The Hand of God

"We make our journey in the company of others; the deer, the rabbit, the bison, and the quail walk before us, and the lion, the eagle, the wolf, the vulture, and the hyena walk behind us. All our paths lie together in the hand of god and none is wider than any other or favored above any other. The worm that creeps beneath your foot is making its journey across the hand of god as surely as you are.

"Wherever live moves, the hand of god is under it, so no step can be off the path. When you stumble on the mountainside, that is part of your path. When your child is sick and you turn aside from the hunt, that is part of your path. When you wander hungry in the desert and cannot find your way, you're not lost, you're on your path. When cunning fails and your prey eludes you, don't curse your luck; this fruitless hunt is part of your path."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.74, The Tales of Adam

Solidarity and Moral Purity

A quote by Brad Warner:

"The moral high ground is a lonely place. It seems like there’s only ever room for one up there. I used to try to stay there. But it was too sad. So I came back down."--Brad Warner in THIS blog post.

I've always admired Stephanie McMillan's clarity (quote below). I think she's done a great service by defining what solidarity means. This is useful to anyone involved in any kind of political struggle, which is most of us whether we know it or not. I think it was Aristotle who once said: "Man is my nature a political animal." In other words, we're animals and were of the polis, or city.

"Someone asked me to explain what I think solidarity is. True solidarity goes beyond building support for someone else's struggle (though it includes that). It is to identify that struggle as your own, to grasp your common interests, and to take responsibility for fighting your common enemy on your own battlefield. And to do this in a way that is collective, mutually supportive and mutually strengthening."

Neither Patriarchy Nor Matriarchy

"The patriarchy is a complicated structure. Mythologically, it is matriarchal on the inside, and a matriarchy is equally complicated, being patriarchal on the inside. The political structure has to resemble our interior structure. And we know each man has a woman inside him, and each woman has a man inside her.

"The genuine patriarchy brings down the sun through the Sacred King, into every man and woman in the culture; and the genuine matriarchy brings down the moon, through the Sacred Queen, to every woman and every man in the culture. The death of the Sacred King and Queen means that we live now in a system of industrial domination, which is not patriarchy. The system we live in gives no honor to the male mode of feeling nor to the female mode of feeling. The system of industrial domination determines how things go with us in the world of resources, values, and allegiances; what animals live and what animals die; how children are treated. And in the mode of industrial domination there is neither king nor queen." [Robert Bly, pg. 98, Iron John]

A couple of thoughts occurred to me while typing this out:

1. The idea of male and female modes of feeling means that you accept the premise that there are certain masculine and feminine traits that you inherit genetically. In other words, this is the gift of our ancestors. It's a genetic inheritance that is not culturally determined.

2. Daniel Quinn made a genius move by explaining to his readers why the problem of good and evil doesn't exist for him. He simply stated that he has peopled his world with gods that have an equal care from anything from a wood tick to a wildebeest. In other words, if a wolf takes down an old whitetail deer it was good for the wolf and bad for deer. Perhaps when one is in the mode of industrial domination they can't see this. In a sense Quinn has softened the mode of industrial domination. He's made it easier to fall in love with the world.

Nine Inches of Fresh Snow

Close to nine inches of fluffy snow on the ground this morning. It's April 23rd, and I would have never expected to be driving over to my dad's to pick up the snowblower. At this point in time only one question remains for me: What will the weather be like when it becomes more extreme. Out of all the climate change literature that I've read one scientific prediction that has always stuck with me is that of more extreme weather conditions. I wonder what the weather will be like 10 or 20 years from now.

Off to blow snow that'll be melting in a few days.

Re-Imagining Us

"Imagine our ancestors [primitive tribal peoples] enacting a different story from ours. Not a story about man mastering his environment. Not a story about man's conquest of the world. Not a story in which products and productivity figured at all."--Daniel Quinn, The Book of the Damned

Snow Falling In Northwestern Wisconsin

Snow is on my mind. Six inches or more (It's still falling) of fresh heavy, wet snow to drive through on the mail route today. Maybe this is what we get for having Senator Ron Johnson in town last week saying he thinks man-made global warming is a farce. I don't know. I'm done trying to figure it out.

Transparent Man

"Transparent Man, who is seen and seen through, foolish, who has nothing left to hide, who has become transparent through self-acceptance; his soul is loved, wholly revealed, wholly existential; he is just what he is, freed from paranoid concealment, from the knowledge of his secrets and his secret knowledge; his transparency serves as a prism for the world and the not-world. For it is impossible reflectively to know thyself; only the last reflection of an obituary may tell the truth, and only God knows our real names."--James Hillman

On the home front: Spring is here and so are the ticks and the diseases they carry. I don't think it's an exaggeration to call it an epidemic, especially in northwestern Wisconsin. We found a deer tick dug into our 3 year old son's head last night. It's obviously been there for over 24 hours. Now it's either get him on antibiotics immediately or wait it out to see if he starts showing symptoms for any on of the tick-borne diseases.

What's The Matter, Don't You Wanna Work?

I don't know how many times I've had that question asked of me or have heard it asked of others. It occurred to me this morning, after reading some excerpts out of James Hillman's Blue fire, that it could be the person asking the question perceives work to be a duty. They do not associate work with pleasure but as their ethical duty. They also might not find much pleasure in their own work. Anyway here is the excerpt that set me off on this train of thought:

"We moralize work and make it a problem, forgetting that the hands love to work and that in the hands is the mind. That 'work ethic' idea does more to impede working...it makes it a duty instead of a pleasure. We need to talk of the work instinct, not the work ethic, and instead of putting work with the superego we need to imagine it as an id activity, like a fermentation, something going on instinctively, autonomously, like beer works, like bread works...."--James Hillman, Pg.171, A Blue Fire

Perhaps

Perhaps" by Shu Ting

Perhaps our cares
will never have readers

Perhaps the journey that was wrong from the start
will be wrong at the end

Perhaps every single lamp we have lit
will be blown out by the gale

Perhaps when we have burned out our lives to lighten the darkness
there will be no warming fire at our sides.

Perhaps where all the tears have flowed
the soil will be richer

Perhaps when we sing of the sun
the sun will sing of us

Perhaps as the weight on our shoulders grows heavier
our faith will be more lofty

Perhaps we should shout about suffering as a whole
but keep silent over personal grief.

Perhaps
Because of an irresistible call
We have no other choice.

(Again, thank you to naturalawareness for this one.)

Daydreaming, Kids, and Homeschooling

A good article HERE on daydreaming. If I can give my kids one thing hopefully it is enough time to daydream. Now that I think of it that is one of the main reasons why we homeschool or unschool.

Thank you to Naturalawareness.net for sharing this.

Environment, Religion, and War

"Environmental battles are where the wars of religion are fought today, showing the old pagan nature Gods have not altogether been subdued by the world unification plans of god, the Economy."--James Hillman, pg.4, Kinds of Power

It's Time To Set The Record Straight

"We belong to the world. We belong to the community of life on this planet--it doesn't belong to us. We got confused about that, now it's time to set the record straight."--Daniel Quinn, Pg.174, Providence

Spring?

We began as a mineral.
We emerged into plant life and into
the animal state, and then to being human.

And always we have forgotten our former states,
except in early spring,
when we dimly recall being green again.~Rumi

Not recalling "being green again" today, Rumi. Snow is falling. There is well over two inches of fresh snow on the ground, and we're closing in on 10 days of no sunshine here in northwestern Wisconsin.

Oh how different it is from last year at this time.

The Souls Code and Tiger Woods

If you've read The Soul's Code then this statement by Earl Woods to Sports Illustrated in the summer of 1996 about his son Tiger will make sense. If you haven't read TSC, than you'll probably think he's a nutcase.

"I was personally selected by God himself...to nurture this young man....Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity."--Earl Woods

Hillman makes the argument in The Souls Code that our daimon chooses our parents before we come into this world. So, I think in a sense Earl Woods is onto something. It may not necessarily have been God that selected him, but Tiger's daimon. It knew Earl would be the one to nurture it.

It's also interesting to note that I read this about Earl Woods in ESPN magazine a few months back.

"After two weeks of swinging his plastic club lefthanded (this is, again, according to Earl) Tiger apparently grew dissatisfied with the motion. As the father looked on, in the part of the tale that always engaged Earl the most in the telling--switched his hands, moving the right below the left, intuitively finding the proper grip. Earl called to his wife Kultida, elsewhere in the house: 'We have a genius on our hands!'"--ESPN Magazine, Pg.76, 2/4/13

Tiger was about a year old when he did this. He was simply copying Earl's swing, so the story goes. But that's not why I mentioned the quote above. The reason why I did is that Earl recognized Tiger's genius. I think a lot of people go through life without their genius being recognized by anyone. Perhaps it takes a trained eye to see it, the problem is we live in a culture where most of is don't even think it exists.

New Essay And Interview With Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn has a new interview and essay coming out. This morning I pulled Beyond Civilization off from the shelf to read the section titled, "The Invisibility of Success," again. It's one of my favorite sections of the book. Below a quote from that section:

"The basic laws of ecology have the beauty and simplicity of a fairy tale, but their existence only began to be suspected a century ago."-- Pg.11, Beyond Civilization

Vitality of a Culture

"The vitality of a culture depends less on its hopes and its history than on its capacity to entertain willingly the divine and daimonic force of ideas"--James Hillman

Uecker is Authenticity

"His head didn't bobble on that one!" Said Bob Uecker after Norichika Aoki's second hit of four hits on Norichika Aoki bobble head day at Miller Park. That, to me, ranks right up there with him saying the proper place for a Jason Kendall bobble head would be a hood ornament on a demolition derby car.

I don't think there is a Brewer game that has gone by where I haven't asked where does he come up with this stuff?

Sunday And No Church

It's Sunday morning. I just finished up listening to an hour long talk titled: The Educated Heart, by Robert Bly. I've been to church less than a handful of times in my life. As a child, whenever I asked mom about attending church, she always told me that as long as you kept God in your heart you'd be just fine. So, we didn't go. Anyway, Bly's talk is more valuable to me right now in my life than any church service will ever be.

Do Schools Work?

"Our entire program [ Compulsory Schooling] is based on this argument: 'We know kids learn effortlessly if they have their own reasons for learning, but we can't wait for them to find their own reasons. We have to provide them with reasons that are not their own. This doesn't work, but it's the only practical way to organize our schools.

"What? How would I organize the schools? To ask this question presupposes that we must have schools, doesn't it? I prefer to think about problems the way engineers do. If a valve doesn't work, they don't say, 'Well, we must have valves, so let's try two valves.' If a valve doesn't work, they say, 'Well, what would work? Their rule is, if it doesn't work, don't do it more, do something else.

"We know what works for children up to the age where we ship them off to school: Let them be around you, pay attention to them, give them access to as much as you can, let them try things, and that's it. They'll take care of the rest. You don't have to strap small children down and teach them to speak, all you have to do is talk to them. You don't have to give them crawling lessons or walking lessons or running lessons. You don't have to spend an hour a day showing them how to bang two pots together, they'll figure that out all by themselves--if you give them access to the pots."--Daniel Quinn, Pg. 121, Providence

Men and Women

"It appears that neither man nor woman want to be so dependent on each other as they have been in the past. Each gender aims for independence, and that seems natural for us. But as the obligatory dependence between men and women lessens, dependence itself if not lessening, dependence on the state increases." -- Robert Bly

The Holy In The Ground

I received this book in the mail yesterday. When a new book lands in my hands I usually open the book up and start reading a few lines or just page through it. Here are the first lines that I ran across after opening it:

"Civilization could probably be defined as humans with lapsed memories who live forgetting that people in the long run are not in charge, nor are they truly ever going to be. Whereas the Indigenous mind does not give the direction of the world to the 'will' of God, but to the desire of the Holy in the ground to continually unfold as nature."--Martin Prechtel

Good stuff.

It's Opening Day!

It's Opening Day! Looking forward to hearing the voice of Bob Uecker through the car speakers as I pedal mail on this first day of April.

“[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.” ~ A. Bartlett Giamatti

The Difference Between Madness and Insanity

"The difference between blessed madness and insanity is: insanity is following the wrong God."--Michael Meade

Quinn Quote Saturday

"People in America (perhaps more than elsewhere) are used to being organized into "campaigns" -- support this cause, elect this president, boycott this product, vote for this legislator, support this bill, and so on -- but there is no campaign that is going to assure us having a livable world. For many generations, we've all been collaborators in bringing us to the point of extinction, but we weren't following any "course of action," as we did this. Rather, we were following a vision (or as Ishmael put it, enacting a story). Political leaders and captains of industry followed the vision in their own way (and contributed in their own way to our situation). Shopkeepers and workers followed the vision in their own way (and contributed in their own way to our situation). In reversing the situation, how could it possibly be different?"--Daniel Quinn in an interview with Bob Conrad

A Pennsylvania Judge Holds That Corporations Are Not “Persons”

I usually don't post news, but this brief news clip is truly inspiring.

"These communities believe that if ten thousand other localities do the same, that those tremors will begin to shake loose a new system of law – a system in which courts and legislatures begin to elevate community rights above corporate rights, and thus, begin to liberate cities and towns to build economically and environmentally sustainable communities free from corporate interference."--Thomas Linzey

Green

"Hope and growth, like youth, are green."--James Hillman

Pope and Unregulated Financial Capitalism

I never thought I'd find myself posting a quote from the Pope.

“It is alarming to see hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor, by the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism. In addition to the varied forms of terrorism and international crime, peace is also endangered by those forms of fundamentalism and fanaticism which distort the true nature of religion, which is called to foster fellowship and reconciliation among people.” ~ Pope Benedict, Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, 1 January 2013

Practice

"It's very important to distinguish between a practice and a task. You can succeed or fail at a task. This is a practice, you can’t fail at it, you just keep doing it. That's why we call it practice. It’s not about success and failure." ~ Ken McLeod

This resonates given my relationship with Buddhism and baseball.

Urging Strife

Up to this point in my life the lines below are some of the most important lines I've come across:

"Part of separating and drawing apart is the emotion of hatred. So I shall be speaking with hatred and urging strife, or eris, or polemos, which Heraclitus, the first ancestor of psychology, has said is the father of all."--James Hillman, pg.114, A Blue Fire

Our Form Of Display: Rhetoric

I'm following my fascination with Hillman's work this morning. I like the idea of our speech as a form of display in the animalistic sense.

"I think that the human form of display, in the ethologist's sense of 'display,' is rhetoric. Our ability to sing, speak, tell tales, recite, orate is essential to our lovemaking, boasting, fear-inspiring, territory protecting, surrendering, and offspring-guarding behaviors. Giraffes and tigers have splendid coats; we have splendid speech."--James Hillman, Pg. 295, A Blue Fire

God Is Life In Abundance

"God is life in abundance wherever life is found, but not for all in every season. When the locusts thrive, the birds feast and the bison and the deer go hungry; still that place is as full of life as it was before and as full of life as it can be. No place where there is life is a desert, except to man."-- Daniel Quinn, pg.8, Tales of Adam

More on Diderot

Someday I'd like to learn more about Denis Diderot. James Hillman has called him the spiritual father of our democracy. He had a big influence on James Madison and the other thinkers that had a hand in writing The Constitution. Diderot interests me because he'd given up on the state leading us. He also gave up on monotheism. Two ideas that we still think will lead us into the promised land, unfortunately. On his deathbed he said:

"I do not believe in God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Ghost."

A Certain Kind of Coin

"Each God makes a claim on us which we may pay only in the God's coin--this is an inescapable fact."--Euripides

Einstein and Fairy Tales

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."--Albert Einstein

I think Einstein is onto something here. Living the life of an homeschooling/unschooling parent has taken me into to the world of fairy tales. Growing up I heard very little of fairy tales after 6 or 7 years old.

Quinn Video Saturday

I think he makes an important point in saying that we don't have the power to destroy all of life on this planet. We do have the power to make it uninhabitable for humans, though.

This LINK will take you to the video.

Money Cow

Baseball season is right around the corner. So, like years past, I find myself flipping through Robert Bly's book, The Sibling Society. I've learned that this isn't a conscious thing, it just happens. I would guess it's for the adult male wisdom in it. I'll be working with adolescents and children in one capacity or another on the baseball diamond this year, so it's always nice to get my bearings straight before I go at it. Anyway, while looking for a quote by Dostoyevsky on how adolescence naturally use language like soldiers and sailors I ran across this tale by Bly. I've probably read it a half-a-dozen times or so in the past, but this time it really had an impact on me.

A Curious Tale

Once upon a time there was a country, far north and far south of here, where farmers found a new domestic creature, superior to sheep, pigs, or chickens. It happened just after money had been reclassified as an animal. One day it was a thought; the next day it was real, and had horns and an udder.

The breeders soon found that the new animal needed much air and water; and some of the poor had to be moved to the inner cities and others to the suburbs, to make room. Although it was regrettable that people had to lose their old homes and their security, nothing could be more important, the Senate and the House said, for the future of the nation than this new money cow. What they needed was one great money bull for the development of the line.

A perfect money bull was finally discovered; his name was Bottom. For a while, everyone was satisfied with Bottom, and many gifts were brought to him. Boys wore their caps backward as an honor to Bottom. He finally learned to speak, and his words and his sperm were sent all over the known world.

When Bottom began to demand sacrifices, some people became uneasy. But Congress agreed to his demands. Hundreds of people lined up to be sacrificed to him. This line of people about to die was called Bottom's line.--pg. 153-54

The first people I thought of after reading this tale was Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, and Wisconsin's very own Governor Scott Walker.

I'd say we've sacrificed a lot to Bottom since 1980.

Soul and Spirit Again...I think

"Spirit yearns for meaning, transcendence, and fullness. It asks for dedication to life and a mystical connection with all that is above and beyond us. Soul, on the other hand, is our ordinary life of deep connections, emotions, thoughts, and important attachments. Both soul and spirit need our attention? We are at our best when they work closely together."--Thomas Thomas Moore

This reminds me of Robert Bly talking about the masculine and the feminine. I've heard him say that it's vitally important for us to define what it means to be masculine and what it means to feminine and live somehwere in the middle. I would think the same would go for the soul and spirit.

Skulls, Eyes, and Sockets

Once again I was moved by this man's writing and wisdom this morning:

"The old natural philosopher, who was usually both physician and philosopher, pondered with the skull upon his table. Not only did he see death from the viewpoint of life. He viewed life through the sockets of the skull.

"Life and death come into the world together; the eyes and the sockets which hold them are born at the same moment. The moment I am born I am old enough to die. As I go on living I am dying."--James Hillman, Pg.59, Suicide and The Soul

And A Quote Presents Itself

Well, I was searching for a quote in one of the first on-line interviews that I ever read back in the late nineties. I didn't find the quote, of course. I usually never do. What usually does happen, though, is that I find a better one:

"But I think everyone knows secretly that if we’re going to save the world, it will have to be by a new religious awakening that technology isn’t going to be able to address. Governments aren’t going to do it, laws aren’t going to do it for us, police aren’t going to do it for us. It has to be an awakening among people of a religious kind. This is so serious here, we’re talking about the extinction of the human race; that’s what’s at issue. If the extinction of the human race isn’t a religious issue, what is?"--Daniel Quinn

Speaking of religion, I have a philosophical insight, I think. Those who have too much love for heaven end up hating the world around them to some degree. Of course, the opposite is true as well. If you fall in love with the world around you too much you end up hating anyone that speaks of religion or Christianity or manners or morals, etc. In other words you could be a fundamentalist-leftist-marxist.

Diderot and Democracy

"If we look to the city rather than the state it's because we've given up hope that the state may create a new image for the city."--Denis Diderot

Diderot is considered by some to be the spiritual father of our American democracy. I'm also really starting to like the idea of organizing folks at a community level and starting hammer out what our vision of a sustainable community is. It's becoming more and more clear to me that we can't expect government at the federal and state level to stop things like frac sand mines or factory farming.

Quinn Quote Saturday

"During your lifetime, the people of our culture are going to figure out how to live sustainably on this planet -- or they’re not. Either way, it’s certainly going to be extraordinary."--Daniel Quinn out of If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways

The Hopeful Illusion

"Most men, the huge majority, in fact all of us, are dyed-in-the-wool Christians, fully immersed in hope. We are unconcsiously converts to the hopeful illusion. But hope itself converts into what it covers, its ever-faithful nightime companion, despair, and we have been instructed, deceitfully, in only the the upper half of this truth. Look up; and new day is coming!"--James Hillman, pg.216, A Terrible Love of War

Kant on Discord

"The means nature employs to accomplish the development of all faculties is the antagonism of men in society, since this antagonism becomes, in the end, the cause of a lawful order of this society."--Immanuel Kant

Like It Or Not We Are All Christians

One thing is for certain: Simply rejecting Christianity isn't going to be enough to stop us from going extinct. Years back I thought it would be. That aside I trudge ahead fearless in my foolishness.

"The fact is clear: Western wars are backed by the Christian God, and we cannot dodge his draft because we are all Christians, regardless of the faith you profess, the church you attend, or whether you declare yourself utterly atheistic. You may be Jew or Muslim, pay tribute to your god in Santeria fashion, join with other Wiccas, but wherever you are in the Western world you are psychologically Christian, indelibly marked with the sign of the cross in your mind and in the corpuscles of your habits. Christianism is all about us, in the words we speak, the curses we utter, the repressions we fortify, the numbing we seek, and the residues of religious murders in our history. The murdered Jews, the murdered Catholics, the murdered Protestants, the murdered Mormons, heretics, deviationists, freethinkers...Once you feel your own personal soul to be distinct from the world out there, and that consciousness and conscience are lodged in that soul (and not in the world out there), and that even the impersonal selfish gene is individualized in your person, you are, psychologically, Christian. Once your first response to a dream, a bit of news, an idea divides immediately into the moral "good" or "bad," psychologically you are Christian. Once you feel sin in connection with your flesh and its impulses, again you are Christian. When a hunch comes true, a slip-up is taken as an omen, and you trust in dreams, only to shake off these inklings as "superstition," you are Christian because that religion bans nondoctrinal forms of communication with the invisibles, excepting Jesus. When you turn from books and learning and instead to your inner feelings to find simple answers to complexities, you are Christian, for the Kingdom of God and the voice of His true Word lies within. If your psychology uses names like ambivalence, weak ego, splitting, breakdown, ill-defined borders for conditions of the soul, fearing insistence upon unified, empowered, central authority. Once you consider apparently aimless facts of history to be going somewhere, evolving somehow, and that hope is a virtue and not a delusion, you are Christian. You are Christian too when holding the notion that resurrection of light rather than irremediable tragedy or just bad luck lie in the tunnel of human misfortune. And you are especially an American Christian when idealizing a clean slate of childlike innocence as close to godliness. We cannot escape two thousand years of history, because we are history incarnated, each one of us thrown up on the Western shores of here and now by violent waves of long ago.

"We may not admit the grip of Christianity on our psyche, but what else is collective unconsciouness but the ingrained emotional patterns and unthought thoughts that fill us with the prejudices we prefer to conceive as choices? We are Christian through and through. St. Thomas sits in our distinctions, St. Francis governs our acts of goodness, and thousands of Protestant missionaries from every sect you can name join together to give us the innate assurance that we are superior to all others and can help them see the light."--James Hillman, Pg. 191, A Terrible Love of War

A Daniel Quinn Quote On A Saturday Morning

“But why? Why do you need prophets to tell you how you ought to live? Why do you need anyone to tell you how you ought to live”--Daniel Quinn out of Ishmael

The Furies and Resistance

This brief excerpt about the Greek furies knocked me on my ass this morning. It's sort of dark. Then again I'm feeling dark so what can be expected.

"After a blood-crime the ancient Greek Furies (Erinyes) demand vengeance. They do not let go and they work by disturbing the mind. There is no escape from their pursuit. Heraclitus says that if the sun itself were to leave its ordered course, the Furies would find him. To forget a major wrong is to neglect the laws of the cosmos, which are also reflected in the order of the family."[James Hillman, Pg.157, A Terrible Love of War]

This is part of the reason why, I think, Derrick Jensen heavily criticizes the dogma of non-violent pacifism. We are destroying nonhuman life at such an alarming rate there isn't one of us that can wash the blood off from our hands by claiming the moral high ground of nonviolent pacifism. And besides, the furies (Erinyes) will find a way to torment us anwyay. I'm beginning to think the deaths cannot be transformed by love. Perhaps underground acts of resistance will be inevitable for some simply because of the torment.

Rumi on Blindness

"The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why."--Rumi

Cheating On One Religion

I read this a few days back. Since I don't get out of Washburn County much let alone the country, it's interesting to learn how the Japanese handle religion.

"People in America are very committed to their religions. A religion to them is like a wife/husband or girl/boyfriend. You can only have one of them! If you are a Christian and you do yoga, you are cheating on Jesus!

"The Japanese, on the other hand, are very religiously promiscuous. They’re like polyamorists when it comes to religion. Lots of people over there go to Buddhist temples on the Buddhist holidays, Shinto shrines on the Shinto holidays and maybe even occasionally to Christian churches on the Christian holidays like Christmas or Easter. Lots of non-Christian Japanese people have church weddings, often with foreign guys pretending to be preachers. It’s no big deal."--Brad Warner on his blog titled: Hardcore Zen

Initiatory Books

Lately I've been thinking of Daniel Quinn's and Derrick Jensen's work somewhat as books of initiation. I've also thought of my struggle to express myself here and in my journal as an initiation also. Why? Because I think Western Civilization is dying. It's at its end. And when the majority of the people in this society don't understand this on a conscious level one needs someone to articulate this to them or they'll think that they are going nuts. And eventually after one has this articulated to them they have the urge to express themselves also. Anyway, I ran across these quotes in A Terrible Love of War by the 20th century philosopher Michael Foucault that rationally explains what I'm getting at.

"For Nietzsche, Bataille, and Blanchot, experience has the function of wrenching the subject from itself, of seeing to it that the subject is no longer itself, or that it is brought to its annihilation or its dissolution. This is a project of desubjectivism."

"...however boring, however erudite my books may be, I've always conceived of them as direct experiences aimed at pulling myself free of myself, at preventing me from being the same."

"Which means that at the end of a book we would establish new relationships with the subject at issue: the I who wrote the book and those who have read it would have a different relationship with madness, with its contemporary status, and its history in the modern world."

Simple Marriage Quote

"It's better to marry than to burn."--St. Paul

The Reasons For War: Does The Land Demand Blood Sacrifice?

James Hillman on why the Civil War might have been fought:

"Suppose the entire American Civil War that has permanently marked the land and scarred the character of the American people was a sacrifice by a secular Christian society to a god or gods that had not been honestly remembered until the war, gods of the land, gods honored who had been there for centuries before the combatants donned the blue and the gray.

"Suppose the gods in this 'new world' soil were saying: 'You may not land here; you cannot claim this land by labor alone, nor by law or treaty, nor even by expulsion of others and the rights of victors. To claim this land you shall pay for it with your own blood, and until you have paid you have not truly landed; you remain colonists, attached still in soul to another mother as refugees from her, rebels against her, secretly fawning upon her, and have not let this land bring forth its birth in freedom.'"--Pg.103, A Terrible Love of War

Suppose this is why Derrick Jensen has often said that we must ask the land what it wants. It has its own wants and desires that we must pay attention to before we act to help it. I don't know. I do know that Heraclitus once said: "The true nature of things loves to hide and to stay hidden."

Quinn Quote Saturday

Imagining extinction this morning. One of the affects Quinn's work had on me was that it opened me to the possibility, and perhaps the inevitability, of the human species going extinct much like the dinosaurs.

B's Beattitudes

Blessed are those who do
not exalt themselves above
their neighbors in the
community of life, for their
children shall have a world
to live in.

Blessed are those who
listen to their neighbors in
the community of life, for
they shall escape extinction.

Blessed are those who
refrain from imposing on
others their "one right way
for people to live," for
cultural diversity shall be
restored among them.

Blessed are those who
hunger and thirst for the
survival of all human
cultures, for they shall
preserve a legacy of wisdom
accumulated from the
beginning of time.

Blessed are those who do
not fancy themselves to be
rulers or managers or
stewards of the world, for
the world thrived for three
billion years without their
rule or their management
or their stewardship.

My First Book Of Rumi

My first book of Rumi fell into my hands on February, 20th. It's title: A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings. This book was given to President Obama as a gift from the author during the beginning of his first term as President. Rumi is the President's favorite poet. The poem on the day I received the book knocked my socks off and made me laugh at the same time.

Imagining is Like

Imagining is like feeling around
in a dark lane, or washing
your eyes with blood.

You are the truth
from foot foot to brow, Now,
what else would you like to know?

Citizenship and War

This quote by Machiavelli and James Hillman's commentary on it is stunning and inspiring.

"A prince...should have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other things for his study, but war; [he] ought...never let his thoughts stray from the exercise of war; and in peace he ought to practise it more than in war."

James Hillman goes onto say: "The prince, as generous metaphor for responsible citizen and concerned member of the polis, will keep a focused mind, a mind undistracted by the multiple diversions of peace, and a psyche neither numbed nor in denial. And he will maintain this clarity not merely by meditating or praying to benefit his own 'mental health,' but for the common good and the defense of the community. Hence, the prince 'ought never let his thoughts stray from...war.'" Pg. 36, A Terrible Love of War

I'm also beginning to see why Derrick Jensen titled one of his CD's: Now This War Has Two Sides.

Gods and Porno Flicks

Could it be that Aphrodite finds her way into one's home through the porno flick? Maybe Jung is right, if we look hard enough we'll find the gods in our diseases.

Philosophy: A Frozen Form of Mythology

I'm going to take a stab at answering the questions I asked yesterday. Here is what I've come up with: I've heard it said that the gods speak through mythology and poetry. It's universal. I've also heard it said that philosophy is a frozen form of mythology. In other words, every philosophical idea is associated with a myth. Perhaps this is why an author like Daniel Quinn (Well, he had Ishmael say it to Alan) can say one cannot argue with mythology. It is universal and fluid unlike philosophy which becomes frozen and stiff.

I know that it would be bliss if there was a cafe down the road for me to sit and discuss these ideas.

Wingless Angels

"Philosophy will clip an angels wings."--John Keats

What's Keats saying here? Reading too much philosophy will never get you off the ground? Was he just being a high-flying spirit boy when he said this?

It's time to cut firewood. That'll ground the brain, and work some this coffee out of my system.

Stuck in Muck

I've always been interested in psychology, especially after getting to know depression and anxiety well in my late teens and early twenties. They scared the shit out of me to be quite honest. I never thought I'd climb back out of whatever hole I was in during that period. And once I did, I've never wanted to go back, atleast not to that degree. This, of course, leads me to a quote that has been popping into my head the past week or so. I made an attempt to find it yesterday and couldn't, but this morning I was successful.

"It must be remembered that sensations of the ugly and evil impress us more violently than those of what is agreeable...sickness makes the rougher mark...Illness...makes itself by it very incongruity."--Plotinus

Whatever the hell had a hold of me then left a mark.

Teach A Hundred

"What you do is teach a hundred what I've taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That's how it's always done" - Daniel Quinn, Pg. 248, Ishmael

Another Quote on Beauty

Lately I've been thinking a lot about Beauty. I don't think we consider it enough.

"The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man."-- Fyodor Dostoyevski

D.H Lawrence on Beauty

Question: What is Beauty?

Answer: According to D.H. Lawrence "Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it."

New Strategy To Save The USPS

I've got a new strategy this morning. If any of you have friends or family working within the United States Postal Service please pass this PETITION onto them and urge them to pass it on to others within the USPS. My thinking is that if approximately one-fifth of USPS's work force signs this thing we'll reach our 100,000 signature goal by the 21st of February. And why wouldn't a USPS employee take the two minutes it takes to sign this thing? Their job, and the survival of the USPS, depends on it.

We Petition The Obama Administration To: Save The Post Office

Two posts today. Yesterday I had the intention to post this PETITION:

We Petition The Obama Administration To:

Save the Post Office

The Postal Service is not a federal agency. It does not cost taxpayers a dollar. It loses money only because Congress mandates that it do so.

What it is is a miracle of high technology and human touch. It delivers to more than 151 million addresses every day but Sunday. It's what binds us together as a nation.

If Congress does not take action soon, the Post Office will have only enough money to pay its bills through October. After that, it will go bankrupt.

Before it’s too late, we urge Congress to free the Post Office from its congressionally mandated obligations and allow it to raise additional revenue so that it can become self-sustaining once again.

Read DO WE REALLY WANT TO LIVE WITHOUT THE POST OFFICE? from Esquire's February issue: http://tinyurl.com/ap8vsen.

#savethepostoffice

It's been 24 hours since I signed. I was signature number 4176. I just now checked it and there is 4237 signatures. That's only 61 signatures in 24 hours. We need 96,000 signatures before February 21st. Please sign it and share it. My goal isn't so much to save my own job but to let the President know we value the Post Office and are paying attention. In other words, I like to know active citizenship is happening.

A Reader Responds...And I Respond Back

Recently I had a response to my blog post titled: Where is Marx When You Need Him. I'm going to attempt to respond to it using a method that I learned in Daniel Quinn's If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways. In that book he asks his readers to look for the unquestioned hidden assumptions in their own and other's thinking. I admit I don't do very well at this, but this will be good practice.

Responder: "There is something wrong with your argument, that high paying jobs should be saved even though they aren't warranted. And how could Karl Marx make things better?"

Me: Karl Marx can't make things better because he is dead. But I think we look at the world with the ideas that we hold in our heads. And I think it was Marx who came up with the idea that people don't have to labor for a wage that the owners of production have set up for him without a fight. In other words, a laborer doesn't have to be a wage slave that blows like a feather in the free market winds.

Responder: "Karl Marx would probably save your job and others like it but to the detriment of all. This is why the Soviet Union collapsed, because unnecessary jobs were constantly saved. Thus the whole communist economic system became unproductive and lazy, eventually atrophying and collapsing."

Me: Ah yes, you're letting me know that my job and others like it are unnecessary, and that people working jobs like mine are lazy, and we will be why the United States economic system collapses. The old I'm a burden on the taxpayer argument. But my job isn't supported with taxpayer dollars. It's payed for by pedaling stamps.

Responder: "The ending of unproductive jobs may not be the fairest thing to do. But it is one of those things that has help keep America dynamic and vital."

Me: In other words I should work for half of what I make and be a good patriot. No, I'll choose to be a prickly, pissed off citizen.

A Big Hole In the Ground

Yesterday, I listened to 5 hours of citizen testimony against what will probably be the largest open-pit iron-ore mine in the world today. It was some of the best radio I've heard in a long time. The hundreds of citizens that stood up and had the courage to speak with heartfelt conviction against this travesty deserve to be honored in some way. Also, after listening, it's clear to me that the citizens of Wisconsin must do everything within their power to make sure this mine does not see the light of day. If you've made it this far take a look at the Sierra Club's write up on the potential damage this mine would do to the Lake Superior watershed to see where I'm coming from. It's enough to make a guy want to....

Saturday's Daniel Quinn Quote

Quoting Daniel Quinn out of the New Renaissance:

"If there are still people living here in 200 years, they'll know that humanity doesn't belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. They'll know this as surely as we know that the earth revolves around the sun. I can make this prediction with confidence, because if people go on thinking we belong to a separate order of being, then there will be no people living here in 200 years."

Good Bye Post Office

I'm still thinking about the post office. My family is patterning itself around it through Saturday. My wife is working a three day stint. So I wrote this in my journal this morning:

Perhaps I should try to look at the post office going away through the eyes of an old indian hunter. Their families patterned their lives around the game they were hunting at the time. My family patterns itself around the post office when my wife or I are asked to work. In both cases we're doing something that eventually leads to putting food on the table. Besides the obvious cultural diifferences there could possibly be a similarity: We're both watching the demise of what helps keep our families fed, sheltered, and clothed. The Sioux hunter watched the buffalo go. I'm watching the post office go. In the Sioux's case no one stopped it. In my case no one is going to stop it. We're both colonized. They had it done to them and we've done it to ourselves. Civilization will eventually eat itself.

On a different note. A few people have emailed me and I haven't gotten back to them. I promise I will, it just might take a few days.

The Postmaster Should Resign

I have a theory: If we, the American people, thought of ourselves as civic-minded citizens instead of falling victim to market forces Postmaster Donahoe wouldn't be so quick to announce getting rid of Saturday delivery. Why? Because we'd be on the phone calling our congressional representive demanding he or she ask for the Postmaster's resignation. This current Postmaster has proven himself much to eager to cut services to the American people all under the pretense of The United States Post Office falling victim to the internet. When in reality the USPS has been saddled with unrealistic financial obligations (See article by Ralph Nader) that no other organization trying to turn a profit would willingly accept without a fight.

Where Is Marx When You Need Him?

I just found out from my Dad that The Postal Service will be stopping Saturday delivery. My wife and I will probably be working less as a result, so we'll be making less money. It bothers me. But what bothers on a deeper level is that the labor force will once again be losing good paying union jobs that pay a livable wage. THAT'S what saddens me. It's just another blow to the person who gets up in the morning and labors for a wage.

Where is Karl Marx when we need him?

Smash The Machine

Back on August 22, 2004 Derrick Jensen signed my copy of Welcome to the Machine with this statement: Smash the Machine! When I first layed my eyes on those words I was excited. I was finally reading a book by someone that finally had the courage to say such a thing, and on top of that write a book about it. It's been almost 10 years and I still think about it. But there are times I pull back and question why smashing the machine and taking down civilization appeals to me. Of course, there are the fantasies of doing things I shouldn't be doing under the cover of darkness. And then there are the thoughts and questions that accompany those fantasies like: If only I was normal I wouldn't be thinking about this. If only I wasn't so barbaric. I'm being too male; women don't think about this. If only my childhood was better. If only I'd went to college and became a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher. And, finally, could I actually sit down and utter these fantasies and thoughts to a psychologist?

This morning the last concern was answered.

"Suppose we entertain the idea that psychology makes people mediocre; and suppose we entertain the idea that the world is in extremis, suffering an acute, perhaps fatal, disorder at the edge of extinction. Then I would claim that what the world needs most is radical and original extremes of feeling and thinking in order for its crisis to be met with equal intensity." pg. 151, We've Had A Hundred Years Of Psychotherapy And The World's Getting Worse

I'd express them to Dr. James Hillman. Perhaps the world needs us to be as radical and intense as Derrick Jensen writes.

DQ Still At It

It's good to see Daniel Quinn is still answering questions from his readers. He just answered one on the subject of anarchism. He's been doing this for well 20 years. I remember when I first ran across his work back in the late nineties. I'd spend hours over at the Ishmael Community trying to absorb what he was saying to his readers. Always anticipating the next new batch of question and answers to be published to nourish the soul.


It's also interesting to note that Derrick Jensen is currently working on a book about why he is not an anarchist.

Empty Yourself Out: Start Bitching

Yesterday I ran across some of the best political advice I've seen in my 38 years so far. It appeared on page 104 of We've Had A Hundred Years Of Psychotherapy And The Worlds Getting Worse. But before I type the quote I want to say one reason why I like James Hillman's writing: he stays within Western civilized thought and brings ideas that are thousands of years old to the table.

"I used to get stopped cold in political arguments. I would be going on about something, and the other guy would say, 'All right, if you're so smart, what would you do about it?' And I had no positive idea what to do, no program, nothing. It wasn't just that I was impractical; I was empty. My protests were suddenly emptied out because I had nothing positive to offer. They say that the '68 revolution in Berkeley and in Europe among the students were so easily crushed or petered out because the revolutionaries had no positive programs.

"Kenosis puts the emptiness in a new light. It values the emptiness. It says "empty protest" is a via negativa, a non-postivist way of entering the political arena. You take your outrage seriously, but you don't force yourself to have answers. Trust your nose. You know what stinks. Don't try to replace the helpless frustration you feel, the powerless victimization, by working out a rational answer. The answers will come, if they come, when they come, to you, to others, but don't fill in the emptiness of the protest with positive suggestions before their time. First, protest! I don't know what should be done about most of the major political dilemnas, but my gut (my soul, my heart, my skin, my eyes) sinks, creeps, crawls, weeps, cringes, shakes. It's wrong, simply wrong, what going on here."-- James Hillman, Pg.104

So, there it is. The planet is burning up, nonhuman species are going extinct faster than they should be, the human population is doubling every 50 years or so, the tension between women and men just keeps increasing, I can't eat too much fish out of our local lakes because of mercury, the whitetail deer in my area now have Chronic Wasting disease, the elite in this country have to much money, our food has been poisoned by pesticides, the cancer rates are increasing, forests keep getting cut under the guise of improvement, we keep losing top soil, my house might get bombed by a drone, the local landfill just keeps growing, the post office is falling apart, and I could go on and on and on.

Daniel Quinn Quote Saturday

"Only our politicians still insist that the world was made for Man, and Man was made to conquer and rule it. They must, as a professional obligation, still affirm and proclaim the manifesto of our revolution. If they want to hold on to their jobs, they must assure us with absolute conviction that a glorious future lies just ahead for us -- provided that we march forward under the banner of conquest and rule. They reassure us of this, and then they wonder, year after year, why fewer and fewer voters go to the polls."-- Daniel Quinn, The Story of B

Highway 53 in '93

Pulling some books off the shelf looking for writing inspiration. I turned to Robert Bly's Iron John this morning. Why? I really like his style. I also think it's because I have a 13 year old son that is well on his way to becoming 14 living in our house.

"We are living at an important and fruitful moment now, for it is clear to men that the images of adult manhood given by the popular culture are worn out; a man can no longer depend on them. By the time a man is thirty-five he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he recieved in high school do not work in life. Such a man is open to new visions of what a man is or could be."--Robert Bly, Iron John

I remember the day this realization hit me. I was driving up highway 53 on a gray, cold, frigid day in February. I was 18 at the time. I was returning to my grandparent's house in northwestern Wisconsin after visiting my parents and high school friends in southern Wisconsin. I was tired, hungover, and on my own. Then the darkness set in. Of course, at the time I didn't know what the hell it was. I still don't know if I have an answer, but I think I have a better idea.

A Slice of Morning

Aristotle once said, "It would seem that experience of particular things is a sort of courage." I think I know what he's getting at. There was a period in my life when on a daily basis I'd just go sit in the woods behind my house for half-n-hour up to a half a day. I'd take in all the surroundings and activity with my senses. In other words, I payed attention. And it had a revolutionary feel to it when I was out there on a weekday when everyone else was at work. I eventually quit, though. Why? I didn't want to go broke. There is no money in it. And besides how can one pay attention to particular things if one is living in a system that, as Lewis Mumford so eloquently pointed out, is based on "order, power, predictability, and above all, control."

The system has to go. But I'm hoping I find the courage Aristotle is talking about before that happens.

#

Today, I work with wood. I'm either going to get a load of firewood or work on my son's bunk bed. Working with wood, I've noticed, grounds me.

#

Conversations with 13yr. old son.

Son: Are we going anywhere today?

Me: We're journeying to the center of the universe.

Son: What!?

Me: Haven't you ever heard of that song from sixties or seventies? (I hope I'm not just imagining this. For some odd reason I'm think the Moody Blues had a song with this lyric)

Son: No.

Me: Yeah, it came out during the sixties. When your grandparents were young. You know, when a lot of them were doing acid to find out the meaning of life. Or, like Robert Bly has said, they were trying to dynamite the water out of the pond.

Son: Oh yeah, instead of bucketing the water out.

Not So Poor After All

Over the years I've considered myself living in poverty. I'm simply not a part of the middle class that the politicians are always talking about. I don't know if I've made over $20,000 in a year since I've graduated back in 1992. My grandpa used to say when we were logging together that if you made $300 in a week in northwest Wisconsin you were doing pretty good. That was in the mid-nineties.

But I need to say that I don't feel like I'm living in poverty. There isn't a day that goes by where I'm not thankful for my living situation. I've got three healthy kids, a house and land paid for, and a good job (I carry mail for post office part-time). Plus I have time to sit down and do this.

What's got me thinking about all of this, though, is a quote that Daniel Quinn used in an essay by Wisconsin's very own Thorstein Veblen (Once again, Kurt Vonnegut could be right. Sensible people are born and bred in the Midwest). Veblen's theory is called The Theory of Leisure Class. I'm interested in it here simply because of the name: Leisure Class. Veblen has separated out a class of people from the rest of us--or as my grandpa used to say, "us poor slobs"-- and theorized about them.

Over the years I've considered myself not a part of the Leisure Class. I consider Mitt Romney and Warren Buffet to be a part of that class, but not me. My family and I spent 5 years living in a couple of rooms, without running water, in the old farmhouse on our property for crying out loud, how could I be associated with them? But it occured to me yesterday there is a good chance that I could be a part of the leisure class that Daniel Quinn was talking about in his essay. Given there are 7 billion people in the world, and I'm part of that global community, I'd be willing to bet I'm in the top 1% of the income bracket.

Now what?

There is a lot more I'd like to say here. But right now I'm trying to get out a post a day before the daily chores need to be done. Taking care of kids, animals, firewood, and the rest of it.

Aurelius on the Gods

A quick quote this morning. For that is only what time allows:

"What I do I do always with the community in mind. What happens to me, what befalls me, comes from the Gods."--Marcus Aurelius

Perhaps a true warrior has both in mind always.

We've All Been Abused

I remember a few years back, on an Ishmael related discussion board that I participated in, someone made the remark that they didn't philosophize from the standpoint of a victim. This was in relation to Derrick Jensen's work. At the time it made sense on the surface. But given the depth and subtlety of Jensen's work I knew it didn't go far enough. That Jensen wasn't just sitting around whining about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father.

Well, I ran across this insight by the psychologist James Hillman this morning:

"So we don't want to get rid of the feeling of being abused--maybe that's very important, the feeling of being abused, the feeling of being without power. But maybe we shouldn't imagine that we are abused by the past[For example, by parents, teachers, etc, from the past] as much as we are by the actual situation of 'my job,' 'my finances,''my government'--all the things that we live with. Then the consulting room becomes the cell of revolution, because we would be talking also about, 'What is actually abusing me right now?' That would be a great venture, for therapy to talk that way." Pg.39, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and The Worlds Getting Worse

The system we live in is abusive. I think this is the first time I've ever typed that.

Fathers, Uncles, and Older Men

It's been well over a decade now since Iron John was recommended to me to read. Now, looking back, a few people mentioned it at the time. Author Daniel Quinn was one of them. One day on an internet discussion board I asked him some questions about his current marriage that he talked about in his autobiography titled: Providence. I wanted to know how his current wife was able to deal with his infidelity in a previous marriage. Of course, I also wanted to know if it was possible for a woman to love me given that I'd just lived with my grandparents for five years during what was suppose to be the prime of my life (18 to 23 yrs. old). He answered the question in a way that made logical sense (He's good at that). And in his response he mentioned that I might want to check out Iron John. So, I did.

I've read it a couple of times since then. And the excerpt below has always stuck with me since the first reading. Why? I'll try to answer part of if below.

"Throughout the ancient hunter societies, which apparently lasted thousands of years--perhaps hundreds of thousands--and throughout the hunter-gatherer societies that followed them, and the subsequent agricultural and craft societies, fathers and sons worked and lived together. As late as 1900 in the United States about ninety percent of fathers were engaged in agriculture. In all these societies the son characteristically saw his father working at all times of the day and all seasons of the year.

'When the son no longer sees that, what happens? After thirty years of working with young German men, as fatherless in their industrial society as young American men today, Alexander Mitscherlich, whom we spoke of in the first chapther, developed a metaphor: a hole appears in the son's psyche. When the son does not see his father's workplace, or what he produces, does he imagine his father to be a hero, a fighter for good, a saint, or white knight? Mitscherlich's answer is sad: demons move into that empty place--demons of suspicion.

'The demons, invisible but talkative, encourage suspicion of all older men. Such suspicion effects a breaking of the community of old and young men. One could feel this distrust deepen in the sixties: 'Never trust anyone over thirty.'"--Pg.95, Iron John

My dad worked at the same factory for 30 years. I never once stepped into that place. I never once saw, felt, or touched what he produced. And, of course, like Bly said in the excerpt, the demons arrived. They're there today.

This is something, I think, we need to think about as we move ahead with this industrial experiment (I remember Derrick Jensen in his book Welcome to the Machine referring to it as Hell). The quote also reminds me of a conversation I had recently with my uncle. I ran into him at the local gas station. And while we were pumping gas we got to talking about the most recent school shooting. He thought maybe it would have helped if the guy had an uncle to take him out in the woods to atleast "plink away at tin cans." Like he used to do with me. And maybe the guy did, I don't know. But it's a perspective I take into consideration. He's my uncle. He's raised three kids. I've fished, hunted, and logged next to him.

Quinn Quote Saturday and Some Reflection

"Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness."--Quote from Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn

A brief reflection on this quote out of Ishmael. One of the effects that the book had on me was that afterwards it felt alright to be human again. Yes, there was all of the ridiculous stuff I'd done to myself and other people throughout my life up to that point, but for some odd reason Ishmael helped me get above (Or maybe put aside for a moment is a better way to say it) those acts, and take a look at the bigger picture. And surprisingly enough, the personal baggage lost some of its power. It never goes away, but it puts things into perspective. Perhaps, my psyche, or soul, moved out into the world soul. In other words, I started paying attention to it.

To be clear I'm not advocating Ishmael as a self help book. I'm trying to express the effect it had on me. I've often contemplated renaming this blog: Life After Ishmael. It seems like since ever since I've read the book I'm periodically reflecting on it.

The Weapon of Honesty

I wrote this in my journal this morning:

After reading my local newspaper it seems like some of us are expecting John Wayne to ride into town and protect us from insane criminals with guns. Except this time we're all going to be like Big John. The logic seems to be that if I'm packing a pistol crazy criminals won't harm me or my children.

How about instead of all of us going out and buying guns, and going through the trouble to use them, we try a different weapon: Honesty. Having the willingness to look at the person sitting closest to you at the moment, whether that be man, woman, or child and simply say: You're not crazy, but the culture is crazy. In other words, our way of life is driving us mad.

Writing and Giving Birth

I've been writing more often lately. For the past week or so I sit down on a wooden chair pulled up to a T.V tray as the morning fire is burning. I set the timer for ten minutes and write whatever comes to mind. I keep my hand moving the whole time. I try to get this done before everyone gets out of bed. But there are mornings when the baby and Annie get up before I get started. And during those occasions I'll do my thing and she'll sit there quietly in the recliner, watch the fire, and hold the baby. Quite often, as I'm writing, I wonder if she thinks I'm nuts. But than it occured to me this morning that it could be somewhat similar to what it was like when I watched her give birth. In both occasions the universe is gifting you and you're trying to birth it. Perhaps writing a novel could be at the same level as giving birth. I don't know. I do know that both are hard work.

Power Without Resistance

I was thinking about resistance to power this morning. As a result I've got books scattered about looking for quotes and ideas. I stumbled across this idea in James Hillman's Kinds of Power that has got me thinking.

"Power, without the resistance of a counterforce, mimics the intertia it strives against, becoming an unhindered, tensionless expansion, following the lay of the land, flattening out into stagnant accumulations without intention, much like the pictures we make of inert despots on fat pillows in their pleasure domes, all resistance to the plenipotentiaries overcome." Pg.144

In search for clarification I read the sentence to my wife as she was lying on the bed nursing our daughter. I wanted to know what inertia power was mimicing. I read it. She, like usual rolled her eyes and said speak English. So, I read the first part of the sentence. We still couldn't figure it out. Oh well, I thought, just another question gone unanswered. Nothing new. But as I was randomly paging through the beginning of the same book I ran across this:

"The deeper syndrome is inertia of the spirit, a passivity that feels no vocation and shies from imaginitive vision, adventerous thinking and intellectual clarification. That we imagine ourselves today as a nation of victims attests to a vacuum in the spirit of the nation. These are symptoms of the soul in search of clarity. Clarity is the essential.

If I'm understanding Hillman right, he's saying that without resistance power mimics spirit. Without the process of soul-making spirit becomes passive, shallow, expansive and unclear. It reminds me of a poem by Swedish poet Harry Martinson:

When Euclid started to measure Hades,
he found it had neither depth nor height.
Demons flatter than stingrays
swept above the plains of death....

There were only waves, no hills, no chasms or valleys.
Only lines, parallel happenings, angles lying prone.
Demons shot along like elliptical plates;
they covered an endless field in Hades as though with moving
dragonscales.

victims of flat evil,
with no comfort from a high place
or support from a low place

That's how I'm starting to see the removal of mountaintops to provide us with coal to light and heat our homes. It's all part of the process of what I've heard poets call flattening. And now I can understand why author/activist Derrick Jensen ended an email to a fellow activist with this phrase: Welcome to Hell.

Frost on The Father

"You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's."--Robert Frost

She's Cold This Morning

The thermometer read -10 this morning. It's not suppose to get much above zero here in northwest Wisconsin today.

Pulled Robert Bly's "The Winged Life: The Poetic Voice of Henry David Thoreau" off from the shelf. These two lines will be with me today:

Greater is the depth of sadness
Than is any height of gladness -- Henry David Thoreau

The poet Robert Bly has said that women don't like it when men are always cheery and happy. They're too dry.

Yeats on A Quiet Mind

"We can make our minds so like water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet."--William Butler Yeats

A Saturday Quote by Daniel Quinn

"We have a secret plan that is never discussed openly AT ALL. Someday perhaps we'll know whether it's discussed at the highest political levels and whether it's discussed in code or in plain. We don't teach our children this plan, but they know all about it by the time they reach midschool. Courting couples don't discuss the plan to see if they're in agreement on it. It's THE PLAN. It's there in place, and we're investing everything we have in it. We're investing our future in it, our children's future in it--for generations to come. We may actually be investing the future of the human race itself in this plan.

"The Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews was a shameful plan, and this is why it was kept secret. This is also why our plan is kept secret. It too is shameful and we all know it.

"Our secret plan is this: We're going to go on consuming the world until there's no more to consume. This does not preclude consuming it "wisely" or consuming it as slowly as possibly. It doesn't preclude supporting every conceivable conservation initiative. It doesn't preclude supporting every conceivable means of recycling. We're going to recycle, we're going to conserve-- but we're also going to go on consuming until there's no more to consume.

"We don't know when it will all be gone. We don't WANT to know--just as the people of Germany didn't want to know what happened to their Jewish neighbors when the Gestapo carried them away."--Daniel Quinn quoted out of his essay titled: On Investments

Rumi, Robert Bly, and Manners

We had a homeschooling moment this morning. My 13 year old son and I were talking about manners so I pulled out this poem by Rumi. I read it and played the Robert Bly reading. It's worth taking the 3 minutes to watch him read it. He's an amazing man.

It's also interesting to note that Rumi is President Obama's favorite poet. To me, that says a lot about the man and his faith. And I'm not implying that President Obama is a closet Muslim. My thinking is that he is a devoted Christian that enjoys reading ecstatic poetry because it's not available to him through his faith. Robert Bly claims that Christianity threw out its ecstatic tradition close 1500 years ago. That's also why Rumi is the most popular poet in America. It's just not available to us anywhere else.

Kant on Going Crazy

"The only feature common to all mental disorder is the loss of sensus communis [common and communal sense] and the compensatory development of sensus privatis [private sense] of reasoning."--Immanuel Kant

That Gorilla Koan Has Got Me

The koan from Daniel Quinn's Ishmael:

With Man Gone
Will There
Be Hope
For Gorilla?

With Gorilla Gone
Will There
Be Hope
For Man?--


I recently picked this up out of John Daido Loori's Eight Gates of Zen.

"Too see is to be it. To see the koan is to be the koan. The only way you can see the koan is because you are the koan."--Pg. 99

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Quinn Quote Saturday

“The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler's mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.”--Daniel Quinn

The Begnning of Why This War Has Two Sides

I woke up this morning ready to listen to my James Hillman podcast about war. Why? Because for years now I've wanted to understand why Derrick Jensen titled one of his published works Now This War Has Two Sides. Why he decided to call this a war. But I'm not going to have time to this morning. I was sidetracked by a blog post that Thomas Moore recently published. In it there is what I think reveals part of the answer to my question.

"Another archetypal psychologist Rafael Lopez-Pedraza, who taught me with raised voice to honor the dark, says that we therapists have to enter the rhetoric of the archetype. If we are in a mess, or our client or friend or spouse is in one, it is best not to go somewhere else for comfort, to offer sweet promises of better times or moral persuasion to shape up or pseudo-religious pieties about it all having a purpose. No, the thing to do is to enter the mess and speak for it and use its language."

Part of what I think Derrick has done is entered the mess of the phenomenon of industrial civilization and is speaking to us in its languauge.

Slightly Confused

I'm confused. I've got two books going: The Thought of the Heart, by James Hillman and The Eight Gates of Zen by John Daido Loori. Yesterday I ran across this quote in Eight Gates that has stuck with me since.

"Arnold Toynbee, the historian, has said that a hundred years from now, when people look back, it is not going to be atomic energy, space travel, computers, or any of the remarkable leaps and achievements we have made as a civilization, but rather an incident that most people are hardly aware of, that will be seen as the most significant advance of the twentieth century. That incident is the transmission of the Buddhadharma from East to West. Each and every Zen practitioner is part of that process."--John Daido Loori, Pg.78, The Eight Gates of Zen

All I can say to that is time will tell. I know that what I'm getting from reading James Hillman is that we need a lot of deep and differentiated thought. That's why we have minds, he says, to think with. He also says it's good for the soul. Than I read a line by Dogen yesterday where he says stop deep thinking:

"Cease from the practice of intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate yourself."--Dogen out of Fukanzazengi

Can't you have both? Perhaps from the spirit's perspective you follow Dogen's advice. And perhaps from the soul's perspective you follow Hillman's advice. Or maybe if you take one them seriously enough the other just happens. The higher you go the deeper you go. You can't have one without the other.

Onward. I'll be carrying mail for the United States Postal Service today. An organization that is slowly falling apart.

The Coyote Tree

I've been thinking about the coyote tree that Derrick Jensen talks about in A Language Older Than Words. Anyone that has read it knows the story. Derrick takes off his clothes a couple of times and lays underneath it so the tree can talk to him. To me, it's a profound and subversive act given the way we've been conditioned in this culture. Trees aren't suppose to be able to communicate with us.

This morning I ran across a quote in James Hillman's The Thought of The Heart and The Soul of the World that, I think, explains how this happens.

"Third, 'taking in' means interiorizing the object into itself, into its image so that its imagination is activated (rather than ours), so that it shows its heart and reveals its soul, becoming personified and thereby lovable--lovable not only to us and because of us, but because its loveliness increases as its sense and its imagination unfold. Here begins phenomenology: in a world of ensouled phenomena. Phenomena need not be saved by grace or faith or all-embracing theory, or by scientific objectiveness or transcendental subjectivety. They are saved by the anima mundi, by their own souls and our simple gasping at this imaginal loveliness."

Perhaps what happened is that Derrick opened his heart to the tree and in return the tree opened it's heart to Derrick and communication was possible.

Memories

Well over a decade ago now, after spending the day freezing my ass off watching tip-ups on a northern Wisconsin lake in the middle of January, I remember coming home and lying down on my couch and being captivated by these opening lines:

"There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember it exists." (Derrick Jensen, Pg.2, A Language Older Than Words)

Almost Five Years Ago

I'm feeling aged. I've been going through some of my old journal entries. I wrote this down in April of 2008. It's hard to believe that I wrote this down close to five years ago. I pulled the book of the shelf and he signed it in 2004. Must've wrote the quote down on a second reading. Time flies.

"So far as we know, you have only one life, and there's almost nothing more worth fighting for than to figure out what you want, and then pursuing that if it takes you to the ends of the earth and to the end of your life."(Derrick Jensen, Pg.48, Walking on Water)

Quinn Quote Saturday

"My frame of reference is that of a Martian anthropologist. I'm like someone who has traveled millions of miles to study a species of beings who, while supposedly rational, are destroying the very planet they live on."--Pg. 5, If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways

Nature In Extremis

“It is possible that the world is in extremis because we don't know how to go to extremes”.--James Hillman

A Brief Differentiation Between Soul and Spirit

A small attempt at differentiation here, for that is all time allows me. I've been reading about the difference between soul and spirit this morning. I think soul is comfortable with animism and spirit is not. Spirit despises animism and calls it a primitive religion. Spirit tries to rise above it and unify us as one. Hence that's why I'm now beginning to think that Daniel Quinn's statement of: "There is no one right way to live" is more of a soulful statement than a spiritual one.

One Of My Friends

I consider the books on my bookshelf friends. And there are times I make my way over to my shelf and read some opening lines. Here is one of my favorites:

"It's the worst of times; it's the best of times. That's how we feel as we navigate from a paternal society, now discredited, to a society in which impulse is given its way. People don't bother to grow up, and we are all fish swimming in a tank of half-adults. The rule is: Where repression was before, fantasy will now be; we human beings limp along, running after our own fantasy. We can never catch up, and so we defeat ourselves by the simplest possible means: speed. Everywhere we go there's a crowd, and the people all look alike." Robert Bly, Pg. vii, The Sibling Society.