Rambling

I don't feel like writing about the "horse race" right now. It's important, but don't you need a break now and then? I thought so.

I just feel like rambling. Perhaps unintelligibly. I've got a lot on my mind, and I'm sure you do as well, and I feel like I'm learning more about how to roll with the shocks that are constantly provided by our modern world by taking time out for meditation. Even a good night's sleep can't do as much good sometimes as meditation, if you're having trouble trying to give your brain a rest. It's important to remember that if we're fortunate enough to be able to take a few minutes and set it all aside, we're blessed to be present right here, right now in this still breathtakingly beautiful place. It's important just to remember how much there is to appreciate and be grateful for. Some of you get on your knees and pray. I sit cross-legged, and try to forget about me and just listen. Maybe it isn't quite the same thing, but it's pretty close.

Of course, I've also done a whole lot of reading and study, so much that the ego pops up again, and makes me think I should be pretty impressed by myself. Well, a big part of that chip on my shoulder got knocked off in Manhattan bumping up against some of the finest minds and talents in New York theater, and a lot of the rest of that chip was shredded by the jaw-dropping intellects I've encountered in nearly a decade at Microsoft. I know full well that no matter how much I do, or how much I study, it's barely a blip on the radar of achievements. I don't think I need to worry too much about my ego getting out of control. I'm just glad all this material is out there to help me learn, and I hope many of you are reaching out beyond the largely mindless debates in the media to learn for yourselves. There are levels of understanding, you do realize that, I trust, and if I've advanced past a few plateaus in the last year or so, don't worry, I still can't look up and see the top.

You may know something about me, or maybe not. Most of it isn't important, except that I have no offspring to worry about (at least that I know of, haw, haw). I have my regrets about that, but at least it allows me to speculate a little more freely about the way our society is constructed. If you have children, I suspect there's an understandable tendency to short-circuit that kind of speculation a little bit, for fear that drastic change might endanger the future prospects for those young people. I would counter that I have no less concern than you do for their future, but maybe I can and do entertain some riskier notions than others might. Then, too, I would offer that serious risks are being taken on your behalf whether you want that to happen or not, and we're all feeling the fallout from them, so let's free up our minds a little and entertain some new possibilities. Your children are liable to thank you if you do.

Reports are coming out now -- one of them was the main headline on my Seattle Post-Intelligencer this morning -- about how many ways the ecology of the oceans has been damaged. Here's a link to the article in my paper this morning: Scientists fear "tipping point" in Pacific Ocean. It's about the massive deaths of sea creatures at the ocean bottom for lack of oxygen. There are so many similar reports, not to mention all the humanitarian crises in Africa and elsewhere, other threats of violence and war, and so on. My point is, this isn't working. More importantly, the United States has had its big hammy hands in a lot of places where they didn't belong to prevent things from working. We've been actively supporting the wrong things in the name of one overstated devil or another -- Communism, Socialism, Islamofascism, Illegals, whoever They might happen to be. We've propped up dictators, overthrown democracies who threatened the status quo, and generally promoted the wealthy elite throughout the world and exploited the poor, all in the name of spreading "democracy" and free trade. Now, about 1% of the population controls about 80% of the world's resources, and that little 1% is scrambling frantically to make it 90%, while the Pinochets, the Suhartos, and the Musharrafs of the world reign supreme. Once there was a Hitler, and he's left such a scar on the heart of humanity it may never beat properly again, but we have to try and recover. Another Hitler may come again someday, and we'll need to be prepared for him or her, but I think we need to start remembering how to have a little courage, how to live in the world with a sense of caution, not of fear.

We need to consider some serious changes. We really need to lift up the hood of this vehicle I'm using to represent our modern system, and see if the engine couldn't use a complete overhaul. It's certainly polluting the earth, its fuel drives both itself and world unrest, and many of its parts are ripped from the earth in a manner that leaves it with permanent scars. Much of the construction of these parts is performed in sweatshop conditions for less than a living wage, and the result is wrapped in an overpriced package to be sold for credit we don't always have for a price that we can't afford. It's insupportable, it's unsustainable, and it is on the whole inhuman and morally bereft. That we can still remain in touch with some grain of humanity in this unnatural bête noire is part of the joyous miracle of life.

Back when Eisenhower was President (and yes, I was alive then, just not very old), we had a lot of problems, but in the United States we had a fairly positive attitude, and we were really trying to work together, for the most part. There was still terrible racism, of course, and we had all the sophistication of the Grand Ole Opry, but we had the strongest middle class in the history of America, supported heavily by a very progressive taxation system that rose up to 91% for income earned in a year beyond what would be at least 1 million, I believe, in today's dollars. I'm sorry if that's imprecise or inaccurate, but I'm rambling, and I didn't look it up just now. I'm certain the 91% figure is correct; I just don't remember what the earnings level was for sure, or how that would figure in today's terms. I think it would take some serious doing to get us back to that point. We'd have to take most of Brady Quinn's bonus money away from him, and that would be hard. Besides, I'm not sure what the right approach is, I'm just sure that even when you add up all the money, there isn't enough for every Goldman Sachs employee to get a million bucks for Christmas and to feed all the starving people in the United States alone. We either start learning how to level it out a little, or folks will starve in increasing numbers. You might even start to notice it's happening without my having to tell you. Then it would be real bad.

Now, I like the ideas of achievement and success. I suspect that in even the most perfect world there will still be winners and losers, and perhaps that's as it should be. I think in a more perfect world we can provide a little cushion for the losers, maybe not a house in the Hamptons with servants, but enough to get by. There should be incentive for success, and rewards, percs and privileges, but not so much of all those things that it gets obscene. I think we can experience all the thrill of victory and agony of defeat even if the victor collects a little smaller handful of spoils. We could consider playing this game of life a little more for fun, a little less for keeps, and we'd still enjoy it.

What would become of excellence if we try to establish some sensible limits? I think that's a bogus concern if there ever was one. I believe that those who want to achieve excellence will do so whenever they can, and that part of us has never been all about money. I hardly think that the best in us will suffer if we try to lift up the least. The truth is, I think the best in us has suffered long enough.

Oh, the economy is so fragile, if we try to change things the whole world market will fall apart! All I can say to that is: Read, my friends, Read! The economy is not quite some mystical unexplained force; it can be unruly, but it is being and has been controlled, by and large, by those in whose private interests it's been to do so. This is the tricky part, though, those private interests. They don't seem inclined to play well with others. That's a lot of what makes this another chapter in a long, hard struggle, with no end yet in sight. But make no mistake, there is the potential for control, and there are ways that control can be exercised. This is just one more area where caution should be our watchword, and not fear.

If we can get past being afraid of the economy, and believe me, we should, we can begin to think a bit about quality. Quality was the theme of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read over thirty years ago, and don't remember well enough now, but this blog probably has some echoes of the themes of Mr. Pirsig nonetheless. When I meditate, sometimes I'm actually able to let it go enough to get a sense of the subtle quality of this experience, the heady flavor of the never-to-be-repeated here and now, and sometimes I can even slow down enough to really appreciate it, just a little. I've lived long enough, and studied widely enough, to have rededicated myself to Zen meditation over this past year with high confidence that I was doing something worthwhile, something which has stood the test of time and won the respect of thoughtful people all over the world. There is a serious point to meditation, and it's not just playing around, and it's certainly not so I can gain some special power. I imagine there are many of you out there who could sit down for zazen for the first time and manage more relaxed and productive sitting than I've even approached yet, because maybe you're naturally more relaxed and spontaneous than I am. I don't have any illusions that with Zen I'm going to get anything very special that you don't have. I'm just trying to battle it out with some of my own devils, and recognize a little of my own silliness and stupidity, that's all. I just want to remind you that, when you take a moment and just try to appreciate the special quality it has, the world gets a little less complicated for a while. The things that really matter seem to be the ones we most quickly forget, and so much of that gets lost in the battle for superdelegates and votes in Texas.

Love thy neighbor as thyself. That's my definition of enlightenment, and I have no doubt that it's correct. When we look over the world for its greatest wisdom, there really is no serious disagreement. We may express it a little differently, but it's all the same. A Zen master might tell you that you should love everything as yourself, whether it's your neighbor, a blade of grass, or rancid butter. If we can brush aside the webs of all our distractions and just take it in as if we were one of the very first humans sitting silently by the first campfire and letting the magic and mystery of life show its full face to us in each moment, we might take quite a different perspective on the often insane predications on which we base our lives today. The magic's gone. Since I don't have children, I look at every child I see with a wistful glance, and feel some sense of a father's need to protect it from harm. I am sad for those children who will grow up in a world that has been so diminished, where some of the creatures that lived in my childhood have disappeared, and the fittest are left to survive be they man or beast in a world that's defined by a practical harshness of tone. I am sometimes also glad that I don't have children to leave in this world.

When I sit, I don't really try to direct things anywhere. If I'm thinking, ok, then, maybe it's time to think. If I can, of course, I allow myself to fall silent, and I've practiced enough that I can fall silent for a time. What happens at that point, I couldn't say, but I think that some of it connects to my old creative juices, the openness to that part of me that responds in a personal way, and it makes me want to meet all the moments of life with that same sense of shared adventure. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure when I look around, though, and see all the work that remains to be done. The best use I can make of meditation, at least for now, is as a constant reality check, making sure I stay in touch, or get in touch if need be, with my human self, and not allow it to be buried forever by a society that, as a whole, has left almost no humanity at all.

We need to change a lot. We shouldn't fear it. We've already lost so much, we should pause to remember and mourn all that. We are learning, growing, reaching out in hope, and we've been disappointed so often we fear that our hand might be lopped off as we reach out. I can't tell you that this year there'll be no more disappointments. If we go by history, then we're more likely to be duped again than not. But there is something this year that's special. Whether this is the year it can grow and flourish, or will be forced to recede again, I couldn't say, but if I've seen it before, and I think I have, I'd say that it has grown since I saw it last, and that's very good.

Changing The Mindset

I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.
-- Barack Obama (any of a thousand stump speeches)

Feeling sorry for Hillary yet? I am, a little. We don't actually need to get out the handkerchiefs, as she seems to be having a pretty good life, all in all. But I know she's been working hard, and it's got to be pretty devastating at this point. Of course, she still has a shot, but she has to know it's going to be an uphill battle from here. Obama's momentum is incredible, and folks are starting to climb aboard the bandwagon all over the country, and from all the ubiquitous demographics. The mood of the electorate has seen a significant shift.

But I have to say that Hillary, for all her differences with Bush & Co., is nonetheless part of that mindset we need to outgrow. And yes, I know Obama may, when it's all over, prove to have been yet another politician who was nothing but talk. I've chosen to believe that his heart is in the right place, for all his failings, and it looks like there are a lot of Americans besides just me who yearn to believe. That could translate into big numbers for other Democratic candidates this fall as well, riding the coattails of Yes We Can, and give the Democrats increased majorities in both the House and Senate for the 111th Congress in 2009. The stage could be set for dramatic progress soon in all the areas that trouble those of us who think about the world from a humanist perspective: war, human rights, global warming, economic injustice, corporate greed, and so on. So why am I still so uneasy?

Even a man -- or woman -- whose heart is in the right place has an uphill battle in the halls of American government right now, even with solid majorities in Congress. There will still be enormous pressure from powerful influences, there will still be all kinds of elected officials and many of them will still be corrupt, and there will still be a host of Bush appointees, including those new guys on the Supreme Court, to throw monkey wrenches into the machinery at every turn. Nobody said it would be easy.

So why do I think Hillary is part of the outmoded mindset of war? Well, there's her voting record, after all. It's hard to take her spin on the Iraq vote, since I'm one of those odd people capable of remembering back further than two weeks. I was paying attention, at least out of the corner of my eye while writing software, to that vote that authorized W to lead us into battle, and you would have had to be an idiot not to know what was going on. The same was true of last year's Iran vote, although so far we've lucked out thanks to "disloyal" officials who've let us in on the truth about Iran's WMD capabilities. There's more, though. In general, Hillary favors a more hard-line stance with those nations who've dared to disagree with us, and the more you know about U. S. history, the more offensive it really is that we continue to think we can cop these attitudes with countries where we've meddled and disrupted things so horribly, we've got a nerve saying anything at all. But that's America, the last great power, and what we say goes. Iran's been a mess since Operation Ajax in 1953 when we installed our own friendly puppet, the Shah, and all that crumbled into fundamentalism in 1979, another great victory for American can-do government.

All that's to say, the more you know about what the U. S. has really been up to basically since World War II, the more hypocritical the status quo holier-than-thou attitude really seems. Obama is very up front about wanting to change all that, although some of the details of his plans for the future make you wonder. I'm not sure how a huge increase in the size of the military squares with getting us out of the mindset of war, but hey, we've got to take this a step at a time. I'm hoping that Obama isn't a liar, because changing this mindset is really what I'm all about.

It's always been one of the most frustrating aspects of this blog that I can't transmit all the insight I've gained by my own reading to the reader that happens across this page. There are many entries here that point to a lot of good sources, and all I can say is it's important to be well read, because you certainly can't rely on today's media, owned as it is by either right-wing crackpots or huge corporate entities who profit greatly in times of war. You have to access information not generated by those who don't always find it in their best interests to tell the truth. The truth is, the United States has made excessive use of power during the sixty years I've been alive, and it has made life far more miserable, and far less hopeful, for hundreds of millions -- no, let's use the billions designator -- around the world. If the United States were actually to change its mindset, and it's why the whole world is watching this election with bated breath, and began to truly support bottom-up democracies throughout the world instead of dictatorships, elitism and corporate exploitation, the world could be utterly, profoundly, dramatically and beautifully transformed.

Obama has said the right things, and whether most Americans really understand why they're so right I rather doubt, but they really are the right things. They speak to the deepest hopes and most noble aspirations of humanity the world over, not just Americans, but they are a special challenge to those of us who are American, if we and the speaker are truly ready to turn words into action. He talks about hope, and he could soon be in position to turn some of those hopes to reality. I'm sure he knows, as I've discovered, how truly powerful a force the United States of America really is for good or ill, and I'm sure he knows that too often, and for far too long, we have not lived up to that promise.

America is far more than its president, or the thousands of government officials good and bad that may soon be under his charge. America is the home of the world's most powerful multi-national corporations, the world's most overwhelming military force, the most influential media, and so on. In many ways, the new president will find himself (yeah, himself) still a small cog in the larger machine. Of course, he could use all the snazzy new powers George Bush will leave him, such as unaccountable intelligence, mercenary, and justice divisions, an escalated priority for signing statements that makes the president a virtual dictator, and a vast array of judicial and administrative appointees deeply committed to unitary executive power. Or not. I'd certainly prefer that he didn't, because then we'd still have the dictatorship Bush created, just with a new dictator. That would do little to change the mindset.

The truth is, I think he's going to need a lot of help. He strikes me as someone who welcomes a helping hand or two, and I believe there'll be a lot of us anxious to put in a little time for a good cause. There hasn't been much out of Washington lately I'd want to sign onto, but times change. At least we can Hope.

The Stakes

There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

-- Arthur Jensen explaining the world to Howard Beale, from the film Network (1976)

For a little while, many of you are turning briefly from your everyday concerns, and thinking about some of the things I've been thinking about. You can see that things have turned sour in many respects -- Americans are losing their jobs and homes, the economy is in freefall, Iraq is still an atrocity, global warming is heating up, and nuclear nations are imploding and headed for crisis. The promises of the politicians were just so much hot air, as usual, and now, for your quatrennial moment of participation in this process that determines so much of your lives, you're going to begin choosing between the remaining list of candidates, and cast your vote on the direction you want this nation and the world to go.

If you've not been paying much attention, I can't blame you. For years, I was only able to glance from the corner of my eye as I worked 80-100 hours a week on various projects, the last my five-year contribution to Windows Vista. For nearly a year now, I've stepped back from all that, and really have paid attention to things, and have been sobered by how actually reliable my instincts have been, and yet how dulled they were by the distractions of everyday living. I need to make a choice as well, not on "Super Tuesday", but in the caucuses that will take place in the state of Washington on the 19th. I'm fortunate, I suppose, that the candidate I've been supporting is still in the mix, as I've been a Barack Obama supporter all along. Obviously, I will be supporting Obama in the caucus, unless something changes dramatically.

There were other candidates, like Dennis Kucinich, who really stated the problems more plainly, but I've been around for a while, and I know when some things just aren't going to happen. It's sort of amazing that I would assess, correctly, that the candidacy of a fellow white male from my home state of Ohio would be less viable than that of a black man born of a Kenyan father, but this is a pretty amazing time. Now it's time I tried to state some of the problems plainly, since my candidate still has to play the game and garner votes.

There are real issues at stake. This election won't necessarily be the defining moment that marks the turning point for America and the world, but then again, it might be. At the very least, it will make a critical statement about how we perceive ourselves and our current dilemma, and whether the odds for the future will have improved, or sunk to new lows. We're going to be voting for individuals, Republicans and Democrats, and you've heard a lot about the various candidates. I don't feel like speaking in specific terms today. I feel like making some generalities, working out of that instinct that has been validated and sensitized by my year of examining our current milieu.

I've mentioned elsewhere, though I don't think I've mentioned it yet in this blog, having watched a re-broadcast of a talk given by the Dalai Lama on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. I don't recall now where the talk was given, although it was out of doors, sometimes in the rain, with the Dalai Lama holding an umbrella over his head while he spoke. He talked a little about violence and discord, and he spoke about anger, even admitting that he himself gets angry sometimes. Then he made an assertion that stuck with me, claiming that when you're angry, 90% of what you feel is exaggeration. I don't know about the percentage, but I know there's more than a grain of truth in that. That's part of why I want to continue today's post more in generalities than specifically directed toward individuals, because people are more complex in many ways than even some of the most complex forces at work in our society, and people's motives on an individual basis are rarely entirely good or bad. It's probably a little more accurate to point to a direction and call it pernicious than to point to a person and do the same. I'll leave you to extrapolate conclusions on your own.

There are things going on now that reveal the most cancerous, destructive, tormented aspects of human nature imaginable. There are people who, for whatever reasons, are sowing seeds of misery throughout the world to such an extent that it beggars imagination. The word Evil is such a loaded and absolute term, but I don't think it can be avoided here. If we try to view the world as a struggle between good and evil, we become lazy, and quickly oversimplify everything in black and white. It's hard not to characterize individual actions as Evil, like the bombings in Baghdad this week, and as such, it's hard not to characterize the active promotion of conditions that engender such actions as embodying that same Evil, in all respects.

There is a possibility that you could make a choice soon to support someone who really doesn't care about you at all. Not the least little bit. The simple truth is, there is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, or whatever names those corporations operate under now, and they don't care the first thing about you. They aren't people, they're corporations. They care about, are created, charted, and under legislative dictum to care about, only the bottom line. Left to themselves, they will chew up the earth and spit it out in little pieces, strewing pieces of bone and hair through a barren landscape. They are mechanisms, soulless to their core, and they don't want democracy, they don't want you to have equality and dignity, they want profit. We are, indeed, trying to meddle with the primal forces of nature in this election, and whatever happens, we may not be able to meddle enough. But I want you to know that we really do have a lot to lose. It's more than Kucinich talked about, more than John Edwards told us, it's more along the lines of what we heard from Arthur Jensen over thirty years ago. We've allowed it to happen, and now it's reached us in every part of our lives, and we have to choose now if that's still the way that it's going to be.

It's incredible they would actually give us the chance to choose, isn't it? If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. What we can really do is mostly push back just a little, hold it off while we marshal our forces and add reinforcements, and keep hanging on. Maybe there is no America and no democracy, but there's still just enough an appearance of it that we can find a reason for hope, and a way to move forward. As we applaud ourselves for all this, millions more will die without hope, ExxonMobil will gouge out more wounds in the earth, and more profits will go to the few while the many are starving. All this will happen almost unaffected by even the most optimistic outcome of this year's selection process. If you think we will find a hero, please think again. This is just about a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a difference, but even then, in the whole scheme of things, it's a drop in a storm.

Many of you are afraid to take any sort of a chance. Let someone make you a soothing promise, and you're all ears. Daddy would never hurt you, would he? I hate to break it to you. There are an awful lot of bad daddies in the world, and there's been an awful lot of hurt. I wish I could take what's inside me right now and transmit it directly. Once it's put into words, it's all relative and subject to doubts. I'll tell you what I know with the only tools I have. Over the years, we've made a lot of bad choices. We've allowed ourselves to be fooled so many times by all the ways that have been devised to manage the outcome, by propaganda -- don't kid yourself -- that's reached a level of efficiency with the modern media so overwhelming that it's amazing we can have any sense of the truth at all.

We've had no shortage of courageous examples who tell us about how things really are. We've had our Orwells, our Chayevskys, our Zinns and Chomskys. Now we can take just a moment and think if they might not be right, if we might not be sliding in our meek passivity right down the cosmic drain and into oblivion. We have to consider if we, in the long run, are being controlled. I'm asking you now, can you really imagine we aren't? Do you really think that wealth and power are benign? Do you really imagine that their continually redefined definition of our security is any security at all, instead of a dreamy opiate of lies? You think you can keep your nose clean and retire, and the truth is you'll end up working until you die. In one future, the elderly have no recourse and are left to wither, the sick and infirm are discarded, the weak are crushed. The profits are all that will matter, and they will grow, and among the few there will be the opulent trappings of kings. Keep on voting as you have been, my friends. We'll be there soon.

I recorded the film Network and watched it the other night. I'd forgotten that one of my old friends was in it. Her name is Conchata Ferrell (Chatti to us). She and I were part of a circle of friends that saw the protests, and the Manhattan theater scene, in the sixties and seventies. We were part of a very close-knit group that grew apart. Chatti was a close friend of my first, perhaps only, Great Love, and was witness to all my passionate suffering for that girl's affection, and much more over the years. I was always shy, and much of what Chatti knew of me was of someone so twisted up in his emotions he was barely sane, but I know those years meant just as much to her as me, and I bet I still cross her mind in some way when she thinks of that time. If I think of you now as I watched your wonderful movie, Chatti, it's not for the fame you've enjoyed; I've had my successes as well. It's for that time when we all lived with complete intensity, truly candles that burned completely in each instant of time. I hope you're well. You were great in Network. You're better now than you were even then, because you were perfect.