Me

 It occurs to me that I am hard wired as a "me". Not me as a character, but a me as separate - me as not part of. Actually I realized that my default is that I don't think of my self as part of anything. Well maybe as part of my immediate family. But that's about as far as it goes. 

Now I realize all the usual clichés and facticity's apply. There is evidence that I belong.. I live in a community which is part of a town. I belong to a gym which I use several days per week and know a bunch of other guys who work out there. I regularly play golf with a group of friends. I regularly participate in online programs and am know in those communities. Etc. I could go on but you get the scene. I interact with all kinds of people and in some circles, many would say, I am well known.

Still when I look as these aspects of my life I find my real default thinking/way-of-being about it is that I don't really belong. It's more like I'm still earning my place in these environments - with these people. It's subtle but always there in the background. It's sort of like a nagging background expectation - a set programming - an automatic reality. There's farther to go before I arrive. And so I must keep trying.

Of course it's silly, not true, ridiculous, moronic, ungrounded and stupid. Nonetheless, it's there. When I stop trying to belong somewhere, I don't - belong that is. I'm aware of it now such that I wonder if that isn't some sort of deeply ingrained human condition - maybe the source of us needing each other. Can you imagine not needing anyone? Really? Just Ok alone? Forever? I can't. It almost occurs for me like being dead. That final. That unfeeling. That undifferentiated.

While watching Donald Trump at one of his rallies, it occurred to me that he was eating up the adulation. I wondered about his childhood. If adulation or maybe even being just regarded were missing - as in his parents didn't have a high regard for him. It evolved for me that belonging was really a state of being regarded, being recognized, having value to another.

I realized I don't seek adulation- just regard, maybe respect, as in respecting my existence. It occurred to me that this is what our African American, Indian, and Latino populations are seeking; being regarded, being respected - not anointed, not special, just regarded, just recognized, just mattering. It seems to me that for them, belonging is really missing!

So the me, or if it's also true for you, the us that I'm pointing to innately does not belong. I can't tell if it's in the genes or we're born into that conversation such that it's learned. Of course I/we will survive our sentence. We'll pass on to the next form of energy the universe has in store for us, give up our paltry awareness's and wander/wonder into future, perhaps completely unconcerned for whether we belong or not. 

Points of View

In 1979, while in the Est training, I discovered I had a point-of-view; not just A point-of-view, but THE true point-of-view (POV). That second part was the most difficult to get. I stood in there in an exchange with Randy, the leader, sorting out the difference between my POV, other’s POVs, the truth, perceptions, interpretations, and beliefs.

After ten minutes of back and forth with Randy, I got that I (we all) have a POV. However, my POV wasn’t just any POV, it was closer to the truth – that shared POV that I knew was out there, supported by a majority number of facts (otherwise known as perceptions), so that my POV was the best, most informed, and defendable POV. It was a justified POV; more like the truth; clearly what I knew and my REALITY, my “what’s so”.

And if I could enroll a sufficient number of other people, or find enough others who already agreed with me, then there was real agreement. And when we had enough agreement, we had the ultimate truth, i.e. “rocks-are-hard-and-water-is-wet”, sort of like they preach in church.

Believe me I wasn’t happy about discovering that what I thought was “true”, or “real” was just my point-of-view. I argued that there was “truth and reality”, there was cause and effect. So I challenged Randy with a bunch “what-ifs and how-about’s”.

“What about rocks are hard?”, I asked. “Are you saying they aren’t?”. “And isn’t water wet?” (The phrase, “Rocks-are-hard-and-water-is-wet”, had been used earlier in the program). Randy just smiled. And stuck his tongue out at me. I stood there flummoxed, thinking from somewhere I’d never thought from before, while he just waited; waited for me to let go of my POV about my POV and look from a new place.

I thought to myself, “Ok. Rocks are hard to me. Maybe even to us. Then how about from a molecular perspective? Or the perspective of the universe? Are rocks hard to the universe? 

Maybe not. At least from that universe’s perspective. Does the universe even have a perspective? Maybe from that perspective rocks are just very slow-moving particles; and we call them hard, and agree that they are, in fact, hard. Is there any “hard” in the universe?”

I was about to sit down when a new what-about popped into the that voice-in-my-head, which by this point in the weekend, had become very present for me.“Well what about GOD. We all know there’s a GOD, don’t we? If that’s a POV, it’s global!”, I said. 

“Maybe”, Randy responded. He went on, “I could ask, which is really GOD? What about Buddha, Allah, Paramatta, The Great Spirit, or kami? Which is the true God, the right God?.

 “I’m not arguing that any particular one of these is the supreme one, or the right one, or the true one. Maybe they are all just large-population-points-of-view, all agreements among very large populations. And there are some people, even a lot of people, who believe there is no GOD. That’s their point-of-view.” he finished.

I sat down. I realized there was no way out of this box. I have a point of view and I cannot escape that I have a POV. And neither can anyone else. So, what’s the big deal? There is no way to be free of our points-of-view. We can argue that our POV is the “right” POV. We can argue that other’s POVs are not, or that ours is supported by more facts, more scientific research, more agreements, more laws, more research, more evidence, etc. Right? There’s that word “right”.

Mostly though we just accept our POVs as what’s so. We don’t inspect them. We don’t question them. Indeed, we seek evidence to support them. And we certainly don’t give them up easily! They just are. Get enough in that pile of evidence and we’re certain our POV is the right POV. There’s that word “right” again.

And when anyone argues with our point-of-view we dig in our heels. We dredge up our practiced justifications and launch into spirited defenses of our POVs.  Those defenses are also part of our point-of-view. It’s ALL just our point-of-view. It’s all we’ve got! We can’t escape it!

There’s no proof that one is better than another, arguments rarely change it. We are doomed to be right about it! We will defend our POVs to the death. We can’t give them up. We can’t let go of them. Our brains are hard-wired to their truthfulness. They are our very reality!

It sucks to have a POV! Think about it. If all I think is just my point-of-view, then who's responsible? Who do I blame? If my POV is that GOD is ultimately the final responsible party, then I'm off the hook! After all, “Its Gods will". Right?

I mean, who in their right mind wants to be responsible for their POV? Their attitudes? Their perceptions? Their opinions? Their very reality? Really? Come on dude! What about the “stupid” people who support Trump?

I saw a collective-scientifically-supported-POV on the National Geographic Channel a while back (Mass Extinction) that asserts there is scientific proof that we (people) are currently engaged in practices that are bringing about the sixth mass extinction of life on the planet. Included in our practices is our denial that we are engaged in, and responsible for, or have anything to do with that ultimate planetary result, which the scientists predict will have concluded within the next 200 years

Don’t worry though. It’s just their POV!

There is a useful response to people's POV, however: "Thank you for sharing."

I had a conversation this past week with another elder, at the hot tube at my gym of all places, about “goodness” and God. I told him I did not believe in God, that I think of it as a man-invented explanation/responsible-party for that which is beyond our understanding.

I allowed that I thought there is likely some truth to the story of Jesus, except I saw Jesus as a man transformed for his time, rather than the saintly character we make him out to be.

The goodness part came up as a question of source. My friend wondered if goodness was not “from” God then from where? I pointed out his question automatically classified me as “not good” since not acknowledging his God I could not be considered to be a good person. “No”, he said. “Since I was raised Christian”, that was the source for me being a good person.

So, of course, I then wanted to know if that meant all Buddhist’s, Hindus, Muslims, etc. were excluded from being good? No, he allowed, they had their version of God as a source and guide. It appears that in his belief system God is the root of goodness; not people, not the conversational environments in which we are raised; rather an external non-human source.

The inquiry was enjoyable for me. People my age don’t generally want to delve into such deeply held belief conversations – too threatening to our hard wiring. As we exited the hot tub, I thanked my new African American friend for his willingness to inquire without thinking me a lesser person because I don’t believe in God. I reminded him that where we live that’s grounds for being shunned.

Later as I recalled the conversation, it seemed to me that for people raised and inculcated (as in hard-wired-in-our-brains) in religious traditions, responsibility for “goodness” becomes immersed in these external religious sources rather than in ourselves. And that we are blind/in-denial-of our own hard wiring.

To be confronted with the possibility that humans may be born innately “good”, rather than led to “goodness” modeled by external sources, would require that we be willing to be responsible for goodness and all that pours forth from it on our planet, rather than assign the source/responsibility to deities we invent. 

Of course to do so means we also be responsible for other side of the coin - the selfishness, wickedness, spitefulness, viciousness, wretchedness so apparent in our cultures.

Not a comfortable thought.

Is the master relationship for humans "warring"?

I recently finished reading a supposedly true story of a man who spent most of his life with the Indians in the Montana and southern Canada areas in the late 1800's before the buffalo were killed off and the Indian tribes wondered the upper plains from Yellowstone north into the Canadian plains. this white man grew up in mass, but loved the outdoors and the adventure of the Indian way of life.

He married a Blackfoot woman and became accepted as a member of their tribe and relates a series of stories about his life as a trader roughly based around FT Benton, WY and his life living among and participating in the culture of that tribe.

One of the things which most struck me, was the constant warring (on-again-off-again) between the half dozen nations (tribes) of that region. The default seemed to be raid-and-steal-each-other’s-horses-and-kill-or-be-killed-in-those-raids, interspersed with hunting forays for food for the tribe, or seasonally migrating the tribes to follow the game upon which they lived.

The warring was matter of fact, as it seemed was the mourning, burial and worship rituals, surrounding these constant forays. It was just part of their life, like the weather. And it most often wasn’t usually personal, as in motivated by hatred, though revenge was sometimes a justification.

What struck me was the regularity of it. It seemed the conduct of young men, earning their warriorhood, and the expression of all that that meant in the life of each tribe, was programmed into the behaviors of each tribe, each warrior. It was given momentousness by the tribal grieving, their related ceremonies, and the over-and-over stories told about these events while smoking pipes in their lodges.

There were several levels of relationships to notice in these happenings. One that jumped out at me was the tribe’s relationship to this “warring” tradition, and to the other tribes who were engaged. They all seemed to share in the relationship: warring – a kind of shared standard – slightly differing in it’s import from tribe to tribe, and often similar in their rituals.

I found myself wondering: are we as human’s all bound by this type of tribal warfare (now so apparent in our political arenas)? Is it part of our DNA to war with each other? Is “adversarial” a master relationship? Not a senior relationship, but a master relationship – one in which we all participate without necessarily being aware we are participating?

Is this sort of behavior learned? Innate? Pre-ordained? If not, how come it seems to be around all the time? It seems men want to war, and women want peace. Simplistic, I know.

But can we NOT do that? Have humans at any time in their history, not warred for more than a generation? Can we even imagine the possibility of agreeing on how to exist with each other beyond the condition I shall call survival?

Is the master relationship of existence on this planet competition that leads to warring?

I Am Programmed

For the past couple of years I've been noticing - as in catching myself in the act - how much of my thinking, behavior and actions are programmed, so much so that I haven't observed very much at all that is original.

To that end I've made a conscious effort to notice, to ponder upon what could qualify as new thinking, or behaviors. I'd thought I'd found and example in my gym routines, where I've been modifying and upping the focus of, and difficulty of, my workout routines to improve my strength in certain body areas that have been experiencing aches and pains

I recently watched the Public TV program, The Brain with David Eagleman, which served to elucidate my ponderings by illustrating the brain's mechanics and their consequences. Since watching I've been able to more clearly and more completely watch my programming at work.

This morning I was watching  an interview on the Today Show with three women talking about their various religions and their desire to coexist with other's religions. It occurred to me that the entire conversation was a clear example of programmed thinking.

So I started to wonder, as we age, let's just say past the age of 65, what percentage of our thinking could be said to be original? Any? How much have we been programmed by the people, media, and environment around us? I mean 65 years is a lot of programming time!

Consider: we truck off to church once a week, sometimes less, sometimes more, to be told stories about how people behaved in the past; and how we are expected to copy those behaviors, and retell those same stories. Most religions have a) some element of defining good and bad behavior, b) some mystical leader who tells his/her followers how these behaviors should be maintained and spread to others, and c) an indisputable clarity about the rightness of their own version of the right behavioral doctrine.

All followers go through a kind of indoctrination. I recall as a child, being carted off to church, sitting through a "service", listening to what supposed wisdom was being espoused, at least the little that I could understand; and repeatedly practicing those programming ceremonies that claimed those who participated were "good" people. So naturally in a good/bad paradigm, that meant anyone not "good" was automatically "bad".

I sometimes wondered, "is there any other way to be?" Could I be neither good, nor bad? Could I be both? Do I really have to be one or the other? Is there some other paradigm for human beings? When I brought that up in Cataclysm, it didn't go over well. What if I was neither?, I asked. Would people still like me? Would I be acceptable? Could I survive? Should I survive? How did I arrive to this question?, my minister asked. Should I even be asking such things?

Throughout my religious training (Sunday School, Church, Cataclysm, Youth Group, Boy Scouts, Holidays, and holiday ceremonies, etc) did I ever hear anyone suggest that there might be other ways to think about these stories, this history, this behavioral indoctrination, this programming? Nope.

I do remember hearing a few people say, "think for yourself". I recall wondering on a few of those occasions, "what does that mean?'. Before I got the distinction voice-in-my-head, "I" was my thinking. There was no me separate from those never ending thoughts. And now the voice in my head is wondering, "how much of what is occurring as my thinking, have I ever invented?"

The mind and aging

I've been noticing lately the correlation between my mind (the voice-in-my-head that seems to be separate from me - that does what we call thinking) and what's going on in my aging body. Sometimes the aches and pains get intense; enough to make it very clear that I probably don't have decades left.

I've noticed that in my mind, I'm OK with dying. That doesn't seem so foreboding any longer. What's way more annoying are the same-old-and-new-daily-discovered-pains-in-my-body. My joints hurt. Not all of them, mind you. Just the ones that I use.

I play golf and my lower right side back muscles are sore for a couple days. I walk 9 holes (according to fitbit that is 10000 steps - 5 miles) and my right knee and shin hurt. And when I finish my right-side and back hurt, right under my right shoulder blade and in my lower right lats.  My right wrist needs a steroid shot now once a year as the sheath around the tendon where it crosses the bone in my wrist is worn and frazzled - the doctor philosophically tells me "it's just age".  I swim laps 3 or 4 times a week to stretch my pecs, lats, and my abdominal external obliques (are you impressed?) and they are all sore for two days. I wonder. Do lefty's experience this same pains on the left side of their back? But I digress.

A few days ago I decided I'd build a raised garden for our back deck. I thought I'd be smart and build it to about waist height, use plastic deck lumber so it doesn't rot, mount it on wheels, and make it v-shaped so deep rooting plants could grow in a middle row while shallower rooting plants could grow along the edges - final size = 96" L x 30" W x 32" H. Weight turned out to be about 1000 lbs.

There was a time when I would have planned this out more sensibly, but my brain no longer thinks that clearly. Anyway, that voice-in-my-head had lots of good reasons why it made sense at the time.

It took three days to build it. The last day was the hardest. I had constructed the plastic-plank sides, each of which weighed in at about 90 lbs. I had to lift each of them in and out of the frame four times  to mark and measure the cuts in them so they'd fit as needed. Once I got the whole thing built, I then had to lift 6 forty lb bags of drainage stone (into the bottom of the v) and 12 forty lb bags of planting soil to fill the garden. By that time, given the unbelievable pain in my back, it was clear this was a stupid project.

After each day of work there were nights of pain and body soreness. The last night I was bone tired and slept 11 hours. The next day I did nothing - well I mean nothing really physical. I was too tired to even go to the gym. I did manage to plant some veggies and seeds - my reward for all that stupidity and pain.

So why do I go on so? Well on that fourth day I reflected back on my stupidity. Before I started, in my mind, I knew I could figure out how to do this project. And before I began, the voice-in-my-head figured I was still physically able. And finally my annual-spring-exuberant-energy relished this opportunity to appropriately celebrate the season's arrival. So I dove in. Ouch.

However, upon reflection I remembered back to high school days, coming home from track practice, or an all-day tennis match, with similar pains. And after a typical summer day building houses as a carpenter, I came home feeling tired and sore. If I complained my mother would just call it "growing pains", or say something like, "no gain without ___". You know how it goes. So I didn't give it any credence. I knew I'd outlive it. Context is everything.

Now however, it seems that my mind and body live on different planets. That seems like my daily reality. However as I reflected, there were notable exceptions to that thought:

1. I noticed that in my spring exuberance, my daily dose of vertigo-every-time-I-bend-over was gone! No vertigo! 
2. The more my back hurt the less my wrist hurt! I don't really know if my wrist actually hurt less, or if my mind could tolerate only so much discomfort at one time. The voice-in-my-head just realized (noticed-and-informed-me) at the end of day one, that my wrist didn't seem to hurt any more.

So the voice-in-my-head began to wonder. Is there a phenomenon where the brain accepts aging (and dying) as we go through the process? 

I mean I know my brain is less capable in some very noticeable ways. My mind-body connection is not as automatic as it used to be. I noticeably can do only one thing at a time now. And I typically have to stop and concentrate on that thing - even something as simple as carrying an arm full of things up stairs to put away. I have to stop, empty my arm load onto something; then take each item one-at-a-time and put them away. That of course assumes I was able to navigate the stairs without holding on; which isn't always possible; and, that I'll remember when I get to the top of the stairs, why I came up in the first place - yes, even with an arm load of things.

I used to be able to do that sort of thing all automatically without thinking; and do it as easily and naturally as southerners say "You'all" (sounds more like yawl}. But now I can do neither - walk up the stairs without any thought, or say "yawl" like a southerner.

So the next time my exuberance grabs me to do a stupid project, I need an interruption. I thought I could post my plans on Facebook and ask my friends to intervene by comment. However as I complete this, the voice-in-my-head is saying, "you'll just forget".

Us and the Universe

Having done some catching up on the universe, what we know about it, and what we are recently attempting to discover with the telescope we are deploying to replace Hubble (i.e - the edge of the universe), I'm struck by the way we (as a planet of human beings) interact with the magnitude, the humanly unfathomable scale of it all, and what that scale seems to do to how we see ourselves.

Recent predictions are that we will actually be able to see back to the earliest moments of the birth of the universe, discovering countless more new galaxies in the process. And with those billions (yes it's with a b) of galaxies, which our astronomers are now convinced to be home to maybe trillions of planets, we are confronting a scale that shatters our invention "God". For if we look past our parochial God, the one who resides in a nearby heaven, invented by superstitious story tellers a couple thousand years back, and expand that all encompassing God out to include the whole know universe, it short-circuits our God character.

To say that God created this known universe to the scale that we now can confront and measure, and did so just for us - our existence, our petty paces, our teeny-tiny little nuclear wars, mass shootings, planetary warming issues, and the current president of the United States - is to so diminish that God as to make him/her's existence comical.

God created billions of galaxies containing billions of suns, home to trillions of planets (or other sundry celestial bodies) all just to entertain a species we call earth-human-beings (we have no idea what God calls earth or us). And that he/she put all of this in place in seven days, which of course doesn't compute with the science (one of those inconvenient truths we are driven to avoid confronting).

According to what I'm seeing and reading, leading astrophysicists now calculate it's likely there is life elsewhere in the universe. It may not be life as we know it or define it, but nonetheless some sort of life. Just the sheer billions of planets estimated to exist with conditions similar to planet earth make this forecast (which depending on the hard wiring in your brain, is either overwhelmingly possible, or undeniably heretical.

I know it's treasonous to suggest we are thrown to our perspective, programmed to insist that our interpretations are truths ("What interpretations? I know reality when I see it!"). And if we could  arrive to a place where we simply don't dismiss our science as fake news, it might be that God, if he/she does exist, didn't just create all this universe for us to observe, explore and/or transform (in science destruction is simply a transformation of energy). There are, excuse me, may-well-be other entities out there who can also grok this existence we call a "universe"!

What continues to puzzle me is how entities as developed as humans, are so driven to avoid confronting evidence of our smallness and lack-of-importance within the context - the scale - of this thing we call the universe. I'm supposing we just can't be with the notion - as grounded on our most focused and intelligent observations as those notions may be - that the universe simply doesn't care about human beings.

Realize that to claim any other conclusion is to demote the universe to the status of organized/existing- just-for-us. Organized just for our pleasure, or amazement, or observation; or perhaps, overwhelm. It occurs to me that the abyss we so desperately avoid facing is the one that says, on a universal scale, we don't matter.

"Of course we matter!", we scream. "How dare you suggest otherwise? You heathen!"

For me, the real opportunity for humans is having us somehow evolve to confront the possibility that the only ones who care if we matter is us. There is no "God-who will-ultimately-keep-us-from-destroying-ourselves, or our environments. There is no "mother nature", who will magically reverse our environmental stupidities to maintain a "balance". In the universal scheme of things, a sweltering hot planet is just another among billions of sweltering hot planets. No big deal!

Nor with trillions of planets to worry about, is "God" going to waste any time patching up our planet. In the universe we are just one form of energy that will, with our ultimate transgressions, devolve to transform to another form of energy, and will do so without pain, struggle, or emotion. The best we can do is speed it up or slow it down. And neither the universe nor our God(s) care about how much time we take.