I am not - an expert; i have at times thought myself one - but no longer. It’s only fair to you that i share this now so you may continue your search for one, if that is what you were searching for. Nor am i immune from the allure of consulting an expert, or taking an expert’s advice at face value, but now resist the absurd assumption that anyone could know more than i do about the question i have asked. Certainly there are members of the audience who are more familiar with the chemical makeup of Jupiter, or can say off the top of their head which 3 countries have the highest per capita post graduate degrees within the population, but i have to ask “so what”? There is no school that i’m aware of which offers a Doctoral in Self Awareness - not being an expert at either self awareness or post graduate degrees, it is entirely possible one could become a doctor of “Self Awareness,” but then what¿ It’s hardly a marketable skill, besides what industries would hire an expert on self awareness, and what would they do even if they found a job? One would think in a world filled up to the brim with experts, such an industry would have long since been established. Makes ya’ kind of wonder about the usefulness of experts. Still in a world where one cannot open a screen without being persuaded about something - from personal deodorant to whether Hillary was an agent of Satan, it is natural to expect a greater degree of tranquility than the transient spikes of reality one might sift in between the massive advertising influx we now enjoy thanks to deneutralizing of the internet by the real experts of our world - the advertisers.
I’m not sure i would even become an expert again given the chance. It’s a tremendous fiduciary responsibility - at times i think it is the insurance industry’s actuary tables that drives the need for expert leadership. If the actuary table says you gonna die at 57, there has to be somebody on staff that can explain why you did not. While navigating my way through the career minefield, it has been fairly frustrating to possess a natural curiosity about most things but finding most trades have established expert requirements which entails schooling, which entails money; i am mostly glad i do not have to place graduate of _rump University on my resume, although the more difficult alma mater might have been Florence Ursala Taylor University - ole' FUT U. We’re lucky to be living in times when knowledge no longer has the cache it once had. I picture growing up and someone declaring there is a gyre of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean three times the size of France. Firstly, someone might even have known what a “gyre” was, but secondly if you inhabited the “free world”, such a declaration would most likely have been held up as a communist conspiracy, or if you lived within the communist block, such news would be used as an example of western decadence and capitalist inefficiency. Experts can be found to testify about most anything, except what is. No one knows that; so like the drunken husband with something to hide, we stumble from one assertion to the next all the while, the savvy wife (our decaying world and its plastic gyres) simply peers into his degenerate heart and then weeps silently inside at the travesty which life has made of her love.
We know today what we are supposed to know; what we are losing is the capacity to understand its meaning. Everyone who possesses affect, is faced with fleeting senses about the world. This awareness expands with more and more experiences which we use to inform our judgements; unfortunately, these same experiences are filtered through the input of those we have selected as experts. My mother and father were my go-to experts while growing up and that is a difficult influence to modify. Yet over time, it has become clear that their estimation about events, particularly those pertaining to my own emerging self awareness contradicted my own beliefs. According to the experts this is a normal process known as individuation, i can’t say how that process has gone for ma, but pa is dead; so that aspect of my process has gone as far as it could using real time input - as though it were a neatly wrapped package complete with beginning and end. As an experience, however indistinct, the ability to stand alone has meant everything, including my willingness to scrutinize its utility using this essay. For too long during this inchoate struggle to differentiate authority from self knowledge it was a war, sometimes with both parents and sometimes running battles with one or the other. Like most things of enormous import, we pretend in preparation. I substituted different authorities who concurred with my assertions about whatever: relationships, drugs, education, faith. But all the while there was a gnawing sense of dishonesty about another’s undue influence. Anytime i abdicated my own agency in favor of someone else’s belief it usually turned out badly. However the reverse is equally as true, each time i assumed responsibility for my decisions, a part of me grew, not necessarily in power, but awareness.
This has resulted in making me a better student of good advice, for any unwillingness to hear the wisdom of others is the mark of a weak mind. One indication of good advice is understanding the advisor’s ability to set aside self-interest, or more accurately a capacity to advocate for the greater good. If someone’s sole interest is your betterment, that probably comes with a hook, whereas when the logic of any recommendation could as easily apply to all, that tells you something. Another aspect of advice is how invested is the advisor in his/her own advice. The path to expert status is expensive and time consuming. Malcom Gladwell states in his book “Outliers” that anyone can become a master of something with 10,000 hours of practice. As a child of the 60’s, i’ve heard some pretty astonishing theories, but that is just weird. It stands to reason you are going to improve the more times you practice anything, but whence stems this maniacal urge to codify the process. I suspect it has something to do with insurance actuary tables but am unwilling to spend 10,000 hours devoted to proving that theory. How many young pianists read that quote in some self-help blog and abandoned the pleasure of a life of music simply because the haste that accompanies adolescence whispered “no”? Early on while searching careers to sustain my passion for carving stone, i thought of becoming a barber. What better way to grow smarter about the human head than cutting hair? Pop put the kibosh on that idea, just as he had looked into my impressionable face and declared, “you’re not a painter, you’re a sculptor.” There is nothing wrong with paying careful attention to a parent’s advice, except that Bob Dylan also described it as “oozing out of my ears.” Anytime we neuter our own ability to hear ourselves clearly and honestly, we do the world a disservice.
The older i get the more convoluted becomes reality. There is the promise of the ever-after which has kept us at each other’s throats since we decided it was a good idea to seize resources not rightfully ours; If i believe that my god is the keeper of the keys to the ever after kingdom, it only makes good sense for me to control your wealth. Then there is the high-minded ambition of creating “civilization” as opposed to allowing 1st nation cultures to educate their own children, utilize their own resources or preserve their own culture. Which brings us full circle to the “crux of the biscuit” - Frank Zappa, the “Economy.” This contraption that grew up around the industrial revolution is now being uploaded into the cerebral cortexes of lab rats in preparation for saving humanity for the experts, and that is enough for me. I’ve worked with experts who could devise methods for target acquisition on a black battlefield at night in the snow, but who also believed because their pastor - an expert - said “that god is a republican; poor people are evil and satan is a black lesbian”. These same people whom i have worked closely with who were loving parents, good friends and devote christians. The economy, as it stands today, represents a system of mindless extraction oblivious to consequence. This is not consistent with our physical universe. Our species exists because conditions were such that our environment fostered development, of our bodies, our minds and our future. However that same genius that giveth, can and shall taketh away. While walking yesterday, it occurred to me that no one knows whether the first domino to fall in climate change isn’t a breathable atmosphere. We have a cadre of AWOL captains of industry, using hired-gun “experts” to declare that fossil fuel, glyphosate and constant surveillance are necessary for the economy: how much more crazy is that than positing that what we don’t know about our future is simply resulting in less and less and less . . . breathable air¿
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
idiot - a sonnet
Idiot, is a species of moron
as we are a species amongst others.
We share a planet, but treat all as pawn
expecting that we become ancestors,
a status many believe - exalted.
Yet not a one has returned to confirm
there’s more to the great beyond than being dead,
much less where one’s penis is ever firm.
We know love is healthy, but let it die
We know war is useless, but still we pay
We know truth is sacred, but still we lie
We know god is in us, but still we pray
i know some - dumb as posts - myself am one,
and rather be, than ruled by one - when done.
jts 08/13/2018
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e
∞
