Materialism

Today I have been bombarded with breathless accounts of people shopping by journalists at National Public Radio, considered by some to be the font of intelligent reporting. What is wrong with this society?

Several months ago people were assaulting politicians who were finally trying to do something to help people by reforming a broken health care system. Today they were rushing into stores to charge gadgets, for which many of them have no money. The brainwashing to buy is coming from those disproportionately unaffected by the current Depression, in which millions of middle class people are spiraling into poverty.

Wake up, America. Wall Street is not your friend. Mainstream media is no longer objective. Your future is at stake.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is part of most of my days. Any show of basic human kindness in this increasingly materialistic and impersonal culture is appreciated and acknowledged by me. The simple holding of a door, as I enter a building, touches me. The genuine greeting of a clerk at a cash register merits my respect and appreciation, as a person who has worked with the public for many years. The unseen train operator, who sees me running for my train and leaves the doors open after the platform has cleared, gains my appreciation and respect. The stranger on a sidewalk, who deftly lets me pass or moves to one side to share the way as she approaches, deserves my smile and nod. The shopper in a crowded supermarket, who is careful to not block my way with his cart, is never taken for granted by me. The shop employee, who notices me squinting at an empty shelf and asks, "Can I help you?" with sincere interest, impresses me and gains my respect. The elderly person, who stops to let me pass and says with a winded smile, "You go ahead, I know I'm slow.", deeply humbles me with her acknowledged kindness.

Thanksgiving isn't a just holiday. Thanksgiving is an acquired, in-the-moment habit which makes the world a little better for everyone.

Finally, I have to publically thank the person who anonymously shared this Thanksgiving photograph on the Web. I have to say, I identify with the turkey.

Extremes

One of the goals of my practice, learned from Buddhist and monastic Christian practice, is the narrowing of my moment-by-moment attention away from the extremes of my reactions and desires. It is the most difficult and most rewarding aspect of my practice.

In the US, we live in a country of extreme views and extreme differences in wealth and well-being. While the extremes, diluted by a bureaucratically grinding government, generate slow social progress, the temperament of America is fickle and often unfocused. Materialism is the common ethos of the country. Freedom, as touted and seen by most Americans, is a euphemism for selfish pursuit of monetary wealth and/or celebrity. This adds to the challenge of practice for me.

Tempering the extremes of reaction and desire, brings calmness to the mind. Calmness of the mind allows for self-confidence and an understanding of self. Self-confidence and self-understanding allay many personal cravings. Allaying personal cravings allows the perception of the needs and humanity of others. Generally perceiving the needs and humanity of others, without seeing them through selfish insecurity and/or desire, breeds compassion. Compassion brings love. Love extinguishes fear and violence.

This doesn't just happen. It's exhaustive labor much of the time. A simple subway ride in the city with this consciousness brings countless tests of my resolve to practice. Driving in the city makes this practice nearly impossible for me. But, the commitment to the effort has paid off.

Militarism

Humans disagree. Conflict is inevitable. Violence, however, is a human choice in the twenty-first century. While violence works for the biggest and strongest at any given moment in human history, it does not work for the human species.

There is a new militarism in the US. It is becoming subtle, gentrified by corrupted politicians, who value re-election and financial gain over the welfare of their constituents. Militarism is no longer a Left-Right issue. Corporate corruption of our political system has seen to it that the media they own foster this new militarism with sentimentality and near-sightedness. Even 'public' broadcasting outlets, both radio and television, have fallen prey to this. It was probably inevitable when all media succumbed to the Bush-Cheney manipulation of embedding reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a child of post-WWII America, I have lived with the side effects of the militarism of that period. I was raised by a traumatized father, whose psyche was permanently twisted by his experiences in WWII. I watched as my own government tried to intimidate those of us who demonstrated peacefully against the Viet Nam War. I was a college student at the time of the Kent State Massacre. I watched Buddhist monks set themselves on fire in front of TV cameras to show the suffering of their people and the evil of war.

We are emerging from eight years of Right-Wing indoctrination and intimidation in the US. The military establishment was an active part of that process for eight years. Now, while portraying himself as a centrist, our President, who we elected as an agent of change, is engaging in the militarism of the culture by participating in sentimental patriotism, which sounds to me like old-fashioned nationalism, complete with 'God and country' speeches.

I mourn this Veterans Day for all those pacifists who have fallen, who have been victimized, who have been forced to leave their country to avoid persecution. I mourn all those civilians all over the planet who are killed and tortured by men and women, wearing uniforms and wielding guns or machetes.

Massacre

The Kent State Massacre on May 4, 1970, was the intentional murder of four unarmed, peace-promoting civilians by the US military. Now, Americans are being propagandized to see the deaths of soldiers on a military base at the hands of one of their own officers as 'tragic'. While I mourn the loss of any human life to violence, I suggest that the US military is part of the violence problem, not part of its solution.

Murder

The recent shooting deaths at Fort Hood, Texas, have been reported as an atrocity which has shocked and dismayed the military. Great sentimentality has accompanied the endless stories of this situation in the media. "A sentimentalist", Oscar Wilde wrote to Alfred Douglas, "is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it."

What does the military do? Some would say they are defending us. This is an atavistic piece of indoctrination, in my opinion. In fact, the incident at Fort Hood illustrates that the US military establishment is incapable of defending itself against lunatic violence. The business of the military is gun violence.

The high murder rate in the US, the highest among wealthy nations, reflects the commitment of American culture to violence as a method to resolve conflict. The US is a gun culture, a violence culture. Its media reflect this. Its politicians bow to it, whenever the question of gun control is raised. The NRA is perhaps the most powerful lobby in the US.

So, why all the hand-wringing and weeping when a lunatic shoots people at random? This reflects a deep immaturity in American culture. It reflects a culture which has lost its compass. It reflects a culture which is based on materialism and wealth-accumulation over quality of life and social equality. It reflects a culture where people will murder valuable, educated physicians to protect an embryo. It reflects a culture bullied by religions which promote hatred and rationalize the murder of those who disagree with them.

At the core of this breakdown of values in the US is the corruption of power by money. The ability of the NRA to prevent measures which would immediately decrease the murder rate in the US is simply wrong. The determination of the US government to continue to squander its human and economic capital in Afghanistan and Iraq to prop up corrupt regimes is a symptom of its own corruption. Corruption always enlists violence historically to maintain its power.

Practicing non-violence in a murderous culture is courageous. Responsible valor entails valuing human life over one's own personal interests or beliefs. Responsible patriotism entails a commitment to improve the quality of life for all citizens in one's country. Responsible parenting is teaching your children that violence is wrong, whether it is on a video screen or on a street.

Reproduction

At the core of all the problems facing the human species is its inability to examine and effectively deal with human reproduction. Reproduction is considered a human right, but dealing rationally with reproduction has not been treated effectively by most societies as a human responsibility.

The result is the ever-growing problem of overpopulation, which lies at the root of all the planetary problems of our age. Do you doubt this? If so, I would suggest that you are either ill informed or naive.

Industrialization, based in petroleum, has developed as a means to support population, as well as a means for the most aggressive and wily of our species to ensure their own progeny's survival and dominance . This petroleum based industrialization is the cause of global warming. It is the basis of corporate agriculture, which is stamping out biodiversity and producing food which can maintain an overpopulated planet at a huge cost in nutritional and cultural value. The processing of human waste in industrialized, urban population centers produces a sludge, which is used as fertilizer on millions of acres of land. The heavy metals in that sludge have already rendered thousands upon thousands of acres permanently useless for food production, due to the heavy metals from pipes and pollutants in it.

Educated people in industrialized countries look to the underdeveloped world and shake their heads at the lack of family planning there. Well motivated couples adopt children from those countries, as opposed to having children of their own. These people are perhaps the most rational and courageous planetary stewards in our times. However, corporate capitalism preaches the values of overpopulation, which is considered 'growth'. More cookie-cutter developments, more widgets for more factories to produce more useless junk to fill more landfills. Insanity.

An examination of the Chinese experience with The One-Child Policy illustrates the inability of human beings to address, understand and control their own reproduction for the common good of the species. And, even in a China which is now reaping the benefits of that policy, it is spoken of with condemnation by 'human rights' advocates in China and abroad. How about the human right to have enough space to grow food and enough clean air to breathe?

I hold the opinion that being a truly mindful and compassionate Humanist entails a commitment to fostering and practicing socially responsible reproduction of the human species. It is key. Wars, disease and famine have been the only modifiers of human population to date. With advances in medicine, a growing abhorrence of war, and a growing movement to feed the poor of the world, overpopulation will become a more and more obvious issue. Whether human beings will be able to chose quality of human existence for all people over their selfish choices, based on sexual and instinctual urges, may well determine the survival and continued evolution of our species.