Bumper sticker philosophy

This is a great example of bumper sticker philosophy. It is easy to say, "Yep, ain't that the truth." And, me as a middle class white male, I would say it mostly applies to me. The doors of opportunity were easy for me to open. I had a lot of help and support as a youth which gave me the skills, confidence and background to 'succeed'. There is no reason for me not to do for myself.

Now go to "the other side of the tracks" where all "those people" are getting welfare. Just picture one child. Picture him going to school and coming home to an empty house because there is only a mom and she is somewhere else. Who knows where. Who helps him with his homework? Who says, "I believe in you and doing this work will open doors for you."? Who watches him make mistakes and helps him learn from them? No one. He comes home and watches TV, plays video games or hangs out with kids in the same situation. These kids aren't going to get together and help each other with homework. He becomes an adult with no opportunities, no hope and no sense of duty to the greater good. He has a few kids with different women and takes no role in their life and the cycle goes on.

Personal responsibility is a learned behavior. Self preservation is an instinctive behavior but is not the same as responsibility. We have a system that is broken and throwing these people to the wolves to fend for themselves is insane. These are the communities we should be throwing money into and breaking the cycle. 
Imagine a school system with a 10 student to 1 teacher ratio. Imagine a teacher that is not worried about his/her own bills because they are paid so well they can do what they love, teach. They help teach the personal responsibility, they help create the hope. Imaging a police force that says I am here for you. I'm not here to punish you at every misstep but to serve and protect you." Imagine churches opening doors right in that community and saying, "We are all in this together. Let us help you build a strong, caring community. Child, we know your mom is not home but we have an outstanding after-school program. Your education is important. We believe in you. We will love and protect you."

Imagine that child growing up. He will have learned personal responsibility and when he has a kid he will more likely be involved than not. His child will have more opportunities than his father and the cycle continues but in a better direction. This seems like a better way of ending welfare than saying, "Pick yourself up by your bootstraps" to someone who never was taught how.

Siddhartha and the Gorilla

I was talking to two of my teenage son's the other day and they asked me what I actually believe. My answer, "Not much."  I went on to try to explain why that's a good thing but I felt my answer fell short.  The point I tried to make wasn't coming across.  There are plenty of people who don't have beliefs because they haven't bothered thinking about them.  That's not my case but the words needed to explain that to my sons were failing me that day. 

Thankfully, help was on the way.  I read  Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha many years ago and recently got an audio copy to listen to on my commute to work. Brilliant book. I listened to the whole thing twice and the last CD four times.

More on Siddhartha in a little bit.  First, I would like you to watch the short video and try to do what it says.  It's pretty simple.  You just have to count how many times the team in white passes the ball. See if you can get it right.

Did you get the right number?  And are you one of the fifty percent the missed the gorilla?

Now back to Siddhartha.  The following is an expert from it towards the end of the book where Siddhartha is talking to a long lost friend, Govinda.

 *****

"It's true, I'm old," spoke Govinda, "but I haven't stopped searching. Never I'll stop searching, this seems to be my destiny. You too, so it seems to me, have been searching. Would you like to tell me something, oh honourable one?"

Quoth Siddhartha: "What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?" 

"How come?" asked Govinda.

 "When someone is searching," said Siddhartha, "then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal. Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal. You, oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a searcher, because, striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are directly in front of your eyes."

 *****

I think Hermann Hesse summed up the gorilla experiment perfectly.  

If a person is looking for something they can miss the beauty right in front of them.  If someone has a static and ridged belief system the truth can be held in the book they are reading or the person they are talking to but they will miss it if ideas and concepts don't fit what they are seeking.  

Our beliefs are the container in which our truth is held.  The shape of our beliefs and the size of our beliefs limits or filters truth. We cannot escape that but be can change the shape and size of the container to accommodate a greater Truth.

Recently I heard an old saying twice within a few days.  I hadn't heard it in a long time but as I was getting ready to write this blog the saying conveniently made itself available for me.   "If you're a hammer every problem is a nail."  The meaning is clear.  It's saying you need to open yourself up to look at problems in more than one way.  We're lucky to have a tool box full of extraordinary tools to solve problems and to deepen our understand of the mysteries of life.  These tools have many names, Christianity,  Hinduism, Buddhism,  Republican, Democrat, Atheist, spirituality, skeptic, Socialist, Communist,  naturalist, environmentalist, and on and on.   None of these tools can answer all questions and solve all problems alone.  If a person picks one as their hammer everything is a nail.  If someone seeks the truth solely through one belief system they miss the Truth.  Finding Truth can only be done with a full toolbox.

We have seekers and we have explorers.  Explores set out to find what there is to find but seekers have their eyes set on a target and everything else is irrelevant or an obstacle.  So now I can tell my sons I am an explorer and I don't want my beliefs to stop me from finding. 

Do we need to know we are killing the Earth before we act?

As a child, I remember watching the Crying Indian commercial and feeling his pain.  At a very basic level, it made sense to me that I/we need to respect nature. Who would stand beside that Indian looking at the trash on the shore and argue it is a good thing or it really didn't matter?  Who could argue that smog choking  the cities was a benefit?

The first Earth Day, April 22nd, 1970 lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passage of the The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and dealt with some immediate tangible threats.  Thanks to the call to action, people responded and the smog problem was reduced and Lake Erie started a healing process. 

For many people in the seventies, eighties and nineties, 'reduce, reuse, recycle' just seemed a rational thing to do.   It wasn't something needed to prevent global demise.  It just made sense at a basic level.  To others, it didn't seem overly important in their daily lives.  We had activism and apathy.

Now enters the global warming scare with a 'do or die' message and almost no tangible evidence to the common person.  Unlike a dark dome of smog over a city or the massive algae blooms killing Lake Erie, we don't see direct evidence of climate change.  There have always been summers that were unusually hot and winters in the north without much snow.  There have always been strong hurricanes, droughts and floods.  The Earth has gone through ice ages, and tropical rain forests have become deserts.  All of this has happened in the past with no humans around to cause them.  So, we can rationally challenge what we are being told is the evidence for man-made climate change.

On top of the plausible doubt, we have the massive changes needed to curb greenhouse gasses.  Energy will most likely cost more because of regulations on power plants, mining and drilling.  Our massive, fun to drive SUV's will have to be replaced with smaller, more fuel efficient cars.  Mass transit will become more prevalent, limiting us compared to our current freedom of mobility.   If we make a major shift in technology to solar or wind, many people will lose their jobs as the oil industry is declines.  The list of sacrifices is long.

Understandably, there is a lot of resistant to change.  Change is painful.   Now instead of activism and apathy we have extreme polarization:  the tree huggers vs. the deniers.  With polarization comes a war.  With a war comes cognitive dissonance.  With cognitive dissonance comes the end of rationality and the end of collaboration.

But is polarization the only path?  Why do we need to prove man-made climate change is real before we take action to make our world a cleaner better place?  It seems irrelevant.

Is there anything inherently bad about having cars that pollute less or use less natural resources to manufacture?  Is there anything inherently bad about appliances that suck up less electricity to do the same work?  Is there anything inherently bad about moving to sustainable/renewable energy sources.  If we built a cleaner, more efficient world and we're wrong about climate change, would we have done it for nothing? 

Imagine a house with no utility bill.  Imagine driving weeks without filling up your car.  Imagine cities without ozone warnings.  Imagine cheaper goods because shippers don't have huge fuel cost.

If we take climate change seriously and it turns out we were duped by an elaborate hoax, are we worse off?

The path towards sustainability by the average person is not that difficult.  I know I can't afford to put a large solar array on my house or a rain water harvesting system.  I have no choice but to commute to work everyday.  But as a consumer I can make some critical choices.  Collectively consumers  have vast amounts of power to change the direction of industry.  If one of the top questions asked at every auto dealership is, "What is the fuel economy?" and consumers walk away because they don't like the answer, industry will change.  If consumers only buy energy star appliances even if it cost a little extra,  industry will change.  If consumers buy products with less packaging, industry will change.

We don't need to believe the world is ending or wait until there is a tangible, immediate threat to start changing the world.  We don't need to become activist to make a difference. We can do that everyday with simple choices.

Oh, and shut off your lights when you're not using them.

Why aren't they rich?

I read about many alternative energy companies and I have bought stock in a number of them.  Besides realizing the great need for more intelligence towards our energy choices they seem to have something else in common; they are going broke.  Solyndra made big news with its bankruptcy.  Politically it is a touchy topic and sometimes it appears supporting alternative energy is a negative in a political campaign.

It is to be expected that the road to energy independence and to clean energy will be paved with failures and mistakes.  That is the path forward with any technology.  Oil is a myopic solution but we tend to a a myopic society. 

Here are a couple companies I have followed over the years. 

Beacon Power  

Power plants have a sweet spot where they run the most efficient but that spot is only ever passed through as they power up during the day for peek energy usage and then power down for lower night time loads.  It is intuitive to conclude that the longer the plan can run at peak efficiency the cheaper it is to run the plant and it follows we get cheaper electricity.  It also pollutes less but that point seems to carry less weight for some reason.

The logical solution is to run at peak efficiency one hundred percent of the time by storing excess power during low usage times and then using that power to supplement power needs during peak hours.  Storage is the issue.  Houses which are not connected to the electrical grid use batteries.  Batteries have a draw back due to life span, dangerous chemicals, rare Earth minerals, etc. On a large scale such as a power supply for a city, batteries are impractical.

Beacon Power's solution is exciting.  They are using carbon fiber flywheels.  Modern material science and other technologies are used to build flywheels to turn chemical energy in to kinetic energy.  These carbon fiber flywheels spin up to 16,000 rpm in a vacuum containment chamber.  This is a very efficient way to store energy and reduce CO2 in the process.
 

Energy Conversion Devices

Battery technology is one of the things holding back many alternative energy solutions.  The auto industry has not produced electric cars or hybrid cars until recently because battery technology was not to the point to make it feasible.  Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) was one of the companies pushing the technology forward, getting it to the point it is today to allow us to have hybrids on the road.  They are the company who produced the batteries for GM's EV1.   But that wasn't enough to support a business model and the company is no more.

They also produced a very interesting product, solar shingles.  Most people don't like the look of solar panels on roofs so ECD produce solar shingle which were installed pretty much like conventional shingles, stopped rain like conventional shingles, looked much like conventional shingles but they also produced electricity while acting like shingles. 



These are just a couple companies I have been interested in over the years with marvelous technology yet sadly watched them sink into nothingness.  At the same time I have seen oil companies reporting record profits.  The Solyndra story is fuel for the anti-alternative energy argument and is being used to slow the funding of other such companies.  This is extremely sad because we need companies such as these who are willing to risk failure to drive the technology forward to make it a viable and sustainable solution.

Anti "Anti" Campaign

We are in the midst of the presidential election and the Republican National Convention just finished up.  I didn't watch it but have caught bits of it on different online news sources, also caught the reactions on social networks, and what I am noticing bothers me.  On both sides of the political aisle, the chatter is all anti-other-party and I don’t recall any political person being “pro" anything.

Can it be that we’ve come to a point where all we really have is a two-party government run by people whose main drive is solely to be against the other party?  Yes, I know each side has a platform with talking points, but that’s not what I’m hearing or seeing.  And isn't it the rhetoric and behavior which truly defines what a party values?

I'll be upfront and disclose I tend towards the liberal side.  (Friends and family are at this point sarcastically saying, "Really?")  So I tend to follow more liberal news sources, blogs, twitter, etc.  One source I started following is written by a Christian Democrat.  After my Inherit The Wind post, I became more interested in the Christian Democratic perspective, thinking maybe a Christian who was Democrats would have positive things to say.  Well, it was more of the same; negative; us vs. them.  I don't think I have seen a single positive or constructive comment coming from that writer yet.  The Christian Democrat writer’s sole purpose seems to be to spew the same negative rhetoric back at their opponents that their opponents are spewing.  Which doesn't strike me as very Christian-esque.

But, before I start throwing too many stones, I’ll admit that I trend towards behaving in the same negative way.  It is so much easier and maybe more exhilarating to be angry, to be against something, than it is to be for something.  A fight is always exciting and easy to get emotionally caught up in.

But it doesn't take a huge intellectual leap to see the flaw in this approach, not only in our government, but our lives, too.

I was talking to someone about this recently, and they gave me a Mother Teresa quote, "I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there."  And I thought, That’s it!  That’s the direction I want to go.  That is the rhetoric of the party I want to vote for.

Isn't the idea of being positive and pro-something-- pro-anything-- better than being against everything?

And before you say it’s only semantics, let me point out that “war” is life-destructive and negative, and “anti-war” is angry and negative, but “pro-peace” is positive and life-affirming. Just think about what the two rallies would be like.  An “Anti-war” rally would be lots of loud angry slogans and hate-filled speeches, whereas a “Pro-peace” rally could be equally loud, but it wouldn’t be angry or hateful.  Nobody can focus on peace and remain angry or hateful; anger and hate are the opposites of peace.

When I heard a Republican congressman say, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President", that closed the Republican door for me.  If, instead, I’d heard, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is to work with the current administration to achieve our platform objectives for the betterment of America and our constituents," I’d have been on board.  I like many of the Republican platform points.  I like many of the Democrats platform points.  But I almost always vote third party because I don't like how either party behaves. 

I don't think Mother Teresa would have liked seeing America’s current “anti” political campaigns, and she may not like an anti-anti campaign but that's the catchiest title I could come up with.  What I’d really like to see is a political system that-- instead of being focused on defeating the other guy at any price-- is focused on what’s good for our country and its people.

What you say?

My wife and I watched a very bad movie recently and it seemed the film makers felt they could make it better if it was laced with profanity.  I mean, it didn't serve a purpose, didn't drive the plot,  wasn't for shock value, didn't emphasize tense or emotional points in the story.  It didn't even serve one of the main reasons people use to justify profanity in a movie, "That's how people in <name the setting> actually talk."  As far as I could tell it was there to give the movie an 'R' rating.

I remember when I was in my late teens, working as a dishwasher at a restaurant, I said something to one of my co-workers and he looked at me.  He said that was the first time he had ever heard me swear.  I had never really thought about it.  In no way was I a well behaved kid in those days but I won't list the ways.  My parents or kids may read this and they don't need to know the things I did.  I was a follower and like most teenagers, I wanted to be cool and accepted.  But I guess that never included trying to impress people with my lack of language skills.  Like I said, I hadn't really thought of it up to that point. 

Currently, I am writing my first novel.  So, language has taken on a new importance in my life.  As I was writing a scene where "That's how people in biker bars" talk, I found I didn't want to put that language in there.  It would be justified because, that's how people in biker bars talk, but I fought the urge and in the end wrote around it.  Consequently the concept of profanity has been on my mind lately.

I was talking to a couple of very intelligent writers lately, who don't mind profanity in their writing and brought this up.  There were a couple of themes about the topic.  One, words are words.  We as humans assign meaning and we as humans make words naughty or nice.  Words are tools of the craft.

Well ... I don't know. That doesn't seem like a complete answer to me.  I went to the ultimate source for answers.  Sadly,  when I did the Google search today when writing this I couldn't find the link I really found interesting.  Basically, it said, the brain processes profanity in a completely different place of the brain than other words.  It comes from the automatic parts of the brain which is why, when you stub your toe, you are likely to say ouch or s*** rather than,  "The quality of this experience is less than optimal."  So, we can say words are words but our brain thinks they are different.

Another theme is that words are tools.  I love tools.  I have a garage floor full of them.  When I was in high school autoshop, the Snap-On truck came and I bought a 13mm combination wrench;  the main wrench anybody working a 1970's VW Beetle needs.  I paid a good sum at the time for it but it is a marvelous tool.  Thirty years later, that wrench is in my tool box and not on my garage floor.  I go through screw drivers like mad and buy more packages of them at Harbor Freight.  If I had a Snap-On screw driver I would be able to tell you right where it was but those things are expensive.  If language is a tool then we are in great luck!  It doesn't cost me anymore to use high quality words than it does to use cheap words.  We have a language full of Snap-On words so why use Harbor Freight words?

Let me entertain you

I was reading a book the other day on writing and it kept talking about the conflict in a story.  I thought that was interesting and tried to think of a story that was not based on a conflict of some type.  Every one I came up with contained some type of struggle, an obstacle to overcome, or any other way you want to describe a conflict. Some stories are tragedies which pull hard at our emotions and others are heroic triumphs pulling our emotions in a different direction but they are all based on someone else's hardships.  Basically, we entertain ourselves with other people's problems.  Some of their problems end well, some end very badly, but we are entertained.

This got me thinking about Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It has been many years since I've read it so I don't remember all the details, but I remember it talking about humor being based on someones misfortunes.  Other than word play, humor has a victim.  We laugh, we find it funny when things go wrong for someone else.

This seems to be a universally human trait and can be seen in some primates as well.   This may not be a bad thing and since it looks like we're hardwired this way we might as well make the best of it.  What we can pull from this is the realization that what goes wrong in life, the conflict we face in everyday life, is what makes life interesting.  Just as a movie or book without conflict wouldn't be a story worth telling, a life without conflict wouldn't be a life worth living.  I think the challenge is, when at all possible, to be the wise architect of our own conflict rather than a foolish victim of misguided conflict, eg: college education vs. crack.

Hilltop Mansion

A friend from my early childhood became a minister when he grew up.  We got connected on Facebook and every so often I read his posts. Today he posted the whole hymn/spiritual "Mansion Over the Hilltop."   I love to hear my wife sing that song in church because it is a beautiful, catchy song.  The church sings it with a faster upbeat than other versions I've heard and standing next to my wife, one of the most talented singers I have ever heard, makes it all the better.

I like the song until I think about what it's saying.  For those that don't know the song, here it is with the repeats of the chorus removed.

---

I'm satisfied with just a cottage below, a little silver and a little gold. But in that city where the ransomed will shine, I want a gold one that's silver lined.

I've got a mansion just over the hilltop, in that bright land where we'll never grow old. And someday yonder We will never more wander, But walk on streets that are purest gold.

Tho often tempted, tormented and tested, and like the prophet, my pillow a stone. And tho I find here no permanent dwelling, I know He'll give me a mansion my own.

Don't think me poor or deserted or lonely; I'm not discouraged, I'm heaven bound. I'm just a pilgrim in search of that city; I want a mansion, a harp, and a crown.

---

The song tells us not to worry about this life because the life after is what is important.  Heaven is where our riches are and if we suffer and endure in this life, our wants for riches will be our reward.

How can a song with that message ever be sung in a Christian church?  Greed is okay in Heaven but not here?  Lusting for material possessions in this life is wrong but lusting for them in Heaven is right?

I am reading Rob Bell's Love Wins right now.   I like his perspective to say the least.   Focus on making the life you are living now right.  Make this life your Heaven.

Imagine what the world be if all the Christians in all the countries quit focusing on the reward of Heaven in an afterlife and started making this their Heaven. What if 'love your neighbor' was more than a catch phrase?  What if "WWJD" was more than a great way to sell T-shirts and wrist bands?  What if the compassion Jesus talked about was the driving force of our life instead of enduring this life until our afterlife reward is granted to us?

And, if there really is a mansion waiting for us in Heaven, I think God is more likely to bestow that blessing on the ones who spent their time in this lowly life making a positive difference than the one only doing what they have to to get a reward.

The Act of Will

I was walking through Half Price Books one day on lunch break and saw a book sitting there titled, The Act of Will.  I liked the title so, without much thought I added it to my stack of books.  It ended up floating around in my computer bag for a couple of months and I would see it there when I pulled my laptop out but ignored it much like the other papers and stuff I should really clean out of my bag instead of lugging around.   Then, after ignoring it for so long, I decided to take it out and look at, with the plan to shelf it.  It was, after all, a random book I bought for a silly reason.

The introduction let me know that my random act was one of those mysterious events which makes you wonder about coincidence.  I'm in the process of writing a fictional book and the introduction of The Act of Will echoed the main philosophy behind my book. The author, Roberto Assagioli, asks us to imagine an ancient man coming to our time.  He would see us as demigods with all the technology he could only understand as magic or divine power. But now, imagine that person coming to our time is one of the great minds of the past, such as Plato.

Assagioli says, "He would soon notice that, though man has acquired an impressive degree of power over nature, his knowledge of and control over his inner being is very limited. He would perceive that this modern "magician," capable of descending to the bottom of the ocean and projecting himself to the moon, is largely ignorant of what is going on in the depths of his unconscious and is unable to reach up to the luminous superconscious levels, and to become aware of his true Self. This supposed demigod, controlling great electrical forces with a movement of the finger and flooding the air with sound and pictures for the entertainment of millions, would be seen to be incapable of dealing with his own emotions, impulses, and desires."

After I started reading this book I had to go back and revise mine and it influenced the rest of the book moving forward.  My belief is that technology has actually made it easier for us to become less connected, less in tune with who we are.  It is easy to escape thinking the hard thoughts about our purpose and just watch a TV show.  It is easy to find entertainment, find pleasure fixes, and avoid searching ourselves to find fulfillment. We can find ways to live a pointless and meaningless life and never strive to reach our potential.  Before many of the technological advances people didn't have much free time to reflect on who they were.  Their daily lives were filled with getting food and other necessities just to survive.  With each technological advance people were granted more free time.  This spawned some great mind such as Galileo and Da Vinci. But, for the most part, the path much of humanity has taken is to use the technology to avoid any inward look at themselves.


Assagioli started a branch of Psychology called Psychosynthesis.  He seems to carry a lot of Freudian Psychoanalytic theory forward as far as the parts of the personality but then he expands on it. One interesting thing is that he brings the concept of spirituality into his theory which Freud either ignored or rejected. But, Assagioli says he only takes people to the door of spirituality.  Which path they take is for them to search out.

So, when I was thinking about writing a blog and coming up with a name, The Act of Will seemed a logical fit.  In this blog I want to explore some of the concepts that drive me forward.  Many of these concepts are in my book but I think there are many that I won't actually have a solidified idea of what they are until I do the work of organizing them into words.  The public forum gives the chance to do so with the potential for input from others in a civil exploration of concepts.  Please feel free to join me in this exploration.

Here is a link to download a PDF of Roberto Assagioli's The Act of Will You can also find a link to buy it on Amazon on the "Book list" page of this blog.