You’d make a good bird
I’m not sure what kind
One that flies with confidence
Not flapping noisily
Panicky from place to place
You fly higher than most
Not the type to prey
Not to say you don’t get hungry
You think yourself fluffy
But you are feathered
Smooth and sleek design
Showing you have direction
Purpose
I wonder what bird you are
Something colorful to be sure
But not so small
That only binoculars will do
Companion sized
Something that looks formidable
Perched on your shoulder
Too striking to be menacing
Something tropical perhaps
Perhaps common in some far off place
But rare and breathtaking to me
And so I am left to wonder
What it might actually be like
To watch you take flight
I’m okay with pictures in a book
Some beauty feels peaceful
Just knowing it’s out there
Up there
Sometimes I do think I see you when I look up
And I can’t help but sigh long with a wide smile
Many of my friends have had great things to say today. I have felt fairly empty lately. Empty of creativity, or anything wise to say. A lot of intellectual energy has been focused on keeping down a background of feeling of worry and dread for what’s to come in this country I have made my home.
Watching this video gave me pause for thought. They are old words, which have relevance today. But what it made me think of is that there is much in this universe that is bigger than I am. The events that led to Trump being elected, and the events that follow…may well beyond my control. There are maybe only a handful of causes that I can be active in, and I will fight and stand up for those who may fall under oppression and to those who people in power are denying them their humanity. I will always try to be more than I am, but I’ve realized that what I am today is also important.
I am a scientist. The scientific method is simply the best tool we have for knowing, and well humans utilizing it may make mistakes, it is more reliable than anything I know. I will continue to re-evaluate my views, and defend my views through the vehicle of science. Introspection and advocating effecting methods for discovering our universe is a way out of the darkness.
I am an educator. The reason I became one is because I love learning, and I love thinking about things. I need to make sure to continue to pass that on through my job. Curiosity and learning are wonderful and fundamental human qualities. It is a way out of the darkness.
I am a husband. I have this amazing wife who is strong, capable, and compassionate. She doesn’t let herself be guided by convention or rules placed on her by society. I am simply better because of her. She reminds me that whether we are different by gender, or by race, we are better together. Humans survive through cooperation. It is a way out of the darkness.
I am a father. As I watch my son grow, I know exactly what humanity is. We are affectionate, we are kind, we play, we learn, and we love. As a species we have propagated over countless generations. Everybody is part of a family. And we are all the same species, thus we all share so much and spend too much time focusing on the differences. Children are the future, and if I falter as a father, I am also not doing what I can to make the world a better place. The beauty and innocence of children is a way out of the darkness.
The history of humanity is long. The Earth much longer. I live in a small point in time and space, and even in the context of human history there is only so much I can do. And most important is that I do it well. Throughout history there has been great suffering, there has been great inequality and those places of suffering and joys have moved around to different parts of the globe and it’s still happening. It could simply be our turn. But there have always been good people in the worst of places, because most people are good. It is their nature to be so. If a social species evolved any other way, we simply would not be here today.
Alone I would not be the person I am today. If I am proud of who I am, and if I am considered a good person, it is the people along the way that have made me so, and I am grateful to you all. Stay vigilant and strong and I shall do the same.
It moves in a sine wave
It’s sinewy and sinuous
There is a place of eternal equinox
The line bisects the sphere
Just as the setting and rising of the sun
Bisects hot day and tolerable night
It’s like in the movies,
Maybe a time lapse, or desert heat
You can watch it rise or sink
Only twelve hours to make that long arc
Quickly burning day, deep expansive dark
And there was the horizon and there was the sun
You knew when it started, you knew when it was done
North, because why not
The sun finds gentler journey
And the axis through that sine wave
Moves with the season, it is the reason
It’s just a latitude adjustment
The ebb and flow of dark and night
I wondered about the Arctic Circle
There are days when the descent
Must move so slowly
You just couldn’t stare at the sun that long
But keep an eye out, drink coffee, stay strong
And there was the horizon and there was the sun
For one moment, the sunrise and sunset are one
I go now to stand on shrinking ice
Along with my polar bear family
I will step on that pivot point
And there will I finally own time
Around the world by foot
Around the clock tonight
The sine wave becomes a straight line
A line that oscillates a revolution
But in the moment, no eye could detect
The sunrise and sunset would last for days
Far too long even for a lover’s gaze
And there was the horizon and there was the sun
It looks like it’s moving, but you’re being spun
It’s such a cliché to say, “I can’t believe you are already 3 years old”. It’s amazing to me how life can be boring and routine and pass so quickly, and that alternatively life can also feel full and eventful and do the same thing. As I look back on this year with you the beautiful moments you have brought to my life seem innumerable and in that sea of amazingness I struggle to think of memories that really stand out. Somehow it’s the totality of the change that strikes me this year. Maybe it’s because there doesn’t seem to be as many “firsts”. Well that’s not strictly true, but they seem different than ones in your first couple years. It’s more like this year is about things you could already sort of do, but now you can do infinitely better. It has been still a joy, of course, to watch you get so much stronger and agile, but it doesn’t stand out as strong in my heart. However, maybe the problem is that your firsts this year are much more related to your cognitive abilities and it’s hard to pick out the exact moment it happened, because it seems to get stronger so incrementally, yet the moment when I really become cognitively aware of your development seems sudden. For instance, this year you started making connections between objects and shapes and likened them to things you already knew. Like seeing 4 upside-down plastic cups next to each other reminded you of Lego, a song that wasn’t Indian but had Indian drums made you connect it to Indian music, having intention in what you draw beyond just the fascination of making marks on paper. The best part of this year is how your imagination has taken off. The scenes you play out with your toys, doing different voices and scenarios. I think I could listen to you play like that all day. You also became completely bilingual this year. Your English was first and we were worried about how much Polish you would be able to speak. But eventually we could tell that you were recognizing the differences between the languages and who spoke them. Then, what seemed out of the blue, you started speaking Polish while your great grandmother was here, and now I think you speak Polish better than an English. It is truly a marvel for me to see because I find the grammar rules so hard to learn, and you simply show why children are superior at learning languages. This past year has in many ways been the story of your voice, and your talking fills the air like music.
Ultimately what stands out the most is how much you’ve become a person. Gone is this little human I loved on what just felt like a biological level, but I feel like I actually know you as a person now. Your personality shines, and I can begin to define you as having certain personality traits. And I think you can do the same for me. You also know me, and what I’m like. We are father and son, sure, but we are also people learning about each other and growing together, and I love that. So what is that personality that you are developing? Well you are sweet and loving. You are kind and you like to share. You show concern for others including the cats. You don’t throw tantrums, and you don’t get mad when other kids take your toys. You just sort of stand there a bit stunned and wonder what is wrong with them. What’s most amazing about you is the humor you’ve developed. You love to make people laugh, and you do a pretty good job of jokes for a kid your age. A large part of you seems to be built on silliness. Almost too much sometimes, because you can get unfocused from the task at hand. It’s hard for us to not laugh sometimes, even though you are misbehaving, because we know a laugh from us only encourages you to carry on with your silliness! But if being too silly is the worst trait you have as a toddler than I think we are pretty lucky.
To share with you an example of your silliness you decided one day to call my lips, pimples. You touch my lips and say “I likes your pimples”, and then I touch your lips back or tickle your ribs and say “I like your pimples”. You respond back saying, “No, I like yours pimples!” This goes on for far longer than it should. It’s complete nonsense. But it’s also sweet because you started playing it I think just because you liked touching my lips. You often just put your fingers on my lips when you come into our bed and are still sleepy, or just before you fall asleep at night. As a father we generally don’t get those kind of attachments with a breastfeeding mother to choose from. I don’t know, there is just something deeply personal when there is just some simple thing about you that brings such comfort to another human being.
Also I am really happy that you like Mr. Bean so much. It will make me feel less guilty about indoctrinating you into British comedies. Pretty much the only way I am freely willing to indoctrinate you. 🙂
Part of the reason why I want to write you these letters is to also let you know who I am at this time in my life. Of course as much I feel you are getting to know me, there is so much more to go. This year has been a tough one for a lot of people, but mostly because of how it has ended. Poland has become extremely restrictive, full of prejudice, religious fervor, and heavy nationalism. It is one of many countries that have and may go that direction yet. But Poland is your mother’s country and where she still has friends and family. So it’s personal. And the country we live in has taken it’s turn in that direction as well. As hard it is to let greed win, it is much harder to accept that the world seems like it’s about to get a lot unkinder. And as a species, we haven’t been the kindest bunch even in the best of times. This age of information and global activity, breeds a heightened level of awareness to all our species is capable of, and as a result quite a lot of fear. As I said, we aren’t always the kindest. I hope that this is all just a pull back on the elastic that propels us forward. Of course change happens slowly, so it may be a long pull back before we go forward again. As we are now able to look around this world even more than before, we are starting to realize that there is quite a bit of suffering and we haven’t been very good stewards of the planet that sustains us all. It’s a heavy burden to bear. People deal with it in different ways. Some better than others. I am not sure why this really is. Maybe it’s just the willingness to admit mistakes and try something else. Maybe ignorance really is just bliss. But I’ve always felt that at some level reality slaps you in the face no matter what. I’d always rather just address reality come to terms with it. Perhaps I’ve just had a kinder reality than others, so what do I know? The point is that your life may be a greater struggle than your parents had for most of their life. What I can tell you though is that whatever the future holds, I will always show you the light that is in this universe, the wonder in your world, and what’s best about humanity. I’m going to make sure that even when I’m not there, you will look out with your senses and know there is beauty there. Even if it is small, hiding, muted, or repressed, you will find a way to bring it to others, and have good and pure moments of joy. Even if they happen more sparsely than I have been fortunate enough to have in my life.
I suppose that parents must often question themselves in how they are doing as a parent. I know I certainly do. The truth is that I still feel like I have trouble relating to you. As you get older it is very aware how much you are watching, listening, and learning, and I feel like I should be teaching you more. Maybe I’ve just spent too much of my life talking to college students, that trying to explain things to a toddler feels hard. And often I just feel I’ve aged past the point of remembering how to access my own inner child. Your mother does not have that problem and I am so thankful that you have that amazing woman in your life. I just want you to know that I am trying and that at the very least I can say that you are getting no shortage of love and affection from me. I love the hugs, the kisses, the holding you on my lap, and the cuddles when you crawl into our bed in the middle of the night. By the way, maybe that’s the best part of you talking now is that you can say “I love you”. I suppose one could say that you are bound to say such things after hearing it so many times. But I can tell that you are also beginning to understand what love feels like and there is no dishonesty in your expression of love. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. There is a purity in it that I think we adults lose sight of sometimes. Not that the complexity of love isn’t wondrous as well, but sometimes I think we over think it, and let the fear of vulnerability override the freedom and joy our heart could be experiencing. And while I still have no idea how I would manage if something were to happen to you, it is a fearless love I have for you, because I know that whatever turns life may have, there is no value in holding back the love I feel for you.
These past 3 years of your life have been amazing for me. I wish I really had the words, but maybe there are just some things in life you have to experience and words simply hold no value. My greatest hope for you is that you get to love someone as much as I love you. Happy 3rd birthday my son. Thank you for making me feel lucky, even in 2016.
In a surprise reversal of position, numerous climate scientists now say they could be all wrong about climate change, thanks to a plucky group of public skeptics who have spent numerous hours on the internet reading articles by people not associated with the climate research in any way. For years climate researchers have failed to listen to these pleas for reason and understanding. Much to the chagrin of the climate community, a major misstep has been brought to light, climate researchers have forgotten to take into account the sun in the now shaky theory about human-induced climate change.
The moment of truth came Dec. 9th when an article that was reporting 2016 was shaping up to be the hottest year on record when a commenter who goes by the name “drillbaby” said the warming we are seeing is caused by the sun. We were able to track down this commenter as internet climate expert and full-time real estate agent, Derek Laskin, to ask him how this revelation came to him. “It really was the stuff of stories the way I was inspired,” exclaimed an excited and proud Laskin, “it was a cool morning, but the sun was out, and I noticed that throughout the day things started to get warmer. That’s when I came upon this article about climate change and global warming, where the scientists are blaming on carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, but based on my experience on how the sun seemed to be working, I decided to comment on this article to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t be looking at carbon dioxide, and that the sun is responsible for the warming.”
This comment may have been missed by the climate science community if not for a bit a random luck. Climate researcher, Dr. Mike Hulme, received a text message from his sister who happened in the article that simply read “Holy shit, some guy commented on an article and mentioned the sun! I’ve never heard you talk about the sun before in telling me about your work. WTF!?” The word spread at the speed of light in the scientific community, and while some resistance remains to this new development, the change has been visible and scientists are now contemplating a spectrum of new ideas in regards to the warming we are seeing. We had a chance to go to King’s College in London to talk to Hulme. “Needless to say I am shocked.,” said a shaken Hulme, ” All those years in school studying weather and climate, and nobody ever brought up this glowing orb in the sky called the sun. I’ll admit it made the physics of climate somewhat implausible, but you know we tend to respect our teachers and believe what they tell us without every going through that process of discovery on our own. I am just glad that we have internet commenters like drillbaby to clue us in to important things we have missed.”
When asked why some researchers are still resistant to this very pervasive idea of the sun causing warming, Hulme replied “Well I have no idea why they would prefer to remain in the dark as it were, but I guess most scientists care more about money, and it’s a tragedy really. But I have no other explanation. I will say that there really is a lot of confusion right now and so some scientists are reticent about changing their views yet until all the information comes out. Currently we are still mining internet comments and finding out all sorts of things we previously did not know. As it turns out there are many people who haven’t spent years studying atmospheric physics and research climate data who are writing some pretty in depth articles about how we got it all wrong.” We then asked Hulme if there was anything else these internet comments were shedding important light on. “Absolutely,” responded Hulme, “Quite a lot really, but one thing stands out. As it turns out there are many people saying that the climate has actually changed naturally over the course of Earth’s history and there really is no need to worry. Apparently if things change naturally any suggestion that changes may be enhanced or made more severe unnaturally is a pointless argument. I’ve even changed my views about gun control. People die naturally, thus homicide is irrelevant. I’m just going to retire early and hang out with my Scottish Terrier”
Silence ensued for a few minutes as the exasperated Hulme simply shook his head in quiet contemplation. I then asked him about the field of paleoclimatology that looks at how climate has changed in the past. Hulme looked up at me wild-eyed and said, “Don’t you understand, it’s all been a lie? We missed the part about the sun and so you can’t trust any of our understanding about past climate either! Honestly how can you trust us or anything we say ever again?!”
The Sun, featured here in the upper right. The missing piece of the global warming puzzle, previously missed by scientists.
We left the sobbing Hulme, but there still seemed to be some questions. Previously computers models had demonstrated the warming could only be explained with the additional CO2 going into the atmosphere, and not by natural causes alone. What then were those computer models even showing? We sat down with a distraught Dr. Michael Mann at his office at Penn State University to ask him. “We’ve all been taken aback by this sun thing, and it’s really made us look more carefully at the qualifications of the people involved in this research. Models are really complex and most of us don’t really understand it. As it turns out those who make these models don’t have years of experience studying computational fluid dynamics, but are rather out of work video game designers. Apparently it’s quite common to randomize things in a video game, and this is apparently what the designers were doing – just randomly throwing in some false warming into the models. Overall it’s pretty disappointing that we missed the sun in our models. Right now I’m in the processing of going through my old syllabi that I have from my many years in college to make sure that there was no section called “the sun”. If not, I think I have grounds to ask for a refund on my tuition.”
Finally, we asked Mann when the climate research community would have an official statement to make to the public they lied to all these years. Mann, like Hulme, said there are many more internet comments to troll through, but he did say this “Right now I’d just like to say thank you to all those who persevered through perhaps 6 or 7 articles from right wing media outlets and were still able to find time to post their well-defended comments underneath articles with our nonsensical babbling which represents, to be honest, some of the shoddiest science mankind has ever seen.”
In silence you approach, slowly darkening days,
Autumn arrays of color fade to deathly brown,
Precious skies of blue are replaced by grays,
Sharp winds blow across frozen ground.
And then one day you bring all to standing still,
I watch as my breath, eager to show it’s alive,
Disappears hopelessly into air it can’t fill,
Icy touch on the shoulder of all that thrived.
And what more can we do who wait?
Where night comes early, but feels so late.
Hope for snow to settle on barren limbs?
A touch of white when all seems grim.
Snowy blanket covers the harvest’s reaping,
Lets us pretend the Earth is happily sleeping.
Each slippery step on landscape so bleak,
As we drudge through our lives week after week,
You take no pleasure as you tally the score,
We see what you’ve taken and you hunger for more,
And just when you drain our heat to burn our skin,
Though you love your endings, in the end you won’t win.
For when the sun hides for its longest hours,
We gather with friend and kin to warm with love,
With charitable hearts gloomy Death does cower,
Mocked by hopeful songs of the mourning dove.
New Year’s rejoicing as the sun climbs higher,
Dreams of future gains and not what we lack,
You snap and bite at us, even as you tire,
As snow melts into thawing soil, life bites back.
Discussions about politics always lead to many arguments over capitalism and socialism. I don’t really have principles with capitalism in theory. I think a lot of good can come out of it. Through that spirit of competition, things that companies compete at can lead to many improvements in technology, and the development of things that people want to help them solve problems and make their lives better. It’s been difficult to really verbalize what I don’t like about capitalism other than a gut feeling that it misses the mark, so I wanted to explore the topic a bit, and also talk about socialism as well. Both words sort of don’t do us justice as humans.
*Spoiler alert*
If you haven’t seen the movie Gattaca, which everyone should, then you might not want to read this, although the part of the story I am going to tell isn’t really central to the plot. The main character Vincent had a younger brother, Anton, who was genetically superior in this sci-movie, Vincent had a heart defect. They would compete with each other as children by swimming out to the ocean to see who could swim the farthest without getting worried and needing to swim back. Anton would always win, until one day Vincent won and left home never looking back. In the future, their paths cross again by circumstance. Anton is a cop. Vincent is someone who could be turned in by his brother in this future where genetics is everything. So Anton and Vincent have a moment of truth, and Anton challenges Vincent once again to their swimming competition, never understanding how it was that he lost to his brother who had a defective heart. Their initial competition was important for Vincent to realize his dreams and have the courage to follow them. So as they compete once again and swim out to sea, a determined Vincent is going strong, and his brother Anton falters, is exhausted and starts to drown. Vincent stops and rescues him, and swims him back to shore.
This is humanity, or what humanity should be. We may compete as a means of helping ourselves improve, but in the end we are brothers and sisters and when another is suffering, we forget about the competition and we help each other. This is not capitalism, at least it is generally practiced today. In capitalism today, you compete to get ahead and whatever the damage in your wake, whatever suffering that might be happening outside the realm of your drive for growth is not your problem. Can capitalism be separated from selfishness? In theory the answer is yes, but this doesn’t often seem to be the case. Does capitalism promote greed, promote the corruption of our better nature? Ultimately it seems to me to promote capitalism as a system to live by that is truly beneficial to all, that promotes liberty, and happiness is a mistake. Capitalism at best much a sub-system under a larger framework that is focused on the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants. Capitalism is a system designed by humans, it was never meant to be a system to design humans. On the surface it seems to maximize freedom, but I would say that it’s very enslaving. We are slaves to consumerism, slaves to the constant making of money, slaves to the clock, with no real thought to our happiness which supposedly we are so free to make happen.
So is socialism better? First let me explain how I define socialism, the word has come to mean so many things:
“A political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”
I will start out by saying that any ideology can be corrupted by greed and if there is a governing body the chance is there. Socialism is something that seems to be an antithesis to freedom, and in some ways this is correct. But maybe the better question is, how free are we really meant to be? We evolved in tribes of about several hundred. We were mobile out of necessity, and not sedentary. Resources were uncertain as the environment changed, and as we most likely made occasional mistakes with damaging an ecosystem which we depended on. But it was like a small town. Everybody knew each other and took care of each other. Taking care of children was communal, the idea of ownership was non-existent. You passed down skills, and I am sure there was competition to help improve skills, but in the end success for the tribe was about cooperation. Some people had lesser skills, some people were likely injured from time to time, some might have been too old or too young to be very effective, but that was life. Everybody did what they were able, and for those that weren’t able, you took care of them. You didn’t work for yourself. As the best hunter you didn’t say, I’m taking all the meat today, good luck suckers! At our core, our brains are wired for this idea of the collective, and the empowerment of the collective is an important tenet of socialism. We are after all a social species.
So why do we see so many flaws in socialism? The difference between that tribe of several hundred, and cities, or states, or countries, or the entire globe is that we don’t all know each other. While we may be built for empathy, the fact remains that empathy is much easier to have when you’ve known someone personally (the longer the better), and in a tribe everybody knows everybody and you depend on each other.
In many ways, I feel that capitalism vs socialism boils down to a similar debate between individualism and collectivism. Two things I’ve blogged about before. When I frame capitalism as a sub-system in a larger framework I guess I now see individualism sort of similarly. I am sure individuality played an important role in the tribe. Someone having creative ideas was surely encouraged, having a diversity of expertise (even if everybody had to have similar skills), would have also been beneficial. But if someone came up with a better way to catch more fish, it certainly wasn’t profited from. They wouldn’t have just kept storing fish for themselves and sold them to their hungry tribe members, they would have taught this method to others and shared their haul while others learned.
In the end I just don’t see capitalism as the ideology that saves us all. It is always going to produce winners and losers, and winners can keep rigging the game to make sure they keep winning. And even if they intentionally don’t rig the game the privileges they and their offspring gain, compared to those with less makes sure that the deck gets continually stacked in their favor.
But if socialism is a better mirror of our tribal life that our brains are wired for, how do we get around the disconnect between the people we know and those we don’t? Of course we could look at science and say, hey genetically we are pretty much the same and despite the fact that we are brought up in different environments, fundamentally the same things keep us happy and prosperous. We could remain curious and continue to learn about other cultures and other problems people face, and see how similar their struggles are to our own, or what we might have gone through in the past. We could believe in that Greek concept of “agape” a love of mankind, or a higher love that transcends our day to day to lives. Can these things ever replace truly knowing each other, and develop empathy in the same way? But they seem like good things to embrace even if in a lot of ways, we have to take them on faith. We take so many religious myths on faith, so why not something that increases empathy for our fellow human?
I mean the truth is that capitalism can work, but it doesn’t mean you can get away from sharing, helping each other, and working for the rest of your tribe which is quite large in the present day given how much our population has grown and how global the economy has become. Civilization is such a large departure from how we are wired, but for as many wonders it has created, it has spawned deeply disparate class structures and large populations in which a wealth of resources floats beneath the noses of those who have the most power to help people, and temptation to take over give becomes too great for our fragile minds who evolved in a far more uncertain world than we live in now. Our fears and uncertainties can also be exploited by others, trapping us into a never ending cycle of divisiveness eroding the empathy which made us the successful species we are. We are better when we cooperate. At the end of the day I don’t really care to argue about capitalism vs. socialism, but whatever system we decide as best has to do away with greed. I hope that one day we can find a path back to that communal culture from whence we came.
We had some guests over on the weekend for dinner. My wife likes a few decorous things when setting the table for guests, especially when it’s someone we are just meeting or don’t have often. Nothing overly elaborate, but my wife has certain tastes and a style I like. One of these things are napkin holders that are also in the shape of a bull’s head. They are dark and wooden. My son, who likes anything animal picks this up and is confused to its purpose. My wife tries to explain that it’s for decoration and for holding napkins, but doesn’t really understand why napkins need to be held. His only response was “Well where is its legs? If you are going to have something that looks like a bull’s head, it should have the rest of the bull.
As I watched the puzzlement I began to think about how simply children see the world and just sort of see beyond the messy social fabric that binds us all together. A mass of rituals and customs and rules that we share with others that keep life from seemingly falling apart at the seams. A construct so you know who is like you and who isn’t like you. It helps you sort and categorize. And then as if you hadn’t spent enough time breaking up the fluidity of nature, you actually been to rank all that sorted information. Things that are good, things that are bad, things that are tolerable, surprising, beautiful, sexy, evil, disgusting, creepy, not trustworthy, frightening. Ideally having as few categories as possible, and trying to fit as much into a category as we can. And the diabolical thing about all these rituals, customs, and rules is we both need them to make sense out of an ever changing and persistently uncertain world, and…well…we just made it all up.
And in some sense we all know that much of this social construct is to give us a post to lean against, a chair to sit down in, or a good night’s rest when we need it, but there is so much absurdity that even we don’t really want to follow the rules, perform the rituals, do what is customary. And sometimes we can even laugh about it. Many a standup comedian has made a living from such observations about society. And as we explain to my child what this napkin holder is for, we normalize it and it becomes not a strange thing; something to accept and move on to the more pressing issues in our lives. Of course the use of napkin holders is not the worst of things to normalize. Rather small really. You hope to simply teach the lesson that we all have such decorous things in our lives to add some color, some aesthetic pleasure to the world. But what about those bigger prescribed rules and customs? Like, what is masculine and feminine, a woman’s place is in the home, atheists have no morals, black people are not to be trusted, or a definition of what it means to be patriotic. Past and present is full these human social constructs, meant to make things fit. Like a shirt we’ve outgrown it doesn’t fit well, and even if we do squeeze into it, it feels uncomfortable and the aesthetics are lost even if it was ever actually there.
All of us in our lives have taken a stand against something. We said, I am not going to play by that particular set of rules. It doesn’t make sense. As I age, I feel that part of me slipping away. Is it that I have truly observed carefully enough to know what all the harmful rules are, and thus which ones not to follow? I suspect I’ve missed a few. Or does the fight simply start to leave us when we feel like we’ve come and fought far enough? The same wisdom that protects me from being tossed and blown around, also seems to prevent from wanting to toss and blow others? I feel like I question less, even if I ask better questions. Perhaps there is value to both parts, but as I watched my son, I couldn’t help but feeling that life is for the young to lead the way at making things better. I hate when older people get down on younger people. As a society the young are our children and grandchildren, we need to encourage, because they certainly don’t have it easy. Is it easier than we had it? Perhaps. But these things tend to be subjective. The key is, I don’t think we should be having children if our hope was to keep the world just as hard and as uncertain as we had it. And as I watched my 3-year-old look at something in the world and basically say, “This makes no sense. Why do we do it?”, it made me happy. It is a simple question we seem to ask less as we grow older and that needs to always be asked. This is how we move across this category-laden world we’ve created. The social constructs that our evolved minds create are both essential, and perilous if we adhere to it too strongly. Our species spans across numerous ages, and that is one of our evolutionary advantages. Each age group providing something unique, another way in which we cooperate. Maybe in the end it’s just the young breaking barriers as fast as they can, while the old are just there to wag their finger and say “not too fast, you don’t want to fall and hurt yourself. “
“I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so. Moments like this, I can feel your heart beating as clearly as I feel my own, and I know that separation is an illusion. My life extends far beyond the limitations of me. ” – Spoken by Robert Frobisher in the movie Cloud Atlas
The brilliance fades quickly, Because I’ll be on to something else, And those two lines, They won’t make any sense. But maybe they will again tomorrow, I’ll remember what I wanted say, And by the end of the week, The month, The year, I’ll have written some poetry, Something that will blow a soul away, And you’d never tell, That I didn’t just sit down and write it, All in one gasping breath of inspiration, The exaltation that moves me so much, That I can only write two lines, Without getting lost in the music, Without getting thirsty, Without needing sleep.
When Atlas has to set the world down, There shall be a revelation in two lines.
Well I promised that I was going to talk more about my Trump concerns, but unfortunately there is a little more scolding left to do of liberals, which includes me. I want to talk about complacency and to do that I am going to start with a short YouTube video.
I don’t like her tone very much, and there are a few points I would disagree with, but much of it is hard to hear, because she’s right. At least in my opinion. Because I was somebody who when Barack Obama was elected I thought that a black man being elected president was a giant step forward and he was so full of hope I felt it. I felt it so strongly, that I fell into complacency.
The words of JFK continue to ring true, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” There have been several studies that demonstrate optimism can lead to complacency and perhaps we are all victims of that. A country this size has many problems and maybe too many people relied on government to fix them all. The hope and change that Obama talked about was the responsibility of all us. And as much I really do like Obama. He had his flaws as we all do. Hero worship gets us nowhere. He still bowed down to the establishment more than he should have. He still continued foreign policy mistakes of previous administrations, and while the economy recovered there was still growing income inequality and many of the American’s at the bottom saw no improvement in their situation. This article shows that while there was overall growth in employment, the type of jobs and the quality of jobs matter. Hell we have to pay attention to the fact that even a Muslim…nay a Muslim woman voted for Trump. I mean holy crap! If you were to make a list of top 10 types of people to not vote for Trump that would have been near the top of the list. Now while I believe this woman, given her overall viewpoint, seemed to focus on only a couple of issues compared to all the other ones it certainly tells us that the homogeneity that we apply to Trump supporters isn’t right and isn’t helping.
“But, the desire for change last Tuesday was bigger than any worries Clinton was able to raise about Trump. Four in 10 voters said the most important character trait in deciding their vote was a candidate who “can bring needed change” to Washington. Of that group, Trump won 83 percent to Clinton’s 14 percent — 83 to 14!!!!”
She was going to be the first female president, and I think that will be an amazing day when it happens. But how would she have been any different than Obama? Nobody had been able to convince me that she was progressive in any way. And I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. She’s worked very hard in her life and has accomplished a lot. She’s smart. But I found her to be reactive, not progressive, not a visionary. There was no change that was the center of platform that was going to be the answer than many struggling Americans are looking for. This is just my opinion, and I am sure there are those that would disagree. As the article states, change is what people were looking for. A change from the establishment, a definitive improvement on Obama’s policies, a voice that speaks to all Americans and not just the ones in swing states who already support her. In that desperation for change….well…we got Trump.
You can feel the empathy with many memes like this.
It’s unclear to me how much change this really represents, and change can certainly be negative. I was also desperate for change, but I’ll choose slow decline over disaster any day. But it is a terrible choice to have to make when you know that establishment politics isn’t working and the only choices you are given is the establishment and outsider who runs his campaign on lies, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. And what of those last 3 words. I know many people are upset at being labeled that way in supporting Trump. Here is the thing. If all your concerns were legitimate economic ones, were related to health care costs, or just going for change and wanting to vote for an outsider, why did Trump bother with all the racist comments? Why did he bother fear mongering about existential threats from immigrants and Muslims? Why did he say that was going to take away women’s rights to determine what happens to their own bodies? Why was any of that necessary if, as a Trump voter, none of you are these things? Why weren’t you critique Trump about it while also praising his strengths? This is what we are all struggling with. So here is what I want to say to the Trump voters.
Dear Trump Supporter,
I will believe you when you say you are not a racist, not a xenophobe, not a misogynist. I understand you are feeling like your voice has been demeaned and/or ignored, and that your life hasn’t improved or gotten worse. I understand maybe you just really wanted somebody you felt was going to cause change. But here’s the thing. Your candidate said many racist, xenophobic and misogynistic things. The very words that came out of his mouth was the worst kind of populism that was intended to exploit your fears and spur your anger. As a result, you demonized a hardworking woman who, regardless of your disagreements with her views or her ethics, she has served this country for many years, introduced a lot of legislation to try and help people and has been an active voice for equality for race, gender, and other minority groups. I disagree with many of her policy decisions but I have no idea what it’s like being her, trying to be a woman achieving success in a man’s world of politics. So now you have voted to put a man in power, who, if he does the things he says we will see the violation of numerous constitutional and human rights. If he enacts the policies he says he will enact we will see the national debt skyrocket, damage relations with foreign countries, and do great damage to the environment. And the RNC platform is supportive of many of the things Trump said he was going to do during the campaign. This was the cost of your vote. For many people that are potential victims of the views Trump espoused during the campaign, they are having a hard time understanding how your vote was not in support of those hateful views, but solely rooted in economic change and health care issues. You want our empathy and understanding, and you will have it, but not at the expense of injustices acted upon other people. There are plenty of countries where governments work to make all people happy. We should not be an Us vs. Them scenario. It is not moral to say “now it’s time to pay attention to you, and screw everybody else.” So let me know how I can help you, but if you are asking me to hurt somebody else to do so, I simply won’t do it.
And this empathy that you want, this desire to be seen as a human, and complex, and knowledgeable and aware. It runs both ways. While I have seen many of my liberal friends condemning the violence at anti-Trump protests, I have yet to see one Trump supporter that I know is on my Facebook News Feed speak out against any of the bullying and violence from Trump supporters. The most common responses are “These are Hillary plants”, “What about the violence and anti-Trump rallies”, “Give Trump a chance”, or links to fake stories or pictures about anti-Trump protestors. Remember we also sat through 8 years of “birther” conspiracy theories, denigrating names towards the president, constant lies about how Obama wanted to take your guns, blaming Obama for pretty much everything, and so when you now say we should respect the new president-elect, please understand how hard that hypocrisy is for us to swallow. The person you have elected has run a campaign based on division, has espoused hate and vowed to infringe on the rights of many people that we care deeply about. We will not trade their safety for your prosperity. So you must also work to find a way where we can all get along or nothing will really get better for anybody.
Finally, we don’t have to like a person who, in his very own words, has promoted ideas that bring harm to people. We don’t have to show tolerance to the hate, the authoritarianism, and the lies he told. The cabinet he is building currently leans towards the idea that he really doesn’t care about the working class and that you’ve all been taken in by a snake oil salesman. I hope this isn’t the case. I hope that you can show the same amount of understanding and empathy that you expect from us right now, because quite honestly, looking over the rhetoric from the past 8 years, hearing the hateful chants at the Trump rallies, and the bullying and intimidation that’s been going on post-election, it’s difficult to see why I should be doing all the work in this relationship. So I’ll refrain from calling you those divisive names and labels, if you work to prove that you are unworthy of them.
With Love, Libtard, socialist, communist, bleeding heart, elitist, femiNazi, clueless liberal
P.S. And if Trump does become the disaster to American ideals of freedom and equality that he espoused during his campaign, anybody who didn’t actively try to stop him from becoming president in this election is responsible regardless of whether you feel the labels hurled against you are fair.
And finally, because every once in awhile we just need some inspirational words here is the response of Buddhist teachers to Trump’s win.
In many ways, I feel that capitalism vs socialism boils down to a similar debate between 
I mean the truth is that capitalism can work, but it doesn’t mean you can get away from sharing, helping each other, and working for the rest of your tribe which is quite large in the present day given how much our population has grown and how global the economy has become. Civilization is such a large departure from how we are wired, but for as many wonders it has created, it has spawned deeply disparate class structures and large populations in which a wealth of resources floats beneath the noses of those who have the most power to help people, and temptation to take over give becomes too great for our fragile minds who evolved in a far more uncertain world than we live in now. Our fears and uncertainties can also be exploited by others, trapping us into a never ending cycle of divisiveness eroding the empathy which made us the successful species we are. We are better when we cooperate. At the end of the day I don’t really care to argue about capitalism vs. socialism, but whatever system we decide as best has to do away with greed. I hope that one day we can find a path back to that communal culture from whence we came.
Cloak Unfurled 