Suffering as a choice

Here is what I notice about myself and my decision making process. Well, an example will probably work best.

I'm sitting in the car. I have just finished grocery shopping. In the car are, among other things, half of a sandwich and a box of generic pop-tarts. I am not hungry. The sandwich tastes really good and so do the pop-tarts. I notice that I am not hungry and that I do not want to eat anything. I decide to eat something anyway. I eat one pop-tart. Then I eat the sandwich. Then I eat the other pop-tart. Now my stomach is uncomfortably full. I hear the thought, well, I might as well finish the box of pop-tarts since I am already past full and I will have to eat them sometime anyway.

So, what I see in this example is something that pervades my life. I see the choice that will lead to happierness, and I do not take it. I consistently chose pain and suffering. Not in large ways necessarily, although I sometimes do that too, but in these small ways, every day, I chose to suffer rather than to respect the limitations of the form.

When I came to human design I knew this, and it is this tendency that I hoped to heal. That I could chose what is correct instead of what leads to suffering, but it seems like this tendency has gotten worse. It used to be that sometimes I would chose what felt right, and sometimes I would chose what I "wanted." Now I consistently chose what I "want" instead of what feels right. It's like my mind is trying to rebel against the increased awareness by proving that it has power whenever it can.

Though, it is also entirely possible that in the past I was simply unaware of how often I chose to suffer and that what is happening now is an increased awareness of suffering that will lead to a decrease in suffering overall. Time will tell.




Photo by Marc Pilaro

Tribute to Harvey Milk

Just a small tribute to Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the United States, though he stood for much more than that. He was a decent politician, which is rare, and he acted as a voice for disenfranchised people of all kinds.

Somewhere in Des Moins or San Antonio there's a young gay person who all the sudden realizes she or he is gay knows that if the parents find out, they'll be tossed out of the house, the classmates will taunt the child and the Anita Bryants and John Briggs are doing their bit on tv and that child has several options: staying in the closet, suicide. Then one day that child might open up a paper that says 'Homosexual Elected in San Francisco' and there are two new options. One option is to go to California... or stay in San Antiono and fight. Two days after I was elected I got a phone call. The voice was quiet young, it was from Altuna Pennsylvania and the person said, thanks. You've got to elect gay people so that that young child and the thousands and thousands like that young child know that there's hope for a better world, that there's hope for a better tomorrow. Without hope, not only for gays but for balcks, for asians, disabled, and for seniors, the us's, the us's, without hope the us's give up. I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. and you and you and you, you gotta give 'em hope.

Check out the Milk Foundation for more good stuff. Click here to listen to the hope speech.


unfortunately in my wanderings I lost the tab where I found this photo. 

Maybe Sartre was on to something...

mmm...

We really are stuck here in these mechanics. I am reminded of it every day that I spend living with my mom.

The first twenty-five years I spent with my family I spent in relative silence. I would participate in the fun stuff, but I never participated in family arguments, and I never intervened when I thought I could be helpful. I saw my mom being mean to my dad. I saw my dad complaining about it and never standing up for himself. I saw my mom and my sister say terrible things to each other.

Everyone adored me. They confided in me, I heard their perspectives and I was "such a great listener." The thing is that it was all sort of a lie. I was holding down everything that I was seeing. No one ever asked for my perspective and I never offered it, but the bitterness that developed in me was palpable. Why didn't they ever ask me what I thought? Why didn't they ever want to know what was happening in my life?

Finally at age 23 I exposed myself. I told them everything. I told them what I thought of each of them and what I thought about the way we interacted with each other. No one disagreed. But they stopped telling me how great I was, and what a great listener I was. In the meantime, they kept being mean to each other in the same ways. Year after year I watched it, tried to point it out, tried to get them to talk to each other, tried to confront them about what I saw, and every time I did things got worse, and I got more committed to transforming the situation.

Then I met human design and finally it all became clear. Ah! I'm a projector. I can see the things I seem to be able to see. I'm not crazy! But I can't share it with people until they ask me. And because I'm a 5/1, my family never will.

Since then it has just been years of dealing with the fall-out. I apologize, but it kills me. It feels like I'm lying to myself, like I'm stabbing myself in the back. I am right! I think while I tell them I am wrong. But there's no explaining it. They can't ever understand what it's like to be a projector. But ah! It's so hard to let go! It feels like a cruel joke - to be able to see what we see and to be sentenced to do nothing about it until the apes recognize that we have something to offer. Sure, they're beautiful apes, but fools. They are all fools.

It reminds me of No Exit, by Sartre. In fact, it is making me reconsider these existentialists and their brilliance. Three people are in a room. They are all dead. Garcin is the newest to be dropped off in the room. They know only that they cannot leave the room for all of eternity, and that this is hell. Otherwise, there is nothing. The three dead people begin to argue. Finally Inez understands something.

INEZ ... Ah, I understand now. I know why they've put us together.
GARCIN I advise you to - to think twice before you say any more.
INEZ Wait! You'll see how simple it is. Childishly simple. Obviously there aren't any physical torments - you agree, don't you? And yet we're in hell. And no one else will come here. We'll stay in this room together, the three of us, for ever and ever... In short, there's someone absent here, the official torturer.
GARCIN... I'd noticed that.
INEZ It's obvious what they're after - an economy of man-power -- or devil-power, if you prefer. The same idea as in the cafeteria, where customers serve themselves.
ESTELLE What ever do you mean?
INEZ I mean that each of us will act as torturer of the two others
[There is a short silence while they digest this information.]
GARCIN [gently] No, I shall never be your torturer. I wish neither of you any harm, and I've no concern with you. None at all. So the solutions easy enough; each of us stays put in his or her corner and takes no notice of the others. You here, you here, and I there. Like soldiers at our posts. Also, we mustn't speak. Not one word. That won't be difficult; each of us has plenty of material for self-communings. I think I could stay ten thousand years with only my thoughts for company.

Their attempts at not torturing each other are obviously failures, but it's funny to see the way that just them being who they are, each of the them being themselves tortures the others. Funny in a very dark way. Funny the way that I feel now when I realize that I am in that same situation. That I am Garcin, trying, now that I have discovered the mechanics of it all, to get out, thinking that by understanding it I could change it. And slowly, SLOWLY surrendering to the reality of the limitations of human interaction, to the fact that there is no exit.

I just can't help but continue to wish to dream of a time when we could understand each other. When we can be separate but also know each others' experiences. Maybe that wish is my own private Inez or Estelle. Or maybe that's exactly what human design promises. Guess I'll just have to wait and see. For now, the bitterness encompasses me. The thing is that if anyone valued what I had to offer from this bitterness it would only feed the bitterness, and the feeling that everyone else had owed me. It's not from here that I can find resignation. I have to resign first, and that's a bitter pill to swallow!


photo from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NoExit_cover.gif

Skin as Thin

Explorations in focus and color and light

Experimenting Noticing

I recently listened to the first class of Radical Deconditioning again. It's a class that I took in the winter with Leela and Dharmen Swann-Herbert. I have an all left oriented mind, so it's good for me to listen to things - classes, lectures - more than once. I tend to miss a lot the first time. The last time I took the class I was dating Devin and part way through it he broke up with me. It was certainly the most difficult breakup I had ever experienced, and part of my coping strategy had been to try to prove that I was really good at noticing.

Now I am not taking the class with anyone. I'm just listening to it and doing the exercises on my own. The first class is all about the transformative power of observation and experimentation. This is really the foundation for what Leela and Dharmen have to teach (or so it seems to me).

Their claim is that there is nothing we can do to get our minds to surrender to our lives. There is nothing we can do to get our minds to trust our lives. (Which leaves me wondering why Dharmen was yelling at me "you have to trust life!" the last time we spoke, but it seems everyone is full of contradictions.) The only thing we CAN do, they say, is to observe our life - to observe the mind, to observe our body, to observe the world outside of us, and to observe the things that we say. Observing, they say, is the key to transforming our lives. The transformation happens on it's own, the surrender happens on its own - but the observation is something we can do.

My friend Ashley came to visit about a week ago. It was hard to have him here because I am lost in a fog. He told me about a game. You sit in one spot in the woods and you sit there until you see a hair. You will always see a hair if you wait long enough. The trick is that you can't be looking for it. When you start looking for it, you don't find it. If you can relax your mind and let the hair present itself to you, it will. If you look, nope.

So I was out for a hike yesterday (on account of having met the girl in the tree the day before) and I found myself on someone else's property. I heard some folks coming my way. It was dense woods and so I felt safely hidden, but didn't want to take any chances, so I sat down to wait for them to pass. With nothing else to do I thought I would try the hair game.

First thing I thought was, what if I don't find a hair? am I going to be really disappointed in myself if I have to give up? maybe I shouldn't make this kind of commitment. Am I just setting myself up? Then I relaxed, remembered what Ashley said - that you only find the hairs when you're not looking for it - and I started to adjust my seated position when lo and behold - a hair. Then another.

Cool!

It was easy. The first time. But I found myself once again resting in the woods and once again the thought came through - maybe I'll try the hair game while I sit here. This time I was really scared. The chances of me succeeding twice in a row seemed slim. My mind was sort of sure that it wouldn't happen, but it was also really excited by the idea that it would. I remembered what Ashley said - that you only find the hairs when you're not looking - but it didn't help this time; I couldn't stop looking.

What happened next was illuminating. I watched as my mind tried to get itself to surrender. I watched it try to trick itself into thinking it had surrendered. I watched it get mad at itself for not being able to surrender. I watched it try to trick itself into surrendering. And then, finally in desperation, I saw it give up completely. And then I found a hair.

What was illuminating was not so much the truth of Ashley's statement, but the struggle that my mind had with accepting the truth of it, and implementing it. It's the same struggle that I have with my life. During the hair game I got to see on a micro scale what is happening in my mind in relationship to my life on the macro scale.

I got to see it. heh, but that's all. I just got to see it. There's nothing else that I get. I don't get to change it. I don't get to teach anyone about it. I don't get to convince other people that it's important. I don't even know if it is important.

I have spent my life exploring this consciousness and I can't say that I have found much reward in that investigation. I just haven't found anything else yet that seems more worth doing.

So, I've been watching. For the last few days.

Most of the time my mind is able to convince me that it's dramas and complaints are legitimate. Often times I'm able to convince other people too - that part scares me. It means I am responsible for what I say. I can't count on other people to call me out. I thought I could. At least, that's what John made me think. I mean, that's what he told me he could do. I thought that was the key to healing my relationship with my life - having someone else tell me when I was lying to myself, but there's no one else who can see through me the way I can see through myself. That's not what a projector is for - to tell you what's true and what's not true for you. I don't know what we're here for, but right now it seems silly to me to think that we are here to help generators live their lives as themselves. It seems to me that we are here to guide large groups of generators in large scale projects. But maybe that's just this projector.

Sorry, there's still a lot of anti-John left in me.

{There's a female cardinal sitting on the back porch. She is just sitting there, and has been for some time now. It's rare that the birds sit there so still, usually they are eating, or they are in the trees. Oop, there she goes, down to the feeder. Bright orange beak.}

So, I don't know. Things seem like they are getting more honest every day. And there is no Devin now in which to frame that progress. No one to prove things to. No one to try to hold onto. Just myself. Which seems good.




cool photo of brain rays: http://www.metaphysics-for-life.com/mind-over-matter.html

What is surrender?

Warning: Nihilism ahead

I've been seeing the connections lately between what Dillard has to say about the joke in life - that we are sewn into it like so much corn, and that being sewn into it makes us subject to it - and some of the epic stories that have graced the movie theaters in my lifetime: the Matrix and Hunger Games keep popping up.

What strikes me is that these movies give us hope - like Dr. Snow in the Hunger Games points out - but it is a false hope. In the Matrix, Neo gets out of the Matrix, and then goes on to fight the bad guys who are keeping everyone else hooked up to the big joke. In the Hunger Games, where everyone is pitted against each other and everyone is on their own (much as in life), the heroine beats the game by threatening suicide, and she is able to save someone else's life. She then goes on to rebel against the people who control the game and all of society.

But in real life there is no one controlling the game and there is no one keeping us connected to an artificial matrix. The matrix we are in is real, and we cannot get out of it. We can commit suicide, but even this is only a temporary release from the struggle. We are stuck here, "spread into matter, connected by cells right down to our feet, and those feet likely to fell us on a tree root, or jam us on a stone." Not just possibly, but likely. And that's the part that is hard to understand and hard to accept. 

We are pitted against each other. We are alone, and yet we want to be united. We can make alliances or we can create unions with another sorry soul, but these are only useful tools for advancing our chances at survival. We are in bodies that are designed to survive through manipulation, cheating, and lying. We are not designed to want to be here. We are designed to want what we are not. We can only be liberated from suffering by accepting that these feet are likely to fell us on a tree root, and to see life as a joke instead of a symphony. We are liberated through surrendering not just to our own incompetence, but to our immorality as well, to our selfishness and to the endless cycles of living and dying, and to pragmatism.

Some more Spring photos

Rooting for Australopithecus

Reading about the evolution of man and it's hard to regard the world with the same blasé attitude. Plumbing, toasters, maple syrup, potted plants, bird feeders, the cloud, we have far exceeded the expectations of our ancestors, if indeed they had such things as expectations.

To this homo sapien sapien, fascination seems to be a common experience. Fascination with the material world. And the question 'why' is one she loves to ponder - it seems to illuminate to her the interconnectedness of all things, and this interconnectedness... I would call it "important" to her. She is "inspired" by it.

Skin, for example, there it is, on every mammal. It works to allow what is happening to happen. And what is happening? I cannot know, but I can know that I can't know. I can know that I only see a small spectrum of what is happening. Knowing this does not change it. Even with infra-red glasses, I am seeing information translated into the language that my eyes can understand. I can know it's there, but I cannot know what is there, only that it seems to be something that is not a part of "me." Skin.

The senses, which allow experience to happen. It is not enough for this creature to want to understand what is going on - be it seeing infrared, or seeing into the future, she wants to know why she wants to know. What a curious creature she is to be curious about the world, and about herself. What a strange existence to be in a cage, to know that you are in a cage, to want out of the cage, to be able to imagine being something that you are not.

I just wonder if Australopithecus would have been as philosophical. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe that's why she died off.

Night time intruder

Last night I was lying in bed, trying to sleep. My body has been very tired lately, but something seemed to be urging me to get up. I sat up and immediately, some small movement caught my eye. I looked closer out the window and that's when I saw him. He looked like a tiny black bear from where I was, and I had the urge to reach out and hug him. Then I saw what he was up to - holding down the bird with one hand, and shoveling seed in his mouth with the other.

I tapped on the window. He looked up at me and his eyes reflected what little light there was. He paused, then stuck his paw back in, without taking his eyes off of me. I opened the window. He paused again. I said, "hey mr. raccoon, you better get moving," and that's what he did. Turned right around and waddled over to the stairs. I did my own waddle down the stairs and headed out onto the back porch where I heard the unmistakable sounds of scuttling. Brought the feeder inside and slept well.

Hope we wasn't too hungry to sleep well himself.

Despite their absolute adorableness, if anyone who doesn't already know that they can be seriously dangerous is reading this, please don't follow that urge to hug, they're cuter when they're far away.

photo link: http://www.theoilpaintingsaless.com/upimage/201007260156590156_M.jpg

Vast Skin

I'm not sure this poem works, but I can't find a better way to capture the feeling it gives me. I don't know what it means, the edge of my skin, but it seems to make sense to some part of me. It's something like, I look at my own strength and it frightens me. I keep myself small because I am afraid of the vastness that I have seen inside myself. The question, who could be so vast, I love. Because we all are, and because it implies the existence of the witness inside us, who is so often exemplified by wonder and awe.

I did not take this picture and unfortunately, I don't know who did.

New House

Outside Mom's front door

Stuff I noticed while I was outside

Investigations into melancholy

Annie Dillard... We wake up a thousand times a day and laugh.

I wrote this out for a friend a little while back...

I hate to take this out of context, because it's the punch-line in a book I would recommend to most anyone, but particularly to someone as honest as you. This comes from the book I started to read to you the other day. The one that starts... "Every day is a god, each day is god, and holiness holds forth in time." It's the story of a writing professor trying to make sense of existence and god after having spent the day with a girl who was in a plane crash when she that burned her face and neck badly. I guess it's about trying to live with suffering, and that is probably why it resonates deeply with me. My favorite part is in bold.

"She saw me watching her and we exchanged a look, a very conscious and self-conscious look - because we look a bit alike and we both knew it; because she was still short and I grown; because I was stuck kneeling before the cider pail, looking at her sidewise over my shoulder; because she was carrying the cat so oddly, so that she had to walk with her long legs parted; because it was my cat, and she'd dressed it, and it looked like a nun; and because she knew I'd been watching her, and how fondly, all along. We were laughing.

We looked a bit alike. Her face is slaughtered now, and I don't remember mine. It is the best joke there is, that we are here, and fools - that we are sown into time like so much corn, that we are souls sprinkled at random like salt into time and dissolved here, spread into matter, connected by cells right down to our feet, and those feet likely to fell us over a tree root or jam us on a stone. The joke part is that we forget it. Give the mind two seconds alone and it thinks it's Pythagoras. We wake up a thousand times a day and laugh. 

The joke of the world is less like a banana peel than a rake, the old rake in the grass, the one you step on, foot to forehead. It all comes together. In a twinkling. You have to admire the gag for its symmetry, accomplishing all with one right angle, the same right angle which accomplishes all philosophy. One step on the rake and it's mind under matter once again. You wake up with a piece of tree in your skull. You wake up with fruit on your hands. You wake up in a clearing and see yourself, ashamed. You see your own face and it's seven years old and there's no knowing why, or where you've been since. We're tossed broadcast into time like so much grass, some ravening god's sweet hay. You wake up and a plane falls out of the sky." (p. 41-42)

The joke part is that we forget...  This excerpt comes from Holy the Firm.

p.s. I can't believe Annie Dillard named a book For the Time Being because I thought I was the only one who played with that phrase... 

Also p.s., the painting above is one by Dillard titled Summer 1936

http://www.anniedillard.com/

The Corner I'm in: Faith as Nihilism

I recently saw that Contact was playing on AMC. AMC's programming has gone down hill. It used to be nothing but black and whites from early Hollywood. Now it's mostly westerns, with the occasional blockbuster. But I love Contact. So I set my mom's DVR to record it and today I watched it.

I love that movie. The dialogue between science and religion is something any human alive in the Western world today can empathize with. Or maybe I should just speak for myself. I was raised Catholic. I remember distinctly asking a question in third grade, and getting an answer that was vague and allusive. They (anyone who claimed to be Christian of any sort) all went on the "do not trust without investigating first" list. That was the entire adult world where I lived, and a decent chunk of my peers as well.

But as I grew older I was surprised to see that people used science, and turned to science for answers they couldn't find in religion. Myself, I resonated more with art. The ability to create something beautiful, that inspired awe, inspired someone to reflect on the meaning of their own existence, this seemed far closer to answering the questions I had about existence than Mrs. Burn's explanation of the period table of elements. ZZ Packer once wrote, "She felt God most when she was quiet, or when she wondered whether there was a God at all."

Finally, when I was free of highschool (also Catholic), I started wandering. I wasn't looking for anything, except maybe myself. Mostly I wanted to hear different perspectives. I think I was hoping I would find something that resonated with me, some people maybe, who wanted to walk that line between faith and reason, where, it seemed to me that truth was living, always elusive. I might taste it burning in my mouth while I spoke with friends in a coffee shop, but it was never something that could be written down. Almost like truth was always changing, like it evolved as we spoke about it, like the very act of describing, the very act of speaking, and of being, that somehow our existence, our movement through the world shifted it, moved it, that we were inextricably linked not just to the expression of truth but to the universe itself. Like if there was a God, it was this, it was life itself, and that our separateness was just that one entity knowing itself, and knowing separateness.
I had an experience when I was in Dusseldorf. I was walking along the river, the Rhine. It's a big river. It takes a long time to walk across the bridge, and it's got quite a current, a heavy movement to it. So I was staying in Dusseldorf, at a hostel, I was supposed to be traveling around Germany, but Germany was boring me and I had fallen in love with a Czech man in Estonia, so I had decided I would head back that way. But that's not important. That was just the story that I believed in that let me be in Dusseldorf. It was the story I told myself while the other partt of me knew that there was something else I was here for. Which I wasn't thinking about at all as I walked along the river towards the foot bridge that would take me back to my bedroom, but suddenly I felt like I was floating. Almost simultaneously I realized that it was because of the current of the river. I was matching it, almost perfectly, and as my eye caught the periferal view, my mind interpreted the experience almost as if I were floating on the water.

I don't remember the sequence of events that happened after that. What I remember is just these simple things. 1. I became aware, not visual, although that was there too, but physically aware of the boat that was chugging along upstream, against the current. It was the first time in my life that I could feel something that wasn't touching me - the water was like a conduit for my consciousness. The second time that happened it was air that was the conduit (still moist with morning dew). I started to laugh. And I, that's right, I started to laugh and I remembered that Siddhartha had said that he heard the river laughing at him. I suddenly I understood why the river laughed. It wasn't malicious, like I had originally taken it, it was laughing because of how hard we try, when there is no need. The river, as I was experiencing it, was like life, easy, flowing, uncontrollable, and we can either flow in its direction, or we can spend the energy of our existence fighting against it. But it wasn't until I was on the bridge that I saw the tapestry. It seemed to move out in every direction and everything was a part of it. There was nothing that could break free of this fabric, but it wasn't a stationary thing. I knew in every cell of my body that I was and was not at the same time. That I was utterly insignificant, and all the more precious because of it. Mostly I knew that I was held in something so much larger than myself and so much greater than I would ever be able to comprehend.

It was a beautiful experience. And it left me in a very difficult position when I came to conversations about god and about science. I certainly couldn't argue that god didn't exist. I certainly couldn't argue that god did exist. It seemed moot to me. Existence exists, I would say to people, isn't that enough for you?

And I went on encountering each situation with an understanding that the fabric of life could not be broken, and that it was infinitely more than I am. But I continued to see so much confusion and suffering in the world. I started to wonder how I could help. It seemed that there needed to be a massive shift in the fundamental values of the societies I had encountered (US, Brazilian, European, African in that order). But how could you bring about REAL social change. I said to a friend of mine once, "The only way this is ever going to change is if something inspired comes from above and wakes everyone up at exactly the same moment. If everyone just walks out of their front door one day and says, to hell with this, we're starting over." I got really discouraged.

I went back to school, invited by a friend of my to look into a small liberal arts college in Vermont, just check it out she said, I think you'll like it. I fell in love. I went to study Sociology. Then I met the Sociology professor and started to have second thoughts. I gave up on Sociology and just fell into studying the Czech Language. I had fallen in love with it the first time I had heard it, in my kitchen in Luanda. In Estonia, my Czech love had begun to teach me some things. And that's where I found Vaclav Havel. He spoke things that were true. About the political world, about science and religion, about life, about being alive, about being a human being, and about how all of those things - being a human being, being alive, being political, being scientific, being religious, were all the same thing. He navigated the world the way I navigated with the world, with an inner guide that allowed him to speak on any subject from a place of truth and honesty, and I was inspired. So I dug deeper. And I found a whole movement built on the principle of speaking honestly, of speaking the truth in the face of political power. And I dug deeper and I found Heidegger, who had delved deeper into the psyche of the individual, and described the mechanics of the They, how they make each of us inauthentic so that we will have the opportunity to become authentically ourselves. Again I dug deeper and found Patocka, who described those steps out of inauthenticity into authentic life as Care. And I told people about what I had found. And they gave me an A-. And they offered me a job. But something was broken.

Because in all that investigation, it wasn't Havel, or Heidegger, or Patocka, or truth, or poetry that I had been looking for. They were all just things that I found along the way. There was nothing that I was looking for. It was just the looking that I enjoyed. It was following one clue to the next clue. There was nothing that any of them could give me that I didn't already have. And there was nothing for me to do with what I had learned because it was my journey, it was my exploration, and it was for nothing other than itself. The fabric of existence has no destination. It was not an arrow that I saw, pointing out of me headed in one direction. It was a huge web extending in every direction, with no beginning and no end. There is no where to get to, there is just this life to experience. And knowing that, as deeply as I knew it when I finished my thesis, I suddenly couldn't participate in it anymore. And it's only gotten worse and worse. If there is nothing to find, then why look? Because the looking is the point. But if that's the case, then I've already found what I needed and there's no sense in looking.

So earlier today, while I was watching Contact, a thought ran through my mind that said, oh, maybe I could read this book, or maybe some other books by Carl Sagan. But then I saw where it would go, it would go no where, or it would go somewhere, but not where I expected, and it would surprise me, and it would enrage me and it would inspire me. But something is different. Because where as I used to take those inspirations and follow them up with enthusiasm, now, I just look at them and think, well, I could do that, but I know full well that I won't. I just don't see any point to it. If life is just about the experience, then why should I do all that work? Why should I play the game? There's no way to not play the game. There's no way out of the fabric. But for some reason, that doesn't inspire me anymore. Instead, it leaves me bored, tired, disappointed, extremely disappointed.

I feel like what you tried to tell me today is that life is shitty and it is also pleasant. Why does everyone want to change me? Why do you want to fix my inner authority? Why do you care? Why do I? It's like we've been locked into a torture chamber where we are designed to search for meaning, but never be able to find it. And there's no other option. We can either flow with the river or spend all of our energy fighting against it. I always thought humanity was stupid for the choices it made, going against the river, but now I sort of have more compassion for them. Because at some point, you just want out of the fabric. You get to see that you are miniscule. But that's all you get to see. Seeing your own pointlessness does nothing to change the pointlessness. Seeing how limited you are does nothing to change your limitations.

I don't want to investigate. There's nothing to find. There's only the investigation itself. That's all that is of value. But I can't do it, if I don't believe that there's something I'm going to find. I would never have walked along that river if I didn't think I knew why I was there, or have some idea of where I thought I was going. I have to have something to believe in. I have to have some story about why I'm doing what I'm doing, some way of convincing myself that it's worth it. and I just don't have any anymore. It's just for the experience itself. That's all that's left. But if I had known that. My experience is so painful and uncomfortable. I don't know how to justify the pain. If there's nothing that it's for, then it's just pain. for the sake of pain. for the sake of the experience of pain. if there's nothing to find, then why look?

The Hunger Games - Reflections

I saw the film today with my mother.

The same questions arose after I watched V for Vendetta.

Will people see the similarities? Do people understand that these films are a critique of our political world? Do they wonder about the implications of how we understand ourselves as a species, that we are capable of such brutality? That we can imagine brutality much worse, not just as individuals - the serial killer is easy to right off - but as state-sanctioned activity.

Heidegger called it The They, Das Man, also sometimes translated as The One. One doesn't do this and one doesn't do that. They say you shouldn't eat too many eggs. They say you should eat some though...

"The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self (das Man-selbst), which we distinguish from the authentic Self - that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way [eigens ergriffenen]. As they-self, the particular Dasein has been dispersed into the "they", and must first find itself... If Dasein is familiar with itself as they-self, this means at the same time that the "they" itself prescribes that way of interpreting the world and Being-in-the-world which lies closest. Dasein is for the sake of the "they" in an everyday manner, and the "they" itself Articulates the referential context of significance... If Dasein discovers the world in its own way [eigens] and brings it close, if it discloses to itself its own authentic Being, then this discovery of the world and this disclosure of Dasein are always accomplished as a clearing-away of concealments and obscurities, as a breaking up of the disguises with which Dasein bars its own way." (Being and Time/Sein und Seit, p. 129 of the original text.)

sigh. oh Heidegger, I love it when you do me like you do.

{p.s. if anyone is actually reading this and hasn't read Heidegger before it's important to know that he made up a lot of words, and he made them up in German, so it was sort of tricky to translate. So when he says things like "Being-in-the-world," it has a very specific meaning. Dasein is the most important word in this paragraph, and it's the word he made up for Human Being. Sein, in German, means being, Da means there. Being there. It takes him a long time to explain why, and it includes a long critique of Western Philosophy starting with Descartes who tried to say that "I think there for I am" means that "I" can see "myself" objectively, or in other words, my mind (the part that thinks) can be separate from the part that is existing, and the place in which it is existing. Here is one of my favorite moments from his critique: "The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself." swoon.} (ibid. p.12)

The "They" in Western Philosophy, The "Not-Self" in the world of Human Design, Havel, if I remember correctly, describes it simply as Ideology in The Power of the Powerless. Ideology, he says, is a "specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them." (see link)

Havel's example is probably the easiest to relate to. It's a shop keeper, a greengrocer, who places a sign in his window everyday. The sign reads "Workers of the World Unite!" and demonstrates his allegiance to the communist party. No human being, he says, would hang a sign in his shop window that said "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient," even if this were more true than the sign that he does hang, because it would humiliate him. The ideology, Havel says, allows the greengrocer to say, "Well what's wrong will the workers of the world uniting?" and thus deceive himself. It allows him to keep in place the "disguises with which [he] bars his own way."

We participate in these events - the Hunger games, the Lottery, the National and Local Elections, knowing full well that we do not agree with what our government is doing with the money, or the power. We have all kinds of excuses, we have all kinds of disguises. And because of those little lies we tell ourselves, everything continues exactly as it has, Guantanamo, Iraq, who's next?

What I appreciate about Havel is that he describes it (the They, the Not-Self) in a way that is so easy to relate to, while illuminating it's political implications. What I like about Heidegger is that he is so detailed. What I like about Human Design is that instead of focusing on the political implications, it focuses on the personal, which is where all political power lays anyway. The personal transformation is something we each do for ourselves, and this is the only way it can be, no matter which of these systems you look at. I guess with Human Design I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the practical information that is available is invaluable, it directs the mind to the answer it has been seeking. But on the other hand, by doing so, the individual is easily caught up in the answer, which, as both Heidegger and Ra point out, is not the point. "The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself."

What worries me about movies like The Hunger Games is that they allow us to feel like we are participating in something that resonates with our own feelings of oppression, but without actually asking us to transform the roots of that oppression. In the Hunger Games, President Snow, played by Donald Sutherland, is talking with Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) about how the main character is doing in the game. "Hope," he says, "is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained." I worry that films like the Hunger Games give us just that, enough hope to be contained. People walk out of the theater feeling identified with the triumph of the main character, with just enough hope to continue living the life they've been regretting all along, but not enough to get them to examine how they're contributing to the disguises that are barring their own way - political and personal, because they are, of course, the same thing.

oh that was fun. I love it when Heidegger and Havel get to come out with reference to pop-culture. sooo fun.

... and now from Albert Camus: weeping with affliction and wonder

     From east to west, in fact, her gaze swept slowly, without encountering a single obstacle, along a perfect curve. Beneath her, the blue-and-white terraces of the Arab town overlapped one another, splattered with the dark-red spots of the peppers drying in the sun. Not a soul could be seen, but from the inner courts, together with the aroma of roasting coffee, there rose laughing voices or incomprehensible stamping of feet. Father off, the palm grove, divided into uneven squares by clay walls, rustled its upper foliage in a wind that could not be felt up on the terace. Still farther off and all the way to the horizon extended the ocher-and-gray realm of stones, in which no life was visible. At some distance from the oasis, however, near the wadi that bordered the palm grove on the west could be seen broad black tents. All around them a flock of motionless dromedaries, tiny at the distance, formed against the gray ground the black signs of a strange handwriting, the meaning of which had to be deciphered. Above the desert, the silence was as vast as the space.

     Janine, leaning her whole body against the parapet, was speechless, unable to tear herself away from the void opening before her. Beside her, Marcel was getting restless. He was cold; he wanted to go back down. What was there to see here, after all? But she could not take her gaze from the horizon. Over yonder, still farther south, at that point where sky and earth met in a pure line - over yonder it suddenly seemed there was awaiting her something of which, though it had always been lacking, she had never been aware until now. In the advancing afternoon the light relaxed and softened; it was passing from the crystalline to the liquid. Simultaneously, in the heart of a woman brought there by pure chance a knot tightened by the years, habit, and boredom was slowly loosening. She was looking at the nomads' encampment. She had not even seen the men living in it' nothing was stirring among the black tents, and yet she could think only of them whose existence she had barely known until this day. Homeless, cut off from the world, they were a handful wandering over the vast territory she could see, which however was but a paltry part of an even greater expanse whose dizzying course stopped only thousands of miles farther south, where the first river finally waters the forest. Since the beginning of time, on the dry earth of this limitless land scraped to bone, a few men had been ceaselessly trudging, possessing nothing but serving no one, poverty-stricken but free lords of a strange kingdom. Janine did not know why this thought filled her with such a sweet, vast melancholy that it closed her eyes. She knew that this kingdom had been eternally promised her and yet that it would never be hers, never again, except in this fleeting moment perhaps when she opened her eyes again on the suddenly motionless sky and on its waves of steady light, while the voices rising from the Arab town suddenly fell silent. It seemed to her that the world's course had just stopped and that, from that moment on, no one would ever age any more or die. Everywhere, henceforth, life was suspended - except in her heart, where, at the same moment, someone was weeping with affliction and wonder.

A poem by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me of despair, yours, and I'll tell you of mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscape,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over, announcing your place
in the family of things.