No more
10 months ago
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Monday, November 13, 2006
Poem
And though my body has burst
Into a thousand barely seen traces
The day will yet come
When my worst
And all, by miracle, I shall re-collect
Into a larger sum
And then
Bearing eyes of enchantment renewed
With all my thousands of faces
I will look back at you
And you will never forget.
Into a thousand barely seen traces
The day will yet come
When my worst
And all, by miracle, I shall re-collect
Into a larger sum
And then
Bearing eyes of enchantment renewed
With all my thousands of faces
I will look back at you
And you will never forget.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Passion and Civility
The other night I got into a political discussion with a few of my housemates and some party guests. The discussion quickly turned into a fiery debate when someone made a comment about the Third World having a choice on whether it conforms to US-designed IMF and World Bank policies. As the person implied, Third World countries have only themselves to blame for the mess that they're in because they chose to open their markets and, as a result, they chose the exploitation that decision brought with it. Long story short: it's their own damn fault that they're impoverished. Pretty ridiculous stuff, I know. But Globalization isn't what I want to write about (aside from saying that the above is easily the most uninformed opinion I've ever heard on the subject). What I want to write about—and defend—is not my (much more informed and well-evidenced) opinion, but my manner of expressing myself.
You see, when I heard the above remarks, I got angry. I got angry and I started to shout (actually, I didn't feel like I was shouting, but, apparently, everyone else in the room did), so very quickly the discussion was diverted into an attack not on my opinions but on my manner of expression. I was chastened for "trying to convince everyone that I was right" and for sounding "threatening" and for "getting mad". Mind you, I wasn't the only person who got mad. In fact, one of my opponents apologized to me afterwards for, in her words, "getting mad and telling me to shut up," and we made our peace. But I was the only person who got rebuked for my conduct (in fact, the person who apologized to me was praised the next morning for "standing her ground").
In retrospect, I'm sure much of the focus on my "passion", as one person termed it, was a red herring. It's easier to attack a person's emotional outburst than it is a well-reasoned and sound argument (and, though I was drunk and upset, I was still reasoning clearly). At the same time, I'm sure many people genuinely were bothered by my anger and genuinely felt threatened. But it wasn't me in particular that they were threatened by; what scares most people about anger is that it's a real and honest emotion and as such you can't predict or control it. Put another way, anger isn't tame—it's uncivilized. And that scares people.
In truth, my "passion" was as much a part of my argument as my reasoning. Emotional expression counts. It doesn't count in a world governed by abstract thought and abstract, bourgeoisie morality, but it counts if you value honest expression, as everyone should. Anger—and I mean genuine anger not posturing—is one of the purest and most honest emotions that exists (although I grant that it has an ugly, bullying side as well)—and it’s nothing to be afraid of. In fact, the world would be a much better place, in my view, if more people got angry. For one thing, fewer people would believe the Third World is responsible for its own poverty if more people were angry and impassioned enough to speak out about what's really happening (and maybe then the exploitation would cease). Moreover, if more people got angry about the way our government treats not just the Third World but its own citizens, then we might not have many of the problems with poverty, crime, and environmental waste that we face within our own borders—problems which every one in the discussion agreed we had to solve. Fact is, anger has a purpose. Anger emboldens us, it motivates us, and it punctuates our beliefs. In my case, I wanted to show the sincerity of my convictions; I couldn’t do that through logic alone. I also wanted to make it clear that the views held by my opponents weren’t innocuous. In my view, people who defend Globalization are defending abusers and attacking victims. That’s a serious claim and I want it to be taken seriously. Also, in order to have my more radical and already marginalized views accepted on an equal footing, I needed to show that I was not only sincere and serious about my beliefs but confident in them. You can’t accomplish that logically—not when your opponents feel that the world and God are on their side, in other words, not when you’re arguing against established opinion (i.e. Capitalism is an effective means of giving people what they want; America isn't perfect but it's the best country there is or ever has been; we’re much freer and better off today than we were in the Stone Age or at any other time in history). Logic is easy to tune out. Anger isn’t. Anger lets people know that you’re serious. Moreover, when you’re confronted by anger, the tendency is to get angry in turn—to get passionate. And when the experience becomes a passionately felt one, you’re more likely to remember, and, conceivably, learn from the event.
So it’s no mystery why people felt threatened by my anger (which, by the way, wasn’t personal; I never called anyone a name or told anyone to shut up, for example). Anger is a real threat to the system and to all those who belong to and believe in the system. Plainly speaking, the system couldn't exist if people weren't emotionally repressed. It couldn't exist if "passion" was allowed to flourish. People are afraid of passion because it isn’t phony. They’re afraid of passion for the same reason they're afraid of violence, one potential outcome of human passion. Of course violence is a common aspect of all natural interaction, including human interaction, but, living within the system as we do, we don't have to see the violence. We don't have to hunt and kill or pluck our own food; instead we go to the grocery store. So many of us are fooled into thinking that the system--i.e. governments, the "free" market, and other abstractions—and not our natural environments makes our lifestyle—no, our LIVES—possible. So instead of worshipping and giving thanks like so many primitive cultures to the wildlife that sustain us, we worship the system (and we forget the fact that our lifestyles are funded by other species AND other humans--i.e. humans in the Third World) and we defend it against everything deemed not a part of that system, such as passion.
If you believe in the system, then anger—passion of any sort—is indeed the enemy. People are confused, however, when they assume that the opposite of systemic violence and systemic aggression is non violence and pacifist, non-passionate behavior. Liberals certainly have the right idea when they attack the system's forceful abuse of power, but what many of them don't realize (and all of the people in the debate considered themselves to be card-carrying liberals) is that the problem with institutionalized violence is a class problem; it isn’t a problem with violence. The truth is that pacifism and institutionalized violence go hand in hand. To quote Feral Faun, “Pacifism is an ideology which demands total social peace as its ultimate goal. But total social peace would require the complete suppression of the individual passions that create individual incidences of violence - and that would require total social control.” He goes on: "There is no systematic violence in the wild, but, instead, momentary expressions of specific passions. This exposes one of the major fallacies of pacifist ideology. Violence, in itself, does not perpetuate violence. The social system of rationalized violence, of which pacifism is an integral part, perpetuates itself as a system.”
The bottom line is this: freeing yourself from the machine requires the liberation of your thoughts, your body, AND your emotions. Repressing the so-called beast in you will only serve to rid you of your humanity; it won’t make you freer. So people are right to be threatened by anger just as they're right to fear violent resistance and just as they’re right not to fear exclusively pacifist resistance, because anger—genuine passions of all kinds, for that matter—and violence are genuine threats to the system that people falsely believe provides them their basic needs. Repressing your natural passions is the same thing as destroying those passions—and that’s exactly what the system wants. The system can't perpetuate itself if we maintain our natural human—in other words, our animal—selves.
So don't be fooled by the pacifist pathology. If you’re passionate about your opinions, then show people that you’re passionate—express your ENTIRE self, even if, especially if, that means getting angry.
http://www.anti-politics.net/feral-faun/insurgent-ferocity.html
You see, when I heard the above remarks, I got angry. I got angry and I started to shout (actually, I didn't feel like I was shouting, but, apparently, everyone else in the room did), so very quickly the discussion was diverted into an attack not on my opinions but on my manner of expression. I was chastened for "trying to convince everyone that I was right" and for sounding "threatening" and for "getting mad". Mind you, I wasn't the only person who got mad. In fact, one of my opponents apologized to me afterwards for, in her words, "getting mad and telling me to shut up," and we made our peace. But I was the only person who got rebuked for my conduct (in fact, the person who apologized to me was praised the next morning for "standing her ground").
In retrospect, I'm sure much of the focus on my "passion", as one person termed it, was a red herring. It's easier to attack a person's emotional outburst than it is a well-reasoned and sound argument (and, though I was drunk and upset, I was still reasoning clearly). At the same time, I'm sure many people genuinely were bothered by my anger and genuinely felt threatened. But it wasn't me in particular that they were threatened by; what scares most people about anger is that it's a real and honest emotion and as such you can't predict or control it. Put another way, anger isn't tame—it's uncivilized. And that scares people.
In truth, my "passion" was as much a part of my argument as my reasoning. Emotional expression counts. It doesn't count in a world governed by abstract thought and abstract, bourgeoisie morality, but it counts if you value honest expression, as everyone should. Anger—and I mean genuine anger not posturing—is one of the purest and most honest emotions that exists (although I grant that it has an ugly, bullying side as well)—and it’s nothing to be afraid of. In fact, the world would be a much better place, in my view, if more people got angry. For one thing, fewer people would believe the Third World is responsible for its own poverty if more people were angry and impassioned enough to speak out about what's really happening (and maybe then the exploitation would cease). Moreover, if more people got angry about the way our government treats not just the Third World but its own citizens, then we might not have many of the problems with poverty, crime, and environmental waste that we face within our own borders—problems which every one in the discussion agreed we had to solve. Fact is, anger has a purpose. Anger emboldens us, it motivates us, and it punctuates our beliefs. In my case, I wanted to show the sincerity of my convictions; I couldn’t do that through logic alone. I also wanted to make it clear that the views held by my opponents weren’t innocuous. In my view, people who defend Globalization are defending abusers and attacking victims. That’s a serious claim and I want it to be taken seriously. Also, in order to have my more radical and already marginalized views accepted on an equal footing, I needed to show that I was not only sincere and serious about my beliefs but confident in them. You can’t accomplish that logically—not when your opponents feel that the world and God are on their side, in other words, not when you’re arguing against established opinion (i.e. Capitalism is an effective means of giving people what they want; America isn't perfect but it's the best country there is or ever has been; we’re much freer and better off today than we were in the Stone Age or at any other time in history). Logic is easy to tune out. Anger isn’t. Anger lets people know that you’re serious. Moreover, when you’re confronted by anger, the tendency is to get angry in turn—to get passionate. And when the experience becomes a passionately felt one, you’re more likely to remember, and, conceivably, learn from the event.
So it’s no mystery why people felt threatened by my anger (which, by the way, wasn’t personal; I never called anyone a name or told anyone to shut up, for example). Anger is a real threat to the system and to all those who belong to and believe in the system. Plainly speaking, the system couldn't exist if people weren't emotionally repressed. It couldn't exist if "passion" was allowed to flourish. People are afraid of passion because it isn’t phony. They’re afraid of passion for the same reason they're afraid of violence, one potential outcome of human passion. Of course violence is a common aspect of all natural interaction, including human interaction, but, living within the system as we do, we don't have to see the violence. We don't have to hunt and kill or pluck our own food; instead we go to the grocery store. So many of us are fooled into thinking that the system--i.e. governments, the "free" market, and other abstractions—and not our natural environments makes our lifestyle—no, our LIVES—possible. So instead of worshipping and giving thanks like so many primitive cultures to the wildlife that sustain us, we worship the system (and we forget the fact that our lifestyles are funded by other species AND other humans--i.e. humans in the Third World) and we defend it against everything deemed not a part of that system, such as passion.
If you believe in the system, then anger—passion of any sort—is indeed the enemy. People are confused, however, when they assume that the opposite of systemic violence and systemic aggression is non violence and pacifist, non-passionate behavior. Liberals certainly have the right idea when they attack the system's forceful abuse of power, but what many of them don't realize (and all of the people in the debate considered themselves to be card-carrying liberals) is that the problem with institutionalized violence is a class problem; it isn’t a problem with violence. The truth is that pacifism and institutionalized violence go hand in hand. To quote Feral Faun, “Pacifism is an ideology which demands total social peace as its ultimate goal. But total social peace would require the complete suppression of the individual passions that create individual incidences of violence - and that would require total social control.” He goes on: "There is no systematic violence in the wild, but, instead, momentary expressions of specific passions. This exposes one of the major fallacies of pacifist ideology. Violence, in itself, does not perpetuate violence. The social system of rationalized violence, of which pacifism is an integral part, perpetuates itself as a system.”
The bottom line is this: freeing yourself from the machine requires the liberation of your thoughts, your body, AND your emotions. Repressing the so-called beast in you will only serve to rid you of your humanity; it won’t make you freer. So people are right to be threatened by anger just as they're right to fear violent resistance and just as they’re right not to fear exclusively pacifist resistance, because anger—genuine passions of all kinds, for that matter—and violence are genuine threats to the system that people falsely believe provides them their basic needs. Repressing your natural passions is the same thing as destroying those passions—and that’s exactly what the system wants. The system can't perpetuate itself if we maintain our natural human—in other words, our animal—selves.
So don't be fooled by the pacifist pathology. If you’re passionate about your opinions, then show people that you’re passionate—express your ENTIRE self, even if, especially if, that means getting angry.
http://www.anti-politics.net/feral-faun/insurgent-ferocity.html
Saturday, September 09, 2006
quote
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings there exists an infinite distance between them, and once two people succeed in loving that distance, a wonderful living side by side can emerge, in which each learns to see the other whole, without defect, and against a wide sky.
Ranier Maria Rilke
Ranier Maria Rilke
Monday, July 10, 2006
I hate Superman
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the Christopher Reeves movies. I did. And it isn’t that I have issues with X-ray vision, or super strength, or solid steel flesh. Like anyone else, I'm no stranger to omnipotence fantasies. In fact, what I really hate isn’t Superman at all. What I really hate is that I don’t hate Superman. I hate that the gimmick works on me.
Superman, after all, is a disempowering myth, and, unfortunately, it works. As with most feel-good movies, the Superman series doesn’t make me happier to be alive. It makes me sad that the real world isn’t more like the movies. It makes me wish I had superpowers. Moreover, it makes me tolerate the dullness of reality by encouraging a regression into make-believe and pseudo happiness. Like Clark Kent, I’ve dealt with abusive bosses, inconsiderate women, and bully male coworkers. But unlike Clark Kent, I can’t put a cape on and have all my problems go away. What I can do, though, is go to the movies. I can indulge in fantasy. I can watch someone else put on a cape and make his and the rest of the world's problems disappear. In the movie world, at least, we know we're safe.
Yeah, I understand that Superman, once he dons his cape and tights, fights evil and injustice non-stop. He doesn’t run away. True. But he doesn’t exactly fight the system, either. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the movie or the comic book or the tv shows, Superman never takes a political stance—he preserves the status quo. Goody, well-assimilated immigrant that he is, he protects Metropolis from the enemy aliens who haven’t bought into the American way of life the way he has. In short, Superman is nothing more than a status fantasy. By day, he’s a mild mannered mistreated and incompetent reporter, but none of that matters, because Clark Kent isn’t real (just as “normal” Harry Potter or Scott Parker isn’t real); it’s all an act. Superman, after all, is the true identity. In other words, the workaday world with its mores and values doesn’t matter; it isn’t real. What’s real is the mythic fantasy. And this, no doubt, is what Americans want to believe—that their private, juvenile, fantasy-embodying, escapist selves are real and the guy who goes to work 40 to 60 hrs. a week with 10 to 20 hour commutes tagged on is the fake. The real me isn’t the “me” that exists in the here and now; it’s the inflated me that I know someday I’ll become—the “me” that is promised by the system and “the American Way”, that will have everything he wants, that will live entirely in a world of fantasy, abstraction, and cybernetics.
So let’s face it, Superman doesn’t fight for the little guy—for people; he fights for the powers that be—for Metropolis (a city, like all cities, dependent on imported goods that it hopes to control the supply of by whatever means possible). When he strays from this goal, as he did in Superman Four when he tries to eliminate nuclear weapons, his audience goes cold. What Superman fanatics really want is a guy who preserves all the hype and adolescent power fantasies of the American way—a myth that makes America look like what it says it is rather than what it ACTUALLY is. In a sense, Superman is America—the most boring, meekest, modest and pure-intentioned (in the out-of-ignorance aspect) person on the playing field: an ordinary mild-mannered reporter on one level, an everyday joe, but an invincible hero when sacrificed to a higher power—to the American way. Rephrased: because you in yourself are weak, empty, boring, and timid, you need to identify yourself with something greater—a higher power—such as your religion, America, the Party, the race, God, the movies, or the myth of Superman.
The chief enemy of morality--and art--is fantasy.
Iris Murdoch
Superman, after all, is a disempowering myth, and, unfortunately, it works. As with most feel-good movies, the Superman series doesn’t make me happier to be alive. It makes me sad that the real world isn’t more like the movies. It makes me wish I had superpowers. Moreover, it makes me tolerate the dullness of reality by encouraging a regression into make-believe and pseudo happiness. Like Clark Kent, I’ve dealt with abusive bosses, inconsiderate women, and bully male coworkers. But unlike Clark Kent, I can’t put a cape on and have all my problems go away. What I can do, though, is go to the movies. I can indulge in fantasy. I can watch someone else put on a cape and make his and the rest of the world's problems disappear. In the movie world, at least, we know we're safe.
Yeah, I understand that Superman, once he dons his cape and tights, fights evil and injustice non-stop. He doesn’t run away. True. But he doesn’t exactly fight the system, either. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the movie or the comic book or the tv shows, Superman never takes a political stance—he preserves the status quo. Goody, well-assimilated immigrant that he is, he protects Metropolis from the enemy aliens who haven’t bought into the American way of life the way he has. In short, Superman is nothing more than a status fantasy. By day, he’s a mild mannered mistreated and incompetent reporter, but none of that matters, because Clark Kent isn’t real (just as “normal” Harry Potter or Scott Parker isn’t real); it’s all an act. Superman, after all, is the true identity. In other words, the workaday world with its mores and values doesn’t matter; it isn’t real. What’s real is the mythic fantasy. And this, no doubt, is what Americans want to believe—that their private, juvenile, fantasy-embodying, escapist selves are real and the guy who goes to work 40 to 60 hrs. a week with 10 to 20 hour commutes tagged on is the fake. The real me isn’t the “me” that exists in the here and now; it’s the inflated me that I know someday I’ll become—the “me” that is promised by the system and “the American Way”, that will have everything he wants, that will live entirely in a world of fantasy, abstraction, and cybernetics.
So let’s face it, Superman doesn’t fight for the little guy—for people; he fights for the powers that be—for Metropolis (a city, like all cities, dependent on imported goods that it hopes to control the supply of by whatever means possible). When he strays from this goal, as he did in Superman Four when he tries to eliminate nuclear weapons, his audience goes cold. What Superman fanatics really want is a guy who preserves all the hype and adolescent power fantasies of the American way—a myth that makes America look like what it says it is rather than what it ACTUALLY is. In a sense, Superman is America—the most boring, meekest, modest and pure-intentioned (in the out-of-ignorance aspect) person on the playing field: an ordinary mild-mannered reporter on one level, an everyday joe, but an invincible hero when sacrificed to a higher power—to the American way. Rephrased: because you in yourself are weak, empty, boring, and timid, you need to identify yourself with something greater—a higher power—such as your religion, America, the Party, the race, God, the movies, or the myth of Superman.
The chief enemy of morality--and art--is fantasy.
Iris Murdoch
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Global Warming
An excerpt from and analysis of the handout given at the end of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth
Ten Things You Can Do
Want to do something to help stop global warming? Here are 10 simple things you can do and how much carbon dioxide you'll save doing them.
Change a light: Replacing one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Analysis: We made up the figure of 50 light bulbs per household (by counting the number in our house, which seems pretty typical of houses around here). 50x150=7500 lbs carbon dioxide per household. Multiply by 105,480,101 households (2000 Census http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_DP1&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U) this comes to 395,550,378 tons of carbon dioxide (using short tons, not metric tons here)
Drive less: Walk, bike, carpool, or take mass transit more often. You'll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don't drive.
Analysis: We figured a 50% reduction in driving. Annual miles driven is 2.3 trillion (https://www.worldwatch.org/node/99) Half of that is 1.15 trillion miles, which translates into 1.15 trillion pounds, or 575,000,000 tons of CO2 saved.
Recycle more: You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your household waste.
Analysis: 2,400 pounds for 105,480,101 households comes out to 126,576,121 tons of CO2 per year savings.
Check your tires: Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve gas mileage by more than 3%. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Analysis: Total US Fuel Consumption (in 2002 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004727.html) is 167,730,000,000 gallons. Five percent savings would come out to 8,386,500,000 gallons. At 20 pounds per gallon it comes out to 83,865,000 tons of CO2 saved.
Use less hot water: It takes a lot of energy to heat water. Use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of CO2 saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year).
Analysis: We figured two low flow showerheads per household and multiplied the clothes washing number by 2.59 (average household size 2000 Census) to get a figure of 1995 pounds of CO2 saved per household. Multiplied by the number of households (above) results in 105,216,400 tons of CO2 saved.
Avoid products with a lot of packaging: You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%.
Analysis: 1,200 pounds per household comes to 63,288,060 tons of CO2 saved.
Adjust your thermostat: Moving your thermostat down just 2 degrees in winter and up 2 degrees in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Analysis: 2,000 pounds per household comes to 105,480,101 tons of CO2 saved.
Plant a tree: A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.
Analysis: Using a 40-year average lifespan for a tree (http://www.friendsoftrees.org/tree_resources/facts.php), we figured that each tree would save 50 pounds of CO2 per year. If each person in the US (299,084,893 US Census Bureau Population Clock http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html) plants one tree, that results in 7,477,122 tons of CO2 saved (temporarily sequestered) per year.
Be a part of the solution: Learn more and get active at ClimateCrisis.net.
Analysis: We didn't figure any particular carbon savings coming from visiting this website.
Summation:
Total carbon dioxide savings if every person in the US does all of these things: 1,462,453,182 tons.
Total annual CO2 emissions in the US (2004 figures http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/UniqueKeyLookup/RAMR6P5M5M/$File/06FastFacts.pdf ) (converted from metric tons) is 6,600,572,400 short tons.
Total carbon dioxide savings represents 22.2% of the total. If every man, woman, and child in the US made all of the behavioral changes listed above, the total CO2 saved in a year would represent 22.2% of the total. This is just for CO2. Other greenhouse gases are not included in this calculation.
Now...here's the extra credit problem: What is the current yearly percent increase in US CO2 emissions? How many years of growth would it take at this level to wipe out (in absolute terms) the savings calculated above?
Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?
*** the above was copied from a listserv I belong to.
Interpretation: There isn't a "safe" solution. The problems are systemic. If we want to end global warming, we've got to bring down the system.
Ten Things You Can Do
Want to do something to help stop global warming? Here are 10 simple things you can do and how much carbon dioxide you'll save doing them.
Change a light: Replacing one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Analysis: We made up the figure of 50 light bulbs per household (by counting the number in our house, which seems pretty typical of houses around here). 50x150=7500 lbs carbon dioxide per household. Multiply by 105,480,101 households (2000 Census http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_DP1&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U) this comes to 395,550,378 tons of carbon dioxide (using short tons, not metric tons here)
Drive less: Walk, bike, carpool, or take mass transit more often. You'll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don't drive.
Analysis: We figured a 50% reduction in driving. Annual miles driven is 2.3 trillion (https://www.worldwatch.org/node/99) Half of that is 1.15 trillion miles, which translates into 1.15 trillion pounds, or 575,000,000 tons of CO2 saved.
Recycle more: You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your household waste.
Analysis: 2,400 pounds for 105,480,101 households comes out to 126,576,121 tons of CO2 per year savings.
Check your tires: Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve gas mileage by more than 3%. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Analysis: Total US Fuel Consumption (in 2002 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004727.html) is 167,730,000,000 gallons. Five percent savings would come out to 8,386,500,000 gallons. At 20 pounds per gallon it comes out to 83,865,000 tons of CO2 saved.
Use less hot water: It takes a lot of energy to heat water. Use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of CO2 saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year).
Analysis: We figured two low flow showerheads per household and multiplied the clothes washing number by 2.59 (average household size 2000 Census) to get a figure of 1995 pounds of CO2 saved per household. Multiplied by the number of households (above) results in 105,216,400 tons of CO2 saved.
Avoid products with a lot of packaging: You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%.
Analysis: 1,200 pounds per household comes to 63,288,060 tons of CO2 saved.
Adjust your thermostat: Moving your thermostat down just 2 degrees in winter and up 2 degrees in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Analysis: 2,000 pounds per household comes to 105,480,101 tons of CO2 saved.
Plant a tree: A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.
Analysis: Using a 40-year average lifespan for a tree (http://www.friendsoftrees.org/tree_resources/facts.php), we figured that each tree would save 50 pounds of CO2 per year. If each person in the US (299,084,893 US Census Bureau Population Clock http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html) plants one tree, that results in 7,477,122 tons of CO2 saved (temporarily sequestered) per year.
Be a part of the solution: Learn more and get active at ClimateCrisis.net.
Analysis: We didn't figure any particular carbon savings coming from visiting this website.
Summation:
Total carbon dioxide savings if every person in the US does all of these things: 1,462,453,182 tons.
Total annual CO2 emissions in the US (2004 figures http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/UniqueKeyLookup/RAMR6P5M5M/$File/06FastFacts.pdf ) (converted from metric tons) is 6,600,572,400 short tons.
Total carbon dioxide savings represents 22.2% of the total. If every man, woman, and child in the US made all of the behavioral changes listed above, the total CO2 saved in a year would represent 22.2% of the total. This is just for CO2. Other greenhouse gases are not included in this calculation.
Now...here's the extra credit problem: What is the current yearly percent increase in US CO2 emissions? How many years of growth would it take at this level to wipe out (in absolute terms) the savings calculated above?
Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?
*** the above was copied from a listserv I belong to.
Interpretation: There isn't a "safe" solution. The problems are systemic. If we want to end global warming, we've got to bring down the system.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
a few quotes
Even the best recipe book is no match for the worst-cooked meal.
Aldous Huxley
"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live
without and know we cannot live within."
James Baldwin
What you risk reveals what you value.
Jeanette Winterson
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the
same
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place
every day.
Albert Camus
Aldous Huxley
"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live
without and know we cannot live within."
James Baldwin
What you risk reveals what you value.
Jeanette Winterson
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the
same
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place
every day.
Albert Camus
Monday, May 08, 2006
The Death of Hope
Not that I ever believed that Horatio Algier bullshit in the first place, but there’s an interesting story here which offers conclusive proof that America is NOT the land of opportunity—that in fact most European and Asian countries put us to shame when it comes to upward economic mobility. In Denmark, for instance, you have a 14% chance of rising from poverty to be among the wealthiest 5%, whereas in America you have merely a one percent chance—or a .05% chance if you’re Black (Federal Reserve Bulletin).
None of this really surprises me, yet I was still dismayed to read about the poll showing that today nearly 80% of Americans believe that you can be born poor and become rich through hard work alone, but only 65% of Americans held that conviction in 1984 when the income gap was considerably smaller than it is now. Maybe some people will see in those numbers a cause for satisfaction—a testament to the indomitable and optimistic spirit of America. But I see something more dismal--a sign that Americans, no matter how badly they're lied to, will continue to believe that everything is okay and fail to take any action to improve their conditions.
That’s sad. But as much as I’d like to get on my high horse here, I can’t. I can’t because, like it or not, I’m a product of my environment and I, too, am an optimist. In my best moments, I’m not. In my best moments I don’t have expectations either positive or negative; I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist. But when things aren’t going right, I, like most Americans, revert to dreaming and hoping instead of action. That’s the American way.
This pattern of behavior becomes most prominent in those moments when I’m vulnerable—in a relationship, for example. That’s because fear and hope are really two sides of the same coin. As a lovely Buddhist saying puts it: hope and fear chase each other’s tails. When we place expectations on a relationship (or anything for that matter)—whether that relationship be the one we have with our government or with a lover—we essentially kill the connection between the two parties; we turn the relationship into a commodity meant to yield certain goods and/or services instead of—well, instead of a relationship. We place our emphasis on what could be instead of on what is. And when you do that you’re not really relating at all; you’re manipulating. As a result, you stop seeing the relationship for what it is, and, in the case of the relationship between American citizens and their government, the abusive aspects of the dynamic go unacknowledged. As the income gap widens, our belief in the promise of prosperity becomes more deep-seated. The dream trumps the reality. Promise, not connection, defines the relationship. And consequently, the relationship comes to depend on its assurances rather than the intimacy you feel for each other—on hope rather than awareness. And hope kills.
I know. I know. Hope is supposed to be a good thing—a gift from the gods to compensate for all the ills let loose from Pandora’s box. But I see it differently (and more pessimistically). To me, hope wasn’t given as a gift at all. To me, Pandora’s box was a box full of evil. Period. Hope should not only be included among all the other malignities, it should stand out as maybe the most pernicious—the one that makes all the other afflictions stick (analogy compliments of Derrick Jensen). Without hope, after all, we might be more inspired to remedy our other problems—to put up some fight. But as long as we have hope—as long as Americans believe the system is capable of reform, for emample—the less likely we are to challenge the status quo.
Still, like I said before, I’m hardly one to talk. I fall into the hope trap all the time in my relationships. In fact, I’m doing it right now. I’m in a relationship that scares me a little bit, because I know what it will take to make it work—honesty and concession—but acting that way makes me feel vulnerable, which makes the alternative to intimacy more and more appealing. And the alternative is to settle for hope. As long as you have hope, you don’t need responsibility; you don’t need to act. The fantasy of the relationship takes precedence over the real thing. I know all that. And I know a relationship can’t work (at least not in the way I want it to work) unless both sides are committed to avoiding the fantasy, yet, somehow, I still prefer the fantasy. I prefer to extract myself from the moment and focus on the relationship’s positive or negative potential instead of living with the natural tension (and tension isn’t always a bad thing) of trying to connect with someone. Put another way, I get scared. My fear then drives me to live on in hope and exile, where I fail to take responsibility for my decisions. Like the American I am, I live in naïve optimism instead of action and sincerity. And that’s pretty fucking hopeless.
None of this really surprises me, yet I was still dismayed to read about the poll showing that today nearly 80% of Americans believe that you can be born poor and become rich through hard work alone, but only 65% of Americans held that conviction in 1984 when the income gap was considerably smaller than it is now. Maybe some people will see in those numbers a cause for satisfaction—a testament to the indomitable and optimistic spirit of America. But I see something more dismal--a sign that Americans, no matter how badly they're lied to, will continue to believe that everything is okay and fail to take any action to improve their conditions.
That’s sad. But as much as I’d like to get on my high horse here, I can’t. I can’t because, like it or not, I’m a product of my environment and I, too, am an optimist. In my best moments, I’m not. In my best moments I don’t have expectations either positive or negative; I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist. But when things aren’t going right, I, like most Americans, revert to dreaming and hoping instead of action. That’s the American way.
This pattern of behavior becomes most prominent in those moments when I’m vulnerable—in a relationship, for example. That’s because fear and hope are really two sides of the same coin. As a lovely Buddhist saying puts it: hope and fear chase each other’s tails. When we place expectations on a relationship (or anything for that matter)—whether that relationship be the one we have with our government or with a lover—we essentially kill the connection between the two parties; we turn the relationship into a commodity meant to yield certain goods and/or services instead of—well, instead of a relationship. We place our emphasis on what could be instead of on what is. And when you do that you’re not really relating at all; you’re manipulating. As a result, you stop seeing the relationship for what it is, and, in the case of the relationship between American citizens and their government, the abusive aspects of the dynamic go unacknowledged. As the income gap widens, our belief in the promise of prosperity becomes more deep-seated. The dream trumps the reality. Promise, not connection, defines the relationship. And consequently, the relationship comes to depend on its assurances rather than the intimacy you feel for each other—on hope rather than awareness. And hope kills.
I know. I know. Hope is supposed to be a good thing—a gift from the gods to compensate for all the ills let loose from Pandora’s box. But I see it differently (and more pessimistically). To me, hope wasn’t given as a gift at all. To me, Pandora’s box was a box full of evil. Period. Hope should not only be included among all the other malignities, it should stand out as maybe the most pernicious—the one that makes all the other afflictions stick (analogy compliments of Derrick Jensen). Without hope, after all, we might be more inspired to remedy our other problems—to put up some fight. But as long as we have hope—as long as Americans believe the system is capable of reform, for emample—the less likely we are to challenge the status quo.
Still, like I said before, I’m hardly one to talk. I fall into the hope trap all the time in my relationships. In fact, I’m doing it right now. I’m in a relationship that scares me a little bit, because I know what it will take to make it work—honesty and concession—but acting that way makes me feel vulnerable, which makes the alternative to intimacy more and more appealing. And the alternative is to settle for hope. As long as you have hope, you don’t need responsibility; you don’t need to act. The fantasy of the relationship takes precedence over the real thing. I know all that. And I know a relationship can’t work (at least not in the way I want it to work) unless both sides are committed to avoiding the fantasy, yet, somehow, I still prefer the fantasy. I prefer to extract myself from the moment and focus on the relationship’s positive or negative potential instead of living with the natural tension (and tension isn’t always a bad thing) of trying to connect with someone. Put another way, I get scared. My fear then drives me to live on in hope and exile, where I fail to take responsibility for my decisions. Like the American I am, I live in naïve optimism instead of action and sincerity. And that’s pretty fucking hopeless.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Fantasy
Lately I’ve had this fantasy about selling everything I own and disappearing. And I mean really disappearing—disappearing from Denver, from my job, from family and friends, and even, and most importantly, from myself. I dream of hitchhiking to another country, changing my name, giving up every interest or mannerism that ever defined me, and starting over.
Of course I won’t do it; I’m too encumbered and attached to my lifestyle to give everything up. But I don’t think I’ll ever be happy until I can. At the same time, when, or if, I’m ever capable of disappearing, I probably won’t fantasize about it.
Of course I won’t do it; I’m too encumbered and attached to my lifestyle to give everything up. But I don’t think I’ll ever be happy until I can. At the same time, when, or if, I’m ever capable of disappearing, I probably won’t fantasize about it.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Things
Well, I’m back from my vacation to Mexico, and I’m not really too happy about it. For one thing, I realize better than ever how much of a prisoner I am in the city. For that matter, I’m a prisoner anywhere I go in America; the lifestyle itself is a prison. And it wouldn’t be much different in Europe or in Asia—in any place that boasts of being a developed nation. We give plenty of lip service to the idea that the First World—nowadays known as the Democratic World—is a haven for freedom and opportunity, especially in industrialized cities where every service and product you can imagine is available. But freedom isn’t about how many choices you have (especially when the choices are hard to distinguish, such as in the Presidential elections, Pepsi v. Coke, etc.)—it’s about doing –and knowing—what it is you want to be doing. And that kind of freedom, I’m convinced, is more easily attainable in the Third World where civilization has yet to become firmly rooted. There, at least, the jailers are further away and offer less supervision.
As an American, I rarely feel as free as I do when I’m traveling, most notably when I’m traveling outside of the city, especially in an undeveloped country where English isn’t the predominant language and where I’m unfamiliar with the native customs, i.e. where I don’t have any expectations placed on me because I don’t know what the expectations are—and everyone knows it. Under those circumstances, it’s easy to get lost—to purge myself of the things that define me. When I’m traveling, I can re-create myself in ways I’m not even free to imagine when I’m at home and in close proximity to all the cultural artifacts that define me. It’s only when I’m traveling that I realize, and can subsequently alter, how American I am—and how hopelessly artificial and civilized.
In the civilized world, the tools of our bondage, otherwise known as modern-day conveniences, are always close at hand. We can’t be rid of them. In America, in particular, and most particularly in American cities, we can’t survive comfortably without our things—without our automobiles, our laptops, our Ipods, our televisions, our vanity products, our furniture, or our drugs. We can’t survive without our things, because our things are now a part of us. We’re not becoming—we ARE cyborgs. Contrast this with rural areas of the Third World, where the average person lives on the equivalent of one dollar a day. There, you eat what’s available rather than what you choose. You socialize with whoever is in your presence rather than with the virtual society you select with your mouse clicker. You travel by virtue of other people’s generosity. Any place you can lie down is a bed. And any time you can get there is the time you’re supposed to get there. What this means is that you have fewer obstructions to your liberty. You don’t have to be at home to sleep or away from work to have fun. Because your moments are less well defined, your flexibility increases and you live more in the moment. Granted, you can’t live entirely in the moment, because the tentacles of power have now reached worldwide, but life as a genuine event, instead of a product, is still a possibility for the traveler. Maybe not a strong possibility; we’ve all spent years defining ourselves by our possessions—often very similar possessions, which, in turn, homogenize our experiences. But if you have fewer possessions, you, in turn, are less possessed. And when you’re traveling, especially if you travel light like I do, then your possessions become less a part of you. You become freer and more flexible, and the things that you thought were essential prove insignificant; even your sense of self becomes a temporary idea that you have no trouble discarding. You become more aware of the violence that has been done to you by things—how things both abstract and concrete have shaped you into something you’re not—have, in a manner of speaking, killed the real you.
And perhaps no violence is worse than the violence of language. No other tool has weakened us more. Until we put an end to that violence, freedom and authenticity can never exist. It’s one thing to destroy the body, but to destroy the foundation of reality is far more insidious, and that’s what language does. Language is the one tool that makes possession possible. We use it not merely to communicate but to control. It controls us by naming and defining our experiences, making everything that happens a known commodity rather than a unique and genuine event. It controls us by turning everything into an abstraction. Capital, the primary means of possession in the world today, is really nothing but a collection of words—words and faith. Bill Gates has never seen or laid hands on the billions of dollars he’s rumored to possess, but he has plenty of paperwork to confirm his status as one of the world’s wealthiest men—and that’s enough. It’s enough because we believe it’s enough (Derrick Jensen anecdote--from an interview, I think). And that belief appropriates our freedom. Since we believe in civilization we also believe in its laws (another byproduct of language)—and that violating those laws will imperil us. Consequently, we give away our inalienable rights to unadulterated experience. Take, as one example, the experience of adventurous travel. It used to be that you could take off with little or no provisions. You could camp almost anywhere, bathe in any river, find food and water with ease, and trust, to a degree, the hospitality of strangers. To a limited degree, you can still do all that in the Third World, or at least in Mexico. But in industrialized nations, you need permits to camp in the wilderness, passports and visas to travel in foreign countries, and money—lots and lots of money—to eat and drink. And signs—written prohibitions and instructions—are omnipresent. Thus, the experience of travel is restricted to its commodity form: the vacation—the vacation wherein we observe the spectacle of the world instead of participating in it (http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/outlaw.htm). No bomb has ever achieved such lethal results.
And this, I suppose, is why we need writing. It’s too late to turn back the clocks; words are as much a part of us as eyes, ears, and legs. The rudiments of untroubled thought and joy have been buried too deep to be unsurfaced. Our only chance at redemption is through renewal—through making of ourselves a new substance not incapable of harmonizing with the rest of the natural world. To do this, we need to first and foremost change the way we communicate. To quote Alexander Soltysinski: “all wars are wars of words”. And it’s time we joined the fray. ‘Operation Freedom’, ‘Democratization’, ‘The Patriot Act’, ‘Globalization’. Never have we had more pleasant-sounding words to describe murder, thievery, and exploitation as we do today—and it’s only getting worse. The war of words isn’t a war we can win by conventional methods. Language is owned by the powers that be, and it can’t be re-appropriated through mainstream channels. The corporate media and political spin-doctors have all the artillery and manpower on their side. The only means of combating such exhaustive forces is through sabotage and gorilla warfare—by going underground (to dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools, so to speak) (http://www.carbondefense.org/).
Like in Vietnam, we’re unlikely to win many battles, but we might yet win the war. Remember, the system we’re fighting is self-defeating; it can’t sustain itself much longer. And the more powerful it becomes, the quicker it consumes its resources. So when the goliath comes crashing down in a million pieces, the process of creation will resume. And it has to start by restoring language to its initial purpose as a means of describing, rather than co-opting and defining, reality. Only then will we reacquaint ourselves with life’s adventure, freedom, and mystery—with the sense that something is really happening—something unbounded and non-uniform and non-symbolic.
****
The following quote does a good job of expressing some of my feelings about the rural Mexican people. It’s from Men of Maize by Miguel Angel Asturias, a great, but now mostly forgotten, writer from Guatemala.
“[They were] poverty stricken people who wanted for everything because their families were large, and the wealth which passed through their hands in the placers or in the fields did not belong to them. Wretched wages kept them sick and feeble, always drunk. At first [your instinct] is to help them, to, as Don Quixote would have said, shake them like puppets to bring them out of their contemplative renunciation, their meditative silence, their indifference to the earthly world in which they lived. [But soon you grow to not only understand them but to] share their attitude, half dream and half reality, in which existence was a continuous rhythm of physical needs, without complications.”
As an American, I rarely feel as free as I do when I’m traveling, most notably when I’m traveling outside of the city, especially in an undeveloped country where English isn’t the predominant language and where I’m unfamiliar with the native customs, i.e. where I don’t have any expectations placed on me because I don’t know what the expectations are—and everyone knows it. Under those circumstances, it’s easy to get lost—to purge myself of the things that define me. When I’m traveling, I can re-create myself in ways I’m not even free to imagine when I’m at home and in close proximity to all the cultural artifacts that define me. It’s only when I’m traveling that I realize, and can subsequently alter, how American I am—and how hopelessly artificial and civilized.
In the civilized world, the tools of our bondage, otherwise known as modern-day conveniences, are always close at hand. We can’t be rid of them. In America, in particular, and most particularly in American cities, we can’t survive comfortably without our things—without our automobiles, our laptops, our Ipods, our televisions, our vanity products, our furniture, or our drugs. We can’t survive without our things, because our things are now a part of us. We’re not becoming—we ARE cyborgs. Contrast this with rural areas of the Third World, where the average person lives on the equivalent of one dollar a day. There, you eat what’s available rather than what you choose. You socialize with whoever is in your presence rather than with the virtual society you select with your mouse clicker. You travel by virtue of other people’s generosity. Any place you can lie down is a bed. And any time you can get there is the time you’re supposed to get there. What this means is that you have fewer obstructions to your liberty. You don’t have to be at home to sleep or away from work to have fun. Because your moments are less well defined, your flexibility increases and you live more in the moment. Granted, you can’t live entirely in the moment, because the tentacles of power have now reached worldwide, but life as a genuine event, instead of a product, is still a possibility for the traveler. Maybe not a strong possibility; we’ve all spent years defining ourselves by our possessions—often very similar possessions, which, in turn, homogenize our experiences. But if you have fewer possessions, you, in turn, are less possessed. And when you’re traveling, especially if you travel light like I do, then your possessions become less a part of you. You become freer and more flexible, and the things that you thought were essential prove insignificant; even your sense of self becomes a temporary idea that you have no trouble discarding. You become more aware of the violence that has been done to you by things—how things both abstract and concrete have shaped you into something you’re not—have, in a manner of speaking, killed the real you.
And perhaps no violence is worse than the violence of language. No other tool has weakened us more. Until we put an end to that violence, freedom and authenticity can never exist. It’s one thing to destroy the body, but to destroy the foundation of reality is far more insidious, and that’s what language does. Language is the one tool that makes possession possible. We use it not merely to communicate but to control. It controls us by naming and defining our experiences, making everything that happens a known commodity rather than a unique and genuine event. It controls us by turning everything into an abstraction. Capital, the primary means of possession in the world today, is really nothing but a collection of words—words and faith. Bill Gates has never seen or laid hands on the billions of dollars he’s rumored to possess, but he has plenty of paperwork to confirm his status as one of the world’s wealthiest men—and that’s enough. It’s enough because we believe it’s enough (Derrick Jensen anecdote--from an interview, I think). And that belief appropriates our freedom. Since we believe in civilization we also believe in its laws (another byproduct of language)—and that violating those laws will imperil us. Consequently, we give away our inalienable rights to unadulterated experience. Take, as one example, the experience of adventurous travel. It used to be that you could take off with little or no provisions. You could camp almost anywhere, bathe in any river, find food and water with ease, and trust, to a degree, the hospitality of strangers. To a limited degree, you can still do all that in the Third World, or at least in Mexico. But in industrialized nations, you need permits to camp in the wilderness, passports and visas to travel in foreign countries, and money—lots and lots of money—to eat and drink. And signs—written prohibitions and instructions—are omnipresent. Thus, the experience of travel is restricted to its commodity form: the vacation—the vacation wherein we observe the spectacle of the world instead of participating in it (http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/outlaw.htm). No bomb has ever achieved such lethal results.
And this, I suppose, is why we need writing. It’s too late to turn back the clocks; words are as much a part of us as eyes, ears, and legs. The rudiments of untroubled thought and joy have been buried too deep to be unsurfaced. Our only chance at redemption is through renewal—through making of ourselves a new substance not incapable of harmonizing with the rest of the natural world. To do this, we need to first and foremost change the way we communicate. To quote Alexander Soltysinski: “all wars are wars of words”. And it’s time we joined the fray. ‘Operation Freedom’, ‘Democratization’, ‘The Patriot Act’, ‘Globalization’. Never have we had more pleasant-sounding words to describe murder, thievery, and exploitation as we do today—and it’s only getting worse. The war of words isn’t a war we can win by conventional methods. Language is owned by the powers that be, and it can’t be re-appropriated through mainstream channels. The corporate media and political spin-doctors have all the artillery and manpower on their side. The only means of combating such exhaustive forces is through sabotage and gorilla warfare—by going underground (to dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools, so to speak) (http://www.carbondefense.org/).
Like in Vietnam, we’re unlikely to win many battles, but we might yet win the war. Remember, the system we’re fighting is self-defeating; it can’t sustain itself much longer. And the more powerful it becomes, the quicker it consumes its resources. So when the goliath comes crashing down in a million pieces, the process of creation will resume. And it has to start by restoring language to its initial purpose as a means of describing, rather than co-opting and defining, reality. Only then will we reacquaint ourselves with life’s adventure, freedom, and mystery—with the sense that something is really happening—something unbounded and non-uniform and non-symbolic.
****
The following quote does a good job of expressing some of my feelings about the rural Mexican people. It’s from Men of Maize by Miguel Angel Asturias, a great, but now mostly forgotten, writer from Guatemala.
“[They were] poverty stricken people who wanted for everything because their families were large, and the wealth which passed through their hands in the placers or in the fields did not belong to them. Wretched wages kept them sick and feeble, always drunk. At first [your instinct] is to help them, to, as Don Quixote would have said, shake them like puppets to bring them out of their contemplative renunciation, their meditative silence, their indifference to the earthly world in which they lived. [But soon you grow to not only understand them but to] share their attitude, half dream and half reality, in which existence was a continuous rhythm of physical needs, without complications.”
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Brokeback Mountain
Just saw the film Brokeback Mountain. It's a sad movie, and it got me to thinking about relationships. Bottom line is this--gay, straight, inter-species, it doesn't matter; you can't have a love story about two people who actually live together.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
To Burn Or Not To Burn
The other day I made an interesting realization: many of the starkest memories in my life are of dreams, not actual incidents. Moreover, the few vivid memories I have of actual experience are from early childhood—before I became civilized and learned to conceptualize the world and before dream and reality became clearly distinct. As an adult, the sensual poignancy of my waking life seems to diminish more every year, but the impact and drama of my dreams remain as strong as ever—stronger, sometimes, than pivotal events like my marriage, my first sexual experience, my first time teaching a class, or visits to famous landmarks or museums. This indicates, in my case at any rate, that dreams are significant. They aren’t just random neurons firing at will. Or, actually, maybe they are--but so what? Is real life any less random? And does randomness prohibit meaning? I don't think so; meaning is created, not predestined. And like our waking experiences, dreams, whether random or not, have something to teach us, provided we're willing to learn (and maybe we do ascribe their meaning after the fact, as we re-envision them, but that doesn’t reduce their impact or relevance).
One dream I remember as being especially noteworthy was about my father. He was imprisoned at the top of a large wooden tower that had been set on fire. I was watching him from the ground below. As the flames grew higher, he stood at the tower’s edge and prepared to leap off. I yelled at him not to, pleading for him to bear the flames just a little while longer, but to no avail. He plunged to his death, and I woke up.
I had this dream when I was in my early twenties and just about to graduate college. In other words, I was about to enter the so-called real world, to leave the carefree life of my youth behind, and become a part of the adult workforce. In that context, the two participants in the dream are more likely representatives of two sides of my self—the young self, staring up at the menacing structure I would soon have to enter; and my future, elder self, which was being burned alive inside the same structure.
As I think about the dream now, I see a prophecy fulfilled—at least in part. If the dream were to reoccur, I imagine I’d see it from the reverse perspective: looking down at my symbolic son while I suffered the fire’s wrath, then leaping headlong into the void to abolish my pain, my son's disappointed eyes being the last image I see before smashing into the earth's surface. Burning is what adult life often feels like to me—like a blaze that imprisons and consumes. And the temptation to “leap”—to give up the fight and ease my hardship—is a temptation I fight almost every day, both in the literal sense of contemplating the bourne of no return and also, and more typically, in the figurative sense of dulling my troubles in TV or alcohol or daydreaming or sugar (or religion, when I was younger)—but not just dulling my troubles, dulling, and annihilating, my whole self along with them. What I mean is that I constantly fight the temptation to diminish the power and impact of my life by decreasing my awareness of and my participation in the actual living world. And I’m not alone in that.
Since most Americans hate their jobs, they start to envision happiness as a state of inactivity—kind of like being dead. As a result, they use the fruit of their labor to purchase things like computer games, TVs and DVD players, MP3s, Romance novels, and so on … in other words, things that encourage passivity—things that don’t require active agency as much as compliant admiration and fantasy building. While some commodities such as computer games might give the illusion of agency, real activity—the kind that truly affects the world we live in—is forbidden. The result is that we live our lives between two equally dismal conditions—the fire and the abyss.
The activity we're allowed comes in two forms: activity we do for another—i.e. activity that doesn’t really belong to us but is done to earn money for purchases and, in the Third World, for survival; and activity that we do in our spare time and which we purchase with the activity we sell to another, or, put another way, activity designed to escape the former activity—“escapist” activity (or art-ificial activity). In either case, we’re not acting to realize ourselves—we’re acting to serve the system. We’re acting to erase the legitimacy and effect of our lives—to join the ranks of the living dead via domestication (see Fredy Perlman at insurgent desire for more on this). The choice we’re presented with is to either merge entirely with the system—to die by fire, or to escape into darkness and isolation—and die by plummeting. It’s the story of Icarus all over again, but without the heroic connotations and without any hope of survival.
But maybe, with enough diligence, we can find another option. As my dream suggests, the flames of life might not be as punishing as we imagine them. In Buddhist practice, the main objective is to achieve Nirvana, which translates, literally, as the extinguishing of the fire. Only the fire of Buddhist imagery isn’t extinguishable. According to the ancient Brahmans, when a fire was extinguished it went into a detached or latent state. Rather than ceasing to exist, it simply freed itself from any particular fuel source—it became “unbounded”. Fire also features prominently in Buddhist art and mythology as a force for transformation. In the Tibetan Mandelas, for example, fire is drawn at the outer edge of the image to represent the transformation that has to take place before entering the sacred territories within. In the Western World, too, fire is often used as a symbol of transformation (the Phoenix, to name just one), and it seems likely that this might have something to do with the fire depicted in my dream, as well.
A burning tower is as good a metaphor for my current life as I can think of. The world I live in IS on fire; it’s consuming itself, and me and its other inhabitants, out of existence. At the same time, escape, while tempting, is not an option. The flames are inextinguishable. That leaves only one alternative—to live within the twilight of the two world's--to practice, and to recognize, what Buddhists refer to as the Middle Way. To me, that means much the same thing that it means in the Tantric traditions; it means that I have to be fully alive and open to life’s natural forces but that I can’t cling to or wish to possess those forces. It means—get ready now, this might sound sappy—that I act lovingly instead of on principle or duty or for hope of reward. It means that I act without selfishness or ego. What it doesn’t mean, though, leastwise not to me, is that I act non-violently.
I know. I know. The first precept of Buddhist ethics is to abstain from harming living things. But I don’t care. For one thing, I’m only a half-assed Buddhist, anyway, and for another, I don’t think pacifism is the correct tag for that precept. If you shoot someone while he’s in the process of massacring your family, you’re not harming life—you’re protecting it. And if your country’s government is hell bent on the destruction of all living things to serve its elitist interests, then you ought to do anything within your means to stop it—including acts of violence. You can do as much "harm" to other living things through pacifism as you can through blood-letting, and, in some cases, the latter option serves the greater good. That's obvious. Defensive violence is not the same as an act of aggression. Sometimes the bully really won't leave you alone until you fight back.
During the Vietnamese War, Buddhist monks were known to set themselves on fire as an act of protest (click here for a picture:flaming buddhist). Onlookers marveled at how serenely they bore the flames, never grimacing, never breaking their postures, never screaming out in pain. Now, I’m not necessarily endorsing their methods—there are other ways to be heard--but torching yourself for a cause does say something about commitment and sacrifice—and about lack of ego. Nevertheless, it’s also a violent act—a violent act AND a loving act. In the words of their fellow Buddhists “…they [monks and nuns] had been driven to take the stand they had by their profound compassion for their suffering people, and by the fact that there was literally no one else who could speak for the war-weary people and their longing for peace.” So this very clear act of harming another living thing—the actor’s self,in this instance—was not seen as a violation of the First Precept. As Thich Nhat Hanh explained, "the compassionate intent of self-immolation overshadows the argument that it’s harmful". In sum, acting lovingly trumps acting violently—it trumps the ideological precept.
With that in mind, we can’t, if we’re serious about struggling with and for the oppressed, rule out violence as a means to further our resistance. Acting violently doesn’t mean “you’ll become just like them.” You’ll become just like them when you act out of the same egoistic mindset that they do—when you act selfishly instead of lovingly, or, when you act in obedience to a principle or precept, instead of from the heart. That’s it. No need for a bunch of philosophizing here. And I’m not saying that you MUST act violently. Maybe that’s not your path. I’m simply saying that we can’t rule it out.
Okay, now back to my dream. I don’t think it was telling me to pick up my gun and head for the jungles in Chiapas. The reason I bring up the issue of violence is to show how easy it is to retreat into passive, escapist, death-loving pseudo action—to take the leap from the tower instead of to bear life in its entirety. Unquestioned and unwavering obedience to any principle or law, even a principle or law of non-violence, is an act of submission and escape—not love. As I’ve stated in other entries (Action and Art, On Instinct and Intelligence), when you follow principle you inevitably make actions secondary to concepts. (To reiterate what I said in Action and Art: Instead of being in the act of loving someone, you "fall in love" or "find love". The principle--of love, in this case--becomes the subject of the action.) That's what principles do—they exalt themselves and objectify their followers. If you have a principle, you don't need to be responsible for your behavior, because you're just following a code. And codes also take emotion out of your decision making; they suggest that you can reach a moral decision by adhering to an abstract rule, excluding all other factors. You don't have to feel anything—or think anything, for that matter—and you don't have to take any risks; you get to maintain your unearthly purity. Principles also imply that words are richer than experience, an idea that Buddhism does a good job of debunking.
In a nutshell, what I think my dream was telling me is that there is no refuge from love. But maybe love isn’t the best word choice in this case. Maybe a better choice—one less imbued with sentimentalism—is responsibility. Existentialism 101—you and only you—not God, not a precept, not an institution, not an ideology, not your Mommy and Daddy—are responsible for your actions, and you alone have to bear and recognize that responsibility. You have to bear it when it costs you friendships or romantic interludes, when you lose sleep or when the anxiety becomes so intense that you contemplate suicide. And the only way to bear the full weight of life's responsibility—to be fully aware and fully committed—is to not be bounded by the inferno that surrounds us—to live within the flames but not be imprisoned by them. And the only way to accomplish that (gonna get sappy again) is through loving others. That means accepting our mutual dependence and realizing that you can’t, by yourself, escape suffering. It means that you can't ever find solitude. Bodhisattva like, you have to live within the inferno for the sake of the living world. You can’t escape your responsibility—not even in your dreams.
****
"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."
Italo Calvino Invisible Cities
tags:
anarchist
buddhism
One dream I remember as being especially noteworthy was about my father. He was imprisoned at the top of a large wooden tower that had been set on fire. I was watching him from the ground below. As the flames grew higher, he stood at the tower’s edge and prepared to leap off. I yelled at him not to, pleading for him to bear the flames just a little while longer, but to no avail. He plunged to his death, and I woke up.
I had this dream when I was in my early twenties and just about to graduate college. In other words, I was about to enter the so-called real world, to leave the carefree life of my youth behind, and become a part of the adult workforce. In that context, the two participants in the dream are more likely representatives of two sides of my self—the young self, staring up at the menacing structure I would soon have to enter; and my future, elder self, which was being burned alive inside the same structure.
As I think about the dream now, I see a prophecy fulfilled—at least in part. If the dream were to reoccur, I imagine I’d see it from the reverse perspective: looking down at my symbolic son while I suffered the fire’s wrath, then leaping headlong into the void to abolish my pain, my son's disappointed eyes being the last image I see before smashing into the earth's surface. Burning is what adult life often feels like to me—like a blaze that imprisons and consumes. And the temptation to “leap”—to give up the fight and ease my hardship—is a temptation I fight almost every day, both in the literal sense of contemplating the bourne of no return and also, and more typically, in the figurative sense of dulling my troubles in TV or alcohol or daydreaming or sugar (or religion, when I was younger)—but not just dulling my troubles, dulling, and annihilating, my whole self along with them. What I mean is that I constantly fight the temptation to diminish the power and impact of my life by decreasing my awareness of and my participation in the actual living world. And I’m not alone in that.
Since most Americans hate their jobs, they start to envision happiness as a state of inactivity—kind of like being dead. As a result, they use the fruit of their labor to purchase things like computer games, TVs and DVD players, MP3s, Romance novels, and so on … in other words, things that encourage passivity—things that don’t require active agency as much as compliant admiration and fantasy building. While some commodities such as computer games might give the illusion of agency, real activity—the kind that truly affects the world we live in—is forbidden. The result is that we live our lives between two equally dismal conditions—the fire and the abyss.
The activity we're allowed comes in two forms: activity we do for another—i.e. activity that doesn’t really belong to us but is done to earn money for purchases and, in the Third World, for survival; and activity that we do in our spare time and which we purchase with the activity we sell to another, or, put another way, activity designed to escape the former activity—“escapist” activity (or art-ificial activity). In either case, we’re not acting to realize ourselves—we’re acting to serve the system. We’re acting to erase the legitimacy and effect of our lives—to join the ranks of the living dead via domestication (see Fredy Perlman at insurgent desire for more on this). The choice we’re presented with is to either merge entirely with the system—to die by fire, or to escape into darkness and isolation—and die by plummeting. It’s the story of Icarus all over again, but without the heroic connotations and without any hope of survival.
But maybe, with enough diligence, we can find another option. As my dream suggests, the flames of life might not be as punishing as we imagine them. In Buddhist practice, the main objective is to achieve Nirvana, which translates, literally, as the extinguishing of the fire. Only the fire of Buddhist imagery isn’t extinguishable. According to the ancient Brahmans, when a fire was extinguished it went into a detached or latent state. Rather than ceasing to exist, it simply freed itself from any particular fuel source—it became “unbounded”. Fire also features prominently in Buddhist art and mythology as a force for transformation. In the Tibetan Mandelas, for example, fire is drawn at the outer edge of the image to represent the transformation that has to take place before entering the sacred territories within. In the Western World, too, fire is often used as a symbol of transformation (the Phoenix, to name just one), and it seems likely that this might have something to do with the fire depicted in my dream, as well.
A burning tower is as good a metaphor for my current life as I can think of. The world I live in IS on fire; it’s consuming itself, and me and its other inhabitants, out of existence. At the same time, escape, while tempting, is not an option. The flames are inextinguishable. That leaves only one alternative—to live within the twilight of the two world's--to practice, and to recognize, what Buddhists refer to as the Middle Way. To me, that means much the same thing that it means in the Tantric traditions; it means that I have to be fully alive and open to life’s natural forces but that I can’t cling to or wish to possess those forces. It means—get ready now, this might sound sappy—that I act lovingly instead of on principle or duty or for hope of reward. It means that I act without selfishness or ego. What it doesn’t mean, though, leastwise not to me, is that I act non-violently.
I know. I know. The first precept of Buddhist ethics is to abstain from harming living things. But I don’t care. For one thing, I’m only a half-assed Buddhist, anyway, and for another, I don’t think pacifism is the correct tag for that precept. If you shoot someone while he’s in the process of massacring your family, you’re not harming life—you’re protecting it. And if your country’s government is hell bent on the destruction of all living things to serve its elitist interests, then you ought to do anything within your means to stop it—including acts of violence. You can do as much "harm" to other living things through pacifism as you can through blood-letting, and, in some cases, the latter option serves the greater good. That's obvious. Defensive violence is not the same as an act of aggression. Sometimes the bully really won't leave you alone until you fight back.
During the Vietnamese War, Buddhist monks were known to set themselves on fire as an act of protest (click here for a picture:flaming buddhist). Onlookers marveled at how serenely they bore the flames, never grimacing, never breaking their postures, never screaming out in pain. Now, I’m not necessarily endorsing their methods—there are other ways to be heard--but torching yourself for a cause does say something about commitment and sacrifice—and about lack of ego. Nevertheless, it’s also a violent act—a violent act AND a loving act. In the words of their fellow Buddhists “…they [monks and nuns] had been driven to take the stand they had by their profound compassion for their suffering people, and by the fact that there was literally no one else who could speak for the war-weary people and their longing for peace.” So this very clear act of harming another living thing—the actor’s self,in this instance—was not seen as a violation of the First Precept. As Thich Nhat Hanh explained, "the compassionate intent of self-immolation overshadows the argument that it’s harmful". In sum, acting lovingly trumps acting violently—it trumps the ideological precept.
With that in mind, we can’t, if we’re serious about struggling with and for the oppressed, rule out violence as a means to further our resistance. Acting violently doesn’t mean “you’ll become just like them.” You’ll become just like them when you act out of the same egoistic mindset that they do—when you act selfishly instead of lovingly, or, when you act in obedience to a principle or precept, instead of from the heart. That’s it. No need for a bunch of philosophizing here. And I’m not saying that you MUST act violently. Maybe that’s not your path. I’m simply saying that we can’t rule it out.
Okay, now back to my dream. I don’t think it was telling me to pick up my gun and head for the jungles in Chiapas. The reason I bring up the issue of violence is to show how easy it is to retreat into passive, escapist, death-loving pseudo action—to take the leap from the tower instead of to bear life in its entirety. Unquestioned and unwavering obedience to any principle or law, even a principle or law of non-violence, is an act of submission and escape—not love. As I’ve stated in other entries (Action and Art, On Instinct and Intelligence), when you follow principle you inevitably make actions secondary to concepts. (To reiterate what I said in Action and Art: Instead of being in the act of loving someone, you "fall in love" or "find love". The principle--of love, in this case--becomes the subject of the action.) That's what principles do—they exalt themselves and objectify their followers. If you have a principle, you don't need to be responsible for your behavior, because you're just following a code. And codes also take emotion out of your decision making; they suggest that you can reach a moral decision by adhering to an abstract rule, excluding all other factors. You don't have to feel anything—or think anything, for that matter—and you don't have to take any risks; you get to maintain your unearthly purity. Principles also imply that words are richer than experience, an idea that Buddhism does a good job of debunking.
In a nutshell, what I think my dream was telling me is that there is no refuge from love. But maybe love isn’t the best word choice in this case. Maybe a better choice—one less imbued with sentimentalism—is responsibility. Existentialism 101—you and only you—not God, not a precept, not an institution, not an ideology, not your Mommy and Daddy—are responsible for your actions, and you alone have to bear and recognize that responsibility. You have to bear it when it costs you friendships or romantic interludes, when you lose sleep or when the anxiety becomes so intense that you contemplate suicide. And the only way to bear the full weight of life's responsibility—to be fully aware and fully committed—is to not be bounded by the inferno that surrounds us—to live within the flames but not be imprisoned by them. And the only way to accomplish that (gonna get sappy again) is through loving others. That means accepting our mutual dependence and realizing that you can’t, by yourself, escape suffering. It means that you can't ever find solitude. Bodhisattva like, you have to live within the inferno for the sake of the living world. You can’t escape your responsibility—not even in your dreams.
****
"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."
Italo Calvino Invisible Cities
tags:
anarchist
buddhism
Colola Beach
This is where I'll be throughout the month of February:Colola Beach, Mexico
Check out the thatch hut where I'll be sleeping!
Check out the thatch hut where I'll be sleeping!
Monday, January 09, 2006
Letters of Support
If anyone wants to write letters of support to the activists arrested on Dec. 7, the information is listed below. Don't expect a response, but I know the letters are greatly appreciated.
Here's a link about the story:
arrests
*Darren Thurston #701415
*Multnomah County Inverness Jail
11540 NE Inverness Dr.
Portland, OR 97220
*
Daniel McGowan #1407167*
Lane County Jail
101 W 5th Ave
Eugene, OR 97401
USA
*Chelsea Gerlach #1308678*
Lane County Jail
101 W 5th Ave
Eugene, OR 97401
USA
*Kevin Tubbs #1213751*
Lane County Jail
101 W 5th Ave
Eugene, OR 97401
USA
.
PS: My cousin Ron also has a blog--lots of thoughtful, intelligent entries here (including a critique of my blog). Well worth the read.
Here's a link about the story:
arrests
*Darren Thurston #701415
*Multnomah County Inverness Jail
11540 NE Inverness Dr.
Portland, OR 97220
*
Daniel McGowan #1407167*
Lane County Jail
101 W 5th Ave
Eugene, OR 97401
USA
*Chelsea Gerlach #1308678*
Lane County Jail
101 W 5th Ave
Eugene, OR 97401
USA
*Kevin Tubbs #1213751*
Lane County Jail
101 W 5th Ave
Eugene, OR 97401
USA
.
PS: My cousin Ron also has a blog--lots of thoughtful, intelligent entries here (including a critique of my blog). Well worth the read.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
I know I’m going to lose a lot of street cred with my anarchists pals, but I have to come clean—I love to ski. I know the resorts are bad for the environment, and I completely support the ELFers who fire bombed the resort here in Co. (two of whom, by the way, have been arrested now. If you want to write them your support, see the above entry). But if I could have my druthers, I’d like ski resorts to be one of the last vestiges of civilization to come down.
This year I bought what’s called The Five Mountain Pass. For $360, I can ski year round at five different resorts. That’s a pretty good deal. Yesterday was my third time up, and the first time I spent the whole day on the black diamonds. It was great! I’m skiing as well as I’ve ever skied in my life—in spite of an almost ten year lay off and a body that’s well past its athletic peak. Part of the reason it’s so fun is that I’m not as competitive as I was when I was younger, and skiing doesn’t reward competitiveness (unless you’re a racer, I guess). If I try to show off or even if I try to ski better, then I fall apart. The only time I ski well is when I shut my mind off and just go. If I look down the mountain and think: “Damn, that’s pretty steep”, then I fall apart. If I look over my shoulder and see another skier I want to outdo, I fall apart. If I get lazy and expect things to just happen naturally, I fall apart. But if I focus without thinking—I know that sounds contradictory—if I block out every distraction except my line down the hill, then I ski the hell out of every bump and cranny I touch. And it's effortless. And then if I think: “I’m skiing the hell out of every bump and cranny I touch,” I fall apart.
I think there’s a lesson there that goes beyond skiing.
This year I bought what’s called The Five Mountain Pass. For $360, I can ski year round at five different resorts. That’s a pretty good deal. Yesterday was my third time up, and the first time I spent the whole day on the black diamonds. It was great! I’m skiing as well as I’ve ever skied in my life—in spite of an almost ten year lay off and a body that’s well past its athletic peak. Part of the reason it’s so fun is that I’m not as competitive as I was when I was younger, and skiing doesn’t reward competitiveness (unless you’re a racer, I guess). If I try to show off or even if I try to ski better, then I fall apart. The only time I ski well is when I shut my mind off and just go. If I look down the mountain and think: “Damn, that’s pretty steep”, then I fall apart. If I look over my shoulder and see another skier I want to outdo, I fall apart. If I get lazy and expect things to just happen naturally, I fall apart. But if I focus without thinking—I know that sounds contradictory—if I block out every distraction except my line down the hill, then I ski the hell out of every bump and cranny I touch. And it's effortless. And then if I think: “I’m skiing the hell out of every bump and cranny I touch,” I fall apart.
I think there’s a lesson there that goes beyond skiing.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
other blogs
On my last post, edjog left an interesting comment about how heroic or noble action depends, in large part, on how you feel at the moment--whether you slept well the night before, etc. He's got a pretty cool site at: edjog. Check it out. My friend Lisa also informed me that she has a blog. You can check that out at: lisa My Brother-in-Law's blog is: trav And my friend Lorraine is at: lorraine
More to come.
More to come.
Monday, January 02, 2006
new year blahs
I've almost run out of money. I took the semester off in order to travel and ski, but didn't expect my savings to dry up so quickly. It didn't help that I bought a new car and put $4500 down when I could've put down ... well, zero, but that's another matter. As things stand right now, I need five to seven hundred dollars before I leave for Mexico--and that's what I'm thinking about as 2006 begins. I hate thinking about practical shit like this!!!!!
It's not only that, but when I stress over trivialities like this (and it is trivial; all I have to do is pay the withdrawal penalty on my CD, and I'm covered), every other area of my life seems to plummet. Right now, I'm feeling like a complete waste of space--like everything I've ever done in my life is worthless. I'm thinking about what a crummy activist I make. If this is as well as I handle minor stresses, how will I react to being imprisoned for resistance activities or putting my life on the line for what I believe?
It's not only that, but when I stress over trivialities like this (and it is trivial; all I have to do is pay the withdrawal penalty on my CD, and I'm covered), every other area of my life seems to plummet. Right now, I'm feeling like a complete waste of space--like everything I've ever done in my life is worthless. I'm thinking about what a crummy activist I make. If this is as well as I handle minor stresses, how will I react to being imprisoned for resistance activities or putting my life on the line for what I believe?
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Contradictions
Sound of the Silent Mystics
Oh mind, let me in—
Into the deep, dark, din
Of my Oblivion--
Into the sound of the silent mystics.
Conceal me in its depths
That I might no more be left
The vain shapes my eyes beget
Or the faces I used to dream of.
Let me find no more truth in love—
In unions fated from above—
But in the sound of the silent mystics.
Let me think no more on where I’ve been
Now—now that I am comfortably within
The deep dark din of my Oblivion.
In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as 'dazzling obscurity,' 'whispering silence,' 'teeming desert,' are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth.
William James (The varieties of religious experience)
Do I sound contradictory? I am much, I am many, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman
Oh mind, let me in—
Into the deep, dark, din
Of my Oblivion--
Into the sound of the silent mystics.
Conceal me in its depths
That I might no more be left
The vain shapes my eyes beget
Or the faces I used to dream of.
Let me find no more truth in love—
In unions fated from above—
But in the sound of the silent mystics.
Let me think no more on where I’ve been
Now—now that I am comfortably within
The deep dark din of my Oblivion.
In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as 'dazzling obscurity,' 'whispering silence,' 'teeming desert,' are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth.
William James (The varieties of religious experience)
Do I sound contradictory? I am much, I am many, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Action and Art
This morning I watched a docudrama about the Rwandan genocide. In one scene a Huntu man, loyal to “the party”, is stopped at a roadblock and made to watch his Tutsis wife and their children being slaughtered in front of him; afterwards, the killers let him pass. Another scene has a group of school girls being mowed down in mass because they stood together and refused to give up the Tutsis among them. In both episodes I was brought to tears and driven to contemplate what my own behavior would have been under the same circumstances. In both cases I determined that I would’ve acted heroically. I would’ve given my life (with a fight, of course) to show solidarity with the others and hopefully reveal to my oppressors a little of their inhumanity, thus planting the seeds for change. That said, I don’t think I’m ready, and neither is anyone else, to pin an award for heroism on my chest and congratulate myself for hypothetical bravery and sacrifice. Feeling moved by a movie isn’t the same as being moved by real life—and acting hypothetically isn’t the same as acting in relation to other living things. At the same time, I don’t think life and fiction are completely separate, either. So what does it mean that I felt so moved by this movie, but when the Rwandan genocide was actually taking place I was mostly oblivious to it?
I belong to a theater group which practices elements of what’s called Theater of the Oppressed, a type of interactive theater designed to empower others to see themselves as subjects rather than objects within an imposed political system. Essentially, we try to pose the same kinds of questions I asked myself during the movie—what would you do in this situation and what would that accomplish? More than that, though, we want to show that art isn’t just a packaged reality to be passively accepted but a real “thing” to respond to and accept responsibility for—as the expression of a subject interacting with other subjects. As Samuel Beckett said, “it isn’t about something, it is the thing itself!”
In contrast, you have pornography. I read an interview of Susan Griffin yesterday, in which she condemned pornography as being deterministic. I quote: “The pornographers are very deterministic. They feel, well this is the way people are and we're just giving them what they need. But in fact that's not at all true. The culture is a human creation and we can make choices in what kind of culture we create, and culture has a profound effect on behavior.” I also found an excerpt from the book she was being interviewed about (Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge against Nature) in which she says: “And let us remember finally that we cannot choose to have both Eros and pornography; we must choose between beauty and silence. (p. 249)” James Joyce distinguishes between art and pornography by claiming that art arrests the mind while pornography stimulates it. I think this is true. Moreover, I think pornography kills emotion while art heightens and at the same time transcends it. Beauty (in art or in nature) makes me feel more alive and more eager to take action—not action to satisfy a craving but action motivated by a feeling of relationship to and dependence on other living things—a feeling of thankfulness. To paraphrase Joyce, beauty enables me to see a thing as the thing that it is that can be no other thing or to see the other as autonomous and separate from myself, yet necessary to my existence. It makes me want to “act lovingly” as opposed to falling in love or giving love. It places the behavior, as opposed to the principle or concept, as the subjective essence. Pornography, on the other hand, turns experience into an object. It locks the experience down, pigeonholes it, defines it, takes away its freedom and determines it to be something. It suggests that your desires are determined rather than made, and that your desires are a part of you, when in fact they’re by definition separate and other and can never be possessed. In summary, art empowers us and makes us account for our freedom while pornography determines (makes us all the same—at one with the universe) and manipulates us.
But maybe I’m oversimplifying. Is the docudrama I saw on the Rwandan genocide artistic or pornographic? Or neither? On one hand it stimulated and made me want to do something. It prompted this writing for one (if you can call that doing). But I’m not so sure it was the movie that prompted me to write this or the discomfort I felt knowing that I could be so moved by a film when all around me real life tragedies are going on that I’m unaware of and unmoved by. Is art a replacement for experience? By vicariously experiencing these people’s sufferings am I protecting myself from them—denying responsibility for them? In art, aren’t we primarily living in the past or the future—in our imaginations instead of our hearts? Aren’t we eliminating risk from our experiences? I’m wondering if art doesn’t help us maintain our purity in the world by presenting us with clear-cut decisions which don’t require compromise.
While I’m writing this, there’s a movie called Speak playing on TV. I’ve seen it before and, like the docudrama on Rwanda, it moved me to tears several times. Speak is a pretty cheesy movie, though, and hardly what I’d intuitively call art. The bad guys are clear-cut stereotypical villains and the good guys are clear-cut stereotypical heroes and the victims are clear-cut stereotypical victims. And I think the docudrama on Rwanda is probably closer in substance and style to Speak than it is to Hamlet or War and Peace. The villains in both movies are easy to hate, and the choices represented in both movies are the kinds of choices we’d all like to have in real life, but can’t. Right now I’d like to go out and do something. I’d like to go out and give money to a homeless person, fight alongside a freedom fighter in the Third World, make an abused woman feel like she’s a human being—anything besides sitting here in front of my computer and bitching into a word processor. In short, I’d like to act heroically (even if only for appearances sake). But those heroic choices aren’t available. The homeless person I give money to might grow increasingly reliant on the generosity of others and view him or herself with less and less respect. The freedom fighter might use my assistance to replace one repressive regime with another. The abused woman might see my concern as yet another manipulation or come on. So how can I act in a way that really communicates who I am or want to be (and heroic isn’t how I really want to be but an egoistic fantasy, but that’s another subject)? Through art?
Doesn’t real life and real freedom require that we sully ourselves—that we act period instead of for the sake of principle? Doesn’t art preserve principle? Preserve our dignity and our selves as objects? In that sense, isn’t all art pornographic? Or can art avoid objectification by calling attention to itself as art, by maintaining its ambiguity and declaring itself as behavior rather than dogma? There is, naturally, an obvious difference between Deep Throat and Speak—between pornography and cheesy but well intentioned movies, that is. And there’s even a bigger difference between Sade (educated porn but still porn) and Shakespeare or Dante or Emily Bronte or Jane Austen or Rembrandt or Bergman or Bach. I think pornography deadens but art enriches. I think art enhances awareness and immanence. At the same time, it memorializes and kills. It replaces reality with language and ideology. It oversimplifies and delays action. It encourages myth and fantasy. And if we lived in a pure perfect world then there might not be any need for it, but that isn’t the world we live in. And if we want to live in the actual world, we have to tolerate ambiguity and imperfection and compromise. We have to pollute our images and we have to be willing to take risks. So art isn’t perfect, but if it empowers people to take action and to better appreciate natural beauty, as I think it often does, then it matters, even if in turn it risks the abstraction of real life. Art isn’t our salvation but neither is it our ruin. Some art works are more empowering than others and some works of pornography are less degenerate than others. If the world we live in is artificial then maybe it’s necessary to use artifice to get us out of that world, no matter how simplistic or even emotionally manipulative the art form might be. Art that exposes our cultural assumptions—that lifts the veil we cover nature with—that transforms us—is valuable and empowering. A docudrama reminding me of a genocide that took place while I was alive to help prevent it may not be Shakespeare but it is art and it is something that matters—and so is writing about it … I guess … maybe….
*****
There's no such thing as a compassionate person who doesn't act compassionate, as a thoughtful person who can't articulate her thoughts, or a villian who doesn't participate in acts of villiany. We are what we do. Period. Actions beget principles, not the other way around. And the same goes for emotions. If you don't have a heart, act as if you do, and you'll have one. Fail to act, and you'll be left with nothing except your purity.
*****
To know and not to act is not to know.
Ancient Chinese proverb
I belong to a theater group which practices elements of what’s called Theater of the Oppressed, a type of interactive theater designed to empower others to see themselves as subjects rather than objects within an imposed political system. Essentially, we try to pose the same kinds of questions I asked myself during the movie—what would you do in this situation and what would that accomplish? More than that, though, we want to show that art isn’t just a packaged reality to be passively accepted but a real “thing” to respond to and accept responsibility for—as the expression of a subject interacting with other subjects. As Samuel Beckett said, “it isn’t about something, it is the thing itself!”
In contrast, you have pornography. I read an interview of Susan Griffin yesterday, in which she condemned pornography as being deterministic. I quote: “The pornographers are very deterministic. They feel, well this is the way people are and we're just giving them what they need. But in fact that's not at all true. The culture is a human creation and we can make choices in what kind of culture we create, and culture has a profound effect on behavior.” I also found an excerpt from the book she was being interviewed about (Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge against Nature) in which she says: “And let us remember finally that we cannot choose to have both Eros and pornography; we must choose between beauty and silence. (p. 249)” James Joyce distinguishes between art and pornography by claiming that art arrests the mind while pornography stimulates it. I think this is true. Moreover, I think pornography kills emotion while art heightens and at the same time transcends it. Beauty (in art or in nature) makes me feel more alive and more eager to take action—not action to satisfy a craving but action motivated by a feeling of relationship to and dependence on other living things—a feeling of thankfulness. To paraphrase Joyce, beauty enables me to see a thing as the thing that it is that can be no other thing or to see the other as autonomous and separate from myself, yet necessary to my existence. It makes me want to “act lovingly” as opposed to falling in love or giving love. It places the behavior, as opposed to the principle or concept, as the subjective essence. Pornography, on the other hand, turns experience into an object. It locks the experience down, pigeonholes it, defines it, takes away its freedom and determines it to be something. It suggests that your desires are determined rather than made, and that your desires are a part of you, when in fact they’re by definition separate and other and can never be possessed. In summary, art empowers us and makes us account for our freedom while pornography determines (makes us all the same—at one with the universe) and manipulates us.
But maybe I’m oversimplifying. Is the docudrama I saw on the Rwandan genocide artistic or pornographic? Or neither? On one hand it stimulated and made me want to do something. It prompted this writing for one (if you can call that doing). But I’m not so sure it was the movie that prompted me to write this or the discomfort I felt knowing that I could be so moved by a film when all around me real life tragedies are going on that I’m unaware of and unmoved by. Is art a replacement for experience? By vicariously experiencing these people’s sufferings am I protecting myself from them—denying responsibility for them? In art, aren’t we primarily living in the past or the future—in our imaginations instead of our hearts? Aren’t we eliminating risk from our experiences? I’m wondering if art doesn’t help us maintain our purity in the world by presenting us with clear-cut decisions which don’t require compromise.
While I’m writing this, there’s a movie called Speak playing on TV. I’ve seen it before and, like the docudrama on Rwanda, it moved me to tears several times. Speak is a pretty cheesy movie, though, and hardly what I’d intuitively call art. The bad guys are clear-cut stereotypical villains and the good guys are clear-cut stereotypical heroes and the victims are clear-cut stereotypical victims. And I think the docudrama on Rwanda is probably closer in substance and style to Speak than it is to Hamlet or War and Peace. The villains in both movies are easy to hate, and the choices represented in both movies are the kinds of choices we’d all like to have in real life, but can’t. Right now I’d like to go out and do something. I’d like to go out and give money to a homeless person, fight alongside a freedom fighter in the Third World, make an abused woman feel like she’s a human being—anything besides sitting here in front of my computer and bitching into a word processor. In short, I’d like to act heroically (even if only for appearances sake). But those heroic choices aren’t available. The homeless person I give money to might grow increasingly reliant on the generosity of others and view him or herself with less and less respect. The freedom fighter might use my assistance to replace one repressive regime with another. The abused woman might see my concern as yet another manipulation or come on. So how can I act in a way that really communicates who I am or want to be (and heroic isn’t how I really want to be but an egoistic fantasy, but that’s another subject)? Through art?
Doesn’t real life and real freedom require that we sully ourselves—that we act period instead of for the sake of principle? Doesn’t art preserve principle? Preserve our dignity and our selves as objects? In that sense, isn’t all art pornographic? Or can art avoid objectification by calling attention to itself as art, by maintaining its ambiguity and declaring itself as behavior rather than dogma? There is, naturally, an obvious difference between Deep Throat and Speak—between pornography and cheesy but well intentioned movies, that is. And there’s even a bigger difference between Sade (educated porn but still porn) and Shakespeare or Dante or Emily Bronte or Jane Austen or Rembrandt or Bergman or Bach. I think pornography deadens but art enriches. I think art enhances awareness and immanence. At the same time, it memorializes and kills. It replaces reality with language and ideology. It oversimplifies and delays action. It encourages myth and fantasy. And if we lived in a pure perfect world then there might not be any need for it, but that isn’t the world we live in. And if we want to live in the actual world, we have to tolerate ambiguity and imperfection and compromise. We have to pollute our images and we have to be willing to take risks. So art isn’t perfect, but if it empowers people to take action and to better appreciate natural beauty, as I think it often does, then it matters, even if in turn it risks the abstraction of real life. Art isn’t our salvation but neither is it our ruin. Some art works are more empowering than others and some works of pornography are less degenerate than others. If the world we live in is artificial then maybe it’s necessary to use artifice to get us out of that world, no matter how simplistic or even emotionally manipulative the art form might be. Art that exposes our cultural assumptions—that lifts the veil we cover nature with—that transforms us—is valuable and empowering. A docudrama reminding me of a genocide that took place while I was alive to help prevent it may not be Shakespeare but it is art and it is something that matters—and so is writing about it … I guess … maybe….
*****
There's no such thing as a compassionate person who doesn't act compassionate, as a thoughtful person who can't articulate her thoughts, or a villian who doesn't participate in acts of villiany. We are what we do. Period. Actions beget principles, not the other way around. And the same goes for emotions. If you don't have a heart, act as if you do, and you'll have one. Fail to act, and you'll be left with nothing except your purity.
*****
To know and not to act is not to know.
Ancient Chinese proverb
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