AVOIDING THE SQUIRRELS

Although it probably won’t mean anything to anybody else, I have a fairly developed philosophy of life.  It works for me.  You’re welcome to any parts of it you might like.  I like to explain things with stories that everybody knows.  Goldilocks explains why this philosophy isn’t for everybody.  A lot of Papa Bears will think it’s too simple.  They’ll know a whole lot about some of the subjects I’ll touch on and criticize the work as too superficial.  There will also be a lot of Mama Bears who think it’s too complicated.  It talks about so many things and asks the readers for so much responsibility.  Well, it’s not written for either of these groups.  It’s written for those people who think it’s just about right.  In fact, the whole damn point is to find that place in your life that’s just about right, not too hard and not too easy.   And I don’t claim it’s original.  Some of it might be.  I don’t know.

I believe that human beings are only motivated by two things, love and fear.  Every positive thing you do is motivated by love.  In future posts I’ll expound upon this more fully.  Right now I want to talk more generally.  We face the decision between these two motivations every day.  Love is always the right choice and fear is always wrong.  Unfortunately we don’t choose love very often.  Love is hard.  It requires effort, risk, and responsibility.  Love involves change.  Fear is easy.  It means staying where you are, protecting yourself, and is easily justified.  Beware.

Sometimes in life there is an interesting phenomena.  We make a series of small decisions that all seem to be correct.  Then we look back and it turns out they led to a big mistake.  How can it be that a hundred small good decisions could lead you to a big mistake?  It hppens because those decisions were made out of fear.  Fear is insidious and very powerful because it always sounds so damn reasonable.  This is a deep vein, and I’ll be mining it a lot in the coming months.

Squirrels have a place in this philosophy too.  Squirrels always want you to choose fear.  They scare and manipulate you for their own gain.  They’re scared all the time and they want you to be scared too.  Pointing out these squirrly schemes is one of the reasons I have this blog.  Piss off a squirrel.  Spit in the face fear.  Go do something for love.

There are times that I can’t stand human beings.  The day after Thanksgiving is one of those times.  People are acting like fucking sheep.  A big group of corporate squirrels announce that everyone should go shopping and so the malls fill up.  Stores are opening at 4 am.  A guy was killed in a stampede caused by a Walmart opening their doors for business.  Enough already.  Lemmings.  Sheep.  Mindless workers in the ant hill.  Stop it.  Stop it right now.  Wake the fuck up.

I worked in retail.  I sat in on meetings.  I’m only going to explain this one time.  Big retail corporations make as much as 40% of their gross profit between TG and christmas.  They do this by getting you to buy shit you wouldn’t buy otherwise.  They probably can’t survive if you only buy the stuff you need or even want.  They need the christmas shopping season to sell you a bunch of other crap.  Their existence depends on it.  So they’ll do anything to make sure that happens.

Big retail operations know a lot about what makes people buy shit.  Everything from carpet color to music to smells in the store.  One of the things they know is that the earlier you start christmas shopping the more you are likely to spend.  The sheep who starts buying in Nov will buy more than the sheep who waits until 12/20.  So they try to get you out as early as possible.  They get the media and news sheep to do stories about the biggest shopping day on Friday after TG.  It isn’t.  The Saturday before christmas is.  It probably is about fourth or fifth largest.  But if you shop today you’ll probably spend more total dollars in the next month.

They also know that if they can get you in the door they stand a better chance of selling you shit.  So they have a few really good bargains.  This serves a second purpose because it means some morons will probably stand outside the store all night generating excitement and publicity.  Nice going.  You waited 32 hours outside a Best Buy to save $100 on a cheap laptop.  You made about 3 bucks an hour.  Fucking genius.  How impossibly stupid do you have to be to wait outside a Walmart all night when that Walmart is open EVERY OTHER FUCKING DAY OF THE YEAR!

I would like to announce here that the day after President’s Day is now Black and Blue Tuesday.  Everyone should spend that day hitting themselves over the head with a hammer.  People can line up outside Home Depot to buy special cheap hammers.  The networks can dispatch reporters to tell us that this what everyone is doing.  The aspirin companies will thrive.  If you’re a good loyal American and good Christian you’ll go grab your hammers and start whacking away.  I hear everyone is doing it.

I’ll soon post a more general christmas post.  Bet you can’t guess how I feel about that!

Bikers and  Martial Artists have something in common.  They are looking for a little calm and they need the presence of danger to focus them.  The following was posted on the XL list by Bill.  It explains it pretty well from the biker perspective and would be equally true of martial artists.  I must be particularly fucked up since I need both!

We have a wacky theory for why people like to ride motorcycles, and it goes

like this: The act of riding is a form of meditation, because the

concentration that’s required to safely ride a motorcycle tends to focus the

mind in a way that eliminates other mental distractions that might interfere

with the mission.  This creates a single-mindedness that, in effect,

displaces the continuous stream of thoughts that normally flow through our

consciousness.

Thoughts about what to eat, who to meet, and worries about the common

stresses of everyday life, such as pressures from work and home, disappear

from our minds during the ride, because the concentration that’s necessary

to focus on the ride pushes those thoughts far into the background.  The

result is that the mind becomes refreshed after a ride just like it would

after a session of formal meditation or a relaxing vacation.

Just like some people get “hooked” on meditation, motorcyclists get hooked

on riding because of the mental relief that it brings.  I wouldn’t be

surprised if someone discovers that endorphins or something are released

during the act of riding.  I’m sure you’ve noticed that you can’t “zone out”

on a motorcycle like you can when driving a car.  Riding safe means being

focused and alert at all times – which is one of the reasons why it’s so

important to stop and rest at frequent intervals when riding a motorcycle on

a long trip.

I like this idea.  It was written by Donella Meadows.

THOSE OF US WHO think the world needs saving-from environmental  destruction, rapacious greed, decaying morals, drugs, crime, racism, whatever-keep very busy crusading for our favorite remedies. Carbon taxes. Campaign reform.  The Endangered Species Act. A lower capital gains tax.  Strong regulation.  No regulation. You  know. That long list of mutually inconsistent Holy Grails with  which we like to hit each other over the head. There’s one solution to the world’s problems, however, that I never hear the frenzied activists suggest — slowing down.

Slowing down could be the single most effective solution to the  particular save-the-world struggle I immerse myself in-the struggle for  sustainability, for living harmoniously and well within the limits and laws of the Earth.  Suppose we weren’t in such a hurry. We could take time to walk instead of drive, to sail instead of fly. To clean up our messes. To discuss our plans throughout the whole community before we send in  bulldozers to make irreversible changes. To figure out how  many fish the ocean can produce before boats race out to beat other boats to whatever fish are left.  Suppose we went at a slow enough pace not only to smell the flowers, but to feel our bodies, play with children, look openly without agenda or timetable into the faces of loved ones.  Suppose we stopped gulping fast food and started savoring slow food, grown, cooked, served and eaten with care.  Suppose we took time each day to sit in silence.

I think, if we did those things, the world wouldn’t need much saving.  We could cut our energy and material use drastically, because  we would get the full good out of what we use. We wouldn’t have to buy so many things to save time. (Have you ever wondered, with all our timesaving paraphernalia, what happens to the time we save?)  We wouldn’t make so many mistakes. We could listen more and hurt each other less. Maybe we could even take time to reason through our favorite solutions, test them, and learn what their actual effects are.

Said Thomas Merton, who spent his time in a Trappist monastery: “There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist . . . most easily succumbs: activism and overwork . . .To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many people, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it  kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

A friend in India tells me that the onslaught of Western advertising in his country is a cultural blow, not so much because of the messages of the ads but because of their pace. The stun-the-senses barrage of all TV programming, especially ads, is antithetical to a thousands-year-old tradition of contemplation. I can imagine that.  I have been driven crazy by the somnolent pace at which things get done in India. Don’t these people know that time is money?  What they know, actually, is that time is life, and to go zooming through it is to miss living.

S l o w . . . d o w n. Do that first. Then, quietly, carefully, think about what else might need to be done.  The only problem with this cure is that I can’t prescribe it for others, because I have such trouble following it myself. It’s so easy to get swept up in the hurtling pace of the world. Like most of the other world-savers I know, I’m way too busy to eat well, sit quietly, take a vacation, or even, some days, think.

Edward Abbey, the great curmudgeon of environmentalism, knew better when  he said: “It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.  While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over . .  . those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.”

Good advice. Too bad I don’t have time to take it. I have to go save the world.