Things

There are so many things in the world: houses, tables, dishes, lovingly-built model cars, electric vehicles, watercolor and pen sketches, boots, journals written in almost daily, hubcaps, mirrors, public artworks, tanks, surface-to-air missiles, socks and underwear, bathing suits, and on and on and on and on.

Probably most of what’s most admirable about human beings is the things that we’ve made, especially works of art and devotional structures like churches, synagogues, and sports stadiums.  But it’s all too much, isn’t it?  

Every tangible item that human beings have created, from a washer to washing machine or a pencil point to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, is the natural world converted to artifact.  All the wealth you see, whether riding your bike through the toniest neighborhood in your fair city or standing awestruck beneath that Sistine Chapel ceiling, is Mother Nature turned into money.

Remarkable to be sure, but it makes you want to just stop—and stop making anything ever again.

Another successful city dump run earlier this week, but that only scratches the surface of all that’s accumulated and doesn’t even begin to take on the hard choices like what to do with all the handmade stuff, the stuff that contains memories of your own and your loved one’s creative activities.  

Like what IS going be the fate of all those journals, birthday cards, and, for that matter, lovingly-built model cars?

If everyone stopped making things today, there would still be centuries of things remaining and while I seem to recall Elizabeth Kolbert writing that our entire civilization, in the strata of the geologic record, will, in hundreds of millions of years, be no thicker than a postage stamp, that’s still, in the next decade or two, on overwhelming amount of stuff to deal with and an even more daunting number of decisions to make.

So, I guess I’ll stick to the electronic written word: takes up no physical space and so easy to delete!

Appetite

The problem with having an appetite is that it needs to be filled.

Whether you’re hungry for food, sex, power, or even another vintage Pendleton Board shirt solid-patterned size medium, that hunger will drive you to eat, fuck, win, buy, or whatever until it’s satisfied.

And then, of course, as soon as it is satisfied, you won’t be satisfied anymore and the cycle will happen all over again.  Which is why you’re fatter, more dissipated, exhausted, and broke than ever before.

And why, as the Buddhists remind us, life is suffering, the cause of which is desire.

Now, supposedly, you can overcome this condition of suffering by eliminating desire through following the Noble Eightfold path.  But unless you’re Buddha himself, that probably won’t happen since somewhere along that path—like right around the first or second step on it—you’ll be distracted by something shiny and desirable and by right back where you started, albeit slightly older and more disillusioned than where you were when you started.

The reasonable response to this, I suppose, is simply to observe your behavior with equanimity and continue in the ongoing attempt to accept the inevitability of the human condition with grace and humor.  And maybe have one fewer shot glass full of cashews as a snack during the day.

You don’t want to deprive yourself, since that just leads to overindulgence.  But at the same time, indulging in every desire, in the name of eliminating the tendency to cling to whatever feels good doesn’t work either; nor is it an effective strategy for fitting into last season’s jeans or Pendleton Board shirt.

One thing’s for certain: there will come a time in all our lives when desire is eliminated.  The problem is, as Wittgenstein pointed out, it won’t really be a time in our lives, since death, as he said, isn’t an event in life.

When you’re dead, you won’t have desires, so presumably that means no suffering, either.  

Yum.

Commentary

Science has proven that the absolute best way to raise your blood pressure and increase the likelihood of getting ulcers is to read the “comments” section on your preferred internet news source.  Doing so will make your blood boil and make you wonder why people have to be so mean.

Didn’t Mom always say that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all?

Of course, I’m essentially violating that maxim right here, so I guess I don’t really have a right to complain.  Because as soon as I do complain, I’m doing the very thing I’m complaining about!

I just wonder if it’s possible for people to be a little kinder.  Why do we have to lead with attacking another person’s viewpoint or even their choice to share their viewpoint at all?

It seems like we regularly define ourselves by what we don’t like.  By posting a nasty comment about something that upsets me, I get a better sense of who I am, and let others know that I’m a person to be reckoned with.  Good for me by being bad for you!

One of the more puzzling aspects of this phenomenon is that often the commentors are complaining about the provider of the article they’re commenting on, for instance, ranting about the editorial policies of the Washington Post on the Washington Post site.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply not read the Post?  Isn’t there something strange about blaming the publisher of an article that makes you mad?  Why not just not read the article?

Readers of this site (if there are any), face a similar dilemma.  However, it’s far easier to ignore the writings of someone who is so easy to ignore.  So, perhaps, I’m providing an important public service here by having a website that is so undersubscribed.  But publishing blog posts that no one reads, I’m showing people how not to read what they don’t need to.

Worthwhile

What do you have to do to justify your existence?  

Is it enough to merely awake and perform the usual human functions?  Or do you have to make the world a better place and leverage disruptive technologies or something like that in order to count as a human being?

I was raised by ambitious parents who inculcated in me the message that “You are what you do.”  Consequently, the less I do, the less I am.  And if I don’t do anything, then, well, I’m nothing.

Sartre made a similar point: since we’re condemned to be free, then we have no excuse for not being the person we want to be and the only way to do that is through one’s actions.  If I claim to be a poet, but never write poetry because I’m too busy making a living as a waiter, then I’m acting in bad faith, which is another of saying I’m just a poseur, a wannabe poet who isn’t a poet at all.

If I write a short essay every day, does that make me a writer?  Perhaps, but perhaps just a lazy one.

If I cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner, am I therefore a cook?  Maybe, but maybe just a hungry one.

When I do math, am I a mathematician?  When I philosophize, am I a philosopher?  When I waste time scrolling around the internet, I’m a loser, aren’t I?

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem; not being anti-racist is racist, for sure.  But can’t a person be good enough simply by not being bad?

Think of all the things you didn’t do today: steal candy from a baby; start World War III; stick a piece of chewed gum underneath a table at the library.  Those ought to count for something, shouldn’t they?

Sure, I’m just taking up space on the planet, but it’s a nice little space, which is plenty enough for today, all right?

Napping

Most people think the know how to nap.  You lie down on a couch or bed and doze off, ideally in the middle of the day.

Sure.

But that’s not real napping.

Real napping happens when one is sitting up, in a chair, ideally while reading a book, especially a non-fiction book.

One minute, you’re learning about how the brain works or getting new information as to the causes of World War I.  The next, you’re drooling on yourself, dropping your book on the floor, and nodding off.

It takes some effort to develop this skill, but with practice, even the most restless person can succeed.  It helps to choose a book with really dense text; the fewer paragraph breaks, the better.  Research has shown that analytical philosophy, especially the works of Alfred North Whitehead, are particularly effective.

Another time-honored tip is to choose a chair that’s soft, has solid armrests, and allows you to put your feet up on an ottoman or coffee table.  That nearly-prone position might be considered cheating by some traditionalists, but as long as one doesn’t recline fully, even the International Society of Afternoon Nappers approves.

That’s another point, by the way: afternoon naps are fine, but represent only Junior Varsity level napping.  The truly accomplished napper naps throughout the day, even before lunch.

For guidance on napping, refer to my dog.  She manages to nap after breakfast, before lunch, after lunch, mid-afternoon, at teatime, before dinner, and right before bed.  That’s impressive!

Some might contend that such behavior is really just sleeping away the day, but again, as long as you’ve got a book on your lap, it counts as napping, and one need not worry that what’s really going on is incipient or extant depression.

After all, if I can nap four to six or even eight hours a day, what do I have to be depressed about?  A good question, to be sure; I think I’ll sleep on it.

Trinity

Pick your favorite trinity: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu.  Body, mind, and spirit.  Manny, Moe, and Jack.  

They’re all good, and perhaps, all essentially the same.  So, have at the one that works best for you and experience your own experience of each in your own divine way.

As for me, I’ll take the holy trinity of yoga, cycling, and pot as the central organizing principle for my life.  It’s yoga that feeds by spirit, cycling, for my body, and cannabis, for the mind.  

Alternately, you can correlate them with the three gunas, the energetic principles that give rise to the Universe, according to the Samkhya darshana, one of the six “orthodox” schools of Vedic philosophy.  These are rajas, the active, restless principle, tamas, the principle of inertia and solidity, and sattva, the principle of purity and light.  It’s the eternal interplay among these three that bring the Universe into existence and sustains it.

Cycling is rajas, pot is tamas, and yoga is sattva.  Bike-riding is active; weed-smoking is passive; and doing yoga purifies.  The combination of the three, emphasizing one over the other two depending on the situation, makes for a life that is full and fulfilling.  And plenty fun, too!

I’ve been doing yoga asana almost every day for more than 24 years now.  I’ve smoked (and eaten, sometimes) marijuana with some regularity (not every day, though!) since I was fifteen, half a century ago.  And I’ve ridden a bicycle pretty much every chance I’ve had (often on the way to or from a yoga class and also pretty often while being stoned) since I first learned to work a two-wheeler by careening down Ravencrest Road in the Pittsburgh suburb, O’Hara Township back in 1965.

So, no doubt I’ve had plenty of experience in all three, and it’s certain that I wouldn’t be who I am today without those experiences. 

Yoga, cycling and pot = me, myself, and I.

Nostalgia

“I miss the days when nostalgia was so much better.”

You can fall into an internet sinkhole poking around at bulletin board thread and blog posts from a decade and a half ago and begin to feel like things were far superior in nearly every way way back when. 

Of course, that’s not really true and even if it seems so, that’s only because you were younger then, with stars in your eyes and piss and vinegar in your veins.  Everything appears brighter when it’s shiny and new; the world is merely a reflection of your own mental and emotional state; the better you are, the better it is, as well.

That said, I do miss those days when bike-riding and blogging seemed like they might be able to change the world for the better.  When there was still some reason to resist getting a cell phone.  And when it still seemed possible that climate change could be confronted.

I know that right now is the real now for lots of people, and in some ways, it is even for a 63 year-old like me.  But there was a time, not too long ago, when everything new seemed new, as opposed to now, when so much of it seems like old business that is finally being attended to.

Riding my bike home along the Burke-Gilman trail some twelve to fourteen years ago, I remember thinking that I was already nostalgic for the present time in which I was living.  I knew I would look back upon those days with bittersweet sentimentality, even as I was experiencing them.

These days don’t really feel like that; certainly, they are memorable, but if I had a time machine, today probably isn’t the day I’d set the dial for.

If I knew then what I know now, I’d want to not know then when I now know.  Ignorance isn’t really bliss, but the less you already know, the happier you’ll learn.