Philosophy

Career or Careen?

Thu, September 29, 2011 2 Comments by Neil Hanson

“Career” is a nautical term. I never knew that. I do so love thesaurus.com…

Both careen and career are nautical terms. As nouns, they refer to the nature of a course moving forward. A careen is a course forward using a side-to-side trajectory, while a career is a course forward in a headlong and high-speed trajectory.

This really got me to thinking about my own “career”, and the careers of most folks I know.

It starts early, when we’re encouraged to define what we’re going to be when we “grow up”, as if knowing that destination is a critical element, and as if defining that defines us and who we become. As we mature, there’s a steady set of cultural expectations built on the assumption that we’re all on a “course forward in a headlong and high-speed trajectory.” Read more »

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The Deed Done, or The Poison Left Behind

Thu, September 8, 2011 1 Comment by Neil Hanson

In a conversation with a friend the other day, my heart was breaking over how distraught he’d become over something he’d done and wasn’t proud of.

The deed was a small thing really, in the big scheme of things. Not a moment in life to be proud of, but neither a moment of darkness and desperation. Just a lapse in judgement, a small slight, a minor blemish. The sort of thing we’ve all got hanging around the dusty crevices of the paths we’ve taken through life.

But my friend held this “sin” up in the bright light in front of the eye of his mind’s judgement on himself, and couldn’t seem to let it go. He was letting it define him, and shape the “goodness” or “badness” of how he viewed his place in the world.

He could see clearly the arrogance that he was displaying in trying to hold himself up to the unreasonable standard of “perfection”. He knew – objectively and logically – that he needed to let go of this poison of self-loathing that was seeping into his soul. Yet he struggled to do this letting go. Read more »

Shelem, Shulam, Shalom

Thu, September 1, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

I’m not a student of Hebrew, but little bits and pieces of the language drift in and out of my life, and often fascinate me. I’ll request here that my Hebrew speaking friends correct me if I mis-speak below…

Shelem means “to pay for” something, while Shulam means “to be fully paid” for something. Two very similar words, and two sides of the same coin, so to speak. When looked at together, they represent reconciliation, completeness, balance, harmony.

Change just a couple letters, and we have the similar and related word “Shalom”, which I’ve always understood to be a bit like the Italian Ciao, the Hawaiian Aloha, or the Indian Namaste. Sometimes a greeting, sometimes a parting.

The difference is that Shalom always carries a meaning of “peace be with you” as part of the expression in my mind.

Come to find out, it’s a much bigger word really. While “peace” is a word I could use to describe the meaning, I could also use words like completeness, wholeness, health and welfare, perfectness, fullness.

Complete reconciliation with the Universe.

Perfect wholeness, nothing missing, nothing broken.

Exquisite harmony with every piece of the Cosmos.

Peace – with a capital “P” I suppose.

A very big word indeed…

Shalom!

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Desert Solitude

Thu, August 18, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.
~K.T. Jong

I recently rode my bicycle across the deserts of the west. I’m blogging about that trip here. Here’s an excerpt from one of the postings, from a day when I was beginning to get deep into the desert:

I pull over to have a little snack, and become aware of just how quiet it is around me. The wind is puffing around here and there, and I have no doubt that it’s going to grow into a big wind before long, but right now it’s pretty light. However, even this light wind should make some noise, right?

The quiet is mesmerizing. I realize that when the wind blows, it’s not the air moving we hear, it’s the sound of the air moving through things like leaves and trees and grass that we hear. Out here in this desert, there’s just not much in the way of leaves and trees and grass. There’s nothing whatever in the way of leaves and trees and grass in fact. There are Joshua Trees now and again, which are actually a cactus, and there are some other cactusy-looking plants along the sandy floor of the desert, but there’s just not enough volume of “stuff” to blow around in the wind to create the background white noise of the normal outdoor’s that my experience has taught me to expect.

I find I really like this. It’s a rare sense of focusing quiet. Every few minutes a car or truck passes and disturbs the silence, but I stand here a long time leaning against my bike, and appreciating the quiet solitude. It reminds me of an experience scuba diving once. I was doing a night dive. Moving along the top of a reef, I found a nice sandy area, and settled down to suspend just above the bottom, turning out my light. The darkness enveloped me completely, and the silence and darkness was breathtaking. I lay there for a few minutes, enjoying the exhilaration of this silent primordial darkness, before turning my light back on and moving my way down the reef.

On the reef, both before my little experiment with primordial darkness and after, I saw a couple small sharks out hunting. I’m sure this potential danger added something to the exhilaration of the experience. I was alone in an environment that could rapidly turn mortally hostile, and I temporarily shut down my important sense – my sense of sight. I surrendered to the environment around me, allowing myself to soak inside the vastness.

Here on the bright and flat surface of the desert, I’m remembering and recognizing that feeling. Again I’ve dropped myself into an environment that could get mortally hostile rather rapidly. The quiet around me reminds me of that quiet I felt on the reef all those years ago.

I’m not sure what it is that attracts me to these “moments” out on the edge of comfort. It’s not as though I just find myself here – I went to great lengths to put myself in this situation. The aloneness with the quiet unlocks windows in my heart and soul I think. Taking this path that leads me out along the edge of life lets me feel the edge of something greater than myself, and that must be what pulls me toward these situations. I can’t keep the smile off my face as I bask in the warm, quiet solitude.

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Savoring Rather Than Sprinting

Wed, August 10, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

I met and interesting fella the other day. A fellow cyclist, I suspect he has several years on me. As is usually the case with cyclists when they first meet each other, we went to great lengths to talk about how slow we ride. This is interesting behavior that seems consistent among road cyclists, and a bit unique to them. In most sports, the bravado takes over, and guys talk about how good they are. With road cyclists, everyone is always talking about how slow they ride, and how weak they are, and how their bike could never go as fast as your bike. All in the hope, I suppose, that they’ll take you by surprise when the riding actually begins.

But I digress…

The conversation got me thinking about how much my style of cycling is a reflection of the way I live my life, and how much that’s changed over the years.

When I was a younger man, I liked sprinting. I was physically built more like a sprinter, and in most things I did – sports or otherwise – I went at them pretty hard and relentlessly. Point A to Point B was what I was all about, with a strong focus on getting to Point B as fast as possible.

Today, I’m much more of a savorer than I am a sprinter. While I’m still aware of Point B in front of me, and I still arrive at Point B, I’m much more focused on savoring the moments along the path between Point A and Point B than I am with reaching Point B in record time.

I like to keep my head up these days, and make sure I catch the nuances of the world as I pass through it. I like to sniff the air often, to make sure I don’t miss some particularly sensual scent as it moves across me. When I hear some crickets or lizards singing beside the road, I’m much more likely to stop and soak in the sound for a few minutes.

This summer – on my bicycle journey from Monterey, CA back to Colorado, I had one day that I’d worried about as it was coming up. It was a 120 mile day across the Mojave Desert in June, the first 90 miles of which had no houses, services, or other ways to supply myself with water. I was on my own, and if ever there was a need to stay focused on Point B, that was the day.

A tailwind developed for me, and I knew if that wind continued, I could make record time in the day. Back in my sprinter days, I would have poured on the coal, and not let up until I reached the end. Instead, I stopped and took pictures often, (almost 100 pictures that day I think), and left several voice recordings. I was so wrapped-up in the joy of that tailwind that I didn’t really care about a record time.

On one stretch, the road was a gentle descent for over 10 miles. With the tailwind, I was able to gently coast down the empty highway, rolling by bicycle from side to side, enjoying the hot breeze and the sounds of the desert lizards on the side of the road. Sure I could have grabbed a great big gear and screamed down the descent at 40 MPH, but I would have missed that gentle rhythm of rolling the bike from side to side, and the song of the lizards, not to mention the gorgeous scenery unfolding around me.

The wind stayed behind me all day, and it turns out I did set a record for myself, averaging over 20 MPH over that 120 miles. Never for a second do I wish I would have pushed harder to set a better record. The joy of that day cycling still lingers in my memory today.

Point B is still on my mind, and there’s no doubt I enjoy getting there, but I enjoy it so much more now that I’ve leaned to savor the space between Point A and Point B more than I once did.

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Transforming the Path

Fri, July 22, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

I got an email forwarded to me recently. It talked about the notion of leveling the path of life.

When times are good, it said, we should plan for the bad times ahead. When times are bad, we should rejoice in the good times that are coming.

From a survival perspective, and an economic perspective, this is really good advice. When economic times are good, we shouldn’t be spending all we have, but instead should be paying down any debt we’ve incurred, and putting money aside for the “less good” times that will certainly come our way. As Americans, we can certainly see the wisdom of this approach at this point, after failing to follow this wisdom during all those good economic years, when we spent all our excess in reduced taxes and increased borrowing. Now that the predictable downturn has come, we find that not only do we have nothing in reserve, but we’ve also run up a debt over the last 30 years that is snowballing out of control.

But this email I got wasn’t talking about economics or survival. It was talking about faith and spiritual “investment” of energy. The email seemed to be saying that when things are good, we shouldn’t take too much joy in them, and instead should focus on the less good times we know are coming. By the same token, when times are bad, we should focus on the better times our faith leads us to expect in the future.

I don’t think it’s the same thing. I don’t think we should be treating our spiritual energy in the same way we treat our economic assets. Quite the opposite in fact.

When life drops joy in our lap, we should rejoice in that moment of joy with every molecule of our being. We should savor every little flavor of the joy, and look for ways to multiply it and amplify it and share it with every ounce of our spiritual energy. We should ignore completely the possibility that there may be some moment in the future where we’ll feel spiritually drained and exhausted, utterly dejected, devoid of any joy. We should spend every ounce of ourselves in the joy we’re passing through.

Sometimes life leads us onto dark paths of despair, dejection, and depression. During those times we can try and ignore the pain around us by focusing on the hope of future joy, but I’m not sure this is all that helpful. Certainly I agree with the notion of expecting future joy – hoping for it and praying for it. But that’s quite a different thing than “numbing” the current pain with visions of future joy.

There are times when we need to accept and assimilate the dark path life seems to have led us onto. By accepting it and assimilating it, it works through us and allows us to begin to transform it into the stuff of hope for the future.

It’s darkness that defines light. Shining faint light in the darkness and casting dark shadows on the light makes a morphine-like sameness to life that robs us of both joy and sorrow.

Celebrate every single joyful moment with every single ounce of spiritual energy you’ve got. Doing so will most likely reduce the times of darkness that find entry into your life. But when a moment of darkness and sadness does enter your life, let it work into and through you. Feel all it has to offer. Transform it, don’t numb it.

Enjoy the ride!

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The Space Between

Mon, July 11, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

It’s in the space between one thing and another thing where life’s defined. Those times of transition, where we gather pile a ceremonial cairn of what got us to this point, and turn toward the next. Dorothy and her retinue in Oz needed to make a harrowing pilgrimage to end up on that dais, only to watch in disbelief as what she had believed with all her heart would be the method of her transition floated away without her.

Only in that moment of heartbreak – the space between the hope of the previous moment and the promise of the next –   could she see the bubble of transition, and where it needed to come from.

“Click the ruby slippers 3 times and say …”

I just published a post at Prairie Eden’s website, where I talked about this little window of transition our perennial gardens are going through this time of year in Colorado, mentioning that for the designer of physical space, it’s often the space between things that’s more important than the things themselves.

I recently made my own little pilgrimage of sorts, though I didn’t look at it that way when I planned it. It was simply an adventure – a bicycle ride from Monterey, California back to Colorado where I live. The first 2/3 of it I rode by myself, and the last third with a friend. I’ll be blogging about that ride quite a bit in the upcoming weeks and months, and have posted a summary from which I’ll link to all the other posts as I write them. So far, I’ve only published the summary and first day.

When I arrived at Monterey, I dropped my rented car off at the airport. That point of transition between the drive out and the ride back stands out clearly in my mind. I turned in the keys at the Hertz counter, and got my bike all arranged and packed up. After a quick stop in the mens room, I dropped the jeans and t-shirt that I’d worn on the drive out into a trash can, and rolled my bike out through the sliding doors of the airport into the California sunshine.

I remember looking around a bit as I dropped those traveling clothes into the trash, wondering if the action would look odd to folks. Nobody was looking. The moments of transition I was moving through only had significance for me – not for anybody else. To everyone else, I was just a strange guy wheeling a bicycle through an airport.

I think spaces of transition in our lives are like that most of the time. They consume us as we’re transformed by them, but to those around us, we’re just a strange guy with a bicycle…

 

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Moral Dissonance and Torture

Wed, May 11, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

In my last post I talked about the concept of moral dissonance, relating to our ability to accept the idea of the death penalty, specifically using our assassination of Bin Laden as the center of that discussion.

I wasn’t sure if “moral dissonance” was even a concept in use. I’ve googled it a bit, and found that (as you would expect) it is a phrase that’s used. Here’s an article on Wikipedia discussing cognitive dissonance, and tying it to the idea of moral dissonance.

We all find ourselves faced with decisions we need to make, or positions we need to support or condemn. Sometimes the decisions we make or the positions we support are at odds with our core moral compass. In those cases, we can either recognize, accept, and live with the moral dissonance, or we can justify our decision in some way – building a case that makes it an acceptable exception to our moral compass.

I think the latter is standard human behavior – it’s what we all want to do. There’s a great danger in that path though, because the better we get at building those walls of justification around our deep moral compass, the more likely we (and our society) will devolve into behavior that is increasingly destructive, immoral, and downright pathological.

Case in point: As a country, we’ve allowed our leaders over the past decade to ignore moral taboos against torture, and have joined nations like North Korea and Libya who are happy to use torture if they think it might help them in some way. I doubt that even 1% of the US population believes that inflicting torture and pain and torment on another human being is moral behavior. Yet, a large minority of Americans support our government’s evolution to a torture state, and I would argue that even a majority of Americans tacitly support the idea when we elect any leader not willing to denounce the practice.

Look at the headlines lately, and the vociferous justifiers of torture claiming that the lead to Bin Laden came from a GTMO detainee – presumably tortured. This is strong medicine to help us to take the torture we allow our government to perform in our name, and move that torture into a safe category of “justified” – carefully isolated from the moral compass that tells us it’s not OK. Never mind the rest of the facts – that using torture makes it more likely that our citizens and soldiers will be tortured, and that the vast majority of information derived from torture is less than worthless. We’re willing to ignore all facts except the ones that allow us to justify the immoral behavior.

Am I being clear here? We ALL behave in ways counter to our moral compass – we do it all the time. The issue I’m raising is the difference in how we deal with this internally when it happens.

The lack of tolerance for moral dissonance drives us to justify our actions when they are at odds with our moral compass. Doing this allows us to continue to behave immorally with (internal) impunity, as we’ve build walls of isolation around our moral compass as it relates to our own behavior.

The alternative? Accept the fact that we sometimes choose to behave in ways that are at odds with our stated moral beliefs. Each time this happens, it should force the recognition that the decision we’re making is immoral. I can then take a stand that accepts my behavior AND accepts the moral incongruity, or I can do the hard work of evaluating the moral positions that I’ve taken, to see if I still believe them to be correct.

This is essential work – both as an individual and as a society. I’ve pointed out a couple of places where we – as a society – need to do this hard work. Are there places in your personal life where you need to confront moral dissonance? I know there certainly are in my own.

On the death penalty, I choose to accept the dissonance, and live with it. I accept that I think it’s morally wrong, and I live with the fact that I support it in some cases. Carefully managed and humanely administered, it allows us to eliminate a few of the chronic threats to society.

On the issue of torture, I choose to oppose torture in all cases – I can’t accept it under any circumstance. If there was some evidence that it consistently “worked”, I would probably change my mind. But there isn’t any such evidence, and quite a bit of contrary evidence. The damage it causes far outweighs the gains it brings.

Where are your big moral dissonance issues? How do you deal with them when your moral compass threatens to expose them?

Next, I’ll bring up some questions on this topic as they relate to a real hot-button issue – abortion.

 

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Moral Dissonance and the Execution of Bin Laden

Mon, May 9, 2011 4 Comments by Neil Hanson

The execution of Osama Bin Laden a week ago caused me to reflect again on the death penalty thoughts I posted just prior to that.

At its most simple, the assassination mission was simply a death penalty carried out. As I said before, I happen to support the death penalty in theory – when it’s used by society to terminate a force that is a significant threat to society.

This was exactly that – Bin laden was the self-professed mastermind of attacks on this country that killed thousands. He had confessed, was delighted with his actions, and was hiding from us to avoid execution. He didn’t seem to believe in “due process” himself, based on the delight he seemed to take in killing innocent people.

There are calls from some that his assassination was wrong, in that it failed to live up to the ideals and beliefs of this society. In denying him “due process”, our actions were wrong. The Executive Director of Human Rights Watch made these comments a week ag0.

He’s right of course. A strong moral argument can be made that killing anyone is wrong, and I’d agree with his comments that execution without due process is morally wrong.

This is where we all need to find our level of comfort with the moral dissonance created when we support an action that is immoral. For the good of society in general, I absolutely support the execution of this man who had caused many deaths and who would like to cause many more. There was no doubt of his guilt – he had proudly proclaimed his guilt over past actions and his intent for future action.

At the extremes, there are two reactions a person might have:

  1. A person can take the approach that the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch did, and simply stick by the moral argument, with no consideration of anything else.
  2. A person can justify the actions as “moral” in their mind – check out any of the right-wing blogs for examples of this perspective.

Both of these actions are the result of a low tolerance for moral dissonance. People who fall into these extremes want to see the world as very black and white, with no space for gray. They want to believe they have the complete and accurate set of universal moral rules programmed into their moral compass, and their way is the one and only way to see the world. If they support an action, it MUST be moral, and if it’s not, they’ll find a way to make it sound moral in their mind. Or they refuse to support it, no matter how “right” the decision is.

Our assassination of Bin Laden simply isn’t moral. Justify all you want. We invaded a sovereign country with our weapons and assassinated him and the people around him, and that’s simply not “moral”.

But in my mind, it’s OK. I have no problem with it. It was the right thing to do, as it removed an extremely harmful element of threat from our society – one that would surely cause grief and destruction in the future.

Moral dissonance might not actually be a phrase that’s commonly used – I just made it up because it seems to fit this dilemma. Look inside yourself, and ask yourself how much tolerance you have for moral dissonance. Your reaction to this assassination might be a good clue for you…

 

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Crime and Capital Punishment

Wed, April 27, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

Right up front – I’m OK with capital punishment. Society overall does better, and fewer people are hurt, when we weed out folks who cause heinous harm to members of society. That weeding out can include putting the person to death if we deem that’s the only option to prevent them from causing more damage.

In fact, I’m such a fan of it, that I can’t figure out why we don’t start applying it to corporations. This overtly activist and extreme supreme court of ours has decided that our sacred Bill of Rights applies to corporations, so it’s time they start standing up to the same punishments that real citizens stand up to. If a corporation causes the death of a person, they stand trial for that death. If they are convicted of a capital crime, they are disbanded and liquidated as a corporation, with the assets they leave behind benefiting society as a whole.

But that’s another discussion…

Today I want to talk about a particular death penalty sentence – one that appears to represent systemic excesses and corruption in our criminal justice systems.

In 1991, Troy Davis was convicted of murdering a white police officer in Georgia. While there was no physical evidence connecting Mr. Davis to the crime, there were 9 witnesses – enough to allow the jury to convict him. While it troubles me a little that we’d impose the death penalty without airtight physical evidence, I’m giving the jury the benefit of the doubt, and assuming the circumstantial evidence (9 witnesses) must have been compelling.

The problem is, 7 of those witnesses have since recanted in signed affidavits. Most of them have testified that they bore witness only under the duress of police pressure and coercion. Of the remaining 2 witnesses, there is strong evidence that one of them may be the culprit who actually did commit the crime Mr. Davis was convicted of – multiple witnesses have signed statements that he has claimed responsibility. Apparently this man was the alternative suspect at the time Mr Davis was convicted.

I don’t advocate that Georgia let Mr. Davis go. I advocate that their case doesn’t seem to meet the bar we should be setting to allow us to kill someone. Their case seems to have been weak to begin with, and it has since fallen apart completely. In a trial today with today’s information, it seems unlikely there would be a conviction, let alone an execution.

This is where the corruption of the system becomes deadly. Rather than admitting this case is thin, putting the execution on hold until this new evidence can be evaluated, Georgia appears to be pushing full steam ahead to kill Mr. Davis. This is a case involving the death of a police officer after all, and the state needs to make an example out of somebody.

It doesn’t seem to matter to them whether or not the man they make an example of is guilty or innocent.

Learn more about the case here.

 

 

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Bluebirds

Mon, April 11, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

In the early hours of morning I watched as a pair of Bluebirds investigated one of my Bluebird houses. I’ve tried for years to attract bluebirds to my garden, but without success. The habitat is right, the houses are right, but I just can’t seem to get them to nest.

Eastern Bluebird - Image from SmellLikeDirt.wordpress.com

It’s not that I lack for birds in the garden. I have many feeders out for many types of birds, great habitat and protection in the garden, and ponds full of water. I even have some Sharp-shinned and Coopers hawks that feed occasionally on the birds that feed at the feeders.

But I can’t ever attract Bluebirds to my houses.

Until this morning.

I saw the pair investigating the house, and while they flew off a bit when the dog was out wandering in the yard, they stayed close and kept their eye on the house. I had high hopes that maybe, finally, I’d have some nesting Bluebirds to watch.

As I type this later in the day, the pair hasn’t returned at all. Maybe they didn’t like the sound of the English House Sparrows that congregate on the other side of my house, or maybe they didn’t like that a dog wandered in the yard. Maybe the house just didn’t have the curb appeal they were looking for.

But they seem to have rejected my house, and that makes my sad.

Funny how this sort of thing works in my mind. I “want” something, and will go to great lengths to make it so. I’ve admittedly got a pretty strong will, (a character flaw I recognize), and will go to great lengths to force the desire of that will into being.

My will is an extension of my ego, and that ego and its will aren’t always right. It’s one of the deadly flaws of humanity, that we seem to feel deep inside our minds that our will is the way things are supposed to be. It’s how we’re able to create G-d in our own image over and over again.

But I’m pretty sure we’ve got that upside down in our mind. We don’t get to be the decider of the order of things. We’re just part of the order of things, albeit a pretty intrusive part.

I want to watch Bluebirds in my garden, but there’s something about the location or the surroundings of the houses I’ve put out that the Bluebirds don’t like. They’re not rational creatures who analyze their way through this problem with logic – they’re instinctive little guys who’re working from the collective memory of hundreds of generations of Bluebirds before them. And that collective memory and instinct pushes them to look elsewhere after they stop in and gander at the houses I’ve so lovingly and willfully put out for them to consider.

I’ll keep hoping for a pair of Bluebirds to call my backyard home someday. Maybe I’ll try new locations next year. And who knows – they might be back still this year, or another pair might take a look. After all, my realtor friends tell me it only takes the right buyer…

But for today, I’m enjoying the little lesson they’ve helped me see. While I might still want Bluebirds in my backyard, it’s apparently not what they need right now, and maybe not what I need right now either.

After all, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, I hear you might just get what you need…

 

Seeing The Good – Helping 105

Sun, April 10, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

As we go through the process of searching for ways to cut money from our national budget, we should be doing some soul-searching as well.

You can watch the political parties lining up with their masters and pets, trying to focus the effort on the places where they want the budget cut. To do this, they need to demonize and dehumanize the people who they want to cut funding from.

One side wants to cut funding and “pork” that goes primarily to the wealthy class in our country. They look to move the taxpayer dollars toward those on the lower end of the income scale, and away from those on the upper end. In addition, they target defense spending as the best place to reduce cost.

The defense industry argument is an easy one to make – I’ve written before about the amazing money we could save if we cut our defense spending to twice as much as the next biggest defense spender in the world – $600 – $700 billion a year. It’s staggering.

But there’s a human side to that. Defense contractors are the biggest “welfare recipients” in the nation, and when they get that taxpayer money, they pass some of it on to their employees in the form of jobs – often really good jobs. These people who have these jobs aren’t demons and crazies. They are (for the most part) good people – often hard-working people – trying to get by and do a good job.

As we cut the defense industry’s “welfare” ticket back, many of those good and hard-working folks will be out of a job.

The other side wants to cut funding for any programs that move money toward the middle or lower classes in the country, while retaining programs that continue to benefit the upper class. They typically demonize the waste in government programs like Medicare and Social Security – these are the places they want to make the big cuts.

But there’s a human side to these cuts as well – much easier to see. While there is surely waste and fraud in any bureaucracy – be it Medicare or Defense contracting – there is also a great need among the poorest “class” in our country. As we cut these programs back, those with the greatest need will feel the greatest pain.

These people aren’t demons and crazies. They are (for the most part) good people – often hard-working people – trying to get by and do a good job.

The budget has both a revenue and a spending side. Both sides need to be addressed. On the spending side alone, as we pound the table with our strong opinions about who we should be cutting government funding for, let’s do our best to understand clearly what those cuts mean, who will be hurt by the cuts, and what that pain will look like.

Even when we hold strong opinions about who should receive the biggest cuts, let’s try and see the real people who will feel the pain of the cuts. Let’s see the good within those people, rather than demonizing them.

The same logic holds true for cuts to overseas programs that the government funds, or cuts to outreach programs in churches, temples, and mosques. It’s even more stark in those cases, as the recipients of the help often look much different than we do, and live much differently than we do. It’s much easier to not see and understand those more distant people, and much easier to see only the bad things about those people.

We’ve all got good and bad within us, right? We’ve all got things we’re proud of, and things we’re ashamed of. When we look at someone else, we need to recognize the same holds true for them. We choose whether we’re seeing the good or the bad in that person.

Until we see the good in a person, we’ll not be able to provide real and meaningful help, or find real and meaningful solutions. We’ll not be able to open the Giving Circle.

The Poorest Person In The World – Helping 104

Wed, April 6, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

Mahatma Gandhi believed every single act was important. He suggested once to “think of the poorest person you have ever seen and ask if your next act will be of any use to him.”

In a world where we’re generally evaluating each act on its ability to help us gain more power, wealth, or comfort, this is an interesting twist of perspective.

Or am I wrong about that? Maybe we don’t evaluate our every act to determine how it might help us gain more power, wealth, or comfort. Maybe the majority of our actions “just sorta’ happen” – without much thought.

Of course, a psychologist would probably argue with me that our unconscious mind is, in fact, doing some level of evaluation before we act – that beneath the most (apparently) mindless act is some level of measurement and decision. The scales used in that measurement and decision-making are often hard to fathom, having been built up over our lifetime to serve some hidden set of scale-masters.

Makes sense. After all, we’d be crippled by analysis if every single little thing we did needed to be analyzed before we could act.

But what if…

we were just a little more thoughtful in our process? What if more of our actions did involve a conscious effort to predict who will benefit from that action? And just as important, who will be hurt by our action.

 

Rubbing Shoulders With Need – Helping 103

Fri, April 1, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

Here’s a quote I read recently from Chabad.com: “The very fact you know about someone who is in trouble means that in some way you are able to help. Otherwise, why would this knowledge have entered your world?”

Why, indeed?

After all, the world is packed full of disaster and hardship. Every minute of every day, really bad things are happening someplace in the world, and there’s something you could do to help in many of those cases.

It could be completely overwhelming. You could become paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the help that others need in this world.

For that matter, there are places in your own life where you can use help, right? There are folks in the world who have the ability to provide some of that help to you, though you are one of countless places where their help could be of value.

My Lord, how’s a person to know what to do, where to give help, how to give help, where to ask for help?

Every day, your journey takes you down the path of life. That path moves you through some tight quarters, where your life brushes up against the lives of others. You rub a shoulder here, you bump an elbow there.

And in the process, you glimpse the ability to help now and again. A gift offered to you – the opportunity to give and to help.

Otherwise, why would you have brushed up against the understanding of the need?

 

Zero Sum – Giving 102

Wed, March 30, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

When something is finite, transactions are always zero sum. That is, there’s only so much of the thing, so for someone to see a gain, someone else sees a loss. Nothing grows, it only changes hands.

It’s an economic theory, or game theory. Like cutting a cake – if somebody gets a bigger slice, somebody else gets a smaller slice. It’s a perspective that sees life as a ledger sheet, and in order for my ledger column to grow, someone else’s must shrink.

Living life with a “zero sum” outlook is why we have wars. It’s why most violent crime occurs. If there’s a devil, he works hard to help us see all of life as a zero-sum enterprise.

“Taking” results from the zero sum outlook.

Is Creation a zero-sum game in the eyes of G-d? Put aside your view of G-d for a moment – or whether or not G-d even exists – and think of the universe as it might appear through the eyes of something big enough to see it all.

The universe (or multiverse or Creation or whatever it is you choose to call the Big Picture) came into being. Most cultures and religions have fascinating Creation Myths. Scientists today see the universe as having exploded into existence with a Big Bang about 13 million years ago.

Either way, something came about that wasn’t taken from something else, right? I don’t know any science or Creation Myth that talks about our universe or world being created by taking a world from someone else.

It was Created, or it rose into existence in some way.

Giving is like that too. We’re prisoners inside the walls of our existence, and the key that releases us from that prison is the gift we receive when we give.

It’s not zero-sum. In giving, what we receive is far greater than what we give.

If there’s a G-d, He works hard to help us see all of life as a giving enterprise.

 

Ascending Dragons, Descending Dragons

Sat, February 19, 2011 1 Comment by Neil Hanson

Enjoying Ha Long Bay, vs “Doing” Ha Long Bay

We went all-out on our cruise of Ha Long Bay (in Vietnam). We figured it’s once in our life, and the difference between all-out and just OK was less than a hundred dollars a day for 3 days. In the scheme of my life, there are lots of places I waste that and don’t even notice.

All-out meant the one upper floor cabin on a 5 cabin Junk. Big suite with jacuzzi, rain-shower, big bedroom. A wall full of windows. The works. Really top shelf. Probably the only time in my life I’ll be so extravagant, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! (Fortunately, these sorts of extravagant excesses don’t creep into my life often, so I don’t need to worry much about falling into a life of decadence…)

We used a line called Indochina Sails. Our son in Ha Long Bay said they were considered one of the best lines and had a good reputation. We chose to go on their smaller (of 3) boats – one with 5 cabins called the Valentine. As I said, we booked their best cabin on that boat, for less than a hundred dollars a day more than the other cabins. When we set the cruise up, I wondered how they worked out the logistics of having folks onboard who were 2-day guests and some who were 3-day guests.

Here’s what they do: All three boats make the same exact “turn” every day. They go out into the bay in the afternoon, and they return the next morning. The 2-day guests stay on their boat, and slog through the throngs of hundreds (probably thousands) of other tourists from countless cruise lines slogging through those same sights each afternoon and each morning. However, the 3-day guests get off the boat and spend day 2 on a nice day boat, sharing the boat with the other 3-day guests from the other 2 boats. Then in the afternoon, the day boat meets up again with the 3 big boats, and you get back on your own boat.

This works really well. Without going into more detail than needed here, let me say that I didn’t understand it well, and complained loudly when I heard about this boat shuffling that was going to happen. I felt like I paid to be on this boat, and I didn’t want to be shuffled around. I ended up on a cell phone with the director of the cruise line, whose name is Jerry. Jerry heard my complaint, was the perfect customer service gentleman, and wanted to do whatever he could to make things right with me. In the end, he persuaded me that I was likely to enjoy the second day if I did things their way.

He was right. Like I said before, that middle day is when you get away from the crowds, relax, and see the things that the other thousands are missing. Admittedly, if more people did the 3 day cruise, this would not be the case. But at least for now, hardly anyone stays for all 3 days.

That middle day on the day boat, we had the best “guide” we’d had for the whole trip. He was relaxed, down to earth, and a lot of fun to be around. We also shared the boat with 2 other English-speaking westerners, so it was good to have familiar conversation. One couple was from Australia, and one was from England. Our conversations were truly a delight, and it was really interesting to talk things like politics with folks who have such a different perspective from my own.

The best part of the day – for me at least – was after we got to our own boat. While the newly arrived 2-dayers departed the boat to go visit the fishing village, (which we had already done the day before), I stayed back and hung out down below at waterline. This is where folks come and go on the tender. It’s also the place where the local fishing village folks sell stuff to you. These are folks who live on the water their entire lives. Their houses float, their school floats, and their church floats. The cruise boats have become a way to suck money from the tourism industry into their village. If I’m gonna have a beer anyway in the evening, I’d rather buy if from the local mom selling them out of her little boat than from the cruise line anyway – she needs it more than they do.

So I spent a couple bucks, then sat down in the hatch, and enjoyed one of the beers. Three boats filled with little girls from the village came over to sell me shells. They were savvy merchants no doubt, and I admired their entrepreneurial spirit and spunk. I bought a few shells from them after some hard negotiations. Once they figured out that I was done buying stuff, the fun really started.

I was different from most of the tourists they were used to seeing – I wasn’t rushing past looking to “do” their village. I was just sitting in the afternoon sun, enjoying the ocean. I was someone fun to try out their English on. They were laughing and teasing and giggling – making all sorts of fun jokes at my expense I have no doubt. They were being just exactly like little girls all over the world. And I was in heaven.

3 boats, 3 families. I learned who was sisters to whom, though their names were tough for me. I learned how old they each were – ranging from 14 (nearly ready for marriage by their village standards as I understand), down to 5. The 5 year-old amazed me with her agility as she climbed from boat to boat as-if she were playing on a jungle-gym.

We laughed and joked and learned and had a great time. Until one of the boat crew came down, and the spirit of the encounter changed. They were obviously careful about how the boat crews viewed them, and the all jumped back in their own boat once the crew member was around. It didn’t take long until they decided they needed to head off to different pastures to see if they could sell some shells.

My heart was more than a little sad to lose my new friends. Our visit had been the perfect highlight to a wonderful middle day. We’d spent time in a kayak, had monkey throw rocks at us, visited one of the thousands of caves in the area – just the six of us and our guide, and got a great education at a local pearl farm. Our lunch was outstanding, and the boat was every bit as pleasant and enjoyable as the Valentine. Everyone on-board agreed this must be the best part of the cruise – this middle day.

So I ask myself: If this middle day is the enjoyable one, why is it that the vast majority of people only take the 2 day cruise?

Local Vietnamese folks certainly can’t afford a cruise like this. The majority of people I observed seemed to be from Korea, probably some Chinese as well. Maybe 1 in 4 were Westerners like us. It was the Tet holiday, which may have increased the percentage of Asian tourists since it is their big holiday. So maybe in normal times there are 50% Westerners? Just guessing. In any case, the point is that folks are on this cruise as only one part of a vacation – they’re not here “just for the cruise”.

Ha Long Bay is one of the checkmarks they have on their list of things to do in Vietnam or SE Asia. As such, their travel agent packed as much as possible into their 2-week trip. They wanted to “do Ha Long Bay”, and why spend 3 days of the vacation “doing” Ha Long Bay when you can get the job done in 2?

I get this, I really do. Under different circumstances, and at a different point in my life, I have no doubt I would have done the same thing. Pack as much in as you can. “Do” as many sites as possible.

But when I spend my vacation like this, it’s just a big blur with a bunch of checkmarks at the end. I followed the throngs from one obligatory overlook to the next, and snapped the obligatory snapshot at each to prove I was there, but I missed the guts of all the places I went.

I got the checkmark, but I missed the good day. I missed meeting people of real interest, and enjoying a delightful meal on a beautiful woodenm deck dappled with sunlight glinting off the calm water around. I missed the gecko and the crab deep in the isolated cave. I missed the young woman who reminded me of my daughter trying to teach me about pearl cultivation through the few dozen words of English that we had in common. I missed monkeys throwing rocks at my kayak, and Peggy learning to paddle a kayak all by herself.

I got the checkmark, but I missed the heart and soul of the place.

I’m glad I’ve learned and matured a bit in this way, and changed the way I look at traveling. The number of checkmarks I make on a list might be fewer than it would have been in the past, but my enjoyment, fascination, of love of each of the places I visit is far greater.

If you read my blog, you know that the concept of “place” and the concept of “journey” are important to me. When it comes to a vacation, we need to ask ourselves why it is that we go to a “place”, and why it is that we take a “journey”. If a “place” is nothing more than a checkmark on a list of sites to “do”, I might as well buy a good video and “do” the place in HD in the comfort of my couch. If a “journey” is nothing more than a series of crowded flights and passport stamps, does it really matter where the plane lands?

As I keep evolving, I’m pretty sure vacations are going to become less and less cluttered. It’s those middle days of a visit to a place where I really learn to feel and see the place – where I can really start to let it seep into me. It’s that slow boat ride in the sun where the journey takes place, or lazily sitting in the back of the kayak while Peggy learns to paddle it, not on an airplane at 35,000 feet.

Jerry was right.

Oh, and the whole ascending and descending dragon thing? It’s how the bay was formed. The dragons created the unique islands that the bay is famous for out of jade as they were ascending and descending, in order to give the people protection from invaders and from weather. Watching the light grow as I sat on the top deck of our boat and marveled at the beauty shimmering on the calm ocean of early dawn, seeing these eerie stacks of egg-shaped green islands emerged from the bay all around me, the legend made perfect sense to me.

Corruption – Just Questions For Now

Fri, February 11, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

After spending a couple weeks in SE Asia, I’m working hard on putting together an adjusted view of the concept of corruption, and how it effects the way we’re able to live our lives.

The first observation is that nearly all the “westerners” we met had a firm and preconceived notion of what corruption was, and how awful it is in SE Asia. For the most part, they came here prepared to be appalled at the level of corruption in the governments here, and the level of poverty of the people, and they were generally able to find ways to be appalled by exactly what they wanted to be appalled by. In most cases, I think their expectations were exceeded.

Because corruption is certainly evident and destructive over here. They don’t try too hard to hide it.

My second observation was that folks who lived here had the same view of government that most people all over the world have of their own government. That is, they think the government is corrupt, and that folks with money and power find ways to bilk the common folk from whatever they have in order to continue to line the pocketbooks of those who already have money and power. They think that the government is usually nothing more than a tool for those with the money and power.

Hard to disagree with that point of view.

I want to use the term “lifestyle”, but I want to define my use of it first. Most westerners see this word and think it means what kind of car a person drives, how big their house is, how expensive the restaurants are that a person eats at, how elaborate a person’s vacations are, etc. Because for most westerners, that’s how lifestyles are delineated.

But for most of the folks over here, the delineation is far wider than this. There is a wide gap between the masses of folks who work 7 days a week for $5/day if they’re lucky, and the very few who have all the power and wealth.

That said, I think the corruption over here is more offensive to us for two reasons:

  1. It seems so much more “wrong” to us that so many live lives of such poverty, while so few skim the bribes at their expense.
  2. The corruption is so evident – they don’t know how to hide it well.

I need to noodle on this for a while, and want to write about it. For now, I only want to say that the nature of this whole corruption thing feels a little different than I expected it to feel. It’s nasty and evil without a doubt. Beyond that, though, I’m not sure it stacking itself up in the nice neat little package I’ve been taught to observe.

Back to that Tall Ships post again – this doesn’t fit a pattern I have yet, and I need to noodle through it a bit to see if I can fathom the shapes I think I see out there…

    Chasing or Fleeing?

    Mon, January 24, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    Are We Chasing Happiness or Running From Something Behind Us?

    The story is told of an old rabbi who visited a bustling town, and was nearly overwhelmed by the pace at which everyone was moving.. Everyone was running so quickly, not matter which direction they were going, so he assumed they must not all be running from something. He stopped a young man and asked him, “Why are you running?” and the man says “I’m running to make a living and find happiness”.

    The rabbi stood looking up into the young man’s face for a moment, holding his arm. When the young man tried to politely release himself to continue his errand, the rabbi bade him wait just a minute. He looked into the young man’s eyes, and asked, “What makes you so sure that the living you need to make is in the direction you’re running? How can you be sure the happiness you’re seeking is running away from you, rather than trying to catch up with you? Maybe the living you seek is behind you waiting to catch you, along with the happiness you say you want.”

    We’re all running. It’s the American way to be driven and ambitious and fast-paced. New Yorkers pride themselves in their frenetic pace.

    I don’t think you can easily change the stripes on a Zebra. I am who I am, and you are who you are. Some combination of genetic and environmental factors shaped the person we have become. I do like to go fast often. I get joy out of being productive and out of making “progress” toward some goal.

    While I can’t change these things about who I am, I certainly can force myself to stop and look around as I move through the life I’ve made for myself. I can force myself to look back behind me as well as up in front of me. I can continually ask the questions of myself:

    What am I running from?

    What am I running toward?

    Are there some things that I’m running from that should catch me? Are there times that I need to rest and wait for happiness and “living” to catch up with me?

    And the things that I chase – are they really staying so distantly in front of me, or is this my illusion? Am I continually running past some of these targets I’m chasing, not savoring the moment when I catch them, focusing my attention on the next target?

    Prayer. Probably the best way to take that moment of reflection. Probably the best way to look behind, and to look ahead, and ask those hard questions.

    Note: Story adapted from one told by Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of the British Commonwealth on a broadcast of an event on Krista Tippett’s “Being” radio show.

    Neanderthal Compassion

    Fri, January 21, 2011 2 Comments by Neil Hanson

    Does Evolution Select Against The Soul?

    Photo my Action Press / Rex Features

    I recently listened to an interview that Krista Tippett did with French geologist Xavier Le Pichon, and it got me thinking quite a bit about his point of view on our evolution as “humanity”.

    My thoughts, inspired by that interview, kept coming back to the notion that what defines us uniquely from other animals is compassion. I should also add a connection to a recent book on exactly this subject – The Prehistory of Compassion by Dr Penny Spikins.

    I’m not sure I agree completely with this notion, but I might… I just wonder a bit.

    Let’s talk about the Neanderthal. Archeological records suggest these creatures were religious (shamanic capes found as part of grave at Hortis site), that they were artistic (creating musical instruments), and that they showed compassion (remains discovered indicating an infirm tribe member was cared for throughout his life).

    I think I’d consider all these to be human characteristics – religion, art, and compassion – and they were all three part of the life and culture of a folk that we don’t consider to be “human” like we are. There are some, in fact, who believe that compassion may have been more deeply engrained in Neanderthal culture than it is in ours, and that compassion may have made Neanderthal vulnerable.

    Don’t get me wrong – I really want to believe that compassion is a uniquely human characteristic. I really want to believe that compassion is something that ties us to G-d, and that it is compassion that strikes the chords of harmony between the spirit of G-d and the soul of man.

    But I’m not there yet. I see behavior in many animals that looks a lot like compassion to me. I’ve seen mother deer or elk in clear pain over the loss of their fawn. You read stories of Chimps who carry their dead baby’s corpse for days in what appears to be mourning.

    It’s not that I question compassion as “holy” – I absolutely believe it is. Just as I believe a capacity for art and religion are “holy”. I’m just less and less convinced as time goes along that “holiness” is something that we have any sort of exclusive right to claim.

    If you read my blogs and rants much at all, you know how much I dislike the human tendency to claim one particular perspective on G-d and “righteousness” as the one and only way that G-d chooses to be part of our life. This tendency has caused more destruction in the history of mankind than anything else in my opinion.

    Why would I expect that G-d would look for some special relationship with one and only one species of mankind throughout the history of the world? Why would She choose only this most recent period in the history of our earth to establish that relationship? In fact, why would He have chosen only the creatures of this earth in the vast universe to establish a relationship with?

    As I look at the limited evidence, I think I’m prone to accept that compassion is, indeed, one of the components that creates and strengthens a soul in relationship with G-d. Moreover, I’m prone to wonder if we’ve not evolved further and further away from compassion as just such a strong component in our life.

    Are we evolving away from relationship with G-d?

    When I look around me, I see a great nation that was established to “…form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare…” Yet, the only piece of that beautiful preamble to our constitution that we seem to pay attention to these days is the “provide for the common defense” section. Even in the past 200 years or so, we seem to have lost our focus on issues of Justice, Tranquillity, Union, and Welfare. In fact, the word “welfare” has become a nasty word in our political lexicon today.

    We established a nation on lofty principles, clearly driven by some sort of spiritual purpose. Yet, all of the spiritually motivated components of our reason for establishing a nation have become dirty words, and all we care about today is defending ourselves from the hordes of “others” who we think want to come and carry us away.

    This is our history as a human race throughout recorded history (which admittedly isn’t very long). We’ve continually moved back and forth between the selfish drive to eliminate others and the threat from others, and some sort of internal call of compassion. The further we go, the more it seems that natural selection is selecting against G-d, and selecting for human selfishness.

    The last 200 years within our nation is a microcosm of that selection process – a very frightening one.

    Photo by Erich Ferdinand

    Somehow or another, evolution selected against the Neanderthal. Our ability to conquer and defend increased as a result of that selection.

    What happened to our ability to maintain closeness with G-d?

    What’s happening to our soul?

    Only The Artist Sees The Tall Ships

    Tue, January 18, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    Do Our Brains Manage Away Our Ability To See G-d Or To Be Creative?

    Somebody once told me that they read someplace that somebody said that way back when Europeans were first invading the Americas, it’s likely that natives might not have even seen the ships out on the sea as they approached and anchored. If they had to mental construct for the idea of a big ship on the water, their minds might have simply failed to process the images coming in to them.

    Sounds like a crazy notion to me. And since it was something somebody might have read about something somebody might have said, I’ve always considered it to be mostly a made-up thing.

    But a fun idea.

    I suspect there might be a grain of possibility in the idea as well. So I’ll talk about it here as-if it’s real fact. It makes a point I want to make after all. And really, if I do this well enough, it might be that some Faux News Network might make me a job offer…

    So, the ships were there. That’s a fact. And folks on the shore had eyeballs that worked, and they were looking out across the horizon, and their functional eyeballs picked up the information, and sent the information along the optic nerve and into the brain for processing.

    So far, it’s all fact, it’s all science, and it actually probably happened just like that.

    But we’ve all worked hard to “manage” our brain so it doesn’t interfere with the way we want to see the world. We all process incoming information in similar ways, but with little twists and turns, filters, brushes, and enhancing tools.

    We all know what we want the world to look like, and we have fine-tuned our senses to pick out the pieces of information that surrounds us that reinforces the picture of what we want the world to look like.

    My Faux News comment is a perfect example. What is your source of news? While some people work hard to get a wide variety of opinions and input, most folks simply find the news or opinion source that tells them about a world that’s built the way they want to believe it’s built. In my opinion, that’s explains the growth in popularity of particular networks or sources that are biased to the point of absurdity – people aren’t looking for Truth, they’re looking for reinforcement of the views they want to hold.

    Just like the husband or wife who’s blindsided by the unfaithful spouse, even though everyone around the couple could see the signs for years. From the inside, the husband or wife had a picture of what they wanted their spouse to be, and the only information they accepted into their brain was the information that reinforced that view.

    I understand this tendency. It makes sense. I can only imagine how overwhelming the world is to an infant – information bombarding the brain with no context or ability to put the pieces together. As we mature and grow, one of the ways we unleash the power in our brain is to learn how to filter and “manage” the information that we’re swimming through.

    We can become extremely efficient at filtering and managing information, so that our lives run smoothly, and we’re not troubled with dilemmas. We’re not forced to confront and adjust our filters, brushes, enhancers, and other “information management” devices that make us comfortable.

    I recently ran across a post by a gal (Katinka Hessilink) who suggests that creativity is tied up in this whole equation. In her article, Katinka is talking about the existence of a soul, but I’m co-opting her argument here to help me suggest that creativity in a person might really be little more than a higher tolerance to leave the filters turned down.

    It might be that what we call creativity is really just a tolerance to accept, hear, and see input that doesn’t necessarily fit with the shapes we’ve already constructed within our mind – the shapes that we think the world is supposed to fit into. The “creative mind” really might just see more.

    There’s always been this assumed connection between creativity and, shall we say, a looser grip on sanity? I have no idea of this is actually true, but it’s a pervasive stereotype.

    If there were a linear representation of “sanity”, it could be that the further one moves to the right on the scale, the more constricted is their view of the world, and the less they are actually able to experience the world they’re moving through. They have a very tightly managed shape into which they fit all of the incoming information, and whatever doesn’t fit, is ignored or changed in some way.

    What’s on the other end of that scale? Off the edge of either end would seem like insanity to me.

    Way back in the time of Columbus, a dreamer sat on the beach of some island in the Caribbean. On the horizon he saw something he’d never seen before – he saw ships with tall masts and large sails. He ran and told the others of the tribe, who looked and saw nothing that fit into the shape of the world they knew, so they saw nothing at all.

    I can believe that. You?

    Here’s a Wayne Dyer quote, that I probably have a little wrong:

    “When you change the way you look at things, the things you’re looking at change”.


    Paradox of Unknowing – Part 2

    Sun, January 9, 2011 4 Comments by Neil Hanson

    Or, Creationists, Flat Earthers, and Unknowers…

    From Hubblesite.org

    Not long ago, a religious debate engulfed the center of western civilization. Science seemed more and more insistent as time went along on a “theory” that had developed about the very foundations of the way that life on earth – and the universe itself – was put together. Seems innocent enough, right?

    The problem is that this “theory” was in direct conflict with Orthodox translations and interpretations of the Bible.

    I should insert here a definition of “Orthodoxy”. It means, in essence, “right thinking”, or “the right way to think”. Conversely, “heresy” is simply thinking that is not orthodox. Any non-orthodox way of thinking is, in essence, heresy. It all has a very fascist feel to it, doesn’t it?

    Regarding the debate in question, Orthodox Christianity insisted that you must interpret our best translations of early teachings (ie The Bible) in a particular way, and that this ruled out this new theory. Debate raged both ways, with the fundamentalists feeling threatened that the very “Word of G-d” was being challenged by science.

    At this point, a reader might think that I’m referring to a debate that’s going on right now in the halls of Orthodoxy – the debate over the notion of evolution. And in fact, the debate I’m referring to is still going on in some circles, but it’s not the debate over evolution.

    The debate I’m referring to was rampant a few hundred years ago. In the 15th century, Fundamentalist Christian Orthodoxy was torturing and killing people for the heresy of believing the earth was round. Many who were considered great scientific minds of the day were willing to line up on the side of Christian Orthodoxy, and find evidence to support the notion of a flat earth.

    Today, the Flat Earth Society is alive and well, evidence of the extreme power that Orthodoxy has in keeping our minds locked tight against learning and growing. It’s probably hard for a reasonable person today to imagine how a person could actually think that the earth is flat, but to the folks who believe it today, they’re absolutely convinced that there is ample evidence to support their notion that the earth is, indeed, flat.

    From Hubblesite.org

    There are lots of folks today who are absolutely convinced that the notion of natural selection and the adaptation of a species – which is the essence of the theory of evolution – conflicts with what Orthodoxy has taught them. In my opinion, these folks have mistaken the “teachings of Orthodoxy” with the “Truth of G-d” – two very different things.

    Orthodoxy changes throughout history. As it changes, it adapts history – and adapts what Orthodoxy itself has taught in the past – to try and make it appear as though it is unchanging. “Unchangeability” is something that orthodoxies are addicted to. An orthodoxy must cling to the notion that it knows the answer, and that the answer never changes. As our minds understand more and more about this wonderful Creation, the answers orthodoxies cling to begin to crumble, and orthodoxy fights back.

    Enter the beauty of unknowing. Again.

    If I can simply accept that Creation is, then I’m open to understanding more about it. That was G-d’s answer to Moses, wasn’t it? When Moses asked G-d to explain Himself, and who He was, G-d simply answered that Moses didn’t have the ability to understand. He said simply, “I Am”.

    That’s just no enough for us, and we insist on creating orthodoxy. We have a tough time accepting that “G-d” is something beyond our ability to understand well.

    From Hubblesite.org

    Back to our Flat Earth debate. While we like to trumpet the greatness of Western Civilization, and our advancements, and the “great thinking” that’s come from us, we forget that when we “discovered” the fact that the earth was round back in the 15th century, we were pretty late in the game. Many civilizations already had that understanding firmly institutionalized.

    We were, in fact, great thinkers coming from a great Greek tradition, yet we’d been held back by an ancient mythology about a flat earth. How? The power of orthodoxy to insist that it “knows”. 500 years later, in our world today, the Flat Earth Society is alive and well. Orthodoxy and the addiction to knowing are amazingly powerful, aren’t they?

    The first step is always the hardest – that first step of being OK with “unknowing”. Accepting an inability to deeply “know the essence of G-d” opens us to the ability to understand ourselves, the world around us, and the framework of the universe. Accepting “unknowing” is exactly what’s required to be able to “know the knowable”.

    Paradoxically, according to great teachers and sages from Moses to Jesus to Mohammed to Lau Tzu – even to many of the Saints of Orthodoxy from St Theresa to Rumi – it is in the humility of “unknowing” that we’ll find ourselves able to find closeness with The Divine.

    Unknowing seems to be the key to many sides of the coin, doesn’t it?

    From Hubblesite.org

    Bargains are Killing Us

    Tue, January 4, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    We’re a culture addicted to the idea of bargains. Most of what we buy into as a bargain isn’t a bargain at all in the long run, but we’ve brainwashed ourselves to believe that a short-term bargain is some sort of victory that we can’t pass up.

    Watch behavior at the fast-food counter. People opt for the “supersize deal”, because it seems like such a bargain. In reality, they’re generally not saving much off the menu price, but more to the point, all the extra calories they’re forcing on themselves is a gigantic health risk to themselves, and a long-term healthcare cost to the nation. But it seems like such a bargain, we just can’t pass it up.

    Big-box stores? Let’s just give them the generic name of Big-Mart, since I’m not aware of any chain really named that. It’s a good generic name. Study after study has shown that the prices we pay at Big-Mart are no lower than shopping at the local grocery store or sporting goods store. In fact, many studies have shown that we pay more on average. Worse yet, produce wholesalers find that these Big-Marts are the place where they can unload their lowest quality products. Pay more, get less. No bargain there. The highest cost is that these stores come into a town, drive the local businesses out of business, and many of them refuse to abide by generally accepted fair-labor practices. This means that local businesspeople lose everything, and local workers make less. The community as a whole pays more, gets less, and suffers a big price to both small businesses and the local workforce.

    Yet, when the Big-Mart opens up, the shoppers flock there, believing they’re getting “a bargain”, when in fact they’re paying more, getting less, and damaging their local economy. Hardly a bargain…

    How about dining choices? In my little city we’ve got the typical national chains, generally with a waiting line on the weekends. Yet, we have several locally owned restaurants that struggle to stay afloat. Why don’t the local folks support their neighbor rather than supporting the big corporate chains? Do they feel like they’re getting a bargain? This one baffles me. I go way out of my way to avoid a chain and support a local business whenever I can, and I find that I get better food and generally pay about the same or less than I would at a chain. I certainly feel better about myself when I’m done.

    It might be because I’m a small businessman, and I understand clearly the value of the relationship between local merchant and local customer. But it’s not rocket science. A chain of any sort comes into a community to pull money out of it – that’s its job. They have a corporate structure somewhere else that must be fed, and the local outlet is nothing more than a way to suck as much money from the community as possible. Of course they provide a service – that’s why we give them money. But the local merchant provides the service as well, and he reinvests the money you give him back into the community. He buys locally, and sends his kids to the local schools, and pays property taxes on the home he owns locally.

    This is happening all over America, as we let the big boxes and the big corporate chains siphon money from our local communities, draining them of their vitality. Even worse, this is our behavior at a more macro level as a nation. We have no problem with the fact that our economy is now a consumer economy rather than a producer economy. We’ve allowed the big box stores to ship all the jobs overseas, so that we can save a couple bucks on a pair of shoes.

    Throughout history, this step of becoming a finance based consumer economy is the final step before the demise of an empire. We still have the power to thwart this fate, but it will take a concerted effort on all our parts in every single buying decision that we make.

    Refuse to walk into a big box discount store, and shop instead at your local grocery store, hardware store, or sporting goods store. When you go out to eat, patronize only locally owned eateries. Next time you buy a vehicle, see if you can find one that’s truly made in America, and buy that one. The beauty of a free market in a democracy like ours is that you get to vote not just every couple years, but every single day.

    Every time you let money leave your hand, you’re voting for a lifestyle, or a way of “being”.

    Let’s stop looking for the bargain, and start looking for the good investment.

    The Sparrow and the Hawk

    Sun, January 2, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    The cold weather this weekend has the birds spending lots of time at my feeders. They’re equal-opportunity feeders, meaning that while seed-eating birds flock to the feeders, the occasional falcon takes advantage of the congregated birds to take a songbird as a snack of his own.

    Photo by Will Elder

    I watch a Kestrel (a type of falcon also known as a Sparrow Hawk) sitting on a branch above the feeders. While a Kestrel will sometimes take a bird, their primary diet is usually little creatures like mice. This one has apparently figured out that mice glean the seed that falls beneath the feeders, and he watches the ground intently.

    Photo by Terry Sohl

    The songbirds seem to know a falcon is sitting in the tree, as they stay away from the feeders while he’s there. I see them gathered not far away, clearly wanting to feed on this frigid day, but nervous about the falcon.

    In most cases, hunger will eventually trump risk, as it does with the sparrows and finches. The flock might lose one individual, but the flock as a whole needs to eat.

    The first to approach the feeders is a group of Titmice that stumble into the area. Their rapid flitting from branch to branch attracts the attention of the Sparrow Hawk, and as they notice his presence they decide to move along.

    Just as the Titmice move along, the Sparrows and Finches move into the top of the tree. They seem to know the Sparrow Hawk is still in the tree, staying above his perch as they chatter and move about from branch to branch. The Sparrow Hawk is clearly on high alert – looking for a chance to take a little bird who lets his guard down for just an instant. Eventually, a group of half a dozen or so Goldfinches drop down to the feeders, and the Sparrow Hawk makes his move.

    Fortunately for the Goldfinches, they’re agile on the wing, and the Sparrow Hawk doesn’t have enough space to gain any reasonable attack speed. The hawk flies off empty-taloned, and the Goldfinches resume their feeding after a couple minutes.

    Photo by Peter LaTourrette

    I’m always torn about who to “root for” when the falcons are around the feeder. It is a bird feeder, after all, and falcons are birds too, right? My immediate reaction is always to root for the underdog – the songbird. But common sense usually takes over and I figure it’s out of my hands – it’s just nature happening around me, and I’m blessed to be able to observe. No need to “root for” anybody.

    Why’s that so hard for us – to just observe without rooting for somebody? Why do we always feel like we need to be on one side or the other of something?

    After all, G-d isn’t rooting for one or the other, right? It’s just a balance thing, and it’s happening and balancing as we watch. And there’s beauty in balance, regardless of the outcome of this little confrontation or that little close-call.

    We often mold G-d into our own image, and this is one of those areas where I think it’s most apparent. Our human nature (for whatever reason) pushes us to always take sides on things, rather than simply understanding things and solving problems. This is a human characteristic, not a Divine one, yet we can’t resist pushing G-d into this little mold.

    I coached and refereed competitive soccer for years, and watched as many teams would have a “prayer” prior to the beginning of the match. While I have no doubt that the basic underlying intention of coaches was good when they did this, I also have little doubt that most of the time it was unconsciously a show – putting the “religiosity” of the coach on display in front of an audience. This aspect of the practice amused me.

    But another aspect of the prayer disturbed me. The likely collateral effect these “prayers” had on young minds bothered me – implying that G-d might just provide the most help to whichever team prayed the best, or the most, or with the right words. As-if to imply that “G-d is on my team, not on the other team.”

    While this might not by the explicit intent of the coach, I believe it’s one of the implied lessons beneath the practice. While I love the practice of prayer, I can only imagine how much more valuable the practice would be if both teams came together before the match, and prayed together. What a powerful lesson that would be for the players and the spectators. It would imply clearly the reality that G-d doesn’t “choose up sides” in this sort of thing, and that our need for prayer is our need to keep ourselves close to G-d.

    It’s an unfortunate reality we face in the world, with so many all across the globe believing that their perspective of G-d is the one and only right version – that G-d rejects all the other people who happen to have been brought up with a different perspective or different traditions. It’s quite selfish behavior really, and the sort of self-righteousness that’s led to more war and misery than anything else in our history.

    In my Christian tradition, we’ve got a really nice hymn that’s based on words Jesus spoke. The words from the refrain that are most memorable to like this:

    “His eye is on the Sparrow,

    and I know G-d watches over me.”

    Image from BirdsArt.com

    Maybe He watched the dance at my feeders. If so, His eye probably was on the Sparrow, and on the falcon as well. The falcon missed this time, but the odds may have worked in his favor later in the day, and he probably found a mouse, or a finch. And G-d probably smiled at the beauty of the balance that continued to be maintained.

    Shifting Winds

    Fri, November 12, 2010 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    I’ve got a special fondness for bike rides that let me have a tailwind on the way home. This week here in the Flint Hills, I’ve had some great out and back rides in the wind, where I get to work hard on the way out into the wind, then turn around and ride the wind home with a smile on my face.

    I find that very satisfying, getting the hard work out of the way first, then enjoying the easy half of the ride.

    If only everything in life could be so predictable and plan-able.

    Like kids. We have ‘em, and we figure we’ll get the hard work out of the way early, then things will get easier as they get older, then they’re grown up and the work’s all done. Right?

    Spoiler alert: If you have young children stop reading now while you still know the above statement to be true.

    My kids are all grown. I’m not changing diapers anymore, so that sort of work has certainly stopped. (Of course, I suspect there’s a time coming when I’ll be doing that again for their children…) I’m not getting calls from school principles in the middle of the day, so that’s an improvement. I’m certainly not getting calls from the local constable late at night asking me to come down and pick up a son, so that certainly feels like a bit of a tailwind.

    But I still know what 3:00AM looks like in a quiet house, worried about my kids. They’re out in the world on their own now, (well, mostly…), and there’s nothing at all I can do to help as they journey down their path. It’s them against the world, and all I can do is send love from my heart and prayers from my soul.

    The wind shifted on me…

    Or writing. I’m working on my next book these days, and finding the same thing I found with the first – there isn’t that turnaround point where you get a tailwind. I would have thought that once you get the first draft done, you get to turn and get a tailwind, but that just doesn’t happen for me. Sure, the first draft of the first draft is done, but oh my does it need improvement. Reading through it makes me doubt what I was trying to say, or doubt that I’ve said it well. Pretty soon I’ve rewritten most of it several times, and while I hope it’s an improvement, I’m not convinced. Soon, I’ll have to give it to the editor, an then I’ve got not only a headwind but a hill to climb…

    When I’m riding the bike out and back, I find that when I’m working against the wind – on my way “out” – my head’s down and my focus is on producing work. Then, when I make the turn and get the wind at my back, I sit up and enjoy the ride. I take lots of pictures, and notice all the things I missed on the way out.

    The mind and body are open and receptive. Beauty is more apparent. I find lots of little side trips to explore just for fun.

    Maybe, for me, writing is the opposite of how I like to do a bike ride. Maybe the tailwind is the first part of the ride, when I get to just let ideas flow out onto the keyboard – sort of like I’m doing right here. I’m enjoying it, I’m open and receptive, I find lots of little side trips to explore just for fun. (If you read much of what I write, you know I find lots of side trips…) Then the early part is done, and it’s time to start the real work – time to turn back into the wind and put my head down.

    I wish it were the other way around…

    But today, if it clears up, I’m gettin’ on my bike and ridin’ into the wind ‘til my lungs and legs are beat, then turnin’ ‘round, puttin’ my back to the wind, and screamin’ my way home on the crest of a tailwind!

    The Möbius Strip

    Wed, November 10, 2010 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    In our culture, we tend to have a very delineated view of the world. Things are either black or white, they’re either on or off, they’re either left or right. Everything has a “side” to it, or sometimes multiple sides, and I’ve always got to choose which side I’m on. Somebody’s going to win, and somebody’s going to lose.

    MC Escher Drawing

    The older I get, the less I think the universe is set up that way. Oh, I accept that we try and construct the world we live in that way, but I don’t think this is the “order of things” as they’re laid out in the universe. I don’t think this is how G-d sees it.

    I write about this in my book – Peace at the Edge of Uncertainty – and I recently had a discussion with someone that got me to thinking about it a little differently.

    MC Escher Mobius Strip

    M.C. Escher was inspired by a mathematical concept called the Möbius Strip. Think of it as a flat noodle that you make a loop out of and join the two ends together, but before you join the ends, you give the noodle half a twist. Now, there’s no inside or outside of the noodle, right? If you traced a path along the noodle you’d cover the entire surface – inside and outside – and end up right back at the same place.

    Kind of like the concept of giving. In our delineated view of the world, there’s a giver and a receiver, right? One person is on one side of the strip, and the other person is on the other side. But when your heart opens during the act of giving, you’re much more accessible to receiving as well. On the other side of the interaction, the receiver gives gratitude back to the giver, creating a continuum in the giving cycle. Done well, there is no giver and no receiver, but only the blessing of giving.

    Like forgiveness. In nearly every religion, the instruction to forgive each other exists, but we often come to think of it in our delineated fashion – thinking that if we want to be forgiven, then we first must forgive others. The classic if/then statement. But I don’t think it works that way.

    Expressing forgiveness is something that’s contagious, and infects everyone around us. Forgiving enhances a state of forgiveness, and there’s no inside surface or outside surface. It just happens. We can’t make it happen, or keep ourselves on the outside surface of it, we can only contribute to the state that exists, or turn our heads and try and pretend it isn’t there by refusing to express forgiveness.

    G-d doesn’t forgive us because we forgive others – we just choose to join the state that G-d creates – it’s all one surface. G-d doesn’t let us fall into blessings because we give to others – giving to others opens us to the state of giving, and lets us participate in the never-ending cycle of giving and receiving.

    The Möbius Strip. Jump on.

    American Craftsmanship and the ’58 Corvette

    Tue, November 9, 2010 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    My son Jesse is in Vietnam, managing construction projects over there, teaching folks how to plan and build. Vietnam is booming right now, and companies there are looking for ways to leverage American construction knowledge. I talk to him most mornings, (or in his case, evenings), and through these conversations I’m coming to understand more about craftsmanship, quality, and just how much I’ve taken these values for granted in my life.

    Jesse’s particular “craft” is decorative concrete. He’s an artist really, who happens to use concrete materials to build beautiful work that becomes part of a home or place of business. From stamped patios to countertops, he cares deeply for how something looks, and how well it’s put together. He’s built a valuable reputation as someone who “does it right”.

    When a Vietnamese company hired him to come over there and work with them, he thought it was for his skill with decorative concrete. Now that he’s over there, though, he’s realizing that their culture is a long ways away from even beginning to understand that sort of concrete.

    It’s a pretty foundational concept and value in the American Psyche – the notion of quality workmanship. During my own generation, we let some of that value slip away, and it’s still slipping today. But it’s such a basic underpinning of who we are that many generations will pass before we’ve lost it altogether.

    Not that we do everything right. Not that we don’t know how to do shoddy work. We make mistakes, and we do sometimes do shoddy work. But we know it’s shoddy when we do it, and we generally see the mistakes for what they are.

    For years, Detroit built cars that were works of art. To this day, few things are as beautiful as a ’56 or ’57 T-Bird, or a ’58 or ’59 Corvette or ’63 Corvette Stingray. How about the ’67 GTO (in black of course). These cars were all built as a result of a solid connection between the American worker and a belief in good workmanship and a quality product. I could go on for pages and pages about things like American furniture, or the solid stone homes throughout the Midwest, or the fine bicycles that are built in small shops across American still today.

    We get quality. We get fine workmanship.

    I’m learning through Jesse that this isn’t a universal notion – the idea of understanding quality workmanship. As he tries to teach workers in Vietnam some of the most basic notions of how to build a quality product, he’s learning that their cultural vocabulary just doesn’t seem to include an appreciation of a well-planned and well-executed project, or of the difference between a truly fine concrete finish and one that’s barely passable. Their cultural vocabulary seems much more focused on getting done quickly, regardless of the future costs of poor planning. They have a focus on the appearance that something is completed, rather than on an understanding of something done well that will last.

    I remember when I was young, and a tag that said “Made in China” was something I was taught to avoid. It implied not only that the product was probably cheaply made, but also that buying the product supported a “system” that we didn’t believe in.

    Somewhere in the 56 years of my life, we’ve turned this notion on its head. Now corporations like Walmart seem to be dedicated to stuffing stores with junk made in China. And people shop at these stores, either unaware or uncaring about what this represents.

    50 years ago, “Made in America” represented something of great value. Good, hard-working people went to work in well-paying jobs and made good quality products. We knew how to pay people well to do a good job, and how to create and innovate. We knew how to build a 1958 Corvette. OMC built motors that would last for generations, not months or years.

    We could have exported this to the rest of the world. We could have taught the rest of the world how to appreciate quality in the same way we appreciated quality, and how to find the elegance, simplicity, and beauty in products that were made well.

    Or we could have imported another way of thinking. We could have imported the idea that cheap is better than good. We could have imported the idea that workmanship is worthless, and we need to pay people the lowest wage we possibly can, rather than a wage that will allow them to live well and support other well-paying jobs.

    The American Worker would have benefited far more from the first course of action. We The People would be much better off if we’d have invested in exporting American Workmanship overseas. However, large corporations could show a better short-term bottom line by following the second course of action.

    Guess which one we chose? We’ve now effectively eliminated organized labor in this country, which was the single most important factor in maintaining a living wage for the American Worker. Companies like Walmart have been very effective in exporting American jobs overseas, while working tirelessly to assure that their workers never enjoy the benefits of organized labor. We’ve lowered our standards of quality in this country, and we’ve accepted that everything we buy is throw-away.

    For anyone who thinks I’m being racist in some way in this article, I think you’re missing the point. It isn’t that people in Vietnam or China are “less” somehow than people in America, it’s just that their culture places value on different things. In many instances, I think there are values in these cultures that we should be learning from and importing – they’re better than ours.

    But understanding quality and fine workmanship isn’t one of these. Quality Workmanship seems to be something that still flows through American blood, and this is one of those things that we should be exporting, rather than importing the alternative.

    Jesse’s a smart guy. He’ll figure out how to teach his colleagues in Vietnam how to focus on quality workmanship, and how to run a project efficiently. By the same token, I’m sure there are some extremely valuable qualities that he’ll pick up from them. I’m just sorry that as a country, we didn’t do that same thing, and instead allowed the short-term profits of a few large corporations like Walmart to define the decline in the culture of American Craftsmanship.

    1958 Corvette

    Soul Dressing

    Fri, October 29, 2010 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    It seems that the deity dressed each soul which he sends into nature in certain virtues and powers not communicable to other men, and sending it to perform one more turn through the circle of beings, wrote “Not transferable” and “Food for this trip only” on these garments.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Loss Of The Commons

    Mon, October 25, 2010 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    Common Decency, Common Courtesy, and Common Sense – critical to the survival of a culture. While the definition of each of these might vary slightly culture to culture, I think there’s some foundational common ground.

    As a culture, we seem to have lost our bearings with regard to this 3-legged stool that supports a culture. When it happened I’m not sure, but it feels like it’s been rapidly accelerating over the past 30 years. We’ve lost the ability to allow any disagreement into our dialogue, as we no longer have an understanding of how decency, courtesy, and sense can guide us to learn from one another when we disagree rather than hating and hurting one another.

    Common Decency

    The desire to treat our fellow human beings with respect and compassion. The willingness to forego some comfort or profit in order for another to be more comfortable or to feel some small gain. This notion of common decency is foundational to most religions. In the case of my own religion – Christianity – the entire religion is based on the teachings of a man who gave himself completely to not only teaching these principles, but to demonstrating them in the life he led.

    But these principles seem hidden in our culture today, don’t they? There will always be mean-spirited people who lie and cheat and bully others, but a culture founded in common decency will shun and banish those people. How is it then, that people like Limbaugh and Hannity and Orielly and Beck and Olberman survive and thrive on the airwaves of our public square? How is it that Americans continue to shop at stores like Walmart who strive hard to assure that good jobs aren’t available in America, both by continuing illegal and immoral practices to assure that American workers can’t organize, and by producing every product they can overseas in countries that consistently support labor practices that most of us would consider slavery, child abuse, or worse?

    We make decisions every day with our wallets – our continual vote in the marketplace. Every time we allow one of these abusive, lying, cheating bullies to appear on a TV that we watch, we cast a vote in favor of what they represent. Every time we make a purchase at a Walmart, we cast a vote in favor of what they represent. We have absolute power to simply set our jaw, and make them go away by refusing to support them and what they represent.

    Yet we don’t. Why not? Our refusal to take a stand against these practices makes us complicit in their actions. Certainly supporting the concept of reasonable wages will make our prices rise, but the America I grew up in had the decency to allow my neighbor to make a living wage rather than force him to live in poverty so I can pay a little less for some trinket I might want to buy.

    The lying, cheating, bullies are out in force right now as we run up to our election. Will we continue to swallow their pill of dishonesty and lack of common decency, or will we set our jaw and vote with a conscience rather than with our selfish greed?

    Common Courtesy

    I had dinner with a friend not long ago, and our conversation meandered around to courtesy. As common decency has crept further and further from our relationship palette, so courtesy has become less and less important. Courtesy is an expression of care, concern, and respect for another person. Extending a courtesy to another person is an open hand that lets them see the respect you have for them.

    My daughter went through a period when she refused to let me open doors for her. She’s a strong-willed and intelligent young woman, who seemed to see having a man open a door as an expression of weakness on her part. As she’s grown up, I’ve noticed that she not only lets me open doors for her, but will actually pause slightly to give me the chance to open it. She’s come to realize how much it means to me when I’m able to express my respect for her by opening the door for her, and she’s learning to give this gift to me more often. She’s every bit as strong-willed as she ever was, and becoming more intelligent every day. And she’s learning the art of courtesy in a culture that’s working hard to keep her from doing so.

    I should mention also that my daughter is teaching me a thing or two about courtesy as well. Although I really don’t care a bit about fashion, and have nearly zero fashion sense, I’m allowing myself to learn from her – how to identify “cute” shoes, what colors go together well, etc. I do this not because I really care about cute shoes, but because these are things that are important to her, and by learning from her, I give her a gift and a courtesy.

    The courtesy that our children display is a perfect reflection of what we have taught them about how to express care, concern and respect for other people. How our generation behaves is far less important than how the next generation behaves, and the common courtesy we teach them has a very big impact on that behavior.

    Common Sense

    Common sense was, at one time, the true measure of a person. If a person has all the education in the world, but lacked basic common sense, s/he was considered to have little practical knowledge. If a person spewed rhetoric that couldn’t stand up to the rigors of logic, s/he lost all credibility.

    It was important that a person be able to sew a button on a shirt if necessary, or to understand the most basic principles of how to put something together or to apply common repairs. This represented common sense, and the ability to understand things and solve problems. Today, such things have come to represent “common” labor, and fewer and fewer people can do these things. Worse, they’re often proud of their lack of common sense, making it clear that they don’t have the ability to perform these basic tasks, apparently unaware or uncaring of the lack of common sense this displays.

    In the words of Teddy Roosevelt, “If a boy has not got pluck and honesty and common sense he is a pretty poor creature, and he is a worse creature if he is a man and lacks any one of those three traits.”

    Lest anyone sense any taint of sexism in this statement, the reader should also know that in the year 1913 – well before there was any sense of gender equality in our culture, TR also said, “Much can be done by law towards putting women on a footing of complete and entire equal rights with man – including the right to vote, the right to hold and use property, and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same terms as the man.”…”Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.”

    The decline of common decency is directly related to the decline in common sense. It’s the loss of the common sense required to discern truth from fiction that’s allowed the ascendence of the liars, cheats, and bullies that are paid so much money by the media to spew their distortions and half-truths. The lack of common sense keeps us voting for people who spoon-feed us honey while destroying the orchard, and keep us spending money with multi-national corporations who are destroying the fabric of our economy.

    Like every culture, ours is held up wholly by the 3 pillars of civilized behavior – Common Decency, Common Courtesy, and Common Sense. I question how much longer we can stand as these pillars erode around us. The power to rebuild them and make them strong lies completely in our hands. Will we pick up the tools and start to repair the extreme damage that’s already occurred.

    The Seed and the Journey

    Tue, October 12, 2010 No Comments by Neil Hanson

    American Goldfinch - David Ko

    I love watching finches pulling seeds out of ripened seed-heads. They’ll sway with the stalk as it moves under their weight, displaying amazing balance while pulling seeds from the blackened and drying head they cling to.

    There are many seeds that only germinate if they pass through the digestive track of a bird, or at least germinate much better if they pass through that digestive journey. In fact, I’ve heard stories of plants that have gone extinct after the bird that feeds on their seeds goes extinct. (This may be enhanced legand, but it certainly seems feasable, so it makes for a good story either way.) Then there’s the story of certain forest trees whose seeds only germinate in the heat of a forest fire, essentially assuring that when the forest does burn, they’re the first plants to germinate in the newly cleared forest, where there’s plenty of light. (This one is well-documented.)

    We see this cycle of life everywhere around us – this ripening of a seed, which then becomes the next generation. As a parent, I find great joy in watching my children on their journey of ripening, growing far beyond what I could have imagined when I watched them first sprout. And see them now at an age when yet another generation will soon begin to sprout from the ripening that life now shares with them.

    But this process of ripening, journey, germination, and start all over again isn’t something that only exists at the macro level of the passing of one generation to another. Within the life we lead, we should look for places where this cycle is trying to emerge as part of our larger journey through life. We’re not meant to slog along, one step in front of the other, never looking up. We’re meant to mature within each season that life shares with us. Only through this maturing process can we ripen into the fruit and the vessel that’s capable of producing the seed of what we are meant to become next in this lifetime.

    The journey of your life to this point has produced the seed of what you can become next. You’ve weathered many storms, and learned quite a bit to become what you are today. But what you are is only the vessel to deliver the seeds of what you can next become. Becoming the better you – the one that your soul and your energy is meant to become next – happens when you let go of the seeds and let them germinate.

    The seed itself needs to go on a journey first – it needs some catalyst to help it to germinate. It’s probably different for each of us. For some of us, the seeds our life has produced will germinate best right where they drop. For others, finches will pull from us the seeds we cling to as they migrate past us, giving us a chance to germinate far from where we are today. For others, the heat of some fire is required to break open the seed.

    I suspect in most cases, we don’t even know what needs to happen. We probably feel a ripening within us, but cling to the old vessel that we’ve been to this point, afraid to release the seeds of what we need to become next, afraid to let those seeds travel whatever journey they need to travel in order to germinate into the best “next iteration” that we can be. I suspect this is the source of a lot of the depression that we see and feel around us each day.

    Are you feeling a bit “ripe” these days? Feeling a bit anxious about what’s next? Feeling a bit underwater or over your head? Feeling a sadness that’s hard to explain?

    Maybe it’s time to let the finches take the seeds where they need to go, or let the firestorm scar and open the seed. Maybe the vessel that’s you has worked hard to produce the seed of what you need to become, and now you need to let the seed take its journey and germinate. There’s an even better you that can only emerge when that seed is allowed to take that journey – release it and follow it. Become the better you that you’ve laid the foundation for. Whatever you do, don’t fall down onto the cold damp fall ground and let the seed go to waste.

    Embrace it.

    Celebrate it.

    Release it so you can emerge again – an even better you!

    The October Garden

    Sat, October 9, 2010 2 Comments by Neil Hanson

    Seed-heads ripen and stand dry on the dead stalks of the Echinacia and Rudbeckia in the garden. The tops of the grasses turn golden as they dry in the autumn sun. The Agastache and Mexican Sage are the last strong flowers in the garden, and with the first hard frosts they die back as well.

    To the untrained eye, the garden in autumn represents “the end” of the season, but to the seasoned gardener, the autumn is really the beginning of the next season.

    Woody plants cut off nutrients and water to their leaves, as they conserve the energy they’ll need for the upcoming bloom – right after they take a nap… Hardy perennials shed their tops and curl up in the energy of their roots, preparing for the explosion of new growth that’s soon to come – right after they take a nap…

    Goldfinches on Echicacia Heads

    This is the height of the gardening season for the birds. Goldfinches line up for a place on the drying seed heads to pull morsels out for dinner, beginning the life of new plants that the seeds will produce thanks to the help of the birds. The last of the migrating hummingbirds dine on the Agastache and Mexican Sage, helping them to begin their new year further south. My bird feeders empty twice as fast this time of year, as they’re shared by a few remaining summer residents, most of the new winter residents, and a few migrating guests.

    It’s easy to look at this time of year as a time to cut everything back in the garden – to “neaten it up” before winter. But this is a time when the garden needs to stand and prepare for the coming season. Cutting some plants back too fast can trick them into thinking they need to send up new growth now. The multitude of birds depend on the heavy growth that remains in the garden as protection from hungry predators, as well as depending on the seed-heads on the plants as they die back to provide a good diet. For the forbe eating birds, the heavy growth also provides a higher likelihood of some high-protein bug-snacks.

    I’ve been moving through a “cleaning out” stage in my life recently. I make weekly trips to the Goodwill store with bags of stuff that it’s time for someone else to have. I’m trying not to go too fast, or to make rash decisions. While it’d be easy to see this time in my life as an “ending”, where it’s time to clean things up as the kids have moved on to their own lives. I choose instead to see it as only the beginning of the next growing season. I need to move slowly through the cleaning process and keep the garden healthy. As the winter moves along, I’ll need to continue to cut things back in their time, and keep the garden as healthy as I can for the next stage of this new growing season.

    Happy gardening. Enjoy that standing grass and the seed-heads as the birds enjoy the meal. Look forward to the snow that’ll keep the roots warm as they’re curled up for the winter. Keep checking those closets and corners for stuff that it’s time somebody else took off your hands…