Crises

The best way to avoid constant crises in life is to avoid constant crises in life. By increasing your awareness and general state of mindfulness, many of life's so-called crises can be avoided entirely by proper planning and responsible action.

Yes, shit happens. To a certain degree, accidents are unavoidable. However, many accidents are the results of lack of care and attention in potentially dangerous situations. Improper home or car maintenance are common precursors to accidents, for example. There is no need to invite shit to happen.

It is important to know yourself and to take full, proactive responsibility for yourself and your personal environment, which includes all spaces you occupy in life. Practice, as I use the word frequently in my writing, includes vigilant and persistent maintenance of body and environment. The practice of meditation assists the brain in taking a relaxed and clear view of your life and your environment. Exercise, proper nutrition and adequate sleep maintain the brain and body in a state of efficiency and adequacy to the task of averting or dealing with disaster.

Multiple personal crises are symptomatic of disease and/or personal dysfunction in your environment. Where there is constant and dedicated practice, crises are minimal, because practice places you in a functional and efficient state wherever you find yourself in life. Instead of being a barreling, reactive train, headed for a wreck, the person with a well established practice of health and mindfulness is like a gyroscope, always maintaining balance and simply bouncing away when it hits obstacles.

Culture

Multiculturalism has become the refuge for scoundrels of all cultures.

Rudeness, public indecency, littering, obnoxious children, uncontrolled pets, vandalism, improper maintenance of private property. These blights on the general culture are routinely defended and excused by so-called multiculturalists, or The Politically Correct. Political correctness is used as a shield by the irresponsible and irresponsive. Looking the other way rather than practicing civic responsibility is a rampant behavior in urban society.

I ride public transport often. I see the deterioration in the American cultural ethic every time I am on the train. Garbage is thrown everywhere. People monopolize whole sections of a train to the exclusion of other passengers. Punks place their feet up and use three or four seats at their personal space with arrogant looks of challenge to anyone who might approach, regardless of that passenger's age or need of a seat.

These are symptoms of the dissolution of the fabric of civil society. By extolling the wonders of the cultures of our massive influx of immigrants, Americans have lowered the standard of their own country's etiquette to that of the Third World. Some immigrants have no needed role models, because nobody takes the time or risk of telling them their bahavior is simply inappropriate or disturbing to those around them. The poor who are native to America once looked to those who were better educated and mannered for standards of behavior. No more. They look to the deteriorated culture and simply behave as they would in their own educationally deprived homes. After all, nobody will take the time or energy to tell them otherwise. And, if some responsible, courageous citizen does speak up, that poor soul is often unsupported or even criticized by the lazy and undercultured around him/her in a public situation.

Practice involves constant self-appraisal, self-education, self-discipline. However, compassion cannot be practiced in isolation. Compassion sometimes entails correcting wrong behavior directly or by example. By correcting wrong, or uncivilized/dysfunctional social behaviors, the practitioner is being compassionate. The practitioner is trying to help the corrected person live a more functional and happy life in society.