greed

Courtesy of native-languages.org :

"Wašicun - wašin icu" (the white man, takes all the fat.) Wordplay is common in the Sioux languages.

While growing up, my family had 6: 3 boys and a tough-as-nails sister; both parents were “depression era babies,” so my friend Lyles’ expression “no blood, no foul” could well describe the otherwise genteel mealtime table my mother aspired to. The expression “slow down, nobody’s gonna take it away from you” seems quaint in the days we are living with talking heads formulating remarkable insights about when we can expect the “water wars” to commence and where. Even as I struggle to express how astonished I am that my nation is ranked second to last for childhood poverty in developed nations, my mind falters at how something so utterly unnecessary as poverty could exist in a world capable of repeatedly landing our species on other worlds, but cannot restrain a confused hunger for too much? The scale of grasping sadly now far exceeds any parallel to appetite or really any human image save that of the truly deranged. The blind pursuit of “more” has taken on other worldly aspects which with the resources available to such extreme power, real or perceived is transforming what had once been a largely humane planet into a pustulated reflection of its former self.

Not that the cultural compass of our lauded poets and artists hasn’t at times complicated matters with potent images of riches, power and splendor rewarded for heroic efforts against impossible odds. Nor is the unreasoned grasping characterized by greed restricted to wealth and power; I’m 3 times married and when she once again shows me the error of my ways, it’ll be 4. Does this make me greedy as Leonard Cohen sings of needing “ .  . so much to have nothing to touch, I’ve always been greedy that way . . “ ? As an aging fine artist content to dictate the pace and access of my work, I’m guilty of greed and would have been whither way I turned - japing for the art industrialists or as I do, savoring the deeper recesses of our feeble consciousness while trying to fathom what cave artists knew - who defines what is greedy? In the opening line of William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell he wrote “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” and we’ll never know what he might have said about Bill Gates’s achieving the remarkable feat of owning $1,000,000,000,000 one trillion dollars; back in the day, think 1980’s, the example for any Rockefeller was if you started saving $1,000 a week from the time of Christ you still wouldn’t be as rich - approximately $104 million. To mimic Mr. Gates you’d have to have started saving $1,000 a week better than 19 million years ago or roughly the beginning of the Miocene Epoch. 

The drive to amass more than you can use is unfortunately the flip side to the poet’s coin; and were a 3 headed coin possible, that added face might reflect the ceaseless shoveling of food, or liquor for the alcoholic, or needles for the addict. The arrogance of appetite that drives a human soul to own a brand new Ferrari while mothers protected by plastic trash bags mop up the Ebola Virus is the same contempt for the human spirit which motivates a violently connected multinational corporation (comprised of breathing humans) to reduce regenerative seeds to a single crop for gain, or find a profitable purpose for owning the Ebola Virus. This behavior is a perversion from the original utility for provisioning that drove our species to harness waterways and cultivate food in communities. That cooperation for the greater good has been twisted into the fallacy that we are incomplete, whether that be from an existential vacuum or financial vulnerability. Lao Tzu says the objective of existence is to defeat want, to know satisfaction with what you have and this confuses me, for he also says the 3 greatest treasures are simplicity, patience and compassion. I read of those three treasures and wonder about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s admonition, “moderation in all things, especially moderation.” From which treasures are we to be free of want, “simplicity, patience and compassion” or the filthy lucre the haters dangle out of reach like a carrot on a stick for our modern day horse and carriages. If for some odd reason Lao Tzu was laughing at posterity and advocating we free ourselves from civil restraint, would we be free to unleash our rancor on the heads of our oppressors raining down but again another human revolution and it’s illusion for change except in this revolution it won’t be workers of the world unite, but “Lord of Flies” meets George Orwell.

Is it greedy to demand justice or attack the ruling class with any leverage possible, even logic? I shun any belief that equates punishment with justice, up to and including the traditional drawing and quartering as punishment for endangering a ship and its crew - we are a ship and they the billionaires have put our vessel in great peril. Some number of the 1,467 billionaires on this planet of 7 billion human beings pose the greatest single threat to our survival. They must be brought up on a short leash, as in given a one room walkup with no more to live on than what is paid the local kindergarten teacher. It is what my uncle Dwayne recommended to me as a young thrasher - “if you are jumped by any number of others, you begin with the biggest of the cowards and work your way down,” but Socrates has said “The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but in building the new.” To me this says find a way to supplant the illusion of material wealth with an insatiable desire to “make the world a little better than you found it” - Aunt Jane. I have tried with this essay to better understand greed and so help the world. I am no closer to understanding, so if I can’t help myself, how will I help you? What I am doing is what HH the Dalai Lama advocated which is “if you cannot help, at least do no harm.”

When someone or some entity has demonstrated antagonism to your wellbeing, but then experiences a reversal of fortune; it is still misfortunate, for to take pleasure in suffering of any kind is simply self-righteous greed. Until we are able to disconnect from the desire for payback we will be divided and conquered. The mistaken concept of a balance sheet for violence, but not one for the dignity of life and the welfare of all people is a curiosity. Not so much for the stupidity of eye for an eye, but how easily people are diverted from the problem at hand - justice and adequate resources distributed fairly to the greatest number of people. There is no other overarching demand in the world we live in, not spiritual, economic, or political, not even what happens next on Dr. Who. We as a species are about to perish for the sin of having docilely satisfied the perverse demands of a handful, large handful, of amoral sociopaths who by luck and and circumstance have convinced themselves that having more than they know what to do with at the expense of 7 billion other humans beings is scientific confirmation of survival of the fittest, or some such shit. I’m old, older than you Bill Gates, so whenever you are are up for it I’m challenging you to fisticuffs; name the time and place, Queensberry Rules, or no; as many rounds as it takes . Know this Bill, I am not calling you out because I wish you to suffer at my hand, or because I’m mocking your self-serving incompetence, but because one) I say I got more heart than you; two) I’m willing to prove it, 3) Uncle Dwayne said to start with the biggest and work your way down - Uncle Dwayne was a standup guy and I want to help you learn what it is to be standup; be not afraid - I’ll stop when you fall down or say “uncle.”

p.s. does this essay make me greedy ?

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ignorance

We die; nothing is going to change that fact. A description of the unknown quality of that fact has occupied the greatest minds of our world from Cave Painting to String Theory with a vast array of assertions and guarantees made; the one thing that seems to be clear, we are not very comfortable with our ignorance. The dilemma is that much of our existence depends on us knowing something which impairs the incentive for getting comfortable with our ignorance; further complicated by those believing we are ignorant; those who want to make us ignorant, and those who remain willing to share their ignorance. I search for the latter, for they are more fun to be with when exploring the world; I feel safer when others don’t hide things, which is not to be confused with someone making declarations of self-importance - a good sign of a lack of self-awareness. Why for example does someone drive slow in the fast lane? It is common sense to not interfere, but like leaving a shopping cart in the middle of an isle in the market is common sense which it turns out is not all that common. I find there is a wide spectrum for reasons for most lapses in common sense from deliberate to oblivious. Oblivious obstruction is more akin to the physics of an avalanche - it do or it don’t; where a deliberate obstruction has the overtone of cruelty, meanness or spite. 

As a young squire these nuances were lost on me and duly believed sharing logic would remake the world. I modeled behavior as one does coming from a family of teachers - opening doors for ladies, making way for others in a hurry. Not extraordinary gestures, more gallantries made quaint by ruling class doctrine and demands that correlate clocks with time. Still the plan seemed manageable and cost little, but my ignorance did not prepare me for the intransigence of the vulgar nor the subconscious demand for cruelty prompted by the media rainbow maker and its illusion that caboose of the “income inequity train” can actually be caught. At that tender age I was still trying to reconcile the noble fictions of youth with the hypocrisy of the “greatest generation” and its ham fisted assault on the sovereign nation of Viet Nam - a nation the size of Delaware. It seems now in retrospect that the armistice of WWII included surrender by America’s bankers to the Fuhrer’s Chancellors in exchange for instruction manuals for the capture of a democracy - but that’s another essay. We’re trying to find a better understanding of ignorance for the danger it represents to our collective future. Today there are extremely powerful well financed individuals/entities spending great amounts of money cultivating adjustable levels of ignorance for the entire world population. Though it has always been thus, it is much easier to accomplish using the internet and people’s natural inclination to want to know, or believe what they know - still a monkey see monkey do world - plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes.

Great sages from Socrates to Lao Tzu have stated knowledge is not external but an internal awareness, not a set of laws to be codified and memorized as with “no child left behind” and its reliance on rote memorization or the outcome based model of “teaching to the test.” Yet if the sages were accurate and it is what we each know to be true in our hearts that is important, what of the deadly consequences of our information/secrecy based economy? We have children mathematicians/metadata analysts claiming the capacity to define the deeper recesses of the human heart based on that person’s keystrokes. And we are putting the noose around our necks with many people taking and  believing the results of the ubiquitous internet personality tests proliferating on interactive but not media screen? People wouldn’t be taking the tests if they had been trained to hear their own hearts; the same truism which says the world may only be understood except by observation and that tentatively - “believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.” How then to merge the perceptions from the senses with the only knowledge we have any control over - our own hearts and minds. I see monster armies bombing families into submission using my tax dollar. I object strenuously to what I see while begging to be corrected with logic - it changes little, but I feel better. I require greater discipline to manage the feeling of futility which result from leaning into such misery. Like the young swain modeling behavior, I want to believe such havoc can be arrested through concerted open discussion, but I am still ignorant if only more so save one lesson that was tattooed on the inside of my skull after not one but many drunken escapades - the only control I have is over myself, and that not at all when allowed in the company of beautiful women - a clue, they are all beautiful. 

Ignorance is hard to explain and impossible to obscure. In my travels I’ve met those who believe their power is baed on knowledge they have and you don’t, which to my thinking makes them ignorant. There are those who seek knowledge by sharing what they don’t know, Michel Montaigne for example developed the concept of essay, which means to attempt or aim. It may be that our world’s current destructive balance is suspended between these two states knowing and not knowing. Lao Tzu said in effect: if you want to enlighten the world, awaken all the parts of yourself, and if you want to eliminate suffering in the world, eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself; the greatest gift you can give the world is self transformation. Using the logic of Lao Tzu someone wishing to hide the truth can only hide what they believe to be knowledge or information - the con (We can’t tell you what we do with what we know about you from our database, because then you would understand how little we know about what we are doing.) - and I know this is gonna piss off some seekers of truth, but (we can’t make graffiti clear, because then you’d know how lazy we are about learning the long history of human-crafted, universe-provided beauty and the real struggle formulate a finer form.) The seeker of knowledge can be recognized by what s/he doesn’t know, not much different than I feel trying to make this aspect of the process for thinking clear; but it boils done to an engineering argument 30 years ago: Russell P____ who was made physically ill by my to-this-day belief that knowledge is infinite rather than finite.

In the final analysis it may be useful to cogitate on a statement by HH the Dalai Lama: “when you believe everything is someone else’s fault you will suffer a lot.” We all know in our hearts, at least those those blessed with empathy ( 99% of the world’s population ) how important love and nurturing are. The havoc of our world can only be attributed to the sad truth we have not loved enough, and I place myself at the top of that list. Writing 5 essays on the Four Riders of the Apocalypse seems a peculiar way to love or transform oneself for the better, yet like deep a consideration of dying will never alter the inexorable decay life, just the act of staring into the abyss is preferable to any nagging suspicion that maybe 70 virgins is like all the other bribes from the hated Mullah, or where the vindictive Vicar threatened you with Hell being same as when he threatened the secretary her paycheck in exchange for sex. My sense is the abyss and terror of death will be like Leonard Cohen’s “something old, but always new,” or even Bob Dylan’s “greasy trail;” whatever form it takes I feel better for having sought some light of knowledge from my own inside as to why there is suffering in a world with so many human beings that know what it is to love and be loved but aren’t. I am as okay as I can be with that choice; unless you are not loving because you have abdicated your heart to a doctrine or abandoned it to the will of another - be that romantic or religious, for anyone that would demand sovereign over the only gage we as humans have for discerning fact from fiction is suspect, and conversely anyone that asks me to looks as deeply into my heart to know the truth of existence is someone or something I will stand by even give up my life to for no other reason than to be safe for just that instant in the continuum.

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hate

I have wasted more time than i am comfortable admitting immersed in the corrosive vacuum of hate, and i’m not a hater. Why would anybody, given the vast array of choices in this human experience, waste time or focus on hate? I maintain that if we don’t find a way to transmute this venomous emotion into constructive heartfelt hard work we’re fucked - some people will hate me for saying that; not the content of the stated idea, but the use of the word “fuck.” I hate that we can be so easily distracted by inflammatory language, and still people will be more offended that I swore than any expression of hatred I’ve made. Anger, rage, ire come upon you like the ocean slamming to shore or trickled like death from a thousand cuts, but it still arises and dissipates like ebb & flow of tidal waters - hate is different because it must be tended with attention, strategy, and justification. Anger is something one can quiet with patience and kindness - hatred has legs and will travel miles or centuries to satisfy its blood lust, for what . ? At least with anger one can enjoy the visceral primeval gut feeling in a world gone numb, however necessary it may be to overcome, transmute, tame, cajole or abandon: whereas hate is a choice you make to preserve it, cart it, dilute, or assign it. Hatred has no substance of its own. It relies on the good offices of its host to share and propagate otherwise it withers and fades unable to attract the life force which anger is an intrinsic part of.

For this reason hatred has never held a place high in my imagination or given much credence in the world I seek. Its adherents tend to be weak-minded and lazy rarely demonstrating much initiative for ameliorating those pockets of pus which hatred holds close to its cankerous heart. However, hatred is also a covert coward knowing it can only take form as a reflection of the life force available to its close companion anger and is often difficult to tell one from the other. Hatred is the more insidious of the two for the simple reason it must be preserved and passed on to be of any use. I cannot fathom how that might be accomplished given the toxic nature of this emotion. It has taken an act of will for me to write on the subject and that only for its destruction or neutering. Which is not to say I’ve lived free of destructive and quite dark fantasies. Someone once advocated that to have any thought is “okay,” the danger is in acting on that thought. For a time it was liberating to be sanctioned for animal thinking, as much a relief from guilt for contemplating the destruction or harm of/to another. There is zero value and great cost to conduct violence of any kind, which should only be resorted to as Lao Tzu has said “with great sadness“ when faced with no other choice - there’s always another choice .  .  

Lao Tzu formulated his ideas when it was not possible to sit at a console in Nevada and blow up a car and family anywhere in the world. Physical violence today is merely an extension of the shrill hateful demands on what you should feel or think which replaced conversations we used to have. I prefer dialogue but in lieu of that social pleasure I resort to the internet or what’s left of it to advocate love. There is a duality to our predicament, and though the choice to love may seem “lofty,” it is more practical. There are cataclysms cascading into our future needlessly for, from and to hateful ends. The level of violence that sits at the end of a joystick is only an expression of our culture’s immersion in hate, and should not be confused with either strength or power. Never in the history of our planet has war, what is now “chronic war” achieved anything except a path to the next war. The talking heads only seem to disagree whether we should be walking in single file, pell mell or scurrying hurly burly. When a creature attacks, you fight or run; but even the destructive capacity of empire is useless against the onslaught of love, for love describes contentment and satisfaction which are anathema to the consumer pimps and their cloying media whimper about how you need to achieve what they have - with my apologies to pimps everywhere.

Yet even in the instance of a sustained attack or grievous injury you are a dead man if you succumb to hate or believe there is any reason for destruction other than to encourage growth. Socrates had said “the secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old but on building the new.” I used an example of a necrotizing spider bite for provocation in an essay on ire, for fear rage and anger are all close cousins. When I understood this creature, or creatures were able to inflict a wound which would cause my flesh to feed on itself it was not hatred for this or any other thing which compelled me to heal, it was love, of life, the power of healing even love for the poor creature bringing me the lesson likely at the cost of its own life. However, there is no lock on fighting hate: “It is not possible to eradicate evil for every solution breeds a new problem” Sheldon B Kopp’s “Eschatological Laundry List.” For example, statistically the mosquito is the most deadly of all creatures to the human race, a fact about to be reversed once Monsanto and Bedbug Inc agree to terms for its hosting the Ebola Virus. The a steep rise in cost for fresh water has created market demand for a more efficient method to cull the herd.

Yes it is true - hatred, my own. Having hosted a bedbug hive, I struggle to excoriate the pernicious venom of hate infecting my heart; monsatan - well, any entity that would interrupt the regeneration of seeds for profit is lower than a bedbug, and you know how I feel about them. Hate traipses through the landscape in camouflage, dressed up as reason and adhered to through coercion but remains no more than an exclamation mark to Bertrand Russell’s irrefutable point - “love is wise - hatred is foolish.“ Buddha said of hate “a poison one drinks expecting someone else to die. Love is not just the antidote to rancor; love is all we have left to echo any frequency of value into the ether. Our ability to become aware of not just our own mortality but also our role in the potential destruction of our species will only gain “legs” through a determination to care for unborn generations whom we have by sins of commission or omission thus far consigned to lives of depravation and torment unknown to the human experience; besides everyone knows the prettiest girls don’t do haters .  .  

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