Reciprocity – Like Water to Fish, Part Five

Bob Fiske

Reciprocity – Like Water to Fish, Part Five

CLICK HERE to go to Part Four

Erasing the debt.  Our relationship to the earth has been one of taking and not of giving.  We—all of humanity—have accrued a huge debt.  We have not made a sincere, planet-wide effort to begin making payments to repay the loan.  The big question that will get in our way is this: Who’s going to start?  Which person?  Which neighborhood?  Which city?  Which state?  Which country?

This is not an idle question; it’s a central one.  Just witness the difficulty we are having with climate change related to global warming.  The collective efforts to reign in human production of greenhouse gases (so-called atmospheric carbon and carbon equivalents) continue to stall.  The talks are marked by in-fighting and failure to come to consensus.

What most people fail to recognize is that global warming is just one of several “overshoot problems” looming on, or just over the horizon.  If we’re having this much trouble with the global warming problem—for which replacement technologies already exist—then how are we going to deal with other pollution excesses and resource shortages, not to mention destabilization of the greater biosphere beyond the pale of human concern?

The new human nature.  My answer is a shift in values.  Change ourselves.  If we can flip our taking behavior over to giving behavior, then the question of “Who will start?” may evaporate.

For many, this new direction may be an almost insurmountable challenge.  In the book of Genesis, God instructs Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, and to take dominion over the earth.  In some religious traditions, these statements are regarded as God’s first commandments to humanity.  I view these statements as somewhat more than mere commandments.  They are concise, brilliant expressions of human nature.

Looking at the broad scope of human history, is it not obvious that our natural inclinations have lead us down the path of “mastery over the earth”?  Our successes in this regard are a logical outgrowth of our basic nature.  Or is it?  What is missing from this description of human nature?

What if we were to recognize that human mastery of the earth—the cause, one might say, of our unquestioned taking from the earth—is only one half of our nature.  In that case, it might not seem quite so impossible to change our nature. 

Changing our nature might appear to be a process of forcefully suppressing our “base desires”.  That is an unpalatable notion.  But the problem can be turned around.  Perhaps there are parts of our nature that are already being suppressed, making it seem as though we are nothing more than taking creatures.

I maintain that fully human beings are more than taking creatures.  Animals are taking creatures.  They respond to motivational forces and show no capability to restrain those motivations.  Only human beings can consciously exercise restraint.  It’s true that many times we don’t want to do that—unless we are provided with a compelling reason.  Nonetheless, it is a capacity we have that is unique in the kingdom of living beings.

What else can fully human beings do?  We can think about and judge our own actions.  We can look back upon something we have done and conclude that that action is not desirable or socially acceptable.  Again, we often do not wish to do this because of emotional barriers such as shame or guilt making us want to hide our actions from others or ourselves.  But if we have sufficient reason, we can override these barriers.

I have given just two ways that mark fully human beings as more than taking creatures: self-restraint and integrity.  Furthermore, if we consciously take ownership of these traits (and other fully human traits), it will become easier to reign in the part of us that exists only to take.  Our full human nature can “naturally” lead us away from fruitful multiplication and dominion over the earth.  Our full human nature can lead us to own that part of our humanity that is rooted in integrity and responsibility for our actions.

And so, I have a proposal to begin our reprogramming of ourselves into giving beings.  This is coming in the next section of this essay.

Another Path to Self-Worth: Nobility.  I have argued so far that our economic system has embedded within most of us a “deep value” that guides many of our choices.  This value is reciprocity, which can be understood as the drive to engage in fair exchanges.  We are so well conditioned in this way of thinking that many of us determine our sense of self-esteem or self-worth based on how effective we are at conducting fair exchanges.  For most adults this occurs firstly through the activity of earning a living.

To illustrate this I will ask you to imagine a person that has developed a severe illness that will require an extended period of recuperation.  Consequently, the person will have to stop working.  If the person is fortunate, he or she may have some kind of worker’s compensation that keeps some income flowing into the bank account.  Nevertheless, this person feels uncomfortable about not working and impatiently waits for the doctor to release him or her to return to work.  Have you ever met a person like this?  Maybe it was even yourself.

When people are denied the opportunity to work they often feel inadequate and may even sink into a state of depression.  I would suggest that this makes perfect sense if generating income for the purpose of engaging in reciprocal exchanges (buying stuff) is the primary means that people have been taught for arriving at a sense of self-worth.  Consequently, people will become highly invested in maintaining a system where self-worth is organized around reciprocity, or fair exchanges.

However, this is a distorted picture of human psychology, as well as of the entire system governing the well-being of the world.

Martin Seligman, who wrote a book entitled Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment talks about a fellow psychologist who built a career on a phrase he learned from his mother when he was a boy.  If the mother found her son moping around, she would say, “If you’re in a bad mood, go find somebody to help.”  This idea brilliantly reminds us that self-worth is not only about exchanges.

Yet our economic system seems to have forgotten this.  It is no wonder, then, that the field of economics has lead us down a path toward ever-increasing imbalance.  It is no wonder that citizens of developed countries, and the United States in particular, are having trouble reclaiming a sense of self-worth.

Summary of Part Five.  In our relationship to the earth, it is time to start repaying the debt.  Who will take the lead?  Suppressing our desire to take might appear to be an insurmountable challenge.  Maybe the answer is to un-suppress other aspects of our nature.  The fully human being is endowed with capabilities such as self-restraint and judgment of actions as good or bad.  There may be other suppressed capabilities of the fully human being.  Expanding these capabilities will help temper our taking nature.  Additionally, our economic system is tied in with the methods we use to achieve a sense of self-worth.  If self-worth is primarily achieved through earning an income and buying goods and services, then this, too, will impair our ability modify our taking nature.

CLICK HERE to go to Part Six.

Happy Birthday Independence Day

July 4, 2012, Bob Fiske

Happy Birthday Independence Day

Happy Birthday AEAD.

It is July Fourth.

Your combined ages is 167 years.

I hope you are well.

I hope your spirit is lifted.

I hope your spirit knows it’s lifted.

I hope you know how to lift your spirit.

I hope your path is the journey of a lifted spirit lifting spirits.

May you also experience peace and compassion.

May you and all living beings find connectedness and compassion in the path ahead.

As I seem to see what lies on the path ahead I know that calmness could be our greatest virtue.

As we awaken to what we have created, with a calm spirit we could fully open our eyes and our minds.

From clear, calm seeing we could begin to accept the truth of what we have done and grasp it without blame or remorse.

As friends we could begin to fully accept the state of the world and the state of ourselves.

With a calm regard we could begin to accept the pain of knowing and, from that, the peaceful release of responsibility.

As companions on our one ship earth we could know each other warmly.

We could reside quietly as though in the restful time of the setting sun.

We could be ourselves newly and be aware that, in the new dawning, petty disputes and trivial concerns could be put aside.

We could accept the role of doing the greater work of serving the harmonious welfare of all that is impermanent.

We could understand that we are imperfect knowers of Good and embrace our limitations even while we strive to reflect It into the world.

We could identify our inner selves, experiencing that this is who we were all along.

We could realize that the struggle to be our authentic selves was bound to lead us to this place.

And this place could allow us to live as ourselves, in the deepest sense possible.

Art Cries

(NOTE: This is a raw journal entry.  Some stones are unpolished.)

I brought chard to The Growing Experience (my CSA) and met J-Dream-Worker who says he will read my blog.  His schooling was in theater, and he’s starting to return toward his artistic self.  So, he’s hungry for all kinds of input.

I’ve started owning my thinking and my writing as my art, and I’m starting to own myself as an artist.  When you’re an artist you create because you have to.  There’s not much choice involved.  The pressure builds and stuff pours out.

Bangkok-Girl said something about my being an outside artist, kind of like the guy who built Watts Towers.  He worked in isolation and didn’t have the reward of public acclaim while he did his work.  She said this in response to my complaint that I’m getting tired of being insane: the feeling that I’m the only one who understands or cares about what I create.

I’ve been feeling very disconsolate lately.  Like, why bother?  I mean, I even asked her if she read myDawkins vs. Collins essay, and she admitted she read only a third of it, and then it seemed like a bunch of Matrix talk, so she skipped to the end.

Fuck it. I’m surrounded by idiots.  And they’re all so busy embracing the technology that is dumbing them down.  Assholes.

All this Facebook dreck where people post a picture and think they’ve made a meaningful statement.  They don’t know what it means to craft a personal thought.

A picture is not worth a thousand words.  A picture is the loss of a thousand words because someone plucked it off the shelf instead of growing it in the soil of her/his mind.  Where’s the effort?  The creativity?  The risk?  And, social networking tools perpetuate all this bullshit—pouring somebody else’s work into your info-stream.

So, I’m a lonely outside artist.  I guess I still have a responsibility to bring my art to the world.  That’s what it means to be in the world and do your work.  Once you come to know and accept your responsibility, then you’ve passed the point of no return.  There is no choice any more, no opportunity to agonize over should I or shouldn’t I.

You just know your work and do it.  Damn it.  God, are you laughing again?  I thought so.

 = = = = = = = =

I had a thought a couple of days ago.  It’s a little hard to recapture.  “You don’t yet know who you are.”  As if to say that I am tip-toeing around my purpose and my power and my use and my instrumentality.

And it makes me sad.  I feel so far away from the home I knew and the home I’m to make for myself.  Sad about all this work on my path, and seeing that I’ve barely begun.  I ask you, God, how many times must I walk this way before I get it right?  How many times must I live this life before I understand?  How many times around the track for my pitiful self to run into the conscious awareness of what I’m actually doing here?

These are the questions every grain of sand asks.

You Clean It, You Own It

Occupy Long Beach Beach Cleanup, Cherry Beach, Mar. 18, 2012

Report From the Field.  Today between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm about ten of us showed up at Cherry Beach for another in a series of trash harvests sponsored by Occupy Long Beach.  Actually, for me, this was my first official beach cleanup, ever.  I was fired up.  And a good thing, too.  In the wake of yesterday’s rainstorm, the National Weather Service issued a high wind advisory with gusts up to 32 mph.  So I layered up the clothing and drove (You what???) there.

Inge and Betzi met me there with official, orange Beach Cleanup trash bags and hospital gloves to diminish the yuck-factor.  Normally, when I pick up trash, I avoid things that have made contact with mucus membranes, but this way I didn’t need to worry about that.  Also, Wayne had a bunch of those grabber sticks bought by Philip.  (Thank you Phil!)

The strong, gusts were coming from the West.  At Cherry Beach this meant that the air current was blowing down the coast, perpendicular to the direction that the waves move.  The wind is like a living force, moving things around according to its own patterns.  It had started its work much earlier in the morning, sweeping across the sand like an invisible broom.  We had to deal with it.  Most of the lightweight trash was gone, having been blown to sands eastward (and perhaps into the water as well).

The beach is large, a person is small.  Mostly, you work by yourself.  There are no rules, so you just make up your own strategy.  Some move quickly, looking for the big stuff.  Betzi had victory in this approach as she held up the rubber hot-water bottle that an anonymous tourist left for her.  I opted for the micro approach.  Step by step, I moved systematically around my marker (an unused grabber stick that I laid down) as I looked for small pieces the wind had missed.

There are a lot of little white pieces on the sand.  You pick one up.  It is a small piece of Styrofoam.  You wrestle with your plastic bag as it dances wildly.  Finally you succeed in depositing the little piece.  Another little white piece.  It is a broken piece of seashell.  Put it back.

The colored plastic is easier to spot.  Isn’t it wonderful that consumers respond so well to color in their plastic products?  Certainly makes our work easier.  Then again, as my new buddy Eric pointed out, color is attractive to birds, too, and so many of these little bits end up in their gullets.

At the end of our two-hour cleanup we had a nice pile of orange trash bags filled with human rubbish.  Wayne took a photo of us standing proudly over our catch.  Before we departed I asked for people’s impressions.  Betzi expressed amazement at all the Styrofoam that you find out there.  Someone mentioned the idea of a legislative ban on plastics at the beach.  (Currently, only people’s pets are forbidden, as I found out when a beach official blared on a loudspeaker that some party could not bring their dog to the beach.)  Wayne expressed frustration that people will not take the time to walk thirty seconds out of their way to put their trash in a trash can.

Afterthoughts.  When I was a kid I remember seeing these old guys with their metal detectors searching for hidden treasure beneath the sand.  Do they still do that?  I don’t know, except I expect that mostly what you find on today’s beaches is the throwaway junk from our society’s disposable culture.  Julia Butterfly Hill asks, “Where is away?”, and answers, “There is no away.”  The idea that we “throw away our trash” is quickly losing meaning in a world filled to the gills with human beings and their stuff.

At the start of today’s activity, Inge wondered out loud (with perhaps a twinge of anger) WHY SO MANY people are so careless about their trash.  I answered that we could respond from the Buddhist context of compassion.  Maybe there is not so much that separates us from them except that if we are patient rather than angry we can slowly wake them up.  Later, on my solitary search in the sand, I reconsidered the idea.  Folly, folly is it to want to awaken another.  It is I who must awaken.  The world waits for me to deepen my sense of awareness of my place in the great scheme.  And from that, change will happen.

environMENTAL 1

This morning, because the rain clouds seemed to be clearing, Nils took a squeegee to his car’s windows, carefully scraping away the drops of water.  He felt self-conscious as he did this, and he wondered if others would think him silly.  If someone were to remark that his behavior was pointless, that more rain was in the forecast, he decided that he would say proudly, “This is an optimistic act!”

Truth be told, Nils doesn’t feel much optimism these days.  He looks around and notices how woefully unaware most people are of the human impact on the earth.  There appears to be tremendous impetus to keep the current unsustainable lifestyle going.  Indeed, judging from our purchasing and transportation choices, the vast majority of people are voting for more, not less, of the rich lifestyle.

How can we do this?  Nils thinks it’s because of an unhealthy optimism that pervades our psyches.  We tell ourselves that everything will work out fine.  Everything will be OK.  We do the wrong thing and hold onto an irrational hope that nothing bad will happen.  And, when we look around and see everybody behaving the same way, that becomes—reasonable behavior.

Nils sees this as a form of storytelling.  Stories are a vital part of our mental landscape.  We consume them voraciously, in books, television, cinema, newspapers, blogs and magazines.  We have a need for stories that is so powerful that great industries have grown up that provide them for us, around the clock and at a moment’s notice.  People like stories for their drama, for the emotional rush, and especially for their happy endings.

There’s nothing really bad about picturing your life as a story.  Nils realizes that it’s more than a useful metaphor.  It’s an organizing scheme the brain uses to make sense of events and attach meaning to them.  It’s a built-in human need, and pursuing that need creates within us a sense of satisfaction.

If we use that need inappropriately, then our stories become fairy tales: sweet imaginings that charm and reassure children.  An addiction to stories that portray a false picture of the world is an expression of denial, a refusal to grow up, and a failure to take responsibility for our collective behavior.

If we continue to believe in the happy ending, then we will not avert the consequences of our actions.