“When goodness is lost, it is replaced by morality” - Lao Tzu
We live in a time when goodness, if not lost, can certainly be difficult to understand. Not because we are not surrounded by good people, places and things. However from the love of profit, the unscrupulous amongst us have monetized as much as they can lay their hands on, including each keystroke i make now - however faint. Whether that is right or wrong, i cannot say, but i know it is not moral. In a moral world, ideas and the communication medium within which they wander would not bear a cost, for they would be recognized for the benefit which those concepts would provide a curious public: information about how to grow with purpose, how to raise happy humans, or even how to prepare nutritious meals would be freely developed and exchanged. Prior to the “civilized” model of human existence, people lived and survived well, within a vast spectrum of environmental conditions, but without the conceit of good, better and best. The early humans knew that when the game was not killed, or the crop did not yield, hunger would follow. Today, nearing the latter part of my existence - my bigger concern is not if i can find food but whether the units of measure i use to buy what i need will evaporate as result of governmental fraud, or the complete collapse of the “economy” from mismanagement and bad faith. I have done as i was socialized to do - worked, married, bought houses & many things along with paying taxes: on all my bank accounts beginning in the 5th grade, on my wages beginning at age 14, on all purchased items through sales tax, (for cars alone a figure that numbers in the 10s of thousands), for automotive registration, for licensing, for insurance . . . etc., etc., etc. We live in a world dominated by computer power, but there is no application that i’m aware of which easily distinguishes what you spend and what you pay for in tax. Why is that? I think it is because Mark Twain was right, “There are lies, damnable lies and there are statistics”. Statistics, like corporations and the ruling class are not given to scruples.
It is difficult for me to conceive what that state of mind might be like. Once i began to wonder about why i was paying for a home which i had to leave daily, plus the cost of storage space for items i might need but couldn’t fit where i lived, i then began to doubt the wisdom of my socialization. Sadly there were many years lost while i blamed my plight on ________ fill in the blank. Whether that was right or wrong, i cannot say, but i can say it was not a morally defensable position - if guilt is a valid condition, the responsibility was and remains mine alone. What i cannot fathom is what it means if the government steals my contribution to my own social security, or the bank fails which with great moral reservation i allow to utilize my deposits. This is a conundrum of personal responsibility, for to rectify either of these precarious conditions requires i do something to protect what is mine - in the parlance of late stage survivalists - self reliance. That is a paradox; if i use a bank believing the fiction of an “economy”, and capitalize on my political franchise as a citizen - the roles i was raised to believe in and support would result in my independence, but by all accounts these same entities are not not only not keeping faith, they are actively participating in the impoverishment of my wealth and the disenfranchisement of my freedoms along with apparently the entire population of the world. Ironically these same mooks are doing the same to all those sellouts they have on FuckTheWorld Inc. payroll. I can’t say whether this is right or wrong, but it is definitely not moral. Morality as i understand it includes the kindness one pays to a dying human being, the gentleness one gives to an infant or the care of all that protects our fragile organisms in this bubble of air we call home. What is not moral is beating a man on the ground, stealing from those who have nothing or wrecking the world that is all we have to leave the unborn amongst us.
How can we as a species, who can build a pyramid that aligns with galaxies we cannot see; peer beyond our toenails to the very molecules at birth which dictate the color and length of those toenails; or pluck from air the vibrations of a Mozart piano concerto, not restrain the wholly destructive behavior of a handful of human beings from our population? That is a question. I do not believe it is enough to simply refrain from destructive behavior, it is very important to propagate non-destructive loving behavior indiscriminately. We are beyond the point in our extinction where we can pick and choose those with whom we will share our concept of morality. The first human being you have a moral obligation to, is yourself. Hatred, greed and delusion have been proven to be destructive states of being to the fragile cellular membrane we occupy, yet the number of other people i know, and i know a lot of people, who could be said to be free of these self-destructive conditions are 0 - 1, the one includes myself in the count. The most evolved people i have ever read or known of can only have learned the benefits of living free from these limitations of the human condition by confronting their own capacity for such. “There is no eradicating evil, for every new solution creates a new evil” - Sheldon Kopp via The Eschatological Laundry List, or phrased differently “The meaning of life - one damn thing after another” - D.E. Tuppins. The delusion of a saintly human being might be a good starting point for the liberation of our collective spirit. Does this mean we have a license for mayhem, clearly we do, otherwise we would no longer entertain war as a means of improving our world. Even the “awakened” ones amongst us use the metaphor of spiritual warrior to characterize their otherwise benign efforts to save us from ourselves, so deep is our love affair with war. Nor is enlightened self-interest an adequate enough concept to to avert the coming cataclysm, how could it in a world able to coin the expression “disaster capitalism” faster than people are able to comprehend the meaning of the word - disaster?
Hatred is a far more complex feeling than the cartoon pejorative we have been carefully cultivated to rely on. It is at its root - aversion. By this definition to my chagrin, i remain a hater at heart recoiling down the street, sometimes bouncing away from people, places or things for no reason at all - but powerfully, just the same. How can that be? Is there such a state of existence where, minus the silly shit-eating grin one finds on the faces of acolytes, there is such a thing as steady state attraction? Oddly that is how i picture the megalomaniacs, sort of like sharks who are also unable to back up because the design of their gills would suffocate them. Corporate CEOs contain one of the largest demographics of sociopaths, oddly opposite the logic of the CIA bureaucratic org chart which according to one optimistic analyst has the sociopaths occupying the operative lower rungs, while managers lead - possessing the more wholesome mental makeups - whatever that means. Any of these considerations discussing our moral decay neglects the only really important point - what’s it gonna take for mankind to survive¿ It would be so easy if this were a novel, or movie - you just plug in Deus ex Machina, and presto the skies open; a miracle occurs; our heroes and heroines are back alive and there’s a chicken every pot. Yet, our world is accelerating the production of plastic at a time when it is projected there will be more plastic in the ocean than there are fish within the next twenty - thirty years - an ocean which since 2011 has received 300-400 tons of radioactive water each day - with no end in sight. Yeah, instead of Deus we get Shakespeare - “Hell is empty, and all the devils here.” This might be a good time to accept the fact that our characters are not angelic, and dying ain’t gonna change that fact. What then? I say we peer deeply into the abyss and be as Ben Franklin had described himself, “perhaps i’m an optimistic pessimist - prepare for the worst, but when the very worst doesn’t happen, i’m pleasantly surprised.”
I don’t know what is right anymore, for i am unsure of the bumptious aversion meter that has guided so many of my steps through this world. I do know it would be very wrong of me to not do my level best to try and aid the refugees from the coming collapse of our world as we understand it, if for no other reason than i am a refugee; we all are. Simplify Simper Fi might be a good start, rather than “always faithful”, we might become “ever skeptical”. Let us actually rely on ourselves once again for our perceptions - the screen is fake, the puppeteers behind the screen are fake, the person in front of you, sneering, leering or leaving is more real than anything you will find here or out there. Look to your insides, tend to your wellbeing - does that friend resemble an ad, or flawed family dynamic, then embrace that, fucked up feelings and all - let the discomfort soak in. There is no place else for us to go. If we do not discover a way to protect our planet before we protect ourselves there will be no lives to protect, for we will have perished from the face of the earth, all of us - 7 billion souls, just like anyone of the species we have destroyed since the beginning of the “industrial revolution” which just like all revolutions promised much and delivered little. The revolution that is left to us is the battle of the two wolves from Indian lore. One benign, generous and loving for our world and all that is in it, the other vicious, selfish and hateful. They engaged in a lifelong battle for your soul - the one that wins, is the one you feed. Only the stakes are no longer for your life alone, we are now all of us making decisions that will determine whether there will be a continuation of our species. It is said that Jesus returned from the great beyond, and from this return we have justified one war after another, never coming close to applying his lessons. If that is the end product of immortality i think i’ll take my chances on finding friends here on earth and having some fun doing the best i know how - if that is wrong, at least i had a little fun doing it.
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right - the sonnet
I was right once, for about a second,
then i was born to ma for a lifetime -
to hear her tale, two lifetimes, she’d reckon.
It’s just like her to double a good time.
I once had rights, ’til i learned otherwise.
“True” they said, but you do this, this happens.
Too often, what i’ve wanted was not wise,
though it depends on how you use the lens.
I was just told i was delirious,
nor would he be wrong, for i’m more than not,
and much more “left” then i am dexterous.
Ma’s dilemma, me the gordian knot.
i can’t cure her illness, for it is age
but can honor her life and burn some sage.
jts 03/05/2018
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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