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.

 

  

 

 

*

 

A CALL FROM THE PAST

 

     ai weiwei

I look at how things are going in this world, the ongoing breakdown of all traditions; even though I feel I have an understanding that the traditions from the Age of Fire need to be eliminated to clear the field for new ways of thinking in the Age of Electricity, I still agonize somewhat seeing the more meaningful traditions go away with the irrelevant ones. Much of the old ways were good, though largely calcified by repetition over centuries unto beliefs that simply don't work anymore. Among my more interesting learnings along the way has been to see how fluid this life is, fluid even more than liquid, fluid like air can be called fluid in the way it flows around objects without apparent resistance, the way it flows through the grid of a screen and flows back together on the other side like nothing happened. Thought is even more fluid than that. Thought is fluid without molecules, or matter. Thought flows like old man river, just keeps on rolling. What is this world we live in but massive interweavings of human thought, an infinite and constantly changing Persian carpet. Thoughts that occurred thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, continue to have effect on us today.

Socrates comes to mind first for his thought a few thousand years ago (I paraphrase), "The only thing I know is that I know nothing." The thought is with us today. Not many pay attention to it, but it resonates with me plenty. It will resonate into the Age of Electricity too. Our whole civilization is a conglomeration of thinking that collectively agrees upon certain thoughts as valid and certain ones not. In the time we're in now, the NEW is often a thought regarded invalid until suddenly it is seen valid. "Get you a copper kettle, get you a copper coil," the old-time song had fallen into invalid, from another culture, another time, another way of thinking. Then around 1960 Joan Baez recorded it in a Pete Seegerish way and it became new, continues to resonate as valid. A lot of old songs have been brought into the new mind by singing them a bit differently. Stephen Foster's song, Angelina Baker, a making fun of the darkies kind of song that starts, "Way down on de old plantation, dah's where I was born, I used to beat de whole creation hoein in de corn. Den I work and den I sing, happy all de day." It gets kind of Uncle Remus as a cute romance of a slave boy with his eye on the slave girl, Angelina Baker. It's hardly politically correct in our time. Almost everything about it rings invalid now. Except the tune. The tune is used all over the country at contests of picking traditional acoustic instruments. Angelina Baker has become as hot a fiddle tune as Katy Hill and Sally Gooden. Hardly anyone knows it has words anymore.

A little over thirty years ago someone from Europe asked me how long it will be before homosexuals are acceptable in America. I ventured fifty years, give or take ten. He thought that way too soon. Here it is. All of a sudden this year it is PC to be all for gay everything, marriage, baby adoption, the whole works. BAM. Just like that. It took awhile getting here. Considering that we've had civil rights laws over half a century, yet one of our two political parties is the up front racist party. Those sorts of social changes take a long time, but in this time we're in, these social changes are happening in almost the snap of a finger. It is even looking like Rush Limbaugh mind is fading fast. He doesn't have the power of intimidation he had two years ago. I don't mean to imply we're changing to where everything is sweet and happy devoid of anything we don't like. We are taking a giant step toward allowing the flow. When thought patterns become calcified from habits until they become reality is when they need changing. Thinking, like water, stagnates when it stops flowing.

A phone call last night form a cousin I'd not talked with in several years. We're about the same age, grew up together as friends and then I went my way and he went his way and that was that. I don't encourage him in this time of my life, because he has taken the way of the calcified mind of the American man. At the beginning of our phone conversation last night it was like talking with one of the old men of my grandfather's generation, men that were down on everything, especially niggers and dumb women. Cousin has watched a lifetime of television, so he is not of that old man mind of grandfather's time. But it hasn't changed much from then to now. He started in on me aggressive-like, taking charge, letting me know he's the bigdog in this exchange, bumping me the way dogs do each other, showing me his weight. I bumped him back to say, I'm just as big as you. He let me have it for talking on the telephone all the time. He's been trying to call and my phone is always busy. I knew that was horseshit from the start. My phone is nowhere near always busy. I asked if he called in the mornings. No. I said, I talk with my friend Carole in the mornings anywhere between 9 and 11. Other than that I hardly use the phone at all and it seldom rings. He said, Oh. And he came down off his high horse.

The conversation functioned for me as a measure of how far I have come from where I started out. Cousin Tommy is still there. He hasn't changed at all, except to lock down in that aggressive testosterone stance that has only one purpose, to say, I'm in charge here. It works for him largely. Then he comes up on somebody like me, bumping like a dog, and he has to back down. I didn't get aggressive with him, just stood my ground on firm feet and let him know if he called me to play bigdog, he needs to call somebody else. I'm happy to talk with him, but I'm not going through the dog games just because he needs to see himself in charge. Turns out he was listening challenged as well. Doesn't listen well. While he was telling me about his "dumb" wife, I was thinking, Yeah, sure. He never did tell me why he called. It was a brief reminder that I spent my early years in a world of that kind of mind, the calcified white man mind that Limbaugh parodies so well. I ran from it with all my heart, mind and strength. Tommy starting off that conversation with the bigdog challenge was a reminder of where I came from, and how glad I am to be a long ways from. I had enough of that when I had no recourse. I don't have to take it now. I've heard I get called arrogant for not taking that white man bigdog shit, but that's ok.


*