Goodbye, Benazir Bhutto

I'm sure that thousands of blogs are written today upon the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Some will be lauditory; most will be anywhere from sad to frustrated to downright angry.

To me, Benazir was an incredible woman, superior in beauty and intelligence. She managed her fears like few can, and was willing to risk her life from the very moment she stepped into politics. Though I could never tell from official accounts, my gut always told me that she was demonized, threatened, and slapped with trumped-up charges by those who stood the most to lose from the truthful light she radiated. When they said her administration was rife with corruption it seemed an obvious example of projection.

When I heard that Benazir was assassinated this morning I was filled with a hopeless frustration. I've asked for years how we can stop those who cultivate hatred and employ violence without resorting to their tactics. These are the people too self-involved to recognize common humanity, too myopic to understand the common good, doubt their own potency too much so that they have to prove to others that they are strong, people who conquer anything but themselves. They live in pitiful, damnable fear. But they would rather kill the bearers of light rather than admit it.

If anybody questions why I have such a problem with the political and religious neoconservative movement in our nation it is for this very reason. When George Bush stood up this morning and said that Benazir's assassination was so horrible, I believed he really doesn't understand that his use of military violence has anything to do with the escalation of violence in the world. Then his intonation of the threat that we will 'bring them to justice' meant what it always means: we'll hunt them down, beat them up, and kill them. Revenge is justice. Allah will sort these people one day, but until then we have to live with them.

At what point do we finally say that enough is enough? We have the sophistication to test for pathological power-seeking in people. There is enough history to learn from and creativity in good people to find a way to restrain them and keep them from seizing power. The revolutions of human history have been in conquering conditions that make life hard or dangerous for us; the next revolution needs to be conquering ourselves.

Goodbye, Benazir Bhutto. In your memory may we continue your spirit and agenda, may we bear your courage, may we take you for inspiration though we no longer have your voice and vision.

A Bad Marriage

While I want to stay away from political sour grapes, let me digress to another rumination for a moment:

In a marriage, if one partner gets his or her way all the time it is an unbalanced, unhealthy partnership. Eventually it descends into neglect and even abuse of the partner whose needs aren't met. And sadly, the partner who triumphs repeatedly is never satisfied. There is no such thing as 'enough' to be taken.

A report came out this week that said the Bush administration has figured out ways around having a minority in the Senate. There is a difference between a numerical majority -- fifty one percent -- and a voting majority -- sixty percent. The former they don't have. The latter they're taking advantage of. This Congress has used filibusters more than any previous Congress. And the president has used the veto, or just the threat of the veto, regularly since losing the numerical majority in the Senate, which he didn't have to employ when Republicans had the numerical majority. In sum, the White House and the Senate are still getting whatever they want without compromise.

If we call a marriage unhealthy when one partner takes from the other without giving, what should we say of a bicameral government that does the same thing?

John Powell, S.J., said, "If you do not love yourself you cannot love others; you can only use them." In an unhealthy marriage this is what is happening. Is this what has happened with the conservative element in American politics? Is it so full of people who very deep down doubt their own love that they are repeatedly using others for their own gain, not even recognizing that they are draining the goodness from others without refreshing their resources? And, even scarier, are there so many Americans supporting them because they have the same dynamic going on? How did we get to such a state?

This is a spiritual malady. When we take from others without regard for their well being (fitting the definition of 'aggression', which naturally descends into abuse) we are trying to fill a spiritual void by accumulating things that give the illusion of fulfillment, usually material things but most often symbols of power. But they never satisfy. It's like putting water in the gas tank, wondering why the engine won't run right, and putting more water in to make it go. It's useless.

Unhealthy marriages either go on being unhealthy, which gets passed down to successive generations, or break up. There is the occasional relationship that is stopped in its unhealthy course, the real issues identified and worked out, and it becomes healthy. Divorce isn't an option for our government unless we want the nation to fall into civil war and break apart. We don't want the spiritual illness in our national heart to persist into another generation. We, the people, need leaders who are healthy, will keep our focus on maladies and solutions, and guide us into national health. We, the people, have the power to do this at the voting booth. We, the people, have the responsibility and duty to see that it happens.

Be careful with your vote. Make it count.

Flotsam and Jetsam IV

The war in Iraq is employing psychological help for soldiers like no war in history. PTSD is now recognized in the field instead of years later. Massive amounts of material for research is being gathered. There are many decades' worth of research on the psychological aftermath of war with both soldiers and civilians.

I wonder: what if they came to find that war is psychologically unhealthy for everybody involved?

* * *

My newest coworker was ready to leave work at quitting time today, as was I. She's green, just out of college, with all kinds of theoretical knowledge and almost no practical experience. Everybody else was working feverishly to get work done before the weekend. My coworker asked if anybody would think badly of her for leaving while everybody else was working.

"Why should you feel guilty for having your work done on time?" I asked. "You've already seen how several of them stress themselves out, taking on more work than they have to and not managing their time. Don't worry about what others think. As long as your work is done you're blameless."

* * *

At a client's house today I looked through a book on her shelf. It was a series of pictures taken in a small Wisconsin town in the late 1800s. One picture captured me: a small child in a coffin, propped up against a wall.

I suppose they were more accepting of death back then. Diseases were less controlled. Medical treatment was less available and nowhere as sophisticated as we have now. Today we see death as an insult, a failure of medicine, a fault of something as small as a bacterium or virus that we didn't fight hard enough against, a liability of someone else too careless to consider our well being. Victory over death has become the only option, and we will not accept defeat.

Yet in not accepting death we can't make a graceful exit. So it's always tragic.

Too bad. Death is a reality that won't be overcome. I will die one day. In order to have a good end I will have to have lived well all along the way, today and today and today. So you see, it is in the thought of death that we define how to live. It would only be an insult had I not foreseen and planned for the conclusion, and the fault would be my own.

Stop and Shift Gears

I stopped writing again a couple of weeks ago. My blogs were centering on gripes about politics and not as refined as many comments out there. I ain't no Leonard Pitts, Jr. I don't like just spewing bile. There's a lot more to life, and a lot of more interesting and wonderful stuff.

Watching The Pianist while snowed in recently, I was imagining what it was like to be in a concentration camp. There are all kinds of horrific images possible. But then an unbidden fantasy blew into me, quite unlike anything I would have chosen given the subject. Still in the setting of a concentration camp, this time I imagined being relieved of the slavery of possessions, the necessity to work for a living, and the cultivation of image. Absent these things I would be free to do and be whatever I liked. In the fantasy I elected to no longer speak, and would merely go about looking for helpful things to do for people, from silly little things to hard labor, with no expectation of payment. Somewhere inside it seems that this is what most religions would like for us to do, and which we find so hard to follow because we're invested in our image and industry. What a difference the experience of a concentration camp would be with this attitude! I would even be silently charitable to my captors.

Many years ago, first introduced to the Tao Te Ching, I thought that to follow its tenets would make one look insane to the general public. I quit studying and trying to follow it after a while out of fear for this. A few years passed and the book came off the shelf again. Now, after a quarter century of study and inner work, I find that the closer I follow the Tao the less it is obvious to others. The benefit is all inside: without intending it one becomes more and more powerful. It is the dragon hidden in plain sight. Paradoxically, though others don't seem to see it (how can you recognize something you've not been trained to see?), because I cultivate the qualities of balance, flow of energy, nonaction, the pursuit of potential, and virtue, my being around others affects them in ways they likewise fail to see.

I sometimes wonder if this is why I have trouble getting a second date. They sense something about me that scares them (the unknown is one of our strongest fears, for we don't know if or how we will be able to handle something when we don't know what we're facing; this is complicated when we haven't been taught to trust our inner strength in the first place). What a fond thought, to run across a woman who finds no reason to fear me!

Perhaps I dislike my griping because blame is fouled water that merely sits and stinks. But cutting gemstones, even though it requires much patience, is indescribably satisfying because it results in beauty that few will protest. So even though my passion and trained insight will forever inform me about political actors, maybe I need to just observe them, sharpen my beliefs, then let them go play their games as they will. And I will play the piano and cut gemstones, and love my daughter.

Superrationale

In Guantanemo prison, when a detainee is able to obtain legal representation for a writ of habeas corpus (according to an NPR report this week), if the prisoner wins there is a policy that he is tried three or four more times until he loses.

Translation: you're guilty because we say you're guilty.

The report came out this week that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program in 2003. President Bush, echoing his father's famous quote "Don't bother me with the facts" said that the report was evidence that Iran is dangerous and that nothing has changed toward them.

Translation: Iran is dangerous because we say it is.

A common logic fallacy is called appeal to authority. It has several shades, but in general it goes like this: person A is perceived as an authority; person A says that X is true; therefore X is true. The fallacy is obvious.

Each of the beginning situations are examples of the fallacy.

I understand that a lot is at stake here. The Bush administration has a lot invested in its war on terror. There are a lot of policies, procedures, and beliefs based on it. Much of its culture-building throughout the administration is geared toward furthering the fear of terrorists and the need to fight them. If something shows up that knocks out a supporting pillar it all comes crashing down. For the structure to fall would leave Bush and Co devestated, especially this late in the presidency when there is little time to rebuild anything. Eternal disgrace is just not an option, therefore something -- anything -- needs to be done to ward off potential threats to the legitimacy of its policies.

Unfortunately, even after so many investigations that have brought legitimate objections to administration claims and so much spin that we're too dizzy to settle on a reality, rationalizations such as above are just too bald to believe. A rationalization is a psychological defense mechanism designed to conform reality to one's preconceived notions, beliefs, or agendas and ward off challenges that would destroy it. The biggest problem with saying reality is other than what it is, is that it doesn't change reality. You're fighting a battle that you won't win. You're wasting time and breath and energy and resources trying to bend reality with no hope of success. Imagine if we put all those resources toward decreasing poverty or enriching education instead!

Rationalization is normal. Super-rationalization happens when you fail to include morality, emotion, and spiritual guidance. Many dictators in history have believed in ethnic cleansing; it made perfect sense to them. They were even able, in most cases, to couch their belief in religious terms for substantiation. It borders on the diagnosis of delusion, which is having a fixed belief (not open to reason) that has no basis in reality and can be easily debated with logic (though the delusional person cannot be swayed).

People rationalize every day. Nearly everybody. What bothers me about the Bush administration doing it like they have this week is that if they get their way then more people will die. More tax dollars will go to this insane path of destruction that is the hallmark of this administration. More hatred and division will be manufactured in the world. The opportunity for using nuclear weapons is inched closer to, or the probability that they will be used becomes greater.

If the American people are so resourceful that they can develop a space program and land a man on the moon within the space of ten years, surely they are strong and resourceful enough to relieve of office a president and administration that drains the nation's resources in their determination to hate someone and obliterate them. It has gone on too long. We're tired. Too many are dead. We want our civil liberties back. We want our tax dollars to go to the common welfare within our borders. We want world-class leadership and statesmanship, not paranoid bullies with an army. If our leaders cannot be convinced that what they're doing is harmful and destructive then they no longer need to be considered leaders. Unless we want to be led into destruction. Despite what we've been told, the collective citizens of our nation are stronger than the presidential administration, even with the army backing them up.

A Lott of Logic

Who woulda thought that Bush would pull a Clinton? Gearing down at the end of his presidency he's trying to boost his legacy by approaching the Israeli-Palestinian issue. No matter that through the last seven years he has supported Israel and dissed Palestine. I wonder how Rush is characterizing this since he demonized Clinton for trying the same thing at the end?

And it's finally been made public: the neocons, it turns out, plan to keep fifty thousand troops in Iraq, retain control of oil reserves, and encourage the investment of foreign capital, especially American, in Iraq. We've been saying that since the invasion and they've been denying it. Now that they get honest is there any consequence for their dishonesty?

But that's not what I'm writing about tonight.

All of a sudden Trent Lott, being the second-ranking Republican after more than thirty years inside the Beltway, steps down with no explanation other than he listened to a sermon on Sunday from Ecclesiastes ('To every thing there is a season...') and decided it was time to go. Now, call me cynical, but that's a bit thin. My BS meter spiked when I heard about it.

A coworker remarked on Lott leaving. I told her it was probably because he was close to getting caught for something and was skating before it came out. Thinking later, maybe he did get caught, the scandal was too tight to get out of, and he bowed to upper management telling him to get the hell out of Dodge and they wouldn't let the truth out.

Either way, such a powerful man leaving like that points to the oft-voiced allegation of corruption. If the scandal goes that high in the food chain then it's too close to the top to not have had the top involved, or at least aware of it. To not doubt is irresponsible if we are to preserve the good name of our nation. Where is investigative journalism anymore?

And to give such a thin excuse, using a Godly reason to cover his ass! How it rankles. How low we have sunk. I wonder how God will deal with him when the time comes?

Rather than get indignant and even angry about such things I'll just shake my head slowly. What can we do with such people? We're better than that.

* * *

From the Shooting Sunset dictionary:

Death (n): 1. a misunderstood transaction. 2. quittin’ time before one is ready to clock out. 3. being fired from life.

Questions

If the United States instituted a surge in Iraq, doesn't that make the US insurgents?

The news in last the few days is that the amount of violence in Bagdhad has decreased. One independent news source (foreign, of course) reported a steady amount elsewhere in the country. The spin machine is trying to say that the surge is working. As several have noted, one month of decreased violence in one city out of five years of war does not a trend make. Also, has anybody considered that the other side may have pulled back in order to lull us into a false sense that things are going right? Are they too stupid to not have any psychological acumen?

Has anybody also noticed that the number of American military deaths in Iraq has now surpassed the number of deaths in the WTC attacks? And the estimates are that more than a million Iraqis have died since we attacked them. When do we say that we're even? At what point do we back off the fight and say that it isn't worth carrying on? Unitl every terrorist is dead? That's an impossible number. Until all Iraqis are dead? That's ridiculous. Until Bush and Cheney are satisfied? Who volunteers to keep dying for that agenda?

I've long thought that since Bush and Cheney are so interested in the outcome of Iraq that we should just ship them over there, let them play their war games (not with the US military; they'd have to contract with private armies NOT at US taxpayer expense), put somebody else in the White House, and get on with our country. Bush for President of Iraq!

Some say I'm cynical. Am I? Nah. Just frustrated.

That bile out of the way, let me say that in this season of thankfulness there is much to be thankful for. That there are jobs and income and some level of comfort for most of us, more comfortable than we often stop to think about. There are so many good people in the world who go unrecognized in the day to day sensational media, political gaming, and daytime TV sniping at each other. The world is a rather beautiful place once we slow down, take a look, and overcome our stereotypes long enough to notice that this tree is an interesting shape with reasons for all its oddities, that this bird is a marvel of flight engineering and color selection, that this person has a story, too, and it is just as important and interesting as mine. Most of all, despite everything we hear and see every day, Love continues to be a strong force, obvious and subtle, that keeps everything moving forward in the world, keeps everything growing toward its potential, and makes it worth it to witness and be a part of this whole planet full of people and other beings, sentient and unaware, without which we may as well say that Hell is indeed here on Earth. Keep the spirit going, my friends.

* * *

From the Shooting Sunset dictionary:

Car (n): a mechanical assemblage designed to extend the range of human inactivity.

Bush Psychology

In case you've wondered why I have such a hard time with how the Bush administration runs the country, it goes like this: my degrees are in psychology. Going back to Psych 101, here are some theories and their relations to the administration.

In Freud's psychoanalytic theory we have the id, ego, and superego. The id is the childish, self-centered state where we want things our way without compromise. The ego is the rational adult mind; without the superego state anything can be rationalized. The superego, then, is necessary as the moral regulator of both the id and ego to keep them from stretching too far outside the bounds of reality.

In the administration Bush is the id, Cheney is the ego, and intellectuals around the nation and the world are the superego.

Then we go to the theory of locus of control. In this theory a person is motivated and regulated either by external things (outside the person) or internal things (inside, natch). In reality every person has a blend of the two, with varying degrees of one or the other. People who are externally motivated tend to see the world as a dangerous place that needs to be tamed to ensure security for the self. People who are internally motivated tend to see a vast universe inside that needs to be mastered. In theory the most desirable mix is to be mostly internally motivated, with enough of an external motivation to account for realistic things that are outside one's control. The mastery of the inner self gives one resources to deal with external situations.

Bush and Co. display a continual fear of the external world that needs to be tamed. They are too far into the external locus of control to be healthy.

Though there could be more theories to review I'll only give one more. In the Object Relations school of psychology we come across a concept called introjection. This means that one is capable of manipulating others to treat one in a certain way that gives one permission to either claim victimization or substantiate revenge. Generally one is unaware of this dynamic even when exercising it.

Bush seems to have no concept that fighting terrorists breeds resentment that prompts them to recruit more terrorists. It also engages them in a King of the Mountain fight, giving them worldwide press and thus legitimacy (at least to themselves), which gives them the motivation and energy to pursue their extreme agendas.

By these three examples alone we find that Bush is a childish, insecure bully who picks fights and doesn't understand that his fighting encourages others. Cheney sits in the background with less obvious though just as strong fears, rationalizing everything without any seeming awareness that what he's doing is wrong according to constitutional, international, and religious law. The intellectuals have spoken out for years trying to get their attention. But there is not enough support in the public because there has been a successful campaign to not think for oneself and to only guarantee one's inclusion in the herd (rejection, in our caveman side, is ultimately deadly) by going along with the official line.

This is a taste of why I have trouble with the way the administration runs things. It is beyond me how many psychologists support Bush.

* * *

From Shooting Sunset's Tao:

A foolish man tells the clouds that it should not snow today. It is like trying to push a river back upstream.

The wise man appreciates the beauty of snow.

Overtreatment

I heard a comment on the radio yesterday that part of the problem with healthcare costs is that we have overtreatment in medicine in America. In essence, every little complaint is taken seriously and treated. It becomes overtreatment when the complaints are minor or even nonexistent. I should note up front that there are legitimate illnesses and disorders, and courses of treatment for them.

In town we have a university hospital where doctors are being educated and trained. If you enter the door with the tiniest complaint you will have a phalanx of doctors -- teachers, residents, and students -- investigate the complaint. It seems natural in that setting. But I also have clients who are on disability, used to The System taking care of them, lots of time on their hands, few social skills, and the ingredients are right for them to make trip after trip to medical appointments. They come up with complaints that I wouldn't bother about for myself. And it costs the taxpayers.

My daughter has braces on her teeth right now. I've survived this half century without straight teeth. But up against an oral surgeon who sees imperfection and an ex-wife who doesn't discriminate well on her own, I'm paying for braces. I will always wonder if my daughter's teeth were as bad as they were made out to be, or if the horrific possible scenarios would really have played out. Wondering about the difference between possibility and probability makes the world of medicine look kind of silly because they (and pharmaceuticals) let us know there are all kinds of terrible things that could happen. What if I questioned how likely it was that they would happen?

Did you know that the better you get at stress management the fewer medical problems you're likely to have? If that's true, why don't we ever hear about it as a method to reduce healthcare costs? Because the psychology lobby ain't spit compared to the pharmaceutical lobby. They need for us to be sick in order to guarantee profits.

I've wondered many times how much all this happens in my field, counseling. I've denied treatment after assessing people before, saying that they don't have much of a problem and not wanting to spend tax and insurance dollars unnecessarily or waste the client's time or mine, and despite having to deal with the occasional probation or parole officer who ordered them to enter treatment Or Else, the clients have been really surprised that I've not recommended treatment. Sometimes I look at clients and think, 'Where's the problem? You have enough inner gumption to handle what you're complaining about.' It's long been recognized that there is a population of 'worried well' in our culture, people who are psychologically sound but just a little anxious about something. But it's fashionable to enter treatment, or to believe that a 'professional' knows better how to handle things. How did we get along without shrinks a couple of centuries ago?

Another fault in the field of psychology is that many minor aberrations and eccentricities of yesteryear are now being called disorders, which suggests that they need treatment. Haven't adolescents and teens always had problems with adjustment to social roles and responsibilities? That's part of the path they tread. But now we list several 'adjustment disorders' in the diagnostic manual, Big Pharma comes up with a pill to address it, and kids are doped up through the period when they're supposed to be establishing an identity, learning to cope with society, and strengthening their character. Hm. What are the long-term individual and social effects of blunting their development?

Speaking of Big Pharma and overtreatment, a few years back they came up with a medication to address influenza. They promise that if you take the medicine you'll begin to notice a reduction in symptoms in 36 to 72 hours. Tell me: how long does the flu usually last? That people swallowed that one without question attests to a herd mentality without critical thinking, another of my common rants.

I haven't heard the term 'defensive medicine' in a long time, but this contributes to the rise in healthcare costs and sometimes gets ridiculous. It's the doctor testing for all possibilities for the CYA phenomenon. This brings in the glut of lawyers we are visited by, and between the two there is a lot of unnecessary treatment performed.

What is lost is a lot of common sense, a refusal to accept imperfection and other realities, a doubt of your own better judgment about what's happening with your body, and higher costs all around. Is there a chance that sanity can be restored as we get more and more specialized, compartmentalized, and litigious so that the forest is lost in the trees?

Kindergarten 101

One of the lessons of Kindergarten was that we learned to share, right?

What is at the bottom of the problem between black people and white people in the United States? It’s that the white people don’t want to share power with the blacks. The attitude is so strong that after a war and continuous legislation over the last 150 years to make things equal there is still a power differential between blacks and whites.

Why are the whites so reluctant to share power? What are they – I should say we – so afraid of?

Despite scientific evidence that proves there is at best an infinitesimal genetic difference between black and white – race is considered more an environmental adaptation than genetic difference anymore, -- despite the example of many fine black people who have contributed to the progress, safety, and well-being of our great nation, despite the example of Harold Washingtons who are able to suppress centuries of resentment and are able to treat blacks and whites fairly, we still have the power differential.

There is probably a fear, a legitimate fear, that if blacks were granted power there would be many who would try to take too much, to make up for generations and generations of maltreatment and suppression. Some would. It’s probably why so many white folk have such a hard time with rap music: it glorifies symbols of power that the black people have been denied throughout their history in this nation. Unfortunately it is often angry, and the symbols are base things like brutal language, sexual dominance, and money-grubbing. It revels in the pure exercise of power – guns and purchasing power and such – without much regard for the sanctity of life and spirit, but I suppose it should be expected when a people have been told for centuries that they’re not valuable and have been treated as expendable.

Black people have been demonized in our nation as dirty, smelly, uneducated, and violent. Some fit the description, some don’t. Some white folk fit the description, some don’t. But the point is, what is the need to demonize a people? It is the apparently very human need, borne of insecurity, to feel better about oneself and to retain the tentative grasp on power one has. This is the most basic reason for not sharing power: one fears the loss of control and possible resulting harm.

The solution, then, is contained in the description: if insecurity is the problem then security needs to be instilled. This would be a two-part effort, and both need simultaneous cultivation. One part is individual security for both blacks and whites, and the other is collective security for all. And it’s not a matter of sharing money or other symbols of power; it’s the power that comes from the cultivation of mature spirit, instilling principles of responsibility, trust, respect, and so forth. Heck, Boy Scouts learn to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Are adults able to learn such things? We need strong, capable, fair, loving leaders to guide us. Guidance is key; shouting, demanding, and legislating haven't solved the problem.

Should we engage in this task there will be little need to demonize foreign Islamists, gooks, wops, krauts, or any other national, religious, or ethnic group while we turn the scope on ourselves and work at healing within. Until we learn to share equitably we haven’t graduated from Kindergarten and have no business pretending to be a world leader.

* * *

from the Shooting Sunset dictionary:

Moustache (n): the worst part of blowing one's nose.

Stressing Fibromyalgia

Stress is stored in the muscles of the neck, back, and shoulders. That's what we learned in psychology class. That's what masseuses get paid for.

Going through a pamphlet the other day about fibromyalgia, it said that the cause of the condition is unknown. Later in the pamphlet it said that fibromyalgia has no psychological cause.

So which is it? How do they know there's no psychological cause if they don't know what causes it?

Until we notice that the pamphlet is put out by a pharmaceutical company. Even without knowing what causes it they have a pill that treats it. Backward science. Or clever marketing.

Has anybody noticed that the treatment advertised for a range of maladies from headaches to heart disease to acid reflux is always pharmaceutical? I've seen a commercial for an antacid that says pretty blatantly, "You can't change the amount of stress in your life," so you may as well buy their product. People are swallowing more than the antacids by believing such dreck.

Because you can change the stress in your life. You can make decisions about what you involve yourself in and how much, you have the ability (and the right) to say no to things that would be negative for you, you can take charge and not let the kids and their activities run your life... There is a multitude of things you can do to change the stress level in your life.

The pharmaceutical industry doesn't want you to know this. If everybody started handling stress better then their profits would plummit.

I have a series of lectures that I've done for years on handling stress better through physical (diet, exercise, rest), mental (decision-making, logic), emotional (regulation, positive uses of), and spiritual (beliefs, practices) means. While nowhere near perfect, I use these things myself and almost never get sick, almost never see a doctor, don't feel that my life is commanded by every force around me, don't get stressed out, and can handle most any situation I'm in. My daughter commented a couple of weeks ago, "Dad, you're in good shape. A lot of people your age are getting old."

Big Pharma would shudder to hear it.

Backing Off The Brink

Today I had an experience that has become somewhat common to me in the last seven years. Listening to independent talk radio I heard another litany of deceptions that the Bush administration and those who support it are perpetrating. In a moment of frustration I felt like throwing my hands in the air and crying, “We’ve been exposing these things for years now! There aren’t drug-soaked hippies demanding that we get out of Vietnam anymore…we have nonprofit corporations, independent media, and protest media populated with very intelligent and hardworking people striving against the Bush agenda but the neocon machine goes on. It’s not working!”

It’s at times like this that I have to stop listening to the radio for a while. The helpless frustration has nowhere to go, and if I feed it, it only grows bigger.

Yet there’s a part of me that can’t give up. Giving in is tantamount to giving tacit permission for them to continue. So what to do?

Well, if the emotion gets intolerable but the principle needs to be held to then the emotion must go. I must become a dispassionate participant holding together the principles of democracy that remain. But I can’t afford to become one of those cold fish who can recite endless statistics with no give in any area; a computer can do that. I guess I just have to contain myself, not let passion overwhelm my purpose, not give in to the Dark Side but calmly allow positive creation to push and guide me.

The facts are abundantly obvious. The Bush camp started wars for a reason: it benefits them. They lie about intentions and operations for a reason: they get away with it and it benefits them. They enact policy that detracts from the common good for a reason: it benefits them. They take away others’ freedoms in order to increase their own. The consolidation of power is everything. Profit is more important than benevolence. People who get in the way – be it politics, protests, or the unfortunate soul who happens to be where the bomb lands – are expendable.

The Bush doctrine has proved that greed is a strong motivating force. They have also proved that greed doesn’t have a limit. No longer content to wait until international treaties bring them higher yields, they have resorted to merely attacking and taking as they wish, and richly reward those who build the machines and support the effort to accomplish it.

A part of me wants to think that God will deal with their souls justly and there’s nothing stronger I can do, and then wait for it to happen, but even if that is the final outcome for them individually it does nothing to protect and preserve the nations that they are raping and pillaging along the way. Including our own.

And so I must continue to write, and to let people know where I stand and what I see. I have to do whatever is necessary for me to not give in to hopelessness, and if the swamp is up to my neck and slogging through is tedious and so very slow, then I must keep moving at whatever pace I can. To stand in the muck and cry doesn't get anybody anywhere.

Lacrimosa

It has ever been the error of humankind that we have allowed men who see about them competition, threat, and enemies to become leaders. Men who are driven to survive by whatever means, men who are too desperate for security that the rule of law is a hindrance, men who will conquer anything but themselves. These are men who invest in the suppression of opposition, who inwardly quail at the spectre of defeat and outwardly boast of nation or gods or symbols of power. In the mad pursuit of power, never enough power, these men have lied, rationalized, cheated, schemed, impoverished others while enriching themselves, and killed attempting to retain the heady rush of hormonal satisfaction. In the holy mantle of demigods they rule, convinced of their rightness and righteousness while cloaking an eternally vast emptiness and fear of the dark even to their own awareness. Such pitiful and dangerous men!

Were that we could widely acknowledge and recognize maturity of spirit, that we could accept Love as stronger than fear, and more desirable. Were that we could promote those of this magnitude to the position of teachers of humankind, and ask of them to lead us. Oh, that we could value cooperation over competition, commonality over boundary, creation over destruction, service over dominance!

For until then we shall have the petty, fearful slaves of power arresting, suppressing, and killing those of great spirit. It need not be so.

Quantum Change

Two weeks ago I met Dr. William Miller, the founder of a movement that is quantifying effective psychotherapy as few theories have, called Motivational Interviewing. Dr. Miller was introduced as “the most quoted scientist in the world today,” so I assume if you Google his name you’ll find oodles of information.

Like any lesser mortal I bought one of his books to get an autograph. It was a pretty recent book, Quantum Change. Having only read the first chapter I understand the premise, that many people experience a life-changing insight or epiphany that is sudden, surprising, benevolent, and enduring. Before continuing into the research and scientific quantification of the phenomenon, though, I would like to record one of my own experiences. As I’ve gone through the preface and first chapter a single experience many years ago keeps coming back to me, and it will be interesting, after I put it into words, to see how well it fits (or doesn’t) with Dr. Miller’s collected and tested samples.

My story starts in my upbringing. Anger was never really expressed in our home and so the five of us kids never really got any education in its proper use. Not that this is necessarily bad; imagine the world with much less arguing and fighting, and a commitment to get along even if we disagree. But the downside was that we got married to people who didn’t grow up like us. Two or three of us latched onto someone who used anger in a very different way.

My wife was one of them. She was accustomed to anger and arguments being a normal part of relationships. While not trying to sound self-righteous, I think that if she and her family hadn’t hidden that fact from me until we were married I may have made a different decision in partners. But they did hide it, and we married. A part of me believes that since they hid it they knew that something was wrong, but they chose not to change it for the better and simply covered it up until it was too late for me. Over three years the arguing grew between us. I tried in lots of ways, subtle and obvious, to let her know that I didn’t want to argue and would rather resolve things in a less heated manner. I said many times, “I wasn’t raised learning how to argue. I don’t know how and I don’t want to learn.” But I suppose that just gave her the upper hand when she repeatedly insisted on arguing.

Halfway through that third year I was getting increasingly frustrated and unhappy. There was more heat than warmth in the marriage. I don’t remember what the argument was about that one particular day, but I do remember graphically the moment when I broke. I was getting nowhere with her again and in frustration I hauled off and kicked the easy chair in the living room. It didn’t hurt either of us too bad, but the heavens opened up, a light shone on my perception, and it occurred to me that “this is not who I am.” It was astounding. It was crystal clear. If I participated in one more second of argument with her I was betraying who and what I was. The longer I went with this the more I lost something of myself I treasured. I could no longer argue with her. I calmly told her, “I am not going to argue with you anymore.”

It took her a while to believe me. She tried to engage me, and it increasingly frustrated her that I wouldn’t. But something about the realization was so solid and eternal that I had no trouble abiding by it.

It was one of the main things that signaled the end of the marriage. Her final act of control in the marriage was hiring a lawyer to do the fighting for her.

In truth I married again, and sadly the arguing came up again. I told her from the beginning (before we married, in fact) that I didn’t want to argue. That marriage lasted for five years. She insisted on fighting me. I didn’t even hire a lawyer to fight hers when she’d had enough of my calmness and reason.

I’ve dated a little in the seven or eight years since, but this one realization severely limits the field for me. Arguing is so commonplace. It’s so frequent in the media, movies, government, and even religion. ‘Fighting’ is so much a part of our culture that a local hospital says “We fight cancer” instead of “We treat cancer patients” and people don’t even question the stance.

This realization, that I refuse to argue, has lasted without question. It seems to be a truth that I can’t, well, argue. Because of it I’ve have the chance to study the difference between discussion and debate and to observe the upmanship that so many people engage in, and have opted to not play what has become for me silly little games of power. I have learned that in arguing you tend to forget to be loving, and since this to me is the most powerful force in the universe and the most important task of being with people, I simply can’t afford to learn how to argue. It has helped me become a more honest person, for in order to not have to fight (which a lot of people use to ward off the truth) I simply admit when I’ve been wrong. I’m still human and not a hundred percent on this score, but progressing. I have come to believe that marriages based on cooperation are infinitely more successful than marriages based on competition. I regularly hear from clients and coworkers that I am an exceptionally calm person.

We’ll see how this story fits with Dr. Miller’s research.

I’d bet every one of you readers has a story of life-changing insight or epiphany you could tell.

Fascist Warning

I heard today that several neoconservative pundits and media personalities are planning a campaign to provide an 'education' program at colleges across America about Islamo-fascism. In education there should be a rounded presentation of different philosophies, points of view, and facts to teach our young adults how to evaluate between them in order to make an informed choice.

This push to 'educate' about Islamo-fascism, though, has me thinking several things:

1. Fascism by itself is a horrible thing. Is there that much difference between religious sects that we must distinguish the Islamic version of fascism? In the interest of fairness and to give students the chance to develop a rounded viewpoint, shouldn't there also be a unit on Christo-fascism?

2. Religion really isn't the point with fascism, anyway. Such a form of governing may borrow from religion or claim roots in it, but at the bottom of it the leaders are only borrowing from the legitimacy of religion to push their unholy agenda. No form of fascism is supported in religious literature.

3. What the neocons are speaking out against is Islamic extremism. They ought to label it as such. But again, if we are going to recognize Islamic extremism it would only be fair to recognize Christian extremism. They are equally destructive and neither conforms to religious tenets.

4. I haven't had a chance to check with my Moslem friends about this situation (Asdan, Furqaan, Omar, Majed, and others). I have made these friends through community efforts to get people to get along. They are all advocates for peace, and none are extremists. If I was in their shoes I would be really frustrated, even angry. Some of our national leaders are connecting their religion with the most horrible form of government possible.

5. Which is really what is going on, anyway. The pundits and media personalities are really just furthering the myth that Islam is bad, wrong, evil, dangerous, evil, violent, and evil. Why do we put up with such narrowmindedness and insecurity?

Somewhat connected, but this morning I wrote a thought down that seems appropriate here: I wish that the Competitors of the world could accept that there are those who do not want to compete, but would rather cultivate cooperation.

Let us have some legitimacy. Let us practice what we believe is right. Don't make us out to be wrong. I would be perfectly content to let you play your games of power and influence -- because that's what makes you feel that you have purpose, and I have no desire to butt into your game and take over -- if you would let me do what fulfills my life. One day we will each have to answer to God, a.k.a. Allah. Since Jesus was one of the most peaceful activists the world has ever known, I would like to be able to report that I followed His lead.

P.S. I lied a little in the last paragraph. I am not content to let leaders play their games of power and influence because it results it poverty and death for innocent people. That's just inexcusable.

Which of These Is Not Like the Others?

Given a picture of an ant, a butterfly, and a spider, and asked to choose which one doesn't belong, a lot of people would say the butterfly. It can fly, the others can't. Until we consider that a spider can anchor its web to a tree branch, launch itself into a breeze, spread its legs, and in essence becomes a tethered kite until it reaches a new destination. Is that flying? ("That's not flying, that's falling...with style!"). We say that we fly kites. So this judgment becomes muddied.

Then we study wee creatures in our world and discover that some insects have six legs, others have eight. In the picture above the ant and the butterfly have six legs and the spider has eight. The spider is the one that doesn't fit. Although it may resemble an ant more than a butterfly on the surface, the spider is in a whole different classification.

The lesson from this, in the style of Sesame Street, Taoism, Buddhism, and many philosophical traditions, is that there is more than one level of understanding. Deeper, more informed understanding is more accurate than superficial judgment.

Shift gears. Why is it that the more tyranical and despotic leaders of history -- into the present day -- always oppose intellectuals? Why do they arrest them, ship them away, or execute them? Why is there less of an emphasis on education and more on militarism? Because intellectuals understand things on a deeper level. They can see through the despot's machinations. They are capable of exposing the truth when the despot is keeping a superfical image to the public but behind the scenes is doing unethical, illegal, inhumane things.

The President, right or wrong. Don't question the President. America, love it or leave it. Either you're with us or you're with the enemy. If the President says it, it's good enough for me. Bush says he reads the Bible / has a Father greater than his earthly father / goes to church, therefore he's a Christian and that's that.

"I am the decider" (if one makes poor decisions, this is worthless). "Terrorists want to kill you" (what proof? Until there is credible science that debunks the Conspiracy Theory of 9-11 this one is up in the air. That our soldiers die in Iraq doesn't prove the statement; it suggests cause and effect, that if people are occupied by a foreign military force and seventy percent of the deaths that result are innocent civilians then they will fight back). Moslem extremists are the biggest problem in the world today (what about Christian extremists?). National security is the preeminent issue of our time (then the underlying problem is insecurity). "These are dangerous times" (stated by nearly all despots throughout history). And so forth.

Intellectuals can see behind the smoke and mirrors. They are a threat. They threaten the status quo, the exposure of deceit, the ill-gotten consolidation and hold on power that despots accumulate. They can't be tolerated, nor can we afford to train up any more. Education isn't as important as bullets and bombs. The liberal thought process, or critical thinking, must be discouraged. Keep the people ignorant and you can play on their emotions, especially fear.

Step into my home
Said the spider to the fly.

I hope that whoever from the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring my blogs has children, and that love for those children is stronger than the dictates of leaders who give an image of strength but underneath harbor the fears that they project onto the public, and don't mind consigning others to death trying to resolve their anxieties.

Losing Hatred

I have been accused in the past of being hate challenged because I find it difficult to feel that feeling for people. I have been accused of being in denial of my own hatred for others.

It is late and I should be in bed, but I just returned from a community meeting about reducing hatred between people of differing faiths. The crowd was equally divided between Muslims, Christians, and Jews. There were about ten people I knew well from these types of meetings; I've been involved with them in this community for five years. And there were many people I had never met before.

In a small group dialogue I recounted that part of my ancestry comes from Pulaski, TN, where the KKK was started. Yep. Those are some of my roots. One young Muslim man, whose family emigrated to the US only a generation ago, said it was really interesting to hear a white American man tell some of his story; he is so accustomed to hearing stories of immigrants that end up being so close to his and his family's, and white people don't expose their stuff. My reaction was that my family's immigration story just goes back a few more decades than his.

That young man was one of the more level-headed, creative, assured, peaceful people I've met in a while. After the meeting, in the parking lot, I got to know more about another young Muslim man and found that he and I have very similar passions and styles of living. I also gave a hug to a gal I already knew as she was departing; I realize that hugging an unmarried Muslim gal in public would raise some eyebrows, but we've done that for quite a while without being struck down by lightning.

As I was driving away it struck me that I had just spent a couple of hours with some peaceful Jews and Muslims. Don't hear about those types in the news very often. We have a lot of beliefs in common, even religious. I felt very fortunate to have spent time with them and would be quite happy to be around them some more. What made the time so valuable was that we talked openly about our upbringings, beliefs, and experiences. When you do that there is no way that they can remain stereotypes...they become humans like me. Very much like me.

I am very fortunate to live in a place where there is more diversity than usual. We have a major university that draws people from all over the world. Then again, I have made decisions to put myself in places to connect with others; out of a hundred thousand people in the city only about thirty showed up for this publicized meeting. But it enriched my life in a way that can't be had in any other way.

And I got more hugs tonight than I've had in a while. What's it worth to feel safe and comfortable enough with people to make such contact?

Hate challenged? Perhaps projection is alive and well in the world.

Conspiracy Theory resources

As a follow-up to the blog on conspiracy theory, a couple of sites to find information about research to test the Official Version of 9-11 are http://www.911truth.org/ and, from an architectural point of view, http://www.ae911truth.org/. I don't recommend these in an effort to convert anybody, but only for you to look at information and decide for yourself. Which is, after all, the process of liberal or critical thinking, which is such a dirty thing anymore.

Cheers, if it ain't keepin' with the situation.

NO: It's Not Enough

On the phone with my 16-year-old daughter, she said that one of the girls on the varsity basketball team was pregnant. "Why is it that the really Christian ones are the ones who get pregnant?" she mused, and then gave herself an answer: "They're probably too scared to talk to their parents about birth control."

In the half-second pause that followed I felt fortunate that my daughter was talking to me about it.

Research has shown that abstinence-only programs have no more effect on teen pregnancy than no programs at all. My guess is that it has the same base -- and lack of success -- as Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign against drugs in the 1980s. It relies on an authoritarian command ("Because I said so!") without even beginning to understand the dynamics underlying a very strong urge. And scaring people into believing doesn't result in solid conviction; it's merely hopeful, loyal, or subservient. Even more, it ignores knowledge about the subject and only treats it as bad, giving adherents no skill in dealing with it when it, uh, pops up.

Sexuality is complex. A lot of 'normal' adults have strong misperceptions and misunderstandings about it. How can we expect teens to deal with it okay when we're not that adept as adults?

I wrote a letter to my daughter several years ago, anticipating that one day she would be confronted with the issue of sex. In as simple language as I could muster, I wrote about love and feelings and relationships and decisions and the future and.....and sex. It's not easy to say, "I want to rely on you to make good decisions for yourself" when her friends are getting pregnant. But hey, she recently got her driver's license and there was some practice in Daddy letting go. And she seems to react better to guidance and encouragement than to command and control. I think it's time to send the letter.

Remember the Conspiracy Theory?

My apologies for not writing for quite a while; there is something about me that I occasionally have to take a vacation from writing to recharge my batteries.

Today I pulled a DVD off the shelf, dusted it off, and popped it in. It has two pieces on it, an address by David Ray Griffin on 9-11 and the American Empire, given on April 18, 2005, and one on Eric Hufschmid's analysis of the 9-11 attacks. Both are part of what is known as the 'conspiracy theory' that the 9-11 attacks were an inside job. The conspiracy theory has largely dried up and disappeared by now.

My degrees are in a social science. I am trained to look critically below what is happening or what is being said to determine if the content matches the process. If it does, fine. If it doesn't then something is going on underneath that we aren't being told.

Dr. Griffin and Mr. Hufschmid offer example after example to question the Official Version of what happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that day. Their points are hard to argue. For example, we all accept that WTC Buildings 1 and 2 were hit by airplanes and came down. But why did Building 7, of steel contstruction, which was not hit by an airplane, had minor fires on two floors, and was not hit by either other building falling, also fall that day? Why couldn't the intelligence offices of our government find a reason, when the landlord of WTC stated on a PBS interview that he had requested the NYC Fire Department 'pull' the building that day? 'Pulling' a building means a controlled demolition, which takes weeks or months to plan, test, plant charges, test, and execute. Besides, the NYC Fire Department doesn't do controlled demolitions. That's done by private companies. The landlord, Larry Silverstein,by the way, obtained the WTC properties just two months prior to the attacks, replaced security with his own people, and made upwards of seven billion dollars in insurance reimbursement following the attacks.

This is just one hole in the 9-11 Commission report. That report concluded the cause of Building 7 coming down was unknown. It also concluded that the central core of Buildings 1 and 2 were hollow steel shafts that housed elevators and stairwells, when in fact there were more than forty thick steel beams that supported the buildings from the inside, designed to withstand the impact of 160 mps winds (on the full surface of one side of the building this amounts to oodles more force than an airplane hitting it). The Commission reports simply ignored the design of the buildings (what would motivate them to ignore it?). The idea that jet fuel melted the steel in the buildings is disproven: most of the fuel was spent in the initial contact blast, burning jet fuel isn't hot enough to melt steel else airplane engines would melt down on the runway, and there were people standing in the gaping holes left by the planes after the fire had died down (photographic evidence). The 'pancake theory' of how the buildings came down has been debunked by computer modeling. Buildings 1, 2, and 7 all appear in video as controlled demolitions.

The Pentagon attack is likewise suspect; a Boeing 757 would have had to skim just feet off the ground at 400 mph after turning 270 degrees in a tight pirouette to hit as is alleged. One wonders why there weren't hundreds of people who saw the airplane skimming just over the adjoining buildlings and highway without hitting so much as one of the highway signs or light poles thirty feet above the ground. The strike profile on the building looks more like a missile or drone hit it. More photographic evidence: there were no parts of a 757 at the crash site. At the Pentagon as with the WTC, evidence was removed from the scene before investigation could be properly conducted.

On and on, there are questions that have never been answered. At least not in the Official Version (and remember that there were three Official Versions of the military response to the attacks in the week after). Heck, it's possible that Dick Cheney was at the helm ordering a stand-down of Air Force interception of hijacked jets, or sending the intercept fighters the wrong direction so that they were 150 miles away when the WTC was hit.

The conservative media in the nation went on high energy to back up the Official Version. As is necessary with propaganda a term had to be assigned to the package of questions that brought up the inconsistencies of the Official Version, and thus we had 'conspiracy theory'. It worked. It makes anybody who uses the questions into nutcases, into shadowy characters who are really unpatriotic and bad.

Again, I'm trained in the sciences. If a theory exists, it will remain a theory until it's investigated and either confirmed or refuted. There has been a lot of research on the probabilities of the Official Version and the 9-11 Commission report, and has come up with a lot of inconsistencies and improbabilities. Even impossibilities. But what happened to the research? Shouldn't the exposure of what amounts to lying be a cause for concern to the American public? Lying that covers up likely government actions that resulted in the deaths of more than three thousand Americans? Lies that were further employed to start a war that to date has resulted in more than three thousand American military deaths and possibly a million Iraqi military and civilian deaths? Until I hear a credible refutation to the questions of the conspiracy theory I cannot help but think it could be true.

That the conspiracy theory has died out even with research to support it says a lot.

On Whose Authority?

Just an appetizer before the main meal: in all the discussions and reporting on the high price of health care and oil products, why is it that we rarely hear that record profits in those industries might be a factor?

And a question, before I forget: if all time zones converge at the North Pole, what time is it on the North Pole?

Now to the main course:

In an interview with Dianne Rehm recently, John Dean spoke about his most recent book. It included the idea of an ‘authoritarian personality’, which has apparently been researched for a number of years but hasn’t been included in a diagnostic manual. Not having researched authoritarian personalities I can only give a reaction to some things that Mr. Dean said.

He said that about twenty-five percent of the population can be labeled as having an authoritarian personality. But I suppose it’s only natural that a larger percentage be at the top of business, government, and religion; that type of personality would gravitate toward such positions. However – and this is where it would benefit me to look into the research and get familiar with the traits – it would make sense that people with authoritarian personality would carry some common problems. If it can be, or is, outlined what those problems are we might want to take them seriously so that the problems can be anticipated and thwarted before affecting too many people, or we could use the knowledge to balance out the population of leaders to include other types of personalities and dilute the problematic effect.

My guess is that one of the strong traits of authoritarian personalities is in the way power is perceived, acquired, and exercised. It is probably a very important feature. Unless there is some method of putting the brakes on it, when you pair competition – a quintessential feature of capitalism – with the acquisition of power there is a strong possibility of the misuse and abuse of power. Exhibit A: the Bush administration.

Mr. Dean stated that “not all leaders have authoritarian personalities, but all people with authoritarian personalities are conservative”. I would have to review the research to believe this, but for the moment, since he claims to have reviewed it, we will believe him until evidence says otherwise. Hm. I suppose I also need to know a definition of ‘authoritarian’ before proceeding with the thought. Maybe a later essay. However, just a cursory glance with such blessed ignorance makes it look like Mr. Dean is right. The conservative element in American politics and religion in the last quarter century does seem to ride on the shoulders of authoritarian types.

He also said that authoritarian personalities seem to be of two types: leaders and followers. The leaders don’t like to be told what to do or how to do it, and expect their agenda to be carried out. The followers tend to make themselves subservient to the authoritarian leaders and pass on the agenda with little personal reflection on it. In a beneficent system this would result in a strong, clean rule that is good for most everybody. In a power-abusing system this results in hegemony, secrecy, cronyism, and blind adherence to policy. I imagine it would be necessary to forcibly remove any dissent from this type of system in order to keep it from crumbling in the face of truth and abuse. Exhibit B: the Bush administration.

The sad part: this research has been going on for years and I’ve never heard about it before. All the while power is being abused right in front of us by authoritarian types. If someone like me, a GDL, has to hear about it years afterward only on independent, seditiously liberal community radio, how in the world is the information going to get into the mainstream to become common knowledge, so that it can be used to curb the abuse?

Maybe I could write a blog, and everybody who reads it Googles ‘authoritarian personality’, writes their own blog about it, and emails it to everyone they know. Then those people could Google, write, and mail. It could go viral. Wouldn’t that would be a hoot!

Gems II

Tonight I finished the crown of my first gemstone. All facets are polished. Honestly, it's coming out better than I expected for the first effort. Either I did my homework better than I thought, the faceting machine is more simple to use than I expected, the moon was in the right phase, or something...

It's a seductive effort, cutting gems. Everything's on such a tiny scale. One degree of difference in a facet angle makes a world of difference. Time cannot be rushed, and here in the early going it's taking more time than I would ever be able to recoup in sales of stones. Yet I can see how it can get better with practice, and eventually I'll be turning out really nice stones with much less effort.

I didn't have an engineer's brain to start this whole thing, but it looks like an artist's temperament may compensate. Once I realize what I'm looking for with each facet, the cutting is like playing a Chopin nocturne, the same notes played every time but each performance subtly different from the last depending on my mood, my fingers' willingness and fitness to translate the piece, the setting in which the piece is being played, the depth of soul that can be had at the moment... There are so many jukes and jives you can use to tweak a facet, and each gem will be a unique performance. Unlike music, the gem will remain in silent beauty forever, always there to appreciate, never decaying with time.

I like this stuff.

Slavery

In a report this morning on the radio the estate of James Madison, President of the United States, was considered. The focus was on the fact that Madison, principal author of the Constitution, owned about one hundred slaves. There is a modern sense of disbelief that such a contradiction could occur, but this ignores the historical context. It was the spirit of the times and an integral part of the economy. At the time very few in positions of authority questioned it.

The reporter said that many of the slaves had no earthly possessions to pass on. Set that next to Janis Joplin singing, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, and it turns our understanding a mite. It got me to thinking about what the slave owners were beholden to, and a whole landscape opened up. In a short space, during which I was driving and soon had to pull over to write it all down, I came up with a list of things that people can be enslaved to.

But first, I wanted to consider the definition of slavery. Turning to Webster’s, the first definition is what we normally think of as being owned by and in servitude to another human being. But skipping down to the third definition we find that slavery is a condition of submission to or domination by some influence, habit, etc. By this definition James Madison was enslaved to his business ventures and land holdings. My own idea is that slavery is whatever is necessary to support your drives, and this could be positive or negative. Let’s go back to my list. We can be enslaved by:

· Possessions, or standard of living
· Self image and identity, including the pursuit of success
· Opinions, either our own or others’
· Doctrines
· Causes
· Relationships of many types
· Hope without certainty, especially with religion and politics
· Desire for potency, power
· Passions
· Situations we’ve gotten into and are hard to get out of

This is just a short list of all the kinds, and each could take an essay itself. Jumping back to the global level, it seems that we’re all enslaved to something or someone. And so much time, effort, money, and hopefulness goes into efforts to feel free, which paradoxically enslaves us to the pursuit of freedom. Bikers find it in the wind on the road. Adrenaline junkies find it in fast vehicles and extreme sports. Workers of all types find it in a lazy Saturday morning with (relatively) nothing to do. Yet the feeling of freedom is momentary and fleeting; we return to other enslavements in all too short a time.

Is there a more enduring type of freedom? Stay tuned.

If there is such a thing as a free man or woman, it must be exceedingly rare.

*Sigh*

On the news today somebody from the White House leaked that Iran will be attacked next month. I'll trust that this wasn't unsubstantiated rumor, that NPR checked out its sources.

What can you do with people who only see the world in terms of Good Guys and Bad Guys, who have the world's largest military at their disposal, and whose apparently only solution is to attack? They don't hear reason. They don't admit fault. They don't think through to outcomes. Through their decisions and actions over the last six years more than six hundred thousand people have died, more than seventy percent innocent. A newly elected Congress hasn't been able to curb their aggression.

I'm holding my head in my hands. My eyes can't focus. They want to start another war. I want to scream "STOP IT!!!!!!!" But it would be shouting into deep space, where the sound doesn't even leave my mouth.

In a different report this morning a man was talking about 'peace through strength'. It's an admirable moniker. It sounds full-bodied and patriotic. It expresses a desire for peace.

But it's only peace on the surface. Strength is a friendlier word than dominance, which is what is really going on. Peace at this superficial level only means nobody dares confront. Underneath we have fear and resentment in those under domination. The image of peace is only as valuable as an imitation Rolex.

Real peace, as I often preach, cannot be had by competition and domination: it can only be had by cooperation and equality. It must be cultivated over a long period of time. It involves the risk that when you hold out your hand in offered brotherhood it may be grabbed and you're pulled off balance, and once off balance you can be thrown and hurt. Those who can only imagine aggression as a solution in this situation aren't wise or visionary enough to be leaders.

I'm tired of being ruled by those who believe that an image of strength is the height of respectability when they know little strength of spirit and loving. I'm tired of having to submit to the dictates of playground bullies. And it makes me sick to think that in a month, should the leak from the White House prove to be true, thousands more innocent people in another land will die because America's leaders only know how to attack. God help us all.

Punishment, Death, and Wisdom

I think I've broached the topic of punishment before. It's still on my mind, the attitude of criminalizing everything officially unwholesome (while looking the other way for corporate greed and crime). The culture of punishment is bothersome for two reasons: first, what happens when parents focus more on catching and punishing their children than loving and encouraging them? The kids may turn rebellious, they may become crafty and scared, they may be resentful or hateful in return; in short, they become anything but loved and encouraged. Our Federal government can be looked at as a parent figure to the nation. Get the drift? Second, a focus on crime and punishment is one of fourteen typical traits of a fascist state. Bush & Co can deny it all they want, but if they walk like a duck, quack like a duck...

* * *

A long-time friend of the family, retired a few years, drowned last week. He was revived and kept alive on life support for nearly a week, but after thirty minutes under water there was massive brain damage from lack of oxygen, and within hours of removing life support he died. Another friend from a different family, this one my age, has been struggling with an extremely rare form of cancer. Last week they were going to try the last resort, what they called a 'fatal dose' of chemo. Either it would kill the cancer or it would kill him. I haven't heard the results yet.

Things like this get you thinking about your own mortality. If I'm found not breathing with no heartbeat, DON'T REVIVE ME. If I have late stage cancer with little hope for cure, give me palliative care and let me say my goodbyes. Since a strange clinical death experience at age 14 I have no fear of death. There's a fear of dying painfully, but that's a different story. Death itself is not frightening. It's the next adventure, the next stage in the journey, and -- if my experience and the experience of many others who have died and been brought back to conscious life is believed -- a thousand million times preferrable to a human, mortal life. If I live to be 150 I still won't have done everything I want to; at some point this mortal experience will end. That's the way it is. It's not morbid to think about your own death. For it is in the consideration of death that we discover some of the meaning of life. And find the motivation to start doing things now.

* * *

Dont' you wish sometimes that there were more homo sapients around?

Bumper Stickers

I don't see it very often anymore, but one occasionally rolls past me affixed to the rear of a car, the bumper sticker that says, "Faith, Hope, Victory". It's a condensation of the elements held by those favoring the war. But though they do not realize it, it exposes the religion of Nationalism, which borrows from religion until something inconvenient is encountered, then a patriotic ideal is inserted. In this instance the biblical element of Love is dropped and replaced by Victory. If God is Love, then when you drop Love you drop God.

Another bumper sticker I still see regularly is "Freedom Is Not Free". There are usually other bumper stickers around it that suggest support for the President, right or wrong. It's a sound-bitish kind of saying, easy to remember, and packed with emotion for those who revere the flag. Its meaning is that many have sacrificed money, time, effort, and even their own lives to perpetuate the guarantee of freedom in our land. Yet thought about for a moment, the saying melts into an oxymoron kind of situation. Something is not what it is. Either that, or something is what it is not. It's too close to "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength'. You have to use the same kind of twisted rationalizing to believe it without question, to accept it without bother. This type of motto, underneath it all, serves those who benefit from the twisted logic and relies on the unquestioned ignorance of the people enslaved. It is one footfall on the path to fascism.

It is a strange vision, to imagine a land without politicians, for the people only send representatives to gather who believe that the people rule themselves.

Risky Thoughts

Getting out of bed every morning there is a chance that I could stub my toe before fully awake. Brushing my teeth I could jam the brush too far back and tear the inside of my cheek. Getting in the car and on the road is risky: more people die in car wrecks every year than have died in commercial plane crashes in the U.S. throughout aviation history. Hiking in the woods presents a cornucopia of dangers: ticks can bring Lyme disease, I could snap an ankle on uneven rock, copperheads cross the path, tree branches come crashing down unexpectedly, falling off a bluff would hurt, and I could unintentionally come between the local mountain lion and its food stash. Going to work, I could be assaulted by a client blowing up. I could be-- and have been -- fired for specious reasons with little legal recourse.

I could reduce the amount of risk I face in life by just staying at home all the time. But then a tree could fall into the house, the house could catch fire from a bare wire in the wall, I could be asphyxiated by undetected carbon monoxide, I could cut myself on a can lid or with a kitchen knife, I could slip in the bathtub and crack my head open on the stool, I could get shocked by trying to do laundry when the wiring in the machine has rubbed bare on internal metal parts, I could get a paper cut just sitting on the couch with a book...

Risk is a fact of life.

Yet when a bridge collapses unexpectedly, when miners are trapped or buried when the earth shifts and ruins their tunnels, when a tornado levels a town, when a young person dies during football practice or on an operating table, when our hearts are broken by someone we thought loved us...on and on, we have somehow come to think that these things shouldn't happen. How did we get to that point?

For example: when a death occurs we have to list a reason (it's illegal to die of old age in the U.S.; did you know that?) and we think a good percentage of deaths are wrongful. News flash: to date the rate of death among humans is one hundred percent. Every aspect of life contains risk and the law of averages takes many before they expect to go. If you somehow survive all the external risks long enough, your body at some point begins failing. How we got to the point of being offended by death is, as mentioned, legislated, and too many attorneys on the landscape prompt us to claim being wronged. We expect doctors to never err, medications to never react wrongly, and products that we buy to never present any potential harm. Never, never, never.

The word never is an absolute. It leaves no wiggle room. It's a form of perfection. Yet we live as imperfect beings in an imperfect world. To expect perfection in this life is to live outside a demonstrated reality. Not living in reality, we live in fantasy.

Good luck.

Okay, but product liability has prompted a lot of R&D in product safety to the point that our cars and children's toys and power tools are less risky than ever. Should we stop the forward progress? Some of the advances in safety were undreamt of a generation ago. Heck, when I was a kid car dashboards were solid metal. Guaranteed to knock your teeth out.

What's the acceptable level of damage from inevitable risk? "No miner deaths are acceptable," one industry spokesperson said on the radio today. It shows that the company is concerned, but it promotes an unrealistic expectation for a very risky job. It would be nice to be able to not have any tragedy, but how much stress do we hand ourselves by setting unrealistic expectations? We get accused of not caring if we say that it's likely that X number of miners will probably die this year, but we fail as administrators if our expectation of perfection is not met.

I could probably go on and on, but would only wind down to this one point: risk happens. We can get better at being more aware so that we can avoid a good amount of risk. And we could get a lot better at accepting reality even if it's tragic. It's a part of the flowing dance of life, knowing when to leap, when to dance joyfully, and when to bow gracefully.

Flotsam and Jetsam II

A coworker today said that he's never looked at a porn site on the Internet. Part of me is happy for him, that he has disciplined himself so that he carries a point of pride. Another part of me thinks that it's a stupid practice to deny part of our essential nature. Like our head and heart it just needs to be used wisely and responsibly, even made into an art form. And have fun.

I'll admit I've looked, and come to find that there are a lot of women who pose nude who...uhm...shouldn't. But for every yin there's a yang, and there are some very pretty women. Yet I find that the eyes are more important than anything else: if they are self-involved, hateful, or clueless it doesn't matter how good her bod looks. I'm turned off. If they are intelligent, kind, and playful it makes a woman so attractive.

A woman at our day center today said that I'm handsome. Haven't heard that for years. The self-deprecating part of me concludes that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and one comment in several years is an aberration. A question also arises: this woman is diagnosed with a mental illness; does her comment mean that only a crazy woman can find me attractive, or does it mean that a person with a diagnosis is only in that one way affected and in most other ways is like any other normal human, and from years of therapy she has learned to merely say what she honestly sees?

The woman next to her asked if I was a psychiatrist. Clearly off her rocker.

I wrote in a recent blog that I struggle in relationships because I don't like to be emotionally dishonest. Last weekend on Car Talk Tom and Ray were in rare form and laughing more than usual. One of the topics throughout the show was about relationships, and one female caller said that it was not that she lets her husband be right about things, as Tom and Ray had posited, but that she led her husband to think he was right. Lots of laughs. And a very common comment. It was another example for me that we somehow think that one person in a relationship is to be in control, and manipulation is necessary to retain one's sense of control. How sad, that we don't trust our partners to have knowledge, wisdom, decision-making skills, and our best interests at heart as well as their own; if we aren't willing to share as equals aren't we being pretty immature or insecure? When we say we love someone but then don't show trust in them there's something wrong. That machinery is going to throw a scrap iron fit one day, or will spend its life laboring on only half its cylinders.

With thoughts like that I'm gonna be single for a looooong time, huh?

Gems

They say that my grandfather was a genius. In 1925, at the age of nineteen, he figured out aerodynamics well enough to design and build an airplane – a low-wing monoplane in an era of biplanes – that actually flew. He was a gifted artist: a plate of his incredibly detailed color drawings of butterflies still adorns my mother’s living room wall. Armed with only a high school education my grandfather spent his working life as an engineer, first with aircraft, naturally, then many years designing combines. He designed the first Gleaner self-propelled combine, bringing the company from the age of horse- and mule-drawn implements into the modern age. A six-inch replica of that combine, built by Grandpa from tin cans, sits in my uncle’s living room.

After retiring my grandfather took up a new hobby: faceting gems. He studied how light acts and reacts, how it reflects and refracts, and the entirely complex world of gem minerals and what types of cuts and facet angles each required. He bought faceting equipment and made a small business out of a very exacting hobby. All family members have jewelry given as gifts.

Following Grandpa’s death, my father took the faceting equipment into his own home, taught himself to facet, and carried on the hobby. Understand, Dad was also an aircraft engineer, a quiet, intelligent, and exceptionally kind man, and the exacting nature of faceting was an easy extension of his life’s work. Alas, his eyesight declined in later years and he became increasingly unable to do faceting as finely as he expected. Dad died a year and a half ago.

Last weekend I, the oldest son in the family, picked up the faceting equipment that Grandpa and Dad had accumulated and brought it to my home. To buy equipment for the hobby outright would cost more than I can afford, and I have the double sense of gratitude for inheriting it and the sober responsibility to facet gems as well as the excellent men preceding me. Although artistic, I’m not an engineer. It will take effort to equal their quality.

On the faceting machine there remains a gem started by Dad. I don’t know what type of stone it is; its very pale green may be corundum, which would make it a sapphire, yet it is exceptionally clear and large. The finished stone would be more than a carat. I don’t know of any synthetic stone that would imitate such a pale sapphire – its shade makes it worth less than darker and bluer stones – and I am left wondering. Dad only got the crown faceted, the top portion of the stone, and hadn’t even shaped the pavilion underneath. He may not have been able to see well enough to know that the crown wasn’t polished well enough, and there are still lap streaks on it.

It would be nearly impossible to finish the stone as it was started. I don’t know the facet angles that were used and can’t accurately polish them as they need to be. I’m not sure how to align the girdle facets – the thin strip of surfaces around the girth of the stone that separates the crown from the pavilion – to match the crown. Probably I’ll have to regrind the stone and start over. It will lose carat weight if I do that. But it’s not a complete stone otherwise, and to save it as is serves no purpose other than to occupy one of the dop sticks I’d need to facet other gems.

So I’ve inherited some equipment and several hundred rough stones. There was something else also given me: the attitude to use it well. There is no doubt in my mind that I can figure it out and make some very nice stones. There is an artistic determination and appreciation in me, and the desire to do things well. There is also a desire to make fine things as gifts for others (every family member already has one of my hand-crafted, built from scratch, antique reproduction clocks). There’s little use in arguing whether such things were with me from birth or taught during my upbringing; it’s likely both. But it’s the way things have always been done in my family and I am the next generation to use it in the world, with the responsibility to pass it on.

Every facet on a gem is important. Leave one unpolished and there is diminishment. Facets at sloppy angles leave a gem less brilliant than it could be. I was raised with good morals, good language, the pursuit of knowledge, the expectation to treat others well, the discipline to do things well, the ability to think critically, and on and on. There are many facets to a human life.

My life is a gem, carefully shaped and polished by artistic souls and hands. It is my fortune that they did a fine job.

Fear and a Slippery Slope

Yesterday the Senate passed a bill authorizing warrantless wiretapping on domestic/foreign communications. It's one of those things that makes you cock your head and say, "Huh?"

Hasn't it been one of the bones of contention that the Bush administration unconstitutionally did warrantless wiretapping, ignoring FISA? Wasn't this one of the grounds for impeachment that almost nobody had the guts to support? And now the Senate hands Bush permission to do what he was doing illegally before. It will be impossible to hold him to account for this wrongdoing now that the Senate has okayed it.

It is also one step -- a substantial step -- off the path and onto the slippery slope. For now it's limited to foreign communications. How much longer before it's domestic? A silly question, really: it's already been practiced domestically, and now with permission to tap foreign communications it will be so easy for them to invoke the same logic when it's revealed again that domestic wiretapping is still going on.

Didn't I wonder aloud in a recent blog which civil liberties the Bush administration was after next?

A second part of this is that lots of Democratic lawmakers went along with this bill, saying that they didn't want to look soft on terror. An immediate problem comes up: the American people sent them to Washington, DC to tell Bush and Buddies that we're tired of this game. And now the newbies are already wrapped up in it. What kind of backroom pressures are being put on them so that they violate the trust of the citizens who sent them there?

When lawmakers say that they don't want to appear this way or that, what they're saying is that they're afraid for their images. They're not voting on principle; they're voting on how it looks so that they can get reelected. This has been one of the biggest problems with the whole war on terror: Bush and Co defined the terms of this landscape, and anybody who responds to it is playing the game by the rules the Administration laid down. Once you step foot into the game the Administration is already in control. You're playing their game.

We know from oodles of research on children that bullies are operating out of a fear of personal powerlessness. They are preemptively aggressive so that nobody questions their fears. And the fears never get addressed. Why don't we apply this to adults? To politicians who display preemptive aggression? Does human nature change from childhood to adulthood? Nope. Not like that.

When we say that national security is the preeminent issue, then insecurity is the problem. Are we going to solve it by focusing on terrorists we can't see Somewhere Out There? Nope. And when the majority of Americans are trying to tell the top elected officials that we don't like their insecurity anymore, of course they respond in the way they know how: to be aggressive.

How do we deal with childhood bullies? We know a lot from the research. It's time to use it on the adults who are behaving just the same. Before more people die in a war based on insecurity. Before we lose more civil liberties because our 'leaders' harbor unacknowledged fears.

America is better than that.

Empowerment

It has become a popular word of our time, empowerment. It connotes the bestowing of power upon those who lack it.

Yet the use of the word, from the beginning, has made my tummy do strange, unwelcome things. There’s something about the way it’s used that doesn’t feel right.

I guess it’s like the strange world of affirmations. Used for decades in counseling and self-help, these critters are designed to make one feel better about oneself. I’ve nothing against believing good things about oneself and wish that more people would, but there rarely seems to be a distinction between merely reciting the affirmation and living it. In its mistaken use, it seems to be counted on as a magical chant, that if you say it then it will be true. There is something to ‘fake it ‘til you make it’, but the blind recitation without supporting work to cement its foundation makes it a hopeless effort.

Can you really give power? I suppose it’s possible; imagine handing a child a gun, or a teenager a driver’s license. But this exposes a dire need: you have to be trained to use it, and committed to the proper amount of responsibility that its rightful use carries. Lethal power in the hands of the untrained and irresponsible is a frightening thought.

Yet this thought doesn’t satisfy. It refers to external power. What about inner power? Strength of character? Intellect? Satyagraha? Can inner power be given?

Floating in this existential stream, it seems that internal power can’t be given. Power (which in my definition is the ability to effect change, and only results from the transfer and consolidation of existing energy from one source to another, all the way from the atomic level to the intellectual, spiritual, and political domains) can’t be created ex nihilo unless one is a god. I can tell corn that it has permission to grow, but without cultivation the results will be haphazard at best. Besides, the power to grow is not something I give the kernels at all, but an inherent quality they are endowed with. My permission for the corn to grow is rather insignificant. Silly, even. All I can do is work the conditions in which the corn grows in order to encourage the greatest yield.

Are humans like this? Do they have inherent power that for whatever reason is unrecognized and uncultivated? Or, perhaps very likely, is prohibited and the person comes to accept it as a given? Don’t get too big for your britches. A woman’s place is in the home. Black people should marry their own kind. America, love it or leave it. Who do you think you are? You’re just an employee, I’m the boss. Who died and made you God? Moslems are all terrorists and anti-American.

If this is so, then it must also be true that no matter how much one rationalizes and accepts one’s impotence there is also a part that will not believe it. For throughout history we have had repressed and oppressed people striving against the oppressors, from married couples to entire nations. Something in the underlings just will not accept defeat.

So maybe this is the rightful use of empowerment: to awaken, educate, and cultivate the inherent power that is contained within. It’s a lot harder and takes a lot longer than merely reciting hopeful platitudes, but the results are infinitely better. It makes parenting and teaching a very serious and responsible duty.

And my tummy can abide that.

Thomas III

Thomas stood on the mountain peak and turned toward the west. Before him lay all governments of the earth, from poor districts to great principalities, the domes of great capitol buildings rising above the smaller state houses and city halls. Within, Thomas could see diets and congresses, politburos and assemblies, parliaments and dictatorships, and the incredible amount of activity generated by the business of governing. And while there were great differences in style from one state to another, Thomas could see that there was a mundane consistency in the execution of the duties of state. Had there been one language and a single style of dress, he would not have been able to tell one from another.

‘The need for governing,’ Thomas meditated, ‘is that people have to live together in community, and governing regulates behaviors to prevent people from coming to harm.’

Looking over the governments of the earth Thomas saw that this need was not met, and in fact the governments had become the perpetrators of harm just as much as unprincipled individuals and corporate bodies. It only made sense: because people are imperfect they cannot run a perfect system of governing. A corporate body may have the pathologies that any individual can have, and thus there are governments that are paranoid, that are amotivationally depressed, that are sick with power.

“You see clearly,” said the Voice.

“To dwell on it is a cause of useless pain,” Thomas muttered half to himself. “There is little I can do.”

“Do not fail to see,” the Voice reminded him, “that there are many people of good heart and sound principles laboring in government, and but for them all the peoples of the earth would be subjected to the tyranny of corruption unending.”

Thomas was grateful at this.

“Yet why,” Thomas asked, “do corrupt people rise to the top? Why is it that some of the deepest, ageless philosophy comes from China yet they have too often been ruled by despotism? Why is it that communism, which should make all things economically fair between the people, ends up ruled by dictators who belie every principle of communism in their policies and actions? How does a democracy end up ruled by corporations, by the wealthy, by special interest groups rather than the will of the people?”

“Why is a dangerous question,” the Voice gently chided, “when a mind which is limited in knowledge fills empty places with assumption – and every human mind is limited -- yet for this time I will tell you. With minds capable of abstraction people choose to chase the seemingly ungraspable winds of control either within themselves or without. In the complexity of time, provinciality, individuality, and society there is ever a new generation thrust into the responsibility of governing. Those of sound principle only occasionally become the highest leaders, and it is their stability of purpose and effect which bring them there.”

“Yet you said that people either ‘control themselves within or without’,” Thomas mused. “Is it that those who do not work on controlling themselves become the most zealous controllers of others?”

“It is so, and those who at once fear their own impotence and cannot allow themselves to see it. In the act of governing other lives they hope to foster the illusion that they are in control of themselves; in the accumulation of power they breed the illusion that they are potent. Yet setting one's sights on others does nothing to address that which is within; no amount of controlling others, my child, will satisfy the desparate thirst for inner power. Their greatest weakness is the unquenchable fear of being discovered for the inadequacy that is masked.”

Thomas thought for a moment. “It would seem, then,” he said quietly, “that if every person governed themselves adequately there would be no need for a state government.”

“It is so.”

“And ‘no religion, too’.”

“Quite.” Thomas could hear the smile in the Voice.

“You believe there is little you can do,” the Voice suggested. “Yet we have already spoken to your belief. It is a very hard task, Thomas, for you to come to control yourself. It will occupy you for the rest of your life. And it is as a virus: infect others with the will to do the same and you will be serving me. Do not hate those who fear their impotence, rather see them with eyes of pity and loving, and both a will to instruct them and to guard against them until they are capable of controlling themselves. Approach them with invitation, not anger. And should they refuse to address their own fears you must quietly and diligently work with others of good principle to remove them from positions of power and influence, lest they harm others in their unending thirst for power. You do not know what you are capable of. Twenty years ago you did not know how a rabbet plane worked, yet it is now second nature.”

(To be continued)