Seventy-four and Counting …

The first day of my seventy-fifth year was distinguished by this conversation over daybreak ganjava with my neighbor, Homer, who, in response to my observation that all the lessons anyone claims to have learned from hurricane Sandy were about needs to reinforce and improve infrastructure against now obviously worsening climate extremes due to global warming, with no mention of how it is just such attempts to isolate ourselves so defensively from nature that are polluting and heating the planet upon whose health we all depend, said, "Todd, you don't live in reality. There's nothing we can do about it."

"Homer, my reality observes your reality being formed by excluding the parts of it that hold our artificial, addictive conveniences responsible for our natural, karmic discomforts."*

*This is a paraphrase of the meaning intended by some less articulate arrangement of words I garbled at the time, noted for where three-quarters of a century living in the US of A has led my understanding of it.

Another Brick in the Invisible Prison

The lie we all tell ourselves to allow us to be herded like beef by the butchers is that obedience is control; life is good because no one is after me for anything. Parents, church, public education and government all depend on replacing individual’s innate curiosity by devotion to authority, enabling orderly fleecing, milking and harnessing by those who would profit from such duplicity.

That this is self-deception is exemplified by the conscious imitation of such control in most  individuals’ daily practice of “making a living” by profiting from the deception of fellow fools willing to pay; tithing to keep a good word in at the pearly gates ‘cause I been convinced God knows I’m the wretched sinner I can’t help but be down here in this miserable life.

The misery this life might seem to need rescuing from is caused by the general population not being sufficiently convinced of the lie because they're being nagged by the remnants of their curiosity still being able to recognize nature’s contradictions to the answers in the book being thrown at them by authority that falsely claims to live by it.

Obedient Nature

The kindness of strangers is exemplified where mutual benefit is the basis for all relations.

Just the Facts

A discussion about a media star uncovered the microcosmic key to how the macrocosm of people, a whole civilization can be described by the “facts” it assumes are indisputable in dealing among themselves and with the rest of the world.

She said, “He’s an asshole.”

I said, “That’s just your opinion.”

“No, he really is.”

“Based on what?”

“He’s mean to people.”

“Because he says what he thinks instead of kissing ass?”

“He’s an asshole, it’s a fact. End of discussion.”

Sounds like conversations my daughter cuts short with, “It’s in the Bible.”

Twenty-six lanes of facts

The “facts” of any person or culture are the practical consensus derived from desire to solidify the eternal change nature is by endlessly naming new phenomena to patch holes in the neat capsule built of forgone conclusions. The unknown lies impenetrable, just beyond one’s final conclusion. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all agree to the “fact” that there is only one god. This agreement has bound them in an ancient, bloody war to settle the correct, factual name of this consensus superhero.

I live in an ostensibly Christian nation by declaration of its government and the professions of faith among 80% of its citizens. All other nations gaining my country's recognition as developed have less than a majority who say religion is important to them at all. I am well aware of the steamroller Christ’s followers interpret his inspiration commanded them to become. Christianity wants the Bible to be the facts of the world, but with as many versions as opinions, they just can’t settle on the one correct, factual name and required behavior.

Knowing the facts of one’s culture can aid the climb up the factual framework with  answers of correct names, dates and obedience to the authorities sitting atop the pyramid of consensus. For one aware of the process of fact fabrication, the difference between the direct experience of nature and the structure of the myth-cum-fact becomes as obvious as scaffolding one must skirt to keep from banging one’s head on the closed minds with which they are constructed. The business of Western Civilization is to bend nature to the facts about itself.

 

The momentum of nature's fluidly inevitable experience washes away more mere facts

The Zen masters know how to deal with conclusions:

Let go or be dragged.

Authenticity

The only authority I respect lies within self-actualized beings representing themselves genuinely rather than through manipulative illusion or honorary delegation.

For many years I regarded paintings of dogs playing poker as cartoonish silliness until I caught on to a deeper humor ranking among the greatest surrealism of all time; there’s not one bone in the body of a dog that can bluff! Dogs are the epitome of self-actualized beings within the domestic scene. Every being in what we consider natural wilderness is authentic.

Such examples are fewer and further between domesticated human beings not already culled and locked away in burgeoning jails and mental institutions. In four years of college I had only one teacher whose authority I recognized because he taught Strength of Materials wearing the dusty clothes he wore while walking a cantilevered I-beam on a construction job he was working on just before class. He brought interest in tension and compression to life more by his body language than the desiccated text ever could.

Some claim acquired authority based on books they’ve read, sides they're on, degrees they've been awarded, who's their Daddy, marks they’ve made, gods they worship, clubs they’ve joined, elections they’ve won, money they’ve got or intentions for our future. Western civilization is based on such claimers successfully awing the rest of us. Those remaining outside this bond of gullibility exude the authenticity that escapes those testimonies to elsewhere by genuinely representing themselves — self-actualizing before one’s very eyes without needing to claim anything.

The Invisible Prison

By staying out of the conversation just now I began hearing an overwhelming amount of testimony to experience of cultural products as opposed to discussing firsthand experiences in nature. Recollections spanning from books, movies, music and politics to gossip columns, biographies and news flashes about authors, actors, musicians and politicians leave direct experience of nature outside the opaque, isolating wall of vicarious references to settings in dramas and documentaries. I feel like I am listening to a classroom of students still turning in book reports years after their last class on the momentum of having learned to be ready with the answers.

I look up at the towering pecan shading us all and wonder, “What in the hell are they talking about?”