2010

As this ancient globe rotates its northern hemisphere toward the sun for another segment of its annual orbit, my head spins with concepts of time, aging and unfinished business in my own life. Hurtling through space sounds like fun. But, I realize I am the size of a bacterium on my vehicle. So the thrill must be sought by gazing at the sky with determined attention.

I have felt the earth move under me. It is an unforgettable experience. You'll know it when it happens. My most memorable experience of the ride through this tiny part of The Universe occurred around 2 AM on a January morning. I stood atop a snow-covered dune at Herring Cove, outside Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod. Above, a clear sky allowed an unobstructed view of The Universe beyond. Twinkling colors amid unfathomable, cold darkness. Breathtaking.

In that moment of space travel, I experienced my oneness with the essence of all that shining energy out there. I experienced the weightlessness of my own energy field, the electric pulses which transmit feeling and thought beyond the confines of cellular walls. The energy of imagination. The flickering comprehension of timelessness.

Since then, I have carried the memory of that experience, locked in consciousness, like spice in a jar. I sprinkle it, when needed, upon my gravity-weighted life. It adds zest, perspective and refreshment. And, as I embark upon my 61st year on this planet, I hope to continue to look up from time to time, so I can enjoy the ride.

Christmas

Christmas Past: When I was a child, I thought as a child.

Christmas Present: Double entendre.

Christmas Future: Possibly, the 22,272 nd day of my life.

Happy Hollandaise.

Polls

I have been looking at several polling sites. I occurred to me that there is no regulation or oversight of these polling sites.

So, a thought came to me, as I saw a preponderance of positive data about Red States and a preponderance of negative data about Blue States on one site: In a media-driven, poll-diven, divided government, wouldn't it be likely that corrupting interests would manage to control and manipulate polls? Who would know? The polling sites I have visited show no signs of transparency in terms of their corporate links, institutional links or their data. Yet, our politicians are driven by these statisticians' pronouncements about the voter's psyche.

Is it really likely, for example, that the majority of a population, plagued by a major financial collapse and its insecurities, really doesn't want improved health care coverage? or sticter climate remediation policies? I wonder, but whose numbers can I trust in a society which has been corrupted by international corporate manipulation?

Humanism

Most likely, intentional, practical individual and group humanism predates history. It certainly predates monotheism. It may well have predated theism. After all, animism, which seems to have promoted a higher standard for respect of all life, predated theism. It seems sensible and logical to speculate that early tribes survived through some form of humanism. Throughout recorded history, practical and philosophical humanism are recorded. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, referred to Greek and Roman humanism in his Renaissance Humanism of the 14th Century, as one example.

I considered my own intellectual motivation to do good in the world as my humanism for the past four decades. My understanding and application of that word, humanism, is simple: Humanism is my practice of being a truthful, responsible, giving and respectful human being with an awareness that every person, while ultimately living and dying alone in an unique human experience, has the same basic human rights, to life and peace, and the same responsibilities to himself and to all humankind.

Recently, a new popular movement has arisen under the name of Humanism, in part, I believe, as a predictable reaction to the rising religious fundamentalism of the last two decades. Opposite and equal reactive forces are part of the physics of life in this Universe.

I have been privileged to meet Greg Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, who has written a book called "Good Without God: What A Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe". He is a dynamo of energy on behalf of his ideals. He represents, in my opinion, the energy and good will which are needed qualities in this world.

My concern about this new Humanism, as it spirals into a popular movement, is that it may fall prey to some of the cancers of religion and other human bureaucracies, which are born initially as popular movements. One of the calcifying diseases of movements for good is the establishment of authority by the perceived leadership of a movement.

Pastors and popes, imams and rabbis, lamas and shamans, all these authorities have contributed more misery to humankind than enlightenment. My own sense of humanism is based in its foundation in peer, human relationships, which are equal and mutually educational. The sum of intelligence in these relationships exceeds any amount of intelligence in the one human brain of any authority figure.

The fellowship, equality and mutual learning of movements in their early development is what powers them. The establishment of hierarchy and authority usually saps them of their creativity and goodness, as greed and ego corrupt. Once the process of a movement yields to this force, it is no longer an open, free movement of people of like minds. It becomes a bureaucracy, which exists for itself and for the support of its management.

While this seems increasingly unavoidable in the materialist, media-driven world of this time, I am optimistic enough to believe that this process is not inevitable in this Humanism movement that is currently developing with the help of Greg Epstein and many others. I hope that this new Humanism can develop as a cooperative fellowship of equals, which can draw comfortably on the expertise of individuals for the common good, without ceding to anyone, or group, the 'last word' of authoritarian orthodoxy.

Buddhist?

It may come as a surprise to the reader that I do not consider myself to be a Buddhist. I do not consider myself to be 'GLBT' either. I do not consider myself to be 'white'. I do not consider myself to be 'Liberal'. I do not consider myself to be 'spiritual'.

I do consider myself to be the bane of all those who seek to capture and use followers for a movement, a trend or a religion. I consider myself to be 'one-being-striving-to-become-consciously-truthfully-responsibly'. Some would call me a 'free-thinker', but I do more than just think.

I do not deprive myself of the right to make judgments, decisions, evaluations, criticisms, or bad jokes. I do take responsibility for my words and actions to the best of my ability.

There is a common misconception that those who are non-violent, direct, optimistic, socialistic, intelligent and responsible are easily confronted by violence, mocking, chiding, cynicism, gangsterism. This is high-school thinking. And, unfortunately, many people in the general population do not evolve socially, emotionally or psychologically after high school. This is the price they pay for conforming to the identity that has been handed to them by society.

The title of this blog, "Buddha's Pillow", is a riddle, a provocative play on words, which, I would hope, those who have seriously studied Buddhism and other bodies of thought will understand with a smile. To those who are looking for their own Truth in my words, I simply suggest you are looking in the wrong place. If this blog has any worth, it will simply be a spark in a combustible mind.

Stupidity

The current 'new' political movement in the U.S. is the Tea Party movement, which developed around opposition to universal health care in 2009. Some of the opportunists behind this movement (perhaps 'business' would be a better term) are techies in Chicago who founded the Samuel Adams Alliance. The name of this group belies the stupidity, or perhaps duplicity, of its motives. Samuel Adams, according to their literature, was chosen as their mascot based on their appreciation of his Libertarian, anti-government principles.

Below is a quotation from http://www.ushistory.org/, which tells a different story about Samuel Adams. Perhaps the new Tea Party patriots should start drinking their 'tea', rather than smoking it.

"Samuel and John Adams' names are almost synonymous in all accounts of the Revolution that grew, largely, out of Boston. Though they were cousins and not brothers, they were often referred to as the Adams' brothers, or simply as the Adams'. Samuel Adams was born in Boston, son of a merchant and brewer. He was an excellent politician, an unsuccessful brewer, and a poor businessman. His early public office as a tax collector might have made him suspect as an agent of British authority, however he made good use of his understanding of the tax codes and wide acquaintance with the merchants of Boston. Samuel was a very visible popular leader who, along with John, spent a great deal of time in the public eye agitating for resistance. In 1765 he was elected to the Massachusetts Assembly where he served as clerk for many years. It was there that he was the first to propose a continental congress. He was a leading advocate of republicanism and a good friend of Tom Paine. In 1774, he was chosen to be a member of the provincial council during the crisis in Boston. He was then appointed as a representative to the Continental Congress, where he was most noted for his oratory skills, and as a passionate advocate of independence from Britain. In 1776, as a delegate to the Continental Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence. Adams retired from the Congress in 1781 and returned to Massachusetts to become a leading member of that state's convention to form a constitution. In 1789 he was appointed lieutenant governor of the state. In 1794 he was elected Governor, and was re-elected annually until 1797 when he retired for health reasons. He died in the morning of October 2, 1803, in his home town of Boston."...

Opportunism

Since I didn't go to Oxford or Harvard, I'll begin by quoting Wikipedia:

Opportunism is a term used in politics and political science. It forms an important rationale as well for transaction cost economics. It is interpreted n different ways, but usually refers to one or more of the following:

....a political style of aiming to increase one's political influence at almost any price, or a political style which involves seizing every and any opportunity to extend one's political influence, whenever such opportunities arise.

....the practice of abandoning in reality some important political principles that were previously held, in the process of trying to increase one's political power and influence.

....a trend of thought, or a political tendency, seeking to make political capital out of situations with the main aim being that of gaining more influence or support, instead of truly winning people over to a principled position or improving their political understanding.

Most politicians are "opportunists" to some extent at least (they aim to utilize political opportunities to their advantage), but the controversies surrounding the concept concern the exact relationship between "seizing a political opportunity" and the political principles being espoused

Milton Friedman, the Father of Contemporary Narcissistic Greed, in my opinion, is quoted as saying, "One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship."

The problem is this: Media and politics have merged in our electronic age. Media has made politics a spectator sport. This is, of course, intentional. The powers who hold the media wish to hold the world's vision and shape it to their liking. The Fourth Estate, a free and somewhat anarchic press (newspapers), has disintegrated under electronic capitalism. The anarchy exists on the Web, but it is only anarchy within the boundaries of commercial capitalism. It is bourgeois anarchy. One must have a computer and a certain amount of capital, as well as technical education, to get one's message actually seen on the Web. In order to influence society in any way in the world of virtual information, one must subscribe to Google Ads or other mechanisms of capitalism. And this trend is becoming more and more entrenched.

So, as media and politics do their dance, politics effect media as well. And, as media is effected, or infected, with political opportunism, the whole public discourse becomes opportunistic. As the whole public discourse becomes opportunistic (think: bipartisan, extremist, materialistic, etc.), people themselves become opportunistic. Human beings tend to mimic their leaders. Now, more than ever, human beings study their leaders by being bombarded with constant information about them. Perhaps this explains why Sarah Palin has become a perfect storm of a relatively ignorant beauty queen, elevated to national political figure.

I wish I could say the leaders have taken this to heart and put their houses in order under the weight of their responsibility to the public they represent and influence. They have not.

The Oprah-ization of the population is one result. To have the light of the Oprah spotlight shine on your life is salvation in the modern culture in the US and, increasingly, in the rest of the world, as it becomes infected by American media. The Oprah spotlight now comes in many forms: American Idol, Survivor and dozens of other reality TV shows. The book-publishing industry has been particularly infected with Oprah-ism, since it was soon discovered that her magic wand can make or break an author's sales record. An author's sales record is what determines the quality of what is published more than ever in increasingly attention-deficient times.

So, what happens when a world becomes overpopulated by one predatory species, infected by opportunism? I think we are beginning to see exactly what happens in our environment and social structures. Sharp divisions between the wealthy and vast majority of struggling-to-be-wealthy. With these divisions, environmental fall-out is inevitable. China and India, among the latter class, refuse to consider curbing their carbon emissions, for one example.

As for 'American culture', what else could evolve in a country which tries to idealistically apply the illogically mutated principles of slave-owners from two centuries ago to a present world that has absolutely no scientific relationship to that past? If America turned to its present with hard and discerning eyes, it would walk away from its self-righteous meddling in the affairs of other nations with shame and embarrassment. Perhaps it would then tend to its own health and survival.

War

Preemptive war is a policy of fear, not strength. "We're fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them here." This is lunatic and childish thinking. They are already here, as evidenced by American Somalis going back to Africa to fight with extremists, as evidenced by the several recent bombing plots uncovered by the FBI, as evidenced by the rapid development of mosques being built in the U.S. to accommodate Muslim immigrants.

The poverty and ignorance that has led to jihad throughout the Muslim world is the fault of the same regimes we have supported politically. Now we pressurize a victimized and deprived civilian population by killing them with our military might in their homelands, while still supporting their oppressive and corrupt leadership.

If we withdrew our armies, the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan would have to make their own choices and allegiances. Frankly, they would be too busy sorting themselves out to worry about attacking the U.S.. That is simple common sense. Viet Nam was a prime example of this.

The current government war policy in Iraq and Afghanistan has its roots in the same evil which brought us the catastrophic lessons of Viet Nam. That evil is the attempt and success of the military-industrial complex to run U.S. foreign policy, against the founding precepts of the U.S., as designed by leaders like George Washington, who insisted that the military be subject to civilian rule.

I am sorry to see the Obama administration bow to the military-industrial complex in Afghanistan. It speaks of a weakness in that administration. It speaks of an abandonment of the politics of peace and reconciliation by that administration. My only hope comes with an understanding that a new anti-war movement will rise from these events, as the American people feel the cost in lives and in their wallets for many years to come.