philosophy

Uncomfortable Truths

Uncomfortable truths are more times than not just truths.

-If one is a capitalist in today’s world, then that person is morally unconscionable.

-If one turns a blind eye to evil and wrong-doing, then one is the problem and the cause of our destruction.

-Conventional economics is a form of brain damage- David Suzuki

-If someone defends an economy over all else then that person is a liar and a psychopath.

-Progress at any cost is not progress at all but a blind, slow, torturous and un-needed death.

-Consumption as a way of life is not life at all but death of all things.

-If the answer is always more then the question is rhetorical, meaningless and dangerously misleading.

-Human beings do not have technological, social, cultural or political problems. We have ethical problems.

Why?

Why do Americans support an obviously fascist regime such as Donald Trump’s Republicans? This question is one that is asked more and more both by Americans and to me as an American in Europe.

“The Answer is complex.” I answer. “It is important to remember that American can be defined in large part by the drive for profit, personal benefit, and fear. There are no safety nets in America and America is in large part a theocratic society. Religion and money. One makes empty promises and the other gives false hope. And so what is left is fear because deep down Americans know that what they believe, whether it is religious or social, is not, in fact, true.”

“Add to that,” I continue, “Americans want to be, they strive to be independent in the true sense of the word. The American story is based upon rough and ready independence. But the fact is that such independence is and always has been a fantasy. So why do any Americans support Donald Trump? Because he offers easy answers based on empty promises, false hope and fantasy.”

Donald Trump and his minions are cheap. Truth is expensive.

Normal

Over a beer; at a bar or in a living room, we’ve had those conversations where the word “normal” comes up. Inevitably someone exclaims: “What is ‘normal’ anyway?!” Usually, it is a dead-end comment. Other platitudes follow. Such as “I know ‘normal’ when I see it…”

In today’s America ‘normal’ is no longer a platitude because what is going on in America today is not normal. No matter what the Trump sycophants may espouse. Donald Trump’s America is not ‘normal’ in the sense that normality implies a healthy and happy society.

A normal society is not led by those who undermine the good that normal societies offer. A normal society is not one in which the military is turned upon the citizens of that society, or where massive percentages of wealth go only to a minutia of people. A normal society is not militarized, fanatical, driven by greed and narcissism.

If it is actually true that we can “know ‘normal'” when we “see it” then it must be obvious that Donald Trump’s America is far from.

A Discussion

A discussion with a friend ensued about regulations. He complained that regulations were nothing but a bureaucratic way to suck profit from his business, that they made no sense, that they made doing business impossible. He then proudly announced that he was of a capitalistic mindset. He saw no other possibility.

His claims rolled around in my head as I purposely tried to gather the gist of his statements. I thought of a world without regulations. I considered the arguments that I had heard about regulations, especially about governmental regulations, and how they impeded the march towards free-market capitalism. I thought of history.

I thought of how regulations played a part in ending the civil war in America, child-labor, environmental catastrophes that were argued necessary by profiteers since the industrial age. I also thought of how the lack of regulations had led to the stock market crash in the 1920’s, the dustbowl conditions of the 1930’s, the unquestioned, unconscionable nuclear testing (well over 300 tests), and the uses of nuclear weapons of the 1940’s and 1950’s.

I thought of the ongoing environmental horrors of corporations and societies in the name of non-impeded profit. I thought of the ongoing torture of animals everywhere. Of Wallstreet, of banks and other oligarchical institutions, suburban sprawl, over population, and now un-regulated research in AI.

I thought of all of this and one question came to mind.

“What kind of a world do you want your children, others, and yourself to live in?”

Situations

I no longer believe that situations define who we are. Rather, I believe that situations define what we need and what we desire to do. Situations do not define one’s character. They strip away the lies we tell ourselves and expose who we really are.

From the mother who is willing to watch other children die in order to save her own, to the profiteer who is willing to kill all that is good in order to become rich; they are one-in-the-same. Neither is based in love or understanding, and neither is virtuous.

We can find ourselves in situations what disallow us to do what we know is right but then we must work to change the situation or remove ourselves from it. whatever we do we must never give up the knowledge of right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and evil.

We must call a spade a spade. If we give in to stupidity, laziness, lies, fantasy, ease, and comfort; if we give in to situations that are based upon such ideas then we become lost and inconsolable.

Memories

I eat meat, but I don’t always like to do so. If I can put myself in a situation where I can raise my own animal, give it the good life that it deserves, come to know it, then I will always enjoy the meat that I get from it. I can thank it by doing my best to treat its body and its life with respect.

“Meat is not merely flesh.” John Seymour wrote. “Each animal has its own life saga…” I have come to realize the truth in that statement. It is because knowing that saga gives us a relationship to the meat that we have on our plate; to all food that we eat. It makes the food taste better, we feel better. When we have memories on our dinner plate we understand the cost of putting it there.

I have wanted, for many years now, a place of my own to raise food, to work. And while my desire has been couched in a need to fend for myself, to make my own way, to prove to myself that I can, and to live in harmony (the best I can) with nature, it is in no small part because I want those memories.

I was not raised on a farm, and had only the faintest experiences on my grandfather’s ranch when I was young. But I have been lucky enough to have had a taste of the freedom (that word so many sling around) that comes from having memories mixed in with the food on my plate.

Progress

There was really no other choice than to move forward. That was what movement was: no matter in what direction we started or finished, no matter how we coined phrases or felt regret, or despised the loss, or loved the gain; life was a march towards-or so it seemed.

Towards what?! To what end did we move? Even when we sat still, admiring the stars or enjoying a late autumn day; there still seemed to be a goal. we spent time considering consequences, always in the future; always something or somewhere else.

Always living in motion led to never looking at the past for answers, even as it faded into time immortal, forgotten or feigned. And so, we forgot what it was to live and existed rationally instead. We spent our time with probabilities and possible future outcomes instead of moving towards our dreams and desires, right and wrong, good and bad. And days passed.

We rarely considered the movement itself. We rarely considered the moment, or what it was we were moving towards, or even if we wanted it.

Values

It was easy to think of the ways to fight and administration wrought with corruption, defined by greed, and blinded by a twisted ideology. But read history. In its annals one will find pages of fights documented of the same people fighting the same enemy time and time again.

It becomes clear that the fight that needs to be addressed is not only a political one, but a personal one as well. It becomes obvious that the horrors of history, of human-brought destruction, evil, greed, and violence are the symptoms, and not the causes of dictators, profiteers, and authoritarians. The cause of our killing the world and ourselves is, in fact, the values that we hold.

Wendell Berry said it best when he wrote: “We are familiar enough with the nature of American salesmanship to know that it will be done in the name of the starving millions, in the name of liberty, justice, democracy, and brotherhood, and to free the world from communism.”*

If what we value is consumption and ease, and only those things, then we can wish for nothing other than the world we live in and the continued fight against rank stupidity. It is the values that we hold that have gotten us here. We have to change what we value, and why we value the things that we do to end the cycle of a history filled with horror and disillusion.

A Day in the Life: Hands

He looked at his hands. They were scarred but soft. Every wrinkle had been earned. He even say the faded white line of the pig’s last dying kick, the hoof catching him between his thumb and forefinger.

The seventeen stiches on his index finger; the soft, pink leftovers of that night, slightly discolored was a reminder of a past he wanted to forget and a future he wanted to live once more.

The incidental cuts on his knuckles that showed up, often caked with dirt, left little dots. He pulled the small flap of skin of a scrape off and let the dirt coagulate the blood. One more dot.

His fingers showed his life. The broken knuckle at the end of one of his fingers, the flattened finger nail, his obsession, his hatred and his happiness. “Shit!” he almost yelled as a piece of sharp wood wedged its way into his palm leaving a red blotch and a piece of wood sticking out. He pulled it out and continued working.

Over the years his hands slowly changed from soft and dimpled to calloused and dirty and back again. His pride altered with the time stamped on his hands.

A Day in the Life: Demons and Ghosts

Every morning was a cool, grey reprise from the dark night of ghosts and demons that would torture him. The mornings were times when he would look out over the frontier of his future and see wide open spaces. He had grown up in a world and believed in a world of plans and goals. Now he had neither.

He was older and surrounded by a dystopian world. Computers generated music and automatic “authors” pumped out whole books in minutes. The fantasy of those who couldn’t was hurriedly becoming the nightmare of those who could.

Cellphones were a sickness and e-bikes were exercise. But he wrote anyway and pedaled his bike up hills happily. Although it was inevitable that the world would change, people were…well, they were what they were and anyway, he thought, he wouldn’t let the laziness and inanity of human ‘progress’ hold him back.

He wouldn’t be subsumed into a black hole of buying rather than learning. He would not fall for cheap trinkets and sell his soul so easily. He would earn every sentence and every inch with thought and sweat. He still needed to work for what he accomplished, not because he was a good man but because he didn’t want to live in the dark world of the demons and ghosts of his nights.