Tighter tomorrows

Whether we like it or not, we've got to tighten up our relationships with others. I know I sound like some goody-two-shoes, but if I'm wrong about this, I'd be more than happy to entertain contrary thoughts. No opinions, of course. You can keep them to yourselves. If you've got a well thought-out argument, though, I'd be happy to take it into consideration.

All I'm trying to say is that being together and cooperating with others is as natural as anything can be. All we need to do is accept this simple fact and other things start to follow. Don't get me wrong. If there is anything capable of aggravating you till you're ready to tear your hair out, it's other people. I'm sure we agree on that. But in the end, at bottom, we can't live without them, so if there's anything we need to start doing – and I mean all of us – it's learning to live with others. Yes, everybody has to do it, and since everybody's waiting for the other person to start, we'll never get started. You know that part of you I said was your own self? Well, now's the time to call upon it: you have to start. Not the other person. You. Some things are up to you, and this is one of them.

This isn't a trivial matter, you know. If we don't get started on this, we'll end up killing ourselves off, and the planet will simply breathe a sigh of relief that we're gone. No savior is coming down from heaven to instigate the change. Nobody has a front row seat in paradise. It doesn't matter anyway, most of us still have a bit of time to spend here on this plane, and it is precisely on this one that we need to get our ducks in line. I'm here to tell you: it doesn't make a hill of beans of difference what you think you believe or how fervently you believe it. The only thing that makes a difference, now, later, and if there is one, in the afterlife is what you do here. This is it, folks. This is your only chance. Don't blow it.

Lighter tomorrows

If you've given something up ... if you've shifted your attention away from yourself to someone else, then you've got to feel lighter. You see how simple it all can be.

Yeah, yeah, I know ... all you do is sacrifice yourself for others. Who doesn't? All we all do is give and give and give and everybody we know just takes and takes and takes. No wonder the world is so screwed up. If everyone were like me ... right.

That's where we always get stuck, isn't it? We just love to think that we're just fine and everyone else is the problem. That's only partially true. Yes, everyone else is a problem, but we're the problem, too. There are no exceptions. Master George said it best: you're born, you're guilty, end of story. That's right. Being present is the admission of guilt. You're here, you're part of the problem.

The funny part is, contrary to popular belief, no one has ever expected you to change the world all on your own. You can't. You just aren't that important. Why place that burden on yourself? It's really simple ... and obvious ... if you stop to think about it.

Humans are one of nature's creatures who is most helpless when born. We are not capable of living on our own for quite some time (and some people never manage to mature that far, but that's another story). We aren't suited to eat "outside" (mom) food till around nine months after we show up. We can't walk till around then either, and we have no idea where to go anyway. We spend years depending on our parents for everything: food, shelter, clothing. We can't function without learning lots of useful and useless things in school, and even then, we don't grow or hunt our own food, most of us don't know how to cook. We are, and remain, highly dependent upon others for our mere survival. It's time to simply acknowledge this simple fact.

The point is that nature has made us dependent on others. There's nothing wrong with that. It's how we are, by nature. All that bullshit about individualism, rugged or otherwise, is just that: bullshit. You are not any more of an individual than anyone else, and in the end, we are our own selves, that is true, but we are selves who cannot live without others. The sooner we own up to that simple fact, the sooner things even stand a chance of getting better.

Brighter tomorrows

Yes, yes, yes ... there has been a good deal of frustration in the last couple of posts. I'll be the first one to admit that. After all, there's a lot to be frustrated about. If you stop to be honest with yourself, there are a lot of things not working these days. A lot is broken. Some things are on their last legs, and if some changes aren't made soon, I'm afraid a lot of people are going to get hurt. I'm not exaggerating. Dying of starvation, being thrown into poverty, losing everything you have, contracting a fatal disease ... those are all very painful, and it is precisely these things that are not occurring less often. All of them are on the rise.

I can't be the only one who see this. I can't be the only one who can figure out that the trajectory we have put ourselves on is not going to end happily without some changes. And, I can't be the only one who has figured out that some of those changes aren't going to be to my liking, but that doesn't make them any less necessary. So here's the deal:

Decide what it is that you want to give up. Everybody has to give up something. Every change starts with ourselves. We don't get more ... we have to give more, so you have to decide what it is that you want to give. It's not about you. It's never been about you. It's about your friends, your family, your children, your grandchildren. It's about people you never met and people you never will meet.

Oh, and before you get carried away, it's not about your political involvement, how you vote, or what shows you watch or what news you listen to. It's about you deciding what you can do to make the world a better place. Not better for you, but better for someone else. If you're not making the world better for someone else, you're not making it better at all.

Collophone March

So, here are the muses from last month:

Allman Brothers, Eat a Peach;
Steve Earle, Train A'coming;
Jay Farrar, Stone, Steel & Bright Lights;
Green Day, Dookie;
John Hiatt & the Goners, Beneath This Gruff Exterior;
Chris Issac, Baja Sessions;
The Killers, Hot Fuss;
Lifehouse, Stanley Climbfall;
Sarah McLachlan, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy;
Julie Miller, Blue Pony;
Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited.

Those are my long-tail recommendations for March. As you can see, not all your usual fare, but every one of them does come highly recommended. Enjoy.

Just a reminder for you lexicographers: the collo- part is from "collection" and the -phone part is, well, obvious. Therefore, it is a collection of music that is listened to for a particular purpose, such as marking assignments, writing blogs, or watching sunrises/sets (depending on your inclination).

Holy moley

When you are considered by some to be a cynically optimistic curmudgeon, my last post really isn't all that bad. At least it's not out of character. Which came first, the character or the cynicism will have to remain a chicken-and-egg question. I don't think it much matters.

I know, I know, there are lots of you out there who still have hope for the world, and I can assure you that I'm glad you're there. I doubt you're going to have much effect, bar some unforeseen world-altering event, but as the Germans like to say, hope dies last. What nevertheless amazes me most, I think, is the degree of denial that we humans are capable of.

Think about it for a moment: When you have to pump almost $30 trillion into an economic system just to keep it afloat, just how robust can it be? When you have almost 10 million people dying of starvation alone every year, how effective can business be? When three people own more than 48 countries combined, how fair is that? When it is obvious that we've got huge environmental problems but we insist on business as usual, how smart is that? When we give up freedom after freedom in the name of false security, how do we explain that to our children? When everybody is wrong, how can anyone be right? Yes, these are big-ticket issues and for every one of them there are literally millions of people who deny that any one of them, let alone all of them, is true. And I'm supposed to have hope in a brighter future?

Sorry, no can do. Sorry, my sleep-walking friends, but it's time to wake up. The first step, says Lao Tzu, is the hardest, but it's one everybody can take: drop your opinions. Stop talking, start listening. How hard can that be?

The whole hole

If one opinion is as good as any other, then none of them has any value. Things without value cannot serve as the basis for Values. And so, here we are in a valueless world. How great is that?

In a desperate attempt to salvage something from it all, we've reverted to "worth" as a replacement. After all, the words are very similar in meaning, so the transition hasn't been all that difficult. Unfortunately, the words only appear to be similar in meaning. But what else can we do?

Not much. We are not allowed to have values anymore because the opponents of my values decry them as mere opinions. And everyone who doesn't share my values, well, they're just not worth talking to. (And if you stop for just a second to look at how "values" and "worth" were used in that last sentence, you'd realize how little the two words have to do with one another.) And that's precisely what happens. We no longer talk to ... we only talk at.

Political debate has become nothing more than the repeating of positions until the other either agrees or stops listening. Religious debate has become nothing more than the repeating of tenants of faith until the other agrees or stops listening. Educational debate has become nothing more than repeating of alleged principles until the other agrees or stops listening. In the end, what they share is the fact that there is nothing more than opinion being spouted, and no one is listening.

Perhaps the most effective marketer of all time, Josef Goebbels, is well known for his adage: if you repeat the lie often enough, the people will believe it. And that's where we are, whether we like it or not, and whether we want to admit it or not. Everybody's bought into the same lie: opinions matter.

Here we are at the beginning of the 21st century, and all we have to offer the world are opinions: economies are better than societies; my god is bigger than your god; my students are smarter than yours; my team is better than your team; my clique is cooler than your clique; my ... well, you can fill in the blank.

Almost 2,000,000 years of human history (or roughly 6,000 for you fundamentalists) and that's all we have to show for ourselves. Don't we have reason to be proud?

Deeper in the hole

Opinions are not restricted to just the political sphere. That's where we encounter them quite often, and it is there that it's most apparent that we're dealing with opinions, but, truth be told, they're everywhere ... in every major sphere of life.

Let's take economics. We love to talk about that, don't we? Like I've said so often, we traded in our society for an economy, so all we ever talk about anymore is how much stuff costs? Who's going to pay for that? Why do I have to pay so many taxes? And it's all based on what? Right – opinions. Free markets: opinion. They don't exist; never have. Add one cent of government subsidies to anything and that market is no longer free. Which aspect of our economy is unaffected? None. Who are the biggest advocates of free-market economics? Those who receive the biggest subsidies: banks, defense contractors, private equity speculators ... and more and more the broad masses of people without much of anything, for they've bought into the opinion that if it's free, I have a chance too.

Or, what about religion? We've got at least two related religions running around claiming sole access to the truth: Christianity and Islam. In both cases, however, it is just one variety of the religion that dominates the discussion, namely the fundamentalists. What gets me is that they both claim the same source for their rightness: the Big Guy Himself. What are the claims then really based on: opinion, what one has chosen to believe.

Or, education? We don't even teach facts anymore. No one learns to write, to express thoughts, to think critically, to debate ... why? Because it's all politically incorrect. Since when has political anything been the determiner of what we need to learn in order to be conscientious citizens? Oh, I almost forgot: citizens are members of a society, and we don't have a society anymore, just an economy, and how educated do you have to be in order to consume? Consumers shouldn't be too smart, they might not buy my stuff.

We're a lot farther down the hole than we like to admit, aren't we?

Down the hole

And therein lies the rub, as Bill once wrote. We can't and don't know what's right, because we can no longer agree. And we can't agree for the simple reason that we can't talk with one another anymore. We love talking at others, but there's as good as no more talking to. We can't discuss and debate anymore, because we no longer acknowledge that the other person has anything worth listening to. Everybody's entitled to their opinion, and makes none of them right, and none of them wrong. Everybody has one, and those folks who agree with mine are the good guys and everyone else is a bad guy. Isn't that how it works?

If we're honest, that's precisely how it works. When I was growing up – and I realize that was a long time ago – we thought that opinions were the result of thinking, not a replacement for it. But that's changed. I'll give Fox News one thing: they call themselves a news channel but they admit they aren't one; they have clearly defined hours when they broadcast news and everything else is opinion. No, the vast majority of their listeners/watchers/fans don't know the difference, but at least they have made it known.

You can't argue with opinions. They aren't based on anything. They are merely individual (or prescribed) interpretations of a personal selection of facts. We still use words like "truth" and "justice", but they don't really mean anything. "Truth" has come to mean "agrees with me"; "justice" more or less means "got what I think s/he deserved". And that's it. Our entire social and political debate has been reduced to little more than he-said-she-said. I find that just a little more than sad.

Beside the hole

For those of you who have been suffering through these "hole" posts (not post holes ... please note the difference), you have to be asking yourself about this time, just where is all of this leading. All I can say is that that is a another excellent question. Nevertheless, I'm going to try and answer it, and to do so, I'm going to make use of two very popular words ... at least popular these days ... for the simple reason that they will be used in a sense much closer to their original intent than is thought of today.

What have we got? Fundamentally, our beliefs drive our opinions, regardless of the facts; what is more, the facts, in and of themselves, are of little value, they just are. On the one hand, then, we have those who believe in the stability of their beliefs, that their beliefs are the right beliefs, that the reason anything functions as well as it does is because of how they believe. We'll call these folks "conservatives"; that is, those who think that things should pretty much stay the way they are. On the other hand, we have those who believe that just because a lot of folks believe something doesn't necessarily make it right; there could be different things to believe at different times or in different places. We'll call these people "relativists". (Gotcha, didn't I? Admit it, you thought I was going to write something very different.)

What's wrong with this picture? What should be wrong with it, you may be asking. It looks just fine to me. Well, if we stop and reflect for just a moment, why should there be only two positions to take on this: conservatism and relativism? Why isn't there another, if not other, way(s) of looking at all of this? Well, there is. And it's what we're going to call, for lack of a better word, realism. Yes, it's just that simple to redefine somebody else's words. We should never forget that language is just that: language, a way of expressing our understanding of reality. And, in deference to the master, George Carlin, I might add we can't say things in our own words, just in those words that everyone else uses as well.

So, there we have it: conservatives, relativists, and realists. How do we know who's right? Can we know what's right? How do we decide what's right? Those are the pressing questions for the moment. The short answer is: we don't.

Back to the hole

Facts in and of themselves are just that, facts. Opinions, even informed opinions, are just opinions. They don't tell us what is good, bad or indifferent. They really don't tell us anything (other than what is or how something thinks about something). But, in the end, they're really not all that helpful. Why?

At bottom, what makes a difference is really only that which matters, that which has meaning. But meaning for whom? How do we determine what something means. This is a much more difficult question, believe me. It may even be the most difficult question of all. Why? Because when all is said and done, we find meaning in those things that we believe.

This may sound banal, and to a certain extent it is, but it is nevertheless deep, and not everyone is ready to dive into that deepness. What am I talking about? Let's say, just for the sake of argument, Joan believes in free-market capitalism. How does she interpret the "facts" about starvation in the world? Let's say, for example, that Tom believes in a redistribution of wealth, if necessary, forced. How does he interpret those same facts? Who's "right"?

Yes, here's the rub. What the facts tell us, what they mean, depend, in the end on what we believe, in particular how we believe the world functions, whether money or G-d is at the root of all things, what we believe democracy to be or what we understand when we use the words "freedom" or "liberty" or "government" or "wealth" or any number of other abstract concepts that can't be corralled in fact or statistics or numbers.

No, in the end, it is our beliefs that drive our thinking, our understanding of numbers, our interpretation of reality, our opinions and our knowledge. Everybody can't be right, and everybody can't be wrong. But, the biggest part of our unending discussions don't center around facts, or statistics, or anything, except what we believe ... and we tend to congregate with those who believe the things that we do too.

I only bring this up because while we think we are being oh so convincing in our argumentation, that we are so persuasive in our presentations, in fact we are merely telling others what it is we believe. And the question that immediately presents itself, of course, is why is that what you (or I) believe better than what somebody else believes? Yes, just why should that be?

Who's going to celebrate?

We moderns are just silly enough to think that it was a good idea to decouple ourselves from nature, from the natural world around us. Oh, I'm all for modern conveniences and technology (to an extent), but losing sight of where one comes from in the end means never being able to figure out where you're going. You lose all sense of orientation.

I find it meaningful that two of the world's significant religions decided to have their holidays at this particular time. The fact that they are movable, that they can, and do, occur not on a specific day but at a specific time, tells me that the fest was there first, the reason came later. This does not diminish the significance of either of religious holidays nor the reason for their veneration in each of their complex of beliefs. After all, what should religions be doing other than helping us understand ourselves and our lives more deeply. And I believe that is precisely what the religious stories surrounding this event do.

The Passover story is a story of true liberty, the chance to go forth and establish a just and free society. Sure, we're all still working on that ... most people everywhere are still working on that, but the story reminds us, at a minimum, that this particular struggle is worth the effort. It tells us that true freedom is gained with others, not in spite of others. The Resurrection story is also a story of freedom, the ultimate second chance. It is a story that tells us that even when we screw up, there is still hope for us, but only if we stop thinking just of ourselves and start thinking of others as well. What both stories tell us, what they have in common, of course, is that they are about a new lease on life ... not just the lackadaisical, oh-I'm-feeling-better kind, but rather a deep, profound, existential lease of life.

It is our modern arrogance that too often prevents us from accepting and embracing the opportunities we are given. Myth, my friends, is simply truer than we might want to believe. The details are not the deciding factor, the moral of the story is. The stories being told right now -- mythologically, spiritually, cosmologically -- are worth listening to. We all have reason to celebrate.

What's to celebrate?

Sometimes I'm just naive enough to think that everybody knows why we have holidays. I'm always amazed then when I find out how many people don't. OK, maybe it's not necessary to know the exact formula for figuring out when Easter and Passover come, but seen cosmologically, there does appear to be a very long-standing tradition of why it's now.

The Easter story is pretty straightforward: a young Jewish rabbi is accused of rousing too much rabble, so the powers-that-be decide his number's up and they crucify him -- the standard abominable punishment of the day; contrary to expectations, however, he doesn't stay buried, was raised from the dead, met his disciples leading them to draw the conclusion that this man was in fact the long-promised Messiah ... thus (in very abbreviated form) Christianity was born. Easter, then, is Christianity's defining moment: no Easter, no Christianity.

Passover is perhaps a little more complicated, but not very: the Hebrews are slaves in Egypt, Moses, who was incidentally raised by the Old Pharaoh, is tasked by G-d to get the New Pharaoh to free the slaves. After a dramatic series of events, the last of which killed the first born of the Egyptians, but not the Hebrews (for the Angel of Death passed them over), the Pharaoh relents, lets them go and they leave; then, after wandering in the desert for 40 years, they settle in what is now Israel and become the Jewish nation ... thus (in very abbreviated form) Judaism was born. Passover, then, is Judaism's defining moment: no Passover (Exodus), no Judaism.

Aside from any religious or ideological issues, am I the only one that finds it odd that these two holidays should coincide. OK, it's not all that rare that two different groups may have holidays around the same time, but these two holidays are not just any old holidays. Instead, in both instances they are the holidays that more or less define these two groups.

Sure, I hear the skeptics already shouting "coincidence", but to me the fundamental significance of these holidays speaks against that. As we saw between the years, it was anything but a matter of chance that Christmas ended up where it is, but what we also saw was that there had been a long tradition of a particular type of holiday at that time. Is it really to unreasonable to think that the same forces might be at work here? I don't think so.

Time to celebrate?

It might be advisable to get out of the hole for a moment. There are plenty of things to explore there, and we can get back to it whenever we please. It may have escaped your notice, but we've got the big spring thing going on, and I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention it.
Yes, for some it's Easter, of course, for others it is Passover. The close affinity of the two religions gives us the overlap.

Like Christmas, believe it or not, just when these holidays fall is also related to cosmological events. You will recall we have two solstices (when the sun is farthest and closest to the earth, the longest day and longest night, that is, the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter). You will also be happy to know we have two equinoxes as well, that is, days when the days and nights are of equal length. These occur when the sun crosses the equator going north (spring) or south (fall). Spring just recently sprang, so things are looking up. If you're not clouded in at night, though, you may want to check out the moon, because it is waxing (getting larger) and on Friday (the 6th, for most of us) it will be all filled up. We'll have our first full moon after the spring (that is, vernal) equinox. The first sabbath thereafter is when the holidays occur.

It's all very logical, isn't it? Perhaps. Just as I mentioned between the years, we moderns don't handle these kinds of things very well. It all seems to arbitrary, doesn't it? Well, actually, no ... at least not to one who is still aware of the fact that we humans, whether we like it or not, are still a part of nature and still very much influenced by it. When the moon is full, the tides are higher and water flows more strongly. When spring arrives, the plant realm awakens from it's winter sleep and things start to bloom. And our hibernating animal cousins awaken as well.

For anyone who wants to take it seriously, let's face it, this is precisely that point in the year when we get a new lease on life. That's reason to celebrate, isn't it?

Over the hole

How do you figure out who's got the best numbers? I know you're not going to like this, but we have to now ask ourselves what do we mean by "best"? Are the best numbers those that most accurately describe the phenomenon in question, or are the best numbers those that we like the most? Good question, I think.

What I've been leading up to over the past few posts is that for as much as we may like numbers and quantitative data and all that objectivity, truth be told, they aren't as objective as we would like. The numbers can't really tell us anything. The numbers are, depending on how we approach them, merely one way of describing whatever it is we are looking at. The numbers aren't just "there", independent of us. There are only numbers there when we choose to count. This is what my conference-attending friends need to remember. And it's what you need to remember, as well, when you read something – including my posts – where numbers and statistics and data are presented.

The question we have to be asking ourselves is: So what?

The Unites States is the richest country in the world (in terms of GDP). About 33% of all workers worldwide are unemployed or poor. The Germans (or Australians) consume the most beer per capita in the world. (It depends on the year ... there seems to be an undocumented competition going on.) Only about 16% of students pursuing a bachelor's degree in the US attending college full-time. The number of young people pursuing a college degree in Germany is about 28% of a given class year, while in the US it is almost 50%.

The response to each and every one of these statements must be the same: So what?

At best, these are facts, even if every one of these facts is a statistic, a number, something objective. But facts are just that: facts. They don't really tell us all that much, do they?

Around the hole

My question is, why is everyone entitled to an opinion? Shouldn't we be saying that everyone is entitled to an informed opinion? How can we tell the difference? I mean, an opinion is an opinion is an opinion, is it not?

One thing we can do is question the opinion-giver as to the reason for that particular opinion. We really should get over our overly sensitive politeness at least enough to determine with the opinion we're being confronted with is informed or uninformed. It makes life easier and is relatively painless (unless the opinion-giver is presented uniformed opinions and feels particularly strong about them ... but we have a word to describe that too: it's called "prejudiced"). And then?

If you've been following the last couple of posts, you may be coming to the slow realization that determining what's worth listening to is a matter of effort, and Lord knows, we moderns aren't all excited about effort. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but living in the modern world just ain't as easy as it looks. Yes, we have to start deciding which back-up evidence is good (or acceptable) or bad; we have to figure out a way to evaluate the evidence and the resulting opinions. (And for those of you who may have lost sight of my train of thought over the last couple of posts, we're now going to come back to the numbers.)

In the absence of any other measure, we tend to think that numbers are somehow "objective". The person with the best quantitative evidence must, of course, have the best opinion. After all figures don't lie, do they? But, as a wise person once noted, all liars figure. No, it's not as easy as we'd like. And there we are, once again ... immediately ... back in that ol' hard-work dilemma. We need to figure out now who's got the best numbers.