More Ways to Come to Grips with a Radically Changing World and to "Build 2020"

Adrian Molina is a hip hop artist, poet, futurist, educator, and thinker whose Build 2020 Manifesto: A People's History of the Future takes on such diverse topics as transhumanism, civil rights, mass action, economics, and peak oil, and sets them to beautifully produced tracks courtesy of a mutual friend, Eric "HipGnosis" Young.

Build 2020 is available for download at any price (including $0) and is truly priceless, deepening with each and every listen.

The final track, "Build 2020," spells out some of the many things that all of us need to do to take the power back and build a future worth having. They include seemingly mundane things like getting in shape, composting, bartering, learning to grow food, educating yourself and others on these subjects, etc. Here it is for your enjoyment and edification:

So take a listen, download all ten tracks, listen closely, pass them around, send Molina a few bucks in support (or get in touch and see how else you can help out), and take these ideas to heart. The world is changing around us, rapidly and radically, and we must do all we can to ensure that it moves in a direction that benefits all beings.

It really is up to us.


Special thanks to Molina and HipGnosis!

Ten Ways to Wrestle with a Rapidly and Radically Changing World

A while back I came upon an apparently defunct blog called Brainsturbator and spent a couple of weeks reading through the backlog of fantastic material posted there. One of the posts was so powerful and relevant that I have tacked up a modified, one-page version on my cubicle wall at work, right under a picture of Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty.

I check it regularly, seeing if I am putting the recommendations into practice. While I usually find that I am not, or at least not enough, I do that whole "start where you are" thing and hit the reset button, attempting once again to take a baby step or two in the right direction.

Here are the ten things, I recommend visiting the site for the full breakdown:

1. Practice is repetition is preparation is power.
   This might be the hardest for me. I have little discipline, and so I tend to get caught up in an interest, only to be swept away by the next, and so on. I will be exploring this further in the next couple of blog posts, I think.
   
   
2. Create situations that cannot be controlled.
   
   
3. Do not allow yourself to be controlled by situations.
   
   
4. Seek information, avoid arguments. Especially good to remember in the "someone is wrong on the Internet" world of pointless pedantry and faceless flame wars.
   
   
5. Seek predictive models, avoid explanatory models.
   
   
6. Become an autonomous cell.
   "Work for your community, independently and perhaps invisibly."
   
   
7. Don’t be a dickhead, and love thy neighbor.
   This is one of my favorites. And it is easier said than done, of course. And the anti-fascist in me has to ask, "Is the cop spraying mace in the face of a peaceful protester really my neighbor? How about the Wall Street hedge fund trader whose greed translates into real suffering for millions of people? Is he really my neighbor?"
   
   
8. Invest in tools and share them subversively.
   I am reminded of the tool libraries like the one in Berkeley, CA and the Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign, IL.
   
   
9. Become a Beacon of Insane Hope.
   Rob Brezsny springs to mind immediately, as do the late great Robert Anton Wilson and Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson. I also find that the "Christus Victor" interpretation of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of the bodhisattva both fit this description.
   
   
10. Please, be fearless.
    Chögyam Trungpa's Shambhala Training is a fine place to start, as are most martial arts. See point 1 above. Rinse, repeat.

Special thanks to Justin Boland for his work on the original Brainsturbator site!

Leaving Facebook

Not sure why, but it finally seemed like the right time to kill my Facebook account. Evidently it dawned on me that I was using Facebook for two primary reasons:

1. To put ideas out into the world that I think are worth sharing, discussing, contemplating, etc.
2. To connect with friends.

Neither of those reasons force me to use Facebook, though, and the latest blurb from Douglas Rushkoff, about how we are not Facebook's customers but its product, really hit home. I don't want to be Facebook's product. That sort of defeats the point of the things I post there. 

So back to the reasons I used Facebook.

Regarding the first point, I figured that I can just as easily share the sorts of articles and ideas here that I do on Facebook, and while fewer people may encounter them, those that do might be more included to contribute more than a "like" or a snide comment.

Regarding the second point, how many of my "friends" on FB are actually friends, how many are acquaintances, and how many were people I spoke to once in high school who remembered my name and tracked me down? Shutting down FB will mean more face to face conversations, more phone calls, more emails, and heck, maybe even a couple of hand-written letters. All of which are good things, especially if one of my goals is to build that elusive creature, community.

Anyhow, adios Facebook.

A system that leaves us helpless

Climate activist Tim DeChristopher talks about his guilty verdict:
"The big question for us at this point is how we as citizens are going to respond to [what those in power do to maintain the power, order, and security], what we as citizens are going to be willing to do to our fellow human beings in the name of just following the law. When the government tells us that it's not our job to question whether that law is right or wrong, as the judge did in this case to the jury, I think we need to be prepared for that moment, and make a more conscious decision of what we want our role to really be.... You could see it in [the jurors'] minds when they made that switch of accepting the fact that they weren't allowed to use their own conscience, and they had to make a certain choice, even if they thought it was immoral, and that's a really dehumanizing thing." [emphasis mine]




Under a Cloud in California, Charles Shaw:
"When the system we are told we must put our faith in and depend on leaves us helpless, and then mocks us for trying to help ourselves, it might be time to consider that perhaps its time to break from that system.... In an age of institutional failure, we--each other--are the solution to the problems we face, which are only, invariably, going to get worse, until we have finally shaken off the plague of the old world order and can proceed again with the business of living, this time, in the manner of our choosing."

My horoscopes for the week, courtesy of FWA

Props (and credits) go to Rob Brezsny at Free Will Astrology:

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):

The History cable TV channel has a reality TV show called "Ice Road Truckers." It documents the exploits of drivers who haul heavy loads in their 18-wheelers for long distances across frozen rivers and lakes and swamps in Alaska and northwest Canada. They bring supplies to remote outposts where humans work exotic jobs like mining diamonds and drilling for natural gas. If you have any truck-driving skills, Leo, you'd be a good candidate to apply for a gig on the show. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, your levels of courage and adventurousness will be at an all-time high in 2011. May I suggest, though, that you try to make your romps in the frontier more purely pleasurable than what the ice road truckers have to endure?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):

Pop chanteuse Katy Perry is renowned not only for her singing ability but also for her physical appearance. Her preternatural ability to sell her musical products can be attributed in part to her sparkling good looks and charisma. That's why it was amusing when her husband, the trickster Russell Brand, Twittered a raw photo of her that he took as she lifted her head off the pillow, awakening from a night of sleep. (See it at tinyurl.com/RealKaty.) Without her make-up, Katy's visage was spectacularly ordinary. Not ugly, just plain. In accordance with the astrological omens, Virgo, I urge you to do what Russell Brand did: expose the reality that lies beneath and behind the glamorous illusion, either in yourself or anywhere else you find a need.

The Dude calmly abides

From an excellent Utne Reader interview with Jeff Bridges, discussing a range of meat-and-potatoes topics, from Buddhadharma and Jesus to acting and feeding hungry kids to just sitting as a key component of both the spiritual path and the taking of a shit:

I noticed I had a resistance [to committing to do something to help children suffering from hunger] because I wanted to do other things with my time besides help people. So I said, Well, maybe let both of those things exist at the same time.

It’s like this. Preparing for a role, sometimes I’ll have to get in shape fast, lose a lot of weight. But I don’t want to work out so hard the first couple days that I’m sore and I don’t like it. I thought I would apply the same thing to this hunger work. I would go toward the light, so to speak, but if it got too bright and too intense, ’cause basically what it’s asking you is Be Jesus, be Buddha—give. And I’m not there. I’m not light yet. [Changes to a higher voice.] So just because you’re not there yet, are you not going to do it? [Cocks his head.] So I go toward the light, and if my selfishness comes up too much I’ll stop for a second. And then I’ll take little baby steps toward it. I like to experiment with myself, to go against habitual self-gratification. And then you try it and you say [high voice], Oh, hey, I kind of got off when I did that. That kind of felt good! It’s like taking a shit. Sometimes it’s best to just pick up a magazine and get in there and sit, rather than aaaaargh [mock straining]. It’ll kink up that way.

Indeed.

Three poems by José

In this weekend's CounterPunch, the Poet's Basement section published three poems by my good friend and dharma-brother José. The first poem, my favorite, is re-published below.

Wisdom is Not Half-Baked
by JOSÉ TIRADO


We can ask the seasoned
How to identify the Great Silence-
That moist-warm womb at the heart of things.
A prayer book might get passed,
The hands waved over heads,
A tender look, a bleating lamb given.
Monuments have been raised trying to pass that torch.
Lamps were lit. In the algid flat air of knowledge
An idea or two might resonate. Aphorisms sometimes worked, too.
Still the noble walk secure,
The Good, with nary a p.r. man
Along the trails, where trees grow proper.
Some sit, inviting the shade to teach.
It does. Illimitably lacking science or spires,
Sprouting from that center, settled
Beneath the branches,
Atop the roasting, fecund earth.

"Do we have a soul? What do you base your answer on?"

I just posted this response to the titular conversation on FB:

It seems that there is something about being alive, and more particularly, being human, that allows us to have experience and to be aware of our conscious experience. There also seems to be a real distinction between "my" conscious experience and "your" conscious experience. So to that extent, I think that we have "souls."

If we take that experience, and extrapolate to the broader conclusion that "my" experience means that there is an essential, unchanging "me" that moves from experience to experience, then I start to have intellectual and existential problems with that conclusion. How much of "me" can I lose before I am no longer "me"? If I lose a finger, or even all my limbs, most people would say I am still me. If I lost my entire body and was merely a brain in a jar enjoying a virtual life, would I still be "me"? If I am not my body, but am my mind, then how much of my mind can I lose before I am no longer me? My memories, my preferences, my habits, my use of languages, which of these parts is "me"? Am I the same "me" that I was before I became a parent, before I went to graduate school, before I had sex the first time, before I learned to drive, before I learned to speak, before I was born? If we believe that "I" will survive death, which "me" will live on? Me at 18? Me at 28? Me at 38?

I would add that this does not necessarily mean that I DON'T have a "soul" or some "essence" that won't live on after death. The universe is far stranger than we CAN suppose, to paraphrase Terence McKenna, and so I can't categorically deny that some Other may have the power or ability to restore "me" (like software, if you must) in the future. As some Christian apologists have pointed out, most of us have no problem accepting the theoretical possibility of the transporter on Star Trek. ("Beam me up, Jesus!") If the flickering, flowing nature of my current experience doesn't deny my felt experience of being an individual with consistent, if not unchanging, characteristics, then the restoration of this felt "me" in the future isn't impossible.

And even if I insist that it WERE impossible, by my own admission, I'm a talking monkey. So just who am I to insist to that hypothetical Other? As the aforementioned Terence McKenna adroitly pointed out, "For monkeys to speak of truth is hubris of the highest degree. Where is it writ large that talking-monkeys should be able to model the cosmos? If a sea urchin or a raccoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe, the absurdity of that assertion would be self-evident, but in our case we make an exception."

Ah the mystery of being human.

Please weigh in with your own thoughts on this question.

2010 Reboot - The Voyage Continues

Still walking the path, pondering a fuller commitment to Jesus and the "Body of Christ" via becoming a member of the local Mennonite church, wondering what this means about "seeing other people" spiritually. In light of this sort of commitment, is it possible to be a Buddhist-Christian, a Mennonite Freemason, and a rock-and-roll, shamanistic weirdo? Conversely, is it even possible for me to be something other than what I feel myself to be? Is my fear of commitment to one faith tradition a sign of legitimate fears of religious intolerance and exclusivity, a symptom of a larger cultural spiritual consumer mentality, or something else entirely? (I know members of this same Mennonite family who are comparative religion scholars, biology professors, and devotees of Sai Baba, so it is also quite obvious that "committed discipleship" is more complicated than it sounds and that I'm not the only one who must sort out these sorts of issues.)

I also wonder what G-d is all about. If there is an all-powerful, all-loving God in the sense that my parents and most other Christians understand there to be, then how do you explain stuff like this without being glib? Why does an impersonal Godhead seem more acceptable in the contemporary intellectual world than a personal, theistic God? Perhaps more importantly, what is it about a personal G-d that is less acceptable to me than an impersonal, panentheistic Godhead? What would it mean for G-d to be more than personal, rather than less?

For the time being, here are things for me to read for the journey:

Buddhism and Christianity

Through the Eastern Gate: From Tibetan Buddhism to Orthodoxy

Please weigh in with thoughts and suggestions.

Someone has to do this: A fool and clown for God and humanity's sake

clipped from www.denverpost.com Shortly before 8 a.m. Thursday, Carl Kabat arrived outside a N-8 Minuteman III nuclear missile silo near New Raymer in Weld County. He donned his signature clown costume and breached the fences that surround the silo. He hung banners on the fence. He kneeled in his yellow wig, his one-piece blue jumper adorned with patches and smiley faces and his outsized red shoes. And he prayed. "St. Paul says we are fools for God's sake. I change it to say we are fools and clowns for God and humanity's sake," he said, explaining the clown get-up. I never will forget his response when I asked him why he does such things, always landing himself in prison. "Someone has to do this," he said with a laugh, adding that the missiles he attacks are 20 times more powerful than the one that wiped out 100,000 people in Hiroshima. "Just one of those missiles could kill 2 million human beings. I have to do this."

(And for my nitpick friends, please overlook the foolish misspelling on his placard and get the point.)

The Buddhist approach to happiness, according to Pico Iyer

clipped from happydays.blogs.nytimes.com We can’t change the world except insofar as we change the way we look at the world — and, in fact, any one of us can make that change, in any direction, at any moment. You make your way to happiness not by fretting about it or trafficking in New Age affirmations, but simply by finding the cause of your suffering, and then attending to it, as any doctor (of mind or body) might do. Think in terms of enemies, he suggests, and the only loser is yourself. Happiness is not pleasure, they know, and unhappiness, as the Buddhists say, is not the same as suffering. Suffering — in the sense of old age, sickness and death — is the law of life; unhappiness is just the position we choose — or can not choose — to bring to it. True happiness, in that sense, doesn’t mean trying to acquire things, so much as letting go of things (our illusions and attachments).

Right Here, Right Now

Beautiful mash-up of Alan Watts & Chögyam Trungpa from YouTube:

Mathematician sculpts "shadow" of 4th dimension

clipped from www.physorg.com

From the linked story:

"The sculpture, designed by Adrian Ocneanu, professor of mathematics at Penn State, presents a three-dimensional 'shadow' of a four-dimensional solid object."

Wow. Just wow.

Seeing small, beautiful joys

This hangs over my desk at work, and I wanted to share it with all of you:

I am not accustomed to rejoicing in things that are small, hidden, and scarcely noticed by the people around me....

Somehow I have become accustomed to living with sadness, and so have lost the eyes to see the joy and the ears to hear the gladness that belongs to God and which is to be found in the hidden corners of the world....

[Seeing the small and beautiful] is a real discipline. It requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visible, and choosing for the truth even when I am surrounded by lies....The reward of choosing joy is joy itself....There is so much rejection, pain, and woundedness among us, but once you choose to claim the joy hidden in the midst of all suffering, life becomes celebration. Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy.

from The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Henri J. M. Nouwen

The practice of mediocrity

clipped from robertgdavis.blogspot.com By making un-extraordinary acts and behaviors our ordinary practice, we entrap ourselves from knowing how precious life really is. We don’t use opportunities that come our way as a means of expressing how special we really are. Instead, we walk the walk with the rest of the herd and soon find ourselves in such a deep rut of limitations we lose sight of our own value. We become trapped in mediocrity.

I am guilty (more than I would like to admit) of making mediocrity my ordinary practice.

Important Truths, according to David @ Raptitude

David at Raptitude has posted a series of Nietzsche-esque aphorisms, most of which (OK --- all of which) are real gems.

Each one is worthy of serious reflection, but due to the word limit of Clipmarks (and because David wrote these, not me --- you must visit Raptitude for the whole shebang), I've only been able to post a sample.

clipped from www.raptitude.com 16. Cynicism is far too easy to be useful. 17. Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours. 18. Whenever you hate something, it hates you back: people, situations and inanimate objects alike. 25. Putting something off makes it instantly harder and scarier. 27. Nobody knows more than a minuscule fraction of what’s going on in the world. It’s just way too big for any one person to know it well. 32. The greatest innovation in the history of humankind is language. 34. Everyone you meet is better than you at something. 35. Proof is nothing but a collection of opinions that match one’s own. 38. What makes human beings different from animals is that animals can be themselves with ease. 40. Whoever you are, you will die. To know and understand that means you are alive. 43. Almost every cliché contains a truth so profound that people have been compelled to repeat it until it makes you roll your eyes. But the wisdom is still in there.

Two salient comments on the passing of Michael Jackson

From The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan:

clipped from andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.

From Julian Vigo, in Counterpunch:

clipped from www.counterpunch.org I can only hope that Michael Jackson's death offers us all a moment of sobriety to reflect on how, what and why we believe the things we do as individuals and why our culture so often feeds off the fictions of negativity and violence produced by our media, rather than gravitate towards the dreams, the creativity and love that Jackson's music, dance, words and actions have given us all.

For Michael Jackson, and for the anonymous billions on this planet whose lives are twisted and warped by the satanic values of the global corporate capitalist culture, we must work to build a new culture in the shell of the old. May we turn from judging one another in order to avoid our own flaws and miseries, and instead gravitate toward dreams, creativity, love, forgiveness, and kindness.

The Sutra of the Crushed Volvo: Stuff, anxiety, and community

clipped from www.counterpunch.org I got an important reminder today that at least where the country’s economic crisis is concerned, it’s really mostly just about stuff. The reminder came in the form of a very large limb, about two feet in diameter, projecting out over my driveway from an ancient horse chestnut tree. The limb suddenly decided it had been hanging around long enough, and it just broke off, unannounced, and landed on top of my car.... A thing like this can be pretty depressing, but after a cold beer I got to thinking, “Heck, it’s just a car.” ... And so it is with our economic crisis. Homes are plummeting in value, jobs are being lost (magazines I have depended on for assignments have been folding or cutting back their freelance budgets). But most people have places to turn to—relatives, churches, friends, food stamps. Losing a house to foreclosure can seem like a tragedy, but it’s not terminal cancer. It’s stuff. Renting isn’t the end of the world. What makes our national crisis seem so terrible is that so many people have been so focused on their wealth, their possessions and their standard of living, we’ve stopped thinking of ourselves as part of a community. We see a house in foreclosure in the neighborhood, and we don’t think, “How terrible. I wonder if those people need help.” We just drive on by and go home to watch TV.... This all might seem a far cry from having a tree take out your old car, but my point is simply that a lot of what causes people to freak out these days in America is our fetishism of material goods. And a lot of our anxiety about the current crisis has to do with our loss of any sense of community.

May I remember that life is about love, relationship, forgiveness, compassion, and community.

Not stuff.

In praise of Golden Boy Peanuts

Occasionally I'll hear a catchy song that celebrates the wondrous ordinariness of life, a stellar example being the song "Gold Boy Peanuts" by the Mountain Goats. Apropos of nothing, I found the chorus bouncing around in my head a few minutes ago,

there are no pan asian supermarkets down in hell
so you can't buy golden boy peanuts
there are no pan asian supermarkets down in hell
so you can't buy golden boy peanuts

and decided I wanted to hear the actual song, rather than just my mental reconstruction. A few Google searches later, and I'm still without the song (which is no real bother--I have the original Object Lessons:Songs about Products EP at home), but as a consolation I stumbled across this wonderful description of the song and its lyrics:

The Golden Boy peanut becomes the main attraction on the flashy streets of heaven. It is the reason for life—that elusive thing everyone searches for and few find. Don’t squeeze life for meaning anymore. Take a jaunt to your local pan-Asian supermarket and it can be yours for a low, low price.

The peanut seems like a good choice for ultimate meaning. Unassuming, nutritive, delicious. Why not? I’m not sure that life is best captured by the moments of high drama and intrigue. A huge percentage of it is occupied by thinking about food, staring at walls, and laughing senselessly. Why not valorize these small experiences over the scarce moments of capital-letter life (Bravery, Courage, Love, and the like)? Maybe we wouldn’t be in such a stressful hurry to do something Meaningful if we valued peanuts (literally and metaphorically).

In “Golden Boy,” The Mountain Goats cordially invite us to remember these wonderful little details of a day, to exalt and worship them. Do so and your heart will fill with lovely minutia until it overflows and spills red confetti on the dirty back of a winter street.

"There are no pan-Asian supermarkets down in hell."

Indeed.

The Ties that Bind

This beautiful, short sermon by the Rev. Scott Gerard Prinster (UU) reminded me of how crazily blessed my life has been, and how many of those blessings can be credited (or blamed, depending on my mood) to my parents.

Nothing has made me appreciate these often challenging blessings more than being a father myself. (Being a dad also revealed the constantly changing perspectives that growing and maturing afford you, particularly if you're willing to pay attention. Suddenly I was far more compassionate for my parents than I'd ever been in my pre-parent days.) I never really understood what my Mom and Dad meant when they said "I love you" until I said it to my daughter. It's like having a supernova right below my sternum, an explosion of bittersweet wonder and joy. Coming full circle, round 1.

The puzzle of our identities is indeed more complex than we want to admit, and how much of it is attributable to our folks, to their strengths and failings, we'll probably never know. So here's to you, Mom and Dad!

clipped from clf.uua.org I’ve also come to see that manhood is a changing state rather than a fixed set of qualities. In older adulthood, the man my father has become is almost nothing like the caricature I once created. Last week he left a phone message telling me that he was drinking green tea from the coffee company I had introduced him to. Green tea? Maturity has made us increasingly alike, and I’m grateful that my father is now both a man I like and one I don’t mind being like.

You can listen to the sermon here.