samadhisoft.com

I was reflecting last night on conversations I’d had with two different people recently. The subjects had been the environment, the state of the world, and the likely directions history will take in the near future.

Both my friends clearly understand the situation that we (humanity) are in. They are not denialists in any sense of the word- they really get what’s going on.

But, I noted, they were both emotionally distressed about it. And that their distress was causing them to waffle back and forth between seeing the situation we’re in clearly and then switching around to trying to ameliorate it by saying something like, “Well, humanity has tremendous powers of creativity - surely we’ll think of a way to avoid these problems.”

Watching them squirm got me to thinking about what it was that was making them squirm.

One of my friends has older parents who live in a major metropolitan area and she’s made a commitment to them and to herself to live near them in their closing years. She’s also dependent upon them financially as well. Later, when they’ve passed on, she will be able to live where she wants and how she wants - but for now, she’s made commitments that tie her to this city.

My other friend had been thinking very seriously about immigration to New Zealand as a result of his analysis of the world’s situation. But, after a lot of agonizing and thinking about his extended family here on the U.S., he decided that he couldn’t simply abandon them and go off to save himself. So, he’s decided, out of love of family, to stay here with all of them and face the hard times together.

To me, it looks like both of these folks have the same problem. They’ve both made emotional decisions to stay but at the same time, they are both confronted with convincing reasons why they should go. Cognitive dissonance is the result. And the way that the mind tries to reduce cognitive dissonance in a situation like this is to try to reinterpret the data that suggests they should leave into something less convincing.

It seems to me that their rational mental processes are being distorted by the presence of emotional non-negotiables in the mix.

When this first occurred to me, it seemed like a bit of an epiphany and I spent several hours over the next day or two noodling it over. In the end, I saw that it was no epiphany at all but just something I’ve known about and acknowledged forever. It’s just that I hadn’t quite looked at it from this angle before - especially as it relates to how people see the world’s current situation.

On the web site Al Gore’s put up about his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth“, he has a quote that I’ve admired since I first saw it.

It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

- Upton Sinclair

This captures a lot of what I thought was my epiphany.

When, in the past, I’ve asked myself why people seem so obtuse about seeing the state of the world right in front of their eyes, I’ve assigned the cause to a variety of things like ‘He’s a Republican.‘ or ‘He’s a Libertarian.‘ or ‘He’s a right-wing Christian.‘ or “He has no understanding of science.‘. Or any of a long list of other reasons.

But, amazingly, I’d never seen that all of these folks, just like you and me and everyone else, are encumbered by any number of emotional non-negotiable factors that limit their ability to process the data before them solely on its own merits. We are all twisted by our emotional attachments.

Men who run corporations and have their identities and all of their finances tied up in those endeavors cannot think objectively about the good or ill that corporations do in the world.

People who cannot move away from an area of danger (like my two friends), cannot see the data indicating the danger they are in clearly without cognitive dissonance. And that cognitive dissonance generates stress which the mind will try to lessen how ever it can.

Religious conservatives have staked their faith on the fact that God has everything well under control so how can they objectively view information that shows things are getting badly out of control around them?

Libertarians believe that free markets will find appropriate solutions for all conceivable problems so how can they assimilate the fact that the financial sieves that are multinational corporations and Globalization are steadily increasing the wealth of the very few at the expense of the many.

I’ve had to smile privately at Republican friends of mine as they held forth on the merits of less government and free markets. And then I watched them stress as they tried to explain why all these ‘free’ corporations and ‘free’ markets, which only care about next quarter’s numbers, are sending all of our jobs and manufacturing overseas to the benefit of their bottom lines but to the ultimate degradation of the country and the lives of those who live here.

I recall reading a Buddhist tract a long time ago. It said something like,

“One can only see what one is looking at clearly when one doesn’t care what one sees.“

Yep, that about sums it up. And we, all of us, are emotional creatures who are emotionally bound to certain ideas, creeds, places, points-of-view and whatever. And all of us, therefore, are not clear and rational thinkers to the extent that these emotional non-negotiables warp our rationality.

I don’t think any of this changes my prognosis for the world. I still think it is bleak. Perhaps, even more so given that I now see that many (most, all) of us are incapable of rational perceptions due to our emotional attachments. But, it does, perhaps, make the problem a bit clearer.

Recently, in New Zealand, there were reports and that Asian people in Auckland were considering banding together and forming vigilante groups to combat crime in their area. Their complaint was that the police were ineffective and that they, the Asian folks, were being targeted by criminal groups.

The fellow, Mr. Peter Low, who was at the center of the effort to organize vigilante defenses, in my opinion, went too far and created a media firestorm when he suggested that Asians could hire Chinese Triads to protect them. Chinese Triads, if you didn’t know, are similar to the Japanese Yakusa or, perhaps, the Italian Mafia. Secret societies with more than a little involvement in criminal activities.

Soon after, many of the people he was trying to defend were disowning him and the entire thing went nuclear in the press and basically melted down.

I found all of this interesting, to a point. I think Mr. Low may have been justified in organizing local people to defend themselves but I think he was clearly over the top to suggest bringing in outside Triad enforcers to defend Asian interests. He might as well have suggested importing the La Cosa Nostra.

So why am I blogging about this? Because it made me reflect on the fact that I, personally, only believe in the law … to a point.

The law is suppose to be a common set of rules we have all basically agreed upon to keep order in our societies. Of course, we could quibble for hours that that’s not how it often works, but that is the basic idea and intent. And that’s good - it benefits us all, when it works well.

But, I’ve often reflected that if the law breaks down and fails to protect my interests, I am not going to passively watch myself or those I love be abused. I have limits and beyond those, I will look out for myself.

Some would have us believe that this sort of thinking is anti-social and that we should always passively rely on society’s systems to look after us - even when they are failing us. They would have us believe that no matter what the justification, taking things into one’s own hands is bad. Personally, I don’t feel that way.

There will always be those who think they are above the law and that they can act with impunity against us because of their age, their associations, their money or their political clout.

Have you never encountered the 16 year old with an attitude? He’s been breaking the laws and causing mayhem since he was 11 and he knows the juvenile courts won’t do anything to him more than a slap on the wrist. His parents either think he’s a saint, no matter what he does, or they are utterly disinterested. In any case, he has no fear, no limits, no self control and no respect for anyone who’s not prepared to do him more violence than he can do them.

Would you think me anti-social and very un-liberal, if I said I think a two by four on a dark night in an alley might help sort him out?

My wife tells me about what it was like in the 50’s and 60’s to grow up in small town Kansas in the American Midwest. Everyone carried guns there. Every pickup truck sported a rifle rack with a rifle in the back window. And folks left their doors unlocked and there was very little serious crime of any sort.

I long ago read most of Ayn Rand’s books and then outgrew them. But, Rand said one thing that has always stuck with me. She said (paraphrased), “They cannot oppress you unless you consent to it.”

I judge myself as quite liberal in most of my feelings and beliefs but there are definitely some exceptions to this pattern.

Your comments, as always will be appreciated.

Here, amid the weeds
of these centuries, I rise.
Seeking light and duration
up from the soil and seas of another world.

The long rise; the single cell, the multiple,
fleet of form and bright of eye, we gather
and rise in complexity and imagination
beneath the wheeling sun above
and the shifting plates, below.

Again and again, we come to self-consciousness
spewing poetry and conquest, cities and literature.
Proud and driven, we sing the animal’s song
in a higher key; procreating, building, consuming.

Always the rise, always the fall beneath a different star.
Technological children, impulsive and uncontrolled.
Pressed by those same biological imperatives
that fueled our rise from the mud and the struggle.

Those same imperatives freed by our intelligence,
those same imperatives pushing us from behind
while we stare into the mirror of our imagined future
thinking ourselves Gods as we sleepwalk to our end.

Thinking we are aware, imagining that we see the game.
Looking for enemies without the gate
when they are no further than our next desire, within.
Rising on our imperatives before we plunge on that sword, the same.

I have been here before and I will come again
beneath different stars with different eyes and chemistry.
I have yearned for immortal freedom before
and died by my own hand or claw, and these imperatives.

Someplace among the stars, I will rise and transcend
the very reproductive urges that gave me birth.
I will become not the arrow of evolution but
the intentional form of a greater wisdom
as this dirt finally finds the path of immortality
and all that lies beyond, to the end of time.

gallagher
21Jun08
Monroe


- from Samadhimuse:   

A couple of years ago, if you had asked me what the world’s biggest problems were, I would have listed quite a few things - but corporations would not have been among them. At that point in time, they were such a part of the background that I hadn’t really ’seen’ them.

But, today, I’d list corporations as among the biggest problems mankind is facing.

If you train a dog to be a junkyard dog and to attack anyone who comes onto the premises, that’s fine. The dog serves a purpose. But to create such a dog and not control it is criminal.

Corporations are like that. And, note here that I am not talking about small entities where the original founders are still involved in the day to day activities like Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream or such. I’m talking here about large publicly traded companies with boards of directors and thousands of stock holders.

What are corporations, that I should give them such a bad rap? We all know what they are, if we just think about it. They are entities that are created and that exist to seek profit for their shareholders. And the people running them are judged and retained or dismissed based on how well they maximize return-on-investment for the shareholders.

So, why is a corporation like a junkyard dog? Because they will seek the path of the highest profit at each decision juncture. If the choice is between what’s good for the company’s bottom line or what’s good for people - they will always go for the bottom line - unless the economic consequences of the potential PR fall-out might outweigh the profits gained. And even with that latter consideration - it will still be a consideration based on where the maximum profit lies in the situation.

So, is this an evil thing? No, no more that the junkyard dog, once trained, is evil for doing what he was trained to do. It’s just a plain and simple fact that corporations are about profits - not people. They are like that junkyard dog or the sharp pocket-knife in your pocket. They can be very useful in the right situation and they can cause serious harm when they are misused or uncontrolled.

The problem with corporations in today’s world is that they are largely uncontrolled. Especially in the U.S. The economic power of many of them rival or exceed the economic power of many sovereign nations today. This is a very bad thing. We have loosed great slobbering junkyard dogs of Capitalism on the world and now we stand about surprised that

- Our rain forests are being cut down
- Our fisheries are being destroyed
- Our atmosphere is being polluted by excessive CO2

And on and on. If you look what’s behind many of the world’s big problems today, you will find corporations and their decisions.

So, am I outing myself as anti-Capitalism with all of this rant? Nope. I clearly recognize that Capitalism and corporations produce the vast majority of the wealth and innovations in our world. I’m not advocating here to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. No, I’d just like to suggest that it is time in our human history to recognize that unleashing corporations and letting them do what they do unconstrained - is a very bad idea.

The right approach is to make corporations subordinate to a higher level of control. And that higher level of control would have as its highest priority, the good of mankind. We’re not talking Communism here. We’re not even talking robust Socialism here. We’re just saying that the highest level of decision-making in this world cannot be controlled by entities whose primary purpose for existing is to seek profit. It must be controlled by folks whose primary concern is for the well-being of all of us - humanity.

Would this or should this ‘kill’ Capitalism and corporations and their ability to create wealth and innovation? No. The aim of those at the top should be to leave the Capitalistic elements run free so long as their decisions do not run counter to the highest good for humanity. If this was well and evenly applied, then all the world’s corporations would still operate on a level playing field and would not lose competitive advantage against each other. Their range of action would be restricted but the restrictions would apply equally to all of them.

Idealistic balderdash, you say? Impossible to implement, you say? Perhaps. But, in the end, I think we have no choice but to do this or something not unlike it. Because, the way we are going, we are on a history train bound for deep disaster.

Places like Wal-Mart sell the schlock they do because they’ve decided to try to own the low end of the market and that’s simply how you do it at that end of the market. They will advertise to convince you that their product quality is high, that their products are equivalent to those sold by others, they will shop for their stock at the cheapest places they can find, they will cut quality, they will ignore problems, they will ignore human rights abuses in the factories that supply them, they will intentionally mislead the public if necessary and they will do all of this with a clean conscience - because all of it improves their bottom line - and that’s all that matters at the end of the day to them.

If we piss and moan about their lack of integrity and their lack of caring about people - we’re really just trying to reason with a junkyard dog. And that dog only has one purpose in life - to bite you if you are unwary and get too close.

- I’ve written a fair amount about New Zealand on this blog over the last few years. My wife and I intend to retire there, so I have a special interest in the place. Below is an article from the New Zealand Herald about why folks are drawn to New Zealand.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Lifestyle biggest drawcard to NZ

New Zealand’s relaxed lifestyle is the leading reason people come here to live, according to new statistics.

Statistics New Zealand’s longitudinal immigration survey put lifestyle (44 per cent) at the top of the list of reasons people want to live here.

The climate or clean and green environment came in second at 40 per cent, with a desire to provide a better future for children following at 39 per cent.

The survey showed 93 per cent of permanent migrants indicated they were satisfied or very satisfied with life in New Zealand, while almost the same amount said they planned to stay for three years or more.

More…

“Some physicists still find quantum mechanics unpalatable, if not unbelievable, because of what it implies about the world beyond our senses.   The theory’s mathematics is simple enough to be taught to undergraduates, but the physical implications of that mathematics give rise to deep philosophical questions that remain unresolved.   Quantum mechanics fundamentally concerns the way in which we observers connect to the universe we observe.   The theory implies that when we measure particles and atoms, at least one of two long-held physical principles is untenable.   Distant events do not affect each other, and properties we wish to observe exist before our measurements.   One of these, locality or realism, must be fundamentally incorrect.”

- From Seed Magazine, “The Reality Tests” by Joshua Roebke, June 2008

This is a personal post about a decision I came to tonight. Nothing earth shaking - I’ve just decided to let go of one of my life’s deep pleasures - because it is time.

Tonight, I decided I’m done with racquetball; a sport I’ve played with great love and enjoyment for 35 years; since I first learned it in college.

It’s the last time I will move through space with millions of my neurons tracking the ball, predicting its trajectory, noting where the other players are, developing moment to moment strategy, estimating timing, ensuring balance while moving, knowing the three dimensional space around me and experiencing the coordination of this beautiful body that the Beloved has given me.

The last time to feel the swing, estimate the force, think where I want the ball to go and be conscious and observant in the midst of the execution of neural programs that have been deepening themselves in this body and mind for most of my life. Neural sequences that flow like a ballet that I am privileged to watch from the inside. Intimate and possessive and pleased that this, this beauty and passion and animal joy are mine to feel.

I’ve loved this sport deeply for so many years. I’ve played it left handed, I’ve played it right handed, I’ve taught it to two sons and to many friends. I’ve played it in competition and I’ve played it for fun. And if my body has strength today at 60, it is largely because of the many years I’ve danced the light three-dimensional fanstastic with that flashing blue ball.

Thanks you, my Beloved, for these experiences .

So tonight, after an hour of hard play with men much younger than myself, I realized that I was lucky, yet again, in that I hadn’t blown out my knee or damaged my elbow.

There’s been a deep truth looking me in the face for sometime now. I’ve had surgery on both knees from the hard sports I’ve played. The most recent operation just last year. I’ve blown out my lower back and my left wrist rubs bone against bone at the base of the thumb.

I know that every time I play now, I risk going through a door marked “permanent damage - no return”.

I don’t want to have my knee replaced but, if I blow one of them out again, that’s the likely outcome.

Right now my right elbow just hurts from the power swings that I should have given up at 40 and that I’m still slamming at 60. And maybe the next time, that ache may not go away in a week. Maybe next time, something will tear away.

At 60, I’m beginning to think about conservation. My body is no longer invincible and sure to heal flawlessly. I could, in a careless or unlucky moment, lose serious functionality for the rest of my life.

Right now I can walk, my hands work and I can do real work and do it well. Right now, my body is strong and sound despite all the hard use I’ve given it. I’m thinking that these things, this functionality, has a deep value to me and the quality of my remaining life.

And I know that every time I play now, I am gambling them.

Tonight, as I drove home from playing, I weighed these things against the desires of that old athlete. The one that loves the dance, loves the airborne turn in the air and the racquet’s sweep and the feeling as it all comes together as the racquet finds the ball and physics and neural magic unfold together in the hanging moments of light and sound.

And I decided that in spite of this love, it is time. Time now, before I buy myself a deep regret in exchange for ‘just one more game’.

I’ve had a good long run - far better than most folks in this life and there is much I still want to do in these next decades and I need the functionality of this body to see me through those things.

So be it then. I’m giving my racquetball gear to my son, Christopher and I’m going to let go of something I’ve deeply loved, as of tonight.

Thank you, Beloved, for all of these experiences. You have given me such a rich and varied life and I am very deeply grateful. Even for this. For it is all part of life.

The news has carried this story quite a bit over the last few days so there’s not a lot I can add here to the basic facts.

Hofmann’s discovery had a big effect on me during my college years and opened my thinking up in many ways. LSD is definitely not for everyone. But I am not in agreement with the policies of most governments on this substance. I think in controlled circumstances it has a place in our pharmacology, in our psychological therapies and it our quests for personal enlightenment.

One of the best comments I saw on Hofmann’s passing this week was over on the Unknowngenius blog where the author said,

Albert Hofman, discoverer of the lysergic acid diethylamide compound (better known under its initials) and advocate of a mature, non-repressive approach to psychedelic drug experimentation, died this week at the age of 102.

Yet another tragic example of a young life cut short by the evils of drugs.

Some links on Albert (R.I.P.):

- to the Albert Hofmann Foundation

- Albert Hofmann on Wikipedia

- Albert Hofmann via Erowid - a number of remembrances of the man in different newspapers may be found here.

I think the current global food crises is more apparent than real. That’s not to say that food isn’t short and the prices aren’t rising rapidly. But, at bottom, there is still a lot of slack that we could take advantage of in the world’s food system.

First, the biofuels thing is misguided and causing more problems that it is worth. Valuable cropland that used to be used to growth human food is now being used to grown food for … cars.

The right answer to the problem of lessening world oil supplies is not to switch to biofuels to avoid giving up our consumption habits. The right answer is to adapt and to start living within our (oil) means. And a second impetus towards this path is that we need to lessen the amount of Carbon Dioxide we’re pumping into the atmosphere.

Second, we could back off eating so much meat and this would free vast amounts of inefficiently used food resources. I read that it takes six meal’s worth of grain to produce one meal’s worth of meat. So, if a person gave up one meal of meat, they and five other people could all share a meal based on grains.

So, there’s slack in the system that we could take advantage of. The question is, as always, human nature.

Will we do the smart and logical thing here … or will we continue to deny reality and press ahead with unabated oil consumption, biofuel growing and rampant meat consumption while larger and larger numbers of the world’s poorer people begin to starve.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.

The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’

- Thanks to Van for this one…