After Dachau and Eliminating Competition

More on the theme of elimination competition. This is an excerpt from "After Dachau." In that book the Nazis had successfully purged the human race of the mongrel races and the only race left was the Aryan race. Here is one of characters describing the inevitability of the Aryan's success:

"The story of human evolution doesn't follow the same pattern as the evolution of other creatures. When reptiles emerged from the amphibians, they didn't destroy the amphibians. When mammals emerged from the reptiles, they didn't destory the reptiles. But the same is not true for humans. Among humans, each emerging species apparently destroyed the species from which it emerged. This explains why none of those earlier species survived to the present time. In fact, most biologists feel this accounts for the tremendous speed with which humans evolved from lower forms. So we Aryans were only doing what humans have done from the beginning. [Daniel Quinn, Pg.125, After Dachau]

Control of Nature

While reading Lewis Mumford's perspective on Karl Marx I came across this quote: "At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy."--Karl Marx [Pg.204, Interpretations and Forecasts]

Working Defintion of Capitalism

Occasionally I make my way over to the bookshelf and pull down Doug Brown's book "Roadmap to Sustainability: Interpreting Daniel Quinn." Today was one of those days. I'm trying to understand why we value products over people.

"Our working definition of capitalism is 'individuals competing to get ahead.' In other words the essence of the market and profit-driven system is competition, along with the relentless pursuit to eliminate it."[Doug Brown, Pg. 41, Roadmap to Sustainability]

I'll see where this leads me.

Understanding the Acorn Theory

More quotes out of James Hillman's "The Soul's Code." This will be the last day of the parenting and adulthood thread. Also, there are more quotes then usual in this post partly because it is in memory of Mr. Hillman who passed away at the end of October in 2011.

He's speaking to adults here:

"I want us to envision that what children go through has to do with finding a place in the world for their specific calling. They are trying to live two lives at once, the one they were born with and the one of the place and among the people they were born into." [James Hillman, Pg. 13, The Soul's Code]

"So this book is about children, offering a way to regard them differently, to enter their imaginations, and to discover in their pathologies what their daimon might be indicating and what their destiny might want." [James Hillman, Pg. 14, The Soul
s Code]

"A child defends its daimon's dignity. That's why even a frail child at a 'tender' age refuses to submit to what it feels is unfair and untrue and reacts so savagely to abusive misperecptions. The idea of childhood abuse needs to be expanded beyond the sexual kind--which is so vicious not principally because it is sexual, but because it abuses the dignity at the core of personality, that acorn of myth."[Hillman, Pg.27 The Soul's Code.]

He explains what the acorn theory or "acorn of myth" is here:

"The acorn theory proposes, and I will bring evidence for the claim that you and I and every single person is born with a defining image. Individuality resides in a formal cause--to use old philosophical language going back to Aristotle. We each embody our own idea, in the language of Plato and Plotinus. And this form, this idea, this image does not tolerate too much straying. The theory also attributes to this innate image an angelic or daimonic intention, as if it were a spark of consciousness; and, moreover, holds that it has our interest at heart because it chose us for its reasons."[James Hillman, Pg. 12, The Soul's Code]

I like the idea the it has chosen us and has our interests at heart. If you ever want to read a good autobiography that supports this idea pick up "Providence", by Daniel Quinn. I think he did an amazing job at showing how his daimon guided him throughout his life.

Parental Fallacy

James Hillman talking about the parental fallacy.

"A 'happy' child was never and nowhere the aim of parenting. An industrious, useful child; a malleable child; a healthy child; an obedient, mannerly child; a stay-out-of-trouble child; a God-fearing child; an entertaining child--all these varieties, yes. But the parental fallacy has trapped the parents also in providing happiness, along with shoes, schoolbooks, and van-packed vacations. Can the unhappy produce happiness? Since happiness at its ancient source means EUDAIMONIA or a well-pleased
daimon, only a daimon who is receiving its due can transmit a happy benefit to a child's soul." [James Hillman, Pg. 83, The Souls Code]

Children and School

More on parenting, with some schooling weaved in.

These quotes, and the section that it was pulled from, changed the way I parent and how I percieve my schooling experience. Plainly put it was dull. Of course that was thirty years ago, but from what I see things haven't changed much.

"Children don't need schooling. They need access to what they want to learn--and that means they need access to the world outside the home." [Daniel Quinn, Pg. 166, My Ishmael]

"But, of course, having your children underfoot in the workplace would seriously reduce efficiency and productivity. Even though sending them to educational detention centers is terrible for children, it's unquestionably wonderful for buisness. The system I've outlined here will never be implemented among the people of your culture as long as you value buisness over people." [Daniel Quinn, pg. 165, My Ishmael]

I especially like the part about valuing "buisness over people." I've liked it ever since I read it over a decade ago. It's clear, to me at least, that our current political and economic systems(Which schooling gets us ready for) value products over human and nonhuman life.

Payback

I'm still following the parenting and adulthood thread. I've always considered this wise criticism.

"Parents of my generation taught our children the codes of responsibility, restraint, and renunciation, but also we taught them how to evade the codes. Stepping through the codes was a secret game among parents in the 1970s, a little payback for being a parent. That would be all right--at least humanly normal--if the code were strong. But widely vayring codes from dozens attractive cultures flood our receptors. If we want to evade a certain element in our code, the renunciation of selfishness and theivery, for example--in which the forbidden is allowed. Some of us spend our whole lives looking, successfully, for holes in the codes. When our parents teach us how to do that at the dinner table, we find those lessons very appealing. We could say that flatness lies in saying yes to everything." [Robert Bly, Pg. 232, The Sibling Society]

Adulthood and Parenting

I'm going to stick with the adulthood theme, but this quote is going to have more to do with parenting. Ever since I've read this quote it has stuck with me. Partly, I think, because it comes from one of Robert Bly's books and mostly because I'm an active parent in the United States.

"J.B. Yeats, W.B. Yeat's father, wrote to his son after living two years in the United States, 'You know discipline is essential in every family. In Europe the children discipline themselves so that the parents can have a good time; in America the parents discipline themselves so the children can have a good time.'" [Robert Bly, Pg.38, A little Book on The Human Shadow.]

Limitations

I was looking through my notebook and found this quote that I'd written down back in the middle of November(right before deer season as a matter of fact):

"Adulthood is connected, in some mysterious way that no one understands, with the number of limitations that there are in your life."--Robert Bly

Perspective

Given my lifestyle, one post a day for an entire year seems like it is going to be tough. But then I thought about this line by Robert Bly talking about Hanry David Thoreau:

"He walked two to four hours each day and noted with the most astonishing perseverance and tenacity the exact days on which wildflowers--dozens of varieties--opened in the forest. [Pg. 77, The Winged Life, Robert Bly] He then goes on to say, "Thoreau trained himself over many years to see. His training involved a number of disciplines. The first was constant labor. His journals are so immense that they must have required, during his short life, two or three hours of writing each day, over and above the walks he wrote about. Second, he aimed to become just, and in this struggle followed the ancient doctrine, contrary to scientific doctrine, that certain aspects of nature reveal themselves only to the observer who is morally developed. The alchemists founded their penetration of nature on their moral character. [Pg. 81, The Winged Life, Robert Bly]

One post a day doesn't seem so bad.

New Year's Resolution

I've made my New Year's resolution: atleast one post a day on this blog. That means by this time next year my annual count should read 365. It's a lofty goal, but I'm thinking I can get at least get one quote a day posted.

The Community of Life, Intelligence, and The Personality of Nature(?)

Some notes:

The Personality of nature is the best I can come up with for right now. I'm following a thread and I don't know quite where it is leading me. Like Jung said, personal growth is not linear but circular, so I keep coming back to this thread when I get to thinking about otherworldly subjects and the nonhuman community.

“Thought creates the thinker of the thought and that which is being thought—a dichotomy. This dichotomy divides us from intelligence. I have inherited the notion that I am the thinker of the thought. I am not going to let anyone tell me that my thoughts make me up, and that my idea of who I am is getting in the way of some great intelligence out there somewhere.” [Pg. 191, Rezendes, The Wild Within]

I think what Mr. Rezendes is getting at is there is an intelligence out there that can't be understood if the ego gets in the way. The ego is part of the psyche along with intelligence, when it is allowed to be. The problem might be that intelligence is tuned out when we concentrate so much on our ego. The ego, of course, isn't bad nor good, it just is. Perhaps we can inflate or deflate it at will and that is dependent on our awareness of it.

Lifeline Quotes and Poems

There are poems and quotes that I consider to be "lifelines." They are basically words that have at times kept my head above water. Here is one by Robert Bly.

"A clean break from the mother is crucial, but it's simply not happening. This doesn't mean that the women are doing something wrong: I think the problem is more that the older men are not really doing their job.
"The traditional way of raising sons, which lasted for thousands of years, amounted to fathers and sons living in close--murderously close--proximity, while the father taught the son a trade: perhaps farming or carpentry or blacksmithing or tailoring. As I've suggested elsewhere, the love unit most damaged by the Industrial Revolution has been the father-son bond.
"There's no sense in idealizing preindustrial culture, yet we know that today many fathers now work thirty or fifty miles from the house, and by the time they return at night the children are often in bed, and they themselves are too tired to do active fathering.
"The Industrial Revolution, in its need for office and factory workers, pulled fathers away from their sons, moreover, placed the sons in compulsory schools where the teachers are mostly women."--Robert Bly

I like it because it points to the effect the Industrial Revolution has had on men.

Last Breath

One of my favorite Rumi poems:

It's important to pay attention to the name the
Holy One has for things.
We name everything according to the number of
legs it has
But the Holy One names it according to what is
inside.
Moses had a rod. He thought its name was "staff";
But inside its name was "dragonish snake."
We thought the name "Omar" meant agitator
against priests,
But in eternity his name was "The One Who
Believes."
No one knows our name until our last breath goes out.

Possesion and Privilege

"Our cultural conditioning tells us that the way we live is the way humans were meant to live from the beginning of time and that we have to hold on to this way of living even if it kills us." [Daniel Quinn, Pg. 145, If they Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways]

Now from an economist's perspective.

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather surrender any material part of their advantage."[The Age of Uncertainty, John Kenneth Galbraith]

More Baseball

Off to work for the post office this morning. Here is a baseball quote I wrote down about a year ago.

"You sell your soul to this game, and it gives you nothing to go on but the promise of chance." [Dirk Hayhurst, Pg. 141, The Bullpen Gospels]

Baseball and Democracy

A quote from one of my favorite philosophers about baseball.

"Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero." Edward Abbey

Sitting Bull's Perspective

More on freedom from Sitting Bull's perspective:

“This land belongs to us, for the Great Spirit gave it to us when he put us here. We were free to come and go, and to live in our own way. But white men, who belong to another land, have come upon us, and are forcing us to live according to their ideas. That is an injustice; we have never dreamed of making white men live as we live.

“White men like to dig in the ground for their food. My people prefer to hunt the buffalo as their fathers did. White men like to stay in one place. My people want to move their tepees here and there to the different hunting grounds. The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion. Why has our blood been shed by your soldiers? . . . The white men had many things that we wanted, but we could see that they did not have the one thing we liked best,­freedom. I would rather live in a tepee and go without meat when game is scarce than give up my privileges as a free Indian, even though I could have all that white men have. We marched across the lines of our reservation, and the soldiers followed us. They attacked our village, and we killed them all. What would you do if your home was attacked? You would stand up like a brave man and defend it. That is our story. I have spoken.”[i]

Derrick Jensen provided made that quote available in Endgame.

Note Post

Occasionally, I wonder what freedom is.

"Population growth creates a loss of one thing pro-growth advocates seem to value most: freedom. As alluded to previously, increasing population density causes restrictions on behavior and freedom. Loss of freedom is an inevitable consequence of population growth." [Pg.77, Humanity's Environmental Future]

Of course, our growing population is dependent on one thing: increasing food production.

Fifty-First Degree of Losing Faith

For some of you that have read "The Story of B" you might remember this line: "There is only one degree of having faith, but there are fifty degrees of losing it." And later on B goes on to say, "When that amount of faith is gone, however, then it's ALL gone, and you're at the fifty-first degree You're out, you're finished."

After listening to an interview with Daniel Everett on Wisconsin Public Radio it sounds to me like he reached that fifty-first degree that B was talking about. His book titled: Don't Sleep there are Snakes is an account of how he and his family tried to convert the Piraha people of Brazil to Christianity, but didn't have much success. Daniel went into the jungle a Christian but ended up leaving the jungle an atheist.

I haven't read the book yet but the interview was fascinating. I thought some of you might be interested.