New Career Choice: Recycler

I watched the CNN media-blurb on their 2013 Hero of the Year.  This was a man who devotes his life to any number of recycling initiatives.  I think the world needs an army of these people.  A viable and official career path that falls under the title Recycler would be good for the Earth.  No, we're beyond "saving" but there's prolonging.  There's redefining.  There's helping where we can.  There are unemployed people who could be on the reclaiming side instead of the raping and consuming side.  And it could pay in several ways.

It would be part social justice/social work, part educator, part leader and influencer, etc.  A person could specialize in any particular aspect of Earth nurturing.  I acknowledge there are jobs that do this to some extent, like park ranger.  Like recycling center operator.  But maybe more on the consulting/sub-contracting, proselytizing and lobbying, engineering (although there are already Environmental Engineers, this might be more opinionated and militant, bent toward the Earth side designing super-efficient and elegant design for every single thing from books to electronics to buildings to everything else).

I believe the political side of things is by far the biggest hurdle, so becoming an army of public opinion and capacity in order to sway the political will is going to have to be central to the initiative, but within corporate America -- that's the hardest because their profit-first motivation wants to be wasteful rather than efficient.  When we make it politically dangerous to be wasteful, we are on the right path.

Criticize and poke holes in this argument, then spackle and fix them so it becomes a yes instead of a no.  You armchair quarterbacks, so smug and smart -- turn your cynicism into strategies to make it work instead of throwing your hands up and saying it can't.  Use your 20/20 hindsight to solve this issue.  And then act.

Emotional Stew

This morning riding in to work listening to music, the illuminating analogy came to mind that the emotion state (which was incidentally being induced by John Hartford's Mark Twang) that flavors the feeling was a combination of several memories acting simultaneously.  This particular piece of music (for me) invokes the feeling I might have riding a steamboat on a sultry southern afternoon.  But because I first encountered this album when I was working with a high-performance and dynamic team of people I loved, those real memories are cast in along with the imaginary.  And the imaginary, itself, is fabricated from real memories of my grandpa (who was an Arkansas Ozark denizen who lived in the "Bluegrass Capitol of the World" and close enough to the Mississippi but also matching the quaintness of the lyrics and bluegrass fiddle).  A virtual "feel-good" gumbo.

It's the unique mix of those feelings in that moment, and the moment itself, riding to work at zero dark-thirty, that was the recipe for that feeling.  The unique oleo, unique to me and unique in that moment, made me think very much of how each meal is unique in the combination of ingredients, the relative amounts and strengths of the seasoning, the meat and potatoes (also different from cut to cut and batch to batch . . ).  Lucky thing, I should think, because it keeps things interesting.

The Limits of Life/ Time

So a person has a career or two, and to be really good at it takes a considerable amount of resources.  To be a parent on top of that takes a little bit of time and energy, learning some and doing some.  Then, to be an engaged citizen there's some level of basic background information and understanding a person needs to figure out how it all works, along with an awareness of local issues.  But then choosing something to actually DO in response to that constantly changing knowledge and environment.  Just to be able to make an educated vote on issues that affect the neighborhood, city, and state.  Understanding enough of the national state of affairs (just considering the domestic issues for a minute) takes a regular investment of time and mental resources so that a guy can weigh in on policy when the time comes, probably around election time when politicos and statesmen run for (re-)election.  Trying to get a gist of what is happening globally again takes an additional timeslot on a regular basis.  The economic scene is a big part of reality, technology and the environment (fracking? Is it really good/bad? and how?), what to do about global warming, GMOs, diabetes, etc.

Clearly, there are millions of us so we don't all have to be well aware of every issue.  Each of us could pick one or two issues on every level (personal, familial, professional, local, state, national) and fill in general knowledge about all of them with a few broadly edited magazines, and the principles that guide life as we know it can emerge, but still . . .

With globalization and the continuous march of advancement, building on the historical mountain of previous understandings, we reached a limit a long time ago when a person could know it all.  I just wonder if we can get enough people involved in enough issues to be able to keep this thing going.  One of my (many) ideas of heaven is seeing how this whole big thing unfolds over the next couple hundred years.

PhDs

I've known a few PhDs in my life, and they're often impressive in their field.  I've known a few EdDs, and so far, one is awesome and was before he got his degree, and the other 4 are terrible.  What's up with that.  Simple data point.  I must admit that they all came from SDSU, but still.  Terrible, as in not so smart, not good at their assigned positions, and sort of mean and political.

I don't know if it's a function of intelligence, but it seemed the common thread among the embarrassments was their inability to self-assess.  They either weren't able to see how ineffective and bafoonish they are, or they were just evil.  I'm still waiting for them to be removed from positions of power over others.

Good Friday

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. ~ Rene Descartes

Those who know me may have learned that Good Friday is special to me. Like my favorite holiday. It's not the death that I celebrate because it's often excruciating, but the necessity of the death to bring about the profound change it promises. An addict hitting their rock bottom. The faithful in their deep spiritual crisis. The tragedy that shakes your sensibilities hard enough that the core is finally laid bare and able to actualize. Salvation, however it looks, takes some sort of death, even if it's to the ways of thinking we've held dear.

Having been raised Catholic, the language of Christianity is my baseline for talking about relationship with the divine. But as a science oriented person, I like to translate it into more general terms. As powerful as faith is and as much as it offers adherents, it's a metaphor and surrogate for the reality that's so hard for the human mind to grasp. Like advanced calculus, the longer you spend with it and the deeper you go, the more we understand the complex relationship we each hold with the universe. And taking ourselves out of the matrix constructed for us by society since the onset of our first coherent thoughts needs as much undoing as the original indoctrination. And the gateway is identity.

You've seen the NOTW stickers on the back of cars. And the "world" that it refers to is both the physical realm in which our minds find themselves, and the constructed world of human society that very few of us ever step out of. Our original, innate tendency is to identify with what's in our world. The things, the people, the ideas. We are boys, Americans, doctors, students, etc. To some extent, those identities are as real as we believe they are. And there's nothing wrong with that, but for every identity we assume, and however deeply we choose to identify with them, we are less of our deeper, more fundamental nature as the existential beings that we are at our core. Our soul, to use a common term as a near cognate for my purposes here, has none of these identities.

But for most of us, it's disorienting out there, just you and your universe. We're used to the comfort and familiarity of this assumed belief system -- how could we not be. Like a city boy in the middle of the woods for the first time, none of the familiar landmarks, no electronic or structured forms of communications, no roads or buildings, no other humans...just you and your world. Now take yourself out of the world altogether, and it's you and your quiet self. And the last step, leaving your body. Not literally because our consciousness is one with our nervous system, but un-hitching our sense of who we are in our most fundamental form from the color of our skin and hair, the size of our arms, the pain in our joints. Those, like the earth itself, are our habitat, it is not US. But the more time we spend communing alone, just you and your maker, the more comfortable and the greater ken we develop for it. The idea of constant prayer starts to make sense. (Not an ego prayer, asking favor from God, but the simple act of surrendering this moment to quiet communion.)

So there are a couple pretty amazing things that happen when we decouple from the whole system shebang, the belief system, the dependence on our senses and history. First, we are left with that profound and mystical something that makes people want to be monks, to share the experience to the point of founding religions to honor it. I think it's that experience that Buddha and Jesus and any number of crazies over the centuries have wanted to share with the world.

Now, I don't believe that this state is preferential in an absolute sense. It's been called Nirvana, Enlightenment, The Kingdom of Heaven* Living with a secular center is fine and normal. But secondly, when viewed from that decoupled state, much of Jesus' teachings come into clarity. The rich man getting into heaven -- eye of a needle? Being rich, deeply invested in wealth, it's a lot harder to give that all up than for the desperately poor with less too lose. The comforts of the world are a little addictive. The only way is to take up your cross and follow me . . ., the parable of the pearl. Clear. The pearl is this state of being, and once you've discovered it, there is nothing more important than being able to access that state of mind.

But what holds you to the world is your habit of identifying with things of this world. Your work, your accomplishments, your family, your country, your duty, your religious obligations. The religion was designed to bring you closer to God, and when you identify with the Dogma instead of the target of the Dogma (oneness with the spirit), you miss the point, and again, that might be the closest some people can ever get. But the beauty of religious rite and ceremony, when seen as habits to keep one close to God, to take you out of the rest of the seductive fruits of the social and normal matrix, become purposeful and hold meaning. (In their most corrupt, they are used to separate us from others and exclude rather than bring us together**)

Good Friday is the acknowledgement that the Kingdom of God is available to us all, but takes the ultimate sacrifice: putting worldly things (all the tings we are attached to) second and our relationship with the holy, first. The good things in our lives are merely physical reflections of the goodness of that connection with the oneness that is everything. When we appreciate them as such, we are open to both: the simple and fleeting pleasures of this world as symbols only, and to get the big prize, we have to be fully willing to give them up at any moment. But in my experience, that makes them all the sweeter in the moment, we can really appreciate each moment we are allowed to commune with the worldly pleasures because we are not attaching to them having to be in our lives in the future. Which goes for everything from our eyesight to the taste of a luscious slab of prime rib and a caramel sundae to the tender kisses of our babies. Those will, one day, be only memories, but they were really only little reminders that being alive in the universe and one with everything is the gift. In my experience, with our attachment being to our relationship with the infinite, the nature of pain also changes. "God comes to the hungry in the form of food." ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

A curious paradox: It's through faith and belief and practice of a religion that one is supposed to reach the Kingdom of God. For me, though, it was through studying my own general learning, personal experience, people in my life, and a few severe trials and hardships that I found what was clearly the state of being referred to by the Bible as the Kingdom of God, and that, then, led me to an understanding of both the Biblical narrative and the beauty and efficacy of the religious ceremony that comprises the faith of my upbringing.

*I believe the biblical references to Kingdom of God, Heaven and other renditions of that thing are really this state, and because the idea is so foreign to most, and because it's so life-changing when experienced, that it was relegated to an afterlife proposition in the major world religions. The idea that heaven is really just that state of oneness with the infinite (or Divine, or the Creator, or the universe, or God) in the here and now is not only more powerful to me, but it brings the parables alive as very near metaphors, accessible to anyone at any time. The crucifixion as a metaphor for dying of this world is literally removing the center and driver of your consciousness (your ego and attention) from the worldly world, and letting it abide in the stark, deep reality of the moment without the judgments stemming from your learned expectations and values. There ARE values down there, but they're not yours. They are of the very fabric of the universe, or the great abyss, or loving bosom of God. Call it what you will, conceive it however your best comprehensions allows you, we are looking at the same state of being. This is the Rome that all roads lead to. Some may only experience it death.

** I listened to Radio Lab tonight and a show that highlighted the arbitrary notion of identity, specifically the separation of the Sunni and Shiite muslims, different sects that, in some places, use their supposed differences to kill one another (doubly ironically, because religions are to support love and bring us all closer to God, and because Islam means Peace/Surrender). It is the basic idea of identity that leads people to exclude, subtly or absolutely by hate and murder, others. Less identity, less exclusion. Or, should I say, the broader the identity, the greater the in-group! So someone who identifies as human gets to love the whole human race as being one with them. Someone who identifies as one with God and everything, gets to love all things, which IS, in fact, the state of mind one feels when in the Kingdom of God. There's could be a little bit of a chicken and egg scenario playing itself out here. Is it the feelings of love for all things that expands identity (or shrinks it?) to encompass everything, or is it the disposal of identity that allows the feelings of love to flow out to everything?

Why bad things happen to good people.

You hear it all the time: "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

You think you know someone?  You think you can hear their internal dialog?  Their petty judgments of their neighbor to inflate their egos.  Their snarky secret comments to those more unfortunate then themselves.  Their condescension of the homeless beggar at the stoplight.  Their schadenfreude when their pretty classmate gets cancer.  And so if you believe in karma, or the ultimate justice of the Lord, you can be comforted that they got what they deserve.  You were just in error in judging them "good" by your own definition.

If they are "good" people as you want to define it, maybe someone who wishes only the best for everybody, truly does not judge others, and works tirelessly like the best of saints, and lives on subsistence means while giving their whole soul for the betterment of their fellow man, especially the most destitute, then they are also of a mind where they trust in the wisdom of their creator and don't judge their own situation as "bad" because their purpose is to be an instrument of God's will as God sees it, not as their little human mind might want to believe is should be, and the pain or suffering is the honest fruition of a greater grace that just happens to be invisible in the moment.

If  you want to feel a projected empathy, "My goodness, they must be totally suffering because if the same thing happened to me, I would be devastated!" then, by all means own it as your own, but its possible that they are closer to living a life more fully surrendered to their God than you are, and that, though they may feel the loss, they don't think in terms of "How could this happen to me?! I'm a good person! Alas! Why me?!"  They may grasp the concept that this world is unpredictable and multi-faceted and wondrous in its dispassion and grandeur and the full spectrum of the human experience.  They may be bringing a great deal more of life's pregnant reality into their being and opening up their soul to life's comprehensive offerings.

It's natural for humans to be limited by our own perspective, unable to entertain the breadth of circumstances that present themselves, and so lament those things that seem contrary to their limited definition of justice.  It's not even a choice, really, for how can someone possibly wrap their minds around something outside their tiny slice of universal comprehension?  It's as it should be because it's as it is.