Simple wisdom

There's an old Zen saying: "Those who speak do not know; those who know, do not speak."

I stumbled across that one many, many moons ago, and I can assure you it's every bit as true now as it was then. We've got more than our share of purveyors of "truth" (or what they believe to be true or whatever), but, let's face it, most people talking have very little to say.

And, before you get the wrong impression, I'm one of those talking. I know that, and at a literal level, one could maintain that I have no idea what I'm talking about. However ... there is a difference between speaking and "speaking". Regardless of what my detractors might think, I don't claim to know what's what or what we should or should not think or believe or not believe. I don't think, believe, or even feel, that I have all the answers. Hell, I'm not even claiming that I have any answers. My "job", if that's how anyone might like to see it, is simply "to draw your attention to". No more, no less.

It's impossible for me to tell you what's right, wrong, good, bad, worthwhile or not worth even thinking about. That's something that each of us has to decide for him or herself. And that's what you need to do. You have to decide what you want to believe or what you actually believe. You have to decide what is fact and what is fiction. You need to discern and differentiate between what is real and what is illusion, what has substance and what does not.

All I want to do is nothing more than perhaps make you aware of something that you might have not thought about before. I'm not telling you what "is", I'm merely pointing out that this, that, or the other might not be exactly how you thought it might be, that not everything you're being told is being conveyed with good intentions, that a small dose of skepticism is very often very much in order, that just because something feels right doesn't mean it is right.

A buddy of mine once told me that the reason we have to learn from others' mistakes is because we don't have time to make them all ourselves. He was right. The flip side of that coin is that we need to listen to and learn from others because we don't have time to find out everything for ourselves either. When we're all sincere about pointing out and sharing, about communicating, we can all benefit. True, there are those who would abuse this process for their own advantage. We all know that as well and for that reason it is important that, well, we keep a bit of a skeptical attitude until we can corroborate, confirm or, when necessary, deny what we're hearing.

It's really not a difficult nor dangerous nor risky undertaking. It means taking things perhaps a bit more slowly, perhaps stopping to think from time to time, and maybe evening thinking first and believing later.

So, while I may be "speaking", in a sense, I'm not laying claim to knowing. Sure, I want to know, but first I've got to figure it all out.

The anathema of caring

People who care have it tough: they're laughed at, derided, criticized, maligned, and, worst of all, ignored. Still, there are not just a few of us who are concerned that the current trajectory of developments may bode ill for us all. No, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist. In fact, most conspiracy theorists aren't ... they're just called that, and then we don't have to deal with them. Truth be told, we're being beaten down by our own silence.

A lot of things in our world are broken, from our economic system to our idea of society, from our idea of community to our notion of something as simple as sharing, or even caring. The world suffers as we sit idly by and lament that there's nothing any of us can do about anything. We couldn't be more wrong.

If you care -- about anything -- you have to know that you will have a tough go of it. Most folks don't care that you care and most folks, when push comes to shove, will try to prevent you from caring. Sometimes it's a simple "it's not your problem", to the more general "you can't do anything about that", to the grotesque "why should anyone think they can live off my dime"? Oh, we love to sift and sort, to pick and choose, to declare these folks are "in" and those are "out", but all we're doing is demeaning ourselves.

We can't solve the world's problems, but we can solve our own and the problems of those near to us, and by this, I just don't mean those related to us. In the English translation of the Bible, there is lots of talk about "neighbors", as in "love your neighbor as yourself" and more. In German, this is translated as "the next one"; that is, the one to whom you are in closest proximity, physically. In other words, your neighbor (and this is clearly laid out in the Parable of the Good Samaritan) is whoever is near you, and, especially, who needs you at any given time.

Popular wisdom will tell you that you'll only be taken advantage of. Most of your neighbors will tell you not to get sucked in by the con. And almost everyone else will tell you that you are a fool for even thinking about caring in the first place. What kind of world is that?

Most people thrive on the acceptance of those whom they care about, be they relatives or actual neighbors. If we want the world to be a better place, we have to get beyond that. Whether you are put down, ridiculed, or looked at askance for helping others in need, doesn't matter in the end. It only matters whether you were willing to stand up and to act because you knew it was the right thing to do.

Personally, I don't care where you start, be it in our own family and neighborhood, or be it in the country in which you live or the world at large. At some point, we all have to care about more than just ourselves, regardless of what others may think. That, of course, takes courage. And you need courage to care. You need even more courage to do something about your feelings.

And I know that most of you feel you are doing your fair share already, but I'm here to tell you that you are not. None of us do enough. All of us are capable of more. And all of us will be guilty, if we don't follow our hearts instead of our brains. The choice is yours

The myth of freedom

As promised last time, I'm going to turn to the other half of Ben Franklin's equation: liberty, or freedom, as we most commonly call it. No, I'm not going to go into a discussion of the details of differentiation between the two. We all have a general understanding of the word, and we all profess with certainty that we are, in fact, free, but just short of an outright, apparent dictatorship, we couldn't be more wrong.

Another wise man, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, once remarked that "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." I would maintain that this statement applies to some degree to just about all of us, but it hits the proverbial nail on the head as far as Americans are concerned. Going back even further, no one less than Aristotle noted, that whoever prefers security to freedom is rightfully a slave. That pretty much describe post-9/11 America.

You can't voluntarily gut your own Bill of Rights, limiting or suspending your rights to freedom of expression, speech, and assembly, eliminating of the right of habeus corpus, allowing yourself to be arrested on mere suspicion of terrorism only to be potentially turned over to the military and suspension of all legal rights, gutting the 4th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, allowing your elected representatives to gerrymander you out of the value of your vote, standing by while certain segments of the population are denied even their right to vote, and introducing so much money into politics that only those who have have a say and think you are living in a free country. You can't see one video (since you don't often see it on the news) of the dispersal of an Occupy demonstration or almost any demonstration for that matter and think that you live in a free country. And, especially if you are a person of color, you cannot begin to imagine how tenuous your own existence is should the State decide to clamp down on you, as was the case in the wake of the Ferguson demonstrations, for example.

None of that, my dear friends and readers, speaks of freedom. None of it. Each and every one of these is evidence of how severely your rights, and hence your freedoms, have been restricted. The worst of it all, of course, is that Americans, at any rate, demanded that it be done to them. They voluntarily gave these rights and freedoms up, in the name of -- quite ironically -- national security. Mr. Franklin was right all the way around.

One important point to keep in mind, however, is that none of these rights is ever coming back. Oh, we were all told that these were temporary steps necessary to get the situation under control, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret: power never relents; once you give up anything, especially your rights and your freedom, you never, ever get it back. Mr. Franklin said you don't deserve them anyway, and I happen to think he is right.

Enter Mr. Goethe. Yes, those who took all that away from you have not tired since telling you, impressing upon you, suggesting to you, convincing you that nothing has really changed. But it has. Those who took all that away from you lied to get it, just like they lied to start the wars that would increase your fear which would demand more action and more restriction and more control. Enter good old Aristotle: keep me safe and I'll do your bidding.

Americans, for the most part, have never really been all that free, but they are less free now than they have ever been. Depending on where you live, you know which sports teams to root for, which church to attend (and you'd better attend one of them), which religion to believe in, which party to vote for, and whom to associate with. Peer pressure has never been writ larger than in America, and, I have to admit, America is really good at it. But whether you're pressured by your peers or by the police or by the legal system, it doesn't really matter. In the end, you adjust, adapt, and submit. You like to think you're free. You love to tell yourself you are, but in reality, you're just grist for the mill.

The myth of security

Since I left off with Ben Franklin last time, it seems fitting to, in a way, pick up where I left off, with Ben again. Among the many other notable things he said, he pointed out that "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Let's just deal with the latter of these notions; I'll come back to the other one next time.

What Franklin described as "safety" in his day is what we call "security" nowadays. A little less than a decade-and-a-half ago, my fellow Americans fell for this one in a big way. The events of 9/11 drove the stake of fear into their isolationist hearts and they were confronted with a dose of reality that made them more than willing victims. Total data collection, unwarranted wiretapping and evesdropping, computer-analysis of all email communication, the rise of unchecked police power, the suppression of rights unseen since the founding of the country, and for what?

Nothing, really. Oh sure, go to the airport and you'll be inconvenienced, but are we safer? Are we more secure? Are we better protected? Not in the least.

In spite of all the invasions of privacy, the intrusions into our personal lives, the repression in public spaces, and other inconveniences we've been made to suffer, not a single terrorist act, in the US or anywhere else in the world, including the most recent attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, was prevented. We've even toppled governments (elsewhere of course), carried out physical assassinations (e.g., Bin Laden) or have murdered countless innocent civilians (the drone program), and we've still got an Islamic State and Boko Haram and a vast number of wannabe organizations that are threatening all of us in ways that we couldn't imagine not all that long ago.

Of course, it's not only national security that is at issue. Though the rates of violent crimes is declining throughout the Western world, America in its gun fanaticism is seeing an increase in the number of accidental homicides. The more guns, the more people are going to be killed. Anyone can be shot, given the flimsy nature of house construction or the thinness of the walls in apartment dwellings. Without a system of health insurance, anyone and everyone is exposed to health dangers that can't be addressed, and the recent outbreaks of previously eliminated contagious diseases are cause for concern. And then we have the lack of labeling of food products, the machinations of the processed food industry, the secrecy surrounding fracking company chemicals, the multitude of accidental poisonous spills, the decline of environmental protection worker health and safety regulations and, well, you've got the perfect combination for a high probability of death by just about anything other than old age.

Americans, for sure, but increasingly we in Europe, are facing a noticeable lack of both safety and security, both generally and in Mr. Franklin's sense of the word. The world has always been something of a dangerous place, but the illusion of safety and security we have created for ourselves is probably the greatest danger of all. Our surest thing is a blatant false sense of security.

The myth of unity

You can think what you want about America's Founding Fathers. I have -- I'll be honest -- more than just mixed feelings. Yes, yes, yes, they might have been products of their times, but history is replete with great thinkers and doers who looked beyond and were not just victims of their own particular time and place of birth. That's part of my dilemma, I suppose: if these guys were such great visionaries (as is so often claimed) why couldn't they see beyond their own cultural context, why couldn't they envision something more universal, why were they tripping over their own feet to set a standard for the world to come?

To me, the most enigmatic of all the Founding Fathers is Benjamin Franklin. I'll admit it: he has been ever since I was forced to read his autobiography in 11th grade. Granted, I didn't always do what I was told, but I waded through that one. I was taken aback by the contradictions and enthralled by the moments of genius. I couldn't believe any text could be that boring, but found such inspiration for life, that I live quoting the man.

It was Uncle Ben (not he of rice fame) who inspired me for this post. Ben, when arguing before the Continental Congress on what the colonies should do in regard to the Crown, let loose a most impressive statement: "Either we hang together, or we hang separately." What wise words.

Right here at the beginning of American history, at a time when the idea of the individual was concreticizing in the Enlightenment mind, Mr. Franklin quipped out a truth that would stand the test of time. He knew, and the circumstances dictated, just as they do today, that it was in togetherness, in overcoming petty differences, in seeing the bigger picture, in cooperation in the face of adversity, in solidarity that something new could be achieved. The world recognizes the French Revolution, which transpired 13 years later, as the irruption into modernity, but it was Mr. Franklin's simple statement that made that other revolution possible. Yes, in the Enlightenment, in the Age of the Individual, in the transition from collectivism to individualism, Uncle Ben reminded us that we are only strong and capable of survival when we band together, when we collectively react, when we cooperate, not when we compete.

Since then, as history as patently demonstrated, the individualists have done what they could to gain the upper hand. Our own current, post-modern attitude is that the individual is supreme, but Ben knew, and we know deep inside, that the individual is nothing without the collective to support him (or her, as the case may be).

The antithesis of the Roman adage to divide and conquer is Mr. Franklin's admonishment to pull together. Not quite 100 years later, one Charles Darwin would generalize this idea into his theory of evolution. It's as obvious as the noses on our faces, but there is a significant number of individuals these days who would like the rest of us to think otherwise. And they are doing a damn fine job of it, I hate to admit.

We -- America, any modern, Western country, any significant political organization or grouping -- praise the individual, raise him to almost godly status, but we know, and have known for quite a long time, that real strength lies in coming together. That's why our ideal of unity is a mere myth. It does not and cannot exist. We mouth the words, but we live our actions: me first, everyone else second; as long as I have mine, you're free to try and get yours; it's every person for themselves.

No, Ben was right. if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately. It really is that simple.

The myth of justice for all

If you don't have shared values; if you erroneously believe that you can do everything yourself; if you refuse to recognize that where and when we are born has a lot to say about what's even possible in our lives; if the notion of personal responsibility is perverted into a justification that it's your own fault if things are better for you; and if you believe that only the individual is capable of anything positive; it is, well, simply beyond my ability to imagine, let alone comprehend, how you can think that we're all treated equally in the eyes of the law.

In the United States, money is free speech, though there's no hint of that in the First Amendment. In the Western World in general, there is the legal precedent that social standing, background or history, may not be considered in assessing your standing in society. For anyone who wants to see -- and I realize that means "damn few" -- it is clear that different measures are applied to different individuals in our everyday reality.

To me, the most emblematic, the most telling, the strongest statement of the negation of the notion of "justice for all" is the notion of "affluenza". Don't get me wrong, I'm quite a fan of linguistic dynamics, of the ability of a language to change and adapt to the world around it, of neologisms, and more, but "affluenza" ... well, that one, I must admit, stopped me in my tracks.

It was, I believe, a judge in Texas (otherwise not known for its forward-thinking decisions) who declared that a young man who was drugged and drunk and who drove into a crowd of people, killing several of them, was, in fact, innocent (and sentenced accordingly) because he suffered from "affluenza": he came from such a rich family, that he was no longer able to determine the difference between wrong and right. It wasn't an isolated incident; the defense has been successfully invoked since then. How, in the name of all that's holy, does that make any sense at all? How can money absolve you from moral responsibility? Well, in a "society" in which the only real value is money, money talks, and the guilty walk.

There was no outrage. There were no demonstrations against the injustice. There was no outcry, no anguish, no speechlessness, unless you take the silence that thundered across the land as speechlessness. It was just another day in paradise, just more business as usual, another instance of "nothing to see here". It passed as good as unnoticed. And all of us, whether you like it or not and whether you want to admit it or not, had our hands stained with blood that day. Some community service, a few hours doing something for others so that maybe, just maybe, it starts to dawn on you that there are other people on this planet other than yourself ... that was it.

On the same day, not a small number of people of color were frisked, searched, pulled over from traffic, arrested, incarcerated, sent to prison, and executed for alleged crimes that they may or may not have committed. (When you have an error rate of 5-10% of innocent people being executed, you can't really claim anything for the "system" other than it doesn't work.) And there was no outrage, no demonstrations, no outcry, no anguish, no speechlessness, just business as usual.

You're a person of color in America, you're an immigrant, most likely Muslim, here in Europe. You're different in that you are not what we aspire to be. Too many want to suffer from affluenza. They dream of it. They long for it. Justice should be blind, but only so long as she doesn't see me.

The myth of shared values

When I was a very young child, I fell in love with the image of painting oneself into a corner. The picture in my mind was more than rich enough, and there were -- don't ask me why -- enough comic strips and cartoons that materialized that image before my very eyes. I always wondered how that was possible? How can you paint yourself into a corner? How little can you know about what's going on around you to end up in a situation like that? And then I grew up.

We like to think that we're a free and open, a tolerant and forward-looking society, but all we've really done is paint ourselves into a corner. We have those flag-waving patriots who still believe in "my country, right or wrong" even though the world has recognized America for what it is: the latest version of Empire which acts not based on values but on violence. We have those free-market libertarians who think that money is the answer to all problems and the more they have themselves the more the problems are solved. We have those gun-crazy tea-baggers who think that the government is out to get them when all it's really concerned about is seeing to it that those that have get more and those that have less get less. Then we have all those hopelessly exposed racists who can't bring themselves to admit that the United States simply hasn't overcome its genocidal history. And, of course, there are my favorites, the über-Christians who want God to save America from the satanic machinations of a crypto-Muslim dictator, who can't take enough away from those who need it most, who deny science -- publicly and without shame or contradiction -- and who don't hesitate a second to decry, condemn, pursue, and persecute anyone who even thinks of straying from their own perverted view of Christianity.

How, in the name of all that's reasonable, can we even start to think that we have anything even approaching shared values? Which values might these be? It's obvious from recent legislation, attempts at legislation, Supreme Court decisions, and other public phenomena that there are so many splintered, specific, interest groups which are patently unable, and unwilling, to even think of speaking with any other group that the mere thought of "shared values" is not only chimerical, it's downright absurd. Who is speaking for whom? And when? And how? And why?

No, dear reader, we have achieved the complete and utter disintegration of all that we once held in common. We have a society -- if one may even use that term -- of fragmented, dispersed, alienated, isolated, and unreconcilable pseudo-groups, which are, in turn, plagued by self-centered, self-absorption, and egoistical individuals who all trying the best they can to get what they can for themselves, and to hell with everyone else. Where is the basis here for shared values? Please excuse me if I don't see it.

The real losers in this scenario, of course, are those who can't get beyond themselves to see that the entire evolution of humankind (... and no, I have not forgotten that the majority of Americans no longer accept the theory of evolution ...) has been possible because of one, single trait that has set us apart from all others: our ability to cooperate, to work together for the benefit of all.

Now, I don't want anybody thinking I'm just picking on Americans. They may be closer to me than other nationalities, but they are not unique. Every single Western culture is suffering from the same malady. As is so often the case, though, the Americans have taken this misery to a heretofore, unseen level of sophistication. All of us in the West suffer from the disease. The Americans are simply better at it than the rest of us.

And that is the corner into which we have painted ourselves: the inability to recognize, to acknowledge, to accept, to engage, and to deal seriously with an other (or, Lord forbid several other) point(s) of view.

The myth of self-sufficiency

If we follow the line of thinking that's been forming over the past few posts, we have to ask ourselves just what are the consequences of the thoughts. There are lots of folks, particularly in the West, who like to think that they are somehow self-sufficient individuals who are untouched by the situation of others. These are the biggest fools of all.

The debunking of the myth of the individual pointed out that our set of values are determined to the largest extent by the circumstances and timing of our birth. The debunking of the myth of personal responsibility made clear that the choices we have to make in life are largely determined by factors outside ourselves. The debunking of the myth of equal opportunity showed us that external circumstances limit and determine what kinds of choices can even be made. In sum, it would seem that there is little about what we do or can do that is solely determined by ourselves. But, there is more.

Who amongst us builds their own shelter, digs their own wells, grows their own food, weaves their own cloth and sews their own clothes? Who amongst us is completely self-taught and self-educated? Who amongst us has and needs absolutely no social or other interaction with other human beings? I can't think of anybody. Can you? I didn't think so. The answers to these questions determine what it would mean to be self-sufficient. We can't be. We aren't made that way. Human beings are social creatures and we have evolved to cooperate with and depend on others for our well-being and survival. I don't know what's wrong with that. I don't know why that's the indication of some sort of weakness. I don't know why this fact should be so vigorously denied, unless ...

You have been conditioned to believe that it is a sign of weakness. This is the fact, actually, only in the West. Other cultures across the globe are very other-oriented. The Japanese are well-known for being a collective culture. The role of the family in Mexico and South America is also widely known. Only in the West, particularly in America, we have this crazy idea that the problem with life and the world are others. This wasn't always the case, and there are still pockets of resistance in rural areas for the most part. I started off in life in a multi-generational household. There are still areas where the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents are close enough to visit, at least weekly, if not daily. What is more, school, sports team fanship, church or other organizations promote dealing with others. Truth be told, we are engaged with and want to be engaged with others most of the time. And as long as it's fun and everybody's getting along, we're all for it. The moment things get sticky, a bit problematic, or challenging, we think for some reason that we have to withdraw to the impenetrable fortress of self-sufficiency. If you take a moment to step back and look at the big picture, you quickly see how silly it is.

No, dear reader, we are all in this together, and I mean all of us, every single, last one of us. It may be the family, the people in the neighborhood, the community, the state or nation ... it really doesn't matter. All of these "levels of otherness" make quite clear that none of us -- regardless of how much we might like to be (for whatever distorted reasons) -- is an island unto him or herself. What make us individual and unique is our own set of talents and strengths, our own frailties and weaknesses, and these are complemented and compensated by the talents and strengths, frailties and weakness of others.

For the like of me, I can't figure out why that's a problem of any kind, but the myth of self-sufficiency drives us apart. We need to pull together.

The myth of equal opportunity

It should be clear by now that every one of us is faced with different circumstances, different timings and different contexts within which we make our personal decisions and choices. I would be the last person to maintain that one's environment, one's social standing, one's economic situation is to blame, or is responsible for who or what one is or becomes in life. What I am saying, however, is that we can't completely ignore these factors either. The overall context in which we find ourselves always shapes and influences which choices we are presented with. I can't imagine that I will ever be in the situation to decide whether to buy the Bentley or the Rolls. A lot of things would have to change in my life for that choice to even become a possibility. I have also never been in the situation in which I had to decide whether I buy shoes or food, but there are many people on this planet who are. Are there right or wrong choices to made in either of these situations? I don't think so. It all depends on what got you to where you are and where you think you are heading after the decision. To blame the outcome merely on the decision is more than short-sighted.

It is quite obvious, at least for anyone who has even a minimal understanding of what the world is like, that different people in different contexts have different opportunities. Rich people in America are faced with much different choices that poor people there. Poor people in America are faced with much different choices than poor people in Iraq. Which choices one can make are determined to a great extent by the circumstances in which one finds oneself. When things are good, you certainly have better chances of making good decisions. When things are bad, the chances of making bad ones increases as well.

To assume, or worse, allege, that everyone has the same opportunities is simply ignorant. Rich people may be able to decide between Harvard or Yale for a college degree, but a poor person in rural Mississippi may have to decide between finishing high school or day-laboring to feed his mom. The opportunities of the two individuals are anything but equal. The notion of equal opportunity is a myth for the simple reason that it is an abstraction at such a level as to be theoretically admirable but impossible in practice. In other words, it's a nice thing to say in order to extract yourself from the awkward situation of having to admit that some people have it much better than others, and those with more don't have it because of anything they've done themselves, nor are those with less necessarily responsible for their shortcomings. In other words, it gives us all a convenient excuse not to have to deal with the fact and reality of any given situation, rather we can retreat into an unreal, abstract sphere where we may remain untouched by anything as dirty as reality.

The myth of equal opportunity is just like the myth of personal responsibility or the myth of the individual. They are merely excuses to not to have to think very deeply at all about things that affect everybody, those near to us and those far away. If you believe in the myths, then you also believe that you can absolve yourself of any responsibility for anyone else. And that, dear reader, is the wellspring of inhumanity. In invoking the myths we remove ourselves from the lives of others. Whatever befalls the others is their own doing, and I can wash my hands of any and all responsibility. What a cold, lonely world that must be.

The myth of personal responsibility

As we saw last time, where and when you are born has a massive impact on who you become. But, I know there are many of you who believe that it is up to each of us individually to make decisions in our life that affect its outcome. To a certain extent, that's true, but it's not an absolute truth. We in the West, in the so-called advanced, industrialized world, like to think that everything that happens after our birth is simply a matter of the choices we make in life. Make the wrong ones, you have a bad life; make the right ones and life is good. This is, of course, pure and utter nonsense, because it ignores everything we talked about last time. The choices one makes cannot be seen in isolation from when and where you were born to begin with. Let me explain.

We can take me as an example. I don't mind. I was born and raised in a humble but secure environment. There was a feeling of excitement and optimism for the future. My family, the church, and the school all impressed upon me the hope for a better future. All I had to do was stay in line, obey authority, look out for myself, and work hard and I would have a good life, mostly likely a better life than my parents.

But let's say, just for contrast, that I was born in Sub-Saharan Africa instead. Now I find myself in an impoverished and hostile environment. There's a feeling of desperation and the future is as far away as the next meal. I'm surrounded by family, my tribe perhaps, but there's no school, a traditional religious establishment to impress anything on me, for everybody's doing everything they can to stay alive. I have little choice but to stay in line, adhere to the established hierarchy, and looking after myself means struggling day and night to survive; there is no harder work. And what is going to change? Very little, if anything, and whatever change happens will be slow in coming.

Do you really think that these two me's will be making the same life decisions? If you do, you are in serious need of a reality check. My circumstance of birth, where and when I live growing up, all impact to a large extent which choices I can make, which decisions I'm even confronted with. I don't think this should be all that hard to understand, but for reasons unbeknownst to me, it apparently is, for when I hear acquaintances, friends, strangers on the street or talking heads on the TV, they can't have taken this simple fact into consideration. They spout their platitudes of self as if they were universal principles of life. They're not.

This is not to say that there are individuals who do manage to escape their environment and themselves. I have the greatest respect for them. But to assume that if one person can do it then anybody can do it is simply foolish and naive. One person wins an Olympic gold medal, then anyone can win one, but not everyone can. In this case, not only your own physical disposition plays an important role, but so does your opportunities for training, access to the right people and contexts, and sponsors of all kinds. It's not just the desire of the individual; there are a wide range of factors and decisions and, yes, downright luck that go into it. For every single gold medalist, we should remember, there are 1,000 ruined existences of those who tried and did not succeed. Their failure cannot be attributed only to their individual decisions. Too many people and too many circumstances were involved to justify such a simplistic view of reality.

The circumstances of your birth and your environment may not be to blame for who you end up becoming, but to act and believe as if they had no influence at all is disingenuous.

The myth of the individual

Even though it's now pretty clear that I keep repeating myself, let me slide down that slippery slope again. There is a modern myth, a misunderstanding really, that life is just up to us, that life is simply what we make of it, that the individual is the final arbiter of his or her fate. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

It is exceedingly difficult to distance ourselves from ourselves, but that's what I'm asking you to do: to take a step back from yourself, a step far enough to take an objective view of yourself as a person, and to take a closer look at what you see. I'm going to pose a few questions to help clarify that picture.

• Where were you born? (I, for example, was born into a run-of-the-mill, working-class family, in Western Pennsylvania.)
• When were you born? (Again, for me, it was near the beginning of a very strong economic upswing, though the country in which I was born was still at war in the Far East.)
• What was life like when and where you were born? (Things were relatively simple, straightforward, everybody knew how they fit in (or didn't fit in) to the community; we went to church regularly; parents, older people, teachers, police and other professionals were treated with deference, if not respect.)
• How did you come to be born where and when you were born? (And for this one, personally, the only answer I can find that makes any kind of sense to me is that I ended up there by pure chance.)

That's right, pure chance, a mere accident of fate, if you will. One day I woke up and there I was in small-town America, surrounded by a way of life that I was taught to accept and respect, that was full of unspoken rules and customs, ways of doing things, accepted topics of conversation, attitudes, and more, none of which I had any idea about before I got there and merely accepted because, well, that was all I knew. In other words, much of who you are today was established in that context in which you were born and that context has to do with the timing of your birth and the circumstances of your environment. That, if anything, is just the way things are, and there is nothing that you can do to change that.

The early years of life are the most formative years. Any child or developmental psychologist will tell you that, so let's try a small thought experiment: try to imagine that you were born somewhere else. Try being born in a ghetto where you are forced to live because "your kind" suffers heavily from discrimination. Try being born into utter poverty, in the middle of nowhere. Or, try imagine you were born in another country, say, Poland, or Nigeria, or Bolivia, or India. (This last experiment will be all the more difficult the less you know about anything outside your home country.)

Now, I ask you: who do you think you would be if the timing and placement of your birth were different? Do you really think you would think, believe, and act just like you do now? If you do, I have to question whether you really seriously tried the thought experiment.

If you were born poorer or richer, all your surroundings change. If you are born in another country, you grow up loving that country, not your current one. If you are born in an economic crisis, things develop quite differently than if you were born in a period of economic growth and stability. In other words, the cards a shuffled anew, and you are a completely different person than the one you are now. And that's why the "individual" is for the most part a myth. We are who we are largely by virtue of the accident of our birth. No more, and no less.

Winter is here again

Many winters have come and gone since I started my Great Journey. Of some of them I was aware, and there are others that have melted away without leaving the slightest trace.

What I have noticed in recent years is that they're getting colder. Well, in the way I'm thinking all the seasons are starting to cool off. Oh sure, temperatures are increasing. Physically, climatologically we're experiencing a global warming, and its effects are being noticed the most in the developed regions of the world. We have the time and opportunity to devote to things like that.

But inside ... well, that's a whole different story. Inside, it's getting colder. Inside, we're getting colder.

This is also in my experience a developed-country thing. We in the West have got it good ... in some regards, too good, in others, there is plenty of room for improvement. But I've noticed a coldness descending upon our hearts. We're too ready to blame the victims for being victims. We're too quick to judge by appearances. We're ignorant of our collective history and when we find out how different it is from what we were told -- in school, at home, in church, wherever -- we distance ourselves and cry foul when we as individuals are asked to accept our responsibility from it. We're lightning fast at generalizing from our own anecdotal experience and so slow and recognizing, let alone, acknowledging the bigger picture.

The detachment from others that comes from individualization has many positive aspects. It is a good and necessary part of our development that we become our own persons, but we become less, not more, of a person when we allow that detachment to actually separate us from others. We can still smell, hear and see far beyond the boundaries of our own bodies and those oders or aromas, those wails or harmonies, those nightmarish images or inspiring visions still affect us ... if we let them. Most people know on the inside how they are affected, even if they don't often show it on the outside. To know more, to use our other senses, to taste or to feel, we'd have to get closer, but we don't ... for fear of becoming infected, I suppose.

And so we distance ourselves from our own world. We avoid being touched or touching. We stay aloof, unmoved, ensconced in our individual little fortresses that we foolishly think will protect us from what's "out there". And we become isolated, and lonely, and cold.

Many winters have come and gone since I started my Great Journey. And they're getting colder.

Self-awareness and the awareness of others

Anyone who has been slipping in and out of these blogs over the time I've been writing them, and especially anyone who has been following lately will have recognize that this idea, this notion, this concept of "the Other" plays a big role in what I write. If you've noticed, I've done my job. If you haven't, allow me to get a bit more direct.

Think about it: all of us are here in this reality (at least, I hope, all of you who are reading this); we share a common space (here) and a common time (now); we have common feelings, such as being happy, sad, frustrated, relieved, and more; we may speak different languages, but we all communicate (for better or worse); we have different backgrounds and experiences, but we nevertheless can relate to one another because of this (not in spite of this); we all dream and hope and yearn, and we know that other human beings do so as well. As I never tire of saying, we have much more in common than whatever it is that makes us different.

One of the real advantages (and unfortunately, obligating characteristics) we have as human beings is that we know, are aware of, recognize, and (often begrudgingly) acknowledge that there are other creatures in this reality, in this here and now (and for the more advanced, that then and there) who are very much like ourselves. In other words, we are aware of ourselves (I keep getting the feeling that there is a "me" in "my head" who experiences things) and we are aware of others who are like ourselves (that is, "you's" and, in general "others", who experience similar things as well). We take this all for granted, I know, but if you stop and reflect upon it, this is quite an amazing, if not mysterious, state of affairs. For as much as we love our pets (as we should), they're not doing this. For as much as we are stunned by the capabilities of whales and dolphins and chimpanzees and bonobos, they aren't doing this either. They're close, I'll give you that, but they are not quite there (perhaps, yet, but that remains to be seen). Without going over the top, I have to admit, that there is something about us humans that makes us different (not necessarily better ... and Lord knows, judged by our behavior, not at all better) than our animal cousins.

The simple fact is we are capable of much different things than they are, and, what is also worth noting, those things of which we are capable, can have a far greater impact on others, our environment, on the world in general than any of our cousins can generate. In other words, knowing about, being aware of the consequences, or impact, of our thoughts and our actions, in simplest terms, obligates us to be more conscious of whatever it is we are doing. This is, I admit, an extremely difficult idea to grasp. It is, nevertheless, more important than ever.

We don't have to go so far as to believe that we are the pinnacle of creation or the end-purpose of whatever. What we do have to realize is that since we are capable of so much, our responsibility for what we do is just as great. Just because we can doesn't mean we should. Instead, it means we should be careful (of what we do).

Just a handful of years

No one should get the idea that I'm making fun of people who love their country. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am merely saying that I, personally, don't understand the fascination, because you are born where you are born by mere chance and whatever it is you call your country today might something very different tomorrow.

What I suspect lies behind these feelings, though, may be worth thinking about, namely, our common, individual desire to belong: to be a part of something meaningful, to be accepted, to know there is something greater than ourselves, something that gives us a feeling of safety, security, and being welcome ... somewhere we are not just lone, often lost, individuals, isolated, alienated, and lonely.

We humans are, at bottom, social creatures. We need and desire the company of others. We're not rugged individualists who can survive on our own (well, except for a couple of eccentric hermits). We function best in groups, and this is OK. It's what makes us what we are and it is something we need to seriously recognize and acknowledge, not merely hoot and holler about from time to time. It's never about just "I" or "me", part of being human is knowing and embracing "we". Studies have shown that we do best in groups that do not exceed about 150 individuals. Fortunately, for us, each of our 150-people groupings overlap with other 150-people groupings of people in our group. While the intensity of the relationship decreases, the principle of relationship remains: we cooperate, we try to get along with one another, not necessarily compete. Cooperation is the natural state of being, not competition.

Obviously, that's not how things are in the world today, for a whole litany of reasons, most of them bad ones. It is unfortunate that things have developed this way, for our world is not a better place for it. We have inverted the natural state of things, from cooperation to competition, and while we have made great advances in some areas, we have ruined and destroyed a lot along the way. I think we can get just as far, less destructively, if we are true to who we are. It's time to change our minds and shake off that which is simply alien to our nature.

If anything, this simple message is at the heart of just about everything I have been posting on this blog for the last five years. The official anniversary is tomorrow. A lot of words have flowed over the network in that time, to be sure, but when one writes, one always wonders whether one is making any sense as well. Anyone who has ever tried to find something worthwhile to say for any period of time, regardless how short, knows precisely what I'm talking about. For some, five years is nothing, but for others it's half a decade, a significant chunk of life. I would be lying if I said I was weary of writing, but it is not always easy to find the right words to say what it is I really mean. Sometimes it flows, and sometimes it is simply very frustrating.

On this occasion, then, I would like to thank all of you who bother to read these posts. Whether you agree or not does not matter: I write so that you can read, and I appreciate that you do. For those whose feel their toes have been stepped on, I'm sorry, but I can only call things as I see them. I would be doing both you and me a disservice to simply be agreeable all the time. We're allowed to and should disagree on things, for it is only in the interaction, in the dialog, that truth may be found.

None of us is born with the Truth. We all have it search for it together.

So, who are we?

It turns out, the everyday (to us), rather mundane, act of pointing, is one of humanity's most profound gestures. Only humans point. Yes, you can forget the apes and other simians who do not do it in the wild and dogs which have been specifically trained to so.) Pointing is unique to humans.

Raymond Tallis, in his fascinating book, Michelangelo's Finger, tells us that due to the physiology of our hands (in particular, fractionated finger movements: separating and unfolding of index finger), we are physically able to point at all, but pointing itself consists of four essential components. You need a

1. producer – the person doing the pointing;
2. pointer – used by the producer to do the pointing
3. pointee – that which is pointed out and
4. consumer – the one who benefits from the pointing.

What is more, pointing; that is, genuine, meaningful pointing, has three fundamental characteristics. It is, namely,

1. dialogic – interactive; that is, it is for someone else’s benefit;
2. specific – it singles out the referent, a particular pointee and
3. directional – it is away from the pointing hand.

And this what makes it uniquely human, for the act encompasses five unique points of human self-consciousness. Pointing is

1. uniquely sustained;
2. uniquely complex;
3. unique to its contents;
4. uniquely stitched together internally both within a moment and between moments and
5. uniquely interwoven with self-consciousness of others.

This last point is particularly important. The ability to point, the ease and naturalness with which we do it (babies do it and understand it before they can even speak), shows that this ability is intimately linked to the explicit awareness of one’s own body, but even more importantly, it is linked to the explicit awareness of another’s mind.

We are not just hunks of self-mobile flesh. We are not mere animals, even if we share much more of our being with our animal cousins than we may like to admit. We humans -- and it is this which provides us with the most significant and fundamental distinction to other sentient beings -- know there are others, and we know that these others are just like ourselves. To ignore or deny this is simply to deny one's humanity.

The next time you are trying to make a point, or simply pointing something out, or even merely pointing at something, you may want to keep your uniqueness in mind. Now you know, and knowledge, as it is also well known, obligates.

References
Tallis, Raymond (2011) Michelangelo's Finger: An exploration of everyday transcendence, New York, Atlantic Books.

Michelangelo's Finger

As sometimes happens, through a rather odd series of coincidences, I've been having my nose rubbed in something that's really not the centerpoint of what I need to (or should) be focusing on. This isn't a common occurrence in my life, but it's not exactly rare either, and I have learned over the years that it's better to devote some attention to it or it will come back to me in a much more demanding, if not insistent, way at some other time, most likely a time when I'll have no time for it at all. In retrospect, say, in reflecting on my recent series of postings, I can see where this has been bubbling up toward the surface.

There is no doubt in any of our minds, I'm sure, that we are -- and should be -- seen, experienced as, and taken for individuals. Though more pronounced in some than in others (whereupon it is most often referred to as an "ego"), somewhere "in there" -- in our heads, or brains, or minds, or ... -- there is something we think of, and call, an "I". It is not clear what this "I" consists of or how it comes to be, but it's pretty clear it is there. I have very materialistically perceiving friends who will be quick to tell you that whatever that "I" is, it is an illusion. After all, there is only matter, and the laws of physics and chemistry, and these do not (at least up until now) actually allow for the presence of this "I".

Some of you are shaking your heads in some kind of amazement, and I can understand that. Science is a wonderful tool and it has provided us with a lot of knowledge, but it is not the be-all and end-all of knowing. It is, as it's name implies, a way of knowing, but not the way. It is good for some things, and not so good for others. It is good when it comes to physics and chemistry, for example, but it starts getting weak in biology (has trouble dealing with the issue of "life"), and it certainly has nowhere to start when it comes to something as elusive as our I's, that is, with human consciousness in particular, but consciousness in general. Whatever makes up what I call/think/believe is my "I", it's not material, that's for sure. So, for the moment, we're just going to let the materialists stew in their own self-contradictions and move forward into this, admittedly, mysterious domain.

We don't have to delve deeply into any kind of science, or psychology, or neurophysiology. For the moment, it is sufficient that we simply stop, recognize and acknowledge that there is this thing, or person, or whatever, we call an "I". What is more, we also know -- or at least strongly suspect -- that there those others running around whom we refer to as "human beings" appear to also have such an "I" and that they, too, know they have one, and most likely suspect that we do to. I realize that this seems a bit obvious, but as I never tire of repeating: digging into the obvious, rooting into whatever it is we take for given and for granted, is an extremely rewarding, and sometimes enlightening, experience.

In other words, I'm aware of myself and I am aware of others. These others appear to be like me in that they are also aware of themselves and aware of others. And, all of us are aware that everyone else is aware. This isn't gobbelty-gook, it's a genuine starting point.

In fact, there is a very famous panel on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, entitled the Creation of Adam. It's a special painting, not only for its central placement on the ceiling, and not only because Michelangelo, who absolutely detested painting (he wanted to sculpt), painted it in a single-day, but he also painted it freehand; that is, without the aid of a charcoal tracing, which was the normal method of producing such works of art. In this picture God is about to touch Adam's index finger with his own ... or perhaps, He is merely pointing at/to Adam. What does it matter?

Saving private me

It should be obvious by now that we're not in good shape. And by "we" I mean all of us -- every single human being on the face of the planet. Yes, other people in other cultures have other pressing problems than the (let's admit it, rather high-level, comfortable) problems that we in the modern, industrialized, rich West are confronted with. The vast majority of people are the planet are still struggling with ensuring the basic necessities for themselves, so anything that we "complain" about simply pales by comparison. Still, I acknowledge that those reading this post are in a very fortunate position, even if they don't know it, recognize it, or acknowledge it themselves. It is only a matter of time, I suppose, until those "behind" us will have caught up to us, and what is more, all of us who have come as far as we have at least know what lies ahead of the others. If we wanted to, we could make their path less arduous than the one that we -- as a civilization -- have had to tread.

If ...

I stress this point for the simple reason that our wonderful Enlightenment thinking has condemned us to individuality. We think of ourselves as individuals, independent of and free from others. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

We like to think that we are free and independent, but as the example with Mr. Bush showed and as we experience every day in our own little, individual lives -- from the golden handcuffs that some of us wear to the this-job-or-no-job decisions that others must make to the desperate struggle for survival that still others are confronted with -- we don't always have the choices available to us that we would like to have. No one does. We're simply not as free as we would like to think. And our everyday existence constantly reminds us that we will never be as free as we would like.

The soothing ointment in this injurious drama is more available than we think as well. Having been forced into thinking of ourselves as more individual than is necessary, we have a way out. We don't have to be rugged, completely independent individuals. (Truth be told, there are none ... this individual is every bit as fictitious as unicorns.) We are not only allowed, but at bottom we are required, to be members of communities, but only if we recognize the value, worth, and pure existence of "the other".

There is a world of difference between members of my own club or fellow fans. The Other is the one I chose to recognize and acknowledge as being like me in the most basic and essential way imaginable: as another human being. That person's culture, language, customs, mannerisms, or attitudes toward life are irrelevant. What we share is our humanness: our being lost, our having feelings and desires that remain unfulfilled, our basic needs and wants, that we share the same physical space at the same time. You are like me, and I know it.

The time has come, for any number of reasons ... be it the impending environmental catastrophe, the suffering and deprivation caused by war, the denigration suffered at the hands of political or financial interests ... to simply assert our humanness, not our individuality, for our own sakes, but, more importantly, for the sake of The Other.

The power of the unconscious

We've awakened to a world that has no meaning. Nothing really makes sense anymore. As a result, there is a (I must admit, misguided) tendency to revert to what we think we know. We think the Enlightenment thinkers knew what they were talking about. They did, I suppose ... then. But, now we have, well, now. Too much has changed in the meantime.

Whether we like Freud or not, whether we think he was correct or not, we do owe him this much: he made clear that there are "forces" at work in our lives that we can neither see nor consciously control. There is, in a manner of speaking, a good portion of unpredictability in the most reasonable and rational decisions and courses of action. This unsettles most of us. It is a cause for anxiety, and the most common reaction to this anxiety, since we really don't know where it is coming from, is to simply ignore it.

We've become experts at ignoring (or is it ignorance, I'm never really sure).

With the proliferation of media, particularly social media, we can pick and choose what we what to be confronted with. We seek out like-minded thinkers, people who share our attitudes and opinions, we look for those who are like us, not different. Sometimes they root for the same teams, brandish the same colors, or simply use skin color as a criterion of distinction. Yes, these kinds of choices run the gauntlet from harmless to destructive. It is now easy for any of us to simply get lost in the mass, to be part of the crowd, to stay below the radar of individuality. But isn't this really a problem?

On the one hand, we like to think of ourselves as individuals, of free-thinking, self-choosing and deciding persons who are the captains of our own destinies, not mere pawns of Fate, as it once was. At the same time, I don't see a lot of these independent, individual free thinkers actually standing up for anything. Social injustices, for example, are simply beyond their control. There is nothing that any of us can do about a lot of things. The economy is just the way it is ... what can we little people do about it? There are other groups (clans? tribes? ... has only the label changed?) who aren't pulling their weight, contributing their fair share, but we only pick on those who we think we're better than.

It would seem that we're right back where we started from: no, this is all not a matter of Fate, but (truth be told ... or just believed?) there's nothing that I -- as an individual -- can do about anything. Have we given up? caved in? yielded? surrendered? What have we done to ourselves? What's wrong with us? Has the unconscious risen to take the place of the fate we once displaced?

To be perfectly honest, I don't know for sure ... but, I do have my suspicions

The Enlightenment's (no doubt, well-intended) emphasis on the individual has led us to believe that everything in life is up to us as individuals. We know, however, from everyday experience, that there is too much going on, too much at stake in the world for any one of us to deal with it adequately. We're lost. We felt we've been left alone. We feel isolated and alienated. And we're right: we're all of these things. What we have lost, more than anything else, is the awareness, the knowledge, the assurance that there are others just like us, that we have more in common with others than we have certainty only within our own selves.

The promise of redemption through individuality has shown itself to be little more than the threat of our own demise.

What's really at issue

So, what's really at issue here?

It would seem that we are confronted with a number of interrelated conundrums: are we individuals or are we not? are we responsible individuals with free choice or are we not? may we be judged by our actions or only by what we say? do we get passes if we're in a high enough position and act against our own beliefs? can you do something that causes widespread grief and destruction and still be considered honorable? are we truly solely responsible for our own decisions? are there no mitigating circumstances?

These are not easy questions to answer. And there is no reason that they should be.

One of the real issues with which we are confronted at denizens of the modern, industrialized, consequently rich, Western world is that we no longer know what is right and what is wrong. There are so many mitigating circumstances with which we are all confronted. When they happen to us, they are a tragedy. When they happen to others, well, they should just learn to suck it up and deal with it. Why is that? One of the reasons, I believe, is our misunderstanding of the notion of "individuality" which was bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment.

There are some of you, I am sure, who wonder what it is that I have with the Enlightenment. I admit, I mention it quite a lot. It was an important period in our development as a species (homo sapiens, that is). It was the Enlightenment that gave us the free-willed individual. It was the Enlightenment that dethroned God and promoted Science to the arbiter of what is "true". It was the Enlightenment that introduced the "Rights of Man" (and I have purposely chosen to phrase this as the Enlightenment thinkers phrased it, not what some these days think it should be, namely "human rights"). It was the Enlightenment that demythologized the world, exalted Reason above Belief, and that displaced the human from the Center of Being, just as the Renaissance had displaced the Earth as the Center of the Cosmos. For Americans, this is a particularly beloved time, it would seem, for America's own (sacred, if not holy) Constitution is a product of the Enlightenment as well.

My concern is more mundane: it's 250 years later ... has nothing happened in the meantime? It would seem a lot has.

Just for starters, how about: the rise of the nation-state, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of capitalism and the counter-effect of Marxism, the consolidation of European powers, the introduction of evolutionary theory, the development of Freudian analysis, the discovery of relativity and quantum theory, the two-time attempted suicide of Europe (WW1 and WW2), the destruction of meaning (via post-structuralism and deconstructionism) and much, much more. All of these things have transpired, yet our thinking remains every bit as much rooted in what came before, as if none of it had happened at all.

It would seem that we've cherry-picked what we like and tried to discredit the rest. As I see it, however, that which we so gleefully discarded is now coming back with a vengeance.

Not Fate, but Free Will?

There are a couple of consequences that follow on from our elimination of -- or stated perhaps somewhat more modernly -- our supersession of Fate. For us in the West, it has meant the development of and the focus upon the individual. An individual is one who makes his or her own independent and free decisions about just about anything, from what to eat to what to become in life. We in the West love the Individual, because the very notion itself seems to endow us with unlimited freedom. And, if there is anything that Americans, in particular, love to claim that they love, well, it's Freedom. But just how free are we? Just how free can we really be?

Let's go back to Mr. Bush and his little war that I was so bothered by ... after just a little background (to explain why what I have to say is not "political"). Mr. Bush chose to run for the office of President of the United States. Mr. Bush chose a career of what used to be known a "public service". In other words, Mr. Bush -- of his own free will and accord -- chose to subject his decisions, his opinions, his actions, and the consequences thereof to public scrutiny. And, it is for this very reason that we can look at, think about, and discuss his actions independent of any political persuasions that any of us have. His defenders, of whom there are many, would maintain that he had no choice: given the events of 9/11, given the growing threat of terrorism around the world, given the increasing hostility toward America and all it may or might be perceived to stand for, he had no choice. (This is not something I'm making up hypothetically, it is an argument with which I have been actually presented.) Of course, the question arises, in light of the fact that we are free, unique and independent human beings, why he, in this particular situation, had no choice. What do we call it when we have no choice in what we do? Yes, Fate. But, (I'm pretty sure we agreed last time that) we've superseded Fate. It is our choices that determine who we are and how we are perceived.

We all should remember that I was quite open about the fact that I wouldn't have wanted to be in his shoes at the time of making that decision. On the other hand, we may also not forget that he -- as a consequence of his own free and independent choices -- did want to be in that position. Do you see the contradiction? How can you want to be in a situation of your own free will and accord and then claim that you have no choice? Either you believe we have the will to choose, or you don't ... and if you think there are degrees and shades of whatever that color our ability to choose, then it only seems reasonable to grant others that same concession.

Anyone, not just the (alleged) most powerful person in the world, can be in a position in which s/he actually has "no choice.

(And here's the political statement, and then I'll drop it: this is not a state of affairs allowed for everyone. If it were, we wouldn't have a general attitude that the poor are poor by choice, or that they stay poor by choice, or ... I think you get the point.)

So again: either things are a certain way or they are not; either individuals are free to make choices (and if the most powerful person in the world is not in such a position, then who, might I ask, is?); we are either masters (or mistresses) of our fate, or we are not. What are we?