Mythic Religion and Containment of the Power Ego

A great post from Integral Options Cafe:

The Benefits of Religion

from Integral Options Cafe by WH

Yesterday morning I was being a slacker and not doing homework, so I watched Top Gun, which was on some cable station or another. I really dislike Tom Cruise so I had never seen this flick, but I had heard that it offered a great object lesson in memetics.

Maverick (Cruise's character) is a hot-shot young pilot, but he is very cocky and takes too many risks to show off his skills. Eventually, through no real fault of his own, his best friend and co-pilot dies on a training mission.

Iceman (Val Kilmer) is the rival pilot, equally as talented, but he flies within the rules of the Navy pilots training program, one of which is to never leave your wingman. Iceman eventually wins the Top Gun competition among the pilots in training. Maverick eventually submits to the military structure and saves Iceman in a real life firefight.

Maverick represents an ego-centered memetic stage of development, while Iceman represents a more authoritarian memetic stage. The film demonstrates through (melodrama and bad acting) that the power-drive of the ego needs some strong containment within authority structures to allow it to reach its potential.

By now, you may be wondering what this has to do with the benefits of religion.

Over the weekend, a video made the rounds online of a pastor up in Tempe (just outside of Phoenix) saying he hates Barack Obama and wished him dead. This same man and some of his congregation had shown up at Obama's speech a little more than a week ago armed with assault rifles and handguns.

Here is the video:

Popout

This video has resulted in a lot of despair about the role of mythic religion in our culture. You can read some of the discussion the video generated at my friend Stuart's Facebook page.

Many people feel that mythic religion has outlived its usefulness, or that it is no longer an appropriate developmental response to a complex world. This is not wrong, but it is only a partial truth. In fact, the mythic worldview is losing its power, and that is partially why those infected with a more malignant version of this developmental meme are reacting with fear-based violence.

However, not all religion is bad, and not all religion is malignant. As is the case with the military structure portrayed in Top Gun, mythic religion offers a structure to contain the power-drive of the raw ego. But mythic religion is only one form of religion (and here we are talking specifically about Christianity, not Islam, Judaism, or other religions). There are many rational, egalitarian, and even some integral stage Christians. It is not Christianity that is the problem.

The problem, rather, is that some of the people who adhere to a fundamentalist religious dogma also adhere to a very rigid and hateful form of ethnocentrism. The result is a profound fear of the other, and the other is anyone who does not share their specific values and beliefs about the world.

In the example of this clown up in Tempe, the other is Obama - because he is liberal, because he holds some postmodern relativist values (a woman's right to choose what happens to her body), and quite possibly because he is black. The Phoenix metro area is already well-known nationally for its fear/hate of all people who are not them, as Sheriff Joe Arpio demonstrates on a regular basis.

When religion in this country isn't infected with this ethnocentric hatred, it performs valuable roles in society. It has been inner city churches that have done the most to help those involved in the tribal and ego-based power drive of gang culture grow out of that. Even Malcolm X, although his faith was Islam, found containment for his power-drives in the authoritarian structure of religion.

In the same way that sports teams or the military provide that rule-bound structure to contain the raging egos of young men, so does mythic religion. When well-meaning but misguided liberals worked to disempower inner city churches in the sixties and seventies, it was the the neighborhoods that suffered for the lack of religious authority.

And none of this even touches the benefits that religion has for its believers. Churches provide community, comfort, and certainty. While we may not share their values or beliefs, most of these believers are good citizens. The few hateful people should cause us to condemn the whole religion.

It's strange that I find myself, an atheist, defending religion so often against other atheists. This is not the first time, and it likely won't be the last that I make these arguments, so I guess it part of what this blog is about - an integral approach.

Moment of Zen, Kennedy Shrug

At Orbit48.

Not sure how to embed this, so you'll have to head there. But it's worth it.

Quote #6

Mencius speaks to Republicans blocking health care reform:

"Talk is easy when you don't have to get the job done."

-Mencius



From The Useless Tree, an excellent blog on Chinese philosophy in the present day.

Seeking truth from whatever...

From Jottings from the Granite Studio, a great Chinese scholar's blog. The last conversation is hilarious, and I have had innumerable conversations like it myself. (Qiu Shi, btw, means "seeking truth." For those of you who have never been to China, this is what happens when you're not taught culturally to think critically. Chinese people think, with few exceptions, that if they could just explain things correctly without the pesky western journalists lying and distorting things, everyone would love them. Shadow projection? Recently having lunch with my Chinese mom, she said to a friend about Japanese people, "they just don't like Chinese people." That's how I translate it, because that's what she meant. Literally, though, she said, "they just don't understand Chinese people," as if that would automatically turn them around.

"

For what it’s worth, David Bandurski and his team at China Media Project absolutely rock, and today’s commentary and translation of a bit of whiny blather from Qiu Shi on “people being mean to China” or some other such spray of sputum and self-pity is just the latest in a line of great posts. For what it’s worth, someone desperately needs to alert the editors of Qiu Shi as to the dangers of inadequate nutrition…poor sods seem to be suffering from a serious case of irony deficiency.

Leaving aside the whole point that very few people in the Chinese government understand, are willing to understand, or even want to understand how the media actually functions outside of PRC…the mother of all “dead horse” topics…There is this blissful piece of ineffable twaddle:

But in developed nations like the United States, some people now voice surprise at seeing that Chinese have mobile phones just as they do, and they ask ridiculous questions like, “You Chinese use mobile phones too?” Their understanding of China is trapped in the 1970s.

Yeah, maybe…but for every nameless American who “expresses surprise at Chinese using mobile phones,” I’ll give you 10 Beijingers who can’t wrap their skulls around the notion that a foreigner could read/speak/understand Chinese or is able to use chopsticks without jabbing themselves repeatedly in the eye socket.

A: “Oh, you can use kuaizi!?!?!? You are really lihai! Did YOU knOW that “kuaizi” is what we Chinese people call chopsticks!”

B: “Why thank you. In the nine hours I just spent at the Number One Archives going over a decade of Qing Dynasty court documents, the word kuaizi did not appear once. Thank goodness you told me that because otherwise I’d have had to eat with my toes.”

A: “Really, how did you read the material? It is all in Chinese!!!!* Did they translate them into English for you?”

B: [sound of head banging against table repeatedly]

(And yes, I’ve had this EXACT conversation. Many times.)

————-

*I’ll save the reaction when I say, “Yes, it’s in Chinese, but the really GOOD stuff is in Manchu” for another post.

"

Open Information and China

"China has become a dead-zone for any business planning on building an international online presence."

This is one of the two things (the other being pollution and lack of life) that I could not stand living in China.

From a great blog post at Chinasolved.com. So good, I'm posting the whole thing:

China’s Fractured Web Part III – Myths and Realities

At the time of this writing, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are still unavailable in Mainland China. YouTube has been blocked since March of 2009, and Facebook and Twitter have been dark for almost a month. There is no indication about when - or even if - the blockade of these sites will be lifted.

First, let’s put a couple of myths to rest.

Fractured Web Myth 1 – the Chinese internet blockade is a minor inconvenience that just about everyone can get around.
Fractured Web Myth 2 – the only ones affected are kids surfing for fun.
Fractured Web Myth 3 – it’s a temporary phenomenon
Fractured Web Myth 4 – it’s about national security - not an international business or trade issue.
Fractured Web Myth 5 – Chinese counterparts and substitutes already exist.

Myth 1 – It’s just a minor inconvenience that just about anyone can get around. Simply not true. There was a time when proxy servers were simple, effective and free ways to get around the Chinese internet blockade, but China’s technology has gotten better and better. Even some commercial VPNs (virtual private networks) that charge for access are being blocked now. The cost of going online in China wasn’t cheap to begin with, but going online in China is now becoming more expensive, slow and difficult. Another problem with VPNs is that they often require software to be downloaded – making online life even more difficult for those of you who have more than one computer. A handful of digiratti will take the time, trouble and expense to get around the blockade – the vast majority of Chinese netizens won’t bother.

Myth 2 – These social media sites are all just kid’s stuff. True, 90% of the bandwidth used by Twitter, Facebook and YouTube seems to be devoted to college-boy pranks and sophomoric banality - but that is rapidly changing. Twitter is being used as a news feed, marketing platform and communications-tool by serious, grown-up businesses. Facebook is emerging as one the best ways to build and maintain an online professional or customer groups – and a great advertising platform. YouTube videos, embedded in private sites, puts professional quality broadcasting within the grasp of small & medium sized businesses everywhere. The impact of China’s blockade is relatively minor for now, but business applications for the Google, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are growing fast. Businesses interested in marketing to or from China are going to find themselves at an increasingly significant disadvantage.

Myth 3 – It’s temporary. YouTube has been blocked since March 2009, and Facebook & Twitter have been down for over a month. In the 24-7 world on online commerce, that level of service interruption is total. YouTube may come back someday (or it may not), but no IT or Marketing department will ever again be able to rely on the platform in China. The same goes for Twitter and Facebook. Even Google has been restricted and hobbled to the point where it is not a 100% reliable business tool in China. For business owners the bad news is already in the market and they are responsible for finding a way around it. No one can claim ignorance about a risk that has already been demonstrated.

Myth 4 – It’s not a business issue. The 20th century benchmarks for international trade were how many containers or freighters one nation sent across the water to another. In the 21st century, it will be about data, viewers and users. The few big sites that have been blocked and hobbled in China are powering thousands of small businesses and driving the future of online commerce. China has become a dead-zone for any business planning on building an international online presence.

Myth 5 – Chinese replacements already exist. Sites like Tudou, Youku, Xiaonei, Kaixin, Baidu and a host of others already replicate the functionality of the blockaded sites – so it’s easy to say that the problem has already been essentially solved by the marketplace. Indeed, if it were possible to link Twitter and Xiaonei or Facebook and Kaixin, this argument would be valid – and represent an exciting opportunity. But the fact that the two internets are developing in isolation and segregation from one another creates diseconomies of scale. Companies wishing to bring their online presence to China will have to duplicate budgets and content – and overcome substantial hurdles as far as quality control and due diligence. Multiple platforms that cannot integrate with one another raise the hurdle rate for business and makes marketing to or from China so expensive and risky that it is now beyond the reach of most small business.

Towards Universality, Again.

From an entry on the Kill the Buddha blog:

"I’ve written too many novels, many too many, and as I get older I regret that when I was starting out, some forty years ago, I didn’t trust a vision of universality enough."

Signs that we are beginning to cope with the limits of postmodernism and resolve its distaste of Universals.

What is Integral Theory?

Explaining to a friend, I got a pretty good succinct explanation: "Integral Theory is the consolidation of all areas of human thought into one."

While not descriptive, it at least gets the idea across.

Quote #5

"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."

- Abe Lincoln

Quote #4

"Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain."

- JFK

Appropriate considering my post here and his younger brother's recent death.

Quote #3

"The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned in no other way."

-Mark Twain

Killing the Buddha

A couple of days ago I found this wonderful online magazine. I'll let their manifesto speak for itself:

Manifesto

Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the “spirituality” section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not. If the religious have come to own religious discourse it is because they alone have had places where religious language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the supposedly non-religious to think and talk about what religion is, is not and might be. Killing the Buddha is it.

The idea of “killing the Buddha” comes from a famous Zen line, the context of which is easy to imagine: After years on his cushion, a monk has what he believes is a breakthrough: a glimpse of nirvana, the Buddhamind, the big pay-off. Reporting the experience to his master, however, he is informed that what has happened is par for the course, nothing special, maybe even damaging to his pursuit. And then the master gives the student dismaying advice: If you meet the Buddha, he says, kill him.

Why kill the Buddha? Because the Buddha you meet is not the true Buddha, but an expression of your longing. If this Buddha is not killed he will only stand in your way.

Why Killing the Buddha? For our purposes, killing the Buddha is a metaphor for moving past the complacency of belief, for struggling honestly with the idea of God. As people who take faith seriously, we are endlessly amazed and enraged that religious discourse has become so bloodless, parochial and boring. Any God worth the name is none of these things. Yet when people talk about God they are talking mainly about the Buddha they meet. For fear of seeming intolerant or uncertain, or just for lack of thinking, they talk about a God too small to be God.

Killing the Buddha is about finding a way to be religious when we’re all so self-conscious and self-absorbed. Knowing more than ever about ourselves and the way the world works, we gain nothing through nostalgia for a time when belief was simple, and even less from insisting that now is such a time. Killing the Buddha will ask, How can we be religious without leaving part of ourselves at the church or temple door? How can we love God when we know it doesn’t matter if we do? Call it God for the godless. Call it the search for a God we can believe in: A God that will not be an embarrassment in twelve-thousand years. A God we can talk about without qualifications.

Killing the Buddha insists that if religion matters at all it matters enough to be taken to task. We believe it’s high time for a new canon to be created, and that the Web is just the place to collect it. We refuse to accept the internet as a world wide shopping mall. We know intuitively it can be a sort of Talmudic cathedral, a tool of transcendence made of words. We’re here to build it. If the end result looks more like Babel than the City of God, so be it. Babel, after all, came close.

Thanks for reading.
- The KtBniks

Pifas in the news!

An article in the Times about Philly art, including PIFAS!

In related news, Gavin Riley at PIFAS tonight, 9pm, 5 dollar donation.

Health Care with Chinese Characteristics?

This morning waking up from a nightmare a fairly bitter and ironic thought struck me: health care reform would get passed in China.

Of course, the type of sweeping health care reform that we need in America with the type of coverage that we're talking about never could actually get passed over there- most of the populace (900 billion peasants) has never had anything resembling the type of care Americans with decent health care are accustomed to, and the political system is not in the business of giving away gobs of money and or services, and is corrupt beyond anything most Americans could imagine.

The thought was not realistic, just something of an amusement. Chinese leaders are said to be contemptuous of the weaknesses of democracy, and this whole issue is a prime example of why: this health care debate is a whole mess that never would have happened in their country. They don't realize that the strengths of our system lie in these very weaknesses, but that's not for this discussion.

To be sure, our democracy is ideally healthier than their "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" by ten, but that presupposes certain things, some of which have been in the balance for some time, such as a media disengaged from power, and some of which have come up short, such as education. (Shout out to Nate for this.)

Our sort of democracy presupposes an educated electorate, and by educated I mean up to the ability to think critically, rationality. Far from being rational, human thought is predicated on emotions, growing on their root. It is a human capacity, a possibility, but not an inevitability. It is something that people must be educated into, though I don't necessarily mean formally so. One does not teach rational thought like one teaches about the American revolution, one teaches rational thought in how one teaches about everything. It is cultural, not a subject.

Not that there aren't rational arguments in any direction on this debate. There are. But most people are not reacting against a public plan from some disinterested intellectual perch. They are reacting against a fear of change coming from people unlike them whom they don't trust. They reject a public option because they don't like black presidents, they are terrified of socialism, they are fearful of becoming a minority in their own country, and all of this could be summed up by saying they're terrified that they are losing their voice, and so their power. They are not alone; their fear is being drummed up by the greed of people who are benefiting from the current system and likely to benefit from any arrangement without a public option in the future, but the fear is there, and is accessible because of a lack of rational thinking. Democracy is born in rationality, and needs it to flourish. (For the Integral out there we are obviously talking about SDi 5 v SDi4.)

I feel as if these people who are de facto with the insurance companies on this have never actually had to deal with them before, having their coverage dropped for nothing, getting seventy percent of the allotted (already only one third of what's necessary) maximum reimbursement per week because their psychologist isn't in the network (someone I know), or having to sift through claims and do paperwork with most of their energy and all of their out of bed time during chemotherapy.

My family has gone through it as well. When my brother got Hodgkins disease in 2003, we routinely received letters from the insurance companies that his medication wasn't covered. Yes, for cancer. Even with excellent health care provided to employees of New Jersey (my mom), we had to jump through hoops. Thankfully we weren't one of the thousands affected by "rescission," which means cut from the rolls for some technicality just as we needed care, a practice illuminated in this excellent Nicholas Kristof piece. In it, Kristof talks about a health care executive that saw the light as he was preparing response propaganda for the Michael Moore film "Sicko," and testified in Congress about the methods used by insurance companies to purge the sick from their rolls. It's a sort of short tell-all, and it shows the depths of depravity of the system we have, if not necessarily all of the people operating it, and just how desperately we need reform.

But how?

I am praying that, as Howard Dean said, Obama has been rope-a-doping the Republicans, displaying that they're not really interested in sitting down and working out the kind of reform that we need, and therefore should be largely ignored. I'm looking for one of those powerful speeches to come just before the fall legislative session begins, outlining the necessity of reform, pushing the public plan as the only legitimate option, and calling out the opposition, all in a straightforward and rhetorically excellent manner as only Obama can do.

But as I said, I'm at the point of praying, and am not a religious man.

As lofty as my love of the country grew when it elected a black man with "Hussein" in his name, so hard will it crash back into tempered cynical realism if we get change all insurance companies can believe in, as evidence of it not mattering who you vote for, or why. For the economy, for the people, for business, and as a moral imperative, we need reform. I trust Obama knows this, but we're all seeing that he's somewhat uncomfortable leading against hard-nosed opposition. (Enneagram 9 with a 1 wing? Anyone?) It still isn't impossible, but make no mistake: this is the defining event of his presidency, and his life.

It's almost enough to make one wish for a government that could just magically take all the cars off the roads and shut down all the factories in the area for some large international event, contrary opinions be damned. Don't be afraid, America: it's not socialism, it's socialism with Chinese characteristics.

And Here's an Article Saying Much the Opposite of the Last

From Wired, Happy 150th, Oil! And So Long!

I tend to agree with this one more, and they note the economic cliff we're headed for if we have no way to transition from oil, whenever that day does come.

Thanks to Richard M. for the link.

What Peak?

If you dislike oil, do read this, an op-ed from Michael Lynch, an energy consultant. It tries to pop the theory of peak oil, at least in the short term.

But I'm not really writing about peak oil. Whether or not Mr. Lynch's logic is correct, the point of the idea of peak oil is that at some point in the future, oil will run out. Our entire energy system has to be prepared before this happens, or, especially if it happens during a period of exponential growth, we'll be screwed economically; it will bring everything down. This is going to happen one day. It may not be today, or tomorrow, or ten or even fifty years, but it is inevitably going to happen if humans are still around and we don't have any other way to power our machines. Oil is finite, and we are using more and more and more of it. Yes, putting significant economic resources into fuel programs which will create fuel still more expensive than oil makes little sense, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be working towards it gradually.

But in any case, I'm not writing about peak oil, I'm writing about this: this is pretty good news, and I, reading the article, felt bad about it.

This is good news! Oil powers the world's economy. Unless you are looking forward to dying of starvation or exposure or in a resource war or of any number of effects of the collapse of our civilization (and yes, there are some of you out there I know) this is good news. And yet, there is the feeling that it pushes off the golden age, a time when energy comes entirely renewable and people smile at each other on the street.

For sure, the effects of oil on the emission of CO2 can't be ignored, and this is probably why many people would be predisposed to disagree vehemently with this article.

I can't say that it's true, either, but I sure can't say that it isn't. (Brazil has recently found a bonanza of oil off of its coast.) And that's sort of the point. My feelings on the issue are entirely irrelevant. How many people, though, read the article and said, "fool!" or "well it's about time somebody made some sense," not because this is the definitive word, but because there is none. Experts disagree on this, as they do on everything.

This, of course, is a rather inflammatory issue, or at least a litmus test, but I feel that for most questions of opinion the majority of folks would react in a similar manner. There's no real consideration for the merits of the argument, or that one's previous position might not be solid. Who's to say that anybody's right, anyway?

Problem, singular, and integral (theory) solutions.

I've been saying this for years!

An Op-ed from Thomas Friedman. Beyond the corniness of Friedman, this is something that really needs to be said (which I guess could be true of much of Friedman's posts.)

The point of the article:

"We’re trying to deal with a whole array of integrated problems — climate change, energy, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation and the need to grow enough food to feed the planet — separately. The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors...

'We need to stop thinking about these issues in isolation — each with its own champion, constituency and agenda — and deal with them in an integrated way, the way they actually occur on the ground,” argued Glenn Prickett, senior vice president with Conservation International. “We tend to think about climate change as just an energy issue, but it’s also about land use: one-third of greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical deforestation and agriculture. So we need to preserve forests and other ecosystems to solve climate change, not only to save species.'"

Notice the word "integrated" above. As I struggle to explain Integral Theory to everyone, one thing I keep coming out with is that it's mostly a different way of looking at things, a different set of lenses through which to look at the world, one which tries to take into account that reality is unified.

What this means is that if there's a problem, it's most likely either one of viewpoint, or one of orientation.

How can a change of viewpoint change everything?

Well, remember when fire was magic, some random event or act of the gods? Of course not. Every advance that we make occurs because of a shift in viewpoint, a greater, deeper, or wider understanding, or a more encompassing, more connected worldview.

There are no problems in the Universe. You have problems. There are two ways to eliminate them: externally and internally. If you no longer care about something (internal) it's not a problem. If you remove the external cause of the problem, it's not a problem. Both are important. You won't be a very good human if you ignore the external reality of problems. You'll probably starve to death. But you also won't be a very good human if you don't grow past some of your problems. You'll be waiting for your mother to feed you, and you'll starve to death. Both are shifts in viewpoint: you either change your view of what you are and what your relationship to the world is, or you change the way you look at the outside world, which changes what you can do to it and in it.

The shift in perspective that Friedman is discussing is from one where each act in the universe, or process (a series of acts and reactions through time) is basically unrelated to each other (SDi 5) to one which recognizes that every act has consequences for every other ongoing process, or that every process and system is linked to each other (SDi 6). You could also view this in terms of input and output, in the movement from an understanding of inputs and outputs occurring separately to one where every output is a different process' input, creating cycles.

Much of where modernity has gone awry is in disrupting cycles between the output of one and the input of another, creating waste, which doesn't exist in the natural world.

This is not to say that man has no right to tinker with what's there: as mentioned in the end of the article, we can make nature better, or rather, better for us, which is the process of solving problems externally. (Very simply, making a roof underneath which to hide from the rain.) What we need to understand is that instead of creating a different framework to solve every problem we have, we already have been given the perfect framework within which to work, we just need to recognize it as such.

Meditative visuals when tired. Lucid dreaming?

Recently when I have been tired I have noticed a fascinating phenomenon- I am not usually a visual person, that is, it is sometimes difficult for me to maintain mental images in my head. However, I have been meditating quite a lot recently, and when I have been tired, especially if I am not going to sleep but just resting my eyes, I have been paying attention to the shapes and colors playing behind my eyelids. The greater my focus, and greater my relaxation, (I am often meditating casually as I rest) the more real they appear, like the images that can guide you into dreams directly from waking, something I have frequently experienced since the time I was young. I have either been waking up to jot it down or falling asleep, but my goal is to be able to enter lucid dreams from this state, which I'm pretty sure is possible even though I have been as yet unable to control them.

Violent Right?

An article from Sunday's NYT by Frank Rich.

Rich, if you don't read him, is an excellent columnist, funny, scathing, sarcastic, and all in the straightforward service of screaming that the Emperor's got no clothes on. He is sharp and lucid as glass when it comes to historical analogies as well, which comes out in this article quite a bit.

One subtle undertone of the column is that the Right, for whatever reason, seems to be legitimized in the US in a way the Left never would be. Perhaps it is that huge swaths of the country are rural, or the sort of suburban sprawl metros that maintain a rural twang even as they reach a million people. Maybe it has to do with our pledge towards liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And surely there's something in it of the protestant ethos of individual responsibility and accountability and belief in a personal soul, which tends the "life" omitted above and that happiness to refer strictly to one's own, and which informs even our atheists' senses of self.

But whatever it is we surely would not be in this situation if there were an equal balance of Left and Right in this country, at least in so far as what is acceptable in the public discourse, or what is weighing down the levers of power. There does honestly seem to be a virtual tie in terms of the private views of the citizenry, wobbling back and forth every few years, but could you honestly imagine a scenario where far-left zealots caused enough of a stink to get anything on the ropes, let alone something (we're not even considering single-payer here) fairly centrist? They are ostracized, not eulogized as the equally imbalanced recent protesters have been, even with much grumbling about how incorrect their take on the contents of reform are. As Paul Krugman writes, it's almost insanity that the Right's 'government is satan always' rhetoric hasn't died off after the actual policies grown from it have failed beyond failure. The question isn't why the right is so loud- they're loud because they've got amplifiers. But why do they have amplifiers in sober thinking people?

That for some reason seems to be at the heart of this whole matter. America has been the greatest force of progressivism in the last two hundred and thirty-three years, through fits and starts, and yet it's as if every positive step is taken against the weight of a begrudging dragging boulder, and mitigated by terribly insensitive acts that would cause, I'm sure, quite a few people to blanch at the first clause of this sentence.

Maybe it's just energy- America and her people are both energetically progressive and energetically conservative, and we get the best and worst of both. Thanks to that. Without it the world would probably either be a right or left dystopian hell. But we could sure use a burst of progressive energy now.

And we'll need it seriously if we're going to get over the money, without which the situation just doesn't add up. Things are going the way they are because of money, and I think the real disenchantment with Obama now isn't just because of the flagging of the public option, it's because the only thing that could possibly be behind it is gobs of questionably earned money. I, for one, voted for the man mostly because I thought he could be the kind of rare person to point this out and step around it, which is really the only way to make this work in the long run. As an optimist I hold out hope, since the O-man's pattern so far has been staying out of the fray until everyone thinks the game is up, descending, and laying down the law, no strings attached, which is why so many people look to him as a sort of savior figure. The race speech, the clearest example of this pattern, is much less important in the long run than the current debate, but Obama must know this as well. My confidence in him would be destroyed if a bill passed that screwed me (no income no health insurance 27 year old male) but it remains, waiting for the man to work things out. He certainly has the ability to. It would be a shame if he didn't realize that, and it will ruin his presidency if he doesn't act on it.

Perhaps it's coming. Lefties are fairly outraged by all the blabber about the impossibility of passing real meaningful reform in the face of a bullying insurance industry, and if history is a guide the right is about to become more and more violent, something which can only discredit them (much of what Rich is saying.)

And Washington is not a campaign. That is, he'll need all the prodding from the left and discrediting of the right he can get to sort this out. A speech isn't going to cut it.

It's ironic that I lived through eight years of W and am only contemplating finding a Canadian woman to marry with a Democratic president.

Wide Moments

For you, what is the most natural trigger of reverence or awe?

What I mean is that when looking up at a sky full of stars, my mind hushes and melts into that expansiveness without my doing anything, a reminder of how grand it is to be alive and aware of it.

Coming home from Beijing I will no longer take that for granted; for sure the lack of stars in my life for the past seven months is the reason I noticed this. The stars and being surrounded by the smell of foliage at night bring me great peace.

On my birthday I woke up early and went to watch the sunrise on the seashore. It was overcast, so you couldn't see the sun over the horizon, but all of a sudden over clouds far away the sun came up a brilliant magenta color I'd never seen before, off the periwinkle of the clouds and the slate of the ocean, it was magnificent.

Also while hiking recently some friends and I were perched on the peak of a mountain in New Jersey watching the sun settle over mountains west, and the silence.

Again, for me, the stars are the most powerful, but all three of these recently have stuck in my mind. What, if anything, does it for you?

Quote #2

We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.

-H.L. Mencken

Quote #1

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."
-- T.S. Eliot

A translation of this I would give is: "Amateurs borrow, professionals steal."

Round Two

I'm home!

Fresh Air! Full internet access! Books! Friends!

I haven't written on this site in more than three months because of the Chinese government's net nanny and my inability to get around it consistently, but here it goes.

There will be some changes to the blog, and I will be experimenting with quite a bit in the next year.

1- I would like to lighten up. There will be lengthy essays, there will also be cartoons, if they're apropos.

2- Something like Chycho.com (an interesting anarchist website) I would like to begin to create a web of meaning/information for Integral Studies, so quite a few posts, especially in the next few months or so, will be smaller chunks of a larger integrated whole, and may not make sense as-is. They'll be marked.

3- While one of the reasons for having this blog has always been to test out ideas and get them down on paper, as I am heading into a program in Integral Studies and trying to pen out a book, this will increase. Comments and criticism will be treated like VIPs.

4- Trying to pare my thought down and get direct. Nail me, if you like, for verbosity.

Okay!