Thoughts on Self-forgiveness

I have come to truly admire religion's almost magic ability to facilitate people's self-forgiveness. A great example of this is the born-again experience or even something as simple as confession... from what I have observed, people who had wronged others and go through a religious ritual concerning being forgiven find it much easier to forgive themselves. I do not think secular people have anything that compares, or atleast I have not noticed it.

Many have little compassion for people who do wrong. I see no logical reason to hold that position. Everyone does things that are not right, and judging them for their trespasses does no good for anyone. We all have weaknesses and failings. Whether they acknowledge it or not, everyone is emotionally impacted in a negative way by their wrongs. Everyone is human so we are all deserving.

Forgiving oneself is much harder than forgiving others. The absence of self-forgiveness causes personal anguish that can adversely affect people's behavior, leading them to act out of this pain. This negative behavior can take many forms, usually providing only short-term relief while only adding to their long-term burden of guilt. Some behaviors I have noticed:

*people often try to belittle others to feel superior,
*hurt people so they don't feel alone in their pain
*being on-edge and easily roused to anger
*pushing people away - socially isolating behavior
*seeking attention through negative behavior
*when others expect negative things from someone, they react by conforming to that standard.
*identity shifting toward viewing oneself as a wrong-doer, reinforcing a cycle of pain
*feeling the necessity to act wrongfully to prove ones identity.

I think this and other similar behavior stems from the following emotions that run through people when they are saddled with a lack of self-forgiveness.

*Guilt
*Anguish
*Fear
*Anger, hatred
*Resentment
*Feeling isolated, and a fear of loneliness
*Social paranoid - expecting no one to like them
*A feeling of helplessness and like they are condemned for life.

The only way out of this that I can see is self-forgiveness. Making amends and seeking the forgiveness of those who one has wronged is, of course, essential in being able to forgive oneself. But usually this is just the beginning of the process. The pantheon of emotions above are powerfully strong and take serious effort to overcome. However, there is no way around it. People who do not forgive themselves end up adding the the cycles of pain that exist in our society and riddle their lives and the lives of people around them with difficulties.

This is why I always cringe when people say they won't help people because they aren't deserving. No one is an island, we are interconnected and refusing to forgive someone for their wrongs and help them actually just hurts society in general.

It seems to be a hidden trend in human culture, that when one person or a group of people harm others, they themselves are harmed as well, but in different ways. I see it in capitalism where the rich suffer a kind of horrid isolation and fear of loss of property while the poor struggle to survive. I see it in patriarchy where men suffer from a prison of false-emotionlessness and isolation while women are objectified and dehumanized. Wrongs by one party hurt everyone including themselves whether they realize it or not.

Forgiveness, self-forgiveness and reconciliation are the only logical way I can see to heal the wounds in our society.

A Snippet of Wisdom.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned from the ten years that I have really been awake:

The world is a place of cause and effect. You can never know the full extent of the consequences of your actions. However, the general effects can be distinguished... good creates more good, bad creates more bad. I have run numerous experiments in my life on this and it is very clear to me.
This is why the ends do not justify the means, you will never reach the fullness of the end you want through unjust means, you will only achieve a narrow end at the expense of the greater good.
In everything you do, try to do the right, and you will change the world for the better. This helps us muddle through the incalculable causes and effects in our lives to allow us to produce the ends we want. It is the golden rule in its fullest sense, treat others as you would want to be treated, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it is practically the most effective thing to do to achieve good ends.

Does the Law Pursue Justice?

Law school has been a thought provoking experience, both in terms of the nature of the law as well as how far it falls short of providing justice.

The common law system and indeed, the common law itself, has organically developed over time as an attempt to achieve justice for people unfortunate enough to go through the judicial system. While the righteous goal of justice is the stated purpose of the law, the people involved, all good people I am sure, seem to think that the maintenance of the system of law is sufficient to achieve this end. As far as I can see, this institution suffers from a severe case of goal displacement with the maintenance of the status quo of the law placed unequivocally over justice. Individuals are sacrificed on the altar of internal consistency of the law, where is the justice in that? It appears that Weber's classic bureaucratic goal displacement has taken deep root in the judicial system... the institution's own survival and interests are placed over the initial goal that its creation was meant to achieve.

The ironic part is that, while on the surface it appearz that judges interpret law in an attempt to be consistent and maintain the common law's integrity, they actually succeed in perpetuating a series of systematic hypocrisies.

An example. Violence is one of the prime criminal acts, it is considered detrimental for a wide ranging variety of reasons, many completely true and fair. Preventing and healing violence is an essential part of any system of justice, whether they are common law institutions or traditional ones like a sentencing circle. Yet, the judicial system endorses and perpetuates the violence of the prison system and the death penalty. How is that consistent? It is not at all, many of the reasons we dont want individual violence are the same reasons we don't want institutional violence. But this system supports the justification for the existence of the judicial system in its current incarnation, and indeed, helps maintain the view that it is a necessity.

Perpetuating violence in a society will likewise broaden the power of any institution that attempts to prevent and heal it. But when that institution, through a sort of endemic hypocrisy, actually creates more violence, it enters into a cycle of escalation.

Now don't get me wrong, the design of the institution is a very clever one. Have a whole industry of analyzers to seek the truth (both in fact-finding and in theoretical pursuits) in the pursuit of justice, have them discuss in minute detail the implications of organizing society in certain ways. That is a theoretical system that sounds pretty good to me. But in practice it is an unjust meat-grinder that is driven by greed and power, perpetuating an almost Orwellian-style acceptance of hypocrisy as justice.

Brainstorming New Political Systems

The political system needs a good deal of reform. Now with corporations able to pump as much money as they want into elections, there is going to be a much larger amount of corruption than before. So I think it would be a good idea to try to dream up different political systems that would avoid the pitfalls of corporate domination and moral bankruptcy.

1. Electing Ideas. I do not think that politicians should be the prime electees. Voting on broad goals (not specific things, like the referenda in CA often take the form of) would be a much more fruitful system... the system wouldn't get stuck in personal attacks and mudslinging, and corruption would be a much less endemic because it is much harder to corrupt ideas than it is people.

2. Electing officials through a series of trials. We should have a set series of tests and trials that officials have to pass through to become elected. These trials would put the skills of the candidates to the test, and all trials would be broadcast and chronicled by the media. People would have discussion forums to discuss how the candidate did and who was the top competitor. And trials could last a long time. One trial could be One trial could be managing a small government agency. Another trial could be to live on welfare for 2 months. The trials would be designed to both test the individual as well as acquaint them with the country (or state or whatever) they are going to govern.

3. Local Townhall meetings to set general goals of the bureaucracy in small areas. Included in this are a webpage forum for people to discuss things.

4. Some sort of public forum that is more participatory than the current media structures. I am not sure what that would look like.

5. Organized volunteer public works - the government should be more involved in organizing people to improve their locality.

6. Free, voluntary education programs. Basic for any thriving democracy to thrive.

Ok, that is all I have time for right now.

Wars are Arguments #2

Building on my last post, I would like to explain more about Satyagraha which is a method of conflict that goes to the very roots of social ills. Satyagraha's focus is to change society at a very basic level through organizing the populace to both improve their own lot and to act in concert to improve the society. This can take an infinite variety of forms, from encouraging better diet and exercise habits to developing and implementing better political systems. It even takes the form of civil resistance and disobedience. But the main thrust is a transformation of society itself, which is not the government, but the population. Changing minds and people's daily activities is the primary goal. Everything else is secondary to that focus.

Many may question why one should prioritize changing society instead of focusing on taking over the institutions that run society and then use those as a tool to change it. A careful look at history will show that whenever a movement focuses on taking the reigns of power, it always loses sight of the initial goal of improving society and becomes corrupted by the very means they sought to achieve their end, and in most cases fail to achieve the end anyway. Focusing on direct programs and campaigns to improve society has a two-fold benefit. It actually achieves the end of improving society and it brings the added benefit of building political power almost unconsciously. This political power will then almost naturally bring the institutions of power into its orbit over time.

But this is a slow process and not for the weak. A movement must be strong-willed as well as undogmatic in their approach to how to change society. Ever-improving the methods through practical application and revision is essential. This work will bring a movement into conflict with many groups, but through the judicious use of non-violence, these groups can be successfully turned to either acceptance or support. The weak will resort to violence while the strong remain indomitable in the face of oppression. Oppression and other such evils must be met with principled resistance. I found this sweet video introduction to civil resistance from Waging Nonviolence here is the article: http://wagingnonviolence.org/2010/08/a-succinct-introduction-to-civil-resistance/ the video itself is embedded below. I agree with most of it, but, similarly to what was said in Waging Nonviolence, I disagree with the supposition that nonviolence is not about winning over your opponents. Most successful revolutions whether they are violent or not have won over atleast large parts of the military and police. Look at the French Revolution, there was basically no internal military support for the King. Anyway, the video is still a good watch.

Civil Resistance: A First Look from ICNC on Vimeo.

Wars are Arguments

All wars are arguments about something.  This principle can even be expanded to conflicts. These arguments are about a wide variety of things... in the context of war between governments, the arguments are often over the assets that help create power; land, resources, rights to use common resources, and public perception of the government's credibility.  Revolutions and insurrections are often an argument over the role of government, how it treats people, and the government's and rebel group's credibility.  Even personal conflicts are arguments about something, such as money, or one party feels insulted and the other party refuses to apologize (which can also be boiled down to the perception of credibility).

Violence is not inherent in conflict, arguments are.  Conflicts end when the argument is resolved in a way that both parties can agree on.  Historically, the majority of both parties believed that if your armies were defeated in violent war, then you were defeated and should defer to the victor's will.  For the most part, war was seen for over two millennia to be the ultimate arbitrator to resolve international conflict.  This was possible thanks to the simple fact that everyone involved made an unspoken agreement that if you were defeated in violent combat then you stopped resisting.

This stopped being the case on the international scale around the time of the Napoleonic wars when the democratic and industrial forces changed the nature of warfare.  Famously the Spanish, who were defeated by Napoleon's armies, simply refused to be defeated.  They had shaken loose the mental straight-jacket that said violent war was the ultimate arbitrator.  Their resistance, while often violent, was a sign of things to come, where simply defeating an army was not enough to bring a solution to the argument.

You are not defeated as long as you still have the dignity and will to resist.  Threats of death and even death do not produce obedience or even an end to the argument.  "Fearful people do not act well."    The logic of violence presupposes that the opponent will act in a certain way, which is obedience.  This social construct is entirely escapable.  Refusing to embrace it confounds the violent opponent, because they simply do not know how to respond; conferring a significant advantage both tactically and strategically.

When a violent force confronts a non-violent opponent, it is the violent force's objective to provoke the non-violent opponent into becoming violent.  The violent force always has the advantage when it comes to violence, so it is to their advantage to deprive their opponent of the advantage of being non-violent.  If the non-violent force has the discipline to maintain it's dignity and remain non-violent, it deprives it's opponent of the ability to use violence in a legitimate way.  When violence is used against a stubbornly non-violent force, the violent organization loses its legitimacy and credibility, and is often shamed into surrender.

It may seem odd that a violent enemy can be defeated through non-violent means.  But remember, all conflict is an argument.  The point of the conflict is to get the other side to concede to a mutually agreed-upon conclusion.  Convincing the other side to agree will never again be as simple as it was before the Napoleonic Wars.  Non-violent resistance to violence will always sway the opinion of onlookers in favor of the non-violent party, it is a principle of human nature.  It will even go so far as to make the violent party question themselves and their actions.  That is the power of non-violence, it creates allies who pressure the other party, it undermines the other party's power (support from their population/allies), and makes the other party question itself about its own actions and motives.  This pressure, both external and internal, will always lead to a more beneficial agreement to the conflict for the non-violent party.

An Attempt to Explain My Spiritual Practice

The following is a letter I wrote to Dave Belden about my spiritual practice.  It is probably the most articulate I have been on the subject yet, so I wanted to share it.


Dear Dave,
I have found it difficult to figure out a good approach to outlining my spiritual practice, because it feels like explaining my life.  I have an urge to tell stories about how I came upon my beliefs, but I think that would be alittle too long.  I have had to resist the urge to tell more of the history of my development.   To remain succinct, here is a simplified version of the principle behind my spiritual practice:

1. We all change over time.  We change in demeanor, behavior, passions, interests, and what communities we are a part of.  To be human is to be dynamic, thinking of ourselves or others as static limits our capacity and deprives us all of our humanity.
2. Willful action shapes how we change.   You can become the person you want to be through practice.
3. You have the power to decide how to act, behave and respond to any given situation.
4. Every moment is a chance to shape how we change and therefore who we are.
5. Living by broad, well-thought-out tenets facilitates positive personal change.
6. Learn from your mistakes.  Reflect on them at length, for days or months if necessary, to figure out what happened and how to change yourself to be more in line with who you want to be.
7. Reflect on your activities and behaviors and how they impact the world around you.  Try to change your behavior so it changes the people and communities how you want them to change.  
8. The whole world changes over time.  Our collective willful action shapes how it changes.  Even small scale actions change other people’s lives, and you can never know the full positive impact of a good deed.  Likewise, you can never know the full negative impact of a bad deed.

The practice of this principle is the difficult part.  I have used my conscience to good effect in this, when I have the impulse to do something, I will usually check it against my conscience and a myriad of tenets that I try to live by.  Then I act the way that seems to conform to those tenets, sometimes having to force myself to do it.  The most trying actions where I have to hunker down and really compel myself to do are often the most rewarding.  Self-control and a willingness to forgo other emotions and desires in favor of conforming to my practice has been essential in seeing my ability to shape myself become reality.  Likewise, awareness of what I am doing and keeping my practice always in the back of my mind is essential.

Perhaps my greatest experiment in my spiritual practice has been with the Golden Rule.  I started trying to live by the Golden Rule when I was 15.  And it, more than any other tenet, has pushed me to the limit of being the person I want to be.  It has forced me to do some difficult and crazy things.  When I say experiments, I indeed mean it that way.  Looking at the outcomes when I fail to follow the Golden Rule versus when I keep to it has given me the utmost faith it this tenet’s ability to positively shape myself and my world.  These experiments helped me be able to figure out the core tenet of my life and what I believe to be the answer to the eternal question “what is the meaning of life.”

    “People” are my purpose.  That one word encompasses a wide variety of issues, but in short, it means a devotion to other people, helping them, protecting them, and putting others before myself.  Here are the tenets I feel flow from this purpose:

1. Generosity is a tenet that has produced more happiness in my life than I can even conceive of.  I now even get great joy from the search for people to receive.  This includes being generous of myself and of my time, not just the property that happens to be in my possession.
2. Anti-materialism.  This helps alot with following generosity, but it basically means not being attached to possessions and being willing to part with them at any moment.  I have even started trying to re-interpret theft as surprise, unintentional giving to the thief.  Focusing on objects prevents us from seeing the humanity in each other.
3. Forgiveness of everything as soon as it happens.  This not only helps the other person heal but is of huge value in maintaining strong social bonds and one’s own positive outlook.  
4. Being stable.  I think this is the Buddhist part of my practice.  I try to remain calm and unmoved by events and maintain an emotional baseline of happiness.  I consciously let go of frustration and anger, which forgiveness is key in.  Being stable helps the people around me immensely, I have found.
5. Awareness of others and what is probably going on in their minds.  Trying to determine how they feel and what they think based on what I have observed.
6. Activism.  Personal interactions go a long way in changing the world, and bringing that to a larger arena as part of a group is very powerful.
7. Investing myself in the projects and activities I do and in the people around me.
8. Silence.  Being careful with words and listening to other people more than talking.  This shows to other people that you value what they think, as well as makes them value your words more.
9. Non-violence in word and thought as well as in physical presence.
10. Truth.  Not lying beyond white lies.  
11. Humanization.  When I think of other people, no matter who they are or what they have done, I try to humanize them in my mind, not letting myself write them off as bad people.  Seeing myself in other people is another way of saying this.
12. Faith that the universe is dominated by good, and reminding myself of this.
13. Reflecting on everything.  On my behavior, others behavior, consequences of any given action, tenets etc.  This includes the development of self-knowledge and an understanding of oneself.
14. Being non-judgmental.  Being judgmental gets in the way of seeing other people as full human beings, and it burdens you with unpleasant feelings and emotions.  Forgiveness helps alot with maintaining a non-judgmental outlook.  Besides, I feel like reality deals out harsh judgements and punishments to people as it is, I see no reason to add to that misery.

There are probably lots of other tenets, but those are most of the important ones that I could think of off the top of my head.  I would say as far as the practice goes, it is a continuous process.  I am always practicing, trying to make every action deliberate and in-line with who I want to be.  That is really all it boils down to... if you want to become someone else, practice being that person in your daily life and one day you will see yourself a changed person.  I am also always re-examining the principle and tenets behind my spiritual practice, looking for faults or situations that contradict it.   This has helped me maintain confidence in it and improving it when there is an issue.  

I hope that short summary was what you were looking for.
peace,
Will

Thoughts on "Diversity Of Tactics: The Noise Before Defeat"

This is a fascinating read:  http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/07/26/diversity-of-tactics-the-noise-before-defeat/
It discusses the Black Bloc's use of violence and repressive tactics to silence debate about their violence.  It goes on to discuss the movement's failures to really develop a solid foundation of nonviolent resistance culture and institutions that promote and support it.

Here is an excerpt:

"That there are good reasons why it is difficult does not make the fact that it is necessary go away. We may not have the time for it, but we most certainly do not have the luxury of not doing it. Diversity of Tactics and the Bloc are simply one manifestation of how we fail to take our role seriously. A far more important consequence is that we are far less effective than we should be.

I like to use the metaphor of a craftsperson. They assess a particular task and choose a tool suitable to what it is they wish to do, be it a saw, chisel, or router. In the same spirit we should look at a particular political situation and choose one of the 198 different forms of nonviolent action because it will do the job that needs to be done.

The Bloc is a product of our collective ignorance; theirs and ours. We have a responsibility to them, to ourselves, and most particularly to the issues we claim to care about to be truly professional in our political work. Professional in the sense of being competent, knowledgeable and capable. That the Bloc exists is a testament to our failure to live up to that responsibility. "

Personally I have always found it odd how so many people who claim to be anti-war for a litany of reasons turn around and are willing to be violent toward property and people.  War is simply an extreme application of the same principle that legitimizes this violence and anger.  I can see no justification for war or even its effectiveness, so I see no justification for anarchist violence even though I would agree with many of its aims.  But I can understand how, in a culture so dominated by the justification of violence and the use of violence in attempts to achieve ends, that so many on the left would fall victim to this false prophet.

Content from a letter to Sarah #5

7/28/09
I have been meaning to finish this for awhile.  I also couldn't think of how to start it.  So, here is the final part of the initial life story I started out with.  I wrote this before a bunch of the other letters I sent.

After high school... I was lucky enough to get into Brown University where I majored in Anthropology. It introduced me to lots of other cultures and way of thinking about the world; I really couldn't get enough of it. While I was there I helped rebuild the student activist left after it collapsed the semester before I arrived (some huge fight between factions of a grand anti-war coalition that caused most of the active people to stop being active). Being in activist groups was probably the best and most meaningful educational experience I got at college. We built a strong community and managed to get a few victories too. I saw such inspirational dedication and courage from my friends, willing to suffer arrest and harassment from the authorities. (I think I told you this part already, but I will leave it in anyway) Our most awesome victory was with financial aid. Now anyone attending Brown whose family makes less than 60,000 doesn't have to take out loans. I am still active with Students for a Democratic Society (sds), and our national democratic and accessible education campaign. After I graduated I moved to California, because the job market is non-existent in Kentucky, my brother is out here, and a bunch of my friends moved here. The job search took me to Tikkun Magazine where I landed a job as Rabbi Michael Lerner's assistant. He is the editor and has a very appealing vision for a better world. It is a good job, I get to build my skills in alot of random areas, and read and make corrections to the magazine before it goes to print.  But it is very time-consuming.

So that is the short history of my life.  Looks like it is only like 25-ish pages.  I think i might have the beginning of an auto-biography :)

Lets see... what else did I want to talk about.  Ah yes, generosity.  So, as people are my purpose (and indeed, i think people are the meaning of life), being generous to others is very much my MO.  Like excessive generosity.  I think it makes people uncomfortable sometimes, how generous I want to be toward them.  It is one reason that I have acquired 5 mattresses over the past year.  I want to have places for people to sleep, especially my friends who lack a job and a place to live.  My friend Jacob might come stay on one of these beds while he looks for a job.  Liz is staying with us right now. Elisabeth stayed with us while she looked for a place to live.  Sidney stayed with us for like 6 months.  It is very important to me to have space for people to stay if they need to.

  

But back to generosity.  I think it is incredibly important to give, and give often.  It is the glue that holds society together, giving.  It makes everyone feel good, it helps people who need help, it promotes and maintains robust reciprocal relationships (which are by far the most evolutionarily stabilizing kind of relationships for people to have).  Giving just makes everything better.  I have gotten to the point where I always keep an eye out for someone I can give to.  (I think I already explained that I have qualms that I am not actually helping homeless people when I give them money... feeding addictions and so on.  If I ever have food on me when I am asked, I always offer that)  There is a passage in "The Prophet" about how the true believers in life give without thought of joy seeking or moral virtue, and give all of the little they have.  I try to aspire to this, although I fail.  I am always on the search for someone to give to.  The search is almost as fun as the giving.  

Much of my thinking on generosity has been shaped by the short paragraphs that are written in "The Prophet."  I have come to see giving as an essential part of life, something that is so inherent in what it means to live that to not give would be like half-living.  I think that is why I have never been a money seeker, it always seemed burdensome and much like a living death... a death of the soul.  Maybe that is too harsh... maybe it is more of an oppression and silencing of the soul.  

The Prophet section on generosity that has stuck in my head for years is "all you have shall one day be given."  I wish more people could intuitively get that (including myself).  I want to bring into question the whole concept of property, because it seems to me like an embodiment of the negative aspects of individualism.  Keeping things from other people for fear you will go without... it is utterly illogical and only "works" (if you can call it that... maybe functions in a semi-predictable manner is a better way to phrase it) when everyone does it, like in American mainstream culture.  I never ever want to be rich.  That is an oppression I have the power to avoid, and so I shall. There was a sign on a wall in one of the buildings at Friends Camp that was quoting a song.  It went "it's a gift to be simple, it's a gift to be free, it's a gift to come down to where we aught to be."  I love that.  I want to live a simple life, to share my little wealth with people, and to live in a supportive caring community.  In my mind, that is the logical outcome of generosity, if everyone were to take it up.  

Oh, there is a great song by Johnny Cash called "Man in Black."  Aside from being a great melody, it has fantastic lyrics.  This one has particularly stayed in my head:

"I wear the black for those who never read,

Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,

Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me." 

The road to happiness IS through love and charity.  I am so happy when I am allowed to give.  It has made my life so fulfilling and rich in so many ways.  I think that is why like 5 years ago I wrote this statement: "The generous life is the happy life" 

My freshman year of college, I really confronted the fear of not living up to my potential and discovered a way to deal with it in a very good way. (btw, I have always fancied my life's work as activism.) Whenever I am afraid that I am not being effective, I think to myself that I have helped lots of people, and even inspired a few.  The MOST important thing I can do to make this world a better place is to be good to the people around me and try to make their lives better.  That is the social change I want, that is the life's message I want to embody.  We may idolize people who lead mass movements, but it is not them that made the change, it is us.  Small groups of people, doing to each other what they thought was right, that is how things are always done.  A few years after deciding this, I discovered an amazing quote by Thomas Merton: "In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything." 

Attached to that quote, is another amazing quote, here it is: "Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."   I love Thomas Merton, I visited the Monastery he lived at when he was alive.  He died in 1968, like so many of our prophets.  

So yeah, when I worry I am not living up to my potential, I remember that what really counts is how I live my life and how I impact those around me. Doing that is accomplishing something for humanity, probably the most important thing anyone can do.

That reminds me of a story... the winter after I reached this conclusion, I was walking with my high school friend Ben, talking politics.  He was just turning lefty at that point in his life. And I think he was a bit overwhelmed at the impossibility of the problems we are confronted with.  In his despair he asked something like "but what can we do, what should we do."  So I gave him this answer, about treating others well as being the most important thing.  I think I took him aback, because after I explained it, the convo kind of died.  I think it fits in very well with his brand of Catholicism.  

Hmmm... I looked through some of the old letters I wrote to you, and I need to talk about feminism.  I feel very lucky that my Mom was such an amazing ethics teacher, she imbued me from a very early age with a feminist outlook.  She put alot of emphasis on treating everyone equally (no matter gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.), and would consistently correct my language usage when I said gender-specific things that should be gender-neutral, like fireman or policeman.  She told me to say Firefighter or police officer.  That is one of hundreds of examples of the way she taught me to challenge the status quo and try to live by a feminist set of values.  I think it is because of her (and my Dad, too, but I think my Mom spent more time doing it) that it is my default setting to treat people with as much respect as possible.  She helped me notice how women were treated differently (a skill that I have developed alot thanks to activism and collective liberation stuff), and to try to point it out and do something about it.  Noticing gender roles is very important to me, and can disturbing sometimes when I notice it.  Especially when I feel compelled to point it out to conservatives, to whom I am still trying to figure out how to do it in a constructive way.

There are so many ingrained things in our society that are hard to even recognize, much less fight, that I feel very blessed that my Mom started developing my recognition tools very early in my development.

I get quite annoyed at egotistical men who always try to dominate discussions and prove their points.  It really bugs the hell out of me.  And it is really hard to deal with productively in a group setting.  I have seen groups dissolve because of the problems that arise from men doing this.  It is a really selfish thing to do, to push and push your point just because you think you are right and that everyone needs to agree with you.  They really disempower those around them, and make them feel apathetic.  I have seen it in activist groups, in corporations, and in friend groups.  There is probably a corollary with women, but I have not had it destroy my communities in the same way that it has happened with this phenomenon in men.  It is really scary how unaware so many of these men are this effect on others too.  sigh.  

So that is something I fight against.  The communities I have helped build have tended to be supportive and caring and have managed to deal with these issues in a way that has allowed them to survive instead of completely collapsing (which i have seen happen from a distance several times). Brown sds did this about a year and a half after I left. The activist communities in the Bay that I have hung around with have tended to be really cool and aware of these problems.  And for the most part, there aren't any men in them that do this, which has been lovely.  You know, I should really write an article on this and try to get it published. 

For some reason I am reminded of a quote I once heard... this idea has stuck with me powerfully ever since I heard it uttered.  In the context of something that was happening in their family the person said "the greatest sin someone can commit is to intentionally hurt someone else, either physically or mentally."  And I was like yeah!  that is so true.  It seems to me that so many selfish people do this on a daily basis, and it is not only destructive to their communities, it is an oppression unto themselves as well.  See, that is something most people have not yet realized, that the oppressors are greatly harmed by the oppression too.  Doing bad things to people hurts you as well as them.  Freeing the world from oppression frees the oppressors as well.  A large segment of the left does not realize this, they are too overcome with the Us vs. Them mentality.  They believe that through defeating your enemies, you will win.  This set of means is a false prophet.  I do not believe that in defeating your enemies, you win.  Only through mutual freedom can we ever hope to achieve justice.  Winning should be defined as converting your enemies to your cause.  I think Christ grasped that, which is why he told us to love our enemies as ourselves.  Loving our enemies allows us to free ourselves from our egos, and our need to have our beliefs be publicly vindicated as truth... and to act in the best interest of all. It allows us to treat enemies in such a way that they will be forced to cease to consider themselves our enemies.  Atleast, that is the way I see it, and have seen it work.    

Content from a letter to Sarah #4

Where was I... oh yes, activism. So, Brown SDS(Students for a democratic Society) started out as a vehicle to unite the left. We had long talks about it, and the fall of 06 we had a network formed which started having regular potlucks. We had a diso guide produced, which we distributed to the freshmen at the beginning of spring semester. We had held several anti-war protests and we were toying around with student rights issues. We held several solidarity events for things that were happening nationally. We collected signatures when that Arab American student was tazed like 8 times at UCLA. We did lots of solidarity stuff with other groups, we went to a Democracy Matters event at the state capitol (a half an hour walk from campus) and helped push for reform of the disenfranchisement of felons law. We tried to storm a corporation meeting with SLA (Student Labor Alliance), but only managed to get onto the balcony. We threw leaflets over the dinner tables. SLA was pushing for food services to stop labor squeezing part time workers, and give them full employment and benefits. I will talk more about what I did with SDS in a little bit.

With OIF (the anti-war group), we attended a bunch of protests, and brought some speakers to campus. We held several protests ourselves, and some of our group, including Bucky, got arrested at a Senator's office for refusing to leave until he signed a statement giving his support for ending the war. It was an action organized by the American Friends Service Committee. I love Quakers. One of the cooler things we did was we managed to get an art grant from the art department so we could buy steaks to put into the ground. We bought enough wood for 655 steaks, and the cold night of March 18th (or 19th) we hammered them into the ground. Some of the ground was frozen, which made it difficult. Let me tell you, even with 6 people there, it took us a few hours to hammer that many stakes into the ground. It took up a half acre, i would guess. Each stake represented a thousand people who had died. (There was a big report that estimated that 655,000 Iraqis died, and had pretty good science behind it) Three stakes represented American fatalities at the time. People said it was one of the most powerful anti-war things they had seen, that it really brought it home.

Spring of 07 SDS started looking at Brown's dealings with war profiteering companies. We found out that Raytheon (makes missiles, among other things) was going to be at the career fair about 4 days before it happened. So, impromptu protest! It was actually surprisingly well-planned. We had about 20 people with signs make a soft picket in front of the Raytheon booth. It was alot of fun. The career fair people called the campus police on us, so we had a nice battle of words with the cops. They brought 5 people up on charges of some bs rule, and dragged out the proceedings all semester. But we won, every charge was dropped, cause we had the right to be there. They did not bother the protest that happened in fall of 07 (I had left by this point, but I heard through word of mouth).

But the Raytheon protest turned into a big media spectacle in the college paper. We won lots of coverage and some sympathetic press. It really got the war issue to be talked about on campus. Amazing how something as simple as that can get people talking.

After the success with the Raytheon protest, we looked into other local war profiteers that we could target. We found Textron. Textron seems much less scrupulous than Raytheon, they make cluster bombs. Cluster bombs are nasty, if you dont know what they are, you should look them up... but they kill way too many civilians. Textron also gets like 90% of its business from the DoD (Department of Defense), and most of the rest from the IDF(Israeli Defense Force). So, we had a die-in in front of their international headquarters which happens to be in Providence. It was so much fun. About 40 of us marched down to downtown Providence, took the street in front of their building, and all lay down and wailed. We had fake blood (raspberry jam, I believe) (also, i just realized that you spell raspberries with a "p". I always thought it was just rasberry cause it is always pronounced "raz-berry") and it was alot of fun. The police showed up and formed a line in front of the building. I was video-tapping the whole thing, staying mostly on the police to make sure they stayed within the law. After we had died for awhile, everyone got together, put jam on their hands, and rushed the building, plastering it with reddish handprints. It is quite amazing to see people non-violently rush through a police line. There are a bunch of pictures I will have to show you.

We got alot of media attention for this. Even a one line reference from Good Morning America. National Media! So exciting. And we were just like 20 committed kids, who managed to get some friends together to do this. Who knew it could be so simple.
But, as we were leaving the protest, we didn't realize that one of our number was staying behind to talk to reporters. Because he was out of the group, the cops were able to arrest him for "disorderly conduct." The charges were eventually dropped. But it just goes to show how there is safety in numbers.

Another project SDS worked on was the creation of a student union. It got off the ground pretty well, we managed to sign up one fifth of the school in the matter of a month. We held a general assembly and talked about tuition hikes and how we wanted to organize ourselves. I hear that the organizing around this got too connected to sds to get off the ground, but it was still pretty awe-inspiring. It did contribute, though, to some significant reforms in the student government, which was essentially entirely undemocratic and worthless.

The student union was also part of an overarching accessibility campaign to lower the cost of tuition so that the school could be more economically diverse. We started off pretty well with this campaign. We got alot of signatures on a petition. We formed the student union. We really managed to build support and make it publicly noticeable that we had a ton of support. And perhaps my greatest college activist accomplishment was that I helped start this campaign. After a year of organizing for this, sds won. In spring of 08, Brown announced that students whose families make under 60,000 will not have to take out loans. So amazing. When I started being an activist, I didn't think it would be this easy. Apparently all you have to do is make a big enough stink about something and it will happen. I feel soooo good about helping start this. It seems to be in the tradition of activists at Brown. The only reason I was able to go was because of needs-blind admission. And that was an initiative of the Young Communist League, who managed to get a big coalition on the left together and push for it. So I continued the tradition, by getting better financial aid for those who come after me, just as those who came before me did for me.

Activism has kind of calmed down for me, since I came to Cali. Sadly. I haven't been able to find a large group of people to work with. Plus, my job takes up so much of my time, it is really hard. I do have a few activist friends who I do stuff with, but it feels like there is no time and too few people.

I have always been on a path toward being an activist and raising a stink about injustice. I may try to be polite all the time, probably too often, but I have a very powerful urge to confront what I consider wrong. My friends from high school were not surprised that I was near the center of the re-invigoration of the left on Brown's campus.

I would credit alot of this reinvigoration to the intentional way I went about building community in the group and how other people took up the task. I tried to set a tone of caring, fun, joy and just general support. Most lefty groups do not have that, and they suffer greatly for it. When there is big trouble, they attack each other. Not the groups I helped build. When they have difficulties, they stick together and support each other. They don't blame each other for mistakes and are ready to forgive each other. At the 2008 national convention that I went to, there was a workshop on group emotional support and caring (yeah, sds is fucking awesome like that!), and the 5 members of Brown's chapter that were in attendance went to that one. Cause they know how important it is. And I feel greatly responsible for setting that tone. I am so proud of what Brown's sds chapter did after I left.
Now I just wish I could get the whole organization to understand it. And get them to use it against injustices, not just for good internal dynamics. Love is a far more powerful weapon than anything hate can throw at you. Love will win over enemies, hate has no such power. I really love Harry Potter's portrayal of this fact. Anyone who had any smidgen of love in their hearts could not be a true follower of Voldemort.

I still do stuff with sds. I would have gone to the national convention if it had not fallen on the same weekend as my cousin Jodi's wedding. Lets see, what do I do. I welcome new sign-ups to sds in the western half of the country. I work to try to maintain communication between chapters out here, which is tough cause they are few and far between. And I maintain a news archive of everything that gets reported on sds nationally (google alerts are amazing for this!). I am constantly amazed at how much news we get. On average, during school semesters, we get about 3 news stories mentioning us every day. Utterly fantastic. (I have stepped back from most of these in mid-2010)

One of the reasons I have remained so committed to sds is because of its willingness to approach things like emotional support. And because it is the only group I have seen where people of differing ideologies come together and manage to get along somehow (how the Maoists and the Anarchists get along in sds, I still don't know, but they do it, somewhat). This is not a common thing on the left. Plus my job does not provide me with the organizing fix that I crave, so I help out sds the little bit that I can all by my lonesome out here.
In case this hasn't become apparent, I will be an activist for the rest of my life. It is my career, so to speak. The life path that has seemed apparent to me ever since I discovered my purpose. I know I will never be defeated by any momentary burnout I feel. I have survived years in the wilderness in KY, and years of overwork at Brown. Those two extremes are often the cause of burnout. I have survived unpleasant organizing environments and managed to convert them into good ones. That is also a prime burnout causer, bad social environments.

Just so you know, i didn't used to be so confident about all this stuff. It has taken me years of self-reflection to really KNOW all this, and understand it, even if my intuition has pointed me in this direction since I can remember.

Content from a letter to Sarah #3

Written around July 1st 2009

So, to start telling you some of my history with political activism... here is a quick and dirty rundown. I think I have always had an anti-authoritarian streak in me. In school, especially high school, I would always complain about what bullshit so much of what we were doing was. I might have told you this story already... in middle school, when the school board passed a rule saying people couldn't wear images of Malcolm X, my Mom encouraged me to wear a Malcolm X stamp on my belt (the same belt I am wearing to this day). She explained that it had multiple symbolism, it wasn't just breaking an unjust rule, it was pointing out that the US government endorsed such images as good. If I had the courage I do now, I would have worn a Malcolm X every day until they did something. Then I would have gotten some of my friends to do it. I would have made it a big deal, and shamed the school board into reversing their decision.

In high school, I would have started organizing if there had been people who wanted to organize. But sadly, no one but me was into activism. So I joined the school newspaper staff, and senior year I wrote an op-ed against the Iraq war when it started. Then, when I gave a speech at graduation (I was 5th in the class and got to give a speech) I gave an anti-war speech. It was awesome, I bet I surprised alot of people in the audience.

Then my freshman year in college I looked and looked for activists to organize with, but as I would later learn, the entire activist left had collapsed in early 2003, before I was at college. So, toward the end of my Freshman year I started up a discussion group around envisioning an alternate society. Never got too many people to attend, but lots of good conversation. So my sophmore year was pretty quiet, activism on campus was basically non-existent. The beginning of my junior year, an anti-war meeting was called and like 30 people showed up. I was one of them. This meeting would shape the Brown activist left for the next 4 years, as so many of the leading activists in the community attended and really started their activist careers at this meeting. I feel honored to have been there. We had a few meetings to determine what we wanted to do and started organizing. We called ourselves "OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom, anti-war group)" People who were at those meetings went on to dominate BEAN (Brown Environmental Action Network), SLA (Student Labor Alliance), The Brown Democrats, SuFI (Sustainable Food Initiative), SSDP (Students for a Sensible Drug Policy), Democracy Matters (public funding for elections), SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and a few others that I can't remember.

So, in 2005, we started organizing against the war. We wrote articles for the newspaper. We brought some speakers to campus. We tried to raise our profile and make the war an issue that was talked about on campus. We got together with a few local community groups and did alittle Truth in Recruitment. We went to the large anti-war marches in DC. There was this one rally in Providence when it was single digits outside, and we rallied for 2 hours. I was so cold, I had like 5 layers on, but I was still cold. There were about 200 people there, and their commitment was so amazing to be out in the cold for so long. Very inspiring.

This is a picture of the first time I addressed a political rally. So far, it has been the only time. I gave a short intro for a professor who was speaking. It was cold that day. You will notice Bucky is the left-most person in the picture, holding a sign. We were holding a protest of Hillary Clinton in 2005 because she was promoting really Hawkish policies and saying Bush needed to escalate the war in Iraq. So yeah, we protested, it was fun.

At the end of my Junior year, we started talking about getting a group together that could tie together all the issues everyone was fighting for. And it just so happened that one of our professors was hosting the first Students for a Democratic Society conference since the 1960s at Brown. It re-formed in Jan 2006, and we started a chapter in March. I spearheaded this group for most of 2006. We held the conference and started organizing the left community at Brown. Then in May 2006 we started laying the groundwork for the Social Justice Network to get all the small groups on the left in campus talking. I am proud to say that alot of the impetus for this came from me. It is still going strong, they have potlucks I hear. So over the summer and my first semester of senior year we worked on the SJN and getting a Disorientation Guide published to help with the SJN. Here is a copy: http://www.campusactivism.org/server-new/uploads/browndisorientiationguide-2006.pdf I wrote about a third of it. I also designed the front cover graphic.There is more to tell... but i think it will have to wait for the next letter.

Content from a letter to Sarah #2

Written in late June 2009 as part of a letter to Sarah

To continue where I left off with Mammoth cave... there is a cathedral sized room in there that is just indescribable in beauty. It is an aptly named cave. I have gone on a bunch of tours there, one for 5 hours. There is still a good percentage of it that is unmapped. For part of one of the tours, they turn off all the lights. It is the darkest black I have ever experienced.

Looking back on this letter, it took a turn toward describing my mental life, so I thought I would throw out that category for this letter... except the previous paragraph.

My school experience was certainly interesting. I was kind of nerd. Academic team, Gifted and Talented program, you get the picture. I got contacts in 6th grade, and wore them everyday for nearly 8 years before they started to bug my eyes too much and I gave them up. I remember being really self-conscious of my glasses for a long time. Freshman year of college I started feeling much more comfortable with myself, more confident and more willing to let people judge me for who I am.

Tracking my mental development is, for some reason, really interesting to me. In 7th and 8th grade I began to question myself about who I was, who I wanted to be and what trajectory I wanted my life to take. This thought process culminated in 10th grade when I started really feeling lost and was kind of depressed for 6 months. Thinking about one's purpose in life will do that to you. But after being lost in that desert of melancholy for so long, I somehow stumbled upon an epiphany that has been the foundation of my world since then. At the time I couldn't really articulate it, but I had decided that the answer to the question "what is the meaning of life" is "people." (yeah, I am also a stubborn contemplater of unanswerable questions... I am still contemplating the meaning of life a decade later)

It was during this contemplation of myself that I began my core spiritual practices... these are all inherently interconnected but i have kind of broken them down in my own head to include: deep self-reflection, self-improvement processes, emotional and behavioral shaping practices, redefinition of my identity, my experiments with the truth (Gandhi is a big influence on me), my endeavors to understand and empathize with people, and my adherence to a philosophy of generosity. There might be more of them, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I began my experiments with truth during 7th grade. My first and longest running experiment is with the idea of ends and means and their connection. I have always heard that "the end does not justify the means." Most people take this to mean that even if you get the end you want, if the means was bad, you should feel guilty. I do not think that is what the phrase means. I think it means that if you are seeking just ends, you can never fully reach them if you use unjust means. It is just simply impossible. Now, if you have an unholy end, or a narrow end you *can* achieve it with unjust means. And by "narrow end" I mean you want one thing, only that thing and don't care about the effect on other things. The CIA term "blowback" is an example of this... when they achieve a narrow end but the surrounding environment becomes worse. I have done countless experiments on this hypothesis, through observing my behavior analyzing the results, changing my behavior, seeing what happens, etc. I have been doing this since 1997-ish, although not consciously at first.

The first part of this experiment that I can isolate in my memory is my dealings with bullies. Now, I got picked on alot as a kid. But I had great parents, and they told me to try to understand the bully. So I did. I began consciously struggling to empathize with my attackers. And boy did this pay off. I started naturally acting nice to them, even when they were horrible to me. This just confused them, most of the time. But after awhile I wore them down with my kindness. I remember the turning point with a kid named Anthony Berta. He had a canker sore in his mouth and was complaining about it. I sympathized with him, told him I got those sometimes and they hurt like hell. I offered advice, telling him he should try applying hydrogen peroxide to it. He tried it and about two days later he thanked me. I remember feeling so good from that. And as I observed his behavior from then on he was generally nicer to me. He still made jokes at my expense on occasion, but nothing compared to what had gone on before. This is one reason I have such faith in non-violence. I have seen it work from a very early age.

Another bully named Brad something used to bug me in middle school. He was a big guy, rather aggressive and insecure about himself so he felt the need to act out. I don't remember any specific turning point with him, but I slowly won him over. I won him over so much that sophomore year when he was sitting at our table, being a jerk, and everyone asked him to either stop of leave, he was really surprised when I joined in the request. Reflecting on that whole situation, I think he saw me as his only friend at the table and felt very betrayed when I united with the others to try to get him to stop being a jerk. I felt bad about it for awhile afterward. Apparently kindness is a double-edged sword. I wonder what happened to him, I wish I remembered his last name so I could friend him on facebook.

So, building on this very practical and beneficial application of my experiments, I started toying around with a good percentage of my life. I started applying more and more control over my behavior, learning to let go of anger and to communicate my feelings effectively to de-escalate and conflict-resolve. And as I did this, the predictions emanating from my hypothesis about ends and means were all coming true. If I wanted a better life, treating people well seemed to be the most effective strategy. When I slipped up and conducted myself bady, I could sense tremors in my world in that direction as well. I built up my mind as much as I could into an analysis machine to tease out little cause and effects and after years of doing this I see patterns in the chaos, and they all fit my initial hypothesis. Of course, it could be analytical bias, but either way, it makes me happier than I would be otherwise (this could also be a placebo effect... but who cares).

And so, I came to the conclusion that the ends do not justify the means because you can never get the a truly good end using evil means. I am still conducting this experiment on and off these days, re-testing my conclusion.

My second longest experiment, which I have been conducting in conjunction with the first, was testing the golden rule. As you can see, it fits in very nicely with the first experiment. If I am trying to treat others as I would have them treat me, then I am almost always using good means. It is amazing the good feelings and good fortune that come your way when you try your hardest to follow this rule... but it is damn hard. I started this one in 10th grade, I believe... or maybe I just consciously recognized it in 10th grade. I start alot of things within myself without realizing it, sometimes it goes on for more than a year or two before I recognize it. At this point I was way WAY into Gandhi's philosophy, and it buttressed my analysis from a personal level to a societal level and a method of struggle.

While those are my two major experiments, I have a bunch of smaller ones... probably more than I can remember. I have experimented with leadership styles, conflict resolution, democratic processes, communication processes (both appealing to large audiences and interpersonal), etc. Usually with these experiments, I was the only variable I could change. So, I got really good at controlling my behavior and emotions so I could see what would happen when I acted a certain way. This coupled nicely with my intention to improve myself.

Changing myself has been another one of my major life projects. I don't remember exactly when I started, but I have always had a goal, at first nebulous but now quite clear. This general goal in changing myself is to make the lives of the people around me better. When I was young I remember being selfish, somewhat uptight and arrogant. Well, one day I decided I didn't like those traits in other people, and that I should try to change myself to get rid of those undesirable traits. I think it has been like 10 or more years since I really started working on myself, and I am proud to say I have made alot of progress. I still have problems with arrogance, but I do a good job of hiding it behind a veil of modesty. (For these letters, I feel like I have lifted my veil of modesty somewhat, and it is actually making me anxious to have done so... please don't judge me too harshly as arrogant or self-absorbed). I am also so much calmer than I once was, it is a huge relief.

It is very hard to describe this process for change, it is not explained in English in my head... it is a series of emotions, urges and bulbous shapes (representing concepts and cause and effect relationships) interacting with other bulbous shapes in a kind of weird fluidic space in my mind's eye. But when I find that I am acting in a way that I don't like, I will start a long thinking process, analyzing it and trying to set up triggers in my own mind to prevent me from acting that way again. One of my favorite attempts to change my behavior and thought patterns (because in involves my endeavors to fight sexism in my own mind) is to successfully be aware of the gender dynamics at gatherings, to comment on them to the group, and to break them through my actions. So, that house dinner where Lapedis and Caely came over (you were in Marin with a friend), I commented how, after the meal, Liz and Caely started making cookies and all the men were sitting in the living room talking. I offered to help make cookies, but I was un-needed. It bothers me when people aren't aware of how easily people fall into gender roles, which often means women end up doing alot more work. I will talk more about my feminist tendencies later.

This process also comes with reinforcing good traits, like generosity. I like to think I have achieved a pretty good level with that, I am always on the lookout for ways to be generous to other people... there is a chapter in the book The Prophet that has had an IMMENSE impact on my direction in life, especially when it concerns giving... have you ever read "The Prophet"? Here is a taste:

Then said a rich man, "Speak to us of Giving."

And he answered: You give but little when you give of your possessions.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?

And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the over-prudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?

And what is fear of need but need itself?

Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable?

Here is a link to it: http://leb.net/~mira/works/prophet/prophet5.html
I will probably talk about generosity more later... One of my conclusions about life is its inherent dynamism. Things and people change. I change, and accepting my own dynamic self has allowed me to give it some direction. I think far too many people see themselves as static, and don't realize that they can and should deal with unpleasant feelings that arise so that they do not burden one's life. I know all my emotions come up for a reason, and until I know that reason and have dealt with the root of the emotion, it will not dissipate. And it is within my power to do that. I feel very empowered when it comes to defining myself and pushing myself to be my highest vision for myself. I wish I could give that confidence and technique to other people. I credit a great deal of my happiness to the fact that I am able to deal with unwanted emotions and behavior in a productive and healthy way. Looking back at KY, I realize how much of a difference it would make in people's lives to be able to do this. I wish I could make a constructive campaign around it, like Gandhi did.

Defining myself has been an important journey that, like everything else I have described in this letter seems to, underpins a large swath of my beliefs. When I was in 10th grade, I came to the realization that I did not like identifying myself as an individual. It did not hold any appeal to me. If I defined myself that way, then I should want to acquire at other's expense, and that did not make me feel good. That identity meant selfishness as a way of life, and I was already seeing its negative effects in my own life and the lives of those around me. So I endeavored to shed my individual identity in favor of a more collectivist model. The best way of describing this is to look at your hand. Now, I can think of myself as a finger, or I can think of myself as part of the hand. I prefer to think of myself as part of the hand. My well-being is inherently tied to my community, and everyone in the community is tied to each other. Seeing ourselves as isolated individuals is just out of touch with reality. Defining myself in this way has made it not only easy to give, but made it the only logical thing to do.

There are alot of interesting manifestations of this identity. For example, when I am somewhere with unemployed friends... I feel like if they pay that I am somehow getting more hurt than if I pay. (I, here, refers to my identity as a part of a group) They have a finite pool of money that is not being recharged, so if they spend money it is more detrimental than if I or someone who has income pays. It is hard to explain, and I don't think I am doing the best job. but suffice to say this identity has really motivated me to protect/help my community, even if i have to sacrifice a disproportionately high number of things myself. I think many American's don't understand this mentality even when some of them subscribe to it in their own communities... and our world would be a much better place if they did understand it.

I have actually found that playing with my identity is one of the more powerful things I can do to change myself. I am generally kind of shy, but I have made great strides in changing that through trying to define myself as a more outgoing person. This is especially effective when I am in roles where I think other people expect me to be outgoing... like as a camp counselor or a host of a party. There is so much potential for how I could change myself, I have pushed my identity toward more generosity, more kindness, more willingness to forgive, less anger and more calm. And overall, it has made me a thousand times more happier. It is an incredible tool for self-improvement. I think most people, especially kids, simply take up the identity that other people ascribe to them. I wonder what would happen if I could teach this to repeat prisoners and motivate them to see themselves differently. Religion often has this effect, from what I have seen with prisons.

Part of all this interconnected mess is self-reflection. I think about myself alot, maybe too much. I observe my emotions, my behavior, my thoughts, and my motivations. When I first started doing this, I looked at everything and spent years thinking about it. But now, I think I have examined most of myself that I want to reinforce, so I mostly stick to things that bug me, and new things that arise. I mull them over, then over again. As you can see by this series of letters, I can write way too much about myself when I have an interested audience. This process has become second nature to me now, as with most of my spiritual practices. I do it without even trying, and often have to quiet it down to get to sleep at a reasonable hour. It is this process that gives me the strong sense of who I am, which has not really been shaken since maybe senior year in high school.
Anyway, that's enough for this letter... to be continued.

Some content from a letter to Sarah #1

Here is some content that I wrote to Sarah around June in 2009.

I have always liked the idea of letters. They are like time travel, you get to send a message to someone in the future. And then that person gets to send it to you in the future. They also let you go into much more depth than phone, texts, or even email. Somehow email seems like it should be shorter in my mind, even though it is basically an electronic letter.
So, since we aren't able to get to know each other better face to face, letters will have to do. OK... so i'll start out by starting a mini-bio and see where that takes me.

I suppose I have led an unusual and interesting life so far. I grew up in rural Kentucky, in a town of 1500, surrounded by nature. I am the son of back-to-the-lander hippies, although they never got into farming. My Dad says he was never any good at it, but I remember planting and harvesting some really killer peas in our garden. They were so tasty. Growing up I helped my parents build our house (as much as a 3 to 12 year old can). I watched so intently and actually picked up alot of carpentry from it... but I think working with my hands runs in my blood. All my male blood relatives in my parents generation and both my grandfathers are/were carpenters. Some of my male non-blood relatives in my parents generation are/were carpenters as well. I really love building things, like that bed frame I cobbled together from dumpstered wood. I have wanted to learn to make nice-looking furniture for awhile, not just practical dumpster-scrounged constructs.

We lived on a 70 acre plot of land, mostly forest. Our house is on a ten acre field in the middle of the property. We get our water from a natural spring that has never gone dry in living memory, despite the droughts the area has gone through. I love that water, it is soooo delicious. As a kid I would go off into the forest with friends and sometimes alone and explore. Most often along the banks of nearby creeks. Our land bordered a smallish river where we would go swimming. It is amazing to live next to a river and to see it change over the years. The swimming holes shifted dramatically, as did this island where we used to hang out. Getting down to the river was a trip though. Probably a quarter of a mile walk, with stinging nettle at the end of the walk to punctuate it. I remember that pain pretty clearly, probably because I received a dose of it on a regular basis for a large swath of my childhood. It was with that experience that I conducted some of my first experiments with consciously suppressing pain. When I was like 12 or 13 I can clearly remember myself leading a group of friends down to the river and single-handedly clearing a path through the nettle with a stick so my friends could make it through unscathed. At that point i had managed to ignore the pain enough to complete the task. The worst part though, was if you were wearing flip-flops and there were nettle leaves on the ground... they would sting your toes. Anyway, that experience with ignoring and suppressing pain, i think, was the precursor to alot of my experiments with changing my emotions and behavior.

I went to school in a town an hour away, because my parents thought that their public school system was much better than the one in my home town (it was). My parents taught me true generosity through their selfless pursuit of putting me and my brother first, I hope to return the favor to my own kids one day. I think this early example of selflessness made it very easy for me decide to do my best to live a generous life.

I saw many things in Kentucky that have greatly affected my outlook and direction in life, such as the high rate of poverty there (23% of the population is below the poverty line in my home county in 2006). I am strangely proud of the fact that my parents weren't well off while raising me... for my first 7 years of life we had an outhouse. I remember the day my Dad installed our first toilet. My childhood imbued me with a passion to tackle social ills. I think especially the juxtaposition of the incredible hardships people had with the generally caring attitudes they had towards each other has convinced me from an early age that 1. people are inherently good and 2. that it doesn't matter what shit people have to go through, as long as they are with other people, they can get through it.

I saw racism and experienced its impact on other people. I know that growing up in a racist culture has imbued me with alot of racism, and it bugs the hell out of me. I make it a point to fight the passive racism in my own mind whenever I notice it, and to actively work to notice it. If I have what I consider a racist thought, I feel pretty bad and commit myself to not letting it influence my behavior and trying to ensure I stop having those thoughts. My own process for self-reflection and self-improvement has actually changed me a great deal... I will go into that later though, probably in a following letter. One of the scariest things I remember was that in my high school my senior year, every freshman male black student had atleast one failing grade. The school was about 40% African American. While it was not segregated per se, it was de facto segregation. The different races (mostly white, black, latino) didn't mix much. The cafeteria really showed this, with each group colonizing its own section every day.

I remember hearing lots of racist jokes, many of them told seriously. I also remember hearing of a big KKK rally, and a counter-protest called Unity Day during my sophomore High School year. I don't remember why I couldn't make it, but I really wish I had been able to. Most of my teachers were gung-ho about the Unity Day counter protest, which I remember thinking that was amazing. I also heard that it got a much larger turnout than expected and was significantly bigger than the KKK rally.

One of my favorite memories from childhood is star-gazing. We star-gazed alot. I have seen meteors that lit up the entire sky. In 2001 during a particularly spectacular Leonid shower in November, a group of friends and I stayed out all night watching. There were over 100 per hour that night, it was by far the most spectacular meteor shower I have seen. I remember watching comet Hale-Bopp hover in the sky for days, and be almost visible during early morning and late evening. And our sky was absolutely spectacular. On a clear night with a new moon, I could see millions of stars. The Milky Way was very clear and if you closed your eyes for a few minutes and then looked, oh, it would take your breath away. I have always had a love of space (yeah, i am a geek like that), which i atleast partly credit to the awe-inspiring sky I stared at as I grew up.

I was consistently in awe of nature during my childhood. We had a few giant trees on our land, which I found fascinating. They had survived the logging that happened in the early 70s (before my parents bought the land) because they marked the edge of the property. My Dad loves trees and taught me tons of random facts about them, how to recognize some of the species, and how to take care of the forest (which mostly involved leaving it alone). Did you know that if there is a vine growing on a tree (a tree you don't want a vine growing on), that the best way to kill it is not to chop it off, or pull it off but to just remove all the vine's bark in a circle around the base of the vine. This will slowly kill both the roots and the vine's trunk... this method works with most plants. The wildlife around my house was great. There were deer everywhere, lots of rabbits and infinite numbers of insects. I have almost stepped on copperheads (the only deadly snake in KY) 3 times, they are probably the animal I dislike the most. I am also not a big fan of skunks, having been within 2 feet of one, before both of us noticed each other (it was dark and i was walking without a flashlight). We both ran like a bat out of hell. Mammoth cave is also just utterly fantastic... To Be Continued next letter...