A MORNING WALK
I pause on a residential street corner during my morning walk and notice an amazement of things. I notice the blazing star that warms my face and lights the world with its colossal fire. How does it do that, hanging out there in space for billions of years; burning, burning, burning? How does it stay the same size? I notice how the trees are designed to drink in the sunlight and wonder about the issue of Evolution versus Creationism. Who designed the trees? Why couldn’t the trees have designed themselves, through a long, long process of finding out what works, and still have been created by God? Whatever works, whatever promotes life, isn’t that what God wants? The conical evergreen, a study in optimal exposure. The spread of the oak as it displays its boughs full of leaves, reaching up and out to catch the sun’s early rays.
Life’s answer to life’s needs, from the smallest blade of grass to the giant Sequoia, an apparent symbiosis, an exchange of interdependent functions, an infinite network of intricate and loving relationships; yes, loving, why not? Like the exchange of gasses between me and the plants I keep in my apartment. Loving, as we feed one another the breath of life.
I notice the blunt buildings around me, the wires and telephone poles, the man made things that are gathered beneath the flickering birds and the reaching trees. I look toward the humming freeway a few blocks away, obscured behind the trees and thickets alongside it, and wonder at the tenacity and adaptability that allows that vegetation to survive.
Evolution? Creation? Aside from the biblical context, and a lot of monkey business, aren’t these words mostly a reflection of man’s natural tendency to polarize? I remember Carl Jung’s saying that everything is defined by its opposite. But even that relationship implies a continuum, a connection, which means that everything in some way also contains its opposite.
“Navaho dogma connects all things, natural and experienced, from man's skeleton to universal destiny, in a closely interlocked unity which omits nothing, no matter how small or how stupendous.”
I look down at the ground, at a bare spot of earth next to the sidewalk, and try to imagine that unity. I try to imagine the world around me as it might have been long ago. The ancestors of the native Pomo people lived here for ten thousand years and never left a mark on the land. And yet, their technology provided them well enough. I remember the words of a Sioux Chief, Luther Standing Bear (1868-1937):
"I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization."
That makes so much sense to me – the true essence of civilization defined as civility toward all life, toward all things, without violation, in harmony with the planet. So who exactly are the civilized? Recently, while looking through some of my old writings, I ran across this little snippet I had written: “In an effort to explain everything, to understand the world by taking it apart, our culture has become dedicated to the division of the whole into its parts. Still, a dissected bird does not reveal the essence of its flight.”
I was deeply moved by Houston Smith’s writing in his book, Forgotten Truth, about the experience of Native Americans:
“They watched a landscape dismantled, a physical landscape of almost magical richness. Untapped, unravaged, its grains of soil had been to them beads in the garment of the Great Spirit; its trees were temple pillars, its earth too sacred to be trodden save by soft skinned moccasins. Across this un-paralleled expanse of virgin nature there poured hordes possessing a capacity so strange that they seemed to the natives to represent a different breed; the capacity to look on everything in creation as material for exploitation, seeing every tree only as timber, deer only as meat, mountains as no more than potential quarries. For the victims of this ‘civilizing mission,’ as the predators chose to call their conquest, there could only be, in the words of a former U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs (John Collier), ‘a sadness deeper than imagination can hold - sadness of men completely conscious, watching the universe being destroyed by a numberless and scornful foe.’ For the Indians had what the world has lost...the ancient, lost reverence and passion for human personality joined with the ancient, lost reverence for the earth and its web of life.” (From Forgotten Truth By Houston Smith: )
When I first read the above quotation, I was filled with sadness and shame. My race, the white race, has been cursed, and blessed, with brains and power, with energy and curiosity, and, with all the assumptions of entitlement. We have traveled the world and conquered the world. And I wonder; could we have done anything different? Our religious mandate gave us the mission of spreading the Word, of converting the world to the one true God; while our military and industrial technology gave us the means to exploit the world, to take whomever and whatever we wanted. Manifest Destiny was such an eloquent misnomer for the fact of brutal conquest.
Have we in fact gone astray; and from what? Was the Christian animism of the Middle Ages a better way to go? Has our devotion to power and technology, to growth and progress, led us to a crucial imbalance with our natural habitat, even with the God we so proudly proclaimed? If the pendulum of objective science has indeed swung out of control, how can we hope to correct it? Obviously, the material benefits have been monumental, but what have we given up in the process? Can we even know? Are we hopelessly lost in the seduction and intoxication of technology? Have we completely abandoned the guidance of a moral compass?
We already know about the dwindling environment and the dead seas and the polluted air and the disappearing species. We are accomplished at pointing fingers and looking for quick fixes, for the promise of eventual solutions. But what would happen if we stopped looking outside ourselves and started looking within. What is the condition of our internal environment. The degradation of our external world is obviously taking a toll on our physical being, and that of our grandchildren, but what about our ecology of soul? Are we living beyond our means there as well?
I stop at the corner of Ripley and Eleventh Street and notice the beautiful little pepper tree, how healthy it is in the midst of all else. And the well kept old house right behind it, a house that was probably there when I was born several decades past and a few thousand miles away. Timeless images begin to swim all around me, like vague dolphin shapes in a sea of possibility. I pass the porch of another old house and my inner eye watches as a young man in a long duster, behind the wheel of a nineteen-twenties automobile, comes to pick up his girlfriend. They are on their way to a clean and healthy Russian River.
Are we really some sort of cosmic experiment? Will our species’ dominance on this planet end in disaster, or will we wake up to our responsibility as stewards of our own survival? I remember a friend who once reminded me: "You Can't Save The Gold Fish If You Can't Save The Bowl." As I walk down the block on Eleventh toward Cleveland, my heart once again holds the words from Houston Smith’s book: “...the ancient, lost reverence and passion for human personality joined with the ancient, lost reverence for the earth and its web of life.” I don’t want to unduly romanticize Native Americans, they certainly had their faults as well, but, there’s a key for me there, in the way indigenous peoples accepted their place as a part of something far greater than themselves; in the way they looked to the organization of nature for their answers. For the so-called civilized world it seems that God is dead while fundamentalism flourishes?
I pass the old boarded up warehouse on the corner of Eleventh and Cleveland and then turn toward home. There’s a thought on the edge of my mind so elusive that it fades out of focus as soon as I try to look at it, like the logic of a dream that fades in the light of day. The passing of a large truck creates a momentary breeze, disturbing the leaves on the hedge next to my head. Then, as the morning traffic increases, I wonder about the system that drives so many to work so hard for the ultimate benefit of so few, but I resist going there. Power and surrender are a complicated relationship at best. I want to resume my previous train of thought, if I can find it.
We have created a world that is separate from nature, that lights up the night and supports whatever conditions we choose. To some extent we create our own weather, and, for the most part, look out the window at a world that no longer holds us hostage. If mankind was created in the image of God, as we are told, and has the power of creation, then, by the very nature of this magnitude, and the granting of free will, we must also contain the power of evil, of deliberate self destruction.
But do we contain the power to forgive ourselves? Is it really so much the point that God loves us, as do we love ourselves? On the surface we are able to disown our evil and project it onto others, onto the convenience of enemies, but in the depth of our heart’s wisdom we know they are us, brothers and sisters only removed by culture and geography. I wonder if this apparently hell-bent world is a result of our own self judgment? Are we punishing ourselves for not deserving to have it any better? If we cannot love ourselves enough to save the fish bowl, then what about loving our grandchildren? Unless, of course, you are in such denial as to believe there is no problem.
I turn the key that opens my front door and regret that I felt I had to lock it when I left.
© Copyright Rabon Saip 2007
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Our Aging Population and Cultural Evolution
Having witnessed American culture for these past several decades, my overview is one that recalls several different worlds. The thirties and forties, the fifties and sixties, and every decade thereafter, all were times during which enormous and increasingly accelerated changes occurred. And, like the incredibly adaptive creatures we are, we mostly adjusted and learned to roll with these changes. But, I suspect that our memories, also highly adaptative, have rendered a seamless and progressive picture that obscures just how challenging to our true well-being these adaptations might actually have been.
Since these accelerating changes have been absorbed by several different generations at the same time, we have responded to them in a widely dispersed, incremental way. For example, few alive today will remember a world before radio, and there will gradually, incrementally, come a time when no one alive will remember a world before television, or computers, or cell phones.
Driven by the economics of research, development and remuneration, each of these technologies is presented as though it is already as desirable as purveyors have paid large sums in advertising dollars to convince the average consumer. However, each of these advances can also be measured in terms of our somewhat mandatory dependence upon it, and the stress it creates in our lives. Markets for new technologies are usually reinforced by the development and implication of needs that may not otherwise have existed. Further, the creation and fulfillment of such fabricated needs may not necessarily be “good” for us on every level.
The fact is that we are driven to becoming ever more dependent upon technologies and systems that are ever more demanding and increasingly beyond our comprehension and control. As trained consumers we must learn to facilitate and serve the very systems that were initially supposed to serve us. Regardless of the benefits we may derive from these technologies, the mode of their introduction into our lives is all too often based on exploitation for profit rather than public service. And yes, without the profit motive the technology may not exist. Still, I believe we must find a better way of integrating technology with traditional human values.
Less than one century ago, the average individual had a far greater knowledge (and control) over the technologies of his or her daily life. And, although that daily life may have been a little more arduous in some respects, the survival skills that were common to our grandparent’s time, most of which are now lost to our grandchildren, added up to a much greater self reliance in the natural world; and therefore, a much more cohesive sense of participation and belonging.
As we move ever more rapidly into the mystery of the 21st century, these two things in particular are happening simultaneously: 1) We are moving further and further away from meaningful contact with the natural world, and: 2) We are living longer than ever before. These are both profoundly double edged by-products of our sheltering technologies. The industrialization of food and medicine has insulated us from soil, from the knowledge and practice of family food production and herbal remedies. Without super markets and drug stores, the vast majority of people in the so-called developed world would be at a complete loss.
Regarding our experience of aging, we are mostly stuck with the traditional images of frailty, illness and death. However, for an ever increasing elder population, these antiquated mind-sets no longer apply. At the same time, we as yet have no model for how to spend the additional years we’ve been granted; the underlying challenges, and advantages, of which remain to be explored.
The oft repeated statistics go like this: In the year 1900, one out of twenty-five Americans was over sixty-five and life expectancy 47 years. Then, one century later, in the year 2000, one out of eight were over sixty-five and life expectancy was 77 years; a gain of 30 years. By 2030, when the last of the baby boomers turn sixty-five, one out of four Americans will be past that age. In fact, since the Industrial Revolution, our life expectancy has practically doubled. And, all things considered, it is conceivable that a child born today can probably expect to live to be 100 or more. In every developed nation, with an increasing number of elders and decreasing birthrates, a time is coming soon when the old ones will outnumber the young.
This is not to say there haven’t been long lived individuals in the past. Indeed, many of the ancient and famous names we grew up with lived for a long time, but such longevity was given to relatively few, usually among the privileged class. Life expectancy is a figure derived from the average age at death of an entire population. In ancient Greece, a “who’s who” of an obituary column would look fairly current. Thales of Miletus lived to be 76 (c.624-548 B.C.); Hippocrates of Cos, 83 (c.460-c.377 B.C.); Sophocles wrote his last play at age 90 (496-406 B.C.) and Plato lived to be 80 (c.427-347 B.C.). A similar list could be reported for the Romans, again among the privileged class, even though the average life expectancy in Rome at the time was 25 years.
In the Bible (Genesis 6.3) the following statement was made: “Then the Lord said, ‘My spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.’” I find it wonderfully interesting that so many centuries after this was reported to have been written, medical science concurred. The life span of human beings (which is different from life expectancy) is “scientifically” estimated at 120 years.
I believe we are moving into the century when this potential life span of 120 years could also become our life expectancy. I believe we who are alive today are witnessing a major turning point in the evolution of our species, an opportunity to take a giant step toward the realization of our greatest human potential; to become a more mature, adult species, taking full responsibility for the consequences of our actions and for this beautiful planet which is our home.
I believe we have arrived at a time when it is critical to leave the ignorance of childhood behind. If we take responsibility for all we can become, for what we already know in our hearts, we will also own the fact that such potential would not exist unless it is achievable. We could no longer believe that war, starvation and poverty are inevitable; that ignorance, hatred and violence are unavoidable. We have been given the gift of these additional years not simply to have a greater length of time in which to suffer, or fritter away in selfish pursuits; but to harvest the wisdom of a longer life and enjoy much more of our true human potential. It is only by succumbing to our learned helplessness that this potential will be denied us.
We are undoubtedly the only species ever to inhabit the possibility of creating our own future; however, it appears that we may as yet lack the definition, and the courage, to make the necessary sacrifices – the life changing decisions that will bring us closer to a sustainable world. What the scientist, Stephen J. Gould, called “punctuated equilibrium” is a sudden leap in the evolution of any species when environmental stressors cause enough tension to threaten its existence. This kind of pressure requires radical adaptation, or it inflicts death. I believe the elder threshold to what psychologist James Hillman called “a new kind of intelligence,” a new elder consciousness, is our best connection to the possibilities of a radically new survival strategy, or ultimate adaptation.
And, since our survival will probably be dependent upon some degree of technology, then perhaps BOTH the oldest and the youngest among us will be needed to come together and model a completely new way of being human. Who could be better qualified than intergenerational collaborators to integrate technology with soul?
© Copyright Rabon Saip 2007
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THE EMPTY SELF
The quotes in this piece are from an article entitled, "Why The Self Is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology," by Phillip Cushman, which appeared in the American Psychologist, May 1990. I wrote this while at Sonoma State in the Psychology Department in 1992.
Many years ago a young girlfriend of mine did a beautifully detailed drawing that was not easy to forget. The drawing is of a human skeleton standing next to a stream laden with fish. The skeleton has a fish in each bony hand, one in its mouth, and others falling through the emptiness of its body. On the ground beneath the skeleton is a large pile of fish. She called this drawing "Modern Man." I still have it.
©Arnelle Wolner
“The thesis of this article is that the current Self is constructed as empty, and as a result the State controls its population not by restricting the impulses of its citizens, as in Victorian times, but by creating and manipulating their wish to be soothed, organized, and made cohesive by momentarily filling them up. (Cushman 1990)”
On VJ Day, 1945, a truckload of pears turned over near where I lived (Tiburon Wye, Marin County). The driver was unhurt. He sat by the side of the road drinking from a pint whiskey bottle and merrily inviting passers-by to help themselves to all the pears they wanted. A number of cars came slowly driving through, honking horns of victory and crushing the spilled fruit beneath their tires. Standing in the midst of all those pears scattered across the pavement, eating as many as I could, I absorbed the relief at the end of world war. I felt great pride and joy. I was part of the greatest nation on earth. As I speared a pear with my pocket knife and held it above my head, waving it at the honking cars, the part of my being that records history clicked in and I was suddenly aware that I would always, always remember this moment. G.I. Joe had just handed the whole world to the U.S. government on a silver platter, and voices of great joy and optimism filled the air.
“Humans do not have a basic, fundamental, pure human nature that is trans-historical and trans-cultural. Humans are incomplete and are therefore unable to function adequately unless embedded in a specific cultural matrix. (Cushman 1990)”
Then we moved back to San Rafael, to a downstairs flat just a short walk from E Street Grammar School. I had a paper route then that ran through the old southwest neighborhoods at the edge of town, well kept homes worn soft and dignified with time. And yet everywhere there was excited anticipation of the new world. I felt the passing of an age. The quiet, shaded Italian stucco gave way to the tempo of low-cost housing tracts. The latest model automobiles were announced with the use of war-surplus searchlights, beams of light no longer searching for enemy aircraft, but attracting large crowds to see exciting new designs. New automobiles were a sign of peace and plenty and new appliances promised final freedom from the historic drudgery of housework.
Old men now sent young men out to the athletic field instead of the battle-field; football was back. Friday night games at San Rafael High restored memories of a world at peace and were fully attended (I don't remember exactly when they closed down the old San Rafael Military Academy, but I'm pretty sure it was around 1950).
The vestiges of nineteen-thirties life in Northern California gave way to accommodating a large number of new-comers. "Dear Arky, if you see Okey, tell'im Texas got a job fer'im, out in California, picking up prunes, playin' a fiddle in the follies.” Everyone felt entitled to the spoils of war – new homes and the advanced, modern products of the world's most successful fighting machine.
“Culture ‘completes’ humans by explaining and interpreting the world, helping them to focus their attention on or ignore certain aspects of their environment and instructing or forbidding them to think and act in certain ways. (Heidegger 1962)”
We filter out incoming data in accordance with our previous experience, sniffing out pleasure and pain, sensing for power and for danger. No population has ever been so courted, so pampered, (or so subtlety worked over) as the American public. During the post-war decades our society developed an economy that depended on replaceable products sold by replaceable celebrities to replaceable consumers; all on easy credit. The legacy of WW II provided all the essential ingredients for the empty self.
Fragmented family migrations and lost communities served to create a general feeling of alienation and insecurity, which was good for selling products (to fill the emptiness), but not so good for public education and awareness. Politicians became packaged and sold by the same people who managed to sell the difference between competing brands of toilet paper.
Industries that attempt to soothe the empty self offer extensive instruction in mediocrity; false values and false hope. But the major problems of postmodern society cannot be successfully addressed with the same old near-sighted exploitation excused by the same old simplistic political language. Complex issues require a high degree of open education; a high degree of delicate mindfulness.
“Practitioners in both fields (the advertising industry and psycho-therapy) are placed in the position of being responsible for curing the empty self without being allowed to address the historical causes of the emptiness through structural, societal changes. (Cushman 1990)”
When I was in highschool, older cars were ridiculously cheap and many would be serviceable for years to come. The rite-of-passage for my generation was a previously unheard of degree of mobility. My forty-seven Chevy Club Coupe, with rear fender skirts, white side-walled tires and dual Smitty mufflers, was a "magic carpet ride." I was liberated.
I became so hooked on driving that I would wait for my parents to fall asleep and then sneak out of the house to drive around all night. Occasionally, I would get home just in time to muss my bed and pretend to get ready for school. I remember a few instances of falling asleep in class.
Sometimes I would get lost in the hills of Mill Valley or drive up Mount Tam to see the whole bay area at my feet. Sometimes I would drive down to the Golden Gate Bridge, at dawn, to walk out on the bridge and watch fishing boats leave long artful wake patterns across the calm water of the bay.
I grew up to the pain and ecstasy of the American promise, but then, somewhere in the midst of my big ideas and driving ambition – my dream for material success – disability and addiction got the upper hand. Although, it seems to me now, we all lived in a fantasy land.
The emptiness, the deep hunger built into our society, has been a close companion all my life. This was compounded when I learned the extent to which my so-called disability would pose some definite barriers to my participation. I suffered a distorted and unrealistic world-view. Because I didn't take part in the normal pattern of the education/career process, I didn't at first understand that "normal" could also mean empty.
“While psychologists have been treating the empty self, they have, of necessity, also been constructing it, profiting from it, and not challenging the social arrangements that created it. (Cushman 1990)”
I would stand my ballroom dance customers in front of the mirrored wall and ask; "How much did you spend on the car you are driving?" Whatever the amount they quoted, I would say; "Don't you think you deserve to spend at least that much on yourself?" Being an Arthur Murray Dance Instructor was brutal, but, it was something indoors that didn't require a lot of eyesight; just cellophane teeth and greedy trousers.
I watched and learned and became cynical. It seemed to me The American Dream had somehow created a morally bankrupt society, a system full of successful rackets. I was raised with the attitude, all around me, that it was alright to rip off large insurance companies or government agencies, particularly the IRS. After all (chuckle chuckle), everybody does it.
Truth is, we’re all the more wounded because we really know better than what we do. And this dichotomy, this split between what we know and what we do, is an epidemic of silent suffering.
© Rabon Saip 2007
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