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.

Income Distribution

The instinctual drive for self preservation translates twistedly into a global capitalist marketplace.  The self-preservation instinct originated for self, then family, then community.  So the stretch to include a municipality, nation, or even a global community is beyond most people for most of their lives.  They amass to support their security drives, and effectively horde, and when the currency of security in industrialized nations is money, the unchecked desire for "more for me and mine" will, left unmodulated by systemic checks, lead to the gross inequity we see in the world today, particularly in the United States.

For a good broad description of the system and its effects, Inequality for All, the documentary featuring Robert Reich does a great job.  It doesn't judge the status quo, per se, in my opinion, but someone on the "winning" side could certainly find plenty of the description incriminating, and become knee-jerkingly defensive.

The bigger question to me is not so much how the monetary policy in America needs to change (the default focus of our efforts), but rather how do we raise children to understand the underlying psycho-physiological complex that leads to the disproportionate accumulation of wealth.  With the global distribution system, the capability to mobilize thousands in manufacturing, the instantaneous communication with hundreds of millions allows certain phenomena to gather billions of dollars in very little time and multinational conglomerates and interests to amass hundreds of billions in revenue in a few years.  A derivative corruption of this industrial complex is the lucrative and opportunistic management of the financial side of these global markets where people can profit to an obscene extreme while providing no real input into the system (talking specifically about robot traders but more loosely about clever machinations of the larger financial industry that works outside actual venture investments and normal debt and basic banking functions).  If a biological system becomes overpopulated, natural culling occurs through starvation, or poisoning by waste.  When it happens in a bodily tissue, it's called a cancer and we die or treat it through excision, chemical or radiation therapy. When a person sees acute poverty, most through no fault of the impoverished, how can they turn a blind eye?  Someone just making it (enough to own a modest house, adequate transportation, enough food, some entertainment and travel, bills get paid) but with no real luxury, might be understood if they are not profuse in helping those hard on their luck from improving their lot.  But it makes a body wonder, doesn't it, the mindset that believes their body of work in a year justifies the compensation that would sustain 10 or 20 families.  Yes, a person who has invested a great deal in educating themselves, who has worked hard to reach a level of competence that makes their service extra valuable to their clients/customers/employers deserves a handsome reward, but even so, where does the sense of "this is fair compensation" come in?

I wonder if it's getting locked into this idea that the goal is to make as much money as we can after growing up with that in mind and living it with the whole fiber of one's being throughout the early career periods make it almost impossible to think outside that box, even after every reasonable level of "financial success" has been surpassed.  How is it that such intelligent people don't see their place in the larger system, where it is clear that the strength of our country and the continued stability that supports more and more people becoming more than comfortable hinges on the strength of the middle class, and that demands higher wages for more people.  There are a hundred million people out there working pretty damn hard in their jobs who are making 10 or 100 or 300 times less than the few million people at the top of the hierarchy.  Flattening that compensation curve would be way more effective than raising taxes.  When the money has to work its way through a huge and inefficient government bureaucracy to make it's way back out the other end in the form of programs to help so many more poor than there would be if wages were more balanced in the first place is an incredible waste of humanity.  This is one area where the market fails.  What would it take for the leaders to break through their current thinking (I have to make more money) to voluntarily raise the wages of the lower paid workers and reduce their own?  Would an appeal by some rich thought leaders change things?  Is there ANYTHING that would make a real difference short of some painful revolution?

When God Invites You In

I read an inspiring little blog entry by my sister on her daughter's Caring Bridge page about God's Fingerprints.

The gold nugget of her story was that she had a deep sense that "God's got this."  That this is in HIS hands.

Now, from the perspective of a Believer, the belief is that "God's got this" (GGT) in ALL things, ALL the time, and someone who believes that should theoretically have that deep sense of everything being grace, and the plan, bigger than ourselves, ultimately out of our hands, and God is good.  But they don't.  So much for faith.

Why are some times special?  Why does God "invite us in" to his garden just sometimes to feel deep in our soul the truth what we try to believe in all the time?  And is there anything I can do to get on the list?  And how can I stay there (even as I go about the daily routine of my life)?

I know from reading, from testimony, and from personal experience, that there are people who have a lifetime free pass to that sense of peace and contentment of abiding in "God's got this."  And you can follow any of (a hundred?) disciplines to do it, but they all amount to a few singular ways.

• Regular and frequent Meditation, Meditative Prayer.  Not the type of prayer where you try to get something, but the type where you still your mind and allow that quiet voice inside to learn to communicate to the part of you that lives in the regular world.
• Deep thought about the nature of the universe and our place in it.  I'm never surprised anymore when people of the most fundamental science (physics, evolutionary biology, cognitive and brain science) reach the edge of the known/knowable, and still wonder, and get a little bit loopy about some sort of divinity.  Maybe not the exact sense that stems from someone reaching that point from the religious side of things which anthropomorphizes God, but similar enough that it might be mistaken in the emotional centers of the brain.  Years of thinking of ourselves as deeply part of the universe, and one with it is eventually going to have a likewise deep impact.
• Earthshaking events that occur when the mind happens to be in some particular state of openness.  The event creates a rift that allows or propels or forces the truth of existence into the protected areas of our psyche.  Something that induces the deep thoughts about the nature of life (see above), and results, often quite suddenly, in arriving at that same place.  "All is good, GGT."

Having a "lifetime pass" doesn't mean that there is an awareness every moment of GGT, but the path to get there is available anytime it's needed, and the door is always open, should they want to spend a little time there for whatever reason.  As life takes us through its valleys of darkness and across its arid deserts, it can sometimes take a few moments to find our way back, but with enough time abiding there, it's like you can take a wardrobe of it with you, and step inside no matter where you are.  The physical space of a garden metaphor breaks down a little here, because, of course, the whole place exists always inside us all the time (yes, Wizard of Oz is a classic for a reason), but the mental familiarity with the path down into that part of ourselves is what makes it easily accessible.

I'm glad my little sister got to spend a time there when her need was great.

Pinky Time

It fleets by and leaves, the pink or golden sky

Those early evenings, still warm from earlier sun

It comes through throwing out candy as it goes by

And soon, even the last tinge of flavor is a memory

It'll be back, are you going to be around 

To take a look and drink up its gift --

This rounds on him.

And so it is with everything.

News -- You Can Turn It Off A Lot and Get Back to Your Job

If you're over 30 and if you've been reading and listening and watching the news for the last couple decades, you will have seen a steady stream of more of the same.  The Republicans are being fussy with the budget, a country is being overthrown by a revolution, countries are considering boycotting a major world sporting event, terrorists have blown up something with a bomb, shooters have shot up a bunch of people, major weather and catastrophic natural events are wreaking havoc on areas of the globe, buildings are collapsing, workers are striking.  New foods are found healthy and others are deemed unhealthy, diseases are disappearing and others emerging as epidemics, aide workers are helping to turn around third world countries, and medical advances are helping to treat diseases that before were death sentences, infant mortality is down, stress and sleep are found to be important to better or worse health. . .

Clearly I could continue ad naseum.  The world news cycle is predictable after enough time.  Same with local news stories: a police chase ends in a shooting, a murder-suicide is discovered in a condominium, children and dogs are left in a car and die, the New Year's Day baby is born, a tussle about religious symbols somewhere in the public arena ensues, the price of gas goes up and down, weather happens, the local sports team triumphs and falls, the mayor goes up against city hall,

It's the daily drone that you can do without.  It's nice to be informed so you can vote and have opinions but reading magazines, in-dept analysis, books, and other media that avoids the fabricated hype is better than wasting your time daily over-newsing oneself.  Getting the weather and local events when you need them from the internet (pulling rather than yielding to the push), and catching one round-up news show every few days, and following up on the interesting topics from your favorite sources is better than clicking on the 6:30 TV News everyday.  Flipping on the news as you change clothes or do the dishes?  No problem.  But come ON!  It's the same news as yesterday, yesteryear, and when you were a teenager.  Time to move on.

Sitcoms, talk shows, video games, etc. -- same thing.  After a couple decades (times will vary by the boredom toleration threshold of our individual intelligences), the stream of infotainment can be stemmed and ones attention and life-force can be applied to more novel and productive endeavors.  Live, as it were.

Syria and the Common American

As an exceptional country, i.e. as the worlds premier super power, one who has the financial and military support to act with its own volition, we are obligated to choose.

1.  The issue is like any major geopolitical issue: super complex, existing in the chaotic and unpredictable environment of a multi-faceted connected globe.  We have personal, economic, treaty and organizational, governmental and other types of connections, all of which provide their own pressure on decisions.  The consequences of actions cannot be forecast a year out, say nothing of what ultimately could result decades hence, so pretending to know what is the best course of action is folly.

2.  As an exceptional nation, what ARE our guiding principles?  What's right?  What's in it for US?  Our global reputation, noting that the same decision labels us both true to our word (we act when we say we will) and an interventionist state, meddling in other's affairs?  What do we do when those principles contradict each other?

As a regular American, trying to understand even the broad scope, immediate issues are time consuming.  What evidence have I SEEN that tells me it was the government and not the rebels who used gas?  How much do I trust the intelligence and government message versus what could be a ruse by the rebels to incite anti-(Syrian)government sentiment from America?  What are the implications of different types of punitive actions?  How do they jibe with my view of what I want for America?  Again, I haven't even tried to predict the future eventualities of just one of those, when there are scores of different tacks we could take.

What's clear is there is no obvious rights or wrongs among the possible reasonable actions our nation could take.  And how much muddier it gets when a person IS actually able to immerse themselves in the morass of historical president, regional history both ancient and recent, international law and convention, analysis if similar actions in many different scenarios that have played out over the last hundred years...  Those simpletons who are holding their signs have almost as much "right" to their say as the Middle Eastern Policy Specialist within the governments of prominent states, professors of foreign policy at the world's premier universities, and the heads of state, themselves.

In the end, I go with the most underlying principal:  I believe our country should act in the moment with our best knowledge, to be able to wake up the next day with no regrets, being able to say, "We did what we thought was best regardless of what anyone else thinks."

Filner

No way.  The leader of a big city who is using his position to behave in a way that is universally understood to be reprehensible.  At least with Clinton, no one accused him of coercion to get sex.  It's bad enough when someone who is clearly bestowed a position of great power and trust acts in a juvenile manner, with lewd comments or sexual innuendo.  If you can't use the Mayor as a role model, who then?  But to use the position of authority for personal gain of any kind (including financial or sexual favors) needs to be intolerable.  Corruption is a blight capable of bringing down a government.  Everywhere possible, it needs to be met with unequivocal resolve: Not in my (community, city, state, country)!  No second chance for Filner.  He blew his big chance to be trusted.  It wasn't just a single or isolated incident. It's who he is.