Love 3: The sweet compulsion of generosity

To continue the blog series I inadvertently started, embracing love, even to the tiny degree I have managed, brings one a vibrant new life. Identifying oneself as primarily a part of something bigger is so incredibly liberating. Acting out of self interest and selfish desires seems hollow now, like a bewitched tree that will only bear rotten fruit. American culture beats utility maximization, money-seeking and selfishness into our heads and claims they will make us happy. Go shopping to make yourself feel better. Eat to get happy. Watch TV to escape the emptiness you feel. Well, these are false logics, I tell you, they are merely a pain killer and fail to address the real cause of our anguish. In fact, it is our faith in these prescriptions and the soul-sucking lifestyle of America that have caused our pain.

Librating ourselves from this pain is surprisingly easy. Generosity springs like a fountain from the embrace of love. Love makes generosity inevitable, a sweet compulsion that brings the gifts of happiness, secruity, strong social bonds with people, and a fulfillment that is so glorious it is hard to describe. Indeed, the life of generosity is the life of happiness. A quote from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran comes to mind, " And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space." That quote has been stuck in my mind for over a year, one of those puzzles that my mind runs circles around... and it finally clicked while I was writing this. It is inherently human to give, an inescapable aspect of our nature. You might try to escape the compulsion to give my being selfish, but your reward is always anguish. To try such is like the myrtle in yonder valley not breathing its fragrance, it is contrary to its nature and it would probably suffer from it.

I have started looking for opportunities to give. Not just give from my meager possessions, but give of myself. This mostly manifests itself as helping people. I try to help whenever I am asked. But the gems of the experience are when I can help someone without being asked, through understanding what is going on in their heads and lending a hand. It really makes people feel good.

But many of us flee from this kind of risk. Because it is a risk, to attempt to give as a way of life. There is always the fear of rejection, and the fear that we are missing out on something. Fear of rejection is understandable, many people do not like to accept generosity. But the fear that we are missing out on something is much more insidious. It is akin to the idea of "opportunity cost," and has the nasty habit of eating away at our joy while sowing the seeds of nagging doubt. This fear is the sickened finger of selfishness trying to tear us down, prevent us from embracing love fully. Another great line from The Prophet reads: "Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable?" Fearing that we will not have something in the future or that we don't have the best of something is a sign of feeling insecure and entitled at the same time. Watch out for this, it has destroyed much good in my life and I would hate to see it happen to you.

Love 2: Conquering Death

Building on the last post, I think that our culture's pernicious fear of death comes from our lack of embracing love. For, if we truly love, then we do not see ourselves as a sea of individuals but as a single ocean. A hand with fingers as opposed to separate fingers. As one cell among trillions in a multi-cellular. If I claimed that each of my cells was independent from the other cells, people would call me crazy. But, they are as independent of each other as humans are from each other and the rest of our environment. The fact that we do not see that is but a cultural blindfold.

Love is our cellular bond. It is what drives people to see themselves not as one individual that has a finite existence, but as part of a community that has existed for millions of years, and will be around when everyone we know is long gone. If we see ourselves this way, we do not fear our own death. Our identity is vested in something immortal instead of in our flesh and blood.

Accounts I have heard from soldiers, rescue personel, police and fire fighters makes me think that their subcultures are closer to achieving this than most of Western culture. Their job is to protect and help others (debatable how well the violent ones achieve that, but that discussion is for another day; the point is they see this as their job). They have embraced a love of their community and are willing to sacrafice their lives for others.

Now, this is not to say that people should not fear immediate dangers to their well-being. What I am talking about is the philisophical fear of death that makes people wish for immortality. It is this fear that caused people to develop the idea of an after-life; as an attempt to quell the thought of non-existance.

I remember when I was in middle school, I was deeply troubled by the thought of death, and I never found the idea of an after-life all that credible. Years of contemplation followed and slowly transformed into my attempts to explain the universe. I did really like the idea that heaven existed and it would be this paradise with all my loved ones, like one giant endless party. It would be pretty nice, but it felt wrong. It felt like false hope. This triggered a thought in my head that is very hard to put into words. I started to question the very idea that I was a singular unit. The idea of a soul, of an individual, of a person, is singularity. I was told by my culture that we are a single static being with neat boundaries and a single soul. My whole world came crashing down, slowly at first, while I still didn't realize that I was breaking down the foundational belief our cultural point of view is built upon. That is bound to have a tumultuous effect on one's mind. So sophmore year of high school was kind of rough.

Reality pushed me to see myself as something dynamic. The following is a summation of several years of contemplation from my adolecense: "I was certainly bigger than I used to be, and generally calmer. I have changed over time... I am not static. My cells turn-over at a fairly fast rate, I intake and expell lots of material. I am greatly affected by everything happening around me, absorbing ideas and behavioral patterns from other people. Maybe the boundaries of my individuality are not so clear cut as they are made out to be. I am as dependent on them for food, shelter, protection and love as the cells of my body are to each other. All this conflicts with the idea of a person having one soul. Why should each cell not have a soul, and I am just a conglomeration of the souls of my cells?" And that last question did it. BAM! My concept of individuality was in ruins and I was left a directionless 14-15 year old. But the seeds of my new framework were there. The best way I can put what I have settled on is: that I am but one small section of strata of a continum from the small to the large in the oneness of everything and everyone. And, without love to glue it all together, none of us would exist. Embracing love has allowed me the contentment of knowing that death is just a reordering of my strata, not the end all be all; I will still be around, because there is no destroying the unity that I find myself to be a part of.

This old saying is true in so many ways:
"Love is truly the only way to conquer death"

Love

Love is so magical. It manages to intertwine such pure joy with such a deep melancholy quite seamlessly and all the while it emanates a strong sense of sacredness. The versatility of love is astounding, it can generate any mix of emotions. The deepest hatred arises from the death of a loved one. The harshest anger can come from the same, as well as a rejection from a loved one. The most concentrated happiness from those rare perfect days spent with loved ones. The keenest sense of helplessness and apathy when we feel unable to help those we love. The deepest depression when we fail to feel loved. And the most overpowering fear when the possibility of losing a loved one arises.

Many people may consider love to simply be an emotion among many, but I think it is more than that. I think it is the root of everything, a force of nature that is all-powerful. It reminds me of gravity, something you can fight against for a time, but it will always win in the end. The prime effect of it is to bring things closer together, as if they longed for a sweet embrace.

Just as the foundation of physics is gravity, I think that human society is based on love. We humans are glued together with a collective longing to be together, to do good to each other and to be taken care of. We are united in our search for happiness and we seem to only find it with each other. I can think of no better word to describe that than love. The root of what makes us human is love, and those without it begin to become inhuman (I would note that in Harry Potter, Voldemort did not know love. Of course, I would venture to guess that this is because no one risked truly loving him).

I read someone say that love is like slavery. When in love you do whatever you can for your loved one. But it is a joyful slavery, one that is completely voluntary. If fear, greed, and selfishness prevent one from completely embracing love (something I have been deeply affected by, as well as seen and experienced), then we may start to long to be free of it. And that is as deep a loss as anything I have experienced, from both sides of the equation.

For most of my 4 year relationship with Ingrid, I was able to fully embrace love. I would not trade that experience for anything. My whole life bent around her, probably a third of my thinking time was devoted to her, and I would spend hours fantasizing ways to simplely make her smile. I molded my behavior to bring myself emotionally close to her as well as to bring her joy. I studied her ways because I wanted to fully understand her. I ran a 4 year experiment on our relationship revolving around practicing "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," which was probably the most informative experience of my life and a major reason I was able to dive into the relationship so whole-heartedly.

Fully embracing love was overpowering in the most wonderful way imaginable. I can see how embracing love caused an emotional spring in my heart that has never left me. Atleast once a month I am moved to tears. I let myself be moved, scared and riled up by movies. And I no longer hold the reighs on my emotions so tightly for fear of a lack of control. It has been both liberating and deeply meaningful. I find a mysterious pleasure in the melancholy feelings of loss I have been experiencing these past 6 months (since we broke up). It might be because I feel so in touch with humanity and what it means to be human when I feel that way. It could also be because I know that I can replicate it with my next companion.

Of course, toward the end of my relationship I realized that Ingrid was unwilling or as of yet unable to fully embrace love the way I had. So I tried to get distance from love. I am generally able to exert control over my emotions, thoughts and feeling; with stubborn, lengthy effort I can usually manage to change them. But try as I might, my feelings of love would always rear their heads in my mind. I know objectively that this is a good thing; if there is one thing I am unable to change about myself, I guess it is good that it is the perserverence of my feelings of love. And while it might seen easier to try to suppress or excavate them, I have not found that to be the case.

I targeted a great deal of anger and angst toward Ingrid in an attempt to disentigrate my emotional bond to her. It kind of worked for awhile, but I almost feel like I was trying to cut a jet of water with a sword. Of course I can cut through it in a moment, but the force of the water will always keep the jet whole. I know I am unable to turn the jet off, nor do I want to turn my love off... it seems that the only choice I have left is to try to redirect it instead of cut it. It has been an interesting experiment on love, one I hope not to repeat, because it has not been particularly fruitful. It caused me more pain than anything and did not have the effects I wanted it to.

I hope everyone manages to fully embrace love in their lives and relationships, it is the best possible outcome even if you eventually get burned. Not embracing it is a painful, guilt-ridden path to lonliness, something I hope Ingrid realizes one day (and everyone else for that matter). Without love, we are not complete, our human-ness makes us yearn for it. For it is the root of our lives, the foundation of human society, and the glue that keeps us together.

Nature of Money

The nature of money is something i spend way too much time contemplating.

It is the basis of capitalism: liquid, imaginary capital that eases the process of trading goods and services. Western civilization is not the only culture to have developed the concept of money either. I remember learning about a culture in a class in Anthropology that I took at Brown. The culture used certain types of rocks as money. Some were small enough to be handled, but there were also boulders that were in circulation. The larger the stone, the more it was worth. Needless to say, they would not move a several ton boulder when it was used in trade. Everyone just REMEMBERED who owned it at any given time. No one could steal it, because it wasn't just a giant rock, it was an cultural meme and a consensus on whose it was. You cannot steal something when in reality it is just a consensus among a group of people. Money is such a weird concept.

In my mind I have defined it in many different ways... it can be a representation of labor, a representation of power, a kind of score in a weird competitive game, a cultural status marker, a representation of a good, and even a representation of consent. But, it is always just a symbol, something people think is important. When that consensus falters, so does the economic system that is built upon the it. It is ironic that the entire capitalist system, which happens to be very secular (if not in name than de facto), relies on faith. Faith that money does represent something more than a number on a screen or a piece of cotton paper that has no functional use. The only reason money has value is because we believe it does, the same reason that boulder was the proverbial pot of gold. The consent and faith of a large group of people gives things value. If people stopped believing that those boulders had value, or consented that one person "owned" them, then they would be as worthless as any other boulder.

Right now, I work because I need to increase an electronic number, that I can check over the internet. I distribute a quantity of this number to others to get various things like food, housing, and electricity. This signifies both my faith that increasing my number is worth spending 50 hours a week at work, and the belief of others that they want a quantity of my number enough to give me things I need to live. This just strikes me as weird arrangement. It reminds me of the story of the a guy who sold his most of his stuff to buy a virtual space station in an online computer game for $20,000. He is now a millionaire because he turned the space station into an imaginary shopping mall where people buy virtual goods for real money. It is just decreasing your number to buy an idea, and that idea ends up increasing your number because lots of other people like to interact with the idea. Then you can use that increased number to buy real things.

I was reading some money the other day and every bill has this phrase on it: "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private." This statement is meant to reinforce the belief that money has value. And it is an authoritative message, coming from the organization that has the consent of the general population. (Non-sequitor: This also signifies the value we put in printed documents and writing. If something is written down, it is generally considered to be more powerful. Ex: Written vs verbal contracts, religions of the book vs other non-text based religions, use of documents to prove stuff like your identity.. etc.). The point is that institutions have put effort into maintaining and reinforcing people's confidence in money, it is not natural or inherent in humans, it is a cultural meme that has been maticulously constructed and maintained in the minds of the general population.

To sum up...
Money is a multi-faceted symbol of faith, it symbolizes the fact that billions of people put their faith in the idea that money is something real. Belief has made it real and a power in our current culture. Money has value because we all agree it has value. That is the power of consent, the power of belief. It can make a useless boulder or a worthless piece of cotton paper into valuable items that people seek to possess. If anyone doubts the malleability of human culture, they should take a long deep look at the idea of money. When people claim a social system will not work because of X, Y and Z, they are really just writing a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course it will not work if we think it will fail. In truth, we can have any kind of society we want, we just have to believe in it.

sds at Brown

8 members of Students for a Democratic Society at Brown are being brought up on disciplinary charges for entering University Hall when The Brown Corporation was meeting and trying to present them with a petition signed by 1000 students, faculty and staff. They are being charged with allegedly hurting Brown University employees (i.e. Brown police). None of these injuries required hospitalization. But this raises some questions. Why are only 8 of them being charged? Does the University administration think that sds intentionally hurt people? Or is this just some authorities scared to lose their power, so they are trying to make an example out of a few people to scare the others off. That is what it seems to be. They are just out for retribution for a very public disruption of a Corporation meeting and the threat that 1000 supporters wanting democracy presents to this governing group.

These charges are arbitrary and unjust, and it just seems like they were created to have something to charge sds with. I am happy, however, to see Brown sds in the news so much, and making such a large impact on the minds of students. That takes organization, time and effort. I know that if sds keeps this kind of pressure up, they will have some measure of success.

I hope, though, that sds arranges a face-saving way out for the Corporation to take. Giving them an out will allow sds to determine the way this ends and provide a win-win situation for sds and the Corporation. Sds will get some consessions, and the Corporation will get this embarrasing issue out of the news and out of people's minds. Then sds can start another round of demands, make a big fuss about it, get alot of media coverage and support, and give the Corporation a way out that benefits both groups. That way, we achieve their consent to doing what we want, without the often fruitless battle of chicken that two groups with indomnitable wills tend to fall into. There is no sense in a total war mentality that demands the complete surrender of an opponent when one's opponent has a strong sense of pride that will always prevent them from taking a step that they feel will humiliate them. Better to understand this about one's opponent and use it to one's advantage than to try to force capitutlation, because that almost always will never come.

The same goes for the Corporation. If they understood sds, they would try to work something out, because sds is not going to be cowed by a disciplinary hearing or even having some of its members suspended from school. That will only back sds into a corner and cause them to fight harder. But no, the Corporation is arrogant enough to think it can ignore the widespread wish for more democracy at Brown and do as it wishes because it is the authority. More democracy would teach Brown students how to be better citizens and how to compromise and resolve conflict. This would be an objective improvement in the atmosphere at Brown as well as the educational environment. It is so sad to see a group charged with improving and sustaining the Brown community can have its vision of clouded so thouroughly by pride.

Thoughts on the future and Obama

I can't lie, Obama has moved me. And while I hope he institutes a progressive policy, it would not surprise me if he did not. Politicians have a responsibility to the public to do what the public wants, and if they think the public wants them to do A, they will probably go along with it. So while I am celebrating Obama being elected, I do not buy the "he was being centrist to get elected, he is really a progressive-wolf in centrist-sheep's clothing."

I would say the most moving part of his story, though, and the reason I am more hopeful of his ability than most other politicians are his self-reflective nature and his community organizing roots. Atleast according to various exposes of him in various forms of media, he spends alot of time contemplating himself, trying to develop self-knowledge. Self-reflection is so key to so much in my life, that I can't help but have some confidence in a leader who appears to have a similar relationship with it. That and various anecdotes that speak to the kindness in his heart give me cause to hope.
Now, if he can manage to transition his campaign arm into a grassroots organization with the purpose of passing progressive policy, oh man, that would make for an interesting future. The creation of a Democratic grassroots "machine", so to speak, that would have a progressive agenda of its own, plus an ameniable President and congress could be a recipe for significant change.

This is a rare opportunity. If the left can mobilize a grassroots mind-changing campaign along side a policy changing campaign, then we could see some real change. I hope sds manages to jump on this opporunity, because we could sway large numbers of people if we can manage to get our voice out there in a relevant and meaningful way.

Another interesting development that Obama's campaign's extreme grassroots nature could produce is a substantial uptick in the pariticipation of the public in our government. It could be the beginnings of a culture of participation, which will only lead toward participatory democracy. I wonder if Obama realizes the impact he could have on the way government works if he can transition his grassroots campaign organization into a more permeanent institution.

This campaign has also shown that you can get marginalized groups mobilized and involved, as well as the average citizen. They just need to be inspired and she the disillusionment that our system of government seems to naturally produce in people because of its unresponsiveness.

Politicians and power

Real power is not a commodity, it is consent.  Specifically, consent from large groups of people. Power can only be bought when people consent to being bought off, and it can only be stolen when people consent to giving it up through some form of intimidation.  But there is a difference between active consent and apathetic consent.  Active consent produces real, tangible power that can move mountains and change the wheel.  Apathetic consent produces the shadow of power, people go along with it, but their hearts aren't in it.  Consent to the activities and policies of politicians fall into the second category.  Only half the population is motivated to spend one hour or less to do something as easy as voting, now that is apathetic consent to be governed.   

Too many people believe politicians are able to do things, that they have power enough to make decisions themselves.  That is not the nature of the beast.  It was the nature of Monarchs and Emperors, back when people put more stock in the authority of their leaders and were much much more willing to act on their leader's wishes.  But it is not so today.  If a politician asked me to do something, I doubt I would do it unless it was something I was going to do anyway.  I bet the same is true for most of you out there.  We are forced to apathetically consent to their existence, because there is no alternative, as of yet.  Because they receive this type of consent, politicians do not have latitude to do what they wish.  We have stripped them of that power by our lackluster enthusiasm.  Like most of us, their hands are tied, they are stuck in Weber's iron cage of rules and regulations, and without support, they are unable to do what they want just as much as we are unable to create what we wish. 

I am reminded of a story about FDR.  During the early days of his administration, he met with labor leaders, they gave a presentation to try to convince him to adopt their policies.  At the end, FDR told them that they had convinced him and he completely agreed with what they were saying, and that now they had to go out into the public arena and force him to do it.  Hating politicians for being spineless and unable to do what we want is like hating grass for being unable to remain rigid against the wind.  If we want to shift the way the grass bends, we have to change the direction of the wind.  

I don't bother getting angry at politicians anymore.  Not worth the effort, they just do what they do and that won't change until we change our system of government.  Getting some active consent going for a policy will change policy, but it will not change the anti-participatory nature of our republic.  

It seems to me that too many people on the left focus on the people at the top levels of our government, and focus on them for failing to live up to America's ideals.  But they don't have the real power.  The population that apathetically consents to their existence has the REAL power, and they nullify it by being apathetic.  If we ever want to change our society, we have to change the minds of the population and get them organized and acting.  Politicians are a moot point, when the population's minds are changed, the minds of politicians will be changed. Just look at the environmental movement's success in converting the general population.  Even Republicans are now trying to appeal to green-minded voters.  We shouldn't waste our emotional energies decrying politicians and fighting the power-structures unless these activities are aimed at changing people's minds and mobilizing them.  And unfortunately, they often are not aimed at this, they are aimed at forcing authority figures to do what we want.

A Revolution is Just a Spinning of the Wheel

I mistrust the notion of revolution.  Far too many people put stock in it as an effective way to change society, but even a brief gloss-over of history tells me that it is not particularly effective. Take Russia for example.  They have had several revolutions in the past 200 years both violent and peaceful, yet they still have an authoritarian government, it may be composed of different people, but it is still essentially the same as the Tsar monarchy or the Soviet-style government. China too, several revolutions, still authoritarian.  Then there are countless third world countries that have had revolutions galore, and we can see how well that has worked out for them. We could take the French revolution as the archetype of revolution.  They overthrew an absolute monarch and large, powerful factions such as the Sansculottes pushed for direct democracy.  The core of the intellectual support for the French revolution supported more democracy, and indeed has inspired the rest of the world with its idealism.  Yet they ended up empowering Napoleon in the near absolute power of an Emperor.   If there were to be a revolution in the typical sense in America, I do not believe it would achieve the ends we desire. 

I am reminded of the analysis provided in 1984 about before Oceania's type of government:  there were always revolutions that would overthrow one group of oligarchs and replace them with another group.  Indeed, a republic is designed to institutionalize this process, stabilizing the switching of control and reducing disruption.  It also stabilizes the groups who maintain power, allowing them to entrench themselves more effectively and simply change places with each other every few years.  Kind of scary to think that a republic, what we have now in America, is an institutionalization of the cycle of revolution.  I am not particularly interesting in changing who has the reigns of power, which may be why I am never had a particular interest in working to elect politicians or bothering rich people to do things.

  

True to its definition, revolution is just the spinning of the wheel, you always end up where you started.  Myself, I am not interested in spinning my wheels... what I want to do is change the wheel itself.  History, again, can aid in understanding this.  There have been numerous wheel-changing events in history, among the most prominent are the industrial revolution and the enlightenment.  They both defined the lenses that the world has been seen through since they came about.  What is phenomenal about them is that they were not specifically directed at the power structures themselves, they were simple shifts in our view of the world and how one acts in it.  

I have come across the idea of wheel changing events before; something that happens that changes everything.  For indigenous populations, exposure to western civilization has been wheel-changing, their cultures are disrupted, and they are often forced to abandon their way of life.  Forced in the military sense, or in the generational shift-sense when the next generation has to stop living the way they did to survive.   But, the best description of a wheel-changing event that I have come across yet comes from literature.  The Riverworld series describes how an ancient society accidentally developed an artificial soul generator that automatically bound souls to new sentient beings.  So, this society changed its newborns without even knowing it, and in the space of only a couple generations, all the beings without these souls were gone because of old age.   This is a great metaphor for generational change.  One generation develops something, the next generation is imbued with it and it becomes an indestructible part of our society.

This seems to be the main wheel-changing method that humanity has at its disposal, and it can be boiled down to mass education, motivation, and changes in each of our ways of life.  To change society, you really have to change the way people think and act, because what else is society but the aggregate of all of our thoughts and actions.  

The industrial revolution was a revolution of mind, it shifted the priorities in life more directly toward profit, productivity and self-interest away from the typical human priority of social networking and the reciprocal economy.  It manifested itself in the day to day behavior of people and in their way of life.  It was compelling enough to spread like a plague across the earth, infecting all those it touched.  

I also think that the 60s was a wheel-changing event in opposition to the industrial revolution's, as it prompted people to change their priorities away from profit.  In fact, I believe that the old sds's long-haul strategy of radicalizing (educating) young people was key in the effectiveness of this specific event.  Without a de-centralized yet organized education and motivation effort, wheel-changing events are much harder to produce.  

Without this hard work of changing minds, we will not see success in our movement.  In the eternal words of Monty Python: "Power is derived from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony."  Too often people on the left focus on the power structures in a society, when we should be focusing on the real power in human society - each other.

Dueling Logics

I have been toying around with an idea I call "dueling logics." I call it that because it seems there are several ideas and notions that are at odds with each other, that different groups put their weight behind and that everyone thinks are mutually exclusive to each other. I will give some background on how I came upon this idea. It all came about from the unanswerable question "can God make a rock he herself could not life?" My answer is yes, if we assume God is all powerful. then she does not have to follow the laws of logic. Well, after occasionally contemplating this for a couple years, I free-associated it to the notion that competing logics are either right or wrong and mutually exclusive to their competitors. For example, either violence does not work and so non-violence does, or vice versa. Or the logic of fear that pushes mistrust of others as security and the logic of hope that pushes generosity as security. Or authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism. And among these dueling logics, they all claim that the other logic is faulty and that their's is true.
Well, it occurred to me, maybe the laws of logic are breakable in one sense... maybe they both co-exist and both hold elements of truth in them despite the fact they claim to be fundamentally incompatable.

I will use the example of violence and non-violence cause I have alot of experience thinking about it. Violence purports to be able to scare people into consent and that non-violence will be unable to accomplish that consent. Non-violence purports to be able to create consent through understanding and generosity, and that violence simply rifts the bonds that allow provide security. Well, I do not see why both logics are mutually exclusive, I think they both hold some truth and some untruth (I do favor non-violence, and think it is more practical and full of truth). There is truth in the fact that violence does get people's consent to stop doing or do something. It has lots of bad repercussions, but for the single-minded pursuit of an objective, I can see where many people would fall into it's trap. Non-violence needs to recognize this truth if it is to further develop a strategy to remove the use of violence from conflicts. Similarly, violence needs to recognize that there is a large amount of "collateral damage" when violence is used, not just in unintended material damage and death but in the emotional scarring of people as well as entire societies. Using non-violence would prevent these negative repercussions.

So, that is something I have been trying to do, find the truth that underlies all sides of "dueling logics" even if I disagree with those sides. The fact that a large number of people put faith in some ideas means that they cannot be entirely devoid of truth. Logics, no matter how much they claim to be mutually exclusive, are not and we should not believe they are.

It is also interesting that modern religions claim to be mutually exclusive to each other. If you believe in one, you don't believe in the others. This was not always the case. Back during the Roman empire, the Pantheon of Gods accepted outsiders among their ranks, so in a Roman city you might see an Egyptian God prayed to by the same people who pray to a Greek God. People did not see this as odd or contradictory because mutual exclusivity was not an intergral part of religions back then. People could piece together their own religion from the different strands avaliable.
Interestingly enough, I can't remember too many religious wars back then either.

Walk the Earth as Humans

Building upon the thinking in my previous post, motivation to profit has started to seem like the crutch on which capitalism leans. In "The Age of Revolution" Hobsbawm talks about how employers during the early stages of the transition to capitalism would complain about the "laziness" of their employees. These people would work enough to make ends meet, and then stop. They were not used to the consistent work of industry, where one needs to be on time and to stay the whole time. Workers were more used to the farm and rural mentality of working whenever, and making your own hours. The combination of lack of motivation to work extra and to stay working annoyed the employers... because it cut their efficiency and profits. And this didn't happen just in urban centers of proto-capitalist economies, it happened in colonies and the outskirts of "civilization" too. It is a stereotype in my mind that British colonial officials would always complain about the laziness of the indigenous people. Anthropology pointed out to me that our civilization stereotypes indigenous societies as lazy and unproductive too.

Once the capitalist motivation of profit took hold in people with authority and power, they sought to use other people as tools to profit, and when these people stubbornly resisted by not conforming to capitalist ideals of a worker. But, as people had become tools to profit in the eyes of business owners and employers, they justified terrible repressions. Material starvation was one tecnique that was used to get more work out of their workers. They cut wages, to force them to work longer, and used the law. When the workers fought back by forming unions, these were attacked by the methods of coercion at the disposal of the powerful. This began the protracted war over labor rights which continues to this day. Another method to motivate people was to place immense obligations on their shoulders, such as military service and debt.

But the most effective method they used was cultural re-education. The early capitalists wanted everyone to think like they did, that profit is what they should seek and self-interest is the primary motivator. After three centuries of capitalistic re-education of society and culture shifting, we can see the success of this approach. Our entire civilization is now based on money as a motivator. It is true, there has been significant resistence to this belief, which is why it is not too surprising how many people still live in poverty. Fear of making ends meet, of feeding your family and keeping a roof over their heads is an immensely powerful motivator, and it ensures that people continue to buy into the capitalism by selling their labor and conforming to the rules.

Martin Luther King said something like "Humanity has learned to swim in the sea like a fish and fly in the sky like a bird, but we still can't walk the earth like a man." I think to put it more correctly, we forgot how to walk like a person. This analogy is very astute and gets to the heart of the problem. Humans were not meant to live this way, it is physcially and mentally destructive. Placing profit over people corrupts people's souls, and is mentally oppressive to those who think that way. Walking the earth, as MLK implies, would require us to treat people as an end in themselves instead of a tool. Something that I think most lefties dont realize is that capitalism is an oppression on the affleuent and power as well as on the down-trodden and working class. Where the majority of people suffer from material poverty, the rich suffer from a spiritual poverty that I find to be much more oppressive. And by spiritual I don't mean faith in God, or religion, I mean how much fulfillment one gets out of life; how people treat each other and the ramifications that has on their minds; lack of a deeper meaning than materialism; and suffering from a severe disconnection with other people.

Spiritual poverty is generated because people are not meant to live this way. Humans are social creatures and we have certain dispositions toward each other that capitalism disrupts. Generosity, connection, reciprocacy, and the social glue that holds a society together are all hard-wired into our brains, and when capitalism disrupts them it lays a yoke upon the mind of a person. This burden is so heavy it causes us to flee to transient pleasures to dull the pain and try to escape.

In Kentucky, people took care of each other. It is true that poverty took its toll with alcoholism, drugs, alienation and mental illness. But poverty also brings people together, it connects them and can build strong social ties. Lack of material comfort does not seem too harsh if one's family and friends are there, protecting each other. The affluent world I gained a view of at Brown was much worse, in my opinion. In the words of the Union song "Bread and Roses" by Bobbie McGee, "Hearts starve as well as bodies." And I see starvation of the heart to be a common affliction among the rich.

The capitalist motivation meme seems to have taken on a life of its own. It spurrs us into spending our collective time and energy on things that are not important, into things and not into people. Last time I was flying I had a window seat, and as I looked down, I noticed that I could always see something made by people. We have built so much, and yet we don't realize that it is more important to put effort into people. This does give me hope though. If we could push ourselves to do all this, build this entire world in a couple centuries, then we could push ourselves to do anything. Human culture is surprisingly flexible and powerful, we have drifted so far from our nature, and its impact is also quite impressive.

Capitalism (the Game!)

The more I think about capitalism, the more it seems to fit into the "game" category. Except it is perhaps the most complex game out there, and your survival depends on playing it. I think the most game-esque part of capitalism is the stock market, where you watch a bunch of numbers go up and down and you try to make more money based on when you buy and sell. Almost all of the people playing have more than enough money to live comfortably, but they are still focused on raising their own personal score. It is a symptom of a culture that is obsessed with over-accumulation.


Consumerism. That was the answer capitalism developed to answer the problem of the "stationary state." This idea was introduced to me by a book by Eric Hobsbawm titled "The Age of Revolution." As profit is the main motivator in the game of capitalism, if people are not motivated to profit, they will quite soon reach a point where they are quite satisfied with their position in life, and no longer seek to profit.  This is a stationary state, where people no longer seek to profit because they have enough.  I have fallen into such a state, I really have no motivation to make money and my living conditions are pretty good. I am not being a very good consumer, and I could see that the capitalism system would be in deep trouble if most people acted the way I am.  To avoid this pitfall, that would have reduced profits, consumerism evolved.

It actually reminds me of many video games. In Dungeons and Dragons based games like Diablo II and Nethack you walk around killing evil things, getting gold and new equipment. That is all the game is, getting new stuff by killing things... it is almost like gambling, because every time you kill something you have a chance to get something really good. It can be pretty addicting. I wonder how many of you thought I could compare capitalism to Diablo II. In games like Age of Empires II and Starcraft your objective is to conquer your competitor, but to do that, you have to develop an economy where you accumulate resources and assets. If you manage your assests affectively, you win. If not, then you lose. In Thief, you have to steal a certain amount of money. They are all focused on counters... little numbers that tell you how well you are doing. Sounds like the stock market to me.

I was looking at my bank statement the other day and asking myself how much happier I would be if my account was larger. Would I be happier if it were twice as much? How about 100 times as much? What would be the point of having that? What would I do with it? Why are so many people happier when the number on their bank statements are higher? I am still not sure why, which is a failing on my part, failing to understand other people. The only possible explanation I have been able to come up with is that they are approaching it the way I approach games, in that it is fun to test one's skills and see how good one can get. Well, I hate to be the one to say it, but basing a way of life on what amounts to a game is a horrible, HORRIBLE idea. Games were meant as training for real life, not to become real life! It seems that this is another example of goal displacement.

The truth is, the only reason I would be happier if the number on my bank account was bigger would be because it meant I got to give my money away to my friends and family. To help them in whatever way I could figure out.  And once I did that, the number would fall sharply.  I see no other reason why I would want alot of money. Some would respond to that by saying, "oh, but then you wouldn't have to work." But I like work! I would get depressed if I did not have something to do, something to really sink my teeth into. I have done experiments on myself, "Sloth" makes me unhappy. I am quite certain I would just end up giving my money away if I had any extra beyond what I would want to have on hand during an emergency. I don't want to have any more, I do not want that burden. As Kahlil Gibran said in "The Prophet": "The fear of thirst when your well is full is the thirst that is unquenchable."

No, the meaning of my life is not profit, something I am greatly thankful to my parents for imbuing in me. The meaning of life (well, atleast mine) is other people. And I see no other motivator that could bring me as much fulfillment and happiness as that one.

Bread and Roses

I have been listening to some classic labor songs lately, and they are so awesome. One of my favorite lines is from the song "Joe Hill." It goes like this: "Takes more than guns to kill a man, says Joe 'I didn't die'... says Joe 'what they can never kill went on to organize'"
This is such a powerful message, that when people stand up for something and die in its defense, that their spirit lives on in others. They inspire people with their sacrifice and their selflessness. Joe Hill was a Swedish-American labor organizer and a Wobbley (term for a member of the Industrial Workers of the World aka the IWW) in the early 1910s. He traveled around the country organizing people to fight for their rights, and penned songs, poems and speeches. He coined the term "pie in the sky" referencing religious figure's claims of rewards after death but apparent apathy toward the living conditions of the average person. His execution was a sham of justice. He had recieved a gun wound (he said it was over a woman) the same night that two people were murdered. During the crime, one of the two murders was wounded, and of the five people with gun shot wounds who went to doctors in the area that night it would be the labor organizer who was tried, convicted, and executed. No motive could be determined for why Hill would have committed the crime, and many of the facts just didn't fit. But he was still convicted. The trial was very controversial and the media made a big deal about it. Hill gained a bit of fame from it, and his loss has been morned in the labor movement since he was murdered by the government.

Another song which tugs at my heart strings is "Aragon Mill" by Peggy Seeger. It describes the economic desolation caused by the closing of the mill in a small rural town. The mill was the main employer, and once it pulled out, it left a void of unemployment. It reminds me alot of my hometown, with its 23% poverty rate, and the darkness that a lack of jobs creates in a community. This lyric always gets me, sometimes I tear up from it: "Oh, I'm too poor to move, and I'm too young to die, and their's no where to go for my family and I, cause the mill has shut down, its the only life I know, tell me where can I go, tell me where can I?" There is such pain in her voice in that lyric. The level of helplessness that she is expressing is really staggering. Maybe if I had not seen this type of economic situation with my own eyes as I was growing up, I wouldn't be as sympathetic. But this song plucks my heart strings like few others.

Then there is "Bread and Roses." People need more than just subsistence. Earning a wage just for survival is not the way people were designed to live. My favorite lyric in this is "hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses." People need beauty, fun, and love in their lives or they will starve as assuridly as if they did not get their daily bread. I have seen many people whose hearts are starved. Interestingly, most of these people are not in economic need, they are quote well off. But they have no time for the things that are truly important in life. And this leaves them starving. They try to fix this hunger with material goods. But that is like eating empty calories to fight malnutrition, it does nothing to heal the body, just fills the stomach for a short time. True and lasting happiness comes from other people and the beauty in human interactions, not from consumption.

The Dread of Thirst

One of my favorite quotes of all time. "The dread of thirst when your well is full is the thirst that is unquenchable." from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran.

This is a great analogy for our current economic crisis. Fear of loss dominates the market right now, and caused the bank-runs and near collapse of AIG that we have witnessed. And that fear will consume the trust that keeps the market afloat until it is addressed. The ironic thing is, people with stocks are generally well-off. They have the material comforts they need, but it is still not enough, they still thirst for more. This thirst causes them to, as a group, act in ways that will cause pain , alienation, and mistrust which inherently dirupt human social interactions, including the market.

It is not only the unquenchable thirst that capitalism creates, but the inequity which it distributes wealth that has caused this economic trouble. As the average person finds it harder and harder to purchase their necessities, there will be less spending and fewer people spending. And that will hurt the economy. Let me put it another way, concentrating wealth in the hands of fewer people will decrease economic prosperity.

The foundation of the global economy rest on the necessities. Food, clothing, shelter, and each other. The more people who can have all of these, the higher the GDP. When more people do not have these fundamentals, fear begins to infect society. The thirst for more starts triggering the fear of less, and in our society, this seems to cause people to act selfishly. It is the selfish impulse to limit one's losses that has caused these banks to fail. I believe, that if enough people decided to have confidence in an organization, it would not fall apart. Belief in a social system is what keeps in afloat, whatever the system. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people believe something stable, then it continues to survive even if it is inherently unstable. And so if dread of want, loss and, yes, thirst begin to prevail the social system becomes unstable because people have lost faith in it.

Bucky said something like this the other day, "For all the fancy math that economists do, it is amazing how much emotions and belief factor into how the economy is doing."

For our own sakes, I want us to stop dreading thirst.

sds National Convention

The sds National Convention was a great time.  It was a very reinvigorating experience.  I have really missed a strong political community.  It was also wonderful to see my old friends from Brown and Providence, and to meet some of the new people there.  I am SO SO proud of them.  When we decided to start an sds chapter, I had a sense of the kind of organization I wanted to push Brown sds to become.  An organization that provided a space for a strong community that supported its members, and knew how important community is.  Well, I have to say, the organization has become what I hoped for.  The members of Brown and Providence sds emotionally support each other when they are feeling down, stay together and not explode at each other when they are dealt a set-back, and strongly interweave friendship and fun into their activities.  

And so, because the culture of Brown/Providence sds is so strongly community-oriented, they turn out more people, they work harder without burning out, they are ambassadors for the organization wherever they go, and they have incorporated sds into their identity.  Our small chapter turned out 9 people (10 if one includes me) to the convention, which is comparable to much larger cities, and more than came from the entire Northwest.  There was a workshop at the conference that focused on building a community of support within sds, and almost the entire chapter attended, because they realize how important it is.  SO AWESOME.  

I met alot of really awesome sdsers at the convention, and while the structure that was produced isnt ideal, I do hope that it manages to get things done and help coordinate the working groups.  I have the feeling that we will need strong organization to be able to absorb the influx of members that is likely to occur after Obama is inaugurated and is unable or unwilling to get things done.  

There is such a diverse group of people in sds, while I worry that the organization would turn in a direction that I am opposed to, I wish more people would acknowledge that every organization that has people in it is going to be messy.  There is way too much pure-ism on the left, people are way too willing to simply wash their hands of an organization that doesn't completely agree with them on everything.  That is such a prideful move... essentially saying that the only reason people would disagree with someone, that those who disagree are both stupid and monolithically unchangeable.  This is where sectarianism comes from, when people are more concerned with their own righteousness than with the health of the community.  It is so self-centered, and it is why there are so many splinter groups on the left.  People are so certain they are right, and so concerned about remaining pure and in a pure organization that they completely disassociate themselves from each other.  You can't organize a fundamental change to society if you can not even work together, much less compromise on something that enough people like that it could have traction in the general society.     

I want to make sure people don't think I am ranting at sds... while there are some people in sds who are self-righteous and anti-consensus, the vast majority of sdsers are awesome and flexible.  That is why I am still able to spend time with them without going insane, they generally understand that democracy is not about forcing one's views on others, but about dialogue and coming to an agreement with opposing parties.  

I also heard that there is a group at UCBerkeley that is thinking about affiliating with sds, which would be amazing.  I have so hoped that there would be an sds chapter around here that I could go to.  

So, here's to sds! 

sds National Conference Account I Wrote up for Tikkun

The following is an account of the sds National Conference which I wrote for Tikkun.  It will probably go up on the Tikkun website under Current Thinking soon.  

The new incarnation of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) is alive and thriving.   SDS convened its third national convention in College Park, Maryland on July 24th 2008, with the mandate to pass a national structure.  The University of Maryland chapter of sds along with the help of other DC sdsers, played host for over 140 sds members from across the country.  The long plenaries were broken apart by singing, meals, collective liberation activities, workshops, caucuses and socializing.  After trudging through a very long and rushed two days of discussing structure, the convention passed a resolution outlining a National Working Committee as the administrative (and possibly somewhat executive) body of the organization.  This structure will need to be ratified by the chapter base to go into effect.   

Political/Spiritual Analysis

SDS is a complicated political entity.  It has a very politically diverse membership, ranging from Anarchists to Maoists to a smattering of mainstream liberals.  The majority of the membership is anti-authoritarian and very distrustful of hierarchy, and yet we managed to compromise on structure to allow for some hierarchy when it comes to coordination of the national organization.  This bodes well for the future of sds. Being able to unify a diverse group of political outlooks toward positive social change will build the power of the organization and encourage membership growth.

SDS has a very strong vein of spiritual analysis in it, although very few sds members would frame it that way.  Recognizing how people are disenfranchised and dehumanized, having compassion for those suffering around the world, feeling compelled by their consciences to resist an unjust system, believing a better world is possible, and developing human-need-oriented structures are all key elements of a spiritual analysis of society which sds has whole-heartedly embraced. It is still discussing spiritual issues surrounding the humanization of one's opponents, suffering as a method of social change, and interfacing with the spiritual/religious community. 

Religious/Spiritual Issues

Like any community of left-leaning people, there is a certain amount of anti-religious fervor.  This is mostly directed at religious institutions for their role in oppression and causing injustice.  There is however, some deriding of religious/spiritual people as simplistic and foolish.  Sds has taken a mature approach to this issue through starting a discussion around stereotyping religious/spiritual people and the counter-productivity of blindly attacking religions as monolithic-ally bad.  The discussion touched on the extremely high standards that religions are held to by anti-religious people.  The point that religion institutions are run by humans, so they have the same flaws as every other institution was made.  Unfortunately there was not much time for discussion and the development of a mutual understanding to develop, so continuing the healing of this rift will have to wait for another day.     

Community

More impressive though, is the role that sds has been able to play in the lives of political activists.  That is, the establishment of a national community of like-minded people.  Connecting new people into the network, and having groups for across the country for sdsers to join when they move.  Prevention of the overwhelming feeling of isolation is essential to the health of the movement, and sds's network fulfills this beautifully.   Whenever a high school sds chapter graduates a class of sdsers, they spread like seeds across the nation to build new or reinforce existing sds chapters.  When students transfer, they can plug into a nearby chapter.  When a college chapter graduates a class of sdsers, they inject veteran organizers into the real world, organizers who often believe they will dedicate their lives to the pursuit of social justice.  This community causes dedication like none I have ever seen.  It effectively shields its members against ghastly burnout and provides a sense of security that is hard to find in the present social system. 

And this community is often deliberately created and cultivated.  There was a workshop at the convention titled "Building a Community of Support within sds" where the group discussed what in sds made them feel isolated and dis-empowered and what made them feel hopeful, fulfilled and empowered.  This discussion was very healing for those who attended.  Events such as this will help us develop the behavioral technology to protect our communities from the corrosive effects of isolation, fear, mistrust, personality clashes and misplaced anger.  In addition to this excellent workshop, the organizers of the conference created an emotional support and conflict resolution team to attempt to heal many of the frustrations, anger, and miscommunication created during the convention's decision-making process.  While sds does not always focus on how to adapt its current structures to fit human needs, this conference did a substantial job of creating a setting that facilitated the creation and protection of community.

Campaigns

The National Convention gave its seal of approval to one campaign, the "Student Power for Accessible Education" campaign.  This national campaign will, in the short term, push for fewer loans for students, tuition freezes, more grants, lower textbook costs, and many other needed changes to the financial interactions between students and their colleges. Mid-term goals include establishing student unions across the US, and building student power.  The long term goals include fair and free education for all, since after all, education is a right.  Individual sds chapters, as well as any other organizations that want to join us, can plug into this campaign simply by beginning to act on their own campus.  The idea is to not only push for change in the education system, but to build a student movement with the confidence and the skills to be able to have a decisive impact on the greater society. National coordination or activity is a possibility, but that will likely wait until there is a significant presence of chapter campaigns. 

Funk the War on the Poor

On Monday the 28th, DC sds hosted an action for those attending the convention to attend.  It was a roving dance party (essentially a march) that protested the construction of the NAFTA Superhighway, I-69, through many poor communities in the Midwest and South.  This highway is actually going to pass about 60 miles from my home town, so it was surprisingly relevant to me.  The tactic of dancing was quite effective in keeping a good group energy and appealing to on-lookers.  The police showed up in force, nearly 50 of them to our 100.

Update

I am still falling behind on my one post a week pledge.  I wanted to write about 3 more this month, but things happened and I didn't devote the time to it.  There is always next month.  

I do have alot to write about, though.  But... I still posted more recently than Bucky.  

For the past two weeks I have been extremely busy with both the sds National Convention and at the Tikkun office, as well as reading an excellent book on Jesus and nonviolence.  More to come on that later.  

But most interestingly of all, I have started studying for the LSAT and I have decided to try to go to law school.  The way I figure it, law school will help me understand the law and what I can do with it to change society.  Given my lifelong goals of making the world a better place, I figure knowing the law will allow me to combine my organizing and activist knowledge and outlook with a sense of how to push for change both inside and outside the system.  Knowing law will also allow me to use the legal system to my advantage when waging change.  So that is my reasoning. 

Now comes the inevitable turmoil of finding a school, going back to school, and settling in a new location.  I do not particularly look forward to being back in school, although the thought of going to regular sds meetings is sooooooo alluring.  I was never a fan of homework, or excessive reading, and I feel that law school will have alot of that.  But it will feel much more useful, I believe, than the reading that I had to do for school in the past.  

I am settling into living in El Cerrito.  It is really a lovely town, and I love my commute.  walking for 15 minutes, and riding the train.  I love supporting public transportation.  My job is going well, and I feel capable and productive from it.  Things are definitely going my way.  

Thoughts on Happiness and The Meaning of Life.

In trying to make up for June when I didn't write any blog posts, I am writing a few in rapid succession to get some ideas out of my head before they slip away.

Our happiness rests in the hands of the community we build around ourselves. We are happy when we feel loved, secure and fulfilled; when we can share our joys and sorrows with others. Money cannot provide any of that, nor can possessions. Yes, they might give the illusion of it sometimes, but those feelings are always fleeting. They come with the initial rush of emotion but soon fall away. Material pleasures are poor substitutes for the joys of community. When material pleasures become someone's main source of fulfillment, their lives have indeed become empty. They jump from pleasure to pleasure trying to stifle the emptiness they feel inside with the sudden rush of pleasure from some new possession. But when this rush fades, they are left with more emptiness, causing them to fly to something new to avoid their own caustic loneliness. Our economic system takes extreme advantage of this impulse, both facilitating the disruption of community to cause emptiness and giving people the impression that they can find fulfillment in their possessions and the accumulation of more of them.

Indeed, other people are the meaning of life. There can be no other, human nature bars it. Those who fail to realize this and prioritize something else over people always pay an emotional price, and often a material price as well. We all rely on other people, whether directly or indirectly, to give our lives meaning.

Ironically, capitalism is founded on this principle, although it is in a rather perverse way. If other people demand something, than you have a reason to make a living supplying it. The CEO who is afflicted with an ambition to accomplish still depends on his employees to fulfill that accomplishment. Investors who are so concerned about increasing the "value" of their stocks depend on other people to believe it is worth something. Plus, the prestige of accomplishments depends entirely on other people thinking what one has done is impressive.

The rat race, possessions, and other such transient pleasures are of no comparison to the truly deep and lasting happiness generated from close personal relationships. Whether they be romantic or friendly, these relationships are what sustain us. They stave off the specter of unhappiness and loneliness, providing a veritable vaccination for depression. This effect is easily observable in people. People around those who they are in love with are always happier. They tend to be sillier and more pleasant to be around as well, less apt to become frustrated or angry. It is an inspiring thing to see.

And so, I have come to the conclusion that other people are the meaning of life. When one realizes the inherent truth of this, it becomes a simple matter to escape the temptation of excessive material consumption. Indeed, material possessions produce more joy when given away than they ever could when kept. The generous life is the happy life. I hope our society learns this crucial lesson soon.

RYM and societal change.

RYM.  The Revolutionary Youth Movement.  It is something I have been thinking about alot lately, analyzing and reflecting upon its historical impact. 

RYM was a strategic vision that SDS laid out in the 60s, not to be confused with the sds sectarian groups that named themselves RYM I (which eventually became the weathermen) and RYM II (that went maoist and communist and eventually gave birth to countless splinter groups).  Now, I don't think I am getting this exactly correct... but what Michael Lerner described in one of his unpublished books is the basis for this understanding of RYM...  The strategy was simple and very long-term.  The idea was education based: you make a concerted and structured effort to teach as many young people as possible about progressive politics, ethics, and ideas.  You convince them and give them a reason for investing themselves in those politics. When they leave school they will go into the world and spread the ideas, and live their lives by them as much as is possible inside the system.  This will have a culture shifting impact.  Their actions will shift the perceptions of those around them.  Their contributions to their communities will change localities.  

This strategy combines the finest strengths of the left.  Strength of ideas, education, embodiment of principles, decentralized structure and grassroots action are all combined into an extremely long-term strategy that appears to have been quite effective.  It acknowledged the shifts that always occur when generations turn-over.  As new generations come and older ones leave, culture changes.  RYM takes advantage of this natural process of culture change by attempting to reform society by reshaping the minds of new generations.  

Unfortunately, RYM was only practiced for... perhaps the better part of a decade, if not less.  But it's impact is striking.  Take the issue of racism for example.  50 years ago, racism was the dominant viewpoint among large swaths of the American public, including in my hometown of Edmonton.  But now, racism has been forced underground.  It is now a shameful thing to be seen as or acting as a racist.  

But aside from issue oriented changes, I would also like to see how 5 to 10 years of RYM affected the life of a single person... me.  I am proud to say my parents were both products of RYM, whether they know it or not.   The ideas they garnered from the 60s allowed them to move to rural Kentucky and raise me there.  My mom's strong strain of feminism probably would have not been able to develop had it not been for RYM, and I would have lost one of the major positive influences on the way I structure my behavior toward everyone.  My Dad's political side also had an immense impact on shaping my perspective and direction in life.   

The compassion and dedication both of my parents have shown through their social work were, in part, inspired by their politics which were shaped by RYM.   Their dedication to helping others, even if you have to live "in the trenches" as my Dad has said, has consistently inspired me to live up to their example.  

Now lets look at the town I grew up in.  It is a town of 1500 people in rural Kentucky.  The poverty rate is nearly 25%. According to my Dad, there were duels in the streets in the 50s.  However, over the past 3 decades things have calmed down.  There are still plenty of problems, but since the influx in the 70s of hippies and people shaped by RYM, the culture of the county has changed.  Many of these hippie settlers have become community leaders.  Their children have gone on to change the minds of their peers and further the reverberating effects of RYM.  I can see the culture-shifting affects in my hometown of the concerted efforts of relatively small group of tens of thousands of young adults over the course of several years trying to institute RYM.  If between 5 and 10 years of instituting RYM can so drastically change our society that a small rural town in the middle of no where Kentucky is impacted this much, then imagine what a organized effort of 20 years of RYM could do.  With this technique we could restructure the very foundations upon which our society rests over the course of the next 100 years.  

Updates

So, it seems that Blogger posts a post under the date it was started and not under the date it was published, which is pretty cool. The last post I finally got around to posting in July, but the program says it was posted in May. An interesting thing, that.

So, here is an update. I moved from Berkeley to El Cerrito, which is about three miles north of Berkeley. I commute every day on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), a wonderful train system, every day. I am quite happy to be a patron of BART, I not only get a good service out of it, I feel good about giving my money to public transit. Public transit needs more help than ever now, and I intend to do my part.

Let see, I also went to my cousin's wedding in early June. Congrats Rich and Kelly! It was a great time, and only the second time that all of my cousins (on that side of the family), my brother and I were together. Good times. A week after that i had the privilege to go to the Beyt Tikkun Annual Retreat in Marin county. It was at a lovely place called Walter Creek Ranch, which is a picturesque camp-like place. Complete with rolling grassy hills, wildlife and a pond. It was nice to be out of the city, even if for a short period of time. It reminded me of Kentucky.

The following two weekends after that I worked and socialized, and built my bedframe. I just finished that bedframe after about a month of on and off work. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday morning finishing it up. It is stable and everything I was hoping. I am glad my rudimentrary carpentry skills did not fail me. I built it for approximately 4 dollars, which was the cost of two 2x4s that I bought to make up the long sides of the bedframe. I had been unable to procure a pair of 2x4s like them from the local dumpsters. Much cheaper than 150 dollars for a pre-made bedframe. Plus I get the satisfaction of knowing I built it with my own hands and I kept a fair amount of lumber and screws out of a landfill by reusing them. I really do enjoy living my life as close to my ideals of reusing and repairing as possible. It cuts down on waste and gives me a good feeling.

So now I feel like I have just caught up on a month's worth of work backlog, which is a great feeling. I have some catch-up to do in terms of blog posting, which I will hopefully get to in the next week. Alot of ideas have been percolating in my head, and I hope I will be able to get them down.

Strategy for Changing the US... Take 1

I wrote most of this about a month ago, and was going to add more, but life became really busy, so I decided to publish this as is, since it has been a month an a half since I wrote something.

The question in front of us is not naming the system, or even understanding it, but figuring out how to rebuild it and our society to reflect our highest vision. The people exist to do it. The resources exist to do it. The motivation exists to do it. The only reason it has not happened is because we don't agree on how to do it and we are not organized enough to implement it. We need to understand

This is my first try at setting down a skeletal strategy to restructure our entire society to make it more human, democratic, sustainable, and a generally affirming way of life. This strategy is still in bits and pieces at this point, but I think there is some worth in writing it down so i dont forget.

1. Create local democratic structures. Not sure what these will look specifically, but I imagine them as General Assemblies for non-administrative decision-making, with working groups (open to everyone) to execute tasks. If working groups become too large (What a problem that would be! Too much participation, is it possible?), then they can be split into several working groups that coordinate activity. The judicial system would stop being punitive, and become a rehabilitating presence. It would consist of a system where people would share their grievances and perspectives with each other, as well as consensus-based sentencing.

This really needs further study and experimentation in my opinion, hopefully with some resources behind this endeavor.

2. Non-violent Army. Just a really cool idea that has been stuck in my head for a few years now. They would have the discipline and cohesion of a regular army, minus the extreme hierarchy and violence. They would put their lives on the line for others, just like violent army soldiers and they would be extensively trained in conflict resolution, non-violent tactics and strategy, as well as human behavior. The non-violent army would be trained to confront violent forces as well as other non-violent forces. They would go on campaigns against various injustices across the country, mobilizing thousands. Again, resources are the key problem, as well as research into how to do it. The know-how is extremely important. Hopefully we will be able to create the equivalent of army manuals for the nv army.

3. Parallel Structures. With some local democratic institutions in place, these towns and counties could start forming parallel structures to state and federal governments. These would do everything that an organization composed of the entire community should do, including provide social services (police, hospitals, firefighters, general social support, protection and help)

A Lesson from History, for My Beloved sds.

One quick thought, which I had while reading historical analysis of the 60s.
There was a huge upsurge in sds recruitment in the post election time period between 1968 and 1971. While this may be attributed to the media attention that the DNC protest of 68 garnered, I think there is another reason that is more plausible. The 1968 election was the population's chance to change the direction of the country. Many people who saw the millions crying out against the war would first try the typical method for changing the direction. When this failed, they would become more cynical about its viability, and look for other methods to change things. Plus none of the standard methods for the rank and file citizenry can change policy (i.e. voting) were coming up soon after the 68 election. So people naturally looked for alternatives, since they tried voting and that didnt work. They saw sds and the new left. While many of them may not have been happy with the yucky sectarianism and negative feelings floating around sds at that time, they were the only game in town. And so, tens of thousands joined.

I am afraid for the future of sds. If whoever is elected fails to end the war (and my cynical side tells me they probably will), then the new sds will be swamped by new recruits, more than we can handle. So, I think our task in the coming year needs to be building the institutional capacity to absorb and teach all these new recruits. And that is one overwhelming task.

Bee Wars 3, The Revenge of the Sarcophagus

I woke up this morn, and to my eyes, what did appear? Why, a colony of bees uncovered, oh dear!
No longer the Sarcophagus covered, my dearest bee friends, who could hover.
The tub was overturned, was lifting a skill the bees had learned?
No, twas a neighbor who free the bees, man I wish I had my teas.
But, hark, what beist this? The bees had meet the death of kiss.
In piles upon piles they lay, lifeless and cold, in May.
Yes, they no longer menace my yard, but it is unfortunate that they are so marred.
Now the ants have a field day, fiesting upon the corpses of their insect brethren where they lay.
Hundred upon hundred lay still, in a tub shaped depression that I will fill.
A sultry grave for a colony, just like that guy Ptolemy.

That poem-esque rambling is in memory of the colony of bees whose genocide I had a hand in. I do feel guilty that I had to dispatch them, but they had sharp ends on their butts that made me scared to walk to my door. And the hovering... oh the hovering. So unpleasant.

In other news, my sublet is up in two weeks, and I still don't have a place to live after that. But, I am hopeful. Worst case scenario, I would have to spend a couple weeks with my brother.

Here is some food for thought for the estimated 4 of you who read this:
Gandhi's 7 Social Sins
Politics without Principle
Wealth without Work
Commerce without Morality
Pleasure without Conscience
Education without Character
Science without Humanity
Worship without Sacrafice

to that I would add these two:
Work without Community
Priorities without People

Priorities without people, is my way of saying that our priorities should always be each other.
So why do I feel guilty about the bees? I was placing the safety of my neighbor and myself over the lives of those bees, placing people at the top of my priority list. Well, maybe a simple saying like the one I wrote above does not take in the whole complexity of the world. I wish there had been a way where they could have lived.
I can even get a ends and means lesson out of this one. The end may be that the bees are no longer a menace. That was my primary goal. But the means we used produced unwanted consequences... feelings of guilt, regret and sadness. A smelly pile of dead bees covered in ants. On the macro level, fewer honey bees to pollenate the plants that make the food we eat. All this stems from the wrong means. I don't know what the right means would have been... maybe contacting a nearby bee farm and trying to sell the bees to them, or atleast get them to cart them away. Yes, that would have been a better outcome. Maybe if I had put in alittle more effort this sad outcome would not have happened. Yet another life lesson from my banal existence. (Footnote: I learned the word "banal" during SAT prep. Well, it might not have been entirely useless. It allowed me to use overly educated language on a low-traffic blog. Yay!)

Of Bees and Trickery Part 2

The bees appear to have taken up permanent residency in my backyard. So, not unlike the unlucky people of Chernobyl, we have put a sarcophagus over our problems.

But maybe I should start where I last left off. After my attempts to convince them to leave through pouring water on them, I tried a something different. One morning, I put a half-full jar of water out near the hive, with alittle honey in it as bait. The idea is that they fly in to get the honey and get stuck in the water, and die. Well, I tricked 6 bees... so at that point it was 6 down, 400+ to go.
The next day I noticed someone had put a plastic tub on top of the bees. The tub was, however, not a perfect fit with the ground. Bees still came out from underneath the sides where the ground was uneven. I found out that evening that it was my upstairs neighbor, Nathan. So, I hosed the bees down, which tricked all but 2 of them into landing, and proceeded to cover the edges of the tub with dirt, to fully sarcophagize the bees and prevent them from flying around the yard.

So far it has worked. The bees are not smart enough to dig themselves out, but they are still in there. I can hear them buzzing. Just waiting for a chance to burst forth from their sarcophagus as mummy bees. The problem has been put in a box, literally, and left to fester or disappear, whatever the case may be. But I doubt I will be here to see it. I move out of here in a few weeks, and I doubt that the bee situation will change. Although, I bet that I could sell those bees for a pretty good price, considering how honey bees are disappearing across the nation. It only figures that they would reappear in my yard.

Of Bees and Trickery

There is a bee hive in my back yard. It is just sitting on the ground minding its own business. The bees are in one large cluster that seems to move periodically from one spot of the yard to another. They appeared here today, and I have no idea where they came from. I wonder if this is what happens to those bees that are disappearing across the country... they just up and decide to leave, to become nomadic bees. Well, I wish they would migrate away from my yard. They are wholely less welcome than the usual visitor to my yard who I affectionately refer to as, "the cat." The last short-term visitor to my backyard was a cluster of birthday balloons which probably floated away from some kid. I gave those balloon's to Dan's friend Dan. I wish I could do the same with these bees.

I did learn something about bees though. If you try to convince them to leave by tossing water out the window at them, they are both not convinced to leave, and tricked into thinking it is raining. So now I know how to fool bees, check off that item on the things I wanted to figure out in my life. Right now the bees are crawling on the ground, not flying, because they think it is raining. I suppose this means that they are that much less likely to get up and fly away. Lesson learned, water does not convince bees to leave. But, if I ever need to walk through a mess of flying bees, I know to spray them down with water to trick them into landing.

Patrick, I know you aren't reading this, but that info will save your life one day.

I really love not having a TV. I can watch all the important shows on my laptop thanks to the wonders of the internet, and I am not tempted by the prospect of turning it on and listening to it. I have music for that, no need to have the TV on. And I am infinitely more productive when I don't have a TV, which makes me feel better.

Update

Well, I totally flacked out on blogging in April, so I decided to pump out two posts tonight. The last one was catalyzed by watching Gandhi the movie. Such a good movie.
I have been doing pretty well. California is treating me very well. I have a good and meaningful job. And I am going to soon acquire a semi-permanent place to live, with Dan and Bucky. Hopefully we will have gotten an apartment within the next 3 weeks. The few places we have looked at have all seemed fairly good. We are mostly looking in El Cerrito which is a few train stops north of Berkeley. It has entire houses up for rent, and the appeal of having an entire house is very alluring.
In other news, I wish I had more time to read, and more motivation to take the time out of my busy schedule to do it. I have so many good looking books on my shelves.

Overall, I have been coming to a general conclusion about a trajectory for my life. I think getting a law degree with greatly advance my ability to produce positive change in this world. Not because I want to be an attorney, but because it would give me a comprehensive understanding of the legal system.

The Way Out of Madness

I believe it was Martin Luther King who said "The curve of the universe is toward Justice." and Gandhi who told us to look back at history when we despair and see how "the way of truth and love has always won" in the end. Indeed, Love is the foundation of human society, so how it be any other way.

It is utter madness to me, all the violence and hatred that is infecting us. A pandemic of Madness on a scale that has scarce been seen in the annuals of human existence. But the cure does exist. In all its many forms, it has existed since the beginning. However unrefined it may be at this point in history, it has caused the collapse of empires and the restructuring of societies. Always has this cure been based on love, never on hate or apathy. This cure has been wielded by the greats of history to make their worlds better. The Plebeians of Athens used it to bring greater equality to their city. Jesus wielded it against the Romans and the corrupted officials of his land. Buddha used it against the corruption he saw in his own society. Gandhi used it in India, MLK used it in America.
The way out of Madness, the cure to the sickness of hatred is to embrace the love that all human organization and life is built upon. Understanding why this is, is the quintessential necessity behind vaccinating future generations against the diseases of the soul that our world is experiencing.

The way out of Madness is not just an idealistic approach, it is entirely practical. Humans are hard-wired to love, to want to be together, and to live for each other. This is the reason that isolation is a universal punishment across human societies.
Many will throw out examples of people who fail to live up to this ideal, i.e. misanthropes, psychopaths, etc. Unfortunately, there are many people who are so damaged by their experiences, so unable to cope with the horrible situations they are in, that they have fallen for false logics which compel them to do yet more damage to themselves and those around them. To heal these we must not ostracize them or isolate them, we must embrace them and show them the love that every human deserves. This is the idea behind rehabilitation prisons, and why punitive prisons consistently fail to prevent crime. The design of human nature makes this an inevitable fact.

The way out of Madness encompasses non-violence, as violence will only enrage and firm up the will of one's opponent. Violence will only drive a wedge between brothers and force them to believe each other to be less than human. Indeed, the way out of Madness is to believe that we are all humans and treat each other with the dignity that all humans deserve.

The full breadth of the way out of Madness is so expansive that it could not be contained within an entire encyclopedia set. But it can be boiled down to its essence, which is The Golden Rule.
Love all as you would have them love you.

Democracy and Violence Part 2

Some more rambling thoughts on democracy and violence. WARNING, THIS POST CONTAINS RAMBLING, INTENSE BRAINSTORMING AND STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS WRITING.

I think I need to do a more in depth analysis of violence.
Let me start by explaining something about human cultures. We have commonly held beliefs about the way things are accomplished. A simple example of this is the way we make circular holes in things. We make circular motions, like a drill. Indeed, the drill motion has become so accepted as the way to make a small circular hole that we are prone to interpret holes in ancient artifacts as produced through a drilling motion. But they often weren't. It is easy enough to make a circular hole with other carving motions. When a culture vests a certain amount of belief and confidence in a means, then they start to believe that everyone does it that way and that other ways do not really work.
This is what has happened to our culture with violence. Violence is seen as THE method to force people to do things, to force their consent. So people on both sides of the conflict tend to obey this misconception... the forcer will believe the forcee will accept it, and the forcee believes that they have no choice. As a result, the belief is reinforced because everyone consents to go along with it. There is nothing inherent about violence that makes it have this power, it is a social construction and nothing more. It is one of many social constructions that need to be dissolved before democracy can be installed.

Having large numbers of people solving conflicts through violence (either personal or state violence), as happens now, will not work for a democracy. Using violence to solve a problem does not actually solve it. In fact, it complicates the matter. It denies the right of the victims of the violence to have their concerns addressed and it assumes that those imposing the violence have the right to value the issue of contention over the person. In a democracy, people are the most important thing, they should be prioritized over everything else.

Violence is done out of desperation. Resorting to this type of action assumes that the victim is unreasonable and will not be persuaded any other way. It shows how little control someone has over a situation if they resort to violence. This is the difficult position police are put into. They are invested with the responsibility of keeping the peace, and controlling a situation. When they lose control, they get desperate and they get violent.

Right now our society lacks the social institutions necessary to conflict resolve on the spot. The police are the only institution vested with immediate conflict resolution, and they tend to do it by arresting one party. If there was a common belief in a system that involved real, on the spot conflict resolution, then the police would not be forced to resort to physical force and violence.

The act of forcing someone in this way is anti-democratic. Democracy is about discussion, compromise, consensus and understanding. It is not a results-oriented method of governance, it is a people-oriented method. Violence places results over people.

So far, I have said:
1. Violence and democracy have different priorities
2. Violence and democracy have contradicting products
3. Violence does not produce circumstances conducive to democracy.
4. Violence is used (ineffectively) in the stead of democratic institutions of conflict resolution.
5. Violence is a social construction that is thought to be practical, but ends up not being in practice.
6. Violence undermines the democratic prerequisite that citizens need to be able to make decisions free of oppression
7. Violence as a means to force consent would be replaced with other institutions under a democracy

Things I wish to explore further: How violence effects the victim. The ends produced when one uses violent means. And the chaos factors in democracy and violence.

Democracy and Violence Part 1

Well, I am concretely defeating Bucky when it comes to keeping up with my blog. He can consider that a challenge to try and catch up.

So, this is my first stab at trying to articulate why violence is anti-democratic.
Democracy, by its very nature, is supposed to uplift and equalize, to empower and enhance communication. To facilitate understanding and to bring about consensus. Violence is the opposite of this. It is forced disempowerment, a diminishing and isolating means that tends to breed hatred and more violence. In fact, it often destroys power through death. It attempts to undermine the power of a nation not through turning that power to a different mindset, as with democracy, but through the physical act of destroying people and the inherent power they have. Indeed, it undermines power by both destroying it and by forcing consent through fear.

Violence, in our culture, is believed to be an effective way to force someone to do something. I interpret this as forced consent. The person believes they have no choice, even though they do. They can refuse to be coerced and allow themselves to be harmed... indeed, to force the attacker to use violence out of their own desperation to control other people.

So, violence is used in two ways to try to consolidate control: 1. destroy power through removing number of supporters. The worst examples of this are genocides. 2. Forced consent through the threat of violence; most notable emotions involved are fear, a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness.

Democracy can not be created through a process of destroying power and/or forcing the consent of others. The whole point of democracy is for everyone to be able to affect and/or make the decisions that impact their lives. A system such as that depends on people's trust of each other and willing consent to be a part of the system. You can't get people to participate, I mean REALLY participate in the way we want them to, by threatening them. Nor will killing them get them to participate... for obvious reasons.

Now, that that basic argument is kind of out there... many people will rebut with the argument: There are people out there who are oppressing others and exerting coercion and forced consent over them. How do we deal with them? Would it not be prudant to force these people to consent to stop oppressing? And sometimes people will even take it as far as "Isn't a violent revolution necessary to overthrow such an oppressive system as this, it is so violent that it will respond to nothing but violence."
My answer to this is: That is a false situation. When one group oppresses another, they are forcing the other group to consent. All the oppressed group need to do is stop consenting, and they will, with sacrifice (sacrifice that is required for any kind of fighting, whether it is violent of non-violent), be able to end the oppression. The power is truly in the hands of the oppressed, since they are always more numerous. They could (and have in many historical instances) easily and non-violently thrown off the shackles binding them. This is how you build a democratic society, you create democratic institutions in the effort to overthrow oppressors. Using democratic means will create a democratic system, while using violent means will create a violent system. But I digress... violence will only serve to undermine democracy, because it will make the group who were the oppressors not want to participate in a new government, which would probably not be democratic if it were built out of the flames of a violent revolution. So already there is a problem of a (probably) large minority of people who do not want to participate, and are willing to actively oppose whatever democratic institutions had come about. This creates a situation where the people trying to build a democracy start to believe they need to actively take control, or force consent to the democracy from the actively opposing minority. And that is just plain anti-democratic. We come back to the problem of the impossibility of building a participatory democracy by forcing people to agree to democracy. That is just not how democracy works.

So far in this brainstorming session, I have explored what the means of violence produces (i.e. destroying power, forced consent) and how these products are incompatible with the project of democracy. Violence, as a means, simply seems to be ineffective at producing democratic outcomes.

I want to explore this more, but it is late. So I will put off further discussion for another post. I still need to explore the impact of forced consent on people more, and the products that non-violent means produce. I should also explore the chaos factor from both violence and democracy.

In other news, I got my California License!