“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
-Iain Thomas (“I Wrote This For You”)
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Happy Spring Friends,
I hope you are enjoying the seasonal shift (despite the recent winter reprise), awakening to possibility as new life appears in vibrant colors each day. I am blessed to have nature all about me, my parents (whom I rent a duplex from) have a yard designated as a “backyard wildlife sanctuary” fit with vegetable gardens, beehives and plenty of indigenous plants to attract a host of wild creatures that are consistently pushed to the margins as “development” encroaches upon their formerly vast territories. A 5 minute walk provides trails through woods almost dense enough to escape Philadelphia’s traffic noise, a reminder of the thin veneer civilization provides to separate us from our original nature. Death, disease, war and famine effect the “civilized” world each day as the media spotlight chooses to focus on one given day’s specific aspect of our world shadow. These atrocities portrayed as “an” anomaly in our era of “enlightened” democracy, diplomacy and culture. In reality, the earth blossoms, blooms, decays and lies dormant awaiting the next cycle, waning and regenerating.
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Our species attempts to separate from nature’s “chaos” choosing to impose order; mapping an imagined structure onto the organically evolving reality. Those who see cracks in the structure and point to something beyond the dominant discourse, are either labeled fools or praised as mystics, while the truly enlightened remain silent knowing that words (no matter how resonant) are but metaphors - where realities are far more complex. Wars “are” easily explained by bad actors, famine a result of poor economic policies, disease a problem imposed by the unclean, and death: the ultimate disease - yet to be overcome. These may be truths for someone looking to purge the darkness from reality, but shadow is merely a reality of light intercepted by an object. In any attempt to force out the darkness, the light of righteous action may blind us from unintended effects. These aberrations, unprecedented by their nature, may be waived off as something to be dealt with in the future while the shadow of the unconscious psyche, (individual and collective), is carried along into each subsequent crises. Nature (a hyper-object anthropomorphized as “her”) moves, and the culture resists against.
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The answer isn’t to ignore the undesirable, or to grow cynical of any progress. The law of karma uses different words to speak on the later developed concept of Newton’s first law, the law of inertia. The law of inertia states that a body at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line unless acted upon by another force. Karma, by this definition is an animating force, moving a body toward an attractant or away from a repellent; Interference generally has the result of creating more karma. As a pool cue directs a cue ball to smack into its desired target, one action ricochets off another and projects more objects into motion. A change in the topography, such as the pockets of the pool table, allows an object acted upon to leave the field of play; and the friction of the external environment, such as the cloth on the table, may slow the movement or bring an object into stillness - but the greater the force the more complicated and nuanced an intercepting body will need to be to handle and transmute the karma being expressed. As bodies animated by our own unique karma, we may feel a pull to intervene in a conflict; assured by our own goodness we might “know” the path out of struggle, but hyper-objects (disease, wars, climate, race relations, etc) cast large shadows.
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In our desire to change the world we perceive as unjust, we often create unforeseen strife. We increase our knowledge through the introduction of more data, narrowing our field of attention to a surgical approach that may be effective at a given task, though in it’s specificity has eliminated all data pointing to second order effects - that are often only realized once the present crises has been averted, forgotten, or adapted to. A situation may be so egregious that we determine action is necessary, regardless of the consequences - but before we look to impose our will upon a force of nature we are called to investigate our own nature. Intentions, motivations and provocations all exposed to the light. Past karma admitted and unknown effects conceded. In short, everything must be up for scrutiny to transmute an undesirable situation. Pushing dirt under the rug and blaming the rug, will only result in a neurotic impulse to continually replace the rug without ever solving the problem. An individual or the society composed of individuals continually embarking on “hero’s journeys” must be willing to admit the tyrant that lurks in the shadows of an effort to be “king.”
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Many (if not most) of “our” institutions have been challenged and thrown into hard questions in the past several years. Some passionately believe we should eliminate these institutions, others preach that we need to embrace the traditions that have only been interfered with and are unable to reach their intended goals. These opposing forces grow more total in their declarations, increasingly convinced of the devils they defy, and karma creates more of itself as tensions rise ever higher. Each sees the “other” as something to be combatted and overcome: creating ever more brutal ricochets until something breaks beyond repair. Destroying order in favor of chaos is hardly a solution to human suffering and yet doubling down on institutions that perpetually create human casualties ignores the flaws in the logic of the current order. Winston Churchill is attributed as saying “Any man under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart, and any man over thirty who is not a conservative has no brains.” Throughout my life I have gone from a revolutionary mindset to new ground inspired by preservation, but I find Churchill’s idea incomplete and incompatible with where I find myself; for my heart has yet to fail with age. Ayishat Akanbi, writer/fashion designer, said something in a podcast a couple years ago that resonated: “We are encouraging non-binaryness everywhere but our thinking.”
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I suspect we have departed a world (extended moment of time-space) containing “The” “Truth;” and that “truths” exist in nuance and paradox. Families have long served as models, defying a dominant culture to integrate disparate truths within their shared unit. Within the boundaries of “The Family” individuals will, to larger or lesser degrees, disrupt the stability of what defines “The Family.” In its desire to remain a family, each individual will have to adjust their understanding of truths of the variety of experiences that make-up “The Family.” A shared goal, or compatible story, may allow a group of diverse individuals to coalesce, but as the stories break down or goals diverge the stability of the group will be shaken and may ultimately break down. Without shared ground, holding multiple world views as potentially true, or investing in goals that run counter to one’s own, becomes an act of either roboticism or, (assumed as positive movement), near sainthood - where the individual is absorbed into a collective without any personal will outside that of the group. As identity groups become fragmented and a world with the internet proves individuals to be far more complex than any single box can contain, we are called to ask what are meta goals and meta stories - that can encompass intersecting groups and multitudes of individuals.
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Gargantuan communities such as the “national family,” or the “global community” are continuing to break down as shared stories and intersecting goals diverge. I find this necessary on some level, returning power to smaller, more local groups, seems a desirable goal in a world that is ever more connected and increasingly fragmented. What connects a local community is far less abstract than what connects a nation: access to clean water & food, adequate shelter, safety and care for loved one’s are aims more efficiently addressed by individuals, collectively united, who are in close contact to those in need of aid. The path of direct “local” action, does not negate the reality of connectivity and a need for shared stories/goals of a group or a species, which also seems best addressed on the personal level. The internet has thankfully provided an expansion of what defines “local,” I personally am grateful to have found close friends in different time zones and across oceans; allowing communities to build beyond what individuals might experience in their proximal neighborhood. This interconnectivity, when approached on an individually conscious level, allows the tyrany of culture to progress - while simultaneously honoring the attitudes of the individuals with whom one is in direct relationship. It is in paradoxes such as these where action seems possible and desirable where we can “yes and” a community of any size/connective principle, as opposed to merely negating the need of connecting individuals who seem antithetical to a personal philosophy.
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My tendency toward pessimism has been a result of watching individuals participate in the cultural act of picking teams for a finite game with undesirable outcomes on all sides of the field of play. Binaries of good and evil make wars inevitable and justified. In looking beyond good and evil - Nietzsche, philosopher and dissident, identified a “will to power;” One may have an aversion to the shadows cast by a “will to power,” as I often have, but having never explicitly defined the term himself, my favorite interpretation coincides with the American ideal of “self determination.” Sigmond Frued spoke on the will to pleasure (later developed by Wilhelm Reich) and Viktor Frankl a will to meaning. A will to truth may drive the intellectual, or a will of spiritual desire might impel a devotee toward their object of adoration. That which drives us toward action is only as limited as the imagination of the individual, remembering that many of the worst atrocities of human history were under the guise of “good” and “righteous” action. I posit (in a spirit of Taoism) that the opposite of an evil leader is not a good leader; rather it is one who participates, who leads without leading, who can direct without pushing. Goodness can not easily be pointed to, but it can be experienced and embraced. Karma results in more karma and friction that brings an object to rest arises from the irregularities of a harder surface plowing across a softer surface. In the impulse to consistently “do something” to “fix it” we may be reminded to take a breath, look inside and around our immediate surroundings - blossoms appear, flourish, decay, die and await the next cycle.
❤️🙏
-Noah
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