Making Sense of It All

Brilliant beams of the rising sun's light, unblocked by planets, satellites or pecan leaves, scan across the glade feeding the length of my body the warmth of a place I belong — of these cells, under this tree, on this planet, among the galaxies of atoms great and small that, too, belong wherever they exist. Stroking the fur of an animal, the hair of a friend or the satin hem of a winter blanket are further reminders of belonging. The laughter of a child erupting from a person of any age or the dulcet whisper of the great owl above me at night sing the music of the spheres to my ears, the orbits of my atoms. The sweet sensation of a juicy fruit, honeyed java or a lovers tongue are to flavor as the jasmine blooms, rich soil and my own garlic farts are to odor in letting me know I'm in the right place.

I would not know of these things except through reports I've gotten from my cells throughout my life which, at the rate of seven years per generation are in the midst of their eleventh generation. I've come a bit further in my theory that the mind is like a play by play announcer for the team its cells are; born at the same time, learning the game together, getting so familiar with the multitasking performance of this complex team that it forgets it is merely getting reports from the team about how the game is going and assumes it is in charge like any rabid arm-chair quarterback — as if it knew the first thing about digesting food, circulating blood or regenerating cells.

I came across a clever case study in psychology/philosophy the other day which I feel is relevant to the seamless continuity in cell regeneration. It involves five monkeys:
First the experimenters placed five monkeys in a cage with a step ladder and a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling. Whenever any one of them attempted to climb the ladder the monitor would spray the other monkeys with freezing water. Soon enough, whenever the bananas became so tempting for one that he tried climbing the ladder, the other four would beat the crap out of him until eventually none tried climbing.
Next they replaced one of these conditioned monkeys with a new one. When this newbie innocently began climbing the ladder, the four vets beat the shit out of him until he no longer tried climbing.
They repeat this replacement of a veteran ice water experiencer with an innocent new monkey scenario four more times until there are five monkeys who don't dare climb the ladder for fear of being beaten, and none of them know why they do it other than "that's the way it's always been."

Applying this example to cell regeneration and the biological transference of information from the old cell to the new one, called epigenesis, it is easy to see how, beneath any conscious preferences we might form from our experiences during our journey through life, our body is accumulating its own biological traditions of "that's the way it's always been" since the first regeneration of the last of the birth cells — the mini-evolution of the body as it copes with western civilization's deviation from the evolution of the rest of the planet by trying to establish human exceptionality as orthodoxy allowing it to consume natural resources reassembled and wrapped in neat little packages, mindless of the pollution their production and use causes; just as one sitting down to a juicy sirloin doesn't want to see pictures of a slaughterhouse.

If nothing else does, this would seem to shed some light into the mysteries of old age as the mind continues to operate on the reports it gets about the universe based on information from cellular reporters filtering what they experience just as the mind does as it places each new pixel of information it receives into the hologram gestalt of the present with lights and focus directed by the attachments it entertains at any given moment.

I still rely on personal experience being the only authority I respect, but I am finding the vagueness of memory increases with time leading me to think that the ultimate authority about what exists dwells only in the immediate instant of the present before cellular, mental, cultural biases can name anything. 

Meditation is preverbal thinking, the language of genetic memory …

… spoken where we belong.

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.

TIMELESS CONVERSATION ABOUT ATTACHMENT

From time to time I come across such quotations as dilate vast new vistas where once were mere inklings of insight about the landscape of experience I’ve been wandering and reading I’ve been pondering since the last such an epiphany. When I do, I like to scour that plethora of jotted thoughts and quotes collecting in my notebook like iron filings cling to the magnet of my curiosity and arrange them in a coherent conversation about the latest, greatest revelation they’ve led me to.

This time the key to the new vista is:

Let go or be drug.

—Zen

These components of the landscape are notches on the key:

Health is nature’s default.

—Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm

To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen.

•

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

—Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1895)

The noble art of losing face

May one day save the human race

And turn into eternal merit

What weaker minds would call disgrace.

—Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996)

The Karma of Hubris

In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.

—Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine, mystic (1782-1857)

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.

—Thomas Carruthers

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

—Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (1917-1986)

The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.

—Thomas Jefferson

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation.

—Susan B. Anthony, suffragist (1820-1906)

How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself

—Kenneth Tynan, critic and writer (1927-1980)

When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

•

Our chief want in life, is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher (1803- 1882)

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

—Chapman Cohen, author and lecturer (1868-1954)

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

—Anatole France, novelist, (1844-1924)

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.

Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

— Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, writer (1914-2004)

Gullibility and credulity are considered undesirable qualities in every department of human life -- except religion.

—Christopher Hitchens, author (1949-2011)

Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love.

—Bill Hicks, comedian and social critic (1961-1994)

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

—Saul Bellow, writer, Nobel laureate (1915-2005)

Elvira always lied first to herself before she lied to anybody else, since this gave her a conviction of moral honesty.

—Phyllis Bottome, novelist (1884-1963)

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

—Carl Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

—Aldous Huxley, novelist

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

—George Bernard Shaw, writer (1856-1950)

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

—Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)

If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds.

—J.B. Phillips, writer and clergyman (1906-1982)

The World is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe.

—Ed Krebs, photographer (b. 1951)

In International Consequences

The players must reckon

To reap what they've sown.

We have a defense against other defenses,

But what's to defend us against our own?

-Piet Hein

A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.

—Lewis H. Lapham, editor and writer (1935- )

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.

—Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist (1918-2008)

It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order. But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver.

—Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

•

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

—Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.

—Jerome K. Jerome, humorist (1859-1927)

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.

— John Ruskin, author, social reformer (1819-1900)

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.

—Lin Yutang, writer and translator (1895-1976)

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

•

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.

—Thomas Szasz, author (b. 1920)

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

— Marla

The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else -- we are the busiest people in the world.

—Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.

Blaise Pascal

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.