I do believe in the power Of Not Shutting Up. This is why I write this blog, to keep my head from exploding. I have been so invaded and colonized by several lecture halls and parliaments worth of ideas, arguments, counterarguments, gratuitous inspiration, questions, and absolute wonder, disgust, admiration, awe and cynical outrage over our imperfectly perfect human condition that writing this blog alone has proven, not to cure me but to give me a healthy way of venting all this mental white noise. It`s kind of like a process of personal harm reduction, or my own intellectual safe-injection site. I am never cured of exploding head syndrome but at least by getting it all out in my daily posts I can carry on living with relative dignity and serenity.
I was hanging out today with my Peruvian friend, whom I sometimes fear I could drive crazy or bore him to extinction in two languages, both English and Spanish but for his admirable patience with me. At one point I had to ask him to please take over the conversation for a while as I was already getting a sore throat from talking nonstop. He replied, that it's because I enjoy talking and I said that that was part of the problem. I never seem to know when to shut up.
I don't pretend to have any answers really. My whole purpose to this blog is to help me to formulate and frame the question and perhaps to thank you, My Gentle Reader, for sharing in this process with me. This blog isn't intended to find answers, rather to ask questions and to keep on asking, not until we get the answers but until we become so lost in the awe and wonder of it all that we can no longer think of asking. But this isn't the only reason why I write. I also want to alert people to the issues of the day, to offer my perspective, but also to open up a forum of thinking and discussion, to get us all to think, to wonder and to ask...in the hopes of the getting of wisdom.
I also hope that we can inspire and encourage one another to become better people, to care more, to love more and to do more, whatever we can, each in our small portion of the universe, to try to make this world a better and kinder place. I also want to inspire us to perceive and experience the beauty that surrounds and fills us always. We so rarely take the time to do this as we hurry back and forth in our frenetic and tormented lives.
Gentle Reader, did you know that you are beautiful? And that the world and universe in which we live are places of beauty? Will you give time to open your eyes and ears, to open your hearts to the wonder of this?
We might never find the answer. But maybe all our asking and questioning will open us up in the best and deepest ways and bring us to the place where the answer will one day find us?
Sunday, 6 November 2016
Saturday, 5 November 2016
The Goodness Of Whole Wheat
I have long been into whole foods. Not the eponymous supermarket change, aka Whole Paycheque, a store where I never go shopping because their prices are simply stratospheric. While we are on the subject I will tell you what also this post is not about: it has nothing to do with the dangers of gluten (scientifically unfounded apart from those with proven allergies and celiac disease), ditto about GMO (research still needed). I am simply writing here about this most wholesome and satisfying food, so much the staff of life in so many parts of the world: whole wheat.
I buy it at the store in a big ten pound bag. Utterly cheap at less than five dollars and totally affordable when, like me, you have to eat on a budget. And doing everything from scratch instead of buying it in a plastic bag in a store is so infinitely satisfying. Here, I will try to explain why.
My mother raised us on whole wheat bread, claiming that white bread, which we craved since it was always on TV and all the other kids' moms gave it to them to eat, was garbage that she wasn't going to feed us. This was during the sixties' when people were still happily eating whatever junk was being milled out to them. Full disclosure here: my mother grew up on a farm and my grandfather was a wheat farmer, so something tells me she already knew something that a lot of kids' moms didn't.
For this reason I think I can thank my mother that even at sixty I have no signs that indicate even creeping diabetes. As a teenager, my mother`s insistence on whole foods was further reinforced by my friend, Big Bird, from whom I learned how to be a vegetarian and enjoy it. On her advice I bought Francis Moore Lappe's famous cookbook and nutritional bible, "Diet For A Small Planet". I bought and ate only whole foods, with an emphasis on whole wheat. I discovered bulgur, found it more satisfying that brown rice, and for years that became a dinner staple of mine until it became hard to get.
I have often baked through the years, always using whole wheat flour. For a few years I was making yeast bread, and then I learned about quick bread. I make this now every Saturday morning, a very easy recipe requiring whole wheat flour, milk, baking powder and oil. There is something infinitely satisfying about baking from scratch. Handling the flour, the dough, shaping and forming it with my hands, then letting it bake till it's done and, oh, the lovely flavour, texture and nutritional goodness that awaits.
I also bake cookies, mostly chocolate chip, with whole wheat of course. Lately I have been making flour tortillas, or if you will, chapattis, which I learned to make in my early twenties. I have invented and adapted my own recipe: a couple of fistfuls of whole wheat flour, with a bit of salt and baking powder, moistened with milk and sunflower oil. I shape and form it in my hands until it is a large flat patty, then cook it in an oiled skillet. It is so satisfying in every way you could imagine.
There is a spiritual dynamic about cooking from scratch using whole foods. I cannot put my finger on it, but I think it is both a way of honouring our Mother Earth while also reverencing our ancestors who for thousands of years prepared and ate food in this manner. It is a way of saying thank you to God with our hands and our bodies and the joyful satisfaction of consuming and nourishing our bodies from the earth's goodness.
And, no, I don't have a microwave. I have no plans of ever buying one, Gentle Reader.
I buy it at the store in a big ten pound bag. Utterly cheap at less than five dollars and totally affordable when, like me, you have to eat on a budget. And doing everything from scratch instead of buying it in a plastic bag in a store is so infinitely satisfying. Here, I will try to explain why.
My mother raised us on whole wheat bread, claiming that white bread, which we craved since it was always on TV and all the other kids' moms gave it to them to eat, was garbage that she wasn't going to feed us. This was during the sixties' when people were still happily eating whatever junk was being milled out to them. Full disclosure here: my mother grew up on a farm and my grandfather was a wheat farmer, so something tells me she already knew something that a lot of kids' moms didn't.
For this reason I think I can thank my mother that even at sixty I have no signs that indicate even creeping diabetes. As a teenager, my mother`s insistence on whole foods was further reinforced by my friend, Big Bird, from whom I learned how to be a vegetarian and enjoy it. On her advice I bought Francis Moore Lappe's famous cookbook and nutritional bible, "Diet For A Small Planet". I bought and ate only whole foods, with an emphasis on whole wheat. I discovered bulgur, found it more satisfying that brown rice, and for years that became a dinner staple of mine until it became hard to get.
I have often baked through the years, always using whole wheat flour. For a few years I was making yeast bread, and then I learned about quick bread. I make this now every Saturday morning, a very easy recipe requiring whole wheat flour, milk, baking powder and oil. There is something infinitely satisfying about baking from scratch. Handling the flour, the dough, shaping and forming it with my hands, then letting it bake till it's done and, oh, the lovely flavour, texture and nutritional goodness that awaits.
I also bake cookies, mostly chocolate chip, with whole wheat of course. Lately I have been making flour tortillas, or if you will, chapattis, which I learned to make in my early twenties. I have invented and adapted my own recipe: a couple of fistfuls of whole wheat flour, with a bit of salt and baking powder, moistened with milk and sunflower oil. I shape and form it in my hands until it is a large flat patty, then cook it in an oiled skillet. It is so satisfying in every way you could imagine.
There is a spiritual dynamic about cooking from scratch using whole foods. I cannot put my finger on it, but I think it is both a way of honouring our Mother Earth while also reverencing our ancestors who for thousands of years prepared and ate food in this manner. It is a way of saying thank you to God with our hands and our bodies and the joyful satisfaction of consuming and nourishing our bodies from the earth's goodness.
And, no, I don't have a microwave. I have no plans of ever buying one, Gentle Reader.
Friday, 4 November 2016
Sympathy For The What!!!?
This is not going to be a post about Donald Trump.
Gentle Reader, we shall wait for five minutes for the yelling, cheering and laughter to die down...
I was simply mentioning that name as an example of what I mean to say about unconditional love. Either it is a beautiful truth or it is a beautiful fiction.
I think it is safe to say that we all want to be loved unconditionally, without threat of the love being withdrawn: that no matter who we are, what we've said or done, who we have hurt, that there is always someone who will still love us, despite all that. We want to be loved regardless of whether we deserve it. We would almost think that we are entitled to being loved this way.
It seems to go without saying that the closest we ever come to being loved unconditionally is by our own mothers. No one else would ever be so committed to our survival, safety and wellbeing. Fathers, not so much. They don't have as much invested in their children. In some cases they might love unconditionally their children but given my experience of my own less than adequate father one could say that I have my doubts.
The question here is very simple: can those of us who are not mothers, or are without children, ever come to love unconditionally? Given that we all carry that need, that gnawing gaping maw hunger for unconditional love, why not try to give it. Easy? Oh, you are so funny! Necessary? Now, that isn't at all funny.
It is all so easy to hate and vilify some while admiring and adulating others. Some, thanks to that wretched chemistry of narcissism and media, set themselves up as easy targets of mass hate. I will mention no names here. But we see only the public image, dreadful, ugly, hateful and fearful. We do not see the child that person once was, nor what they missed in proper nurturing and the limits that are set only by those who really love us as we are. We do not hear the cry to be loved in these people and it is like this with any population that we wish to vilify: the homeless, addicts, criminals, bankers, Conservatives, Republicans, rap "artists", or smokers. We are all generally very selective when it comes to loving others, and for one simple reason: we all suck dreadfully at it. We still feel the lack ourselves, in most cases and are generally too lazy, selfish and fearful to risk ourselves towards those whom we perceive as being undeserving. But you know what, Gentle Reader? The survival of our species, this planet and the biosphere depend upon our mastering, or should I say rather, on our being mastered by, this higher love. We have grown into an international network of quasi-democratic plutocracies and kleptocracies and bureaucratic dictatorships with ever-yawning gulfs of social inequality and this mass carnage of every billionaire for themselves is sending us into a tailspin that may put an end of us even before the next asteroid hits.
We are called to love. Unconditionally. The underserving, who deserve no more and no less than ourselves. It is time to get to work.
Gentle Reader, we shall wait for five minutes for the yelling, cheering and laughter to die down...
I was simply mentioning that name as an example of what I mean to say about unconditional love. Either it is a beautiful truth or it is a beautiful fiction.
I think it is safe to say that we all want to be loved unconditionally, without threat of the love being withdrawn: that no matter who we are, what we've said or done, who we have hurt, that there is always someone who will still love us, despite all that. We want to be loved regardless of whether we deserve it. We would almost think that we are entitled to being loved this way.
It seems to go without saying that the closest we ever come to being loved unconditionally is by our own mothers. No one else would ever be so committed to our survival, safety and wellbeing. Fathers, not so much. They don't have as much invested in their children. In some cases they might love unconditionally their children but given my experience of my own less than adequate father one could say that I have my doubts.
The question here is very simple: can those of us who are not mothers, or are without children, ever come to love unconditionally? Given that we all carry that need, that gnawing gaping maw hunger for unconditional love, why not try to give it. Easy? Oh, you are so funny! Necessary? Now, that isn't at all funny.
It is all so easy to hate and vilify some while admiring and adulating others. Some, thanks to that wretched chemistry of narcissism and media, set themselves up as easy targets of mass hate. I will mention no names here. But we see only the public image, dreadful, ugly, hateful and fearful. We do not see the child that person once was, nor what they missed in proper nurturing and the limits that are set only by those who really love us as we are. We do not hear the cry to be loved in these people and it is like this with any population that we wish to vilify: the homeless, addicts, criminals, bankers, Conservatives, Republicans, rap "artists", or smokers. We are all generally very selective when it comes to loving others, and for one simple reason: we all suck dreadfully at it. We still feel the lack ourselves, in most cases and are generally too lazy, selfish and fearful to risk ourselves towards those whom we perceive as being undeserving. But you know what, Gentle Reader? The survival of our species, this planet and the biosphere depend upon our mastering, or should I say rather, on our being mastered by, this higher love. We have grown into an international network of quasi-democratic plutocracies and kleptocracies and bureaucratic dictatorships with ever-yawning gulfs of social inequality and this mass carnage of every billionaire for themselves is sending us into a tailspin that may put an end of us even before the next asteroid hits.
We are called to love. Unconditionally. The underserving, who deserve no more and no less than ourselves. It is time to get to work.
Thursday, 3 November 2016
Doing Empathy
Not always easy, empathy, which is probably one of the most essential components of friendship. It is always harder to be a friend than to find one. It is always harder to give than receive. Empathy, of course, is not only necessary to maintain friendships and other relationships, it is also indispensable to our ability to get along in community.
We all succeed at failing. We fail as spouses, partners, parents, children, employers, employees, and we fail as friends. This is universal. Even with empathy we almost always stumble when it comes to the crunch. Following an epiphany moment of sublime inspiration we suddenly fall short of living out the lofty ideal we had moments ago committed to.
Without empathy we are nothing. We cannot form healthy, healing relationships without it. We cannot be a couple, a family, a circle of friends, a nurturing workplace, not without empathy.
Empathy is more than a pleasant, moving emotion. It requires work, often hard work. I mentioned in a couple of recent posts that we tend, as flawed humans, to be lazy, fearful and self-interested. These traits seem to never cease to squat over us like fetid, creeping shadows.
Here is what I try to do. Before I go out in the morning I often try to remind myself that before I open the door I will have already failed. I will silently judge the other tenant in the elevator, or I will swear softly at the smoker on the sidewalk who just wrecked my enjoyment of the rain-washed air, no sooner than stepping outside. I will critically appraise the way people at the bus stop are dressed. I will curse the bus driver for not lowering the stoop on a day when my knee reminds me that I am sixty. Knowing these things in advance I can already begin my counter attack. I can remind myself that I am but one of many trying to make my way through the day, trying to cope with life, trying to cope with the hopeless idiots that are other people. I will remind myself that we are all hopeless idiots, that we are all stressed, that we are all scattered across the earth trying to find our home. I can remind myself that we are all in this together. I can be reminded of the sublime power of kindness.
Committing random acts of kindness can help set empathy in motion. Picking up the keys for the young man getting on the bus and handing them to him, as he didn't even know that he dropped them; holding a café door open for a mother with a baby in a buggy, or a father carrying a child; smiling kindly at the stranger whose eyes meet mine while walking on the bridge; giving money to a beggar, but also stopping to hear what kind of day they are having.
It's not a magic bullet. We seem to often, almost always push against our inherent self-centredness, not because we are essentially bad, but because we are essentially good, and we know that the effort of pushing against our selfish nature, which is not our true nature, with God's help, will strengthen that good seedling as it struggles to life from the very core of our being.
Bless you, Gentle Reader.
We all succeed at failing. We fail as spouses, partners, parents, children, employers, employees, and we fail as friends. This is universal. Even with empathy we almost always stumble when it comes to the crunch. Following an epiphany moment of sublime inspiration we suddenly fall short of living out the lofty ideal we had moments ago committed to.
Without empathy we are nothing. We cannot form healthy, healing relationships without it. We cannot be a couple, a family, a circle of friends, a nurturing workplace, not without empathy.
Empathy is more than a pleasant, moving emotion. It requires work, often hard work. I mentioned in a couple of recent posts that we tend, as flawed humans, to be lazy, fearful and self-interested. These traits seem to never cease to squat over us like fetid, creeping shadows.
Here is what I try to do. Before I go out in the morning I often try to remind myself that before I open the door I will have already failed. I will silently judge the other tenant in the elevator, or I will swear softly at the smoker on the sidewalk who just wrecked my enjoyment of the rain-washed air, no sooner than stepping outside. I will critically appraise the way people at the bus stop are dressed. I will curse the bus driver for not lowering the stoop on a day when my knee reminds me that I am sixty. Knowing these things in advance I can already begin my counter attack. I can remind myself that I am but one of many trying to make my way through the day, trying to cope with life, trying to cope with the hopeless idiots that are other people. I will remind myself that we are all hopeless idiots, that we are all stressed, that we are all scattered across the earth trying to find our home. I can remind myself that we are all in this together. I can be reminded of the sublime power of kindness.
Committing random acts of kindness can help set empathy in motion. Picking up the keys for the young man getting on the bus and handing them to him, as he didn't even know that he dropped them; holding a café door open for a mother with a baby in a buggy, or a father carrying a child; smiling kindly at the stranger whose eyes meet mine while walking on the bridge; giving money to a beggar, but also stopping to hear what kind of day they are having.
It's not a magic bullet. We seem to often, almost always push against our inherent self-centredness, not because we are essentially bad, but because we are essentially good, and we know that the effort of pushing against our selfish nature, which is not our true nature, with God's help, will strengthen that good seedling as it struggles to life from the very core of our being.
Bless you, Gentle Reader.
Wednesday, 2 November 2016
Silly Old Rain
Oh, yes, Gentle Reader, I know how much we love to hate this inescapable fact of November on the West Coast. Rain. Cold rain. Cold rain that never stops. Cold rain that never stops soaking us in its cold wet embrace. Miserable. Gross. Nah, it's just rain. Part of life, part of nature, just like the trees, the birds, the flowers. Just like us.
We are part of nature. And the rain is a gift. Have you ever endured a drought? We had quite a nasty one last year. Five months of almost no precipitation. Already in June the lawns were brown and water rationing was being enforced. It felt like the end of the world. They would have been considered normal conditions in California and in parts of the Mediterranean. Here it was an anomaly. And we all began to do the unlikely: begging and praying for rain.
Rain is a gift. It waters the earth, fills the reservoirs and makes things grow. Water is a gift and it is seventy percent of our bodily substance. Yes, we miss the sunshine and battling through the rain and wind can be nasty at times, but what about embracing it? Water is holy. Water is sacred. They have also found that water has a consciousness. I think of it as a visible sign of the Holy Spirit. Holy water. Water of baptism. The living water that quenches the most burning of thirsts.
Of course, I don't expect that all of you, Gentle Reader, are going to see it this way. Some of you are atheists. Remember my advice in yesterday's post. Even if you can't believe in a personal God, or in God at all, try to envision the Highest Good and make that your focus. For those of you who occupy the "spiritual but not religious" camp, for those who are prone to depression, for those who simply cannot cope without sunshine, may I offer a suggestion or two? Look within. Try to think of or visualize one lovely thought that you carry inside. Focus on that thought. Visualize it. Let it grow a smile on your face. Look at the person next to you. Think of them as a child of four, running and jumping in rain puddles, laughing and shrieking with a young child's joy. Imagine yourself as that child. Think of playing and splashing in puddles. Think of ducks. I cannot look at ducks and not smile. Try singing in the rain. Literally. Never mind who hears you. Think of the lush natural beauty that surrounds us. Where does that come from? What sustains it? Colour or paint when you can. Create bright colour. Surround yourself with bright sunny colour. Think of Mexico. Let it form a new smile on your face, then go outside with a good umbrella and footwear, embrace it. Breathe in the fresh, pure, sweet cool air. Stay out for at least half an hour. Go home and make something nice and hot to drink, then phone or send an email to someone to remind them that you care.
We are part of nature. And the rain is a gift. Have you ever endured a drought? We had quite a nasty one last year. Five months of almost no precipitation. Already in June the lawns were brown and water rationing was being enforced. It felt like the end of the world. They would have been considered normal conditions in California and in parts of the Mediterranean. Here it was an anomaly. And we all began to do the unlikely: begging and praying for rain.
Rain is a gift. It waters the earth, fills the reservoirs and makes things grow. Water is a gift and it is seventy percent of our bodily substance. Yes, we miss the sunshine and battling through the rain and wind can be nasty at times, but what about embracing it? Water is holy. Water is sacred. They have also found that water has a consciousness. I think of it as a visible sign of the Holy Spirit. Holy water. Water of baptism. The living water that quenches the most burning of thirsts.
Of course, I don't expect that all of you, Gentle Reader, are going to see it this way. Some of you are atheists. Remember my advice in yesterday's post. Even if you can't believe in a personal God, or in God at all, try to envision the Highest Good and make that your focus. For those of you who occupy the "spiritual but not religious" camp, for those who are prone to depression, for those who simply cannot cope without sunshine, may I offer a suggestion or two? Look within. Try to think of or visualize one lovely thought that you carry inside. Focus on that thought. Visualize it. Let it grow a smile on your face. Look at the person next to you. Think of them as a child of four, running and jumping in rain puddles, laughing and shrieking with a young child's joy. Imagine yourself as that child. Think of playing and splashing in puddles. Think of ducks. I cannot look at ducks and not smile. Try singing in the rain. Literally. Never mind who hears you. Think of the lush natural beauty that surrounds us. Where does that come from? What sustains it? Colour or paint when you can. Create bright colour. Surround yourself with bright sunny colour. Think of Mexico. Let it form a new smile on your face, then go outside with a good umbrella and footwear, embrace it. Breathe in the fresh, pure, sweet cool air. Stay out for at least half an hour. Go home and make something nice and hot to drink, then phone or send an email to someone to remind them that you care.
Tuesday, 1 November 2016
Our Dear Little Death Culture, 7
How are we going to transform our dear little death culture, Gentle Reader? The answer is every bit as challenging as it is simplistic: by changing ourselves. We are our culture and our culture is us. If there is anything wrong with our general values and shared presumptions we need only look in the mirror. That's right. Basic Gandhi. We need to become the change that we desire to see in the world.
Tall order, eh? Makes you feel kind of small and ineffectual. Like the legendary little Dutch boy plugging with his finger the hole in the dyke. I am not going to suggest that we all start attending church. I'm a Christian. I do not attend church. I mentioned in a recent email to a friend that Anglicans (my ex-denomination) seem to believe in this fatuous nonsense about the basic goodness in human nature. Rather we are quite basically flawed and what good or potential thereof we might possess is usually diluted or corrupted by fear, self-interest and laziness.
Our problem, in other words, is in our failure to love.
We don't love ourselves. But we often adore ourselves which is something quite different, because self-worship always means that we are adoring a lie. When we love we are seeking the highest good of the other, even if this other be ourselves. When we love we are seeking to touch and bring to life that which is most essential and most authentic in the other, even if this other be ourselves. This is to say that self-love, healthy self-love, involves truth, a willingness and desire to not believe the lies that we tend to manufacture about ourselves. If this love is genuine then we will become apt pupils ready to learn our true identity from any person and any experience for they are going to be the mirrors that will reflect back to us our true identity.
Ditto for loving others. And we cannot just stop at our immediate family or friends. If we really want to become the change we desire to see in the world then this calls us to love everyone, even those who hate us, even the stranger on the bus or in the grocery lineup. This doesn't give us license to cross any boundaries mind you or to get creepy, but to open ourselves to the revelation of God, of the highest good in that person. And to love that highest good. Even if we cannot see it. Even if there is only evidence to the contrary. That's right, to have faith, to believe into being this image of God in one another.
I don't care, Gentle Reader, if you might happen to be an atheist. You could still envision the Highest Good, whatever that might be, and then connect the dots.
This is no guarantee that anything in our death culture, based as it is on fear, laziness and self-interest, is going to change significantly just because we have decided that we are going to change into people who love. But you know something? There is plenty to suggest, and convincingly, that nothing at all is going to change if we ourselves don't change. Otherwise, as everything we love and value gets flushed down the cosmic toilet as we sit on the ground like terrified children paralyzed by fear and weep and howl in grief, loss and outrage and we have no one to blame but ourselves for our loss because we were too lazy, selfish and fearful to take on the challenge of seeing our hearts change and blossom into life. Because we refused to light that strategic candle while cursing the darkness.
Because we have refused to love!
Tall order, eh? Makes you feel kind of small and ineffectual. Like the legendary little Dutch boy plugging with his finger the hole in the dyke. I am not going to suggest that we all start attending church. I'm a Christian. I do not attend church. I mentioned in a recent email to a friend that Anglicans (my ex-denomination) seem to believe in this fatuous nonsense about the basic goodness in human nature. Rather we are quite basically flawed and what good or potential thereof we might possess is usually diluted or corrupted by fear, self-interest and laziness.
Our problem, in other words, is in our failure to love.
We don't love ourselves. But we often adore ourselves which is something quite different, because self-worship always means that we are adoring a lie. When we love we are seeking the highest good of the other, even if this other be ourselves. When we love we are seeking to touch and bring to life that which is most essential and most authentic in the other, even if this other be ourselves. This is to say that self-love, healthy self-love, involves truth, a willingness and desire to not believe the lies that we tend to manufacture about ourselves. If this love is genuine then we will become apt pupils ready to learn our true identity from any person and any experience for they are going to be the mirrors that will reflect back to us our true identity.
Ditto for loving others. And we cannot just stop at our immediate family or friends. If we really want to become the change we desire to see in the world then this calls us to love everyone, even those who hate us, even the stranger on the bus or in the grocery lineup. This doesn't give us license to cross any boundaries mind you or to get creepy, but to open ourselves to the revelation of God, of the highest good in that person. And to love that highest good. Even if we cannot see it. Even if there is only evidence to the contrary. That's right, to have faith, to believe into being this image of God in one another.
I don't care, Gentle Reader, if you might happen to be an atheist. You could still envision the Highest Good, whatever that might be, and then connect the dots.
This is no guarantee that anything in our death culture, based as it is on fear, laziness and self-interest, is going to change significantly just because we have decided that we are going to change into people who love. But you know something? There is plenty to suggest, and convincingly, that nothing at all is going to change if we ourselves don't change. Otherwise, as everything we love and value gets flushed down the cosmic toilet as we sit on the ground like terrified children paralyzed by fear and weep and howl in grief, loss and outrage and we have no one to blame but ourselves for our loss because we were too lazy, selfish and fearful to take on the challenge of seeing our hearts change and blossom into life. Because we refused to light that strategic candle while cursing the darkness.
Because we have refused to love!
Monday, 31 October 2016
Our Dear Little Death Culture 6
I wasn't sure whether to write about competitiveness or violence. Why not both? One stop shopping. Save a little time. Yes competitiveness, being competitive, team sports, the job market, getting any little thing accomplished when there are hundreds and thousands of others scrabbling to have exactly what you have or what you want.
This is where global capitalism has brought us to. Not really high tech toys in every fanny pack, and not really a high standard of living for everyone. This ruthless unfettered and vicious competitiveness that has unleashed itself like a horde of furies knows no mercy and takes no prisoners. In many major cities throughout North America, especially here in Vancouver, housing costs have been pushed out of reach to everyone but the most wealthy. Everyone wants to live here, especially wealthy foreigners with bags full of money they have come here to launder. This is beginning to change, however with the new foreign home-buyers' tax but still, almost no one can afford to live here now unless they are prepared to live with debt for the rest of their lives.
Capitalism is a form of violence. It leaves people out. Natural selection. We have swallowed the bait and now we are choking on it. Our vilest, most rapacious tendencies have been declared to be virtues and now everyone must be competitive and must out-compete everyone else or perish. This means that all the gifts, the undiscovered potential, the raw beauty of those who are not strong enough to compete must perish, be extirpated.
This land was taken by violence by ruthless industrialists who fattened themselves on foreign Chinese and other Asian labour. We can boast all we want now about diversity. But really, regardless their ethnicity, it is the winner that takes all. The one with the most money. Equality is still our strong suit, but it really helps if you also have a good bank balance and an investment portfolio.
Saying no to greed and its twin ugly children, violence and competitiveness, does not necessarily have to be a death sentence. We struggle together, we rise together and together we conquer. We just need to get our noses out of our smart phones long enough to understand that we are not alone in this war.
This is where global capitalism has brought us to. Not really high tech toys in every fanny pack, and not really a high standard of living for everyone. This ruthless unfettered and vicious competitiveness that has unleashed itself like a horde of furies knows no mercy and takes no prisoners. In many major cities throughout North America, especially here in Vancouver, housing costs have been pushed out of reach to everyone but the most wealthy. Everyone wants to live here, especially wealthy foreigners with bags full of money they have come here to launder. This is beginning to change, however with the new foreign home-buyers' tax but still, almost no one can afford to live here now unless they are prepared to live with debt for the rest of their lives.
Capitalism is a form of violence. It leaves people out. Natural selection. We have swallowed the bait and now we are choking on it. Our vilest, most rapacious tendencies have been declared to be virtues and now everyone must be competitive and must out-compete everyone else or perish. This means that all the gifts, the undiscovered potential, the raw beauty of those who are not strong enough to compete must perish, be extirpated.
This land was taken by violence by ruthless industrialists who fattened themselves on foreign Chinese and other Asian labour. We can boast all we want now about diversity. But really, regardless their ethnicity, it is the winner that takes all. The one with the most money. Equality is still our strong suit, but it really helps if you also have a good bank balance and an investment portfolio.
Saying no to greed and its twin ugly children, violence and competitiveness, does not necessarily have to be a death sentence. We struggle together, we rise together and together we conquer. We just need to get our noses out of our smart phones long enough to understand that we are not alone in this war.
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