Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Great Expectations
In Thinking Animals, Paul Shepard argues that our continued human evolution and maturation is directly related to our relationship with the other animals with whom we share this planet. In as much as our culture has evolved in the direction of limiting and/or eliminating any direct and personal relationship with the wild animals, we have also stunted our own maturation, both as individuals and as a species. (I hope I did him justice there.)
His premise makes sense to me. I've written often here about the lack of other awareness, other sensitivity in this human culture, meaning that we've become almost completely human-centric in all our day to day living, consumed by human doings continuously. What little awareness we bring moment to moment to the others who are not human with whom we share this life!
In this lack of other awareness, we become myopic to the extreme, our focus is ever increasingly inward, isolating. The aspect of this I find most disturbing is the inevitable impact this will have on coming generations of humans in our culture. I continue to look toward the new generations with the idea that a new vision will emerge, a vision which will allow us to precipitously change our direction . . . but realistically I can't conceive how that could happen--without some kind of outside-the-realm-of-human-control intervention.
I'm not a parent, other than what retro-parenting I am perennially trying to do for myself; so I don't really know what it must be like to raise a child in this world. I don't know what fears and ambitions I might have for my child. I don't know what fears and ambitions I might have for myself as a parent of a child.
The above was written 2 days ago . . . . Then I simply got stuck. I couldn't figure out exactly where I was trying to go, much less how to get there. One of the drawbacks to blogging, I think. I need the dialogue. So, thank you , Jon, for the time and the conversation yesterday.
The problem I was having was the fact that I was trying very hard to not use the word hope in the sentence, 'I continue to look toward the new generations with the idea . . . .' I didn't want to say, 'with the hope that a new vision will emerge . . . .' If you've been reading this blog since the beginning or have gone back and read earlier entries, you may remember the one called Pandora's Box.
So, you see, I didn't want to appear to be hypocritical and confess that I actually do feel hope.
The truth is I do. But I am so wary of that emotion. Yet, there it is. I don't manufacture it. It just arises within me, like sadness and joy and fear.
Think about this in the context of what I'm writing about here. I mentioned (obliquely, yes) my hope toward the 'new generation' and my more veiled hope toward the 'outside-the-realm-of-human-control intervention.' Who among us does not in all honesty have these same hopes. And why not? Most of us generally feel so stuck and so helpless in the face of the cultural juggernaut, that to not have some kind of hope would feel . . . well . . . hopeless.
But if we hang too much on hope, then are we not hanging on to that deeply ingrained cultural meme of the penultimate need for salvation?
Can you allow yourself to question hope itself? Can you, if only for a moment, allow yourself to feel no hope, without giving in to it's sinister twin hopelessness? Can you allow yourself to consider not hoping for things to be different than they actually are and instead to allow things to be just the way they are and not feel victimized by circumstance!?
I stand here in the midst of the rising waters. No floating thing is at hand. I don't know whether or not the water will continue to rise. I know that I can swim or float for a time, but that my strength and endurance will ultimately become exhausted. I don't know what will ultimately happen. I my notice that hope arises within me. My thinking mind imagines various things that could happen that would prevent me from suffering and dying. Yet that does not change my circumstance. If I do not choose to let my attention move away from the images of hoped-for salvation, I will likely miss whatever strategizing I may be capable of that may make some kind of difference. I may become so lost in the internal visions of rescue that I don't notice what may float my way as aid or comfort. I will certainly miss the simple and complete engagement with what life has given me . . . now, in this moment, which may be the last of my conscious existence.
The opposite of hope is now.
His premise makes sense to me. I've written often here about the lack of other awareness, other sensitivity in this human culture, meaning that we've become almost completely human-centric in all our day to day living, consumed by human doings continuously. What little awareness we bring moment to moment to the others who are not human with whom we share this life!
In this lack of other awareness, we become myopic to the extreme, our focus is ever increasingly inward, isolating. The aspect of this I find most disturbing is the inevitable impact this will have on coming generations of humans in our culture. I continue to look toward the new generations with the idea that a new vision will emerge, a vision which will allow us to precipitously change our direction . . . but realistically I can't conceive how that could happen--without some kind of outside-the-realm-of-human-control intervention.
I'm not a parent, other than what retro-parenting I am perennially trying to do for myself; so I don't really know what it must be like to raise a child in this world. I don't know what fears and ambitions I might have for my child. I don't know what fears and ambitions I might have for myself as a parent of a child.
The above was written 2 days ago . . . . Then I simply got stuck. I couldn't figure out exactly where I was trying to go, much less how to get there. One of the drawbacks to blogging, I think. I need the dialogue. So, thank you , Jon, for the time and the conversation yesterday.
The problem I was having was the fact that I was trying very hard to not use the word hope in the sentence, 'I continue to look toward the new generations with the idea . . . .' I didn't want to say, 'with the hope that a new vision will emerge . . . .' If you've been reading this blog since the beginning or have gone back and read earlier entries, you may remember the one called Pandora's Box.
So, you see, I didn't want to appear to be hypocritical and confess that I actually do feel hope.
The truth is I do. But I am so wary of that emotion. Yet, there it is. I don't manufacture it. It just arises within me, like sadness and joy and fear.
Think about this in the context of what I'm writing about here. I mentioned (obliquely, yes) my hope toward the 'new generation' and my more veiled hope toward the 'outside-the-realm-of-human-control intervention.' Who among us does not in all honesty have these same hopes. And why not? Most of us generally feel so stuck and so helpless in the face of the cultural juggernaut, that to not have some kind of hope would feel . . . well . . . hopeless.
But if we hang too much on hope, then are we not hanging on to that deeply ingrained cultural meme of the penultimate need for salvation?
Can you allow yourself to question hope itself? Can you, if only for a moment, allow yourself to feel no hope, without giving in to it's sinister twin hopelessness? Can you allow yourself to consider not hoping for things to be different than they actually are and instead to allow things to be just the way they are and not feel victimized by circumstance!?
I stand here in the midst of the rising waters. No floating thing is at hand. I don't know whether or not the water will continue to rise. I know that I can swim or float for a time, but that my strength and endurance will ultimately become exhausted. I don't know what will ultimately happen. I my notice that hope arises within me. My thinking mind imagines various things that could happen that would prevent me from suffering and dying. Yet that does not change my circumstance. If I do not choose to let my attention move away from the images of hoped-for salvation, I will likely miss whatever strategizing I may be capable of that may make some kind of difference. I may become so lost in the internal visions of rescue that I don't notice what may float my way as aid or comfort. I will certainly miss the simple and complete engagement with what life has given me . . . now, in this moment, which may be the last of my conscious existence.
The opposite of hope is now.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
It's a Question of Attention
I was talking with David yesterday morning about thinking and the fact that thinking can so often feel problematic. How often we wish we could stop the chatter inside our minds or least stop some of the repetitiveness of the thoughts. How often it seems as though it would be more peaceful if it were not for the incessant activity in our thinking minds. How often it seems that we just think, think, think all the time, ceaselessly, whether we really want to or not.
On the other hand, it also seems that there are even more times when we simply aren't at all aware that we are thinking; because, hey, that's what we do. Right?
How many people do you know who fully appreciate what was set in motion by Descartes' statement 'cogito ergo sum,' I think, therefore I am? Of course, Descartes didn't come up with this idea out of a vacuum. The trend in 'western' thought had been toward the supremacy of thought as the determiner that set humans apart from animals for quite some time, well before Descartes so succinctly stated what we have ever since taken completely for granted.
Two thousand years before Descartes made his proclamation, Plato had already insisted that it was the ideas of things that were ideal and real, as opposed to the corporeal, the physical, which were mere shadows of human thought. So, the meme had already thoroughly made its way into our culture by the time Descartes was born.
So, what happens when a civilization has as one of its most dominant cultural memes the 'fact' that thinking not only sets us apart from and makes us superior to all other forms of life on this planet, but that it is the very thing, and perhaps the only thing, whereby we even know that we are?
We inevitably become a culture of animals who think that what we think matters more than anything else. We become animals who live as though all otherness, anything 'outside our own heads,' is less than real. We become animals whose only relationship with anything is perpetually filtered through a skein of habitual, repetitive, purely conditioned thoughts. We become animals who have little, if any, direct relationship with anything. We become animals whose 'created reality,' from the virtual to the purely imaginal, seems more real than the physical, the corporeal, the other--including our very own bodies. We become animals whose vision of reality is completely solipsistic.
No wonder we are such a miserably unhappy group of humans! We are animals whose every waking moment is consumed by incessant distraction-seeking. We cannot stand even one naked instant in which we might really and truly feel the pain and suffering which we actually endure every moment. 'I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.' We are forever trapped inside our own minds. How terribly, terribly lonely.
This is where the questioning can be very challenging but is probably most productive. You have to be willing to listen deeply within and hear what that unquestioned voice inside is continuously telling you is true.
One device for accomplishing this is to notice by your actions what you hold to be important.
However, it might actually be easier, to start with, by watching other people and noticing by their actions what they deem to be important. I'm not speaking of what people would tell you is important to them, but rather what their observable behavior seems to say is important to them. Do you notice people looking around at the 'natural' environment, pausing to take in where they are in the world at that moment. Do they easily and naturally make contact with other humans. Do they notice the birds and other wild animals around them? Are they looking up and out and taking it all in?
If these are not the things you see people attending to or 'minding' as Paul Shepard put it, then what do they seem to be doing? What are they acting out as important?
After some time of doing this. Turn your observations to your own actions. Be gentle. Don't judge. Just notice. Be lightly, even playfully curious about yourself and what your actions tell you.
If our attention is perennially on our thoughts, if we rarely, if ever, shift our attention away from our thoughts to whatever is around us, toward the others sharing the world we live on and in, then our behaviors, our actions will reflect our thinking only.
Choose often to shift you attention outward, upward, downward. Open your senses and know where you are. Don't worry about being who you are. Choose instead to be where you are. The rest will take care of itself. You don't have to think about it.
Let me know what you find out.
Most of us have seen the bumper stick, 'Question authority!' Recently I saw this one, 'Question your thoughts.' I like that one.
On the other hand, it also seems that there are even more times when we simply aren't at all aware that we are thinking; because, hey, that's what we do. Right?
How many people do you know who fully appreciate what was set in motion by Descartes' statement 'cogito ergo sum,' I think, therefore I am? Of course, Descartes didn't come up with this idea out of a vacuum. The trend in 'western' thought had been toward the supremacy of thought as the determiner that set humans apart from animals for quite some time, well before Descartes so succinctly stated what we have ever since taken completely for granted.
Two thousand years before Descartes made his proclamation, Plato had already insisted that it was the ideas of things that were ideal and real, as opposed to the corporeal, the physical, which were mere shadows of human thought. So, the meme had already thoroughly made its way into our culture by the time Descartes was born.
So, what happens when a civilization has as one of its most dominant cultural memes the 'fact' that thinking not only sets us apart from and makes us superior to all other forms of life on this planet, but that it is the very thing, and perhaps the only thing, whereby we even know that we are?
We inevitably become a culture of animals who think that what we think matters more than anything else. We become animals who live as though all otherness, anything 'outside our own heads,' is less than real. We become animals whose only relationship with anything is perpetually filtered through a skein of habitual, repetitive, purely conditioned thoughts. We become animals who have little, if any, direct relationship with anything. We become animals whose 'created reality,' from the virtual to the purely imaginal, seems more real than the physical, the corporeal, the other--including our very own bodies. We become animals whose vision of reality is completely solipsistic.
No wonder we are such a miserably unhappy group of humans! We are animals whose every waking moment is consumed by incessant distraction-seeking. We cannot stand even one naked instant in which we might really and truly feel the pain and suffering which we actually endure every moment. 'I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.' We are forever trapped inside our own minds. How terribly, terribly lonely.
This is where the questioning can be very challenging but is probably most productive. You have to be willing to listen deeply within and hear what that unquestioned voice inside is continuously telling you is true.
One device for accomplishing this is to notice by your actions what you hold to be important.
However, it might actually be easier, to start with, by watching other people and noticing by their actions what they deem to be important. I'm not speaking of what people would tell you is important to them, but rather what their observable behavior seems to say is important to them. Do you notice people looking around at the 'natural' environment, pausing to take in where they are in the world at that moment. Do they easily and naturally make contact with other humans. Do they notice the birds and other wild animals around them? Are they looking up and out and taking it all in?
If these are not the things you see people attending to or 'minding' as Paul Shepard put it, then what do they seem to be doing? What are they acting out as important?
After some time of doing this. Turn your observations to your own actions. Be gentle. Don't judge. Just notice. Be lightly, even playfully curious about yourself and what your actions tell you.
If our attention is perennially on our thoughts, if we rarely, if ever, shift our attention away from our thoughts to whatever is around us, toward the others sharing the world we live on and in, then our behaviors, our actions will reflect our thinking only.
Choose often to shift you attention outward, upward, downward. Open your senses and know where you are. Don't worry about being who you are. Choose instead to be where you are. The rest will take care of itself. You don't have to think about it.
Let me know what you find out.
Most of us have seen the bumper stick, 'Question authority!' Recently I saw this one, 'Question your thoughts.' I like that one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)