to the respite of meditation. With practice the mind clears, the muscles relax, and one leaves behind the daunting chaos at the surface of experience to sink in the deep ocean of truth, for which the Buddhist term is Dharma. Last week's post in the Dokusan dealt with the layers of reality, which science has uncovered to some depth. The deepest layer is the Dharma, impenetrable by human understanding, but not inaccessible. At that depth object and subject, all dichotomies of the dual world, are fused in one. The paradox is beyond objective study, but it can be realized.
To realize is to make real. Our minds realize the layer of our perceptions, which we accept as real. Given a microscope or a telescope we realize another layer of that reality. In our daily lives, society asks us to realize things that may or may not be true, especially in this digital age. Buddha dealt with this very question in the sutras when he spoke of "the horns of a hare." That is a falsehood; a rabbit does not have horns. But to realize the ultimate? First one must admit that it is transcendent, encompassing all duality; otherwise reality is a hall of mirrors - subject becomes object becomes subject. Then reflect that from the surface layer downward what seemed true is displaced by the deeper reality: the sun does not circle the earth as it would seem; solid objects are particulate at the atomic level; people once thought to be possessed by Satan are in reality suffering an imbalance of neurochemicals. Finally, one must just sit, patiently, on a cushion in the lotus posture or on a seiza bench, with the intuition that your deepest self is not the isolated individual that it seems to you, but rather the one indivisible Subject.
Populism? Tribalism
I daresay it was disheartening to see the sorry array of our world leaders at the U.N. last week, most especially for me our dear Boris, aping his role model with the straw hair and the overlong tie. But sorry rises to the level of dangerous where Mr. Trump is concerned in the concerted effort of his party to undermine the "last best hope of earth," which American democracy has been. Critics aghast at the seeming blindness of elected officials to blatant abuses of power naively overlook the naked intent to destroy constitutional order. Mr. Trump's party must now be called the Tribe of White Men, whom we see clinging to their assault rifles for no other reason than to rebalance their numbers with other tribes.
I have expressed here before the idea that nations are for the most part larger tribes, and that the rise of nationalism is in fact a step backward from civilization, which represents a coalescence of tribes. In today's world those backward movements are being described either as nationalism or populism, but perhaps they are skipping this intermediate step and plunging us abruptly into the tribal state.
Last week in The Post, Fareed Zakaria wrote on this very subject, including an alarming statistic that the percentage of people worldwide who look favorably on autocracy and one-man rule is increasing, even in the Western democracies, where the seed for this pernicious ideology was planted by Newt Gingrich, as Zakaria reminds us. An astonishing stupidity afflicts people who can believe, ignoring history, that dictatorship would be better than democracy. Just ask a Venezuelan.
The last phase
I am working on an essay that I call "The Phases of Life: What's It All About?" which I believe will be the last of the collection of ruminations I have been putting together - with that very title, Ruminations. Included are reflections on modern culture and society, marriage and children, aging and death, consumerism, language and communication - as varied as the catchalls basket of the essay form allows, and as this blog exemplifies. The ideas have been with me, and grown with me, over the course of a long life; and even now as I begin to write about the last phase from first hand experience I am struck with new insights. They are new because anyone who might have informed me in this regard was long passed before their wisdom seemed relevant - an object lesson.
There are compensations in old age, I find, beyond a handicapped parking privilege. At the stage when one must focus on keeping his body functional, one no longer is able to obsess over minutia that once seemed all important. Still more surprising to me has been the vivid perspective of a long hindsight. Many people, perhaps most, will protest that even as the years advance they remain the same person, or at least that they feel essentially unchanged. The attitude reflects an insistence on one's own individual, immortal soul that continues intact throughout this life and beyond. But looking back with any objectivity when the entirety of life is there to recall, we will recognize how very different we once were, and view past circumstances with a clarity unavailable to us at the time.
We are not the same. Like all perceived reality we come forth anew in each instant, changed imperceptibly. The changes accumulate, becoming noticeable only when we pass two the next phase. Was I ever young and strong? No, that "I" was a stranger.
"The way life should be!"
Upon learning that I take a break from the mid-Atlantic heat each summer by going to Maine, people always ask if I have a place there. Well yes, I do have a place, though I am not burdened with its ownership and maintenance. It is the Bar Harbor Inn, a historical landmark in that charming maritime village. It is privately owned, and since the passing of the owner two years ago, I am reassured that his son is equally devoted to the institution. An architect himself, he has made improvements that not only enhance the historical nature of the Inn, but manage at the same time to keep up with the competition, including the Marriotts. This season the lobby has been refurbished: the fireplace restored to function, an alcove added for the twenty-four hour coffee service, and - wonder of wonders - the chandelier shades are back. Here is a man after my own heart!
Cruise ships come and go in Frenchman Bay, now two each day, and the Porcupine Islands are ever picturesque, especially in a fog. Some things change year to year; there is turnover of small shops, when newcomers have experience of a Maine winter. But fortunately important things remain: the bar to Bar Island emerges from the bay at each low tide; the Jessup Library, with its spiral wooden stairs to the nonfiction stacks, offers peaceful refuge; and the Jordan Pond House serves tea on the lawn, their own blend of black and green, with popovers. Jolly good week all told - no hurricanes, no politics, just the crisp air, the perfume of meadowsweet, and ripening rose hips on the shore path!
Me, me, me...
I have known at least two bona fide narcissists personally and perhaps a few acquaintances who might qualify, and of the certifiable ones I can attest to their indubitable outrageousness. One woman was so resolutely imperious that not only did she demand the service of others, she implied that they should be grateful of the opportunity. For the great pride she took in remaining helpless, I called her the Empress of China. But not to her face, which intimates a strange quality I have observed in these people: They have a threatening aura; they inspire fear, unaccountably, in a subtle manner, absent any conceivable physical danger. Certainly there must be countless psychiatric studies of the narcissistic personality, but the relevance of the matter has become urgent in light of the Trump phenomenon and its acolytes springing up around the world like poisonous mushrooms. In an autocracy, the fear of a narcissistic demagogue is understandable, but in the democracies it is singular in the extreme. What are people afraid of? Is it the office he holds that causes the media, legislators, fellow politicians to demur? Perhaps in some cases.
No, I believe from my experience there is an impalpable though intense power in the blatant presumption by the narcissist of the superiority and centrality of his person, causing others to shrink reflexively. Who does he think he is, we wonder? Who might he be? Such people are so far removed from the typically conformist social behaviors they must give us pause, and it will take the ingenuous bravery of a child to proclaim the emperor naked.
Shaky ground
Surely I am not alone in noticing how shaky is the middle ground these days. The sociopolitical heat mirrors the atmospheric to the precise degree. Causal, perhaps? In the essays I am working on, which deal with a variety of topics, some controversial, I find myself injecting disclaimers wherever I fear I may have strayed so far from some extreme dogma that I risk being pigeonholed. Indeed, anyone sufficiently bold as to express a moderating idea will instead be labeled and shoved into the partisan camp. Question the viability of the diversity dogma, for example, and one stands to incur a noxious comparison to Tucker Carlson, chairman of what one columnist fittingly has called the Ministry of Propaganda. The real tragedy of these extreme attitudes is that the serious problems facing humanity might be solved in a timely manner by pragmatic people using moderate means. Instead conditions are allowed to become critical, when even extreme measures will not avail, and the mills of God will grind us small. Read below under Past Posts and you will soon know where I see the cause.
This summer I have been catching up on classics that I somehow missed: the suspenseful tale of Little Nell in Dickens's Curiosity Shop, and presently Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure. Poor Jude, left by his parents with a widowed aunt who wants nothing more than to be rid of him, is inspired by the schoolmaster to dream of a scholarly life. But upon coming of age in a state of extreme naiveté, he falls for the wiles of Arabella, daughter of a local pig farmer. I am reminded here, thanks to the inimitable prose of the author, that the primal drives are as irresistible to most people as they are to other animals.
In the absence of predators, populations expand. Simple math. For homo sapiens there is war.
Unraveling. Slowly.
As I contemplate my blog post, I sometimes fear I seem the stereotypical old man on the corner in a sandwich board reading, "Repent! The end is near!" Last week I wrote about the dire consequences of ill-considered changes; and truly what we see in today's world are the disrupters disrupting, the obstructionists obstructing, the marketers marketing desperately. It is a slow unraveling. I go to the printer I have used for decades, and mine is the only car in the parking lot. There is one clerk behind the counter. At the bakery this morning employees were frantic because the computers were down. They failed to appreciate my wry suggestion that everything should therefore be free. The local post office, built some years ago when the postal window in the pharmacy became inadequate, has just two clerks, leaving three desks empty. The two clerks are complaining to one another about pressure from bosses to promote sales.
Unraveling. Slowly. And that is the biggest danger. The effects are too gradual for the average person to observe the cause. Thus in a democracy people will credit the current leader for positive trends brought about by his predecessor and blame his successor when conditions trend down. Accurate appraisals of causality are widely dismissed. In nations with a president for life, citizens know exactly whom to blame, but dare not utter a word lest they and all their family disappear into the gulag.
These days I am struck by the amazing backlash against powerful and wealthy old white men on the basis of sexual transgressions. Deserving as they may be, I cannot but think they are scapegoats for their supreme leader, who has been allowed, by any and all authorities able to object, to claim himself immune to scandal of whatever nature. Observe his mimics around the world, and as the slow unraveling accelerates, prepare for a dark age.
Hogs gone wild!
Readers know that I am a loyal subscriber to The Washington Post, for which my esteem cannot be overestimated. Today in the morning paper was a report on the internet meme that flared up in discussions of gun control, specifically assault rifles. Apparently, unbeknownst to city people, there exist herds of feral hogs marauding the farm lands, this strange fact having been posted by a farmer explaining why he needed a machine gun - as they were once called - to defend his crops and his flock of children from this invasive species.
I feel sure The Post will have more information on this subject, but curious to me is how a species of hog can be invasive. Is the U.S. importing hogs from other countries, and why if so? Have these animals escaped into the wild from hunting preserves? Are there not enough wild boars already? The report goes on to describe more effective, if horrible, means of killing feral hogs than an AK47, a weapon of war, which we should suspect is now being cached by citizens for that very purpose.
But it occurs to me that much of what we observe in the weakening of civil society stems from a history of plunging into radical change without forethought of consequences, or with an exaggerated trust in our ability either to control or endure them. I think first of the global tech giants, self described disrupters, gleefully squashing competitors in the retail sector, along with old-line newspapers and publishing houses. Then there are the obstructionists in government, intent upon the ferocity of their inertia as far as doing anything to help. Add to the list marketers who for generations have succeeded in the infantilization of consumers, to the point that in the bygone meaning of the word no adults remain.
Surely global trade did lift large populations out of squalor, and doubtless measures were taken to prevent the invasion of non-native species - measures we might have seen from the beginning would be inadequate.
So what?
I notice that I seem to be posting with greater frequency on the subject of Buddhism, despite the fact that my weekly post is always followed by the Dokusan on the same topic. Discussions of this type will in any case arouse the "so what" moment. What does any such wisdom, potentially soothing as it may prove, have to do with the struggles of daily life, let alone the outrages bubbling up in world affairs, more heinous than we ever imagined we could witness?
I would only submit that in this world we are surrounded by forces which we fail to appreciate, and for which in our ignorance we are no match. One plain and clear example is gravity. If you have ever lost your balance and been body slammed to the ground by its enormous force you will not soon forget the invisible power of gravity, nor take for granted the common ability to balance against it. Other forces, those shaping society and the destiny of civilization, are likewise invisible: the force that impels the growth of population; the stresses of over crowding, studied by John Calhoun in the 1950s, leading us to the disastrous chaos of his Mouse Universe experiment; and of course the force of human nature itself, which we dismiss at our peril.
I would be more optimistic if only I could detect one scintilla of intellect among the various individuals vying to lead the world's democracies. But intellect is not prized; instead we get buffoons. I fear this trend may have a precursor in China's Crimson Revolution, which led to butchery and even cannibalism, a waste of some generations of talent.
My point is that the fate of human society, presaged in the trends we see, is largely determined by those invisible forces, much as the direction of an individual's life in many ways is not in his control. Not one of us in our final moments - in the ICU or exsanguinating from a bullet wound - will have any thought of world affairs or the daily struggles, then fading away. With that perspective, use this life in search for the deepest realization. If you are serious, you will sit under the Bodhi Tree.
Scale
Years ago in its iMax theatre, the National Air and Space Museum here in Washington ran the short documentary "Powers of Ten", which demonstrated cinematically the scale of the universe in relative terms, thus to impress upon visitors a reality that is generally unimaginable. This problem of scale comes up as well in discussions of Buddhism, in which I am given to noting physical analogies. Modern people understand the limits of our senses, that there are things too small or too far away to see, for example. Even provided the microscope and the telescope, we accept that daily life occurs at a certain level. Now the physical sciences, with more sophisticated tools, have gone deeper and farther. There is the Planck scale, named for German physicist Max Planck, who devised units of measurement at the quantum level, and at the other end of the scale are light years - outer space, galaxies, super novas, black holes.
For all of its explorations, however, science has not found God, and that is the problem for religions, particularly in the West. While most fall back on mystical rationales, they are satisfied to remain at a superficial level in the dichotomous realm of karma. Thus if there is a God, there must be a Devil. Only Buddhism, especially Zen, plumbs the depths, appreciating that at the ultimate scale reality must transcend dichotomy, regardless of the paradox that comes to trouble our logical, symmetrical brains.
That deepest level of reality may dawn upon human consciousness after long and careful practice of meditation. It is said to come like "the spark from a stone." In the oneness at the deepest level, the eye that sees form looks at the same time" upon void. Beneath it is the eye that cannot see itself." But you know where it is!
Free or slave
Editorials in The Washington Post wax more breathless by the day, and not without ample cause. There appears to be an element abroad in the land, around the globe in fact, that agrees with Putin's verdict on liberal democracy. Consistent with my inclination to look for the big picture, I find in it first of all the predictable descent into tribalism. Diversity be damned! The USA is especially fragile in this respect due to its racial history and its founding principles, resulting over centuries in considerable heterogeneity. But they have a whole continent, upon which I foresee the white tribe segregating itself in Kentucky, home of Squire McConnell, the black tribe squeezed into the urban corridor along the east coast, and the brown tribe on the west. The Norwegians, most favored of King Donald I, can remain in Minnesota, being annexed eventually by Canada.
Another aspect of this reactionary movement involves an axiom now needing review. We assume that all people love freedom, that the promise of liberal democracies of individual liberty regardless of tribe and of equality under the law would have universal appeal. However, even a cursory glance at human history reveals to the impartial observer a strain of slavishness in human nature. Incredible numbers of people lean toward the worship of a powerful, wealthy leader, eager to humble themselves in his service. They do not cherish their freedom in the least, but accept their inferiority as manifestly obvious by virtue of their dear leader's wealth and power. One need only consider the many ancient rulers taken to be gods or agents of deity. Their subjects slaved willingly under these ruthless gods. One might list a number of credible causes for this currishness: yearning for protection, passion for revenge on a rival tribe. But history also teaches that would-be demigods are nearly always demagogues. Upon those of us who understand the price of losing our righteous freedom, may God have mercy!
To be or not to be
The language used in discussions of Buddhism may lead to serious misunderstanding in many people; and I confess to guilt in this respect: We speak of emptiness, void, egolessness, and of clearing away thought in order to observe the mind in the practice of meditation. I hope what may lessen my guilt is the frequency with which I use the word subtle, along with my oft repeated warning to avoid the abyss of nihilism. Nevertheless, I read in the Post recently that a mental disorder defined by depersonalization may result from the practice of mindful meditation. Such a result I would argue could only come from a very misguided practice, quite subtle yet categorically different than the true practice.
Let it be stipulated first that the ego is an important element of a healthy psyche; so when we use the term "egoless" we are not advocating its obliteration, but rather a realization that the self is not limited to this temporal individuality. It is timeless and unitary, misperceived when it is refracted by our symmetrical configuration. Depersonalization is an even more dramatic splitting of the self, which may occur if a person "observing his mind" in meditation imagines he has stepped outside of it to do so. What we are observing more precisely is the conscious activity of the thought process to learn how its chaos distracts the mind. The aim of zazen, which is mindful meditation, is to reintegrate the true self by focusing the mind on its ultimate essence, which is the exact opposite of separating it into alien parts.
The difference is subtle even though the divergence is great: in one case finding the reality of self, in the other a mirage sinking the psyche into nightmare.
Apart or a part
It is sad for the British to see their most famous colony - now infamous - slip into tribal barbarism, led by demagogues and sycophants, though Britain, and Europe too, slip in like direction while Mr. Putin, with his great philosophical heft, weighs in on the obsolescence of Western liberal democracy. Apparently he knows more about it than the president of the greatest one, who thought the Russian autocrat referred to the liberal "Democrat" party of California.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is said to have entertained the somewhat whimsical notion, among several for which he was better known, that the American Revolution would someday be reversed and England would reunite with its rebellious offspring. I daresay our royal family is far more attractive than that now conjured in the States. Harry and Meghan might be the very ones to take the assignment!
But the regression to tribalism is seeming ever more inexorable. Please see my post of two weeks back on the subject of nations and tribes. The tribe, in its purest sense, is a kinship group. Within it, members have the innate satisfaction and security of belonging, of being a part of the tribe. Equally as important, more dangerously, is the sense of being apart from all other tribes. My theory on the teleology of this peculiar "us-versus-them" proclivity is explained in the first essay below. Nevertheless, I am intrigued by the linguistic dissonance: differing only by a space, "a part" is opposite in meaning to "apart." If I am permitted a metaphor, it is thus: Put a little space between us and we might just feel closer.
I am one
In the Buddhist literature, let alone journals and media sites, the term "oneness" gets a good deal of mileage, to the point of becoming hackneyed. Here on the blog, for that matter, it often is discussed. Thus it comes to be mocked by innocent bystanders who miss the point and cannot be bothered with deeper exploration. The aversion to depth in fact inhibits the understanding of Buddhism even among its adherents, because this faith is not about concepts that are easily grasped but rather the experience of human consciousness. That experience is wordless, yet outside of the meditation hall, we have only words. And so "oneness."
The average person immediately thinks of being one with someone - intimate family or a close friend - or being one with nature as recalled in a pleasant contact with it. Such thoughts are the exact opposite of the true meaning, since as soon as you say "one with" you divide one into two - yourself and the object of the phrase. To be one with the moment, an unfortunate cliché, is also incorrect, because oneness is a timeless state in which there are no moments, past, present or future. While it is indescribable, I would suggest that true oneness begins with a sense of what goes missing, and that is the dread of loss, of deprivation. I am not "one with," I am one, inseparable from the timeless omnipotentiality.
Temporal individuality, wondrous as it seems to us, is the pallid refraction of oneness, an illusion, ani gnus fatuus, bringing us to grief. As I marvel at the beauty of the heavens, should I grieve that when I die I will never see the heavens again? Nonsense! I am the beautiful heavens, inseparable, timeless.
Nation or tribe?
It would be hard to say in today's world whether we are witnessing the decline of Western civilization or the birth of a global one - perhaps both at once. The fate of civilization is a frequent topic here on the blog, where I am wont to observe its relatively brief history compared with the eons of prehistory, during which the human species lived in a tribal state. In reading about Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, I have cause to wonder how the idea of a nation figures in. During that bellicose era what we think of as the nations of Europe appear to have been nothing more than large, warring tribes. Unfortunate Poland, in the middle of it all, was bandied about like a shuttlecock, while its intelligentsia took refuge in Paris. One definition of a nation, in fact, is a large tribe.
Civilizations arose in ancient times through the unification of many tribes by means of conquest and/or trade. They are thus inherently multi-cultural. We might therefore consider the nation not so much as an intermediate stage between the tribal and the civilized, but rather as a backward step as the empire falls. History offers evidence in the political tumult that followed the defeat of Kaiser Wilhelm in the Great War, and again more recently in the same region upon the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. Small nations lifted their tribal heads out of the morass.
An intriguing footnote here concerns the US, where claims of its "exceptionalism" are assailed as nationalistic. Yet if there is anything exceptional about the USA, we should observe that it is not truly a nation at all. It has been multi-cultural from its origins, as "a nation of immigrants." White supremacy here is nationalism, a bid to regress into the tribe, a mythical white Christian tribe. Is it a civilization then, an empire as some claim? Unique if it is!
The lawn
I have had my property in the States for some decades. It is in a tranquil neighborhood of spacious lawns, a majority of which are covered in plush, velvety grass. The lawn I inherited from the prior owner was likewise a mono-culture; but after only a few seasons the weeds came in, and I learned that the only effective way to control them is through the use of highly carcinogenic herbicides. Well, the dandelions can be mowed down before they go to seed, thereby slowing their spread; but the worst of the broad-leafed weeds grow so low as to elude the mower. They over shadow the grass, gradually killing it. Comes winter the weeds die off; and as their roots do not hold the soil, there is erosion when the pummeling torrents of rain set in.
After some years of this sorry process, I had the idea of a clover lawn. Clover has a somewhat broad leaf and a strong root system that gives the added benefit of fixing nitrogen. It is a legume, and farmers use it as a cover crop in winter, plowing it under come spring for what they call a "green manure." And so over several consecutive seasons, I over-seeded with New Zealand perennial white clover. For some years, the clover lawn did well, to the extent that even in those green velvet lawns throughout the community, patches of white clover emerged. If the neighbors objected, none was so boorish as to complain.
Just lately, with the climate in crisis, we hear that lawn grass - and its maintenance - are terrible for the environment. At the same time, since clover is too often mowed short, the several weeds that still hug the ground are again spreading. However, given the threat of impending food shortages, what with trade wars and extreme weather, I view the lawn weeds with a far less jaundiced eye. According to my field guide, they are mostly edible.
Intrinsic awareness
In last week's post, I alluded to the need to experience in our minds the essential voidness, most effectively through earnest meditation. I implied that this capacity is special in the human brain; in Buddhist literature, I find it referred to as "intrinsic awareness." In the beginning of the Surangama Sutra, Buddha attempts to persuade his cousin Ananda and other disciples of this quality by striking a gong. To the question of what does he hear, Ananda responds correctly. When the sound of the gong stops, Buddha asks, "Now do you hear?" Misled, Ananda answers in the negative. and Buddha points out that even in silence the hearing sense is intrinsic.
I have that sutra in Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible, and as I read, it seems to me that Buddha is at pains to describe the ineffable experience of the mind in meditation. It is easy enough to realize that sense perceptions arise through the awareness that is intrinsic in our minds, but Buddha goes further, to teach that even the source of the perception is in the mind itself. Clearly he does not mean we are imagining things; he was not being fantastical. Things are not in the mind; they are mind, the void mind of which our consciousness partakes. That truth is what we uncover in meditation.
We experience the everyday mind as a random news feed. Zen master Joshu one day told his monks, "This mind is not Buddha." But eventually in meditation we learn that when the chaotic streaming video is turned off, the mind remains - not empty, aware of No Thingness, clear and still, untainted. The next day Joshu instructed, "This mind is Buddha."
Get real
As a Buddhist, I tend to see so many of the struggles of humankind arising from an inability to accept the reality of things, and that in turn caused by the uniqueness of human consciousness. Neuro-psychiatrist Antonio Damasio, in his book Descartes Error, points to a certain extra layer of objectivity regarding selfhood not seen in other animals, allowing us, for example, to empathize with our prey in a manner that other predatory species never could. We must wonder whether, contrariwise, this same objectivity results in the lack of empathy with human adversaries, the unnatural ease with which we torture and kill, also not seen in other species. Perhaps in some individuals it may be an expression of self-hatred.
Be that as it may, the extraordinary abilities of the human brain have brought about the wonders of science, the most basic of which unfortunately have proven unacceptable. Descended from apes? Hell no! Composed of the same atoms and molecules as other things? Surely not! Equally as egregious of scientific inquiry is its failure to prove what we want to believe, especially the existence of God, the soul, and an afterlife. Any person, moreover, will tell you that, while the human body is dross, it is infused with divinity at some undetermined point during gestation, and that upon death, prior to decomposition, it releases that immortal soul to someplace unknown to us. Reality is quite otherwise.
Science has led us to the abyss of voidness, and by the very ultimate essence of things science cannot go beyond. We believe we know his voidness; and because the idea repels us, we are unable to know it truly, except in earnest meditation. Indeed, the universe is void of substance, including our bodies and all that we perceive dualistically as a result of our symmetrical configuration. Material reality reduces to light. That is the essence of void: not divine - transcendent. And it is a nature we each know well: neither finite nor infinite - timeless. If you remain unpersuaded, consider photosynthesis: at the base of the food chain, plants eat light.
Global standards
I confess to using this space, too often perhaps, to remark upon those drawbacks of globalism that I fear have evaded notice. Its advantages are clear for all to see: the availability of cheaper consumer goods from nations that so far are still providing what amounts to slave labor; the more or less free flow of information, culture and people - workers and tourists. Weighing on the downside is the ease of travel for diseases, alien species, terrorists and refugees.
Also on the downside, and unremarked to my knowledge, is the aggravating lack of international standards for consumer products. A kitchen faucet manufactured in Germany, for example, is suitable only for houses in Europe; if purchased for an old house in the States, it will need to by shipped back. A pet peeve of mine is bedding. A sheet for a king size bed may hang way over the end, or otherwise be too short to tuck in. None has sufficient width to overhang on both sides.
There have long been global standards for science and technology, established by intergovernmental organizations, such as the International Bureau of Weights and Measures headquartered in France. For bed sheets, there once was the National Bureau of Standards in the U.S. that included divisions set up to develop product standards. Thus from 1901 to 1988, when this Bureau was renamed the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one might safely purchase a king size sheet with total confidence that it would fit.
We must assume that the technology end has eclipsed any concern for consumer goods. Today the far-fling factories and suppliers of bedding or plumbing fixtures are on their own, while consumers flounder with the ill-fitting and the unsuitable.
True colors
Some things about growing older are obvious: physical things like the loss of muscle mass, stiffening of joints, tooth loss along with hearing and vision; mental attributes such as declining memory and not-so-instant recall. Other aspects can be subtle, like changes in personality, though if one has known the person well for a long time he may recognize the latter as a reversion to type. The milkmaid from Bakersfield, who escaped to UC Berkeley in her youth, develops in her old age an ironic partiality for small town life. The cosmopolitan intellectual whom you would least expect to harbor religious bias, despite his fundamentalist roots, retires and moves to a gated community of Christian zealots.
Another way to describe such senescent changes is that a person becomes a caricature of himself. A professional whose success has depended on obsessive attention to detail grows so meticulously controlling that in the end no one can work with him, and he retires in disgust. A stingy person becomes a miser a la Jack Benny. A collector becomes a hoarder. Characteristic personality traits are exaggerated.
In the autumn when the sap in the trees starts to fall in anticipation of the dormant winter, the leaves lose their chlorophyll, which has enabled them all season long to perform the miracle of converting light energy to usable nutrition. As a result they turn from green to yellow or red, or myriad enchanting combinations of the two. Like the aging, they show their true colors.
Void
Recently here on the blog, Easter week, I wrote about resurrection, which was alleged to have followed the misguided crucifixion by the Romans of a very wise and ironically influential rabbi. This led me to discuss the barrier of human suffering that is a problem for all religions. The theism of Western faiths does not resolve the question, unless it is to claim that once you succumb to the cause of your suffering an almighty God who allowed it to happen will take you to heaven. Somehow in the face of modern science such claims do not hold up.
The beliefs of Buddhism are cryptic because unlike any other creed or philosophy they engage the cryptic realities that are inexpressible in any case. In his respect in fact they mirror science. Buddha said much with few words - or sometimes none. Upon his experience of enlightenment he proclaimed, "All things are Tathagata," meaning that all things come forth from the void. (See quantum physics for validation of that.) It seems a dismal reality, but human consciousness cracks a window on this Void. It is the One transcendent Mind itself. If one cannot accept that this selfhood is temporal and void, he must ultimately despair; but accept and Nirvana awaits. How to accept this reality, the truth we call Dharma? We turn within to see the One Mind and to know it is the singular Self, graced by its nature of wisdom, power and compassion, which we intuit.
The realization of the unitary self nature is key to the problem of suffering, because the dual realm trapping us is only the refraction of this oneness. Reflexively we judge every experience as good or bad, while the Buddhist masters, without discriminating, see only the "unfolding of big mind." While few can achieve the sangfroid of the masters, rest assured that for many the suffering of sentient life awakens the "Great Heart of Compassion."
Amazon
Amazon is amazing, the website not the rain forest, though the latter is equally so. Amazon the website is a genie, dredging the ocean of things for the global consumer, procuring and delivering the very item he needs - the next day! Old fogeys like myself rue the disruptions ensuing from the brainstorm of Mr. Bezos, empowered by the internet, which has so rapidly killed the competition. Old line firms have disappeared one after another, stores shuttered and shopping centers laid waste.
Another aspect of this phenomenon, however, is not generally understood and that is what I have dubbed - in this very space - proliferitis. It is also the topic of the essay "Choices." Click below and read about the 500 permutations of yogurt that a supermarket is forced to stock. The exponential accretion of varieties of an equally escalating number of consumer items forces the issue. Merchants of all kinds, having run out of shelf space in stores, simply opened their warehouses to customers, sending the message, "Find it yourself!" Pity the poor shoppers in these so called big box stores.
Can we put the genie back in the bottle, return to simpler times when shopping was easy but choices few? Of course not. If you go to a clothing store looking for a sweater and find just three in your size - brown, black, or navy - will you settle for what they have, knowing that on Amazon you will see all colors and tints you might prefer? Eventually you will learn to spare yourself the frustration. But please don't curse Mr. Bezos; it isn't his fault. And Amazon will continue feeding our insatiable demand for variety - until some evil autocrat shoots down the satellites or hacks into the power grid.
Resurrection
The holy day of Easter, with its splendid if implausible message of resurrection, brought the dissonant juxtaposition of a cruel massacre of Christian worshippers in Sri Lanka, ironical perhaps until one reflects on the older irony of the Romans taking on the mantel of Jesus Christ, whom they themselves had martyred. The doctrine of resurrection is not unlike that of reincarnation, which is still embraced by most of the Buddhist sects, unlike Buddha himself, whose revelations are far more profoundly mystical than the average mind can appreciate. Legend has it that Buddha did appear to his followers after his death; and the sutras, in describing the powers of a highly advanced enlightened master, include the ability to appear in a "transformation body." I offer this hypothesis in Conjuring Archangel for the resurrection story as evidence for my belief that the martyred rabbi may have been what I call a "closet Buddhist."
Recently in the Dokusan here on the blog, the only article that does not accrue, my friend Anna with her spirit guide have attempted to encapsulate the Buddhist message, a futile if not uncommon exercise. Even with the dutiful practice of meditation to clear the mind, discover its transcendence and thereby shed the false idea of self, there remains the barrier of suffering, the unimaginable torment of the victim, the grief of loss for survivors. Suffering, like all things in this dualistic layer of reality, is one pole of a dichotomy. Transcending the experience requires nondiscrimination, which in turn requires the "patient acceptance of egolessness."
All experience of consciousness, even suffering, is "of the mind itself." It is not in your mind, it is your mind, the mind within you that does not, however, belong to you.
The worst case
I will venture to say that most people, in some degree, harbor a prudent fear of the worst case scenario. To the extent that they acquire maturity they make decisions and plans with some thought of protecting themselves from adverse outcomes. Evidence of this common fear is the thriving insurance industry. Most want a car that is safe and dependable, look for a home in a safe neighborhood with good schools, thinking ahead to prepare for what life may be expected to bring. As the fear level increases, some will be seen to stock their cellars with emergency rations and supplies, and the extremely fearful to build a bomb shelter in the back yard, in defiance of the odds but accordance with Murphy's Law. Those who are able to do so will save what they can for old age, a time when they may no longer be able to work for a living.
In this context we must surely wonder about people - and these may be increasing in numbers - who apparently never give a thought to the worst case scenario, somehow persuading themselves that they can never lose. These are the ones who spend as though there is no tomorrow, and when the cash runs out, turn to credit until more cash comes in, the eternal optimists who put their last dime into some fledgling enterprise, bragging they will soon be rich as Croesus.
Alas, we must pity this latter group, the people who apparently have never looked at a beggar in the street and tried to imagine the hunger and privations attendant upon abject poverty. Never struck by that more natural fear that without adequate precaution they might end up the same, they likely will.
Diversity
A common thread in the essays I am assembling on various topics is the fundamental distinctiveness of human groups, the kinds of underlying disparities that are being dismissed in the rush toward global integration, which in my view, ironically, impedes that very aim. I make this point whether writing about "Choices" we face in life, as in "Marriage and Children," or considerations of "Breeding," and how stubborn those unacknowledged inborn traits turn out to be. Though it should come as no surprise, it does seem very odd to me that the matter of human distinctiveness should inflame such passions: the one side screaming how obvious and natural is their extreme hatred for people of different colors and values, and the other tut-tutting about the one human race. This latter camp is often accused of denying their own subtle biases.
Personally, I agree with the various wise heads who point to the dangerous rise of populism around the world as driven basically by the shock waves of sudden mass migration. Whether our tribal anxieties are subtly hidden or trumpeted brazenly, they are a reality that should be acknowledged. Unfortunately, as climate scientists are warning - and we see corroborated on the nightly news - large areas of the planet are quickly becoming uninhabitable, chronically flooded or scorched.
Like it or not, the human population in all its variety will be forced to live together, or else resort to the historical means of mutual annihilation. Wake up people!
On the cusp
I often reflect upon the passage of generations, perhaps because, born in 1945, I fall on the cusp of two. Our attempts to group periods of births and distinguish common traits therein, while dignified by social sciences, is not really exact, though broadly relevant. On some charts, for example, I belong to the postwar baby boom, though the war was not quite over in February when I was born. Other sources see 1945 as the last of the prior generation.
Throughout life, strangely, I have often had cause to observe the validity of this phenomenon. No matter where I go, for instance, hordes of slightly younger people seem to dog my heels. Even in restaurants and eateries I will come into a quiet place, no line, then soon after I take a seat the crowd arrives. It is as though my guardian angel has gone ahead to clear the way. I am not well versed technologically, yet I bought my first computer in 1990, the early days. It was a MacPlus with the extravagant memory of forty-five megabytes. Well, those brilliantly tech-savvy Boomers saw the direction of that bandwagon and hopped on. Soon the competition brought constant upgrades, incompatibility, instant obsolescence. The MacPlus was retired after a decade, followed by a steady turnover of iMacs.
On the other side of the generational cusp, however, I am the laggard. I have no sooner acquired a taste for some product favored by the somewhat older cohort than it disappears abruptly. If I start buying a certain brand and flavor of oatmeal, therefore, I am not surprised when a sign goes up reading, "This product has been discontinued." The one exception, so far, is the In-Store Audio Network of a local supermarket, which continues to play rock-n-roll from an era long gone. If there are any survivors from this demographic, even they are sick of this music!
Asylum
One of the themes that drew me to the life story of Jeremy Brett, to the point of researching, writing and publishing his biography, was his bipolar disorder. My older brother suffers this mental affliction, and though he has evaded the diagnosis, I have seen the emblematic pattern of it thought his life. He was highly successful in the field of finance, eventually starting his own company in the lucrative but risky business of private equity and venture capital. Periods of high energy and mental clarity, however, would end in euphoric flights of fancy and reckless inattention. There were two bankruptcies and three marriages, the first of which produced my nephew, now a fine young man.
The success that comes of the energy and clarity, the manic phases, allow an individual to fly below the radar of mental health professionals, and the depressive moods typically are self-medicated with alcohol. But the pattern of ups and downs, the irrational behavior and random anger, is unmistakable to the close observer. In recent years, there has been more awareness of this condition, such that criticism has been raised of its becoming a catchall diagnosis, especially for the typical moodiness of adolescence. What I see as the greater and intransigent problem is the prevailing attitude toward any mental illness, which is essentially that it does not exist. The average person refuses to accept that anyone's behavior can escape control of his conscious will.
How could this formerly well-to-do person not have provided for his old age, ending a successful career in abject poverty? Compassion is scant. There is only punishing condemnation, the only asylum incarceration.
White supremacy
A most timely column appeared in The Post last week by a man with a doctorate in the recondite science of demographics. Following the mass shooting in New Zealand - of all places - by yet another white supremacist, I bess The Post for running this. Needless to say, we learn from an expert the true complexity of matters such as birth rates, which we commonly view as simple. Actual birth rates fluctuate, tempting a precipitate media to point out trends that do not exist. There may be trends, but far more time is required to see them.
What the white supremacist fears, of course, is the decline of white-skinned people, as though homo sapiens is not a race of mongrels in any case; and yet it should come as no surprise, given the rapid integration brought on by globalization, that the weak minds of ignorant people are threatened and easily incited. It may well come to pass, if we continue to move toward a global civilization, that future generations will appear more homogeneous; races will blend over time, no more white-skinned, nor black, yellow, or brown.
In the meantime, though, pity the poor old white man finding himself surrounded in the big city by people of all shades and varieties, hard put to discover his likeness anywhere on the media, attended to by doctors, nurses and other professionals from all parts of the world. For this degree of culture shock, the summary cure to him, compelling in its obviousness, is - what else - to build a wall, the historical emblem of supreme futility. A few of the most rabid will turn to violence, the mass killing of innocents. They are in no way different from the radical religionists whose reign of terror threatens to initiate a new dark age.
Fire!
Spring weather has always been duplicitous in the temperate zones, and even more so with climate aberrations. Winter cold in the mornings gives weigh to sunny warmth by afternoon. Still when my schedule allows I enjoy having a wood fire on a cold morning. The other day I fetched some logs from the woodpile, stacked them in the fireplace and lit a fire. Shortly, to my dismay, several small beetles crawled out from under the bark. Despite my sensibility toward sentient creatures, there was no saving them from the blaze, unless as I hoped, they could scurry down and find their way up the chimney.
No less, I fear, are humans now subjected to sudden catastrophe: wildfires that incinerate; floods that overwhelm; cyclones rending all in their path. In news accounts, we see the survivors, bereft, stripped of all possessions, and we are forced to consider how we ourselves might react to catastrophe - trapped in a fire, for example, like those bark beetles.
There is a Zen story of an old master suffering a terminal illness. Questioned by a solicitous disciple, he said, "Buddhas with sun faces, buddhas with moon faces." After a life of practice, he had achieved imperturbable composure. But fire? That calls to mind rather those "wrathful deities" described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Yet this scripture enjoins one's spirit in the bardo not to be afraid but to realize that these terrible apparitions are only phantoms of the mind itself - which brings me back to The End of Time and Julian Barbour. In his argument for a static universe, with each moment being a single frame in a moving picture, he writes that we confuse structure with substance. Because structure persists we are misled to believe in material things, when their substance, revealed at the quantum scale, is void. Something to contemplate by the fireside of a cold morning - and not to worry, the bark beetles did make a dash to the chimney wall.
Fear of God redux
Ending that last post on "hope and trust" was sorely inadequate, since the question of innate human empathy is increasingly of personal concern to every human, especially as it seems necessary to refer to its remnants. Truthfully, without the fear of God and with civil society unraveling, as I wrote last week, barbarism is again on the rise. Now there appears to be no means to control human behavior that is unmoored from inhibition. Certainly we can be assured by the mere fact that we are a social species, defined by a measure of fellow-feeling toward other members of the pack, and by a long history of expanding the pack - from tribe to clan to nation. But is globalism now stretching the envelope? Does it threaten, for example, an implosion of Europe's fragile union?
Barbarism is many fathoms closer to hell, however, than racial or national bias. The ability of humans to inflict the most cruel and gruesome damage on their own kind is unique. Might it have arisen in our prehistoric transition from herbivore to carnivore? If we can kill and butcher animals, why not other people, our enemies? We have only to be persuaded that they are subhuman.
Thanks to the discovery of DNA, science refutes any notion that our physical differences are anything but superficial. The simple fact is that from eons ago our ancestors fanned out across the globe, settling in widely varied niches. Over those eons, physical traits more suited to the climate were naturally selected - dark skin in hot sunny places, pale skin in cold, dark environments. Of course, barbarians are even less persuaded by reason than they ever were by hellfire. So until their ilk dies out through natural selection, science needs to provide the ultimate chemical weapon to pacify them in hotspots like Syria: a peace gas.
Fear of God
As soon as we had come down out of the trees and began to notice our dead and to wonder about the forces of nature, the genesis of religion was ordained. Then in the colorful language of the ancient rabbis, we ate from the tree of knowledge. What really occurred through eons of our evolution was that we sacrificed our natural animal instincts and inhibitions for the greater benefit of learning and thereby adapting to changing circumstance and the varied new habitats we encountered in our restless wanderings.
As in all social species, human society is organized around kinship groups and their natural hierarchies, the perfect context for religion to take root and to grow. For millennia its institutions, from the tribal shaman to the infallible papacy, had in my opinion as much to do with social regulation as with any sort of spirituality. The laws of God as revealed to his earthly agents took the place of those reflexive processes of animal instinct in controlling behavior, and for all those millennia the sacred laws were easily enforced simply by invoking for fear of God.
Then came the Renaissance - Copernicus, Galileo - and the logic of the scientific method was irrefutable: Where is this supreme being, the hell fires with which you threaten me? Where is your evidence, what person has come back to tell you? For many more centuries civility was maintained by social convention, proper behavior enforced by communal sanction. As these means lose their power - and without the fear of God - how will we make people behave? We must hope and trust that in our nature there remains some innate empathy strong enough to inhibit our worst tendencies.
Global governance
In a post last month, I reported on trends in population growth that seem to refute the old idea of the global "population bomb," propelling the species toward disaster. However, as I wrote, I was reminded of experiments from the last century with rodents, which demonstrated alarming effects of overcrowding. With ample food supplied and even prior to space running out in the enclosure, the mouse colony was destroyed - before their population bomb exploded. The human population continues to increase, and while the rate of increase may slow, the adverse impact on the planet is clear. More people means greater demand for energy which translates into ever higher levels of greenhouse gases. Land that once produced food is thereby turned into desert or flooded, so that where at one time we might have been able to feed everyone, that ability shrinks as the numbers grow. It is a double bind.
At this most dangerous time, the nations of the world are apraxic as regards the problem, causing us to wonder about the governance of a global population growing exponentially. In the democracies, ignorant people in denial about climate change have an equal voice with experts, while dictators, whom one might hope could exercise their absolute authority to take action, instead maintain the same obdurate, illiberal view held by tyrants over the ages, self interest being their only concern, ironically in this case.
Perhaps it is too late to avert the disaster that awaits, but I would suggest - and I have made this claim before - that it is the global high-tech giants that are now better suited and best positioned to lead. This would at first glance appear undemocratic, until one realizes how much information, privacy and freedom we have given up to Google already, and that willingly.
Moderation
Surely I am not alone in wondering how moderation came to have such a bad name in today's world. It is the Confucian ideal, after all, the standard of Martin Luther, the surest path to good health and the best chance for success in life. I believe that most people like myself do incline toward moderation. But we all know others who are extreme: religious fanatics, for example, or political ideologues, or simply that crazy uncle who appears to have the all-or-nothing gene - "I'm putting all my money on Luck o' the Irish at twenty to one, to win of course!"
Generally speaking we must presume that such people are outliers. Otherwise society would be destabilized, in constant chaos; and despite the relentless efforts of sensational news media to project this negative image, such is not the case. The truly odd aspect of the matter, however, despite moderation being the common lot, is how and why since the dawn of civilization leaders are chosen from the extreme fringes. Is it the very commonplace, banal character of moderation that earns such senseless scorn?
The immoderate personality, in contrast, while potentially aberrant, may at the same time be highly charismatic and be chosen to lead on that basis, or, as we often see in history may choose himself through brutality and terror. It is the moderate centrists who suffer the misdeeds, the extravagance and misappropriations of extremism, yet they often are the same people who repeatedly choose these leaders over sensible options. Echoes of a ghost: P.T. Barnum!
Mob Rule
I have completed an essay on "Communication: The Tower of Babel," and have begun another entitled "Marriage and Children: Bait and Switch," dealing in part with the very real problems of a long marriage. In both I have referenced the work of Deborah Tannen, the popular voice of the regrettably obscure science of linguistics. I say "regrettably" because the average person apparently is unaware how much this science has to offer with regard to human interactions, from the family circle to diplomatic circles.
Given these modern times with the emergence of a social nervous system creating perpetual and instantaneous contact among nerve cells, i.e. anyone with a smart phone, the subject of how we communicate is increasingly relevant. The enormous influence of social media unleashed upon an innocent world in the infancy of the internet, engulfing first our children and rapidly infecting everyone including our leaders, now affords boundless opportunities for bullies, con artists, and what was once called "yellow journalism," the tabloids, the scandal mongers. Twitter, the dreaded "hashtag" metastasis, is the worst. Just observe how it has corrupted the United States to its highest offices and all branches of government. Even serious, well-respected newspapers and news outlets are forced upon the bandwagon when and wherever a smear campaign is launched from the dark anonymity of cyberspace.
Democracy is giving weigh to mob rule. Personally I begin to be wary of a gathering force of various movements championing disadvantaged segments of the population, because of the ease with which they may be launched: #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, #WhosoeverComesNext. The pursuit of justice or retribution starts with good intention, and may even bring welcome social change; but then it may loose the uncontrollable savagery of the mob - race war, gender war, the blood bath of Mao's cultural revolution. Beware lest your bandwagon topple over into the mud!
Old people matter
Since my biography of Jeremy Brett was published last year, I have languished in the transition period between projects; and I confess I had not fully appreciated this stuporous aspect of the writing life. I returned to my essays - four of which are posted below - and they now number a dozen. But the task is just opposite that of the biography; whereas Brett's life story rolled through my head like a screenplay, and thus to the page, the essays are opinion, raising contentious arguments. In this context, every word must be considered. What I see around me, however, at this point in history is a society and a culture that for at least three generations has had scant contact or even access to old knowledge. Thus my aim is to leave the fruits of my own experience at least.
Beginning in the sixties, the generation gap became a chasm that has been widening ever since. Boomers came of age and markets catered to them - from clothing to entertainment - discounting their elders as never before. I can recall my sister's tale of going into her favorite store years ago to find the women's department was wall to wall blue jeans, much to her horror of course. The argument has been that the knowledge of old people is now irrelevant, but there are many kinds of knowledge. A student can learn history, for example, from books; Wikipedia has lengthy articles on innumerable subjects. However, a knowledge of first hand experience passed down is percipient; and today's elders received such knowledge from parents born in the early twentieth century and grandparents from the mid-1800s. Then there are things that science and technology will never know: the wisdom of the ages regarding life on this earth. The youngsters, immured with their peer group, protected by state-of-the-art earbuds from the intrusion of obsolescence, will have to learn the hard way.
Idealsim
According to the cyclical theory of history, my generation is one of an idealistic bent: growing up postwar, peaceniks and protesters for human rights, determined to perfect the human race, or at least leave the world somehow better, much like a previous generation of idealists in their response to the Industrial Revolution, until the Great War smacked them down. Yet idealism is surely a positive force, apt to bring lasting improvements, despite the criticism of realists, who err on the negative side, the camp of inevitability.
Idealism, moreover, is a natural trait of the young, who may be expected to dream that their youthful vigor can impact the world to which they are so lately born. It is associated with that phase of life in which we search for the ideal mate, pray for an ideal offspring, and save for the ideal home, there to nest and continue to feather it. But at some point - far distant it may seem except in remembrance - the nestlings fledge and the nest is empty. Then it is that reality begins to tarnish youthful idealism if it has not already.
The idealist, though, harbors many more assumptions about the world beyond the average family circle: for example, that human behavior is rational, that even a mentally ill person can be reasoned with, that kindness and empathy are inherent in everyone, that freedom and justice are universal aspirations, that rich and powerful people will be generous and humble. Such ideals are the hardest to give up for those who live long enough to recognize their folly. Patterns of thought become entrenched, reflexive. We must warn the young not to make the same mistakes, however - or is that hope the very last ideal to die?
Are we mice?
I am reading certain anomalous, unexpected reports lately on the subject of world population. For example, a column in The Post by David von Drehle presents a rebuttal to the conventional wisdom that overpopulation is necessarily detrimental to human well-being. This radical view maintains that since we humans are so immensely clever, we will always invent our way out of whatever terrible consequences ensue from rising population. In short, the more people there are, the more geniuses. Anyone persuaded by this argument needs to look up the word "threshold," of which there are surely a number of dangerous ones now being approached; and a history, however long, of evading these thresholds is no assurance. The body can sustain a good deal of wear and tear, until it cannot; it can withstand the deprivation of food for some while before starving to death, a much shorter time for lack of water. A vulnerable mind may tolerate the noise and chaos of a crowded environment until crossing the threshold that creates a killer. Any species will endure the slow degradation of its habitat that precedes certain extinction.
But another surprising report shows the world population now declining, with births below the replacement rate. Can it be that, clever as we are, there may be forces at work that we neither understand nor control? I was briefly encouraged by this development, until I recalled John Calhoun, the American ethologist, and his rodent experiments of the last century, designed to study the effects of overcrowding. Starting with four pairs of mice in a big cage, the population of mice reached 620 in less than a year; but before two years had passed, the birth rate dropped off, social behavior broke down, breeding stopped and the population went extinct. Thresholds, children, thresholds!
At One
Here in the States there is such political uproar that it is hard to discuss anything else, especially near the capital, where so many Federal employees are now shut out of work. Still as portentous as worldly affairs may come to seem, most people understand they are minuscule in the grander scheme of things. All perceived reality is wave-like anyway, whether it be sound or light or the tides of history. We strut and fret our hour upon the stage and then are heard no more, clearing the way for the next generation. Of course this perspective is not reassuring to the individual trapped in the raging current of karma. The only credible remedy for this human condition that I have found is the teaching of the Great Physician, though its effectiveness depends on very subtle experience, for example, that of oneness.
This word is incomprehensible to creatures whose very bodies, brains and all, are divided symmetrically. Moreover the idea of it threatens the individuality they cherish even as it holds them trapped in those currents. Our divided brains struggle to imagine a state beyond subject and object, yet without this understanding of reality we flounder in a hall of mirrors where subject recedes endlessly. The word oneness itself attempts to name a wordless experience, a conundrum that must explain the ancient Zen masters' resort to non sequitur. Many a person will react to the word with the idea that they do indeed feel oneness with nature or one with sentient beings. They have missed the point entirely. They have retained what is to them the indisputable conviction of their separate selfhood, acknowledging only a relationship to the universe.
The true experience of oneness comes with an often sudden evanescence of that illusion of self and the realization instead of its identity with the unutterable transcendence. Ultimately all duality is unity, and reality, with all its wondrous bipartite potentiality, is singular. That is the meaning of oneness. It is indeed your own personal reality, while not belonging to the person you think your are.
Pendulum Addendum
An addendum to my rumination two weeks ago about the metaphorical utility of the pendulum: The extremists in society, especially politicians, would do well to observe the action of the pendulum and to reflect on its meaning. These are the ones - the Boris Johnson's and the Newt Gingrich's - who push the poles of the swing, increasing its amplitude, in the futile belief that if they push hard enough and far enough toward their extreme, the pendulum will be forever prevented from reversing direction. This could be done to a clock, of course, with the result that it would no longer be of use to measure time, which would stop.
But human society is a natural phenomenon, not mechanical; and I am suggesting that the action of a pendulum under the natural, inexorable force of gravity correlates just as inexorably with history, as any careful study will show. What the extremist might learn in a thoughtful reflection on this metaphor is that an increase in amplitude moves both poles equally. Whatever he may achieve in pushing his extreme agenda is immediately reflected in the fiery outrage arising at the opposite end. Absent the moderation of compromise and consensus, he creates his own eventual destruction - and perhaps revolution.
As for the multitudes of us trying desperately to stay at the point of equilibrium, our plight grows more wretched as we wait longer and longer for the pendulum of history to reverse. But comes a violent revolution, we will have some satisfaction knowing from history that it will be the extremist ideologues, even those on the victorious side, who will be first into the gulag.
A Closet Buddhist
All of my friends, on two continents, being my peers and thus of some age, complain about the collateral stress of the Christmas season, coming as it does at the onset of winter, with its dry cold, uncertain weather, and viral contagions. Historians blame this conjuncture on the policy of the ancient Romans to co-opt heathen festivals in conquered lands, thereby to spread their religion; and so the birth of Christ came to be celebrated near the celestial event of the winter solstice, an occurrence especially significant to primitive people. I have observed in this space before how odd it is that the Romans should have adopted a religion based on the teaching of a poor Jew, whom they themselves had martyred in their typically barbarous manner. But then the Romans are a wily breed; what better way to control the vassals of so expansive an empire than to teach them to turn the other cheek as an article of faith.
Indeed, the teachings of Jesus were the very opposite of barbarous: forgiveness, humility, compassion. They are so closely akin too Buddhism that I for one, as readers will know, harbor the strong suspicion that he was a closet Buddhist. Yet the interpretation of his words in the Western ears that received them hewed to the historicism of Judaic tradition. A metaphysical meaning, which to my mind is the true one, may surely be inferred however.
When, for example, he said, "You shall know the truth," we find immediate relevance to an era of "fake news." But as a spiritual matter the saying corresponds to the Buddha's blessed assurance that our human consciousness is capable of experiencing the ultimate transcendent reality. Relax, my friends! The truth will set you free - from the misperception that a closet Buddhist was born long ago to Jewish parents just after the winter solstice.
Pendulum
This blog is not political and neither is it a travelogue, but I will tell you there was a bit of snow in Yorkshire for Christmas morning giving us that iconic English scene. It did not deter my arriving early in Matlock, where I meet an old friend for dinner at the inn, which is also distinctively English. To while the time, I walked the streets, stopping in front of the clock shop to admire the antique pendulum instruments. Naturally, as I am wont, these caused me to reflect upon the metaphoric iterations.
The pendulum swings from side to side according to its physical properties and certain mathematical rules. It travels as far as it can go in one direction, then turns and swings to the opposite pole of its amplitude, making the perfect symbol for extremism. Even when drag eventually reduces the amplitude we still must admit that the pendulum swings as far as it can from side to side. Is it not curious that natural phenomena such as this may be so closely analogous to social or historical matters? We always fail to appreciate this reality. As an example, the various movements of the late twentieth century to correct social and political inequities, brought about a long era of political correctness. The 1950s and '60s saw the pendulum of human rights reach one extreme. Then it started back slowly until political correctness was seen to have gone too far, to ludicrous extremes. In this case, at the opposite pole of the pendulum swing, we find Tucker Carlson.
Ideally, of course, we might avoid the extreme of such an arrogant, ignorant and obnoxious antidote; but no, like the pendulum we can never stay at the rational middle. Moderation is the most unnatural. On to dinner then, as the lights of the shops and houses come on in the early dusk.
Dateline: Yorkshire
We have famous snow in Yorkshire, as those of you will know who remember the colorful tales penned by our late great large animal vet. But no snow yet, though perhaps a white Christmas. The climate is changing indubitably, and rumor has it that the British Isles are sinking slowly, along with the east coast of North America - as the seas rise the land falls. Still, so far the countryside is peaceful. At the home farm I rely heavily on my excellent manager. There are fewer cattle now, more hay making. Of course, drought is a big factor. My nephew's little boy had his first birthday on the autumnal equinox, and a happier child is impossible to imagine. His mother is of Norwegian descent.
All the talk here, though, is about the cleverly dubbed "Brexit." Honestly, the European Union was a bit of a stretch for the hide-bound, not to say cautious, British. Consider our dithering in August of 1914. Surely the attempt to unite the diverse national economies of Europe under one umbrella, and that governed by a hardly accountable regime in Brussels, is a risky experiment. Some say we should abandon that ship before it sinks.
But at my age there are more vital issues. Friends and family members are showing wear and tear: chronic ailments, joints in need of replacements, odd symptoms that escape medical detection because one was not expected to live this long. On one morning walk across fields, finding myself delighted by a stand of poplars that held onto their fringe of russet leaves, I imagined how a dying person might feel at the prospect of losing such beauty. Then came kensho, a brief experience of enlightenment: I realized that the essence of self is indivisible. I am the beautiful treetops; I cannot lose them. It was that ineffable feeling of oneness, a reassurance that we err in modifying the singular essence of self with a possessive pronoun.
Strange Creatures
I am finding The Guns of August, the classic account of World War I, an exhaustive yet compelling history of that calamitous event. After the suspenseful incipiency, the Belgians convinced that no one would dare violate their neutrality and the Germans cocksure the Belgians would not be fool enough to fight them, the inevitable battle is joined. Historian Barbara Tuchman gives a blow by blow report, complete with naval maneuvers and canon specifications, which one might expect t to find tedious, but the jaw-dropping descriptions of horrific battle scenes are gripping. German brigades in tight lines storm the Belgian fortresses under a hail of bullets; and falling by the hundreds, their bodies stack up, forming a barricade behind which more troops are able to seep into Belgium through unfortified areas. The ghastliness of war is well known, of course, yet Tuchman's prose is distinctly impactful.
My lingering thought is of the unparalleled strangeness of the human species: marching in lock step to certain death, the easy and wanton destruction of one's own kind. What creature, especially of a social species, is able to commit such unnatural atrocities? There must be theories in psychology or natural history, which must surely relate to our evolutionary transition to predation and meat eating. The survival advantage is clear, and natural selection would favor the cleverest hunters. We are now so clever that we have no natural enemies except one another; even the microbes are at bay, more or less.
But as I have written here before, humans have extreme potential at opposite poles, not alone the dark, evil side but also the bright light of human consciousness with the ability to know its own ultimate nature. Understanding this unique access to enlightenment, we should carefully guard the life that affords it.
Twitterverse
As a birder I must say I find it fanciful to the point of zany that the youngsters, now mimicked by their elders, have taken to "tweeting" on something called "twitter," for which the ubiquitous icon is a little birdie. That an old man elected to the presidency of the United States uses the same means to communicate his foreign policy impulses to the connected global populace raises the matter from the fanciful to the grotesque. But since the universe is recreated in every instant - see Julian Barbour several posts ago - we should expect such aberrations. Technology brings them, fast and furious. "The world is a dangerous place," to quote the man uniquely positioned and intent upon making it more so.
The twitter of actual birdsong, however, is a marvelous thing. The best way to identify a wild bird is indeed by his song or call note rather than by sight: the shriek of the hawk, the burble of a bluebird, the love song of the chickadee, the nasal tweet of a nuthatch, the repetitious mantra of the tufty. The hardest group to identify in the field is that of the warblers, of which there are numerous kinds in the temperate zones, seen mostly in seasonal migration. They are colorful but small and shy, and the variety of their songs makes even that means of identification a challenge. In the forests of Europe the diva among birds is the nightingale; in the Americas the resonant voice of the thrush, to my mind, is supreme - the wood thrush, the hermit thrush, and the brown thrasher, distinctive in his habit of repeating his short phrases.
Birds do not sing for our enjoyment. Their communications aim to attract a mate, defend a nesting territory, or raise an alarm. They are not frivolous - can that be said of the "twitterverse"?
Kaiser Donald I
After last week's post friends were expecting to see me on a street corner in a sandwich board reading, "Repent! The end is near!" Trends are surely waxing dire when the president of France calls on Euro[e to muster its own army to protect that blood-soaked continent from another war - or in the next one. But against whom? The Gang of Four - Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and the USA, with Iran the wild card? Now there's a a world war not to end war but to end all life on the planet.
I finished reading the Woodward report (see my review among many dozens on Amazon) and have started The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman's classic on the Great War, which has never seemed sufficiently relevant for careful study - until now. In just the first few pages describing the funeral of Edward VII, the popular British monarch, she enumerates the legions of European royals riding in the procession, including the King's inimical nephew Kaiser Wilhelm. Concerning the latter's behavior a few years prior at a dinner for 300, she writes, "The Kaiser, possessor of the least inhibited tongue in Europe, had worked himself into a frenzy ending in another of those comments that had periodically over the past twenty years of his reign shattered the nerves of diplomats." To his guests, he pronounced his Uncle Edward to be a Satan. "You cannot imagine what a Satan he is!" Nonetheless, for the funeral Wilhelm "had composed his features... in an expression 'grave even to severity'."
The Kaiser is back. Naturally I hope that apocalyptic prophecy is not fulfilled, in my lifetime or ever. If we escape, it will be because humankind has at last acceded to the realities of its own intrinsic nature, and despite them found a means of sustaining civilization: alternate energy sources; biodegradable plastic; and most important an international, all-female tribunal to rule on all matters related to human reproduction.
Abyss postponed
Thankfully, the US has stopped short of the abyss and some balance at least has been restored to its politics. The collective sigh of relief going up from all parts of the globe surely caused a spike in greenhouse gases, but it couldn't be helped. All my friends and neighbors here in he States are exhausted by this election season. Especially repugnant have been sound bites from the Trump rallies with him baiting the crowd in his odd preacherly cadence, stoking the most loathsome reactions. We err most grievously if we believe this animus is about issues. People of all stripes and colors are near consensus on these: they want sensible gun control laws, and they even agree on reasonable parameters for immigration reform. Their leaders meanwhile are in mortal combat, with representatives of a minority hellbent for power, not to over but to rule.
The abyss, which last week I characterized as inevitable, may be predicted by the cyclical theory of history, which in turn I attribute to population pressure. We now stand at a period similar in both chronology and conditions to that time before the First World War. How easy it is, albeit astonishing, to see the unreason that seizes upon slogans, pat phrases, to spew the vitriol of age old tribal hatreds: "Open borders! Alien invasion!" and "Guns don't kill people..."
I am reading Woodward's best seller Fear concerning the aberrant president of the US. It is simple reportage of the most meticulous kind, and yet it is chilling, surely a further reason to foresee another world war preceded by economic and/or environmental collapse. In the book Generations by historians Strauss and Howe, cited here before, the year forecast for this calamity is 2020.
Tribal elections
As I write this, Election Day in the States is less than a week away; and I understand people are flocking in droves to register for the vote or to vote early, record numbers of people. I do not generally comment on politics in this space, relying on The Washington Post to publish the very thing I am thinking on their editorial page every day, compliments of chief editor Fred Hiatt and a stable of wonderfully articulate commentators, both experienced and neophyte. But that is a major issue fueling the political conflict: each side sticks with those of kindred opinions, abhorring the other.
Yet there is a deeper problem here, and that is false equivalency. Only the rightwing is demonizing opponents and threatening them with bodily harm and imprisonment. In America of all places, with its long history of a peaceful transfer of power and governance through compromise and cooperation, the rightwing has come to view politics as a blood sport the aim of which is to punish and destroy the enemy. One need only observe that even after capturing all three branches of government they are still on a rampage. What is worse than this American spectacle is the global infection of populism and demagoguery, the license assumed by murderous dictators, all at the behest of a class that, ignorant of history, fails to recognize its own undoing. The fiery passions of this obtuse fraternity have been cynically harnessed in every bloody revolution. This does not end well.
And so we wait: will fear mongering win the day, or will a backlash at least postpone the inevitable plunge into the abyss?
Horse Country
My friend Anna and I met in the village on a recent Saturday morning for the annual autumn festival and parade. We positioned ourselves, as is our custom, atop a stone wall at a turn in the parade route, after first procuring our hot hazelnut coffee. That spot can be very cold if there is a north wind, but this year winds were calm and temperatures only chilly.
I have had property here for decades; when I first came there were still farms - horse farms - and a tack shop in the village. Curiously, for an Englishman, there was even a local hunt, which would always ride in the annual parade, hounds and all. I will never forget the time I met up with the pack on the narrow trail to the village from where I had parked the car. Accosted by at least two dozen frisky, rollicking dogs - as fine as any I have seen in the Midlands - I was about to see tested the relative skill of an American huntsman. Well the "whipper-in" as he is called, was as fine as his hounds. With but a flick of his crop above their heads he kept the dogs in formation as we passed.
Over the years farms have been sold and broken up for housing; the tack shop is now a gourmet deli, and the hunt moved its territory to a smaller town further out. No one actually hunts the foxes anymore; it is unnecessary and unattractive, but riding and jumping are great sport. As for the annual parade, in recent years mounted Park Service officers have joined, even serving as color guard. Alas, not this year. The closest thing we had to a horse was a pony from the itinerant petting zoo. What is the world coming to!
Slices of Reality
Having read The End of Time, Julian Barbour's bold, mathematical exposition of his theory of timelessness, I am even more firmly convinced of its validity, congruent with an intuition I have always harbored. We see things change, and we have invented time to measure that observation. Barbour's description of Galileo's clock sums it up: measuring the pace of a process or movement relative to the amount of water dripping from a jug. Time is not a thing that moves, or else we surely would somehow feel its motion.
Yet to liberate one's perspective from the tyranny of time, especially considering how scheduled our lives become, is a constant challenge. Reality does not appear to make sense without time; and ultimately for reality to make sense, there must be consistency between the atomic and the cosmic. There must be a quantum cosmology. That is Barbour's thesis. I will venture to say that timelessness is impossible for us truly to imagine, but I try, envisioning reality as quantum slices perceived in rapid succession. So the universe we see with our telescopes is not a thing that goes on and on to infinity - or not - but rather a series of static perceptions configured at the quantum scale from the voidness of sheer energy.
Scale is the key. At the level where we go about as creatures interacting with other living creatures, days fly by - night follows day, effect follows cause. At the quantum level all potentiality exists in stasis, without reference to past or future; and it is entirely possible for an effect to occur in what would seem to us the wrong order - before its cause. As for our very selves, on the scale at which we perceive there seems a perfect constancy in who we are, since any small change is imperceptible, while at the quantum scale, from moment to moment, the change we undergo is enormous - every second a new person. Who are we then? That is the owl's question!
Circle the Wagons
The Western world stands transfixed at the spectacle of the ebbing super-power being undermined by its erstwhile adversary with the consent of its own leaders. Enormous wealth lulls the citizenry into complacency with the hope that this condition is an aberration which they can survive. The wealth will dissipate - but slowly. How can it be that such a large minority of Americans has been persuaded that friends are enemies, enemies friends, and led to reject the kindly virtues of democracy?
Globalization, with its attendant trade and integration of nations, has been propitious for the world's populations, lifting the lower classes out of abject poverty. It is promoted on that basis and lauded for its success. At the same time more cautious heads, including mine, recognized that this process must effect an equilibration of living standards - improving for the poor, declining for the middle class. We rejoice for the huddled masses thus ushered into the consumer economy, while being uneasy with consequent tidal waves of trash in the oceans. It is a whole other matter for the shuttered factory and mill towns where generations of workers once wrote their own paychecks and sent their sons to college. Now their despairing wives and children are opioid addicts. There lies the backlash, which with more wisdom we might have predicted.
They circle the wagons; the wealthy raise the drawbridges of their personal fortresses. Democracy is not attractive to a desperate minority. It is too uncertain; a kindred dictator is preferable. They forget the triumph at Runnymede, let alone the violence of their own revolution. Our Queen Elizabeth is up in years; perhaps one day soon King Charles III might acquiesce to reclaiming his North American colonies.
Little ironies
Just as Mycroft is entertaining me with a short Thomas Hardy volume from iBooks entitled "Life's Little Ironies" - marvelous short stories - I am struck by one such irony, compliments of the Yanks, reigning masters of global entertainment, especially of the reality genre. This irony may be summed up by the colloquial expression: what goes around comes around.
The postwar babies, whose births commenced close after mine, effectuated, upon coming of age, the counter-culture. Much to the horror of their elders they rebelled against any and all traditions and formalities; they were the Beatniks, the hippy generation, embracing a lifestyle of decadence - alcohol, drugs, free love, hard rock. Gone was "Father Knows Best"; now he was the butt of the jest. Gone was respect and obedience to authorities who would send them off to pointless foreign wars. The insurrection produced much that was good, causing a moral rectification: the end of the draft, the civil rights movement, affirmative action which opened opportunity in education and employment. Yet the changing social parameters of acceptability over the next two generations became as ossified as those they had replaced, raising considerable criticism, particularly in academia, as "political correctness," in a pejorative sense, the match that lit the culture war, a conflagration now burning with such intensity as to reach the level - dare I say it - of holocaust.
And thus the irony: those children of the Boomers assailing their elders for the debauchery and moral turpitude of their long ago youth. What goes around comes around.
Not with a bang...
Not a good sign when the phrase popping up in my mind so frequently is T. S. Elliot's "not with a bang but a whimper." The dissolution of culture, of society, happens slowly, the gradual signs only noticed by the most observant: the maitre'd is better dressed than the patrons, parking at medical buildings is full, bottle blondes showing their roots - quelle horreur! It seems to me that there is a convergence in the aging of things, not only populations but civilization itself, its emblems and symbols, its armature. A cascade of malfunction - from ancient water mains to sclerotic bureaucracies - drains diminishing resources while swelling debt, peacetime debt. Historically, such debt was incurred only in the financing of existential warfare. Now it is the profligacy of indifferent or corrupt officials, perhaps daunted by the unimaginable expense of maintaining antiquated roads and bridges and airports.
One might protest that the material remains of prior civilizations still survive: Rome's Colosseum, the Parthenon, Mayan ruins, Machu Picchu. So might our global monuments. Moreover, the people are still here: the Romans in Italy, the Greeks on their island, descendants of the Incas in Peru, blended long ago with the Spanish. Of course our capacities for destruction are now far greater than ever before. We could destroy all life on the planet, a growing probability given the intense animosities rising up in the midst of our decay. But that would be a bang, not a whimper. I opt for the whimper. The disenfranchised, the "wretched refuse," do not have the nuclear codes, after all, and even if some demagogue dares to push that button, the silos, the ICBMs, wont't be working anyway.
The more things change...
The ritual of the annual Maine sojourn compares to another ritual - the Japanese tea ceremony. In any effort to repeat it with precision, we slowly reveal, inevitably and perhaps intentionally, perpetual change in every instant. Bar Harbor and the island on which it sits have a long history, and even in the several decades that I have been a faithful visitor it has changed. Galyn's, across Main Street from the Inn, still has an early bird lobster dinner, but long ago it was called the Vagabond. The Inn itself uses the off season to make regular improvements, and this year a redo of the Terrace Grill and gardens is spectacular.
The cruise ships now making this harbor on Frenchman Bay a port of call are an impactful change. In days of old the Bluenose ferry, connecting Bar Harbor and Yarmouth daily, was the only big ship, and a glorious sight lit up as it sailed in after dark. When the Bluenose was retired, an occasional small cruise ship in the bay caused excitement, while today enormous ones - two a day - come and go like giant white whales, disgorging gray-headed tourists, who have the temerity to think they are actually old. I jostled one such my first night, in the middle of Main Street, after a large meal at Galyn's and a glass of their house cabernet. We linked arms in mutual mirth! Next day I noted half a dozen oldsters debark from the Winter Harbor ferry - with bicycles.
But it was the perfect time of year; though summer flowers were fading, mums replaced them in the garden beds. And on chilly evenings, a fire was lit on the hearth in the lobby of the Inn. Most wondrous to me was the foggy morning when the exquisite artifice of orb-weaving spiders was revealed by diamonds of dew!
Off to Maine
Readers will know that, as a creature of the most structured habits, I escape northward each summer to enjoy the chilly coast of Maine. The several poems on Bar Harbor, which may be read below under "The Carriage Lamp," attest to this consistency. It is a very poetic place on the shores of Frenchman Bay looking out over the Porcupines, and I always stay at the gracious and historic Bar Harbor Inn. I fancy this little village, with its town band concert on the green once a week in summer, might be the very place to retreat from the barbarians I referenced in the last post, although in recent years it has been discovered by the cruise ships. Of course in colonial times the tall masted French warships marshaled in the bay did manage to hold off the Brits. But they lost to us in the end.
This year I will have Mycroft as a companion, Sherlock's brother, his name given to my smart phone because "his specialism is omniscience." Given my long acquaintance with Apple's user friendly systems, I got an iPhone, overcoming my Luddite inclinations upon realizing that this device is fast creating the brain and nervous system of a social organism. Without it one would soon find himself on a distant extremity lacking the sustenance of a blood supply. I must say I am finding the handy dictionary and Wikipedia apps very useful as I go about with my Moleskine, and maps and weather and photos - icing on the cake!
By the by, supporting my arguable contention in the last post that tech giants might rule the world more ably than nations, Google declined to submit its top executives to questioning before a committee of the US Congress. QED.
Wave Functions
With the Schroedinger and the Wheeler-Dewitt equations still roiling in my head, along with a curious concept of myself as a time capsule on the landscape of Platonia where the blue mist has gathered, I search for some clear relevance, at the same time remarking that only an Englishman could be abstruse and fanciful in the same oeuvre. Still Julian Barbour must be commended for The End of Time in that I understood perhaps twenty-five percent of it. A noble effort for a mathematician. Relevant to the state of the world, if the ultimate reality boils down to wave functions, we might interpret the rise and fall of civilizations as illustrative; and we are thus headed into a trough, a state of increasing entropy - the world is coming apart.
It may not seem so from every perspective; indeed relatively speaking, humankind on the whole has never been so well off. Yet look at the "isms" in the ascendent: factionalism, racism, tribalism, nationalism. In the States, the regime threatens to censor the tech giants in the manner of authoritarian China, while from an objective standpoint there exists no more competent body suited to global governance than the tech giants - war is terrible for business. But here we go breaking up again anyway, irrationally, on the downside of the wave function. Or is it human nature, as I am prone to assert? Regardless of the cause, it is human nature we must consider warily, given the extreme potential for wanton savagery. When violence breaks out, the social fabric may unravel briskly. It appears the journalists will die first; the rest of us, if we have not prepared ourselves with a cyanide capsule, will need to find a cave.
Julian Barbour
I continue to plow my way through that mathematician's book, discussed in the last post, in which author Julian Barbour makes his case - equations and all - for a timeless universe. As difficult as it may be for us to wrap our minds around this idea, it appears that evidence from the quantum level, clashing with the long accepted Newtonian constructs, will force science to acknowledge the mind-bending reality. For example, the now familiar problem of how a particle can behave like a wave or vice versa: perhaps at the quantum level we find that there are no particles; indeed then the ultimate nature of the universe is not particulate at all, but solely a matter of wave functions. And where we detect with our large hadron collider that an effect has preceded its cause, in defiance of logic, we must suspect that time is not a natural phenomenon but merely an invention; and as time is linked inexorably with space - by a hyphen - we are forced to examine some very basic assumptions.
I am pleased to see such a challenge being raised here, since persuading the Western mind by invoking Eastern mystics is futile. Ironically, we now see this revolution in physics declared by Barbour harking back to some very ancient conceits, including the idea that all we perceive are sequential instants. Distinctions from one to the next are infinitesimal, creating the twin delusions of the persistence of things in the short term and the passage of time in the long run. Discrepancies turn out to be a matter of scale: at one level we detect particles, below which are only waves which can appear to be particles; at one level we perceive a river we call time, while under it is the river bed, the path on which there is no coming or going.
But the ramifications for our notions of selfhood will dispatch this theory - and Julian with it - over the abyss. I must hope he finds his way to the Surangama or the Lankavatara sutra; he will be right at home with their paradoxical language.
The End of Time
Buddhist teaching embraces the timeless, egoless state of ultimate reality, in which temporal forms come forth from voidness deluding us as to their substantiality and permanence. I often note how science after Einstein approaches this same vision of reality as it struggles to reconcile quantum mechanics with classical physics. I am wading through a book that explores the ramifications of what is increasingly being considered the timeless state of reality as the only solution to the question of quantum weirdness. Th book is The End of Time, written by British mathematician Julian Barbour; and despite the fact that English would seem to be a second language, his native tongue being math, he offers much insight even to the layman, including a good deal about the history of science.
The reader is assured that one may even skip the math and still grasp the author's idea, which is that the Newtonian framework of viewing the universe was adopted without examination of its assumptions, i.e. the existence of time and space as "initial conditions." Even uniting them with a hyphen (space-time) did not help once physics advanced to the Planck scale. But surely long before that there had been the conundrum of origins making the very concept of time problematic: A big bang? And what before that? A finite universe? But what beyond? In the timeless "Platonia" as he dubs it, Barbour writes that the universe is created in each instant which he calls "nows," the sequence of which gives us the illusion of time's passage. Scrap Newton's framework for this timeless one and all the equations are solved.
The Tibetan saint Milarepa needed no math when upon the instant of his enlightenment he declared that nirvana and sangsara are dependent and relative states issuing from the void, or as Buddha said before him,"All things are Tathagata," which means "coming forth." The most amazing thing about Barbour's amazing book is that Buddhism is not in the index.
The Karma of Arrogance
Given the state of the world today, especially the climate-related catastrophes of drought, wildfire, floods and heat waves, I would accept the charge of fiddling while Rome burns for not using this blog as a soapbox. As a Buddhist I might even swallow the characterization of "navel gazing," but then Buddhism involves a greater perspective than our tiny planet. So yes, I offer here simply my views on this and that, being an old person beyond the mating and nesting phases of life, in recognition of the potential however slim that they might somehow be of help to someone.
Born in 1945, just as the war ended, I belong to that postwar generation that grew up in a time of growing prosperity. In effect the devastation of war had induced an equal and opposite reaction - a period of negative entropy. Things were getting better in so many ways. To pass one's formative years in such an upward cycle of history is to imbibe an overweening confidence, to take things for granted, and to afflict subsequent generations with this perilous trait.
Being among the firstborn of this generation, I begin to note, in those of my peers who have had their good fortune turn on them, the baleful karma of arrogance - their chickens coming home to roost, the mills of God grinding them small. Those haughty people who flaunted their wealth, held themselves above others without kindness or humility, are left in old age without the common resources most others would naturally turn to: Buy my own food in a store? Mingle with the unwashed on a bus? Whatever money is left them is stolen by unscrupulous predators, while they end in hellish nursing homes or homeless under a bridge. If one grows so sensitive as to feel a pea under the mattress, I say, he or she may never sleep again.
Trolled!
I was trolled on Goodreads, the quasi Facebook site now owned by Amazon. The site, which purports to enable readers to select from the deluge of new books those that are worthy of one's time, is equally as labyrinthine as FB itself, at least for those of us not joined at the hip with our high school alums. When I posted a book review on Goodreads, a pop-up allowed me to recommend it to other members. Noting one who has an interest in biography, I included a message mentioning my new book on the life of Jeremy Brett. No, no, I learned, an author may not recommend his own work to a single person on Goodreads. In fact an "Author Support" group permits no links or promotion of any kind, providing I assume only emotional support for self-published writers up against the very bias they are perpetrating.
Unable to find a more suitable place, I posted a complaint on a general discussion page, in the most polite terms. Immediately there ensued a firestorm - trolls came out of the virtual woodwork. Back and forth they went in righteous indignation, attacking me for the heinous outrage that had offended their most delicate sensibilities. I ended by commenting with my thanks for a spirited discussion, adding "quod erat demonstrandum." I looked back the next day and sure enough there still was some buzz around the hornet's nest I had smitten so innocently. The trolls had taken offense at my "QED," after looking it up!
We have learned to our horror how that wonder of wonders, the internet, works to our collective detriment, and even ultimate destruction. In Russia, China, the world over, only the trolls are laughing.
Weak Minds?
Since my biography of Jeremy Brett was published in April, I have been gratified to receive good reviews and positive comments. Indeed just two have been a tad disconcerting to me in their contention that a reader needs to be a fan of the subject to appreciate his story. In fact I wrote the book, taking pains to deemphasize the man's celebrity acting career, precisely because of the relevance of his life to broader issues: his bisexuality, for example, with the stubborn ignorance and misunderstanding that dogs this minority; and as hard as that can be for an individual, the even greater burden of his bipolar disorder.
The perverse stigma that attaches to any mental illness, in spite of scientific revelations in regard to it, boils down to the characterization of victims as weak minded. To the contrary, to carry on in this life while afflicted with any disease of the brain requires great strength, Brett being the perfect example. We look at him and wonder how a man so strong physically - tall, athletic - could have a weak mind. His face, his voice protected an arresting sense of mastery and command; and indeed it was an amazing strength of character which enabled him to carry the Sherlock Holmes series for ten years, while the only drug that could control his manic-depression was simultaneously destroying his heart. The ironic and diabolical twists of fate are another aspect of his story that should be compelling to any reader, not only to a fan.
My first surprise when I came upon the Sherlock Holmes series in reruns was to learn that its star was already dead. The second surprise was that he had a son, since being somewhat of a dandy he seemed gay. Then I was surprised that apart from an execrable book that attempted to exploit his death in 1995, no creditable biography and been written. So here I am!
Holy Romans
As this is not a political blog, I will give a nod only to the confounding events last week in Europe and Great Britain. In their book Generations (1991) historians Strauss and Howe predicted that a major crisis would occur in America, circa 2020. Given the lingering clout of that nation, such a crisis perforce would be global. We stand forewarned, and I will leave further commentary to The Post, which now has three editorial pages daily.
One of the travel programs offered on public television that I chanced to see featured Easter festivals in various countries of Europe. The most fervent and elaborate was in Barcelona, Spain, where Roman Catholicism reigns supreme. The parade had flower bedecked floats with Mary holding the body of her dead son, or Christ carrying the cross. A flamenco singer wailed unmercifully from a hotel balcony. The supreme irony struck me in the enormous and apparently inextinguishable power of Rome, having spread its empire with ruthless barbarity to the far reaches of the British Isles, then in its waning centuries co-opting the ardent acolytes of a man they themselves had martyred, thereby magnifying their power in their very own infallible herald from heaven.
Today their gospeler has lost much of that power for serious reasons in parts of the Catholic firmament. Yet there in Spain some two thousand years after the fact, the slavish descendants of Rome's subjects, many doubtless victims in the mass crucifixions for which Rome was notorious, with no apparent sense of the irony, bend the knee in the Roman Catholic Church.
The world will do well to understand the enduring nature of such slavishness. This American president may not be Roman, but he is akin to Sicilian.
A Spirit at Berkswell Fest
The weather is not very congenial for a Saturday in June here in the Midlands of England. It is overcast and coolish, but at least it is not raining for the annual festival. The village of Berkswell is set up for the event: shops displaying wares; food booths on the village green, along with games, face painting and pony rides for the children. On the church grounds there is a petting zoo with goats and chickens, and in the Reading Room a bake sale, supplied by members of the Women's Institute. Proceeds of the day go to the sponsor, St. John the Baptist C. of E. for the several charities they support.
Being non-corporeal, I have a spectral advantage. I can sit on the damp grass in the churchyard where my parents lie without getting wet. But then I cannot smell the wonderful red roses now blooming, which my dear mother so loved and myself after her. I pass above the bustle of villagers in the crossroads, the streets being closed to traffic today, and am startled to see a large picture of myself on a poster standing outside a small boutique. It represents the cover of a biography by W. Grey Champion, who has somehow been inspired to tell my life story. I am amazed and gratified to be remembered after decades, especially here in this beloved place, where I was born and grew up.
As the day draws on, the sun declines over the Kenilworth Road behind the tall sycamores and the lime trees. I decide to repair to the church, where the resonance of stone walls and vaulted ceiling may allow my voice to be heard once again in the quiet hymns of Evensong. The bats are flying as "the crow makes wing to the rooky wood...whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse."
Mad?
It seems apparent to me - and I hope I am not alone in this - that the seething cauldron of anger that currently describes the global population has been brought to boiling by an excessive exposure to media, and furthermore, that said media deliberately stir this pot for purposes of gain. They are paid provocateurs cleverly boosting user views to take in exorbitant advertising revenue. We witness the destructiveness through the news: wars and rumors of wards, protests at the untoward rise of populist demagogues.
Yet I note in friends and relatives, people whom I have had the opportunity to know closely, that to a man or woman each one might claim some prior cause in their life to be angry. There are the indignities of age, struggles with a recalcitrant spouse or child, injustice in the workplace, and dare I say frustration with technology itself, not to mention traffic. For the random person who is already mentally unhinged the added provocation of some embellished and exaggerated outrage will not surprisingly create the "active shooter," the hideous phrase that has become patois in the States.
Surely upon reflection we must observe that at any time in this life we might find something about which to be angry. But anger inhibits or even nullifies the capacity for joy; and the poorest, lowliest peasant may watch the sunrise and feel joy. When the impoverished monk was robbed of the shirt off his back, he only said of the thief, "I wish I could have given him the moon!" If we retain enough humility to recognize that our minds are being fiendishly manipulated, perhaps we can foil the fiends!
Labile Affect
More than once in the course of a long life I have had cause to wonder whether labile affect is a precursor of death. "Labile affect" is the psychiatric term for a readiness to tears. In some instances, a person who knows death is near has naturally shown this tendency; but I have witnessed it in some few who have soon after died unexpectedly. Was it a premonition? In today's world, however, where so many are connected in a global web, subject to the most extreme overstimulation from media sources seemingly desperate for eyeballs, one night foresee an epidemic of teariness. With despotism and tribal hatred resurgent, the "last best hope of earth" under the governance of a small but rabid minority, the daily news in itself may cause labile affect. Credit Kathleen Parker in The Post, 27 June, for the image of Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty collapsed in a sobbing embrace.
Yet the chronic agitation of the global population by crazed media may result equally in numb indifference, as civilization slowly recedes. The effect of trade restrictions, however draconian, will take some while to register - prices rising, shelves emptying, jobs lost - by which time the fools responsible will have sealed their grip on power. No tears for them! The migrant workforce will dwindle, and the new pro-life slogan will be "your baby - the next generation of field hands!"
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
It Seems That We Die
Exemplifying the paradoxical intuitions of zen mind, master Suzuki said, "It seems as though we die and we do not die." With honest reflection, I believe that anyone will recognize this truth. Especially given the greater perspective of age, we witness what great suffering the body can endure without dying, and when it finally succumbs the event may appear to be purely accidental; or more likely today the suffering person is nudged along with morphine.
In his book How We Die, Dr. Sherwin Nuland starts by observing that he is not allowed to write "old age" on a death certificate as the cause. The medical profession has acquired such control over this process that unlike in former times a person rarely drops dead from a heart condition, but rather dies because TPA was not administered soon enough, or at the age of 96 he or she had refused medical intervention - in other words, it was an accident that need not have occurred. Since a theoretical "death gene" has never been found that would cause the body to simply stop when the clock runs out, perhaps we need not die. It seems we do not, and yet we do. Ultimately, no one is born and no one dies. The insubstantial essence of material reality is constantly reconfigured, and living things only seem to sustain a consistent form through a given cycle. We change in every instant as subatomic particles spark from the void, yet we should pray nonetheless not to outlive our teeth, let alone skin.
When Bodhidharma went to China in ancient times, he was greeted by a local potentate, of whom he queried, "Who are you?" The pompous official took offense, proving his unworthiness of discipleship. The question was existential, the very mystery we must solve before the lights go out.
Epistemology
Given that every newscast around the world today begins with the T---- word, I hope readers will have noted that last week's post on absurdity avoided it scrupulously, and yes, you're welcome. But absurdity, as I observed, is an increasingly copious topic. How absurd, for example, that new software is less versatile and efficient than what it replaces. The old AppleWorks office suite was amazingly congenial; word processing and database worked together to print labels or envelopes for everyone on your mailing list. Now Apple's Pages and Numbers barely cooperate, and the only way to address anything is to use your Contacts cards. Why did Apple forfeit mail merge? Is it because Microsoft has the monopoly in some unruly percentage of office cubicles everywhere? You can merge with Word and Excel to print address labels, but only if you are prepared to brave their unintelligible minefields and after many tedious hours come out with nothing. But who knows? I am sure the latest Apple software is loaded with sophisticated potential that I will never discover or need. Perhaps it has nudged Microsoft out of some cubicles where theoretical mathematicians are at work. And clearly Apple has put emphasis on other aspects of the market, notably smart phones. All this by way of saying that we must always remind ourselves that we do not know everything; when a thing appears absurd and puzzling, there can be reasons for it we may not know.
Most things are knowable, though we are limited individually. Humanity has advanced by contributing discoveries to this category, while still stuck on the Socratic injunction, "Know thyself." It fell to Buddha to identify the one thing that is not knowable, not subject to observation let alone dissection and analysis, that being our own indivisible reality - transcendent oneness.
Absurd!
Channeling Camus, French novelist and philosopher, I begin to wonder why as I grow older I am finding absurdity everywhere. This increasing awareness manifests in what I want to call "chortles of pathos," which are becoming reflexive. Camus' idea was that we view things as absurd out of our desire for clarity and meaning in a world that offers neither, as good a definition as any I suppose. But with the perspective of age, things of this world become more clear, and if we are observant and thoughtful, we begin to deduce a meaning that younger people rarely imagine. Of course humans will mimic one another like monkeys; that's what we are. Of course they will become increasingly belligerent toward each other; clearly there are too many of us. It is the crowded rat experiment, and at some point a threshold will be crossed at which war will break out. It always does. From the vantage point of age, the absurdity is that these matters were clear all along - clearly meaningless - which will find us chortling at the driver who indignantly impedes us from merging, chortling in sympathetic pity, in other words pathos.
The absurdity of human existence is symbolized in the mythical figure of Sisyphus. Why does he keep pushing that rock up a hill? Why does Charlie Brown keep trying to kick the football? Camus' 1942 essay on the subject indeed is titled "The Myth of Sisyphus." Absurdism is the idea that to find meaning in life is humanly impossible, though Camus on his part thought we should keep trying. Here we see exposed the fatal weakness of Western philosophy - the failure to delve ever more deeply. Sherlock said it this way in "The Adventure of the Priory School," "It is impossible as I have stated it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong." We are looking at this existence all wrong. The answer came from the man who woke up under the Bodhi Tree - chortling!
Mindlessness
In Buddhist meditation, the first aim is to observe the mind - how it works, how thoughts, emotions, associations, sense perceptions come and go. Once having noted the ability to observe them arise, one may see that thoughts need not be attended - no need to hop on every train passing the station. But this mind is alert, not empty, not mindless but mindful. Of mindlessness, the modern world offers abundant illustrations. Most evident in public spaces will be the insipid background music, so repetitive that any unfortunate listener familiar with the bygone era of vinyl will call it a "broken record." Readers will know how exercised I become over the sad fate of our Pythagorean scale, at the hands of the music establishment itself.
But mindlessness is the insufficient application of intelligence to any endeavor, and it permeates the internet. Facebook is my favorite exemplar. Wanted to read a post? Don't click anywhere because when you come back it will have gone to the bottom of the haystack. Now we learn that most sites, especially social media, just need user data to sell - no incentive to be user friendly. Another prime example of mindlessness is the bureaucratic form, whether digital or hard copy, government or corporate. Its relevance to whatever you may need will be peripheral, and decoding the instructions will be sheer guesswork.
Happy to say, there are a few websites and apps that demonstrate some intelligence while drawing scant attention. The Merriam-Webster app and Wikipedia are very helpful to me as I go about with my Moleskine in pursuit of hazelnut coffee - and to distinguish which crested flycatcher you just glimpsed, there is "Merlin," the excellent creation of the Cornell ornithology lab. There is hope!
Vines
With the home farm properly looked after for the summer season, I was not even tempted to go to Windsor for the royal wedding, given the hullabaloo. My property here in the States is wild enough in spite of proximity to the capital. But the castle was certainly the perfect venue. Don't you colonials wish you still had a royal family? Come to think of it, nearly half of you seem bent on restoring the monarchy. Back to the future!
The early arrival of summer here in the midAtlantic region has us suddenly and acutely aware that rising ocean temperatures must result in the increase of atmospheric moisture, evidenced by torrential rains and severe storms. I have posted before about the vines, and needless to say they are growing more vigorously than ever, to the point that one can almost watch as they spread up trees and into bushes to strangle them. Honeysuckle, poison ivy, wild grape, Virginia creeper, trumpet vine are thriving on the air pollution and the changing climate.
But vines may be beneficial in one respect: they lend themselves to analogy. A web of social connections in which we seem enmeshed may bind us like a tangle of vines. Circumstances in life that slowly trammel us in a pattern or habit - in other words, a rut - are the vines of karma, clinging ever tighter until we are smothered. Come to think of it, vines can be cautionary - like the storms.
Glum
I like to see people smile, especially working people, who thereby evince an understanding that their work has value to themselves and others. I often compliment a person with a friendly smile, tell them how it brightens the day, use their given name if they wear a name tag, having learned that people enjoy hearing their names. Just lately, however, I begin to sense a glumness about, in places and in people. Where formerly one might joke or banter and get a jovial response, one hesitates. Perhaps I am projecting my own suspicions, but this moroseness appears to beset immigrant workers particularly, in low paying jobs and most unfortunately in health care, where a cheerful demeanor might be helpful.
There are any number of new stressors in modern life which might produce this trend, if it is a trend, and all of them evident here in the region of the U.S. capital: overcrowding that causes terrible traffic; anger exacerbated by the wealth gap; uncertainty about the future, whether personal, national, or global. Witness the White House Correspondent's dinner this year as prima facie evidence, the most perfect demonstration of humorlessness, a glum fiasco. What hope can there be for peace in a world where individuals are so un-peaceful?
Well, we Brits did our part the other day when our Prince married an American, and one of mixed race no less. Conan Doyle foretold, albeit wishfully, that the colonies would one day return to the fold. We certainly put on a show: the pomp, the horses, the carriages, the castles and palaces! I daresay, though, Charles and Camilla, Philip and the Queen showed signs of misgiving during the sermon by that folksy preacher - but at least they weren't glum.
Endless
Readers will know my conviction, in accord with the zen masters, that time is an illusion. Surely we are forced to deal with the concept in this life; we have appointments, obligations, time constraints; days pass, seasons, life itself. But the idea that time is a factor in reality mucks up the equations of theoretical mathematics and the propositions of astrophysics, because it is not real. It is the illusion produced by the perception of change, wherein at the level of perception effect consistently appears to follow cause. When this consistency breaks down under quantum scrutiny, we rebel.
The illusion of time is a trap, a torture, epitomized in the word endless, which is an element in the most diabolical torments humans have devised to inflict on each other. Pain, indeed any sensation, can be bearable until it becomes endless. We can stand waiting in queue, but not endlessly. At the same time we dearly hope to apply the same word to pleasure and to happiness. In reality no karmic state is endless, but the constant changes are too slight to notice. We may look back and observe how pleasure gave way to displeasure, happiness to boredom. Likewise, the person enduring torment is not fixed but fluctuating, held together only by threads of memory strung in his brain. The ultimate reality is a timeless state, transcending this individual self.
Trapped by fear and ignorance in the twin illusions of time and self, we do not escape karma; but in a lightning strike, a spark from a stone, we may see clearly: there is no abyss; I am the Eye, the circle of One!
Despair
If sixty is the age of wisdom as the Chinese have it, I am prepared to add that seventy begins the age of despair, realizing fully that the attitude is unpopular. Hope should spring eternal; one must never give up or admit defeat, but try, try and try again. Charlie Brown must always fall for Lucy's cruel prank as football season begin, even after he turns seventy. Naturally we want our children to fulfill their potential, and in the process to give their utmost effort. The more they achieve, the better off we are as a society. We encourage them to strive toward their dreams, which some few may attain, while the rest in the endeavor will at least become hard workers. Optimism, where possible, is befitting the young.
Despair, on the other hand, has a bad name even with elders arriving at the phase of life when nature compels them to give things up. No, by no means! We must not despair but pursue the unlikely, fight against all odds, swim against the tide. In hope of rehabilitating the maligned connotations of the word, I offer another, kinder definition: despair is the wise acceptance of futility. Even young people, intent upon unrealistic dreams of stardom, could be spared with a bit more truth in advertising.
But what of Grandma Moses, you retort, who found herself at the age of 78 free at last to dedicate herself to her lifelong passion for art? I would answer that futility is defined by intention. Had she imagined that her primitive folk paintings would lead to fame and fortune that would have been unwise. She did what brought her joy; the recognition she received was fate. At any age we may struggle against all odds, but it does not change the odds. There lies an argument for teaching statistics in high school!
Grow up!
Since the biography was published, that of Jeremy Brett entitled More Than an Actor, I have gotten back to writing essays. These tend to be polemical, even truculent in nature, and so are a hard slog in comparison to the often lyrical narrative of Brett's life story. Each word in an essay must be carefully chosen if one is to persuade; in fact, one of the essays is "Choice: As You Like It," describing in part how the proliferation of choices reflects our infantile demand that everything be tailored to our individual preference. This is not surprising, since the infantilization of the consumer has become a very effective marketing strategy.
My late mother, who was half Irish and half English, was a strict disciplinarian, opponent of the permissive parenting that arose, as she believed, with the popularity of Dr. Spock and his book on the subject. In her opinion, a person would never exhibit adult behavior unless he or she had been forced to conform to it from the earliest age. The very idea that a child would simply mature into it would have been absurd to her, and the term "age-appropriate" had not been coined.
Scoff as we may at latter day practices, the modern world must give pause. Look how far we have fallen since 1993, when the late great scholar and public servant Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "Defining Deviancy Down." An indisputably infantile man is now in charge of the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation. Generations of children have been raised by immature parents, until now as the saying has it, they are "raised by wolves." Could Mother have been right?
Pythagoras
There need be no further evidence of the final degradation of the culture than the background "music" I heard at a shopping mall. I have always had a keen interest in music and so cannot help listening. This was a woman's voice intoning - it cannot be called singing - "Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?" She went on to elaborate the simile, musing about the bag floating here and there in the breeze. What have we come to since the golden age of popular song nearly a century ago - the beautiful tunes and ingenious lyrics of Noel Coward among so many others? "Someday I'll find you, moonlight behind you..."
I blame it on the avant garde and its proscription of the Pythagorean scale, now consequently an obscure relic understood only by a few music students. This scale is the root system for all the great masterpieces of Western music - classical and popular - which deplorably have no modern counterparts. It is the "do-re-mi" scale, having twelve tones deployed in a hierarchy based on the harmonic series, a natural acoustic phenomenon described by the ancient Greeks, who sought to mimic the "music of the spheres." It is solely responsible for the grand architecture of sound composers through many centuries were free to create.
Then the modern sycophants to progress threw it over - in favor of a more democratic method they called "serialism." All twelve tones would be heard in a series and none repeated until each had the chance to be heard. Alas, a good idea for parliament does not make good music. The laity, thrown upon their own resources by the music establishment, began making their own music. Without benefit of training, they now are as adrift as a plastic bag.
The Business Model
Poor Master Zuckerberg! He surely never envisioned himself in the role of sorcerer's apprentice, but here we are. He and his young friends simply took advantage of an odd lacuna: it had not been considered that the internet could be used to connect people socially, creating digital cliques or coteries in cyberspace. Their clever invention naturally took off like wildfire, defying skeptics who wondered how it would fare commercially. Now we have learned that in the Wild West of the Web, as the saying goes, "If it is free, you are the product." The result has been an era of "personal surveillance for profit," as it was referred to in a Washington Post editorial. As he was quizzed before the US Congress, Master Mark was asked if he was willing to change his business model. He hesitated long enough to make us suspect he actually didn't understand the term.
And there are other business models on the net now. Wikipedia, which was comparably disparaged at its beginning, was saved from the intrusion and inevitable overreach of ads by the scruple of its founders and is now a respected source of reliable information supported by users and volunteers worldwide. But too many sites have become insufferably commercial and redundant, their content buried in ads while they each - even the Weather Channel - entice us with world news, or failing that, cute animals. The curious thing about Facebook though is how eagerly and naively the young people flocked to it, more concerned about eluding parents than being secretly scrutinized by hostile parties.
Reason vs. Cause
I observe that it is not only children constantly asking why. It is seemingly a favorite refrain in all phases of life. Why, why, why? Of course it is the root of scientific curiosity: Why does the ship disappear over the horizon? Why were the endemic species of Galapagos uniquely suited to that environment? Then there are more mundane examples: Why is my spouse in a bad mood? Why is the president of Russia so fond of covert action?
The question of "why?" looks for a reason, which we believe equates with a rational explanation, when the more important response often resides in cause; and the deeper cause can be more rational. While we tend always to consider the reason first, we should try to change that habit and address the cause. The reason for your spouse's unfriendly mood may be boredom with his in-laws, but the cause could be an inadequate dosage of thyroid medication. That Vladimir was formerly in the KGB is the obvious reason he uses covert action to enhance his power; the cause, however, may be some simmering anger and deep-seated anxiety driving his megalomania, which is always irrational. In the most egregious cases, people can claim their reasons are beyond dispute, perfectly rational, when to any sane observer they are just the opposite: more guns in schools will make them safer, and booming sales of assault weapons will eliminate mass shootings. The cause of such madness is a cultural or personal paranoia. Basically, the motivation of human behavior is human nature, of which humans are largely ignorant. Reasons are superficial answers, where cause is foundational. Don't ask why, look deeper first - it saves time.
The Social Organism
Upon my belated acquisition of a smart phone, I posted here about theories of a social organism, the internet being its nervous system. When we witness how this evolution is now contributing to the ascent and vigor of despotism with its concomitant loss of personal privacy, we can be forgiven for fearing a rapidly approaching dystopia. I read, for example, that the Chinese are not concerned about privacy, which is fortunate for them since their autocratic government is set to employ the most sophisticated technology to surveil their every action and give them each a "social score." We shudder at the thought of what gulag will await the chronicle jaywalkers, whistle blowers, and even horn blowers.
Th argument can be made that with a large population such measures will ensure an orderly society, that in the land of Confucius leaders will surely be wise in the use of absolute power, and of course the one with the most wisdom and experience must be allowed to continue ruling. Popular elections would simply let riffraff take over and make a mess of things. If our analogy with a biological organism holds up, and the nervous system has total control of the body, then is it not natural for the nervous system of the social organism to be totalitarian?
Here, children, is where at this point in time the analogy breaks down. All systems of a biological organism are controlled by the survival instinct. Unless it is afflicted with an autoimmune disease, the body strives mightily to preserve you. The instinct of a despot is to preserve himself, not you. Is this why a social "organism" has never survived - and perhaps will never?
Men
As our civilization seems to devolve in the way it invariably, and perhaps inevitably does, back into a feudal state of small warring tribes, I am caused to reflect how very extreme a creature is the male human. There can be no doubt - Wm. Jennings Bryan aside - that humans are an animal species like any other but one clever enough to have escaped the wild state. In the millions of years it took to effect this liberation, men were in charge, the female remaining inhibited by the harsh necessities of rearing the young. Without minimizing the contribution of women, especially in the origin of agriculture, it has been men leading the way in science, technological invention, the arts and architecture, building the great cities, the ships that explored all the world's oceans, since the most ancient of human civilizations. They have been the civilizing force bringing about humanity's most profound philosophies in every race and every continent where their seed has spread. And yet.
Despite the civilizing feats with which he may be credited, the human male is an animal with such extreme animal drives that in some lands women must be covered up and segregated for their own protection. Yet throughout the history of civilized society, the animal instincts have been sublimated: celibacy for the clergy; Latin studies, daily chapel and rugby at Eton. Today that veneer of culture has worn very thin indeed; and I cannot hear the great musical masterpieces - the rhapsodic music of Rachmaninov, the emotive songs of Schubert, the delicacy of Chopin - without a new amazement, nay shock, that these were created by men.
Religiosity
The first book I published after retiring from my profession was creative nonfiction on the subject of Buddhism - Conjuring Archangel, with which readers of the blog will be familiar. As explained in the book, I wrote it to address the spiritual hunger of the secular West among people left cold by science but because of science, unable to believe in the primitive superstition of Western religions. Buddhism, however, is a deep and subtle faith - a stretch for Western minds.
Yet those secular non-believers, I observe, despite any spiritual yearning, are in some ways as religious as the faithful. While Eastern thought may seem impenetrable to them, and they reject whatever religion of their childhood, they are nonetheless imbued with religiosity. A person need not believe in the transubstantiation of the holy eucharist - nor in a God who tells them what not to eat, nor in one who insists that women cover their hair lest they incite uncontrollable passions - in order to qualify as religious. Many a secularist simply makes his own rules, which he follows with the same rigidity of mind embedded from youth. He may find it silly to eschew eating pork, but will avoid all carbohydrates like the plague, with gluten being likewise suspect, even in the absence of celiac disease. She may be liberated from the head scarf, but skin tight jeans are de rigeur, or if she is really up to date with religiosity - spray-on yoga pants.
The closed and rigid mind typifies the world's religions, and sciences has not changed it. To the contrary, it has made us more arrogant, cocksure we know it all - until tomorrow's latest reversal.
Siri
Old friends! Be apprised that my biography of the late actor Jeremy Brett is now available. The title is More Than an Actor, the Story of Peter H. Brett died in 1995 at the age of 61. He was the definitive Sherlock Holmes in the British television series from the 1980s, but it was his captivating life story that compelled me to take on this effort. I hope you will read and enjoy it.
In other news, I just recently joined the legions of people indentured to the iPhone or similar devices. Readers will be amazed - nay shocked - at this untoward move by such a Luddite as myself; yet the tides of history being irresistible, I was forced to conclude that this gadget is fast becoming indispensable to life as we know it. To the several techies with whom I interfaced in this purchase I remarked that I wanted to be a nerve cell in the evolving social organism - in which those techies are the brain cells.
I foresaw this development long ago after reading The Phenomenon of Man by the Jesuit Teilhard deChardin, who viewed evolution as a process of coalescence: from atoms to molecules, from cells to organisms, to society and civilization. Thus a social organism, its nerve cells as surely in constant contact as axons and dendrites. I must add however that from may standpoint this latest coalescence seems menacing, not at all the second coming that Teilhard envisioned. Siri? She of the mellifluous voice needs to know everything about me in order to better fulfill my every desire? Sounds a tad salacious. No, no, I think not!
Serve Yourself
This blog has never been about red meat, so I will not belabor all the obvious things people around the world are saying about assault weapons and distraught male adolescents. Indeed this post may be bumped by a Blogger algorithm for the mere mention. The Post columnists have covered the subject anyway, the most articulate being Christine Emba, who wrote week before last.
I would turn your attention, or distract it rather, to the encroaching phenomenon of self-service. First readers should know, if they do not suspect, that long ago when the gas pumps began to be distinguished as "Full" or "Self" I continued to use full service, finding the odd usage of the word self in the context of fuel to be off-putting at the very least. Of course the day came when all the pumps were self-service - no need for designation. At that point, since I had long been on a first name basis with employees at my local station, I began giving a generous tip for them to fill the tank, check the oil and wash the windshield. Eventually I did learn - grudgingly - to do all those things, realizing that I might need to gas up farther from home.
Now the supermarket has installed self-service checkout, where one can save so very many milliseconds by not having to chat with a clerk. They have kept some old cash registers for the Luddites who do not relish talking to a machine, no matter the mellifluous voice. But no baggers there. We may save milliseconds - corporate can now save mega millions. What is this drive to become self-serving? Do we imagine that we do not depend on one another?
Pictures
It is all about pictures, whether we speak of Facebook, YouTube, cinema - where there must be several theaters at one place, each with large screens and reclining seats - or television, which in its ubiquity is hybridizing incestuously with internet. Even gas pumps now, have screens so that our perpetual distraction need never be interrupted by even a moment of quietude.
Pictures are useful of course, at the very least in mitigating multilingual chaos. A few illustrations, for example, can be instructive in setting up your new tech device, more so than printed instructions that now must be supplied in several languages and thus severely truncated. A how-to video on YouTube can teach you any number of things, threatening to put instructors out of work unless they jump on board.
It used to be said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and surely that may be true for a keen observer with a poor vocabulary. It is similar to saying that music is the language of the emotions. But like pictures, music is not specific, therefore useful mainly to those insufficiently articulate to express their feelings. No, no, children! I submit that in today's world, flooded - indeed drowning - in images, one well-chosen word is now worth a thousand of these pictures.
Young and Old
I am not a young person - a term I am well aware is highly subjective in any case. I have passed 60: the age of wisdom; and 70: the age of despair; but have not as yet reached the next milestone: the age of "are you still here!?" A friend of mine who has arrived at that august decade complains of feeling isolated. In my memory of people in times past who found themselves lonely in old age, there was nearly always some reason that was obvious to everyone but them. It might be a mother so adept at meddling in her children's lives that they took the first opportunity to settle on the opposite side of the continent, the far shore of the ocean or of the Earth itself; or it could have been the boor who allowed others to pay the bar bill while he monopolized the conversation bragging of his wealth.
These days, however, I worry about hi-tech aspects bringing a more widespread isolation of the older generation. The young people may well feel justified, for any number of legitimate reasons, in ignoring their elders, evading contact by jumping around in cyberspace from one communication platform to the next. There still are some actual telephones left among the truly ancient; then there are cell phones, email, voice mail, texting, and social media of various brands. By multiplying the means of communication, the chance of reaching anyone is reduced proportionately.
Meanwhile the lack of exposure to anyone with some years of experience, I fear is leaving the young vulnerable to the negative tides of history, having no clue how fragile are their freedoms. North Koreans? "They are just like us." Russian bots and trolls? "We are immune to propaganda." Fascism? Communism? "We will simply take to the streets with our placards. They can't kill us all." Perhaps not, but they know where you live.
Choices
Choice is a good thing: it is good to be able to choose how you will make a living, where you will live, whom you will marry, and to have options when you go to the multi-acre big-box market or scroll through millions of items in millions of categories on the website. Yet I venture to say there is a limit at which every living person will be paralyzed with indecision. The important decisions have always had some inherent difficulty, but we are not helped when navigating our everyday lives becomes an obstacle course. Examples abound in every arena. Granted I am not a fan of Bill Gates, who inflicted Microsoft on a gullible world, but consider the software - Word, Excel, and the rest. These programs allow the user to do anything imaginable but nothing he will actually imagine. Here are dozens of buttons to click on the screen; click any one of them and dozens more will appear. It is a tangled maze producing nothing but frustration, compared to the Apple equivalents, which are and have always been elegantly user- friendly.
Now my friend Anna, who frequents Panera more than I do, tells me they have changed their breakfast menu to include more options. For a breakfast sandwich one must choose among egg white, scrambled or once-over egg, then bacon, sausage or ham, then bagel or brioche. The mid-morning line is now out the door. If they want to turn into a restaurant, they will need wait staff!
This phenomenon is no doubt driven by competition, which must grow keener under the pressure of population, the one economic factor that is simultaneously unacknowledged and unappreciated, and which is the perennial cause of social disintegration. The Dark Age will always return.
After the Fox
My property here in the States is by no means as large as the home farm in England. Indeed as I look out over breakfast, I have an excellent view of my neighbor's bird feeders. He is a busy physician, nearing retirement, and in recent years has become quite religious in supporting the backyard flock year round. Naturally these feeders have become a reliable sustenance for all the local wildlife: squirrels, raccoons, deer, and a most beautiful, healthy red fox, who makes an excellent living on the abundance of fattened squirrels. I first noticed this preference when I saw him in the driveway with a squirrel tail hanging from his mouth.
Recently I watched in awe from the window as he caught his lunch. He chased after his prey, and it seemed the squirrel would certainly escape; but closing to about ten feet, in a split second, the fox put on a burst of speed, fixed his jaws upon the squirrel's neck and trotted off into the woods. I am seeing the creature so frequently this winter that I begin to suspect it might be a pregnant vixen - not "he" at all.
Distracted in meditation by the vivid memory of this wild spectacle, it occurred to me that our darkest thoughts prey upon us in the manner of the fox, chasing us down, then suddenly overtaking the mind, though usually not seizing us by the throat!
Babel Redux
A wonderful thing, surely, is the internet, with its global connectivity, its ironically dubbed "social media," the potential for every living soul with access to express himself, hopeful of grabbing the attention of his fellow man. In this space, in a post post, I may have referred to it as a Tower of Babel, but the phenomenon is not strictly analogous. The Biblical tale seeks to explain the origin of languages, while on the web English is more or less standard - the reason, I believe personally, being that it is syllabically more efficient. So if not the Babel, we might observe the internet is indeed rife with babbling.
I have read that when the printing press was invented, there ensued a period when there were more writers than readers, and such is the case today on the frontiers of cyberspace. The filters have been removed. Where once newspaper editors ensured the accuracy of reportage in reputable publications, people now look online, subjecting themselves to all manner of falsehood and manipulation. Where publishing houses reviewed manuscripts to select the cream of the crop to release to the public, the internet makes it possible for any aspirant to have a book printed on demand.
What we aspire to is to grab the attention of others - for the post to "go viral" in a very telling new turn of phrase. Yet for the most part for all the grabbing of attention, no one is paying it.
Marking Time
Does it come with age or is it the growing complexity of modern life? I refer to the time we spend marking time, not only in crowded waiting rooms at the doctor or nights sleeping at airports, but the many small ways in daily life: the fluoride rinse one must swish in the mouth for at least a full minute; the several exercises that involve holding a stretch for thirty seconds; holding a yoga pose, for the plethora of young enthusiasts, long enough to break one's record - or one's spine. Perhaps it is useful practice for the disabilities we are courting by living too long. Of course a young person imagines his compulsive cycling will spare him any disability - disdainful of wear on the cartilage in his joints - and that if he fails to be immortal, he will simply drop dead from a state of perfect health.
It is hard to imagine losing the freedom of mobility, a state which could try the patience of a piano teacher - a class whose profession inculcates the highest degree of that virtue. But what effect is the constant marking of time having on us? A new generation might grow to be more patient, especially if airports see fit to install dormitories.
No, no, to me the marking of time is a measure of a thing with no ultimate reality. And so I meditate, to nurture that experience of timelessness, a state of mind we may require desperately - if we live too long.
Unnatural Nature
Distinguishing our species from others, we observe opposable thumbs and a large brain, the mechanism for articulation, but even more so we must consider the immense distortions of which the human psyche is capable, or to which, we might prefer to say, it is vulnerable. What other animal, even among predators, is so easy about killing its own kind? Read Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression. But then the same evolution that loosened the imperatives of instinct in human nature also gave rise to our extreme cleverness. What amazing creative flights took place in the mind of Albert Einstein, to name but one?
Every day in the news are stories of the most insane and cruel acts, side by side with reports of kindness and heroism. We are very unusual animals indeed, or we might prefer to say unnatural, for the extreme polarities of human behavior are distortions in comparison with nature. How then should we deploy these insights? The Greeks, who already in ancient times knew all that was needed to know, produced Socrates, who famously enjoined, "Know thyself." It's a start!
Haystacks
While conceivably debatable on economic grounds, it seems a sin that well-off members of prosperous societies accumulate far too much, to the point now that I take note of the increasing difficulty to dispose of or even to donate the excess. It is an absolute scandal that designer clothing and shoes so proliferate across that globe that Air Jordans and Gucci bags - they were so yesterday - may be spotted among the poor in the third world, having been salvaged from the mountainous landfills. In the course of a lifetime, given this environment, one is bound to watch possessions pile up, filling all available storage space and overwhelming what is in any case a diminishing capacity to maintain reasonable order. We forget what we have, and if we remember, cannot find it, so we buy it again, only adding to the haystack. Among us are bonafide hoarders, who are so daunted by the complexity of it all as to be rendered incapable of sorting. Insanely anxious that they might lose something important, they keep every scrap, suffocating in the end under a falling tower of old papers. Of course if there actually is an important document in that haystack it is as good as lost, being undiscoverable.
The internet was anticipated to save us. Records would be stored in the clouds; we would go paperless at the very least; junk mail superseded by email. Alas, the internet is the worst haystack of all. Hundreds upon thousands of unread ads and promotions pile up in the mail box until any significant missive may as well be that proverbial needle. And don't even get me started on Facebook! In seconds one's post is buried in the haystack of "feeds." Better be sure to print out some of those photographs before the haystack tumbles down!
The Gender Dynamic
My morning paper is The Post, as I consider it the only reliable source of accurate, in-depth news in the States. I admire editor-in-chief Fred Hiatt and never fail to read a column with his byline. When I observe a correspondence with my own ideas, I feel relieved of the need to write about them. You should infer from this that what I do write about has not to my knowledge been said in The Post - or elsewhere.
Much has been made of late concerning the remarkable advances of women in society. In contrast to prior generations, they are better educated and better represented in the workforce. They are world class athletes, equal members in the military, corporate leaders and professionals, even sufficiently confident now to speak out about sexual harassment and exploitation. This advancement has been possible due to better methods of birth control, and despite inevitable backlash from men who perceive gender equity as a zero sum. But there has been a tectonic shift in the gender dynamic that seems to go unremarked.
Youngsters will find it passing strange that as recently as a hundred years ago or less, men pursued women with the goal of marriage. Child-bearing was inevitable, and a respectable woman needed to be extremely careful that her future children would be supported. Fast forward to the mid-twentieth century, pregnancy is avoidable, men are off the hook, and we discover they are not so keen on producing an heir as society once told them they should be. Furthermore we learn with chagrin for our erstwhile naiveté that it is women who are vastly more desperate to mate. They fill the advice columns and flock to dating sites. The tables are turned, and the demur virgins of old are replaced by the brazen sirens of a new age. Who knew?
O Come All Ye Faithful
Harrogate, Yorkshire. At the christening of my great-nephew here, I am reminded most emphatically of the pathos commonly surrounding human infancy. It is in the air at this time year anyway in all of Christendom on account of the nativity story, a sweet legend cleverly exploited to the advantage of empire in ancient times. As to what accounts for this inevitable pathos, please see my essay below, under Pages.
In my view, all of the world's religions merge at their deepest levels, i.e. the transcendent truth of visionary mystics. In practice, houses of worship - at least those without a jumbo-tron - are fading. Modern people are not worshipful. I must wonder, though, whether in their desperation the Christian sects have adopted a counterproductive strategy - to modernize: publish a new hymnal that bans all the old, rousing Calvinist hymns; rewrite the liturgy so that only singers practiced at sight reading can participate; allow congregants to express their disrespect through slovenly dress; do away with vestments; replace the rusting pipe organ with electric guitar; add variety to the Holy Communion - wine, juice, gluten-free, vente decaf. People will return to the church in droves, filling the pews! No?
I reflect upon the Jews, their adherence to ritual and tradition over millennia, which has given them the strength of cohesiveness. Worship takes place at the family dinner table - no temple required. For their cohesion they are despised, enhancing their cohesion. Strange and ironic that the religion preaching about an immortal soul is so eager to change things up.
A Fallen Samaritan
I do not always return to the Old Country for Christmas, but this year a nephew and his wife have just had their first child, and I really must be there for the christening. At the same time, I can see that the cattle are safely wintering. Before leaving I met with my dear friend Anna at Panera, a decent refuge on extremely cold mornings, and good hazelnut coffee - a shared addiction.
This Panera is surrounded by several Jewish facilities: a nursing home, a school, a senior residence with assisted living, and a synagogue. Approaching our rendezvous on this occasion, I found one lane of the road was blocked by fire trucks - seemingly every fire engine in the county - in front of the synagogue, where I imagined there must have been a five-alarm fire. But at the intersection there stood several police cruisers with lights flashing, and outside the school and the nursing home more police. Surely, I thought with dismay, it must be a bombing or at the very least a terrorist threat. Adding to the mystery, however, were men in dress uniform on the sidewalk going towards the synagogue.
Enquiring of the clerk as I purchased my coffee and pastry, I was informed that there was a funeral for a young fireman - a deputy fire chief in fact - killed on the interstate when he stopped to assist a stranded motorist. He had a wife and two children. A tragedy indeed, and sad also, I reflected, was where my thoughts had raced at this untoward display of officialdom.
Tides of History
The recent posts here concerning the downfall of civilization - either its devolution or its dystopian evolution - must leave us wondering what if anything we can do about it. Do we control or even influence the tides of world history? And surely that is a debatable, contentious question. Some will point to figures who appear to have wrought great change, for good or ill: Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt. Others will single out events that seem rather to point to the randomness of fate: the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo; the Russian winter that froze the German invasion. In the final analysis, however, all that happens may be seen as the effect of causes and conditions. People do what they do based on who they are, but that in turn has resulted from causes. It is the doctrine of karma.
Critics of Buddhism use this doctrine in raising the accusation of fatalism, whether in the context of world history or personal responsibility. If we can do nothing to save the world, why try to do anything? If I cannot help my bad behavior, I am not responsible. The charge is of course simplistic. In spite of the tragedy in Burma, demonstrating that even Buddhism, the least likely of all world religions, can be corrupted, the heart of Buddhism is compassion for all sentient beings, arising with the realization that we are one which them. We act with this motivation and do what we can in this life, avoiding the arrogant ambition of saving the world.
Connected
Last week's post raised the old idea of a united world. Megalomaniacs from the dawn of history have had that obsession; then came the League of Nations, precursor to the United Nations. It has always been regarded as an impossible ideal, indeed, quixotic. Today we need to consider that "connectivity" may have put the ideal - or the obsession - in reach, and then to reflect what a world government would need to look like.
The unprecedented scope of globalization, beginning to erode sovereignty in places - notably Europe - now challenges the idea of nation states uniting and cooperating, a model that was scarcely effective in the century past. In its alarmingly swift descent into minority rule, the U.S. forcefully and tragically exposes the fragility of democracy, while internet trolls, schooled by Russia, demonstrate the unerring ability to control the minds of great masses of people, thus eliminating any need for coercion. Any surplus population that cannot be fed will jump willingly into the mass graves they have dug for themselves; or perhaps provocateurs will manipulate tribal passions ensuring that certain groups will annihilate one another.
Considered realistically then, a united world does not appear to be a happy place, which may be why we always have broken apart as we approach it. Now, therefore, we must pray that humanity remains asymptotic to dystopia.
Back to the Future
There is no greater evidence of the balkanization of human society than the stamps being issued by the US Postal Service for the holiday season. There is one for each tribal event: Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, and several I cannot even spell. Isn't it curious that these all fall at roughly the same time of year? Could we not simply celebrate the winter solstice - together? The stamp might feature a different owl species each year - the symbol of wisdom.
The rise in tribal consciousness - a circling of the wagons - comes at the same time that the world shrinks, economically and technologically, tribalism being a backlash. There has always been an idea of one world - that in the fullness of time all humanity would unite. It is the Omega Point foretold by Teilhard de Chardin, which would coincide with the second coming. I fear that is just what it would take, because at this time the societal evolution we may be witnessing appears dystopian. The Hegelian synthesis of capitalism and communism may look like the Chinese and Russian model, with the US now falling in line: the concentration of power, the surrender of liberty and individual rights. The world is on a cusp - do we fall forward into Soylent Green, or Back to the Future?
It's All in Your Head
Chaos reigns! Globalization seems to have pulled multitudes across the planet from abject poverty and servitude while plunging others into it, leaving the world - in that relentless process of equilibration - back in the social order of old: upstairs, downstairs. Wars break out - asymmetrical in the manner of feudal times with barbarians crossing the castle moat and scaling the parapets - and rumors of wars. Sinners are exposed though no one remembers the rules. Chaos reigns...
But hasn't it always? No point in human history or prehistory has been without struggle, from the attempt to kill a mastodon with spears to modern day economic reversals. Even our personal histories, whether we are rich or poor, are forever fraught with difficulty. In a recent Buddhadharma journal, I came upon an article about the ancient practice of Yogacara, the chief precept of which is that the experience of life is a perpetual stream of mental states created by consciousness, which is habituated to regard false perceptions as real. The idea seems entirely valid, as I look back on life and note how different today's preoccupations are from those of the past, which were in their turn so pressing. It is as though this world of endless chaos is all in our minds. But first we must come to grips with the reality that those false perceptions, reified by consciousness, include oneself and others.
Idealism
As promised, a critique of my own excessively idealistic generation: Of course, idealism is a fine thing, and granted it was desperately needed in the postwar years. But stability, according to sage wisdom, resides in balance. Were we reasonable we would recognize the necessity to balance idealism and realism. We may believe that nation states have been the source of wars and should be consigned to the ash heap of history, that simply removing all borders would eliminate territorial disputes. Surely reasonable people could then be persuaded to give up their maudlin nationalistic sentiments. Roots to the soil embedded for centuries would die out in a generation. Or take racial integration: Once interbreeding has eliminated all those peculiar distinctions consequent to millions of years of human expansion - once we all look alike - conflict based on such distinctions will be no more. Ideally this will come about in our lifetime.
But realistically, there are thresholds, there is backlash: Trumpsters who feel like strangers in their own land; right wingers in Europe overwhelmed by an Islamic flood. Idealism is so well-meaning, but perhaps we need to take the perspective of trees. Trees live for centuries, and in a forest they support one another, through their roots or through the air, or along the underground network of fungi. They never stop growing, adding a ring of girth each year - large in a good season, smaller in a hard one. They branch slowly toward light, wise in knowing that change is constant. No rush!
Age of Oligarchy
This is not a political blog, yet I would draw your attention to a column in the Washington Post on Tuesday, 31 October, by Anne Applebaum concerning the convergence of Russia and the US. A Londoner, she is savvy about current affairs in the UK, Europe, or eastward. According to her informative report, this Trump business is a thinly disguised replay of what goes on in Ukraine: the same sleazy manipulations perpetrated by the same sleazy manipulators, Russian and American, to install oligarchs wherever they find an opportunity to parasitize.
We must bear in mind the perspective of history, in that civilization has been governed democratically only for relatively short periods: ancient Athens, Rome for two centuries. But the modern nations of the West have fostered hope that there constitutional democracies might escape and endure, as indeed they have for some time. Tragically the very advances that a civilized, free society make possible, giving us the bounteous tree of knowledge, enable the serpent in the Garden. It is positively biblical, but don't say that to a fundamentalist. Once again as a species we have out-clevered ourselves.
The issue is multi-factorial and complex to be sure. It is expertly analyzed in a recent book, One Nation After Trump. Yet I continue to reflect on the idealism of my own generation, its excessiveness and the unintended consequences. More on that next week.
Know the Breed
t was in the John Steinbeck classic Tortilla Flat that I first came upon the saying, "Know the breed, know the dog." The novel captures the essence not only of those paisanos in California where he was born, but also his fascination with the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. The saying is a bit of old wisdom of which modern people could stand reminding. As applied to humans, the implication is that we have inborn traits like any other species. After all, the border collie is born to herd sheep; the dachshunds bred to hunt the burrowing rodent; and the hunting hound, well, these are very elite canines indeed.
The problem is that most dogs are mongrels, not purebred. One gene from its parentage might predominate, but determining which is mostly guesswork. As for humans, despite the ignorant notion of racial purity, we are all mongrels; so as with dogs, guessing at the breed, we cannot be quite sure of the dog. Still there is some truth to the old saying. We are not tabula rasa at birth; and added to an inborn nature is the early nurture of language, culture, habits, tradition, not to speak of parenting, enlightened or not. Observe people in this context and it is clear: we may be responsible for what we do; we are not largely responsible for what we are.
Reason or Nature?
Relative to the last post, I should add that a basic error of idealism is the conviction that people can be persuaded by reason. In truth, some people may be persuaded up to a point. All men are created equal? Can we reword that? From each according to his ability, to each according to his need - sure to create an industrious working class. And this convenient notion: since women are weak and helpless, they must be hidden away, protected by godly men. Idealism flies in the face of natural bias. A person born to aristocracy will, consciously or not, consider himself superior to most others; a worker told that he labors only for the good of those less fortunate will lose his strongest motivation, i.e. competition; and if a society keeps those weak females under protective custody, all the easier to take advantage of them.
But, you protest, human nature can evolve, be perfected. Doubtful, and until such time it can only be managed by taking it into account. The United States has been successful largely because its founders did so, providing for checks and balances on the concentration of power. Other institutions of the republic, however, are obviously no longer serving it well.
Unreason
I have touched on the subject of unreason before on the blog; I recall citing the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, concerning the nascent field of behavioral economics. Coming from a generation tending to idealism, I am nonetheless glad to see people taking reality into account. In reality, human behavior often seems irrational. Quoting the blurb for the above volume, "Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?" Yet the author finds "these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless... but systematic and predictable."
I would suggest that our inclination toward unreason runs deeper than economic behavior, but rather reflects an intuition that the ultimate reality is not constrained by logic. For example, reason dictates that the universe must be either finite or infinite. If the former, what lies beyond? But the latter - an infinity of empty space - is likewise inconceivable. Such dichotomies cancel each other leaving a null state, while zero and one are likewise a dichotomy. We find ourselves in a hall of mirrors.
We must learn to trust our intuitions, especially when they are paradoxical, following the example of the ancient Tibetan, Milarepa: "Nirvana and Sangsara are dependent and relative states issuing from the Void." Nirvana means extinguished - how perfectly unreasonable!
Whetstone
In my younger years, a major factor in my move away from theism was the matter of suffering. The creatures of nature have a struggle to survive, subject to cruel predation and extremes of environment; and the human species is no less natural and vulnerable to terrible suffering, even at the hand of fellow humans. If there is an omnipotent, beneficent God, why does He allow it? the amicus brief on his behalf was never plausible to me. Are these awful conditions the work of the Devil? Even believers find the idea of that eternal combat too fanciful, preferring a resort to futility. We simply are not meant to understand the ways of God.
Yet in troubled times, when we endure adversity, misfortune, even pain, there is an opportunity to observe the mind. Indeed it is against this whetstone of suffering that the mind is sharpened; and when the body calls for our immediate, urgent attention, we are made aware that body and mind are not separate. Suffering may be enlightening - it is not the face of Lucifer, but the moon face of Buddha.
Newborn
My nephew and his wife now have a son, born on the autumnal equinox just past. This nephew, my only one, was something of a late bloomer - age thirty-four before he married and now a father at thirty-seven. It is a joyous event, their first born, doubtless to be followed by at least one more child - a boy for you, a girl for me.
As a Buddhist I am caused to reflect on the true nature of selfhood. Each of us began with the union of two microscopic cells, coming forth nine months later as a small, helpless infant, then to pass through the phases of life, changing continually with each one. We forget, unless with age we pause to think: Was I like that? Was I myself ever a helpless infant, unable to defend my very existence save by screaming, a sound matched in decibels only by that other anthropoid, the gibbon? Mercifully, we harbor no memory of that. Memory begins only once we have donned the mantel of persona. That curious fact is suggestive of the truth we dismiss: There was no "I" there, and neither a continuous self threading its way through the phases of life.
Our intuition tells us the truth: we are not as we were; we change continually, though usually too slowly to notice. But the deeper intuition of a self seems to cancel out this latter, the sense of an unchanging, immortal self. Trust your intuitions, especially when they are conflicting. The self you know is not immortal but timeless, not individual but singular, changing and unchanging - the paradox of transcendence.
Ones and Zeroes
There may be no better way for modern people to understand the dual realm than the computer, filling cyberspace with infinite creation from the basis of ones and zeroes, in exactly the way that all creation comes forth from the Womb of Tathagata, refracted into form and emptiness. That a simple binary code - positive and negative - can express to us all of our perceptions along with the accumulated knowledge of our species, in its entirety, surely suggests its congruence with nature itself. Thus as God goes about creating light and dark, male and female, animate and inanimate, matter and anti-matter, our clever scientists in emulation give us Google Earth and the Cloud.
We seem to grasp rather easily that form may come out of emptiness, from energy perhaps or God if we believe; but then we evade the paradoxical implication of their equivalence. The default logic of our bicameral brain insists that polar opposites cannot be a unity. Light is light, not dark, though it may be bent into colors or adjusted on a scale, like the sliding tools in PhotoShop. Likewise for everything in the dual realm, we may acknowledge complexity, but remain blind to paradox.
Here is what we miss: What comes forth from the womb of creation? What is the essence nature of those incredible ones and zeroes? Even logic reveals that this essence must contain both and therefore must transcend them. What refracts this singular essence into form and emptiness is our own stubborn ignorance.
Egoless
In Buddhist teaching on the precept of egolessness, an analogy sometimes given is of a stream going over falls: individual drops of water leave the stream in falling, reentering it at the bottom. Considering the brevity of our lives, I like to think of the myriad individuals as bubbles arising on the surface of a great ocean. We are, in other words, briefly individual expressions of a common essence. This precept is difficult even for a Buddhist who accepts it; for the Western mind, it is entirely unacceptable. Apart from physical essence, there must be an etherial and immortal soul. But there is no evidence of a soul, wile there is every proof that material reality is insubstantial. Body, mind and soul are one.
Surely we have intuitions of our own nature, albeit rejected as invalid when they seem illogical. Thus from the dawn of our consciousness we kew the truth of self, until it was imprinted with a temporal individuality. To the extent that a sense of that early knowledge lingers within, many come to feel it is an indwelling spirit or the presence of God. But the delusion of a person separate from others, from one's own body, isolated from a mystical Supreme Being, is at the root of human suffering, of fear and grief. That presence within is not God - it is the real you.
Power
Through the meditative practice of sitting with mind clear of thought - neither attending to nor following those that arise - one may uncover unexpected or amazing intuitions. The wisest of them will seem patently obvious, in the way that truth or genius always does. In this manner it came to me that this realm of karma - the cause and effect of our worries, our worldly affairs - is truly, basically all about power. Creatures exercise their youthful vigor to vie for power in competing for the necessities of life. The relatively powerless - the young, disabled and old - may be mercifully protected in a social species, or otherwise serve as prey in the food chain.
In our species, the hunger for power is self-evident politically, economically and socially. It motivates leadership, though too often irrationally, giving us a persistent strain of megalomaniacs. Yet we must consider the root of this hunger. Power is control, and the need for control is commensurate with fear. Power is pursued as the antidote to a primal fear, but it is effective only until we are caught by the mills of God, which will grind exceeding fine even the ruthlessly power-mad. Such is the reality, from which we are liberated only by those amazing and unexpected intuitions that we have patiently allowed to enter a still mind, starting with the transcendent nature - unborn and singular - of this very self.
Biblical
I returned from England in time for my northern sojourn in Maine, an annual tradition, where I spend a week at the Bar Harbor Inn, surely among the oldest and most gracious establishments here in the colonies. Like the sun, I tend northward in summer and back south in winter. The sun, of course, has nothing do with this seasonal pattern, but rather the tilt of Earth on its electromagnetic axis.
The weather in Maine this time was quite unseasonal for late August. It was autumnal, the air very dry and gale force winds blasting out of the north. A fire would have been welcome if the chimney of the Inn's large fireplace had not been out of commission. At the same time the media was and remains riveted by hurricane Harvey, with floods that can only be described adequately as biblical. Very little attention seems to be focused on what made this storm cataclysmic. Hurricanes come and go; this one stalled, held in place by the same weather system bringing early autumn to the north. This clash of extremes is what we may now expect due to climate change.
Regardless of how we may dither and debate about this phenomenon, cause and effect are one, and like it or not we are overwhelmed by the waves of karma. Dare I suggest they may be converging? Torrents of rain, torrents of tribal hatred, bellicose rhetoric, wars and rumors of wars. Biblical.
Eclipse
Often when I post to this blog, I also endeavor to reach out on Facebook to others with ostensibly similar viewpoints. For example, in a group formed around the subject of Zen Buddhism, I wrote a short post concerning the singular, transcendent oneness of ultimate reality. I was treated to a response by the group's founder, who acknowledged that we are all interdependent, but went on to assert that "oneness is a myth." Even overlooking a poor choice of the word myth, this was an oddly arrogant assertion for a Buddhist of any persuasion. But the interchange points to the fact that even would-be followers of humanity's most ancient and profound thought may remain mired in a shallow perspective.
And perspective was the very watchword on 21 August, when a solar eclipse crossed the most media-saturated continent in human history. Our moon, as it hurtled around our tiny plant, fell exactly in line between us and our minor star, which in turn moves in a minor galaxy among many millions in the universe. To the average person this perspective is ultimate. Those few who may consider it more deeply will wonder about the paradoxical dichotomy between finite and infinite, since logically the universe can be neither. Thus does a thoughtful person reach the abyss of nihilism, and with a shrug, decides the matter is beyond understanding.
Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree. After six years, he went on to teach that what is beyond understanding is not beyond us. From our perspective the universe seems paradoxical - because it is not dichotomous. No, sir! Transcendent oneness is not a myth.
Tribes
That tribal fault lines are a growing threat to modern civilization should come as no surprise to any honest observer of human nature. The innumerable stresses of modern life - competition for shrinking resources, rapid-fire technological changes, the shredding of the social fabric - drive us back to our respective tribes, to circle the wagons with people like ourselves. The cry goes up: They shall not replace us! But civilization breeds idealism. Its very essence after all is the coalescence of kinship groups, who learn to live together, work and trade with one another, all the while continuing to hedge: I would not want my daughter to marry one of them. We need our grandchildren to look like us, because corollary to my last post, not only is reproduction the definition of life, it must be fulfilled as near to cloning as possible. Yes, we are civilized, enlightened. We mix and mingle, integrate our schools, and still our children upon reaching puberty self-segregate. Q.e.d.
In the nation of immigrants, on a continent tamed by slave labor, the fault lines have become evident, naturally, though the European nations of empire also feel the strain with the influx of former subjects. This reversion to tribes is not rational or even conscious. It surfaces when stress crosses a threshold into threat, and the anger comes out in random ways - against the hijab, white policemen shooting black men, memorials to long-dead soldiers being removed. Gradually, it destroys civilization. Historically there has been no exception, because, as I posted last week, when it comes to our own human nature we remain as mindless as the paramecium.
Life Itself
In my essay, "The Sexual Theory of Everything," which you may read on this blog, I observe that science recognizes the beginning of life on this planet at the point when organic compounds developed the capacity for self-replication. This accounts for the opening sentence, asserting that the world is not ruled by men, but by sperm. Briefly, telescoping many hundreds of millions of years since the beginning, atoms coalesced into molecules, molecules into cells, cells evolving a nucleus, which by dividing doubled the cell. Now there was life that could evolve into organisms, the myriad forms.
While this evidence provides insight into the drive to reproduce, second only to the survival instinct, I wonder if it was of necessity thus. I seem always to find cause to wonder, yet come to think of it, when cells had the capacity to divide they had no choice in the matter. I have not gone into the biochemistry here, but perhaps we might surmise that for the longest part of the history of life replication was not a drive but simply the status. It was the emergence of sexual reproduction that brought choice: choosing a mate, however unconsciously, or more recently, choosing whether to mate at all. At this point it would be the lingering of that earlier, mindless capacity that we now view as a drive.
Thus replication is and must be the driving force of life itself, but however unfortunately, even for homo sapiens, it remains as mindless as ever.
The Modern City
I much prefer to inhabit small towns and villages, visiting cities only on occasion, though I often read about urban trends and development. My American friend Anna shares this preference, and has but rarely set foot in the city since locating in a suburb long years ago. Indeed she did live in the nation's capital as the young wife of a medical student, and travelled to a civil service job by bus. There was no subway then. Her mother was born in that city in 1906, when the alleys were for stables not garages. This history will preface my report of her impressions upon a recent adventure into one of the boroughs that has undergone gentrification. She found the street impenetrably clogged with cars and the sidewalks with people - all kinds and colors of people. One lone city sparrow seemed to risk his life in a pathetic oak sapling struggling to grow in a tree box. The din of street noise, rising between upscale apartment buildings, was constant and painful. She came away with two related thoughts: the urban environment had never been like this before, and in consequence contrasted all the more starkly with the country.
In this epiphany lies the unappreciated conclusion that quite naturally and inevitably people from such wildly divergent environments cannot possibly share viewpoints. Upon the wide open praire lands of this planet, the stillness disturbed only by the hum of combines or the howl of wind, where there are few people and those few all the same color, there can be no understanding of urban life as it is today. But we must wonder how long even city dwellers will tolerate or survive these conditions.
Deep Truth
Young friends and relatives may be amazed to learn that I have signed on to a few Buddhist groups on Facebook, merely, I would assure them, in order to share the type of bon mot that intergalactic site favors. I started with some classic sayings of Dogen Zenji, without attribution, to see if they would be recognized. On suchness, for example: "If you would attain such a thing, you must be such a person. Since you already are such a person, why trouble to attain such a thing?" No one called me on these references, so I posted something original: "Until you accept the egolessness of your own self-nature, you cannot experience the unity of that self-nature with all beings, nor the joy, the refuge, of that oneness." Nowhere near as terse as Dogen, who had a way of making the path to enlightenment seem simple. I have been rewarded with some "likes," and have commented briefly on other posts, but I only visit Facebook once a week, after updating this blog.
What has occurred to me through these communications, though, is most instructive, and that is that the very attempt to formulate an expression of a profound truth relegates it to intellect. Once installed in that part of the brain it is glossed over as though no further thought is needed. Thus the ancient masters gave us Gutei's one-finger Zen and Joshu balancing his sandals on his head. But still, we might at least try to reconsider deep truth with Suzuki Roshi's "beginner's mind."
Values
Compatriots or globe trotters reading list week's post might, I fear, accuse me of being out of touch with the old country, despite the footholds I maintain on either side of the pond. When I am in the States, I read my local paper, the Washington Post. I like a morning paper - on paper - and the Post being firmly rooted in the nation's capital has, in my estimation, the most informed view of what goes on here. Indeed with topnotch editors Fred Hiatt and Jackson Diehl, I consider it to be the finest daily in the country.
In a recent lead editorial headlined "Why Russia is a hostile power," the core values of American democracy, shared by all Western nations, were spelled out as though these self-evident truths were sadly being forgotten - human rights, individual liberty, the rule of law, a free press, an independent judiciary - adding the chilling qualifier that these had been core values at least until now. These were contrasted with the Mafioso-style power of the Russian oligarchy led by Boss Putin. Americans who temporize that their country is just as bad, that elections are rigged and news is fake, are sadly ignorant of the paralyzing fear of complete subjugation, the dread that any word one utters, caught on surveillance, may lead to burly men in uniform showing up in the middle of the night to take one into custody, without recourse and never to be seen again.
Equally as sad as their ignorance is the size of this segment of the population. While not a majority, these people are protected by the very freedoms they willfully take for granted.
That's Entertainment?
If I may so observe without causing too much distress to American readers, one of several reasons their country has been so dominant in the world is their extreme competitiveness. Any industry magnate who can maximize profit, thereby securing the competitive edge, will take whatever measure required to do so. One of many examples is the entertainment sector. The medium of television, for instance, had existed for barely a generation before networks and producers had tired of paying writers and actors, and in their bottomless contempt for the audience, came upon the idea of paying someone of the working class a million dollars - petty cash - to romp before the cameras to the merriment of his equally buffoonish brethren. While industry leaders pocketed obscene advertising revenue as pure profit, viewers - sadly - vindicated their low appraisal, at the same time paying monthly to cable companies for the privilege of being insulted.
It is fair to say, though I hesitate to seem boastful, that Great Britain has some advantage in this arena. For one, those grand estates that have survived from the days of the Empire, thanks to the National Historic Trust, make it far more economical to produces period drama. Then too, dare I say it, we have not smothered our creative community.
My American friend Anna informs me that were I to have time to watch television when in the States, it is possible to find reruns of the old shows made before so-called reality TV, when they were scripted and acted by some gifted people: comedienne Carol Burnett, and spinoffs like Vicki Lawrence in "Mama's Family;" Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker, the sensitive portrayal of an insensitive lout. Then there is public television, shamefully and endlessly begging, where one can go to view productions of the BBC.
Such a Person
Readers may have found last week's post concerning our mortal remains just a tad somber; but we should remark upon the "charnel ground practice," which in ancient Buddhist monasteries exposed initiates to those bone yards to impress upon them the urgency of seeking enlightenment. Even so, in Buddhism all sentient beings are considered to be naturally enlightened; insentient beings also are said to speak Dharma by manifesting the transcendent truth. We must wonder then why humans struggle and cause themselves misery. As Dogen Zenji said in his Shobogenzo, "To attain such a thing, you must be such a person. If you are already such a person, why trouble to attain such a thing?"
In some ways, I believe, this is a matter of context. The creatures of nature have the simple context of their instincts: a cat knows its place in the food chain; dogs know how to ingratiate themselves with other pack members, including their owners. Indeed, at times we fancy that, could they articulate, our pets would express the same complexity of sentiment as humans do. Well, perhaps, but right there is the point of departure. The human psyche is uniquely fanciful, and individual, each person wrapped in the most intricate cocoon of his own context. Particularly in civilized society, this human context is invariably unnatural, whether it bespeaks the craven, robotic worship of a cruel despot, the compulsion to destroy others of our own species on the flimsiest of motives, or the strange idea that we must be incessantly stroking electronic devices.
This matter of context is the reason a human may struggle to "attain such a thing" as enlightenment. To see through the context, he must be "such a person," the one who has learned that like any other creature, he already has "such a thing."
Ashes in the Closet
As cemeteries have run out of space for graves, we see a growing resort to cremation, the graveyards now providing places for urns in so-called columbariums. Once we might view the deceased in his casket and thereafter envision him still intact under the sod, continuing to gossip and kibbutz with all others thus interred. A novel recently translated from the Irish, called The Dirty Dust, uses the unique premise of recording this macabre chatter. But now we receive back from the mortician a box with ashes, which sits in a closet while we decide where most fittingly they should be scattered.
What amazes me is that a person, beloved or not, being reduced to ashes in the closet should change everything, while for most people it changes nothing. They might incline more purposefully toward seizing the day; they might try harder to believe in whatever religion they profess, or to persuade themselves of reincarnation. They see two conflicting realities: I am reducible to ashes; I possess a selfhood that I have known since my consciousness awakened. Resolutions of this conflict seem irrational, fantastic, yet both realities cannot be true.
Except they are. The identity one has known intimately is neither individual nor temporal, but rather singular and transcendent.
Big Brother
Recent posts have referenced Huxley's dystopian Brave New World, in which a drug called Soma is distributed to keep the masses pacified. The Romans had "bread and circuses"; are we again moving in that direction? We have our colosseums, our gladiators; we have marijuana, heroin, and now the opioids. The pharmaceuticals are the most damning, since they are used to extort the last cent from those already poor, and the masses are far from pacified. But with Vladimir poised to take on the role of Big Brother and Donald the Godfather, we are well on the way.
Perhaps we need to consider that there may be a threshold beyond which those masses become too supernumerary to pacify, and that in an age of nuclear armaments in the hands of unstable leaders, terrorism may be the trade-off to war. Then we should hope that Big Brother expedites the invention of Soma.
Apres Moi
Not all good ideas are lost in the babble of cyberspace; some are published, picked up on "news feeds" and even attract notice. The author of "The New Urban Crisis," for example, was interviewed concerning his idea that the cities having succeeded by attracting creative young people have at the same time crowded out the poor and the middle class. Only the filthy rich can afford to live there now, exacerbating the wealth gap that has given us a so-called "hour glass" economy. His remedy is one of those good ideas that a young person may hit upon pridefully as original. It is not new: to tie the permitting of urban development to affordable housing.
What never seems to arise is the question of how a middle class ever comes to exist in the first place, there being an assumption that it is common, the natural order of things. To the contrary, the natural, default economy of civilization is exactly what the world has been devolving into for some decades: a tiny elite class owning all the wealth which they grudgingly disburse, where slavery is illegal, to a massive underclass that serves them. Think of the incomparable Maggie Smith as the grande dame in "Downton Abbey" proclaiming imperiously that it is the obligation of the gentry to provide work for those less fortunate. The enormous devastation of war, which brought massive national debt and confiscatory taxes, ended that era. A middle class arose, but inevitably it seems to decay after three or four generations.
As I have written here before, the wealthy have no sense of history, without which they are blind to their own longterm interest; they seek to rule a world of perpetual conflict. Economic opportunity and a strong middle class are key to peace and prosperity. But "apres moi le deluge," and this time quite literally!
Rites of Passage
In the Sherlock Holmes mystery,"The Devil's Foot," Dr. Leon Sterndale, noted explorer and lion hunter, keeps among his African curiosities a vial of radix pedis diaboli, the devil's foot root, which he explains to Mortimer Tregennis is used by the medicine men in certain districts of West Africa as an "ordeal poison." Tregennis then steals some of it and kills his sister Brenda, who is Sterndale's secret lover; and Sterndale takes revenge by the same means. It is one of the stories in which Holmes comes down on the side of justice rather than law: "I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies!"
But considering that ordeal poison and those primitive medicine men, I am reflecting on the tribal rites of passage lost with civilization, or where they exist at all, devolved into empty ritual: the bar mitzvah is an occasion for a lavish party; confirmation confers the right to participate in Christian rituals, if unlike most you continue to attend church. The military once provided a certain rite of passage, when young men were drafted.
In tribal times, such rites were taken seriously because they were necessary to survival. The tribe needed strong young people to grow up - and that quickly. Today there is no socially sanctioned demarcation to adulthood, which gives implicit license to indefinite parental authority. Of course the support and influence of parents may be positive; but too often it is the continued indulgence of overweening narcissism, which, when parents live long enough, can blight a person's entire life. Yet another reason our brave new world should distribute Soma. Aldous, old chap, were you not prescient!
Wait...
The complexities, the strained resources, the crowding that plague modern life are not solely to blame for our chronic need to wait - and wait and wait - at airports, in stores, in queues wherever we may be required to go. No, no, in some cases, such as my own, advancing age plays a role, finding one with growing frequency in a doctor's waiting room. You wait for the doctor, then you wait in the lab, if the office still has one on site. There are always magazines to while the time, often gender specific: sports, cars, guns for the men; fashion, hair style, celebrity gossip for the fair sex. And there might be a few periodicals on health, advising you how to best avoid the doctor in the first place.
These days, however, everyone in the room will have their faces and fingers glued to the tiny screens they clutch perpetually, their minds immersed minutely in the affairs of "friends", or in the "feed" of random information that arrives in an infinite cascade. Is it not curious that the "news feed", once the sole province of legitimate news rooms, is now a thing for everyone? Thus pacified, the patients are patient - very patient - and considering the tsunami of elderly sick people pushing at the doors of a shrinking medical profession, they had better be. It will serve them well likewise in all the other queues - while the economy grinds to a halt.
Brave New World
Manchester of all places, on the River Irwell, home of the Manchester Library Theatre, where Jeremy Brett started his acting career, and of Granada Television Studios, where he ended it as the consummate Sherlock Holmes. Manchester, of all places! Yet as always, what strikes me is how stubbornly ignorant we are about human behavior, when all we need do is to be observant.
Readers, if you are habituated to caffeine, as am I, starting each day as we British do with a pot of tea, try going decaf. You will become lethargic and uncommonly taciturn; but when again you succumb to your habit, the change will be immediate. Suddenly you will perk up and have something to say. We know how sensitive the brain is to chemicals - alcohol, drugs, illicit or pharmaceutical - yet refuse to acknowledge the role of neurochemistry in human behavior. Adolescents are particularly susceptible, as their still immature brains stew in hormones. These jihadis are uniformly young men, impressed by the demonic propaganda that poisons cyberspace, the very air they breathe. But what poison pushes some across the threshold of violence to become suicidal, homicidal? Do we really believe, as they do, that the reason is some irreconcilable religious difference, or that the licentiousness of modern culture becomes intolerable?
In the early twentieth century, lobotomy and electric shock were practiced, especially on convicted criminals. Crude and horrific, the practices were stopped. We are still no where near understanding the brain adequately to tinker with it. But in this brave, new world, should we consider that it may be time for Soma?
Babble
Considering the cacophony that the internet has made of human discourse, I cannot be the only one to wonder what genius is being lost in the uproarious bedlam: a cure for cancer; solutions to over-population and world hunger; harnessing atomic fission. For all the increased potential in communication, there is a blindness to it, a groping in cyberspace, the reaches of which are no less than outer-space. What is being overlooked?
In a recent post, I touched on this subject in comparing the publishing business to the Tower of Babel. When anyone can easily self-publish, the result is more writers than readers; but then when the printing press was new, Samuel Johnson said the same thing.The problem is not new - finding the needle in a haystack, sifting the wheat from the chaff. In times past, the filters were a matter of class; the aristocracy received the education and became the intelligentsia. In the twentieth century, a kind of meritocracy emerged, with college boards assessing the capability of applicants, government research grants being awarded on merit, unsolicited manuscripts accepted by major publishers. Today the online culture is undermining all that. Anything and everything can be bought online. A college degree? Click here. Publish your novel? Click there. And if you have the cure for cancer? You could post it on your Facebook page or your blog. Google would find it - on page 210,331,865,000............
Breeding
As civilization becomes global and seemingly more culturally integral, an old wisdom has been dismissed with regard to breeding. We breed our pets for specific traits; we breed demos tic animals and plants as well, though the practice has lately been termed "genetic engineering" and subject to ill-informed opposition. But humans, we ourselves, are a different matter, are we not? We are preeminently adaptable, devoid of inbred characteristics.
It is true certainly, as proven over millions of years of prehistory when we spread across the planet, that we adapted to every habitat, from jungle to desert to frozen tundra, there developing in relative isolation the distinctions we now call "race". Individually as well we are able to adjust to cultural differences, albeit to hugely varying degrees. But there's the rub. A great deal of conflict at all levels of society arises from a simplistic philosophy that we are all essentially alike, with any apparent differences being so superficial as to be meaningless. Any notion of "breeding" is so nineteenth century! On the contrary, if we would get along well with people of diverse backgrounds, it behooves us to understand and to appreciate that such diversity may be deeply engrained and require accommodation. Democracy for a nation with a long history of autocracy? Religious tolerance where theocracy has held rein for generations?
Breeding is a subtle matter, surely not as important as was thought in Victorian times, nor in many conservative societies. It is also not nothing. Chicken salad versus tuna salad: a simple matter of taste, in the short term. But for your whole life?
The Loom of Karma
I have begun a new essay that I am calling "The Loom of Karma", concerning how the warp and woof of our individuals circumstances bind us inexorably into a superficial view of reality, which in the end turns out to be sadly delusional. The warp and the woof are the twin delusions of time and self, and the quality of their shallowness finds as evidence our paradoxical intuitions.
One among these was touched upon in a recent post about pictures, the vain attempt to freeze one's image. Reflecting on this compulsion, we must realize the conflicting beliefs we hold about ourselves. We feel that our selfhood, for example, is unchanging throughout life, yet that we can modify our nature at will in response to reason. We also believe the exact inverse: that we do change, proven by a glance in the mirror, and at the same time that we are stubbornly unable to behave contrary to a given nature. So true. We change and we do not change; we die yet we do not die; time moves on, but we have no sense of its motion. So true. It is just the truth of the illogical that can free us from that merciless loom - only to find that it also is illusion. Sit, quietly, under the Bodhi Tree!
Pictures
Strange as it seems to me, the younger generation is all about pictures: the internet, the cell phone, every new digital device. All about pictures, from the very beginning. Not long after its invention, the mobile phone became a camera; not long after the personal computer was introduced came YouTube, then Facebook. Now thanks to Google we have readily accessible every picture, moving or still, that was ever taken, ever archived, since the invention of photography. For the young though, it is their own image and images of friends that fascinate, which we might view as natural given the human ego. "Here I am with my latest lover; here at the corner bar with my buddies; here I am walking my dog; here I am killing a random old man for no reason."
Pictures, though they aim to freeze the moment, are ironically ephemeral. Even a famous old portrait that might last for centuries after its subject is forgotten, will eventually fall to the force of entropy. Photography, as portraiture for the common man, may keep an album of snapshots for a few generations. People now claim these digital pictures will stay eternally in "the cloud". More fleeting than ever, clouds are only water vapor; they will evaporate in a cyberwar.
But aside from the unfortunate futility of imparting permanence to an image is the deep-seated illusion that the image represents a steady state, that a person stays essentially the same. In reality our essence is just as ephemeral as our image in a picture. We come forth in the moment as the spark from a stone, a flash of lightning. Catch that in a picture!
In Extremis
It seems to us today, surely, that all of human society is in extremis, the Latin phrase used for a life threatening condition - a severed artery, blockage of the windpipe, gassed with a nerve agent. Yet with the perspective of history and even prehistory, our species has ever been thus. The unspeakable barbarities committed in these times are equalled and surpassed in the records of any of our great and civilized nations.
What ought to strike us, however, is that the polar opposite of such evil is equally extreme. While there are people who revel in the torture of others, there are as well those who will not kill even to eat, and cannot bear to witness the suffering of any sentient being. We are persistently amazed by these extreme potentials. But upon deeper reflection, all things in this dual realm of our conscious experience exhibit like polarities: hot and cold; light and dark; the "powers of ten" revealed in the large and small, i.e. astro- versus nuclear- physics. I submit that the intensity of our dichotomous discriminations is a profound intuition that we are perceiving the inconceivable, which is the transcendent unity. To trust this intuition - that one is able to perceive a thing of which he cannot conceive - requires humility, the same quality that releases compassion for all those ensnared in the poles, in extremis.
Tower of Babel
At the intersection of population growth and technological advancement, I do believe, lies the publishing business, in which the pace of change is only accelerating. As it becomes easier and cheaper to publish a book, any poor young person can enter the Tower of Babel, dreaming of glory, or at least attention. Old-line houses long ago stopped publishing any book they did to solicit, while the scores of small publishers that filled the void for new writers or lesser lights may turn out a hundred titles a year from a thousand manuscripts they might agree to consider, the genres favored being children's books and religious tracts.
No wonder that self-publishing services sprang up and proliferated, to the extent that in just the last few years the heated competition has drawn the attention of the corporate world, with several imprints gathering under a corporate umbrella for advantage. Sales of the service - to writers, not to readers - are delegated to Asian call centers, where those who can speak any English are taught a high pressure, misleading sales pitch. Pity the naive youngster so persuaded. The truth is that there are now more writers than readers. Nevertheless, the self publishing phenomenon is tailor made for the older generation, those who seek only to leave, somewhere available, their thoughts, their history, their passions, and who have the money to see to it.
My best advice to the young author? Keep your day job!
Splintering
Recently in this space, I mentioned the peculiar splintering of reality into layers: hard facts; alternative facts; facts spun through bias; and my favorite, innocent hyperbole. It occurs to me that this phenomenon of splintering is analogous to what I call "proliferitis" in the retail world. The attempt to satisfy every conceivable species of consumer is in evidence everywhere, not alone in the proliferating brands, flavors, and styles of yogurt, approaching infinity in their permutations. The internet, along with consumer credit, allows merchants to sell any and every product in any and every shape, size, or form, keeping the nimble fingers of Eastern sale workers busy. But it boggles the mind, and moreover to sort through this virtual haystack for a needle is time consuming when it is even possible.
Yet with growing speed, the Web is taking over: we not only buy everything there, we pay our bills, our taxes, sell things, donate, communicate with distant relatives. Doctors, forced by the torrent of sick people to join mega-corporations, now must deal with patients through online "portals". Woe to any who have no access to the digital lifeline.
Regular readers of the blog may stop here, knowing that my conclusions tend to lead toward one root: the exponential growth of human population. Surely this is the reason for desperate competition among retailers to survive, and why once simple interactions in much smaller cities, towns, and communities can now only be handled by super computers. I emphasize it because it is almost never mentioned. The numbers balloon over generations, and so no one notices, each cohort of the young content with the complex splintering that is all they have known.
Enough Time
Have you ever had the experience of thinking you need thirty minutes to get ready for something when there are just fifteen minutes left, then you manage to be ready in time? You might begin to suspect that time is fungible, or that you suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. In any case, we have to recognize that time behaves very strangely. It flies or it crawls; we believe it moves but have no sensation of its motion, and it is the only vector that moves in just one direction. At the quantum level it becomes even stranger: there in the great particle accelerators, an effect can be demonstrated to precede its cause. Yet the very notion of time arises from the presumptively incontrovertible observation of cause followed by effect.
There is a British mathematician who theorizes, if I understand it correctly, that quantum mechanics can be reconciled with Einstein's equations by eliminating the function of time. Thus the Grand Unifying Theory awaits only our realization that time is an illusion. As I ready myself for my next appointment, I am thereby reassured that as time does not exist, there will always be enough of it!
Layers
There are layers of reality; yes, of course. At one layer, the one we embrace as axiomatic, the earth is flat, objects are solid, effect follows cause, and all things must be either one way of the other, not both at once. At a deeper layer, none of these axioms are true; and still deeper, the ultimate layer must encompass and so must transcend. Comes now the modern era, when the infodemic spread globally by rapacious media has eliminated even a pretense of intellectual sophistication, and the shallowest levels of reality seem splintered: there are hard facts, based on widely accepted scientific evidence; but where these collide with ideology or trending social media, there are alternative facts; then we have facts subjected to spin to serve a more or less opaque agenda; and "innocent hyperbole", which surely is indistinguishable from felonious exaggeration.
Lost in this cacophony is perspective. In any given circumstance, it is important to know the reality one is dealing with: to know whether Ukrainian rebels are in fact Russian military; whether a black man represents a de facto threat, or every woman in a head scarf is concealing a bomb. Appealing as paranoia is made by that rapacious media, still only hard facts should be considered. When an assailant comes at you with a lethal weapon, you will respond - spontaneously - to a hard fact.
The Post Office
The worldwide web aside, I am still appreciative of hard copy and snail mail, so I often have occasion to visit a post office. Here in Yorkshire, where I am visiting the home farm, I was in the village on just such an errand one morning. The door to the post office had been broken, and an old man with a wrench in his hand was there to fix it. As I came out, he struck up a conversation by joking about one of the patrons, whose scowl seemed to tell of a very bad breakfast. He concluded by wondering how people so obviously well off can be so miserable. The poor man was in sore need of dental care, but he was not down and out. His remarks were intelligent and cogent, as he shared them rather generously. He was born and raised in Sweden after the war, at a time when a farm with six cows was considered wealth. He had not always worked for the postal service, and would not be employed there much longer. Previously, he had been a chef at a private club.
He offered several complaints about modern society, which he traced to the upheavals of the 1960's. The old standards were abandoned, children were uneducated, people had become rude and foolish, lulled by affluence, hard times long forgotten. In the end, what appeared to bother him most was that we do not learn from history. Common sense, he proclaimed, cannot be learned; a person must be born with it. Assuring him of my complete agreement, I added that it had been a pleasure talking with him; and upon his snaggle-toothed smile, we parted. What an incomparable trove of personal experience, I thought to myself, younger generations are passing up from old people so eager to talk!
Bedrock
The essence of the momentary experience is timelessness. Thus unobserved and unacknowledged, it is our natural state. Because of our physical configuration, its first law being self preservation, our conscious minds swim in a stream of thought, mulling and scheming, reflecting and planning, always to get on with the business of our lives. Presumably we cannot afford to step out of that stream of consciousness or to stand steady on its bedrock. In reality we are better off when we do. The zen mind hits the bull's eye with eyes closed.
But the main reason timelessness is unacceptable to us is that our idea of self nature is temporal. Unless we were born, lived, and died in a span of time, we cannot be the individual creatures we believe ourselves to be. This belief rests on memory, laid down moment after timeless moment with more or less accuracy. Lose that ability and you will be plunged into the warm bath of truth: timeless, egoless, transcendent.
Particles
Sitting in meditation, one becomes aware of posture; and I often reflect how, when the skeleton is perfectly aligned with it, the sensation of gravity disappears. Modern physics postulates that the force of gravity, like other forces in the universe, is particulate, naming these particles "gravitons". At the atomic and subatomic levels, matter is particulate: the protons, electrons, neutrons, the quarks. And energy is particulate: the photons of light. Our universe is thus a dance of particles, the dance of Shiva. The gravitons are correcting my posture as the photons of light bounce off objects to enter my eyes with vision.
What does it mean? Foremost is that things are not what they seem at the level of our perceptions. Our bodies, our ideas of self, are they as nothing then? Do they house a wraith who escapes when our particulate cremains are dispersed? None of the above. While fixed tenaciously upon our individual configurations, we know ourselves truly to be one, particulated by a temporal illusion, yet still the timeless One.
Coalescence
In an interview on the news, a young man working in silicon valley was describing some of the marketing devices invented for websites to manipulate the behavior of users. He remarked that no more than fifty young, highly paid techies were thus influencing the actions of billions of people worldwide. It put me in mind of Teilhard deChardin, whose thesis, put forth in his classic The Phenomenon of Man, is that there is an observable direction to evolution, which is toward coalescence: atoms to molecules; molecules to cells; cells to organisms; organisms to societies; societies to civilizations. The last, he contended, despite their cyclical rise and fall, spiral upwards to an "Omega Point".
The continual coalescence of civilization, it seems to me, results in a social organism of increasing cohesion. Are those technical geniuses the brain of that evolving organism, few in number comparable to other organisms, a small percentage of all cells in the body? The dreaded calculation for us, the non-brain cells, is whether that cadre of wealthy techies will come to understand their governing role with its attendant responsibility for our survival.
Be Reasonable!
For the idealist, perhaps the hardest reality to accept is that any person can remain unpersuaded by reason. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, the idealist clings to the belief that a reasonable argument must prevail. Of course the parameters of reason itself are debatable. Even a madman considers himself reasonable in the context of his delusions. In affairs of state, whole populations can be manipulated by propaganda to accept outrageous untruths. Indeed, if this is now a "post-fact" era, we may witness a resurgence of the flat-earth societies. But civilization depends on some consensus of what is reasonable based on accepted criteria and verifiable reality. Our ships would not have landed on new continents, uniting the planet, had their captains continued to believe they might fall off the edge.
Still, we cannot presume idealistically that reason is the human default; rather we must strive to understand the roots of unreason and its potentially flammable nature. Then find cave and secure your copy of the Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants.
Elite
The phenomenon that swings the pendulum of duality is of course polarity. When the furthest extreme is reached the pendulum must start back. In human society the tempo of this swing is accelerated by the tendency toward elitism. All social species are naturally competitive, but human nature takes that up a notch; meaningful numbers of us look for or create criteria by which they may claim superiority over the rest. It is the fable of the emperor's new clothes.
Modernism is a good example: the one who claims to enjoy music without a tonal center displays his elite bona fides, as does the one who asserts that a closet coated in beeswax is an objet d'art rather than the work of a madman or a con artist. The age of the computer has brought a plethora of ways to show one's elite credentials, if one can be seen to possess the latest digital gizmo, or better still to have mastered the most esoteric apps.
This kind of elitism, whether cultural, technological, or political, propels history towards the extreme by creating an upper class complacent in its baseless superiority, expediting its own downfall. Then it takes only an innocent child to shout out that the emperor is naked for the bloodshed to begin.
Efficiency
I understand that economists puzzle over why, as they measure things, productivity is low when employment figures are up. If people are working, how is it they are not productive? Surely we are not all so lazy. No indeed, the truth as I see it is that technology, far from increasing efficiency, has rendered every productive activity onerous and time consuming. Hours are spent not in being productive but in learning, and relearning and relearning, the myriad clicks on myriad buttons on myriad screens for every innovation of software or hardware that comes along, seemingly on a daily basis. These innovations, moreover, never make an operation easier.
It is not only the doctor who spends your brief appointment struggling to find the screen and the right place on it to click in order to tell the computer to enter "common cold" in your records - God help you if it is "heart failure". But pity also the retail clerks, for whom each transaction becomes a legal interview - read this screen, click here, sign next, swipe this card, now the other - with the queue of seething patrons growing. The ultimate problem that looms is this: What happens when all the people still doing productive work - creative people, those with actual knowledge in their heads not in the cloud - are gone? Dead or glued perforce to their mind-numbing screens? Is it coincidence that this situation began with a man named Gates? Like the Gates of Hell?
Prism
One of the benefits of the meditative practice is perspective, even as to the actual functioning of one's own mind. An analogy strikes me with a modern skyscraper that I pass on occasion that stands to the side of a major highway. I call it the prism building. The skin of this remarkable structure is adorned with prisms from top to bottom, at each window and a full story high. As you pass it at night, light is refracted through the whole spectrum: a prism will be blue, then give way to purple, red, orange, yellow, and green.
It came to me in meditation that our everyday karmic minds are likewise prismatic, bending thoughts in accordance with perspective. The redness of rage can mellow into sunny yellow, then cool green and the chilly blue of reason. The trick is to keep moving!
To be or not to be
Surely as soon as science, in uncovering the peculiarities of quantum mechanics, defied the seemingly irrefutable logic of mutual exclusivity, it was a whole new ball game. If energy could be both particle and wave, if effect could be observed to precede cause, if a particle could be in two places at the same time, the physical universe at our level of perception is turned on its head; and yet we are illogical in our very insistence on logic. A thing is animate or it is inanimate, material or immaterial.
It is for this reason that the corpse presents such a puzzling dilemma, a thing that was only lately animate, now inanimate. Intuition tells us that in life it was a person who had always been and would always be; yet having crossed some perceptible threshold, the person will soon seem never to have existed. But the body is just what it always was, constituted of matter that like all matter has no substance, animated by a configuration producing the miraculous gift of consciousness. The body was never what it seemed to us, the shell for a soul.
Soul? There is only one, the source of those illogical intuitions which are the most profound, and the root of that "self" you identify in your mind and body, apart from which there can be nothing - indeed, there is not even "nothing"!
Despots
On the subject of despots, my friend Anna's odious mother-in-law, a woman who has been asymptotic with death for some years, passed away on Christmas evening. Anna had taken to referring to her as her Imperial Majesty the Empress of China. No, she was not Chinese, but she was imperious and egocentric, in such a practiced and subtle manner as to avoid incurring the least blemish on the perfection of her character. One's inferiority to her royal person was axiomatic, so that her unfailing criticism need never be direct but couched always in such a way that she could plead the innocence of her intent, however implausibly. Only an Empress of ancient China could claim such skill at skewering her subjects with complete deniability.
Anna and I have often expressed our mutual amazement at the mesmeric ability of a despotic personality to make others cower. Humans are pack animals, less likely to follow the one who commands love and loyalty than they are to give reflexive obeisance to he or she who demands it.
Human Nature
Success in the leadership of human society from time immemorial has required some degree of realism with respect to human nature. Nowhere has this tenet been better exemplified than in the United States by the founding fathers, freshly chafing from the abuses of monarchs and well schooled in their long history of the same. The idea is further validated by history's failures that were blind to human nature, especially communism, which does not account for competitiveness, and Islam, based on the idealistic notion that the stronger gender will naturally be kind to the weaker. Obviously it is the negative, nasty human traits of which we are willfully ignorant and thus continually afoul of history. Apparently we prefer this blindness to the truth: that society cannot depend on the random beneficence of tyrants. Stability comes with the rule of law and the accountability of leaders.
Oh yes, despots will bring peace - the peace of death and the silence of fear.
Fact or Fiction
I now have a draft of my biography of Jeremy Brett, though it will still need much polishing and assembling before I will let it go. It is a novelized version of his life, which I have chosen as most fitting both to the nature of his story and to my resources as an author. But I have been surprised at a degree of blowback from a few of my contacts disdaining a fictional biography as a kind of tawdry hybrid. I have written here before on this subject, expressing sympathy with the defenders of fact, particularly now when it is under relentless attack. But honest fiction has an irreplaceable role in our literature, and I have been careful in this biography to clarify the sources of my surmises. I must quote Sherlock Holmes in "The Blue Carbuncle" when he says to Watson, "You see everything, but you fail to reason from what you see. You are too timid in making your inferences." Well, I hope my inferences may be as accurate as Sherlock's.
A scholarly biography requires intrusion upon the heirs or descendants of the subject, which an author might understandably wish to avoid. Historical fiction, including biography, enhances our appreciation, and in some cases is the only way to honor and perpetuate the memory of a remarkable life. Just be sure to read the endnotes; my book has 150.
Predictably Irrational
The ironical behavior of our fellow humans should be a sign to us that whatever it purports to express is actually irrelevant, and that the real currents of history are as deep as the subterranean faults that cause earthquakes. We will not then be surprised when fundamentalist Christians believe that playboy Donald Trump will be their champion, a man who has no charity for the poor, no forgiveness for his enemies, no respect for other religions, and believes that while every child conceived must be born, they do not all need to live.
The human species has the supreme gift of language, yet as useful as it is, it obfuscates. What really goes on at that subterranean level of the human mind, hidden in most people from their own consciousness, is this: "I can brook no interference with my reproductive instincts, and I cannot tolerate being surrounded by people who do not look like me, with the risk that my descendants will likewise bear me no resemblance; if necessary I will kill those other people, simply by convincing myself that they are not truly human." The disconnect between words and primal urges explains Trump's followers. His election to the leadership of the once free world, however, is the result of a slow and careful domination of the process by the Republican party. Through gerrymander and closed primaries, they now have a stranglehold on the American government and can rule as a minority in perpetuity. A contributing factor has been the segregation of the electorate geographically into political, racial and cultural tribes. The Dark Age returns; look for another war in Europe by 2020. Yes it is ironic, but not inexplicable.
Darwin Redux
A pall hangs over the season, already by nature the darkest, since the world's remaining superpower selected through its arcane election process a leader who is unprepared, unqualified, hence unpredictable. The fear of instability may of itself be destabilizing, especially when even his supporters do not know what he will do. Half of the country sees Armageddon, the other half rejoices that everything will finally be put right. The rising temper worldwide seems to be that liberal democracy has failed, making despotism our last best hope. Mr. Putin is poised to reclaim the Soviet bloc, with the eager permission of everyone there who speaks Russian, and then the French are positioning themselves to sign up by means of their last free election.
While shocking to the generations who knew the last European war and the postwar, in the larger scheme of things, these developments are Darwinian. Unrest began in desert areas of the world, where resources would be first to disappear. When refugees in growing numbers and desperation began spilling over into the advanced nations of the West, the upper classes started to fear for their survival. Now comes the rationale: the fittest will survive; the unfit, the evil people may be destroyed. These will be identified by their deviation in color, language, and dress from ourselves. Thus has our species always reduced its population. A more humane means would require the impossible: rational germ cells.
Eye of the Beholder
There is more to be said of course on the question of cultural aesthetics, touched upon in a recent posting. Indeed when I finish the biography of Jeremy Brett, it will be the first subject taken off the back burner for an essay. The reflexive criticism I anticipate involves the definition of words like beautiful and ugly. What is beauty to one person may be the epitome of ugliness to another, or vice versa, or what is considered ugly in one era may catch on in the next if it is touted as beautiful by cultural elites to the upper classes. There will always be those ready to admire the Emperor's new clothes.
But the people who are so eager to stretch the meanings of words and the uses of language are too cavalier as to the primary and vital purpose, which is communication. We have to have a common understanding of words when we need to convey meaning. As an example, fiction writers today are so compulsive about avoiding cliche that the reader is bombarded with bizarre phraseology and is left to wonder what on earth is meant. If an author wants to communicate what he considers important, his challenge is not to find the most unusual word but the right one, even if it happens to be a cliche.
That the average person understands this is suggested by the fact that no one refers to modern music as "beautiful". Composers long ago abandoned the tonal idiom that was our common musical language, which reliably evoked shared human emotions. Truth is beautiful; communication is beautiful. We still know that.
Sad Vindication
It is sad vindication of my "Sexual Theory of Everything" (see below) that clever as we are as a species, we will always revert in the end to a baboon society. Given the choice, we will decide that we cannot rule ourselves, and so cede power to the alpha male; despite the capacity to reason, we will follow instinct and segregate back into our tribes. Elections aside, the powerful will always find ways to rule as a minority.
Yet to be reminded of just how picayune are these earthly travails we have only to look skyward: the moon, so close and bright this week; the distant stars, barely visible but twinkling; our sun, large as it is, a minor star. Even so the universe is but one layer of reality, and compared to it we are as dust. What lies ahead of us in the devolution of civilization is purely karmic, the result of causes over which we have no control, including those within ourselves. There will be nothing new, nothing that was not experienced on the British Isles when they were overrun by the Romans, then the Norsemen, then the French, and almost by the Germans. America was once a great refuge from the butchery of despots, but nothing lasts forever. The Buddhist takes refuge in the Dharma, the ultimate truth, the ultimate reality that transcends even the vast universe. Let this be a mantra: Emptiness makes all things easy!
Who Do You Think You Are?
Of the various considerations that may impel a creative person into anonymity, or pseudonymity, is perhaps the odd but widely held attitude that such people are by definition egotistical. It gives cause to wonder whether prehistoric hunters sketching their exploits on the walls of caves may have faced that look of disdain which says, "Who do you think you are?" And therein lies the crux of the matter: the cult of celebrity. As soon as one or more cavemen are celebrated for their art, anyone else wanting to paint a cave wall is presumed to aspire to that cult.
In modern times, celebrity has become such a coveted state that perfectly mediocre people may achieve it through clever marketing, especially with the bullhorn of the internet. Fame brings money, of course, hence the reflexive skepticism of any creative activity. The business of fame and wealth obscures the pure motive of real creativity, which is love: For the nonpareil output of J.S. Bach it was ad gloria majorem Dei; for folk singer Bob Dylan, it was not to win the Nobel Prize. I wonder if that is his real name?
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Eye of the Beholder
At the risk of reinforcing my curmudgeonly reputation, I must say that nothing is more fashionable today than ugliness, whether it is of clothing or music, art or literature. Whatever is created in modern times must conform to the aesthetics of ugliness. If we would be modern, our clothes must be torn and dirty, any adornment restricted to ink injected under our skin; our music must avoid a tonal center, and art must be derived from the mundane garbage in which the artist may thereby claim to be immersed. In college courses of Creative Writing 101, the standard lesson in the very first class is this: assemble as many gritty, grungy details you can imagine in describing a thing, and readers will praise your realism. The second lesson is that you must write an explicit sex scene by page 30.
I understand the historical argument that modernism in the twentieth century was a reaction to the excesses of high romanticism in the late nineteenth; but we are now in another century. After more than a hundred years, that rebellion is the status quo. As to the idea that ugliness in our culture reflects the reality of modern life, I say balderdash! He is ignorant of history who can believe that merry Olde England was somehow not as ugly as its modern counterpart.
"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." So begins A Tale of Two Cities, and that is the point. How we discriminate reality is a choice; and when we discriminate collectively with a certain bias, that becomes the cultural viewpoint. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so is ugliness.
Mental Illness
The biography of Jeremy Brett, the late English actor famous as the quintessential Sherlock Holmes, is a compelling story which I have been working on assiduously for the past two years. The final chapter of his life is difficult to write as it must concern the advanced stage of his manic depression - difficult because of the stubborn persistence of our neglect and misunderstanding of mental illness. We refuse to believe that a person may lose control of his behavior, even of his mind. Faced with evidence, facts, we remain unable to accept them even if we might believe them, because if there is such a possibility it may happen to us.
The insane were once held apart in asylums. When they were let out, the police by default have been left to deal with them. But those who manage to function walk among us. Mood disorders are not uncommon, and the drugs to treat them far from harmless. Many of us may know a friend or relative who suffers, and even knowing that illness is the cause of his irrational behavior, may still be unable to tolerate it. That is the saddest thing of all. Where is the rare person who would not vow to cut all ties to the angry unreasoning face of madness?
Desperation
As one of the dwindling number of individuals who has a so-called land line telephone, I am incessantly exposed to the deepening desperation of multitudes on our overpopulous planet, mostly employed, I gather, at call centers in the Philippines or other Pacific island nations. They call hawking one thing or another, begging for some charity, or threatening some bogus government lawsuit unless you pay them, all in a rapid fire, heavily accented English. Technology being what it is, the call may appear to come from anywhere, but usually has the area code of some innocuous state of the U.S. One has to pity the poor souls the monotony of their days, compelled to harass people who curse and hang up on them, but they are the ones who doubtless feel fortunate to have a job that hasn't been taken by a robo-caller, while their countrymen barely survive in hovels soon to be washed away by the rising seas.
The United Nations, in an untoward discussion of public health, is taking up the matter of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a growing and dire threat. Nature it seems is likewise becoming desperate - to restore the thresholds we have crossed and the balances we have violated.
Health Care
What an enormous price we pay for the wonders of modern health care! The financial burden as life expectancy rises is crushing nations. The aged are helped to stay alive beyond any reasonable quality of life, while no one is helped to die even when they struggle to do so. But as great as the economic price may be, it is matched or surpassed by the psychological cost. Every sign or symptom in the aging process, once taken for granted, must be investigated. Where an old back used to be expected to bend out of shape, now a cause must be determined: degenerative lumbar scoliosis. Who, I humbly venture to ask, is the better for that bit of information?
But then with age every checkup is fraught with increasing anxiety as the odds of a terminal diagnosis rise. We live with uncertainty as any anomaly in a test sets up the need for more tests, and we are swallowed up in the maw of the medical machine. In the last phase of life we must have our affairs in order, and take refuge in the Buddha's truth that the self we know in the mind's stillness, being singular, transcends the duality of birth and death. Meanwhile, unless you have some pressing goal remaining in your life, just say no to the beta-blockers.
Logic
Our blind insistence upon the superiority of logic is at once limiting and puzzling: limiting because as science pushes the boundaries of what is perceptible, it has become clear that the ultimate nature of reality defies logic - refer dear readers, to The Tao of Physics - puzzling because human behavior itself is rarely governed by reason. For example, even knowing of the poverty and hunger in parts of the world, let alone their own city or town, there are individuals who will complain bitterly if their favorite brand, type, and flavor of yogurt is not among the 500 varieties on the grocery shelf on a given day, and will swear that the nation is evidently going to hell in a hand basket.
Indeed more often than not, human psychology is counterintuitive. Consider two people who fight whenever they are together, seizing any trivial matter to dispute. Logically these two would want to avoid one another when possible, yet more often than not they are in fact locked in neurotic combat which they will never escape, particularly if they are family. We teach children to think logically, a useful ability to be sure. But if only we might know from a young age that the deepest truth may lie hidden and not be logical at all.
Humorless
In the modern version of warfare - protracted and asymmetrical - civilized people have every reason to be humorless. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in airport security lines, where any impulse to levity is judiciously squelched, all the more remarkable since nowhere is sarcasm more justified. "Security theatre" is theater of the absurd. But seeping into the wider culture is an angry grimness. Have we lost the freedom to jest? Are we incapable of satire when it is needed most?
Of course there is that cable show that satirizes the news, when even the straight news is parody. Young people, normally the most iconoclastic, seem stuck in prepubescent potty humor, hard evidence being the hideous selection of "humorous" greeting cards. But the sharp wit that requires a special kind of intelligence and knowledge? Self censorship is the chilling sign that the pall of despotism hangs over us.
The Simple Life
We read from all the economics news that productivity continues low in spite of improvement in employment figures. Perhaps, it is theorized, the contribution of technology is not being appreciated. Being of the older generation, I hold the opposite view: that technology is a huge drag on the economy, which effect is not recognized because young people have no idea how simple and expeditious life was before its advent. Send a quick message? Choose among Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, email, text, or voice mail. Choose wrongly and you may as well have used "snail mail". Click the wrong website on your iMac and it may be "locked" by a scammer popping up with a message that your Windows computer has a virus"!!!". If you are lucky enough to have the number of Apple Support, you may then spend the rest of the afternoon on the phone to get the computer unlocked, discovering in the process that your browser cannot be updated until your system software is, this on a desktop that is eight years old, no doubt referred to by techies as a T. Rex.
Should you have occasion to see a physician, he will now spend the fifteen minutes allotted to you staring at his digital template puzzling over where to click; in the past he would have looked at you as you spoke, the entire differential diagnosis speeding through his brain in milliseconds. Today your problem will not be solved, nor typically ever. If this leaves you reflecting upon the swift deductive skills of the erstwhile Dr. Joseph Bell, upon whom Conan Doyle patterned his Sherlock Holmes, and who could size up the patient at a glance, thereby discerning his occupation, his home county, and his physical condition, well then you are catching on!
Yin-yang
The yin-yang symbol is the graphic portrayal of duality, each side with a small eye through which we see its opposite, meaning that in each pole of a dichotomy lies the seed of the other. In light is the seed of dark, in sound the seed of silence, and so on. Or one might say the existence of one extreme presupposes its opposite: if there is a God, there must be a Devil, and vice versa. Were this a political blog, I would then have to say that The Donald proves the existence of God!
What is easily overlooked, however, is the overall shape of this symbol: it is contained by a circle, a singularity, a perfect expression of paradox. There are two things, and they are also one thing. Our visual sense gives another clue to this ultimate reality. Regard your candle in meditation; it is singular. But focus your eyes on your folded hands in front of your face, and there will appear in your peripheral vision two candles. We know there is only one candle; we may henceforth reflect on the significance that duality is peripheral.
Maine
Without having to fly across the pond, a trip to Maine is needed refuge from the heat of mid-Atlantic states. I like to stay at an old, historic, bayside inn, where in the elegantly appointed lobby the concierge keeps a coffee urn, and in the afternoon a plate of freshly baked cookies. On my recent northerly retreat, I was in the lobby reading, coffee and cookie in hand, when a toothless old man, half bald and potbellied, sat down across from me and proceeded to start up a conversation. He had coffee and a fistful of chocolate chip cookies, which he said were against doctor's orders because he is diabetic.
Before long it was evident that he is what psychologists call a "flooder"; the listener will have his entire life history within the hour. Accordingly I learned he is a Vietnam veteran, a journalist, a photographer, and an art dealer. He is Catholic and wanted to be a priest, but was turned down because he was "not gay enough". He also wanted to be a spy, and travels to Russia often being a friend of Putin. As a child he was a bookworm, and loved to sing; indeed he broke into a love song which he said he conceived at the age of ten. By then I suspected he was confabulating and recognized other apparent signs of a mood disorder: the grandiose self image, the fluctuating affect. He became weepy as he explained how he loves people who will listen to him, but how rare it was to find intelligent people, those of course being the ones kind enough to be patient. Finally I begged off and rose to search out a quiet lawn chair. The toothless man bade me to stop at his gallery in the nearby town, where I might expect a twenty percent discount on the hand-carved wooden boat in the window. "Just tell them Rod sent you."
Humankind
The capital of the free world, outside of which I live when not in Yorkshire, attracts immigrants from the world over. There are Chinese communities, Israeli, Indian, and every Hispanic nationality; and among them all are professionals, skilled and unskilled laborers. Public areas are a polyglot, unequaled since the wave of European immigrants in the early twentieth century. Since Europe's attempt to erase its national borders, its citizens must be growing more accustomed as well to the culture of global integration.
Humans are a species of wanderers, who spread over the planet since prehistory, over time developing distinctions of race, language and customs; but they sprang from the same stock, which is clear as they have come together in the relatively recent era of civilization. We identify with fellow humans; we walk erect, we use language. Thus we manage to live together, trade with one another, even intermarry. Only when resources are scarce do we become sensitive to our differences, so as to insure the means of survival for our own "kind". It is then that the meaning of humankind reverts to the primitive and sinister.
Free Will
My favorite remark on the subject of free will is the query made by Albert Einstein: We can do what we will, but do we will what we will? It is increasingly clear that we do not. Our behavior is driven by shades of emotion and attitude which fluctuate with the electrochemical tides bathing our brains, our motivations conditioned by an encompassing web of complex influences. In general, our awareness of the state in which we are immersed is no greater than that of a fish, oblivious of water. Surely we have reasons for everything we do or feel, reasons for our biases, our prejudice; and we maintain this conviction even as such things change drastically from one phase of life to the next.
The observation of this fluctuating mind system is one of the first aims of meditation. Attempting to clear the mind, we become aware of rising thought. Then we may be surprised to discover that we need not pay attention to our thoughts, but let them pass. When we get to that clear mind, it is like glass upon which the mist of thought is constantly swirling. It is with such insight into the origin and nature of thought, behavior, attitude, that we may with perspective be enabled to "will what we will".
Hope or Despair
We live as karmic beings in a dual realm, beginning with the symmetry of your bodies, and at certain points in the cycle of our history the extremes of black and white are seen to obliterate all shades of gray. Such times are dangerous, and this is one of them. If any police officer anywhere proves himself unsuitable for law enforcement by killing someone unnecessarily, a shudder radiates instantly through the global nervous system, propelled at the speed of light by the promise of ratings and ad revenue, and convincing wide swaths of the populace that all policemen, a majority at least, are cold blooded murderers. Nuance and complexity are shouted down. No time for that! Moderation must be locked up, no, beheaded!
Is there no hope, and if not must we despair? That is yet another set of opposing extremes; but there is a middle ground, which is acceptance, a Buddhist attitude. Surely though we cannot accept violence, cruelty, injustice! To correct this common misunderstanding, we need only observe that kung fu was the invention of Buddhist monks, who in ancient China faced certain and complete annihilation. The true understanding is that acceptance must be accompanied by humility. We may do what we can; we should not hope for more. But then accepting when that is often insufficient, we need not despair. We take refuge in the Dharma, the Truth, Reality, or in other words, we shall overcome - in our own way.
Gender
My friend Anna is often reminded by her Spirit Guide that gender is the most troubling dichotomy in the karmic realm. It may seem otherwise as modern media trains its laser beam around the globe on race, religion, or ethnicity giving rise to mayhem, but these are localized skirmishes compared with the universal conflict between male and female. Sexual reproduction succeeded in creating a greater capacity for adaptation by allowing the genetic contribution of separate individuals, but over the eons distinctions evolved becoming pronounced, especially when augmented by society. "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" A better question is why would you want that, or vice versa?
Perhaps the conflict is not so much between men and women as it is within them. Our naturally opposite drives work against our acknowledging other potentials: a man may possess enough tenderness to be kind to a woman, and she may harbor enough strength to assert herself. That is the psychological aspect, but of course the science of life defines it as reproductive, as I argue in my essay. That is why gender is problematic. Other species are born with this knowledge; we are not.
Doddering and Demented
Among the several ways that the modern world has turned life topsy-turvy is the attitude towards aging, which until confronted personally one rarely appreciates. In generations past, indeed throughout human history, adults were respected by children, aged people by younger adults. One gained respect along with the accumulation of years. Today, at the risk of drollery on a question of great controversy, persons have the most respect as fetuses, from which apex respect declines slowly but surely. Adults are the fools in comparison with children, and past the prime of life become doddering, demented excess baggage.
The argument I hear is that due to modern technology, young people have nothing to learn from their elders, to which my reply is a resounding balderdash. Technology has scarcely anything of significance to offer that concerns the human experience; and then there is danger of being doomed to repeat history. Of course the longer we live, the more of us will become doddering and demented; medical science is bent on making that a certainty. But still, listen closely: dementia is only a hair's breadth from wisdom!
Perception
I am of the belief that our five senses and the consciousness that attends them are our windows on the ultimate essence of reality, at least whenever we sit quietly and focus on them. Intuition informs us, for example, that the essence of sight cannot be defined by bouncing photons and excited neurons; and the intuition is especially keen at the sight of magnificence: the grandeur of the large - mountains, oceans, stars, galaxies; the intricacy of the small - the fractal geometry of a leaf or a spider's orb.
We naturally fear losing any capacity of our senses, not only because of the disability it may mean, but also of a deprivation of the pleasure they bring us. We fail to acknowledge the deeper intuition: that the capacity to sense is the form which emptiness takes in our minds, and that it remains in the absence of stimuli. When we see, we are aware of form; we see the mountains, the sea, the sky, but when we discriminate them as magnificent, that discrimination reflects the intuition of transcendent Essence, which is the paradox of duality unified; Form and Emptiness equal oneness. The same intuition is the root of the spiritual impulse in human consciousness.
These sights are not magnificent; they are real, which means that reality is the ultimate paradox of all duality unified in transcendence. The gift of sentience allows us the perception of duality; the Eye of the True Teaching, the inner eye, knows without seeing. That is bliss!
Uprisings
Eventually, truth be told, stupid people will rise up when the clever ones are not clever enough. The distillation of Chinese wisdom on the subject - Confucianism, or parts of the Tao Te Ching - is that the ruling classes must watch themselves. "Never drive your carriage past a poor man's house," is a favorite example, warning against ostentation. But we need only pick up the morning paper to find instances around the world. David Cameron was not clever enough, and so the stupid people rose up in the vain hope of liberating themselves from globalization. The leaders in Brussels, the founders of the European Union for that matter, were not clever enough to see the necessity of compromise in holding disparate nations together. Here the Chinese wisdom resides in this: "To control your cow, give her a large pasture."
But Europe is being destabilized by refugees, because President Obama, the cleverest man surely to occupy the office, was not clever enough to heed his advisors, including Secretary Clinton. Strategically targeted bombing in Syria years ago, a safe zone within its own borders, would have ameliorated the mass exodus, even spared heads from rolling int he desert. Now the stupid people will rise up to declare war against Islam, damn the consequences.
A last example on the front page today is Venezuela, where inflation is 700 percent and starvation is immanent. Mr. Chavez and his successor were clever enough to hand out the oil money when it flowed, but not enough to know that markets fall as well as rise; and so the stupid people will rise up, doubtless to find yet another strongman to follow down the primrose path of vain promises.
Religious War
Donald Trump, impolitic and inarticulate though he is, is correct about the Islamic world, where many perhaps most countries that are majority Muslim do not share the values of modern Western civilization.They are primitive and fundamentalist in their interpretation of Islam, and therefore intolerant of all manner of naturally occurring human behaviors, which they find abhorrent, and which they punish in the most grisly ways, which they do not find abhorrent. They treat the female half of their societies like livestock, thereby denying themselves hope of economic prosperity by suppressing the talents of half of their population; and now the most extreme amongst these extreme primitives, driven by the licentiousness of the West, take measures to wipe us out.
Their surest path to success is religious war, and the surest way to start one is to smear all Muslims with the same brush. Rising up to rebut Mr.Trump's appraisal are the many countries in the Islamic world managing to adapt their religious beliefs with modern, secular society, the perfect example being Turkey. But in war we are called up to kill everyone of a certain ilk, individuals with whom we have no quarrel, except that they also are compelled to kill us. If the queen is Catholic, all Protestants must be burned at the stake and vice versa. For centuries, America has been the refuge from just such wars.
The Sick Mind
After each newsworthy incident of mass killing, I imagine that surely there will emerge a dawning realization in the hive mind that the root of the phenomenon has very little to do with the several issues flaring up to distract us: guns, religious radicals, war in the Middle East. Regardless of their own professed motives, what the perpetrators share in common is just this - a sick mind. It is true that radical jihadists are ideological, skilled at marketing and propaganda; they know their target demographic inside out and upside down: young, male, Muslim in particular, and worldwide. Indeed it is through the World Wide Web that they reach their target with the precision of a disease entity.
However the individuals who fall prey to their message - to the point of homicide and suicide - are in general those who were mentally unstable to begin with. Here again we see our deadly ignorance of mental illness and the crippling ambiguity surrounding its diagnosis. Of course, we need a watch list of terrorists who might circulate around the globe with evil intent, including anyone in contact with them. But we must refine that focus to zero in on those showing signs of mental aberration: abusive, antisocial, or bizarre behaviors. When it comes to the homegrown, lone wolf, a man does not have to be certifiable to become dangerous.
Human Truth
In the Berkswell Parish Magazine of last November, the Rector of Berkswell reflected on a distinction between historical and human truth. He related an interchange between historian Niall Ferguson and novelist Jane Smiley, in which the latter argued that neither a factual history nor a fiction based on it can claim absolute truth nor even escape the writer's personal interpretation, while Ferguson complained that the novelist is just "making things up". The Rector of course saw a religious relevance to the Gospels, which may not be historically accurate but were intended to convey the human truth, the deeper meaning of the teachings of that erstwhile rabbi, Jesus.
I came upon this reflection in my work on a biography of late British actor Jeremy Brett, a native of Berkswell in Warwickshire. As it is the human story of this remarkable man that interests me, and not the facts of his celebrity, which could in any case be questionable, I am using a fictional style. Many biographies are written this way, famously those of Irving Stone, bringing the history and the people to life. Yet in an age that increasingly lacks trustworthy sources of information, when blatant falsehood is taken for fact, I am nearly persuaded by the historian's bias. Surely, I tell myself, the subtlety of an author's intent will not be lost on readers - most especially, I hope, the parishioners of Berkswell.
Brexit
The possible exit of Great Britain from the European Union, we read, reflects in part an anxiety arising from multiculturalism. It brings to mind again that word "coalescence" that Teilhard used to describe the evolution of civilized society towards one world. But the course of current affairs should cause us to reflect whether we really want one world. People of different cultures have lived side by side in relative peace, historically under the iron hand of empire. But let there be a dwindling of resources and they will vie for resources; let there be a vacuum in the power structure and they will vie for supremacy.
In human nature, differences are calibrated, consciously or not, on the scales of discrimination. So, do we envision a world where inter-breeding has eliminated all distinctions? Or do we imagine that somehow genuine humility will seep into the human genome? The fact that we have no clear vision of one world that is not wildly idealistic is instructive. When the pace of coalescence is too fast, a backlash slams on the brakes. Then it behooves to slow down and decide: curry or haggis?
Socrates
The most encapsulated yet profound example of human wisdom is surely the Socratic "know thyself", simple but consequently underestimated. We each and all believe we know ourselves, yet clever psychological experiments uncover unacknowledged tendencies; we are, for example, predictably irrational, the title of an interesting book by Dan Ariely. Then there is bias. We might admit to a bias against country music, or bearded men, or red heads, but a racial or a gender bias is often far more subtle and consequential, as poor Mrs. Clinton may find to our collective misfortune. It is my belief that this very stubborn refusal to face our human nature, to know ourselves, has caused the persistent cycling of civilization since it first evolved. I argue that homo sapiens is in essence the end product of the self-replicating organic compounds that signified nascent life on earth, and that therefore the basic drives of life, including human drives, may all be traced to reproduction.
But this, alas, is a giant leap for people. "No, no, no," they complain, "I am motivated by far nobler considerations. I love mixed race children, but my daughter's boyfriend just isn't bright enough." The irony is that issues of tribe that lie hidden beneath the surface may be benign and legitimate when it comes to the longterm success of an intimate relationship, where conflicts of culture can have extreme impacts on children. Your daughter may surmount skin color, but tuna salad over chicken salad is irreconcilable!
Mind Over Matter
In Buddhist literature and scripture, one comes upon phrases that remain forever mysterious. Buddha is often quoted, for example, in the Dwight Goddard compilation, A Buddhist Bible, as saying, "All things are of the mind itself." Of course, the tricky matter of translation from the Sanskrit is always of concern, but we can be sure Buddha did not mean that the world is imaginary. I compare this saying to the teaching of Shunriyu Suzuki, encapsulated in the Zen classic, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, that whatever we perceive arises in the mind. Nothing enters the mind, nor by mind do we mean simply consciousness. Indeed through meditation practice we discover that by clearing the weeds of thought what remains is a consciousness of this mind.
So whatever we are aware of perceiving is really the essence of mind, "of the mind itself". Its multifarious nature is due to the filters with which we are configured: the senses, the brain. These are strangely comparable to filters on a website, narrowing options to the very item we are trying to find in our voluntary blindness to the allegorical infinity of cyberspace. To remove the filters is the purpose of meditation; that would surely be enlightenment!
Sapiens?
The oddest thing about a creature with the capacity to reason is how he turns out to be so stubbornly irrational. Witness homo sapiens: using his incomparable cleverness he creates at great expense weapons with which to destroy everything he has built at equivalent expense, because some other tribe has a different idea about a deity, the existence of which cannot be demonstrated in any case; he repeats this behavior through many thousands of years of history. Or this: he convinces himself that his deity will brook no interference with the reproductive process, but allows him to take any measure however desperate or intrusive to keep a person alive as long as possible.
We can think of innumerable examples from our personal and our public lives that attest to the unreason of our fellow man, like continuing to build suburban housing while refusing to add bridges over the river everyone will need to cross every day. Addressing this peculiar, intractable irrationality is my essay, available below, which begins, "The world is not ruled by men, it is ruled by sperm." In answer to Einstein, we can do what we will, and that cleverly, but no, we cannot will what we will.
Elections
Not to leave readers hanging with regard to my post the week before last, the white chap did win nomination to the Senate seat over the challenge from a young black woman, and in this state he is therefore a shoo-in. So much for what they call primary elections here in an age of self segregation. The bigger picture though, as you may know I am always wont to discover, is the question of federalism itself, and which it seems America now has in common with Europe.
In the governance of a large geographical area made up of smaller regions more or less coalesced into a whole - the United States, the European Union - there will arise over time a growing number of things that will need to be centralized for the common good. The general acknowledgment of such a need as it becomes critical may determine the survival of the whole. In America witness the political crisis that has the government paralyzed as a result of a process that allows representatives to choose their voters, securing their power in perpetuity to the neglect of popular will. To stop this practice districts need to be drawn on a nonpartisan basis; but to accomplish that, the policy would have to be national. For Europe the crisis is security. Countries of the Eurozone have a common currency, but their open borders are apparently not open to their separate police and intelligence agencies. At risk in this case is life itself not just good governance.
"Coalescence" is the very word used by Teilhard de Chardin in The Phenomenon of Man to describe our evolution toward one world, his Omega Point. Recommended reading for our new Senator.
Birdsong
Among the many charms of spring in the temperate zones is the return of such various bird species for the mating and nesting season, adding their voices to those of permanent residents. These latter have grown in number here in the mid-Atlantic region of America. Robins no longer migrate, for example, nor do the Canada geese. But on my early morning walks his time of year, I discern from the avian cacophony familiar sounds of returning birds, or perhaps of some passing through on their way north.
There is the pine siskin with his rapid monotone trill as he perches at the very top of a pine tree like a tiny Christmas ornament. When we are lucky, a brown thrasher will grace the tree canopy. He looks like a wood thrush but is a mimic, like the mocking bird, his distinction being that he repeats each imitative phrase twice. The migratory warblers are the hardest to spot, being small and preferring the treetops. Their songs are often buzzy, but of such variety that they are next to impossible to remember. The grackles return chortling, along with the cowbirds. But when at last the catbird is back, all others are driven from his favorite hedge, and the serious business of the season is underway!
Politics
To the close observer of history, politics can be so telling of human nature and the workings of fate, i.e. karma. In our small district outside of Washington, DC, a man is standing for nomination to an open Senate seat, giving up his position in the lower chamber to do so. Running against him is a young African American woman, a single mother, also a representative but not as strong a candidate. The man is middle aged and white. The history, which I am informed of by my friend Anna, who has lived here longer than I, is instructive.
Years ago the district was represented by a white woman of the opposite party, who had held the post for decades, due doubtlessly to her strength in constituent service. She was not ready to step aside for the young firebrand, the same who now with temples greying vies for a place in the Senate; and so the district was gerrymandered to rake in far-flung, traditionally black communities. The cynical but accurate calculation that black people would not vote for the other party won him his entrée to the legislature.
Now he is challenged by someone from those very communities. If he wins it will be close, but either way one must hope he has learned the value of a "loyal opposition".
The Lotus Sermon
In Buddhism we keep returning to chew over the old stories of the masters, any one of which we are assured can open our minds at last to Truth: What is this state we are seeking on our cushions or benches sitting in meditation? What was it really that Buddha saw in that lotus flower, as the disappointed multitude awaited his words? It cannot be as simple as it seems, surely, belied by something deeply subtle in the knowing smile of Mahakasyapa, the only disciple who understood his wordless sermon, thus becoming the first Zen patriarch.
Did they see in the lotus flower that the essence of reality is revealed in the simplest of things? Yes, of course. Did they feel a sense of oneness with nature? No doubt, but these realizations are common enough; they are far from transformational. Where is that "red hot iron ball" we must swallow to get through the Gateless Gate of Master Ekai?
The magnificence of the lotus flower, of all our perceptions, reveals the transcendent essence of ultimate reality. But here's the rub: that includes what we conceive of as self, with all of its dissections - body, mind, soul. There is but one selfhood, and it belongs to no one. Buddha demonstrated this: No One regarding the transcendent beauty of No Thing. Not oneness, Singularity.
Paradox
To anyone attempting to follow the Path of Buddhism a significant obstacle must be the paradoxes we encounter in this dual realm, and the reason is a stubborn adherence to logic. We find it hard to imagine that the poles of any dichotomy are not necessarily mutually exclusive, despite the frequent evidence of reality, quantum mechanics as the prime example. Poor Albert couldn't believe that God would roll dice, but if not it turns out, he could not be responsible for ultimate reality.
Sentience gives us clues, when we feel cold and hot at once, pain and pleasure, sad and happy. But our intuitions are the clincher, especially those we discount: it seems that we die and that we don't die; it seems we have always lived, and when we are gone that we never lived; time passes, but we have never felt its motion. Not logic, truth, which must encompasses illogic.
God Fearing
I will not argue that men have not always been sinful. Pride, deceit, selfishness - every sin has a long history. But I must observe that once there were standards maintained by civil society, which have been demolished in modern times like last year's sports arena. Lest you scoff, consider that as recently as the nineteenth century advertising was viewed as unethical, and until modern times it was a sin according to the Christian faith to charge interest on a loan.
Those were "god-fearing" times, an apt term, as people were indeed humbled by a fear of the Almighty. Modern people, I submit, are not only secular, they are increasingly irreligious. Many may refute this opinion, but to me the mega-church with the jumbo-tron blaring rock music seems far removed from worship of a Supreme Being, equally as far as modern man now is from humility. What is there left to humble us? Obviously we must now return to fearing one another.
Curmudgeons
As the world shudders for the USA, I tell people that if The Donald is on ballots in the fall, his vote count will provide the precise number of old angry white men left in that colony - sorry, country. Personally when I find myself in an irritable mood, I reflect upon the Zen story of the curmudgeonly flower enthusiast and his prize chrysanthemums. After lopping them with a scythe in the dead of night, the Master tells him, "Even weeds like these grow rank if not cut." Of course this pearl of the ultimate perspective brings the man the bliss of instant enlightenment. Our minds are full of such weeds.
Simply put, the perfect recipe for chronic irritability is some degree of discrepancy between expectation and karmic reality. Keeping to the horticultural analogy, if your landscape design starts out with clumps of white birch amid lovely azalea groves, and over time the birches succumb to ice storm, the azaleas to deer browsing, you had best embrace the native holly trees. When we fail to accept that all of perceived reality is but the natural flux of Form from Void, our misery will overtake us - that includes you Donald.
Butterfly's Wing
This is not a news or political blog, yet in view of current events it did seem strange to post on the subject of "natural death" last week. Buddhists are indeed often criticized for a seeming indifference to affairs of the world. A careful scrutiny of history, however, yields incontrovertible evidence that every event is the effect of a beginningless chain of causation: the heavy handedness at Versailles presaged World War Two; the cockiness of European rulers brought about the prior horrendous conflict, and so forth with any and all happenings.
But we must not thereby be lulled into fatalism, since our own actions in this life create karma in whatever small way, as the flap of a butterfly's wing brings the hurricane. Reflect on the butterfly though: he does not flap his wings to create a hurricane; he has no knowledge of his powerful potential. The butterfly flaps his wings to move from blossom to blossom, to escape predation, to follow his migratory route. He pursues his own humble mission as his nature provides. We should regard our own flapping with the humility of the butterfly, amplified by the wisdom that it could result in a hurricane.
Natural Death
My good friend Anna recently had to have the older of her two cats euthanized as a result of thyroid cancer. This cat, nearly seventeen years old, was her fifth in as many decades; so she is perforce familiar with this sad process, but it is always a difficult and individual decision based on the perceived suffering of a fellow creature. She has learned that nature is not merciful, so that at some point we must be.
The odd thing about it, upon which we puzzle together, is the question of natural death, to which only humans are subject for some reason, apart from wild animals. Many people remain unaware until the end that consciousness can be the last function to fail. The heart and lungs can maintain it at the most meager levels of oxygen. We reason that based on evolution, consciousness would be the first line of defense in ones survival, and by definition the instinct for self-preservation would have been present at the origin of life. Thus without the aid of morphine, a creature will cross over awake to whatever pain and suffering. But if we have found the kernel of voidness within that consciousness, we will know that threshold to be illusion. How do we do that? How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
The Asymptote
One of the more difficult precepts of Buddhism, unfathomable to most of us, is timelessness. It is not even touched upon in the literature with which I am familiar, with the exception of the Shobogenzo of Dogen Zenji, which in whatever translation is guaranteed to make ones head spin. Nevertheless, it occurs to me that, along with nuclear physics, theoretical mathematics may offer a way to glimpse this ultimate reality. I refer to the asymptote. While my understanding is vague, I know that it is a geometrical construct involving a line and a curve, with a point on the curve that can be proven to approach the line infinitely, never touching it.
Surely this is the perfect demonstration of the timeless state: the sense of approaching the future infinitely and never reaching it, of time moving when there is no real experience of it. At this level though we have the concomitant delusion of an event horizon: the sun sets, under an illusory line; the old or the sick eventually die. But this is only perception, and as the ultimate state is timeless we must be egoless. Do not be deceived: the earth is round; there is but one true Self. Transcend the earth and the sun never sets; transcend the ego and no one dies.
Barbarians!
Yet another aspect of our devolution to the Dark Ages, upon which I have held forth in the past two posts, is the impression for civilized people that humans have never before been capable of like barbarity, though a cursory glance at history easily dispels such a notion, inviting the perennial and thorny question of how we evolved this barbarous capacity in the first place. But this answer is likewise obvious. In the course of our evolution, the clever ones who could learn from experience and thereby adapt to changing conditions survived to reproduce and bequeath their cleverness to posterity. But when you can learn all you need to know, you have less need of instinct. Such was the price we paid. The natural inhibitions of predators against fratricide and cannibalism were lost. Humans are thus capable of anything.
Without instincts, the only controls on our behavior are social sanctions. When they loosen, we lapse, and civilization crumbles, at the hands of those who scream the loudest about restoring them - ironically the most barbaric.
Back to the Future
In reading over my last post, it occurs to me that our slow slide back to the Middle Ages comes with a revival of the same conflict - Christians versus Moslems. The latter are being radicalized worldwide, while the former threaten a response in kind, expressed in no uncertain terms by candidates in the American election. Mr. Cruz especially, with his talk of "carpet bombing", appeals to his "evangelical" supporters, in effect radicalized Christians, differing from Islamists only in religious affiliation.
But what of the Jews? Readers may feel free to correct me on the history, but to my knowledge Jews have never been radicalized, and it occurs to me that this refusal to join the fray may account for the antisemitism they have perennially faced. They simply want to be left at peace to practice their ancient faith. Of course the more ancient and most peaceful faith is Buddhism, where the case of Tibet, however, supports my idea. Centuries ago Tibet was very warlike, until the king was converted to Buddhism. There followed a long period whenTibetans were the peacemakers, arbitrating conflicts between belligerent neighbors - but look at them now.
The Old Country
It has been a guilty pleasure sitting out the winter here on the home farm in Yorkshire, while my unofficial research assistant Anna has endured unfriendly elements in the States. Our winters are still relatively mild-mannered, and the surrounding fields and pastures are a soft brown fringed by a lace of trees on the horizons.
We are having our problems, of course: the thorny Scots, with their threat of secession, and the whole nation restive about our relations with the E.U. Given the devolution of superpowers, this sort of fragmentation is historically predictable. It marks the return of the Dark Ages, the feudal era, which is the aim of terrorism to expedite. With respect to the United States, even as "a nation of immigrants", England, in my view, should be regarded in terms of its fundamentals as "the old country". Our past is their future, and thus it may now be time to dig a moat around your castle!
In the meantime, dear Anna, I will be back for Saint Paddy's Day, hoping the Bentley will still start.
Make Work
I confess that I do harp on the subject of over-population, but the exponential growth of our numbers, unchecked as formerly by disease or war, is clearly the one unprecedented factor in so many problems. For example, at the same time we are striving to reduce the need for human labor, ever more young people need jobs in order to make a living. So we put them to work finding clever ways to render anything that falls within their field of vision obsolete. Once that is accomplished, others can busy themselves in the "remanufacture" of the outdated, as in the case of ink cartridges for those of us whose printers did not die in a timely fashion.
But that is just one manifestation of desperation.The more dangerous form of busy-work festers in bureaucracy, whether governmental or corporate. There in the office honeycombs, minions spend their days devising forms and policies to make life increasingly complicated for the rest of us. This is dangerous because there is a threshold of tolerance, beyond which it becomes rational to occupy a wildlife sanctuary - or vote for Mr. Trump. "I'm mad as hell...!"
Election Time
If anything can make this presidential election season in the States more bizarre than it already is, that would be the interest on the part of the British, which may be a sad indication of ignorance of their own history - or not. Preemptively, they would like to ban the Republican frontrunner from their shores. They surely should realize, of all peoples in the world, that Donald Trump is not running for president; he is running for king. He wants to return the United States at last to a monarchy, as in colonial times; and this is what accounts for his persistent popularity in the face of any outrage, none of which, he boasts, seem to faze his supporters.
Americans are historically ill-equipped to understand the attraction of monarchy: a man so wealthy he need never be beholden to anyone, given enough power to solve any national challenge by fiat; and all you have to do is bend the knee. Be loyal to him and of course he will reciprocate against all those factions in society you find distasteful. What's not to like? The Brits will tell you. Long live the Queen! This is hero worship, pure and simple, a common trait of social species: obeisance to the top dog, the alpha baboon. By this standard democracy is very unnatural. It is the worst form of government, as another Brit said, except for all the others.
Matter
When the Tibetan saint Milarepa was enlightened, he is believed to have declared that Nirvana and Sangsara are "dependent and relative states" issuing from the Void. This pronouncement reflects the much earlier one of the Buddha, who after six years in meditation under the Bodhi Tree proclaimed that "all things are Tathagata", meaning that all the myriad forms we perceive come forth from voidness.
I realize I am not alone in viewing these ancient revelations as precursors to modern physics, which, if I may understate, has taken the very long way round with its uncertainty principle, quarks, and string theory. The Higgs boson aside, matter is not matter at all; its ultimate constituent is void, upon which the form we perceive coming forth is dependent and relative.
But this is not the most important insight of Buddha's teaching, which is that we each have this information available to us in our intuitions. We can find the truth in our own minds; the problem is in recognizing it. Even science fails to consider that the paradox of form and emptiness must be transcended, and so we imagine the Void must be a terrible place, when in truth it is this mind itself, which we know intimately, intuitively. We have but to trust.
In the Wake
Monster storms are upon us, as anyone can see, along with record heat, drought, and wild fires. That the globe is warming is verifiable, but that is not the important thing. The main question is who is to blame, because if human activity is not responsible, then we are not obliged to do anything. Right? The sad thing at this stage it appears is that whatever measures we might take would not be likely to make any difference anyway. The real problem is virtually insoluble, and that is addressed in my essay. Click below. You need only read the first sentence: the world is ruled by sperm. We have no choice but to overpopulate it seems, meaning that our ultimate fate is either pollution or starvation.
The developing countries especially need to support populations that grow exponentially. Can we in good conscience tell them to stop relying on fossil fuels? And so our coastal cities and various Pacific islands slowly disappear into the sea, and our species into extinction, ironically done in by our wonderful success.
Personal Space
In birds it is called "individual distance". A flock perched on a line or fence will maintain a uniform amount of space between individual members, measured instinctively with remarkable accuracy. They do not sit wing to wing. People also exhibit this behavior, preferring not to sit or stand cheek by jowl if they can avoid it.
But over the course of what is becoming a long life, I have noticed this distance increasing, between humans not birds, and I wonder whether it has been conditioned by banks and drug stores. In such establishments, you are instructed to stand back, and to wait your turn, the firmness of these injunctions owing much no doubt to the long and constant infantilization of the consumer.
This conditioning as to personal space has given rise to a type of person whom I call the "hang- backer", who stands so far back from the teller or cashier that it is impossible to discern whether he is indeed in line at all, forcing one to inquire of his intentions. I confess that I am prone to indulging a peevish impulse when I am behind a hang-backer; I violate his individual distance, unless of course he is coughing.
Religion
The religious impulse in our species is persistently problematic, though at Christmastime the music it has inspired over the centuries persuades to the contrary. Most striking is the intensity, the fervor of this religious emotion, drawing us into the composer's own depth of feeling. What he must have felt - what reverence, awe, devotion - to create such beauty! And these intimations of the supreme, the ultimate in our nature survive any and all scientific revelations.
I submit that religious emotion predates religion by many millions of years, that it arose together with the higher consciousness which set us apart as human. The capacity to observe nature, to contemplate birth and death surely went hand in hand with the arousal of strong emotion, also newly evolved, while religion came along to rationalize and to codify this phenomenon. Throughout human history religion has been politicized, coming to represent factional power struggles more than anything holy. As a superficial veneer upon the religious impulse, it is able nonetheless to evoke those intense emotions. That is why it is problematic. But our emotional response to the evocations of spiritual music at the Christmas season, irrespective of affiliation, suggests the underlying intuition, ages old, of ultimate transcendence. The tears come; it is beyond words.
Acceptance
In our resort to language to explain the precepts of Buddhism, we slip inevitably into considerable subtlety. We speak for example of the practice of acceptance as a means to be less perturbed by superficial reality, seeing instead into its deeper aspect. In common parlance, acceptance is taken to be synonymous with tolerance, but in our usage the connotations are subtlety distinct. To tolerate suggests enduring something one regards negatively but has decided for whatever reason must be borne. Acceptance on the other and, implies that habitual discrimination has been avoided, that its object is viewed as the simple effect of some cause. This latter of course is far more difficult, and indeed can only be useful when first practiced on the self.
In other words, accept the karmic reality of both self and other. How? As Archangel said in last week's dokusan, "by realizing their nature of Emptiness." Succinct, as usual.
Google It
Spell Google G-O-D. I often wonder whether anyone else worries that civilized society has become perilously dependent on its own intricate, extensive, so-clever technology. Surely the dangers are enormous and supra-numerous. Even if they don't fade to black with the collapse of the grid, might not the machines, already smarter than 99 percent of humanity, evolve still more intelligence, a will of their own? My iMac has been brighter than me from the beginning of our association. And if the computers do not succeed in controlling us, what dystopia will ensue should some malevolent cadre of humans take control of them?
But we need not await these emergent dangers; the worst is upon us, and that is "radicalization". The internet is a demagogue's fondest dream: every living person can be made to believe anything, and in the Babel, how will they know it is not true? At this point it would seem that technology is unacceptably vulnerable, and sour eager reliance on it for vital systems affecting the very functioning of our society, our economy, and thereby the well being of multitudes, flirts with catastrophe of Biblical proportions. So I will keep using those old telephone wires, which we are forced now to call "land lines". I will write "checks" and "mail " them via the Postal Service; I will keep in my basement a manual "typewriter", and on my bookshelf the last word in survival: "A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants". Just in case.
Tis the Season
For those of us in the northern hemisphere, Jesus Christ could not have been born at a more inconvenient time. Really. No sooner has the weather turned cold and inconstant, making it a struggle simply to maintain ones body temperature, and drying out the protective mucosa of the respiratory tract, leaving us prey to rampant viruses, than we are called upon to celebrate the season with late hours and strenuous activities that have become de rigeur, even though further weakening our immune systems. Moreover it is the end of the year, so that just when we want to spend on gifts for our families and friends, all manner of worthy charities are clamoring for donations. We may start out in festive mood then, only to end in January indebted and incapacitated.
Yet as incommodious as Christmastime may be in the north, imagine the discord for southern people, especially innumerable descendants of British transplants: fake evergreens clashing with palm trees; Santa in a speedo. Quelle horreur! Of course, it was the Romans we can blame for the timing of this celebration, clever if brutal missionaries that they were in coopting Pagan holidays. Therefore a modest proposal: on the occasion of the solstice, together with our closest friends, let us raise a glass of nog, liberally spiked, and call it a day!
Shopping
All the mercantile centers are abuzz with Christmas commerce. It is a strong tradition, arousing envy in other religions wherever adherents are a minority; though by now it has far more to do with commerce than religion, having become an underpinning of the economy. The fact of the matter is that in centers of affluence, especially the States, there is a loud, unseemly clamor of increasingly desperate global populations to snag that wealth. From Bangladesh or Malaysia come entreaties to clean ones air ducts, and the man on the line confesses in broken English that your persistent refusal will not stop him - he is paid by the call.
And thus, Christmas. It is a lovely, peaceful time in the northern hemisphere: the trees in dormancy, the clear night sky ablaze with moon and stars. The biblical legend is primitive but sweet of a humble Jewish mother and her newborn son, destined to become the unlikely centerpiece of the Holy Roman Empire. Loyal readers know that my friend Anna and I believe he was a closet bodhisattva. He tried mightily to convey the wise message of compassion, showing in his death that strength of the spirit is greater than barbarity. Now in a show of compassion to the global workforce making our stuff, we throw ourselves into the barbarous crowds. In his name, we shop.
Navel Gazing
The ancient and profound wisdom of Buddhism has been defamed by critics as "navel gazing", when it appears to them as ignoring the individual and collective struggles of humanity. How can we not concern ourselves with the issues of the day, especially now when they seem increasingly grave? Have we not been dragged by gruesome beheadings into a "clash of cultures" that may soon slide into a third world war, perhaps this time a nuclear holocaust? Closer to home there is crime, joblessness, poverty, and we sit in meditation!
Students of history will see nothing new in current affairs. Such troubles have been the universal lot of homo sapiens. With the larger perspective of prehistory, they will note the relative newness of civilization; and observing its rise and fall, as I frequently have in this blog, will recognize in daily news the inevitable victorious assault of barbarity, no "culture" clash. But perspective is the key. From the universal perspective, anything happening on a tiny planet of a minor star in one of unnumbered galaxies is less than insignificant, while from the nuclear perspective all of the realm of astrophysics is literally immaterial. Thus the only standpoint of any ultimate reality is transcendence, and that is the view we nurture in meditation. By no means are we therefore indifferent to suffering. We are all here to offer each other the wisdom, love and strength of that ultimate, transcendent reality.
Thought Trains
In meditation the first hurdle is to clear the conscious mind of thought, which initially may seem impossible. With practice, however, rising thoughts are allowed to pass, causing the unusual observation that the mind need not pay attention to thought. I compare the thought process to a train: its headlamp ever peering into the future, as its engine drags heavy baggage cars behind. We need not board that train, but may stand stationary on the platform of meditation.
Why, comes the criticism, would we seek to cultivate such a thoughtless state? Are we not absent-minded enough, to the point of losing our "train" of thought? True, the thinking mind is undisciplined, which is usually not a problem, unless we are unable to focus on our work, or a troublesome situation preoccupies us, like a train that never stops to let us off. The futility of reining in this mind by force is demonstrated by this exercise: try not to think of an elephant. Of course you will then think of nothing else. But if you want to stop that runaway train, it is the perfect solution. Try not to think of an elephant. Find a comfortable bench on the platform and watch the trains go by. Tell the conductor you are waiting for the elephant!
Curse of Affluence
Another major aspect in the cycling of civilization, discussed in a recent post, is the ironical burden of affluence, especially in free societies, which tend to promote prosperity. People enabled by such good fortune to coast through life free of worries become soft. Moreover, while they may themselves retain some of the starch in which they soaked as children, their own progeny have none of it. Generations born to wealth and comfort have never seen a Black Swan and are beyond persuasion.Witness the sad spectacle of parents trying to enjoy what they regard as hard earned riches, while at the same time struggling to force their children to stay in school, qualify for the best colleges, get a good job, and the holy grail - support themselves.
The young may be forgiven for concluding that with parents awash with millions they themselves will never need to work for a living. But this state of affairs is unsustainable, socially and economically. Somewhere down the line, descendants will be horrified to come upon the Black Swan. Perhaps education would help, demonstrating in school, for example, how vast fortunes can be slowly drained away, and even more convincing, a course in genealogy, which easily shows the exponential growth of the family tree. It grows, it branches, it burgeons; that is why we call it a tree. Stretch your millions over that, and what is left?
Terror
Many are the postings here pertaining to the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, with the implication that ours is on the downward slide. I was in fact about to post about the burden of affluence as an ironic aspect of this slide. But that has been rendered specious. We are forced now to turn our consideration from the internal decay to the external means that bring us down.
Civilizations fall when the barbarians storm the gates, and there is no case to answer. It is a slow process; the terrorists have taken decades already, but they will prevail. They are the cancer cells, now metastatic, and there is no cure for cancer. Normal cells are nutated, though in this case we say "radicalized". The body shrivels, unable to sustain life.
Bearing witness to barbarous, random terror attacks on our civilization is something like watching a pack of wolves bring down large prey - a deer or an elk. They attack him from behind, and as soon as he is bleeding from his rear legs and haunches, he is sure to go down. Then they will jump on his back, and we know for certain their teeth will be in his neck, and one will soon have him by the throat. We will feel the fear and the helplessness of the poor creature, because we are sentient beings with an evolved consciousness capable of empathy. If we are sickened, it is most certainly because we are civilized.
Apprehension
"Apprehension" is a lovely, useful word. In one sense there is a tinge of fear in it, as when one is "apprehensive" about something. But then in a certain context it is at times used in contrast to "comprehension", the latter connoting understanding and the former suggestive of a grasping toward that which cannot be understood. The genius of human advancement in fact, whether in science, philosophy, or the arts, lies in someone first apprehending what had been unknown; and we might observe that in such exploration the tinge of fear remains.
In religion, "apprehension" is called "faith", a grasping not toward the unknown but the unknowable, the ultimate truth utterly beyond comprehension. Science reassures that there is no such truth, no mystery that the human mind will not eventually conquer. But here is the curious thing: our human consciousness enables us both to comprehend and to apprehend, though the latter is sadly overlooked by and large. I will venture to say, nevertheless, that all of humanity from the time that this consciousness first evolved has apprehended an ultimate reality mirrored in the core of selfhood and surpassing their individual or collective power. It is more than a tinge of fear causing them to deny it at their peril. It is the dreadful suspicion that they cannot presume to be as they imagine themselves.
Blind to Wisdom
Among the more persistent even intractable barriers to the wisdom and practice of Buddhism is the blind spot we have about ourselves caused by the very earliest experiences impacting our infant brains. The best book on this subject that I have found is titled The Drama of the Gifted Child, by the late Polish psychoanalyst, Alice Miller. Some of her patients were highly successful, well known people seeking remedy for the painful unhappiness of their personal lives. Invariably, she reports, they would claim to have had the happiest of childhoods, while going on to describe what anyone could see objectively had been cruel treatment from their parents. Rose-colored glasses can be quite misleading, but most of us wear them to some degree.
The important thing in getting to the root of our own neuroses is to view our history as it really was and without judgment. Most parents do their best, given their own dysfunction, often inherited perhaps for generations. Surely we can recognize their imperfection and still cherish their loving efforts. Indeed we must do so if we would remove those personal barriers to wisdom, and avoid handing them down.
As for those parents who truly are cruel, sending their offspring to the couch as adults, there to sing their undeserved praises, Alice Miller proved a maverick. She decried both the fourth commandment and the pop-psych commitment to forgiveness, in which she had found no clinical benefit whatever.
Fellow Feeling
I may be alone in making a distinction between empathy and compassion. Most people I feel sure consider them to be synonyms, but I tend to view the latter in Buddhist terms, consequently requiring the perspective of the twofold egolessness, spoken of in the West as oneness. The former, on the other hand and in my opinion, is ironically quite egocentric; it is the tendency to put oneself in the position or circumstance of another and to imagine what one would feel.
Empathy most definitely is of extreme value in a social species like homo sapiens, though arguably it may be misapplied to other life forms. Certain insects, for example, that barely qualify as living, could not be expected to experience suffering in the same way as a human. Empathy of this inclusive sort can be very painful and burdensome. Compassion in contrast is not the feeling of sympathy as if you were the other sentient being, but in the extraordinary realization that you are that being, that there is a singular Identity configured in myriad forms, and that because sentience confers the experience of polarities, it is the ignorance of the ultimate essence of oneness which is at the root of suffering.
I believe that even most Buddhists do not recognize this subtlety. Compassion flows to ignorance; No One is suffering.
Shifting Winds
Puzzled by the headline? Well knowing that this is not a political blog, readers may infer that it is not about Canadian politics! No indeed, typically more literal: as I sit in meditation facing an eastern window at break of day or soon thereafter, the war of the seasons plays out in the sky before me. My mind is distracted by the thought that soon, a month after the autumnal equinox, the winds will change; and sure enough, whereas day after day, week after week, the clouds have drifted from right to left, in other words from south to north, the day comes when they scud across the sky in the opposite direction. After a night or two of frost, the leaves are drained of their chlorophyll, beginning to show their colors, and now buffeted on swaying branches. Before long they will dry and fall, leaving that elegant filigree of tree limbs through which pours the winter sun, albeit at its most tangential.
It is a bright season at the bottom of the forest, and I often wonder whether the trees themselves appreciate the rest. Meanwhile, dear reader, I hope you appreciate the rest from politics - of whatever nationality!
Rise and Fall
Regular readers of this blog know that a persistent theme is the sustainability of civilizations, past and present. My essay, available by clicking below, relates to the subject; and for that matter all "Past Posts", weekly since 2012, are still here in cyberspace. I hope that each time I raise the question I have something new to add.
It occurs to me, for example, that as modern civilization has become global, two distinct paradigms are emerging: the democracies, promising individual freedom and potential prosperity; and the autocracies, claiming cynically that only through abject terror of a dictator's iron hand can great numbers of people be governed peaceably. Thank you, Vladimir, for this stunning, if unoriginal insight.
A thoughtful consideration of these models, however, must surely lead to the conclusion that neither is sustainable. A democracy after some generations will devolve into the chaos of discord, while autocracy can only smother all productivity needed to support society. Philosophers have therefore pronounced the verdict that human civilization cycles inevitably, interspersed with dark ages.
My opinion is novel, I believe, in suggesting that the decline of civilization can be avoided, but only when and if human beings are prepared to recognize and allow for their own basic nature, which clearly is and shall remain tribal. Devise a way to incorporate into civilized life the cohesion and mutual support of the tribe, while also channeling the conflict and competition, and you will to some degree alleviate the alienation that brings us down. But matchmakers are critical, because after all diversity is lovely, until your daughter marries one of "them", among whom you formerly counted some of your best friends. Q.e.d.
Shelf Life
I am told by pessimistic booksellers that the shelf life of a new publication is depressingly brief, I suppose to prepare me with a rationale for removing my book in a month or two because no one has discovered it on the bottom shelf at the back of the store. I must admit that today there is an explosive cacophony of voices vying to be heard, but then there is always the hope of being unearthed by archeology - or sooner.
These frenzied shopkeepers apparently have not heard of Abe Books, UK, where I have discovered several excellent sources in out-of-print books, available used, as I research a biography of Jeremy Brett. I feel certain that Philip Greene, born in the twenties, who wrote his autobiography "A Haircut and a Shave", never imagined it might be of interest to anyone simply because he lived in Jeremy's hometown; nor would Mrs. Milburn, whose wartime diary was published posthumously by an heir after he discovered it in the attic, have had any reason to think it could help some future writer to know that Christmas in 1939 fell on a Monday, or that nearby Leamington Spa had a popular clothing store named Brett's.
Random you say? I can still hear my late mother quoting, "Cast your bread upon the waters..."
The Clock
Modern life being increasingly complex, we are ruled by the clock. Were we not to schedule things with some degree of rigor, however would we achieve anything, or for that matter manage to do what needs doing? But while many, perhaps most, are ruled by the clock, some are flogged by it, tending like myself to be obsessive-compulsive: the cats will be fed at five; dinner will be at six, exactly twelve hours since rising; and should there be an appointment, more than ample time will be allowed for traffic, stop lights, and parking. I am always early.
What saves me is the awareness that clocks measure nothing but an illusion, that in reality everything that needs to be done will be, somehow. The rest is a matter of time management, which is a question of priorities, changing in each phase of life. But that clock, chasing me with a whip, makes it hard to eke out time, much as I wish, for the next project - that biography of Jeremy Brett. I will just have to live long enough - or go on meds.
The Cycle of History
Long ago I read the book Generations, by Strauss and Howe, which expounds a theory of cycling generational types with distinct traits to explain why major historic events like wars and revolutions seem to take place in an oddly cyclical manner. If true, it enables us to foresee such events roughly every eighty years, or four generations, and indeed the idea is alarmingly congruent with the present state of the world. We may be ready for another great war. There is Russia's blatant adventurism in Ukraine and now Syria, and the Middle East a tinder box, with barbarism driving millions to flee for their lives.
And yet today's world with its global society is a strange place. Its masses for the most part are under the thumb of some ruthless dictator or other, and even in the more humane places they have no economic security. So the old fashioned war between standing armies, each supported by a gung-ho populace seems quaint. Stranger still, increasingly, conflicts involve the more compassionate nations stepping in to protect civilians from their own governments. A peculiar kind of war surely - this time around.
The Writing Life
Now that I have the opportunity, having retired, to take up the writing life, I am gradually aware not only of its pleasures, which of course I anticipated, but also of its drawbacks. The first thing I enjoyed immediately is the chance to write long sentences, using lots of words. What a luxury! On the downside are the reflexive attitudes one encounters upon revealing to anyone that he is a writer, or God forbid an "author". The assumption is that a person who writes is seeking fame and fortune from a glamorous and lofty career, far above the trenches and honeycombs of the commonplace work world; and certainly anyone hoping to make a living this way needs to consider money. But as in every other celebrity-ridden arena of creative endeavor, fame and fortune go to but a handful of participants.
Furthermore, the idea that a writer is a haughty, vain person does not bear scrutiny, since in no other pursuit, except perhaps acting, is one more personally exposed. Far from vanity, it takes a certain courage to accept this aspect of writing for the sake of reaching readers, whether to enlighten or simply to entertain them. As for the jealous friends who think, "I could do that if I wanted to!", well, that is the point. A person writes because he wants to write, loves words and does not become bored stringing them together; and he will find a way, even if it must await retirement.
Culture Clash
It would be hard to imagine two more divergent viewpoints than Western culture and Islam; and I do not limit that to the fundamentalists, for if there exists a liberal branch of Mohammedans, it is well hidden. One has only to observe Western women, especially in the summer, eager to expose themselves - their secondary sexual characteristics, let alone their hair - and to contrast that with the exaggerated modesty of the Islamic girl. Then there is the presumption of subservience, so alien in the West, where its inevitable association with cruelty and injustice has been learned in modern times.
The idea that these two cultures might coexist peacefully in one society seems idealistic, even fanciful; yet that is what Europe is facing. Some refugees may be settled, perhaps the entire population of Syria less the criminally insane, but then what? Tom Friedman of the New York Times put the Middle East into perspective not long ago: it is post-colonial and now post-autocracy; it will require many generations to become post-Islamist. Meanwhile, neighboring countries must devise some way to stop its roiling populations from fleeing in terror from one another.
Decay
Decay happens slowly, too slow for the average person to notice, and often so slow that young people have no chance to have noticed. I don't believe, moreover, that this is simply a matter of yearning for the good old days, which of course cannot have been as good as they may be remembered. One may prefer, for instance, the old fashioned automobile that was large and heavy to the latest design, which to my mind is shaped like a football. But the modern depredations of gridlock are a thing that has crept upon us gradually.
What brings this to mind is my recent pilgrimage to the state of Maine, an annual escape from summer's heat. As I have been making this short flight now for more than forty years, I am painfully aware of the sorry decay of air travel in America since the misguided deregulation of President Reagan. What once was a pleasure is now an occasion for anxiety and discomfort, your ticket only affording you the possibility that you may reach your destination at some future time indeterminate. After my flight was delayed, the pilot announced apologies, to which I wondered aloud what complimentary wine we would be offered. None of course, but the attendant slipped me a chardonnay free of charge. Another old-timer!
Time and Again
My friend Anna sent this text, "How to write about the empty mind?" To which I replied, "You just did!" It is this state that we nurture in meditation, hoping to clear the mind of the vagaries of random thought so as to allow the deeper intuitions to surface. But as for mind-bending, it is modern physics that takes the prize. Just ask a physicist, like Brian Greene or Michael Brooks, who try ably to help us with the subject. Even they, however, have been unable to get their minds around the dawning inevitability of timelessness. Our brains are configured to see the passage of time when effect follows cause, when the hands of the clock move, when earth changes position relative to the sun; and we see it in the life process from birth to death, seemingly validated by the continuity of our individual person, a delusion created by the faculty of memory.
In that word "continuity", I believe, lies the barrier to our apprehension of timelessness, a reality that we cannot experience continuously. Indeed that experience might best be described by joining two time-related words in the paradox: continuously momentary; or more colorfully, by the old Chinese masters in The Blue Cliff Record -"the spark from a stone". But the best clue abides in our five senses. Like a prism, they bend our intrinsic awareness of the deeper, timeless reality, offering up its radiance to our consciousness.
Median Strip Beggar
In our village we have a resident beggar, who stations himself daily in all seasons on a median strip, there to stare accusingly into the eyes of every driver waiting for the light to change. He does not appear to be disturbed, or ill, though his handwritten sign declares he is diabetic. One can surely imagine in today's world that the cost of a vital drug might impoverish someone; but if this man is able to brave and endure all kinds of severe weather, surely he could manage a job of some sort.
He always puts me in mind of "The Man with the Twisted Lip", a Sherlock Homes story in which the man of the title makes a "gentleman's income" by disguising himself as a disfigured cripple and begging on the streets of London. And indeed our beggar must do well at his post, or he would have given it up long ago. My friend, Anna, observes that were she to give him one dollar a day, he would make $365 a year from her alone. Another friend, an Israeli, tells me that in Jewish tradition, one must always give something to anyone so desperate as to resort to begging. I dare say, however, that such a precept rests on an assumption of shame, a rarity in modern times. Must we also support the shameless? However we approach - or refrain from approaching - the median strip beggar, surely we should be judicious with our resources, both individual and communal, while attempting to avoid eye contact.
Books
The maids are coming today; and as I await their arrival here in the library facing the book shelves, I am struck by the variety of books I have accumulated in a lifetime: from Steppenwolf to Alice in Wonderland; from Descartes' Error to the Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, this latter in particular being an essential in everyone's survival kit. Then there are reference books and text books of various kinds: languages, literature, psychology, as examples. Unless it was required for some academic course that might lead to a credential, I have not, it would appear, been one to read what I am told to read. I am not a book club type, and I have avoided fiction in the belief that even a long life will be too short for an adequate study of reality, although good fiction, I admit, may provide probing and instructive insights. But truly my shelves reflect the eclectic interests I have pursued over the years. I read about what interests me, or what I believe will interest me.
There are many people, I realize, who read for pleasure; they read romance novels, mystery novels, losing themselves in the stories, for a time distracted from their personal problems. I can understand that, though meditation would be more helpful. The modern technology of ebooks and "print on demand" is surely a boon to readers and publishers alike, if not to authors. They won't make a living, but creative people never do - and never have.
The Donald
American politics historically has never failed to entertain with its carnival, circus atmosphere, and the current uproar over Mr. Trump's bizarre run for the White House is classic indeed. That people enjoy his iconoclasm does not, however, translate into votes. His position on immigration, for example, is ill-informed and misguided, reflecting the unease of white Americans at becoming a minority among minorities. While this discomfiture is understandable, the fact is that the country is increasingly dependent on the labor - and the taxes - of immigrants.
There are not enough white babies; and this begs an obvious question, the answer to which is even more obvious, explaining why it goes unnoted. People who could well afford ten children stop at one or two, while those least able to support them tend to have many. Far from being ironic, this circumstance stems from the observation that with a smaller family ones resources can maintain a better standard of living and greater opportunity for the next generation. If I may further generalize, those with large families may have failed to see this correlation. But those immigrants fleeing poverty, the clever ones anyway, will over some generations draw the connection; and their demographic will recede in the population.
It won't be in our lifetime, Donald, but meanwhile, please try to calm down.
Memory
Yesterday, a most engaging topic came to mind that I might take up here in the Moleskine. Today the thought has vanished, gone from the memory banks, and so I must discuss memory itself.
The mind, observed closely and objectively, is a most peculiar phenomenon, and memory is its most fundamental process. Without basic short term memory we could not function; just ask the old man who keeps losing his eye glasses. Yet oddly we do not decide consciously what we will remember. We can of course exert deliberate effort to remember something in particular - where one has left his glasses, for example - but as a rule, memory is not volitional, analogous to the autonomic nervous system that keeps heart and lungs working without ones needing to think about it; and thank God!
The brain decides what needs to be accessible to the conscious mind in order for us to safely get on with life, and as there is an obvious limit to this capacity all else will recede in memory. I know, I know, children! That's what the iPhone is for, but I prefer Post-its. Now where did I stick that Post-it?
Unity?
I harp on the subject of tribalism; I realize that I do, and that is because our collective blindness to this fundamental reality of human nature is the root of so much conflict. The historic project of European unity for example, arguably foolish in its idealism, threatens to collapse because these nations are and have always been separate tribes. The Greeks are a tribe, the French are a tribe, the Germans most definitely. Yes we are all the same species, but any number of quite subtle differences in tribal customs, temperament, history, world view, can and do add up to serious ramifications, as the powers that be in Belgium are surely realizing. Nevertheless, if they pull off this daunting feat, it will be a huge testament to human adaptability.
Another under appreciated truism is that geography is destiny. People make the mistake often of comparing Europe and America, when the nations of the former are each no larger than some states of the latter. Colonized by England and having subdued the natives, America began as the same tribe, but with westward expansion became a continental nation. Over time, populations separated by such distance become distinct. A young man may move from the eastern coast to the Midwest, marry, raise a family, and absorbing the political, linguistic, and cultural peculiarities of the local milieu, become a Tea Party conservative, all but unrecognizable to his own family. Add to that the Spanish influence from the south and the African element introduced by the slave trade and perpetuated by segregation, and the USA is a land of many tribes, calling itself a nation.
We can only hope and pray that the EU survives, wishing Angela and Christine every success in their endeavors!
The Web
With the publication of my book, Conjuring Archangel, I am having more exposure to the internet than that to which I had been hitherto accustomed. If it is indeed the nervous system of an evolving social organism, then surely Google is the brain of this new beast; and now that I have said it, that word puts me on edge. Satan was once, in less enlightened times, referred to as the Beast.
I learn for example that businesses, or anyone with a website for that matter, may pay Google monthly for the guarantee of appearing on page one of any relevant search, based on given key words. So "relevance" alone is not good enough. There will likely be a hundred relevant websites on this Tower of Babel, to be at the top or which one must pay. Stretching our metaphor then, dollars are the blood cells feeding this brain. Even more dollars are intravenous glucose, buying you the ultimate seduction of the pop-up ad. Google, we can be sure, is not short of money, nor is Apple, staying on top by innovating each new tool to access this brain.
The web is indeed a wonderful thing, allowing me great facility in researching my next book, a biography of Jeremy Brett, the celebrated British actor and scion of the Cadbury clan. And yet... the internet lives on money at a time when national governments around the world are deeply in debt, all at the same time, and unable to grow their way out of it. Should evolution bring the extinction of government, who will govern? Will Google care for the sick and elderly, build roads, bridges, and air ports? Apple already has taxing authority; to be a brain cell, one is compelled to buy the newest device and every upgrade. Watch for a merger, suggestive of the critical mutation. But I worry about all the websites on page 247 of the Google search; they may be extremely relevant!
Really?
The irrationality of fanaticism appears to be unfathomable. How can sane people be led to believe utter falsehoods: white supremacists contending that black people are taking over the world; whole Arab tribes certain that Allah requires half of their populations to be cloistered on the basis of gender? Surely the adherence to such fantasy is inexplicable! There is, however, one trait in human nature that should be considered with regard to this eternal mystery. Along with our opposable thumbs, bipedal posture, and superior brains, we are given more than the ability for tool making, speech, and abstract thought; and that extra gift is the most dangerous of all. It is imagination.The power of human imagination can lead scores of the young, the impressionable, or the psychotic into the most bizarre recesses of barbarism where they see megalomania as God's will. It can send a disturbed young man - and that is an oxymoron - into a church full of peace loving black people to kill them as rapists. And here we thought those were the Mexicans, or no, the drunken frat boys!
The internet is the supreme tool of the imagination, its every screen calling upon that most hazardous of human abilities; and as such it is surely the work of the Devil. Nonetheless, it has the potential to save us or to destroy us. We must rein it in.
Economics
I have never been quite sure why economics is called the "dismal science", as it is neither dismal nor a science, but rather a very interesting subject. The two writers I most admire on this topic are Robert Samuelson, whose book, "The Great Inflation", should be a must-read for every young person, and Steven Pearlstein, now a professor of economics, whose occasional article in the Washington Post seeks to educate us all.
The curious thing about economics is that throughout the several millennia of civilized history there has never been devised an economic model providing stability, while prior to civilization, tribal society existed for millions of years. We lived much like baboons, as I posted last week, in small kinship groups, ruled by the strong, sharing resources, raiding the rival tribe for food or women as needed. We are forced to conclude that the economy of a civilized society may well be inherently unstable, and to surmise that it is so because it is unnatural.
If economists were once realistic enough to make these observations, they might at last come up with a stable model. It would be based on the science of human behavior, and would take into account studies showing that our natural sense of affiliation has a threshold of around 100 other people. But of course, economics would need to become the science it is supposed to have been all along.
Democracy
I believe we may safely observe that in human history governance of society by popular will, i.e. democracy, has been rare, recent, and fragile. It is a very uncertain business when compared with despotism, where one strongman or group of men may execute whatever scheme they wish, or for that matter, any person who disagrees. But if you want things to get done, have the trains run on time for example, then bend your knee to the despot. We are not unlike baboons in this respect, ruled in the end by the alpha male.
Whenever we have succeeded in creating a democratic society, as in ancient Greece, briefly in Rome, and notably in Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century, this latter instance owing much to the Magna Carta centuries earlier, it has been by means of intelligence coupled with realism. But over subsequent generations, democracy has proven difficult or even impossible to maintain; it is taken for granted, it is misunderstood, and worst of all, it is exploited. And then the trains, which have become routinely late, stop running altogether.
There is no sadder example of this devolution today than the USA, arguably the greatest democracy the world has known, its leaders bent solely on pandering to political constituencies. Intelligent people recoil from the fray, and realism has no chance of being heard. Alas, the human race never lacks for the charismatic despot. Vladimir?
Advice
It has been the common belief for some generations now that young people do not appreciate advice, unsolicited or otherwise, particularly from their elders, in whom there can reside no conceivable relevance, at least in their view. Older and wiser people are thereby inhibited from offering their wisdom and experience lest they be seen as foolish or vainglorious, instead forced to bear silent witness to the most obvious mistakes and poor decisions.
There are, after all, in the course of a human life, eternal shoals to be navigated: whom to marry and when; by what means to earn an honest and decent living; whether to have children; and if one does, how to deal with them over the decades of their development. Parenthood alone produces a plethora of tangled issues. Of course these are individual matters upon which the ultimate decision must be personal. Indeed there are those who can only learn by making a mistake, and some so rigid they fail to learn even then. Yet it is ironic to observe, in these years since our elders have been constrained from speaking up, how often we may find ourselves reflecting, "Why did no one tell me this? If only I had known!"
And so parents, grandparents, please tell the youngsters what you feel they will need to know. They will appear to ignore you, and you will feel old and silly; but trust me, in years to come they will remember what you once said - "So this is what he meant!"
For the Birds
My post of two weeks ago observed the increasing urbanization of the world's population and the unfriendliness of this urban environment. Cities are not only rugged but unnatural, exacerbating the already yawning gap between humans and all other life forms, aside from their pets.What brings this to my mind is the nesting season. City dwellers have a tendency to assign a certain degree of beneficence to the natural world, especially in the spring. They imagine that the birds pair off at this time, build their nests, raise their young, and thrive in perpetuity: the geese by the closest runoff pond; sparrows in the eaves of shops; wrens in the housing of an unused exhaust fan, and so on. Yet anyone who has had the opportunity and the inclination to observe nature closely over some period of years can easily disabuse them of their naiveté.
It is in fact very problematic for birds to raise their young to adulthood. Goslings become dinner for any turtle in the pond; eggs of any kind are a delicious breakfast for the likes of raccoons, snakes, and foxes. Those nestlings that survive long enough to fledge are easy prey for a stray or feral cat waiting under the tree; and this is not even to mention competition with other birds for nest sites, and hawks who also have young to feed.
But don't be glum, children. Here is your take-away: should you chance to see a parade of goslings marching behind their mother, baby sparrows flapping their wings to be fed, or fledgling cardinals taking their first awkward flight out of the nest, be advised that you are witnessing no small miracle!
Discrimination Redux
When my friend Anna read the post on discrimination, she took me to task, understandably, her point being that in Buddhist practice we endeavor to transcend the discrimination of dichotomy. Indeed the extreme polarities we come to experience by so discriminating are viewed as a root source of human misery. But this is a complex matter, one of several such that make Buddhism difficult for logical people.
We are configured by evolution to perceive and to discriminate, these capacities honed by the blade of natural selection. It is true that the unitary nature, the oneness, of our perceptions is their ultimate essence, just as pure light is the essence of a rainbow; but it behooves us to discriminate red from green at a stoplight. As my friend well knows, it is our bodily configuration that supports the very consciousness which makes available to us any insight into the ultimate. In maintaining it, we should be discriminating.
Cities
I railed again a few weeks ago about the tendency of humans to over populate, inducing the desperation of crowding. In modern times, contributing dangerously to this condition, is urbanization. Not only are there more people than ever in the many hundreds of millions of years of the history and prehistory of the species, but they live ever closer together. These urban environments, whether old or new, are not for the faint of heart. Indeed, they may be safely navigated only by the hearty, able-bodied, and fit, i.e. the young. They are noisy, polluted, and despite the promise of having all necessary services close at hand, sprawling. To be sure, in the best of them, one can hop on a train and ride to the farther end of the metropolis, and then walk - and walk and walk.
This phenomenon is especially sad given the aging of populations, and the pathos is augmented by this peculiar observation: the young, and even people in their middle years, regard old age as a condition far removed from them, as if occurring only in some other species. They themselves will certainly never incur the crippling disability of degeneration, and there is the rub. Individuals age and die, replaced by individuals who all along considered themselves immortal, while they in turn are moved aside by the hail and hearty, destined, they firmly believe, to be ever so. When time overtakes them, we can only hope that Africa will continue to bestow her dark angels to wheel them through the congestion.
Mad Men
The first half of the twentieth century was a time of considerable upheaval, when it became normal for each generation to rebel against the last - the "generation gap" as it came to be called; and no generation was more rebellious than the post-war cohort, known as the Baby Boom. Coming of age in the decade of the sixties, they threw over all the traces. They rebelled against the draft, against race and gender discrimination, and rejected absolutely every cultural vestige of prior generations. Gone were the clothing styles of the forties and fifties, the uniform of the "gray flannel suit" replaced with a new one - jeans, tee shirts, gym shoes. Then armed with oral contraception, they tossed aside the old sexual morality as well, allowing themselves any and all indulgence, including recreational drugs.
But now the most curious thing about this generation: neither their children nor today their grandchildren have rebelled against them. To the contrary, Boomers have reeled watching subsequent generations taking their lead to bizarre and destructive extremes. Free love? Date rape, binge drinking. Marijuana? Heroin. Hard rock? Gangsta rap. And all still in the uniform - jeans, tee shirts, gym shoes - now virtually planetary.
The popular cable series "Mad Men", now having run its course, depicted the culture of Madison Avenue prior to the sixties. How alien it must have seemed to young people to see the realistic portrayal of a way of life to which they have been kept assiduously oblivious. Do you see children? You can change the world. Your grandparents did.
Discrimination
The word "discrimination" fell into considerable disrepute back in the 1960's through its persistent and now ironclad association with racial discrimination. Of course, in the immortal words of the Reverend, an individual should be judged on the "content of his character" and not the color of his skin. This precept is morally just, if difficult in execution, given the subconscious tribal instincts of our species. But an equally unfortunate aspect of human nature is to take things to extremes, to ride the pendulum of history from one far height to the other. So today even innocent or necessary acts of discrimination may be frowned upon. Oh, we are allowed to discriminate among different vintages of wine or between restaurants, though we will use another term. But we are not permitted, for example, to discriminate "Ukrainian rebels" from invading Russians; or in another instance, we are doubtless by now without the ability to discriminate "news" from propaganda.
The ability to be discriminating was once not long ago regarded as a strength. It means to judge a thing on its relevant merits; a candidate for a job would be judged on his competency, irrespective of race. And a modern civilized society would be able to recognize its friends by their shared values: tolerance, justice, protection of the weak, rights of minorities. Like the Kurdish people, as I read, standing alone in a sea of barbarity. But who are we to judge? Who must we be?
Desperation
The most unfortunate aspect of human history is that the young people do not know it, and so it cycles. The young today, for example, are accustomed to twelve lane highways, camping on airport floors, standing in line all night at the Apple Store - and not for apples. The day when four lanes made a "super" highway is outside of their experience. The human population climbs gradually, albeit exponentially, long ago having surpassed past levels; so the stress is applied slowly, as to a slowly boiling pot, unremarked except by the old fogies.
The cardinal sign, though, that overcrowding is boiling us alive is desperation, particularly from the most populous regions of the earth. When someone in Mumbai persists in calling you day after day begging to clean your air ducts, and admitting that he is paid for every call he makes, regardless of whether or not you succumb, he is clearly desperate to survive. Great numbers of people are unneeded, even for tasks they were once allowed - agriculture, pumping gas, building pyramids. It is no surprise that political unrest arises in the most crowded areas.
But there are thresholds. What always breaks the cycle in the history of human civilization is war, great war. It is the only way we control our numbers, the discipline of war.
Lucky Dog
I have not taken a poll nor conducted a survey, but I have it on the authority of my old friend, Anna, who has been married for almost half a century, and was once herself a young woman, that many approach marriage with the dream that they will ever after have someone who will sleep with them through the night. She bases this observation on a life-long devotion to advice columns. In discussion, we have concurred that this may indeed hold true throughout the reproductive years - reference my essay on the subject here on the blog - or if the woman marries a Frenchman.
As time goes on and passions run their natural course, too many disillusioned and disappointed wives will begin searching, in vain, for a reliable bed partner. The wiser ones will get a cat. Anna once had a dear old tabby who would stay on the next pillow at night, at least long enough for her to fall asleep. But cats are solitary animals and nocturnal besides; and so my old friend has concluded that young women need to know this starting out: the only creature one may count on to be with you through the night, every night, is a dog - just choose a breed that is not prone to snoring.
Inertia
Life is full of these ironies; I am known for harping on this fact. We know, for example, that things change constantly; we are well persuaded of that. The weather alone is proof, ones face in the mirror, aging at various rates. Styles of clothing change, or cars, prices change. Modern technology changes at breakneck speed, leaving whole sectors of the economy in ruins.
How then to account for inertia? We often come upon situations in life that cry out for change. We think that surely such a condition cannot go on much longer; then time and again we witness this status quo year after year, unchanging, endless, inert. It could be an abusive relationship, addictive behavior, a frail elderly person living in squalor, tribal warfare wherever humans populate. Even in nature there are examples: an old tree, damaged by lightning, riddled with insects, pecked by woodpeckers, but living on; or a shrub browsed by over-populous deer to within a hair's breadth of its twigs, still putting out foliage season after season.
Those of us suffering with untreated obsessive-compulsive disorder may easily become frustrated by such irony, but we must take some comfort in the second law of thermodynamics - entropy - captured in the immortal words of John Dunne: The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.
Review
A first for the blog, but I really must review a book I am reading entitled At the Edge of Uncertainty, by the physicist and science writer, Michael Brooks. Not since The Tao of Physics in 1975 by another physicist, Fritjof Kapra, have the parallels between modern science and the ancient religions of Asia been rendered so clear, even when not recognized. Chapter by chapter, Brooks looks at the cutting edge of various scientific disciplines, as new research sends them beyond what we once believed was certainty. He writes engagingly, and does a good job of explaining these mysteries for a lay readership.
Here is what he comes up with: "...the sense of self is like a concept... it's an idea in your brain"; "our universe is ephemeral, a ghostly illusion... a hologram"; "there are issues of time at play here". He does fall prey in the end to the inescapable reductionism of science: "the neuronal firings and consciousness are inseparable... they are just one thing". Thus to science we are nothing special. But we know better, because ultimate reality cannot be explained from without. Nevertheless, this book had a good go at it. Fascinating!
Hand Me Down My Walkin' Cane
The degree to which times may change over generations is extreme and accelerating. Examples abound, but I offer just one as indicative, and that is the walking cane. Up until the early twentieth century no proper gentleman would leave home without this accessory. Ladies would often carry one as well, and they could be quite ornate, with for example a curved handle in silver or one carved of ivory or wood in the shape of a horse head, rabbit or hawk. The cane might also conceal a weapon such as a sword or a derringer, or it might hide a flask of whiskey. Of course times were harsher then, city streets tending to be unpaved and muddy; a neighborhood might be known for ruffians. So one can imagine a stick could often be helpful.
Today we are more civil; presumably, no one needs a stick. Indeed, even the old and infirm, who can barely stand, strenuously reject the support of a cane, loathe to be seen as old or infirm. Just the other day I witnessed an old man trip on the curb and fall flat, striking his forehead on the concrete. He was bleeding from the abrasion as his daughter brought up the car and hauled him off to hospital.
I have acquired a few walking sticks, which I now have occasion to use when arthritis in my back acts up. For that matter, I always carry one on my walks, to fend off any dog that may have broken free of his invisible fence. But should any of my friends see me using one, I am accosted with bewilderment and chagrin, bordering on horror - "Grey! A cane?!"
Imagine That
Many things in this life, especially in modern times, are hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine, for example, how a creature with no inhibition against killing its own kind, even in mass numbers, can come to over-populate the planet; or how a rich and powerful country can allow itself to become dependent on computer systems that are fragile at best and inimical at worst. But there is one thing that is not just hard to imagine, but beyond the capacity of human imagination; and this is most unfortunate because it lies at the core misery of the human condition. It is timelessness. It is impossible to imagine, even though it is experienced in every sentient moment; and without the realization of this fundamental truth, we fall prey to the dread and the grief of our individual mortality.
Time is an illusion created by the motion of things in relation to other things: the hands of a clock in relation to its face; the movement of stars and planets in relation to each other. To speak of such things, we need this illusion. Timelessness then is not eternity; it is not an abundance of something that does not exist. It is the state of its nonexistence. Unimaginable!
Nesting Time
It is the lengthening of day, the angle of sunlight, that signals spring in the avian realm and sets the birds to their urgent work of the nesting season, ignoring late snow or frigid temperatures. It begins with the stentorian call of the male cardinal, proclaiming his territorial imperative to warn off interlopers. The cavity nesting birds are most interesting, since like humans they compete for limited housing opportunities of varying quality. Adequate nest boxes are rare, leaving whatever cavities have occurred in old or dead trees.
The chickadee nests early, so he and his mate may use a nest box and be done raising a brood before other species begin. The wren is the most aggressive, filling every box or tree hole with his twigs, thereby preempting others. But the quiet, pacifist bluebirds are by far the most endearing and sympathetic of the cavity nesters. With great care they go about assembling a soft bed of dry grasses inside a nest box or cavity, despite great and serious threats: that their young may be smothered by the twigs of a compulsive wren, or pecked to death by the sharp beak of a nuthatch.
Forget the "mustard seed"; oh, to have the faith of a bluebird!
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Control Yourself
"Why let your body control your mind? Let your mind control your body!" Thus spoke an old zen master long ago, as I have read. But is it really possible for the mind to control the body? After all, our autonomic nervous system regulates much of the body's function without conscious awareness: heart, lungs, core temperature. Even our behavior has come to seem suspiciously predestined by the body's inheritance, as with addictive propensities.
Yet concentration practiced in zen meditation is indeed credited with prodigious feats, in the martial arts as an example, or the zen of archery as another - spontaneous accuracy without taking aim. So here the mind is controlling the body, but it is not the conscious mind, which as I observed controls almost nothing; neither is it the mind referred to by the old master. The mind that has the potential of control over the body - to an astonishing degree - is accessible only through the difficult exercise of toning down the noise of consciousness.
Polarity
The perceptible universe of which we are consciously aware during our lifetimes is a dichotomous realm, beginning with the very symmetry of our bodies. We accept that with one side of a dichotomy must go the other: left and right; hot and cold; light and dark, ad infinitum. Moreover with each dichotomy there are extreme opposite poles: the cold of deep space versus the surface of the sun; the dryness of a desert versus the wetness of an ocean. We know and cannot deny these realities.
Remarkable therefore is our incredulity concerning our own kind. There can be no doubt that our species, relatively freed of instinct and endowed with a superior brain that is eminently adaptable and adept at learning, has produced extreme examples of intelligence, creativity, even compassion: the profound insights of Einstein; the prodigious invention of Bach; the selflessness of Schweitzer, and nonetheless the blessed legions of men and women whose job it is to protect and to save others, even at risk to themselves. And yet we are forever amazed at the opposite polarity: the dark ignorance and brutality that allows a person to sever the head from the body of another human being without pity or any feeling of identity. Surely such a monster is unnatural, inhuman.
Sadly, no. With our extreme potential on the side of heaven must attend its extreme opposite. Such is the nature of duality, the fundamental character of the perceptible universe, our intractable bewilderment in this regard all aside.
Misogyny
The roots of misogyny have long been an utter mystery to me. If men love their mothers, as surely they must, how can they come to hate the gender to which mothers belong? Of course, some may have been mistreated in childhood, and disseminate their justifiable anger to all women, albeit irrationally. But then there are entire cultures seemingly based on a distressing contempt of women, who are covered and segregated so as not to offend the tender and pure sensibilities of their male rulers. How strange this is, when ever since the evolution of sexual reproduction, the genders must come together to procreate, and the species flourishes to the point of exhausting the resources of the planet!
The solution to this mystery, I now believe, lies in my own essay, posted below in its entirety. Since the definition of life itself is reproduction, human behavior is governed fundamentally by the agenda of the germ cells. It reflects the extreme disparity between sperm and ova: the latter seeking to protect and nurture the few that are fertilized, out of the limited number available; the former driven to compete for reproductive rights with countless other germ cells, as ruthlessly as necessary. Translate that cellular behavior to the whole organism and can there be any doubt as to the basis of antagonism? Certainly the matter is more complicated, especially in a social species, but sadly with no natural affinity for nurturing - and superior muscle mass on average - men will see women as weak, thus contemptible.
How Many Flavors?
I have complained in these pages before about the phenomenon I call "proliferitis", the emergence of myriad varieties of multiple brands of any given consumer product diminishing the odds, ironically, of ever finding a particular item in a particular retail store, unless it is a mega-Wegman's, already an exhausting experience. Perhaps the root cause of this condition is global competition. Even at a national or local level, competition may breed this sort of thing; after all, if you are making and selling three flavors of yogurt, and your competitor comes up with five, you must keep up. Add any number of yogurt brands worldwide, and you may soon need to come up with forty-five flavors.
Another factor is novelty. No matter how satisfied your customers may be with the electric toothbrush you manufacture, to the extent of paying ten dollars each for new brush heads, when upstarts come along from the far corners of Earth to steal your business, you must think of something new. How about more powerful, oddly shaped brush heads that will not only clean ones teeth but destroy the gums they are supposed to protect?
Well, well. Into the global future we go, if toothless; at least there will be dozens of yogurt flavors from which to choose!
Econ 101.2
Now, as to the genius of Bill Gates, highly and perhaps strategically overrated, it was simply this: much like Walmart, to give away your product until you have eliminated any competition, at which point the consumer, the entire world when we reference Microsoft, is at your mercy. Thanks to this genius, and to the hubris of Apple in its dealings with IBM, the personal computer, the PC, was inflicted with an inferior operating system created over a weekend in the garage of a geek enlisted by Gates.
Years later, after it had become obvious that the Mac OS was far superior, Gates came up with Windows, a copycat and clearly an infringement; but by then he was so wealthy he could easily buy off any judge. Apple went into decline, until its rescue by a true genius, the late Steve Jobs, who unfortunately did not exercise the same acumen with respect to his own health.
To this day, Apple software is always more intuitive and user friendly than its complex and cranky Microsoft counterparts, with which most of the world, sadly, is still saddled.
Econ 101
Practitioners of the dismal science dither about what may be wrong with the economy - the wealth gap, low wages, health care costs. Leaders try to help - well some of them. Nowhere however, have I seen mention of a quite fundamental problem: the brightest people do not go into business, which instead lures only those not intelligent enough for the professions. The economic impact of stupid business people really needs to be studied.
Any consumer can think of countless examples; they abound, but just one will make the point. As successful as Starbucks is in taking over the world, how many decades did it take for them to realize that were they to offer warm pastries, they would have even more customers? A favorite of mine, however, is retail clothing. The end of the season, in temperate zones at least, will find a clothing store stuck with unseemly piles of large and extra large sizes. There will remain few medium and zero small garments. This circumstance obtains year after year, apparently without a single buyer stopping to consider the imbalance. Women are huge, are they not? Especially Americans. In menswear, the smallest inseam in a pair of pants is 29 inches. If a store happens to have, on a rare occasion, pants with the 28 inch inseam, these fly off the rack immediately. How puzzling this must be to the captains of the clothing industry! Where are all those short men coming from? Surely we must be witnessing an invasion of Bolivians!
I will not get into the case of that "genius" Bill Gates. Well maybe next week.
Gentlemen. Please.
Upon the now suspect report of rape at a fraternity at the University of Virginia, Richard Cohen wrote a column in the Washington Post. Of course it later turned out that the real outrage had more to do with shoddy, unprofessional journalism by Rolling Stone - well consider the source - but Cohen's remarks are still important. At the time I replied as follows:
I never fail to read your column in my morning newspaper, assured that you will say what needs to be said and what I myself would love to say, as for example your comments regarding rape. Surely the civilization is beyond redemption if you are "geezered" by stating that the first rule of true masculinity is to treat women with respect. Of course you are right. I am responding only to add certain reflections of my own on this troubling subject.
When a person has relative strength, as most men do, sufficient to harm those weaker than himself, such as women and children, he faces the moral challenge to choose when and why to exercise that capacity. There is no more beautiful being on this earth than the man who chooses righteously never to exploit his strength in such manner. He is the gentle man. We used to put those two words together, and it was every young boy's aspiration to enter those august ranks, to become a gentleman. The question of where we have gone wrong in raising boys is a complex and controversial one. But you have put your finger on the true crux of the matter, which is not really about laws and enforcement and punishment. It is a matter of the standards of behavior men have and hold among themselves. For illuminating that point, which has gone unremarked apparently for some generations, I am most grateful to you!
Real is Beautiful
My version of full frontal nudity is the rising sun smacking me full in the face as I take my walk of a winter morning. It is only at this season that one sees the sun at all, through the trees, and in summer dawn is much too early. Even now the sun often hides demurely behind a bank of clouds on the horizon as it comes up. So a clear morning in January when the solar brilliance fills the vastness of visual space, so that one must shield ones eyes even to see how it has turned the frosted lawns into fields of glistening diamonds, is an absolute sensuous thrill.
We regard the majesty of nature as beautiful, more so indeed than any representation of it by even the most skilled photographer or talented artist. A poem in this space, under The Carriage Lamp, just recently alluded to this curious tendency, that what we see as supremely beautiful is considered so because it is real. But the cryptic ending of that poem, "Duly Noted", that the equivalence of beauty with reality may reveal an unacceptable truth means simply this: that reality must be transcendent, even therefore the moon-faced Buddha. What we discern in the glories of nature is not beauty but Suchness.
One and the Same
By and large, people fail to understand that they do not need to be the same. They do not need to think alike, so long as they agree to disagree. Provided they are not forced to live together, they may exercise whatever personal eccentricities they please without bothering others. They could even consider regarding the variousness of humanity as wondrous, miraculous. They might enjoy the wide gradients of skin color, as long as the daughter doesn't take up with one of those people. For further thoughts on this subject, I refer readers to my essay, The Sexual Theory of Everything, now posted in full at the bottom of this page. Click on the title.
The topic is sadly current with civilization, i.e. France, under attack from the tribes. These conflicts are of course overlaid with political and historical complexity, but still they boil down to my first sentence: people fail to understand that they do not need to be the same. All sentient life, indeed all of perceived reality, is of one nature, but this oneness by no means translates into sameness. Paradoxically, the realization of oneness affords a much keener appreciation of duality, and of each dichotomy, the glorious distinctiveness of its polarities. Vive la difference!
Whipped
ISO: a nondairy whipped topping. To wit: I nearly passed out this morning. I awoke with a bad case of hives from a chronic dairy allergy, and no sooner had gotten out of bed then I felt dizzy, light headed and nauseous. Breaking out in a cold sweat, I staggered back to bed, where I slowly recovered.
If you have ever had this experience, you may share my wonderment at how tenuous consciousness really is. The slightest interruption of blood flow to the brain and one is out in seconds. As I lay waiting for my blood pressure to return, I reflected on the further miracle of the heart muscle continually pumping against gravity to get that blood to ones brain. Of course, over the millions of years that we have been bipedal, evolution has provided homo erectus with this capacity, so apparently the use of our two hands, with opposable thumbs, outweighed the risk of passing out.
It behooves, I daresay, to take good care of that hard working pump, and nonetheless to make good use of that miraculous brain while we still can. As for me, I am wondering if soy creamer would whip up?
Christmas Music
The music of the Christmas season - the real music that is, not the trumped up variety - is uncommonly emotional for anyone the least bit sensitive to such things. Of course, it was created to evoke in the listener whatever emotion he may share in common with the composer, music being the language of emotion. The musically educated will recognize the means employed: a peaceful beginning in the major key giving way to the relative minor, upon which the eyes well and the tears flow. Even the secular tunes play upon the poignance of Christmas nostalgia.
But in the religious music surely there is a resonance with the symbolism that may affect even the nonbeliever: the fragility of infancy; the beauty of parental love, human or divine; the eternal mysteries of human existence, which seem to confound us inexorably. We look to the heavens as always. We pine for God, for the love of God, and most especially for the capacity to feel that love. We look in the wrong direction. In our very essence, we are the love, wisdom, and power of that which we seek in supernatural agency.
OMG! No, really, children! "Fall on your knees! Hear the angel voices!"
Gender
I have every intention of writing a fictional biography of the late Jeremy Brett, the British actor who won renown as the quintessential Sherlock Holmes in the late eighties. His personal life is a fascinating story, in part because he was both bisexual and bipolar. The subject has me thinking about gender differences, and gender stereotypes, especially in modern America. For many generations, throughout the twentieth century in fact, caveman machismo became the image and the very definition of masculine, smothering and ultimately suffocating the softer potential that was once available to men. At the same time, the women's movement, fighting to shed feminine stereotypes, led to considerable confusion among women; and I would argue that we are still a long way from sorting this out.
We forgot that women can be hard and men can be soft, without crossing some imaginary line that we draw at random. Instead, if a young man takes on the care of his children, or shows gentleness and affection, he is regarded as "feminine"; and a like fate awaits the woman who becomes a world-class athlete. Jeremy Brett was a tall, strong, virile man, and he was also kind and gentle, true to his Quaker heritage, or some would say his "feminine side". To my mind, he embodied the fullest masculine potential, so much broader and richer than the machismo culture accepts.
Tribalism
What better time than Christmas to talk about tribalism, except for which Christians might be less reluctant to share such a lovely, innocent occasion with other faiths. I realize of course that most people in the civilized world, even those most obvious afflicted with it, believe that they have overcome primitive tribalism. Bring it up in conversation and eyes will roll. We have long since moved beyond small kinship groups. We travel the world easily, live far from relatives, and we are fine with friends and associates of other tribes. But, "I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one of them."
Perhaps even this perverse sentiment, long considered to be based on racial and cultural bias, is giving way, albeit with predictable backlash. Moreover tribes have been typically wont to interbreed, often coercively. Nonetheless, civilized people want to believe that we choose one another rationally, based on common interests, character and personality.
I wonder then, how we account for attraction, which tends to bypass the filter of reason. Are we attracted to the person who resembles us - the same stature, coloring of skin, hair, eyes? Or is it the urging of our primordial DNA? Might our brains have inherited a tribal archetype of the ideal mate? The idea is dangerously close to determinism, which can and has historically led us far astray; and yet surely there is something compelling in the eyes of that man or that woman. They are not merely blue or brown, but the same subtle shade of gray green, that I see in the mirror. N'cest pas?
www.
I have written before about the idea that the World Wide Web may be the early sign of a nervous system in the evolution of a social organism. It is a social network, with the terms net and web used interchangeably to describe the linking of minds. The analogy of mechanical with organic may be specious, but in these times it becomes compelling. Images, ideas, emotions, flicker through the world on electrical impulses at lightning speed in the same way they do within the individual brain.
Accepting this comparison then, we should look upon those hordes of people walking down the street with eyes affixed to some gadget or other in the palms of their hands as evolving nerve cells. Do they not communicate with one another in the same manner as dendrites, instantly, electrically, constantly? That line waiting uncommonly long outside the Apple Store for the first opportunity to purchase the latest uncommonly expensive device, consists of lowly but ambitious cells hoping thereby to join the elite - the nervous system - transformed by the stem cells of global commerce.
Special Gifts
I suspect that the average person considers all writers to be egocentric, their creative works being embarrassing evidence of conceit. For that matter any creative person falls prey to such thinking. I must confess that, under sincerely objective scrutiny, I have always thought of myself as special, different. But then, with the same objectivity, must every person who thinks himself special be wrong? To quote Holmes, who was not known for false modesty, "To the logician everything must be seen exactly as it is". Surely any person of above average merit in whatever arena is, for that very quality, able to recognize the fact, and with it his responsibility to use his gifts wisely. But there it is: the operative word is "gifts".
Unfortunately, the negative stereotype of creative people arises from the sad fact that many of them are egotistical, eager to broadcast their conviction that they are, personally, God's gift to lesser mortals; and these, devoid of humility, are always the ones in whom it would be most appropriate. No, no, the truly creative person, genius or not, will know that his gift is received, and will nurture it with humble gratitude in the hope that it may benefit others. We should hesitate at least to judge him for simply recognizing his relative ability.
Consciousness Redux
We naturally think of consciousness as life itself, and indeed look upon death with dread as the permanent loss of it. However, it occurs to me that our conscious minds are quite limited, in the same way as our senses. We may be conscious of anything just as we may see anything, but not everything. We have a conscious sense of but a small part of manifest reality, let alone the ultimate. The great depth and breadth of it escapes consciousness. But our hope lies in this: realization, i.e. to make real, to enter and to merge with all that consciousness cannot hold.
Look up, for example, and you are conscious of the blue sky with clouds drifting slowly across it. Look for very long and you realize you are not looking up but out, from a round planet swirled with cloud, fixed to its surface by the gravitational field resulting from its motion. And this is only the manifest reality, the glimmering of Form upon the transcendent Emptiness, two sides of one singular Ultimate Reality!
Book Makers
In the past few years, the publishing business, along with other traditional media, has been thrown into disarray by the internet. With the ascendence of ebooks and now "self publishing" services, not to mention Amazon and other online behemoths, large publishing houses have lost not only market share but also the power they always had to filter what was available to readers, to smother creativity and strangle young talent in the crib. Gone are the days when one sent out a carefully crafted query letter to editors and received back a demoralizing flurry of impersonal rejections. Long ago the point was reached where big publishers, never risking a cent of profit on the unknown entity, now produce only those books that they themselves solicit from authors who are sure to sell on name recognition alone. Small publishers sprang up to fill the void in niche markets, and now authors are in total revolt, publishing their own works as ebooks or resorting to self publishing websites, a burgeoning business.
And what of the fat cats? Perhaps hoping for a deathbed redemption, they are rushing to align with this self publishing wave offering the service through contractors. They have only themselves to blame for not knowing: the creative spirit will out!
Ritual
Anything that is uttered repeatedly tends to become meaningless over time. The one who goes about saying, "I love you", consistently sooner or later encounters an indifferent response, because,"You always say that." Indeed any sort of ritual bears the risk of this fate. Organized religions, for instance, that make a point of adhering to old forms eventually have a falling off of followers, though this may take generations. Historically, the disenchanted will flock to charismatic new leaders bent upon reviving spiritual zeal. Thus the Protestants, the Quakers; even Buddha broke away from his Hindu origins.
But is this numbing the inevitable effect of ritual? I think not, and I would cite the Japanese tea ceremony as evidence. The challenge in this very precise ritual, as in anything that is done or said repetitively, is to hold in ones mind the ultimate reality of change, which allows of no exact repetition. With practice one may pour the tea, or say the prayer, or hear "I love you" and never grow bored, though it helps to be Japanese.
Politics
It is election season, and ironically a frustrating time for the electorate, as no one seemingly is interested in listening to them. Candidates standing for office have their own ideas and agendas to put forward, which they do in silly, repetitive, mind-numbing ads. Besides even if they were inclined to be representative, it is not an easy matter to discern the collective will of the voters. Polls are biased; "town hall" gatherings are a minuscule sampling. Much easier simply to assure that your district incorporates only your own partisans, trash any opponent foolish enough to run against you in that purified place, and walk easily into office time and again, there to do just as you please, voters be damned!
But this mass market phenomenon is not confined to politics. The czars of fashion, some shadowy, obscure elite, determine what styles will be available to the multitudes, regardless of what those consumers may want. Should they fail to manipulate your desire - not for want of trying - they have the power to dictate what you can buy. It is easier than discerning your taste. Like the politician - why should he care what you think?
Commentators fret over the state of the economy, consumer confidence, and especially politics. No one dares point to the arrogant stupidity of the business or the political world, their contempt for the very classes to which they should be accountable.
Bar Harbor, Maine
My favorite place on the eastern seaboard of North America is Bar Harbor in the state of Maine. One needs to go that far north to escape the subtropical summers, and Mount Desert Island has the incomparable Acadia National Park. Overall, the place reminds me of home, and no jet lag.
I always stay at the Bar Harbor Inn, and would never betray that loyalty. It sits right on the Shore Path lining Frenchman Bay, and offers the graciousness of its century-plus history. Over the years I have come to know some faithful members of their staff, and some eventually began to recognize me, in that offhand Yankee manner, as a regular visitor. Tyler, for example, has been with the Inn forever, and seems to be indispensable to its smooth operation. When we meet the first topic is often the winter, always of interest in that latitude where the summer is so pleasant. Against reason, one imagines it might be always thus; but no, winter is harsh.
Last summer, Tyler was unusually talkative. His aged mother had passed away; and his car was totaled in an accident, in which, fortunately, he was unscathed - a bad year. A year later, having inherited his mother's house, situated next door to him, he has become a landlord, renting it out to an Indian doctor and his family. Good fortune for the island, since Indian professionals tend to be relatively accomplished. I just hope they like the winters!
Born of Worms
Surely in this dark time something must be said about the human capacity for evil, as every thoughtful person wonders anew about how such cruelty and barbarity can fulminate in others of his own species. Unfortunately for followers of Islam, it is a growing contingent of their co-religionists bringing this age-old question to the fore in their eager resurrection of ancient barbarism. How does a human being cut off the head of another of his own kind? What seed of humanity is missing from such an individual?
Granted that man's inhumanity to man is not unique to any sect or race nor to any time in human history and prehistory. The evolution of the human brain bequeaths it with extreme capacities, including unnatural behaviors unknown in other animal species; and yet despite our inclination toward mutual annihilation, we somehow survive and even prosper.
In this present case though, in Islamic radicals, smothering that seed of humanity, is their strange attitude toward women, who by nature must be their mothers. They cover their women, to the extent that the women resemble nothing so much as the pupa of some insect, or the prey of a spider, enrobed in silk, trapped in the web. There you have the answer then to the question of how these men can bring themselves to sever the head of another person - with a dull knife: they are born of a class of people whom they despise; they are born of worms.
The Vegetarian Diet
All creatures, in the Buddhist view, are naturally enlightened, including the so-called "lower" animals, those without the capacities of human consciousness. (Though what could be lower than an animal capable of beheading one of his own kind - only certain insects come to mind.) And it is the Buddhist compassion for all sentient beings that underlies the precept against killing them, not only other people but animals as well - hence the vegetarian diet, which nevertheless can be problematic culturally and economically in parts of the world. Nutritionally, it is difficult to get all the essential proteins that homo sapiens no longer can synthesize; yet one can do well as a vegetarian, with care. And of course modern people are by and large at some remove from the actual slaughter, which meat eaters insist can be done humanely.
But that is the very point, not the killing - all creatures will die - but the suffering, being the cause of it. Still the compassion of Buddha is both subtle and boundless, not clad in the iron of ideology; it extends not only to helpless animals used for food, but also to humans helpless in the grip of their karma.
A Closet Buddhist?
I have always held the heretical idea that Jesus was a closet Buddhist; indeed I am privy to a Tibetan legend that he was a bodhisattva who entered an ill-fated manifestation, with mixed results. His message was Buddhist in essence, and badly misunderstood, causing me to wonder whether this errant bodhisattva might have appeared subsequently to other Christians, perhaps in the attempt at clarification.
For example, the Church of Latter Day Saints, founded upon a vision of the angel Moroni: was it bad moonshine or a visit from Jesus? But surely the most likely evidence of this possibility occurred to George Fox in the middle of England in the middle of the seventeenth century. It was upon his revelation that the Society of Friends was founded. The basic Quaker principles, which have survived centuries of sectarian schism, are to my mind the closest Christianity has come the true Path. Their tolerance and temperance, pacifism and quiet worship, are suggestive of Buddhist precepts and practice.
Chiefly though, Fox's inspiration that every person may have within himself a direct, intimate connection to the wisdom, love, and strength of God, compares to Buddha's reassurance that we each have the potential for enlightenment. The Quakers remained theist of course, and Fox believed it was Christ he saw. But might it have been that erstwhile bodhisattva speaking to a receptive soul to set the record straight?
Throughout the centuries, true to Fox's belief, the Quakers have maintained that any authentic revelation would adhere to scripture. Only in modern times have they accepted the notion that the Almighty might wish to reveal something more. Have they finally gotten the message?
Live and Learn
How long does it take us to learn? How many times saying, "I should have known"? When attempting to fly anywhere in the United States on a commercial airliner, one should surely know by now that the most anyone can say, even in the best of circumstances, is that one plans to take a given flight, affording only the possibility of arriving at a given destination at the scheduled time. The system is so precarious that a disruption on any one of its spaghetti legs brings total collapse, or near to it.
But as in any devolving process, generations pass unaware of the slow degradation. Young people take for granted the need to sleep on airport floors, cold and starving, or to be bounced from one city to another like billiard balls in order to finally land days later at their intended destination. They have no recollection of air travel before deregulation, when only severe weather might stop a flight. There were planes to spare for other exigencies.
Competition has been good for the industry - right? Air travel has been democratized, which is laudable - right? Surely the USA will be wealthy enough to maintain a state-of-the-art air traffic control system, no matter by how many tens of thousands of flights it is eventually encumbered - right? Personally, I find it ironic that in the capital city, at the very airport now named for Ronald Reagan, people may be found standing in exhausting queues or indeed lying on the floor in their feeble attempts at a most uncertain mode of "travel".
Summer Color
Before summer slips completely from memory, I must observe that it is indeed a colorful season, especially if there is ample rain. As I enjoy the burgeoning petunias here in the village, in their several colors and myriad shades, I am ruminating about color itself - the bending of light in infinite refractions. Pure light may be said to encompass this infinite variety, while itself exhibiting only purity.
With this thought winding though my mind, an analogy forms with all of reality. We perceive reality in infinite forms - fantastic, miraculous forms - whether as sight, sound, smell, touch; but our consciousness remains ignorant of their ultimate nature. This ignorance is the prism bending ultimate reality into myriad forms.
When you see color, you also see the pure light of its true nature; likewise when you perceive reality, you perceive simultaneously its ultimate essence of oneness. To hold this awareness is a hard but vital practice. The colors of summer are a joy to behold; much greater is the joy of that pure, infinite light that transcends them - and you are already looking at it!
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