THE WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE IF ONLY

 

 

Yesterday I heard somebody start a statement, "If everybody would (fill in the blank), the world would be a better place." In another context, I saw a meme on facebook that asked for comments on what I'd like to see change in the world. That one threw me. Like nothing is changing? Change is the nature of existence. What would I like to see changed? Racism was the first word that came to mind, but it's changing. Years ago, before I quit talking with anonymous phone calls telling me what to buy, one asked for anything I'd like to change about the evening news. I said that would take going all the way back to the beginning of humanity, too much for me to cover. I can't change it and I wouldn't change it. I think of Jesus saying love one another. Or even liking one another will do. Or even treating each other right . That was 2,100+ years ago, and his zealous fundamentalist devotees are practicing hate, preaching hate, parroting hate. And that was Jesus "commanding" we love one another. His voice has more authority than mine, and his fervent fundamentalist followers have turned to hate. Among his followers love is a four-letter word. It means fornication. Sin. Besides, love is wimpy. Real men don't do that shit. Like the saying, "Real men don't eat quiche," it can be added that real men don't love. My experience throughout childhood and youth in a Southern Baptist (fundamentalist) church in Kansas, the word love was only used in quoting verses, not meaning it. Mention the absence of love as a value, and the answer comes back: Of course we love. What's wrong with you? Supposed-to equals doing it: Of  course we love. We're s'posed-to. God commanded us to love one another.
 

 

A preacher I asked about loving everybody assured me it didn't mean everybody in the world, only "the brothers and sisters in the church." To hear them talk about each other, they didn't even like each other. The thought of loving somebody who does wrong, or loving somebody with more pigment in their skin is unthinkable. We see it in our politics now that the Teabaggers turn out to be American fundamentalism gone political. Their belief system, formerly kept to themselves, except for missionarizing, looks mighty ignorant out in the open. They threaten the rest of us with their venal attitude toward anybody not themselves, their racism, their absolutism. Like Jesus said of the preachers in his time, You make the people twofold more children for hell than you yourselves. They can only live up to it by denial, denying they do not adhere personally to their own absolutist belief system. They call it being imperfect. And they want to hold the rest of us to their folk religion beliefs that have little to nothing to do with love. Now that the republican party is the fundamentalist party, we have police state. I never dreamed American fundamentalism could take over a major political party. The republican party's appeal for ignorance has given us fundamentalism to back up the police state with such a long string of stupid people running for public office that it's unimaginable there are so many people in the country as dumb as they are. I guess stupid people follow party line unquestioning.  Fundamentalists don't question. Doubt is a sin.

 

 

 

 

I've said before that the best definition of evil I've come upon is ignorance. Going by this as the case, the republican party is quick to point the finger at evil. Three fingers point back at themselves. What they are doing consciously with purpose is dismantling American democracy to make police state, which they have already done. The Reagan Revolution was indeed a revolution. They called it that themselves, and to this day few see it. Because it's more interesting to see commercials about things you want, like a new car, new shampoo, new toilet paper, new mouthwash, stuff for the septic tank, stuff for the landfill. I have seen it evolve in this direction over my lifetime, but somehow didn't believe the American people would go all the way to having no values at all but in relation to money. Now it's here. The people who preach moral values do so in relation to money. Politicians can't turn their backs on their corporate owners over something as dumb as principles or ethics. Ethics is a ridiculous word in their world. It's never used. Nobody in that world knows what an ethic is. Also throughout my lifetime I've seen anti-intellectualism go all the way to anti-paying attention. Our educational system cannot work in a society where ignorance is held as the ideal. You think it's not? Take a look around.

 

Several years ago, when I heard somebody make the remark that the world would be a better place if everybody would.... For the first time, it struck me there is nothing that everybody is going to do but the obvious, ingest, evacuate and die. If everybody would love one another. That is out of the question. If everybody would quit smoking. It came to me that my world would improve if I attempted whatever it is I believe the world would be a better place if everybody would do. Even television can't make everybody alike, though it's made a valiant effort. If everybody would treat other people right. Aint gonna happen. However, I can treat other people right. I can function without expressions of racism. It would be a better place if everybody would quit judging each other. LOL. No way. But, I can give non-judgment a go in my own life. The spiritual path is not about making other people toe the line.. It is about finding one's own way a step at a time. That's the only thing it's about. Other people will do whatever they do. I have no control over anyone else, not a great deal of control over myself. Someone I know asked me recently, Why do I want to turn everybody in the world on to what I like? My answer: You're a missionary, a living commercial. It had more to do with his nature than philosophy. After a lifetime of television, he's a commercial for whatever comes up. He spends his life frustrated he can't get other people to be him. You gotta see this tv show, you'll love it! No I won't. You don't know, you haven't seen it. I do know myself well enough to know I will not enjoy a tv show about a serial killer, the good kind, only kills bad guys. Even JFK couldn't make everybody do according to his idea of what was right.

 

  

 

 

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PUSSY RIOT PUSHING BUTTONS

     pussy riot

There are moments that I look at myself with a cold eye and feel like I've wasted a lot of time, didn't take making a living serious enough, could have done better. That thinking doesn't last long. I remind myself that I have chosen time over money, not because I had something particular to do, but because I did not want to be a part of the rat race. Money the goal? That's not good enough for me. It could have been the overwhelming amount of attention paid to the preacher in the Baptist church, fundamentalist Southern Baptist, preacher so austere who went his own way that the Southern Baptist Association rejected him for membership year after year. He was a devout Bible scholar, self-taught. Scandinavian austerity characterized his life in the fields of the Lord. He was a powerful influence on my thinking. He made a good example for me of a man living his own integrity. Possibly it's from him I came to understand the importance of living by one's own integrity. It's from him, for sure, that I never developed an interest in "the world." That is, the world of commerce.


It was several years searching for a definition of "the world" that satisfied me as something that fits. Also, by now, I'm not so sure it is all that necessary to avoid "the world," to have a spiritual life. Interpreting "the world" as gambling casinos, beer joints, liquor stores, dance places, the easy ones that get focused on the most, I wanted to know what it really meant. I tend to think of the Bank as the world, wanting is of this world, and, of course, the 7 deadly sins. The greatest reason I can see for, as they say, turning one's back to the world, is so one's dying will be easier. I'm thinking as we study the ways of the spirit and live for inner satisfaction instead of body satisfaction called pleasure, when it is time to pass over to the other side, we're already in tune. It won't be such a big transition suddenly going from ego to spirit. In the place I'm at now, I feel like there is no difference between in the body and out of the body, except presence and absence of the body/ego. For somebody whose whole identity is in the ego, it can be a major loss to see it fall away. It's the spirit that travels from lifetime to lifetime, not the ego. The ego is particular to the body and its experiences. The body gives the soul a home, like a conch shell. The ego identifies with the body. I suppose it could be said the soul animates the body the way a hand animates a glove.


The ego and the soul make an interesting divide. If it is a divide. I suppose when the soul leaves the body, it leaves ego with the body. The soul gains its experiences through the ego. I, personally, don't have a problem with ego, in that I allow and guide my ego the best I can by my own ethical standard. We have varieties of ethical standards from person to person. Every one of us lives by our own. Some are developed, some are not. We're all mixed together of various and opposing ethical standards. Putin opposed the ethical standard of the Pussy Riot girls and they opposed his ethical standard. He has power, they do not. He's letting them wallow in the mud of understanding he has power over them. They do not have power over him. Naive youngsters who think outrageous is chic went a bit far challenging the power of a macho man thug with absolute power over them. He's of a generation that does not embrace rock, esp punk street protest rock in church. Of course he does not care anything for church, but his power base does.


What I've come to see is that "the world" is inside self, not outside, like a "house of sin." I recall from the documentary of raising a baby chimpanzee in an American suburban family to see how it developed. NIM. It's the saddest story of any I know. The "psychologist" behind the study concluded after treating the little thing like an object that when it learned sign language, all it did was say, "I want...." Whatever it was, spontaneous I want. Sees something, points and says, "I want..." By the end of the film I had nothing but revulsion for the psychologist. He was so involved in the trees he lost the forest. I've been watching a baby waking up from birth on to 14 months old and walking. Baby is paying attention to words and sounds, sees everything, likes to watch the wind blow through the trees. Baby wants everything she sees. She wants to hold it and look at it, see what it is, what it does. Without using the two words, she tends to start intent for a sentence with I want, either by gesture or vocal appeal. That's the beginning of the ego, I want. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. The first 30 years of our lives are about developing the ego. Ego works like ballast in a ship, keeps us grounded, keeps us upright.





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ETHICS AS MARTIAL ART

accidental photograph



Have been talking, thinking, looking at in depth and detail ethical behavior with my friend from Hong Kong, Mary Lee. She found a dictionary definition saying ethics is human duty. Ethics is one of those words that doesn't have a handle. It takes two hands to carry it and if it's hot, you'll need pads. That word duty struck me right away what it is. Ethical (conscious) behavior doesn't seem to come to us genetically. It's learned behavior to help us get along in the herd without a great deal of negative feedback. At the same time, the notion of duty doesn't carry it for me. When a motivation has at it's root self-interest, then is it duty? Duty comes from outside ourselves. Seems to me ethics come from inside ourselves. Yes, we learn them from outside, but we fine tune them within ourselves, or so I'm seeing it now.


I say the motivation for ethical behavior, behavior that is respectful, is driven by self-interest, because ethical behavior keeps our emotional waters calm. No guilt or fears as a result. According to the universal law, you get what you give, when we give respectful behavior, we receive respectful behavior and it keeps the emotional waters mirror smooth so you see the clouds mirrored on the silver water traversed by occasional flying fish. It is self-interest to follow the words of Jesus, love your neighbor as yourself. It makes your life a whole lot more peaceful than perpetual war with that asshole next door who persists in cutting the grass one foot over the property line. Hail far, let him do it. That's a foot of grass I don't have to mow. Thank you, man. Let me put some gas in your mower.



Appears to me that right there is the foundation of ethics, self-interest, wanting the emotional waters peaceful all around me. I live in a world of people, whether in the city or the country. The people around me are more my world than the topography. Ethical behavior creates healthy relationships with the people in one's world, making for oneself a good life. If you prefer the biggest house on the highest hill with a high maintenance wife, and get there walking over people, living in it with a conscience that looks out over the town where you know at least a thousand people out there hate you and for good reason, doesn't strike me as inner peace. What kind of life is that? Then there's the American Dream, living underground a la Ayn Rand, out of sight and out of reach of the people you've jilted. Ethics makes it possible to live among whatever people you're around at the moment. In this way, ethics is even a martial art. The real martial arts master never uses it outside the dojo (the boxing ring). Ethical behavior means the martial artist never has to fight. But sometimes something unpredictable comes along and the martial artist knows how to duck.


In that the martial artist never "uses" his deadly knowledge, it's his ethical behavior that keeps him from needing to use it. Somebody wants to fight, he talks them out of it with good sense, knowing he has the upper hand. Rational talk disarms the aggressor and the problem is over. It is ethics that makes it unnecessary to use his training even to defend himself physically. In this way the martial arts make a good spiritual path. It's about conscious behavior. Another way of saying ethics might be self-awareness. Instead of blindly operating by body chemistry, perhaps ethics amounts to paying attention, giving attention where it's called for. I don't know that I would want to attempt to read a book on ethics unless it might be written by a Lokota medicine man. I don't think it means being the darling of little old ladies to be a man of ethics. Jerry Edwards of Whitehead is a man of ethics who goes about freely in his world with nobody looking at him through rifle sites. Welter Hamm too. Anyone who has ever dealt with either of these men has been dealt with honestly and with respect.



I prefer to think of ethics in everyday life action, talk and thought. Trying to define it so a lawyer couldn't find a loophole through it is beside the point. It's a very practical point of view that informs decision making, helps us to make better decisions for ourselves. When it gets down to the true and false questions, the multiple choice questions, essay questions for tests grading comprehension, that's when it gets complex. Like trying to explain every impulse and action involved in lifting the tip of my forefinger from the j on the keyboard to my nose could take volumes of explanations about unconscious thought to nerves that carry the message, on and on, when it's a very simple gesture. I don't want to detail it to death. I want to find the way of seeing what we call ethics in ways that can answer questions for given surprise situations that may be difficult to distinguish, even to the point of is there really any such a thing as ethics? Well, no, but we've made it so by defining it, so now we have it to deal with.



I feel like my own investigation and what I've come to regarding ethics satisfies my need for a conscious way of dealing with surprise issues. Compassion has to be in there someplace. Though I call it self-serving, which it ultimately is, on the way back to self, it goes out in the world through others and then back. Put out something like a smart remark, it isn't long before a smart remark comes back, either from same person or someone else later. Putting out respectful, honest behavior returns the same. Searching for a way to see ethics as an active part of everyday life, I've come to see ethics as first exhibiting through one's compassion for another. It must be altruistic in nature for it to come back altruistic in nature. When there is compassion, the ethical part is easy. It's when compassion is absent that we need a dictionary of ethics by particular circumstances, when it needs to become a course of study to get a doctorate in and write books about.



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