Corporations ARE people!!!

I had the lovely pleasure of spending Thanksgiving weekend out of town in the company of my brother and his family, and with a long, traffic-filled, construction-clogged bus ride home ahead of me, I settled down into the narrow seat, rested on my knees on the too-close seat in front of me, and put my ear buds in to catch up on some podcasts.  I skimmed through my selections and saw one from Radio West (http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/news.newsmain/article/184/0/1874647/RadioWest.(M-F..11AM..and..7PM)/111411.Living.on.a.Food.Stamp.Budget) about the Food Stamp Challenge.  


According to host Doug Fabrizio, if you are on a food stamp budget you have about $4 a day per person to eat.  That's about $1.33 per meal.  So the challenge was to put yourself on this budget and see how you did and to hopefully gain some empathy for those who are actually having to live on that kind of budget every day, all year.  Taking the challenge was chef Karl Wilder.  His focus on the challenge was not only to make the budgetary restraints but also to meet nutritional requirements, which he discovered was one of the more difficult parts of the challenge.  You can check out his musings on the process here:   (http://www.fusiononthefly.com/). 


We've all heard the tales of the woman pulling up to the grocery store in a Bentley and fur coat, then going into the grocery store to buy steak and lobster with her food stamps.  Many people calling into the podcast told stories of people waiting in front of grocery stores to sell their welfare cards, 50 cents on the dollar so they could, presumably, run off to buy cigarettes, booze, and blow.  When asked if doing the challenge changed his outlook on welfare recipients and his opinion of those that received welfare, he said (and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have a transcript), "absolutely.  What it opened my eyes to was that all welfare is corporate welfare.  Every person receiving food stamps is a worker who has been paid less so that corporations can pass on benefits to the stockholders.  Every person receiving food stamps has had their hourly wages knocked back or their hours cut so they can continue to meet their profit margins."  


My eyes snapped open from my semi-nap and it all started swirling in my head:  All welfare is essentially corporate welfare because all government assistance allows corporations to pay less in wages, benefits, and taxes.


So today I found this:

GAO’s audit of the Fed.

The biggest bailouts follow:

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Stearns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

France?  Did I read that right?  The U.S. government is bailing out banks in France and the UK?  Hmmm...

What if instead of that first entry being Citigroup, what if it said, "Medicare?"  And instead of JP Morgan receiving $391 billion right now, what if that said "education?"  JP Morgan, if you've been following the news that no one wants you to see, is in big trouble right now with the MF Global bankruptcy proceedings.  They can't quite seem to find $1.3 billion (yeah, that's with a "b."  Customer money that just may or may not have been used to hedge bets on bad European debt).  

And what about this notion of corporate personhood?  In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the John Robert's Supreme Court ruled that corporations indeed have the same rights as people.  I recently watched a documentary called "The Corporation" (http://www.thecorporation.com/) that asked this simple question:  If corporations are people, what kind of people are they?  

Below is a test for psychopathy.  I went ahead and took the test on behalf of the corporations, and according to my opinion of them (and that's just what it is, an opinion), they are psychopaths.  Psychopathy is defined as this:  a mental disorder in which an individual manifests amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.

I will close with this simple quote from Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh:

"In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, To hate, So we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us." 

It's time to go all zen on the government.  It's time to love it out of its madness.  It's time to stand up for your rights and not be a fly on the corporate monolith.  If the corporation has been given the same rights as you, then we should, in the eyes of the government, be equal.  Right?  

Test for Psychopathy

For each of the 20 characteristics, give a score of 0 if it does not apply, 1 if it applies partially and 2 if it is a perfect match.

1	Glib and Superficial Charm	The tendency to be smooth, engaging, charming, slick, and verbally facile. Psychopathic charm is not in the least shy, self-conscious, or afraid to say anything. A psychopath never gets tongue-tied. They have freed themselves from the social conventions about taking turns in talking, for example.
2	Grandiose Self-Worth	A grossly inflated view of one's abilities and self-worth, self-assured, opinionated, cocky, a braggart. Psychopaths are arrogant people who believe they are superior human beings.
3	Need for Stimulation or Proneness to Boredom	An excessive need for novel, thrilling, and exciting stimulation; taking chances and doing things that are risky. Psychopaths often have a low self-discipline in carrying tasks through to completion because they get bored easily. They fail to work at the same job for any length of time, for example, or to finish tasks that they consider dull or routine.
4	Pathological Lying	Can be moderate or high; in moderate form, they will be shrewd, crafty, cunning, sly, and clever; in extreme form, they will be deceptive, deceitful, underhanded, unscrupulous, manipulative, and dishonest.
5	Conning and Manipulativeness	The use of deceit and deception to cheat, con, or defraud others for personal gain; distinguished from Item #4 in the degree to which exploitation and callous ruthlessness is present, as reflected in a lack of concern for the feelings and suffering of one's victims.
6	Lack of Remorse or Guilt	A lack of feelings or concern for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims; a tendency to be unconcerned, dispassionate, coldhearted, and unempathic. This item is usually demonstrated by a disdain for one's victims.
7	Shallow Affect	Emotional poverty or a limited range or depth of feelings; interpersonal coldness in spite of signs of open gregariousness.
8	Callousness and Lack of Empathy	A lack of feelings toward people in general; cold, contemptuous, inconsiderate, and tactless.
9	Parasitic Lifestyle	An intentional, manipulative, selfish, and exploitative financial dependence on others as reflected in a lack of motivation, low self-discipline, and inability to begin or complete responsibilities.
10	Poor Behavioral Controls	Expressions of irritability, annoyance, impatience, threats, aggression, and verbal abuse; inadequate control of anger and temper; acting hastily.
11	Promiscuous Sexual Behavior	A variety of brief, superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate selection of sexual partners; the maintenance of several relationships at the same time; a history of attempts to sexually coerce others into sexual activity or taking great pride at discussing sexual exploits or conquests.
12	Early Behavior Problems	A variety of behaviors prior to age 13, including lying, theft, cheating, vandalism, bullying, sexual activity, fire-setting, glue-sniffing, alcohol use, and running away from home.
13	Lack of Realistic, Long-Term Goals	an inability or persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals; a nomadic existence, aimless, lacking direction in life.
14	Impulsivity	The occurrence of behaviors that are unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning; inability to resist temptation, frustrations, and urges; a lack of deliberation without considering the consequences; foolhardy, rash, unpredictable, erratic, and reckless.
15	Irresponsibility	Repeated failure to fulfill or honor obligations and commitments; such as not paying bills, defaulting on loans, performing sloppy work, being absent or late to work, failing to honor contractual agreements.
16	Failure to Accept Responsibility for Own Actions	A failure to accept responsibility for one's actions reflected in low conscientiousness, an absence of dutifulness, antagonistic manipulation, denial of responsibility, and an effort to manipulate others through this denial.
17	Many Short-Term Marital Relationships	A lack of commitment to a long-term relationship reflected in inconsistent, undependable, and unreliable commitments in life, including marital.
18	Juvenile Delinquency	Behavior problems between the ages of 13-18; mostly behaviors that are crimes or clearly involve aspects of antagonism, exploitation, aggression, manipulation, or a callous, ruthless tough-mindedness.
19	Revocation of Condition Release	A revocation of probation or other conditional release due to technical violations, such as carelessness, low deliberation, or failing to appear.
20	Criminal Versatility	A diversity of types of criminal offenses, regardless if the person has been arrested or convicted for them; taking great pride at getting away with crimes.
	TOTAL
	DIAGNOSIS	Hillary

Things That People Say

Subject: Actual quote from protesters occupying street of Toronto's stock market



"It's weird protesting on Bay Street. You get there at 9:00 A.M. and the


rich bankers who you want to hurl insults at and change their world view


have been at work for two hours already. And then when it's time to go,


they're still there! I guess that's why they call them the one per


cent. I mean, who wants to work those kinds of hours? That's the power


of greed."

So, if I'm reading this correctly, what I am to learn is this: 
1.  The glorification of slaving away to the almighty dollar is more relevant and exciting than say, being a stay at home parent.
2.  A teacher who spends hours (unpaid) and money (largely unreimbursed) outside of the classroom on behalf of their students is a chump for not getting absurd amounts of dough.
3.  An artist who gives many hours and dedication of their skills is largely a moot point in a society driven largely by megalomaniacs and corporate despots (supported, of course, by the Supreme Court, because you know, corporations are people, too).
4.  The people mentioned in the above quote are probably working 70 hours a week because they know that it is likely they will get fired and replaced by someone who is willing to sacrifice the precious minutes of their lives to their stockholders' bottom line.

Right.

"Money confers the power to command the labor of others. Love of money is love of power. And love of power is the root of evil."  Edward Abbey.

Occupying Wall Street

"Mike check!"  The organizer was standing on one of the marble-like tables in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, in fact the middle of the park was set up as a kind of control center.  On the several tables were tarps that were covering electronic equipment; computers, cell phones, and cables.  She was in her mid- twenties and had short spiky hair, one side of which was black, the other side dyed platinum blonde.

"Mike check!"  The crowd shouted back.  

The shouting banter continued back and forth as the organizer shouted and the protesters repeated verbatim:

"Mike check! 

"Mike check!"

"If you want.  To go to the bridge.  There is a group.  Forming here.  You will likely.  Get arrested.  We have legal.  Representation.  We will block.  The groups of marchers.  In the buses.  Who have already.  Been arrested.  Be kind.  And be careful."

I watched as a group of protesters formed a line on the other side of the control center and followed one of the organizers to march to the Brooklyn Bridge where the protesters were led out of the park to peacefully form a blockade to the buses full of the groups of protesters who had been arrested while walking peacefully over the bridge. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/02/us-wallstreet-protests-idUSTRE7900BL20111002.  They shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and managed to keep it shut for hours and hours.

Turns out I arrived at the party a little late.  And in fact, on the way to the protest, which is in a part of Manhattan I rarely visit, I got lost, of course, and wandered around in circles despite the fact that I set up the navigation app on my phone.  After about 20 minutes of fruitless searching, I decided to ask a New York police officer if he could help me out.  

Me:  Excuse me, officer, could you please direct me to Zuccotti Park?

Officer Friendly:  What do you wanna go there for?

Me:  Um, to check things out.

Officer:  There's nothing down there to see.  They got some flowers in there.

Me:  Nothing to check out?  What do you mean?

Officer:  They cleared out the park.  Nobody's down there.

Me:  What do you mean they cleared out the park?

Officer:  They all got arrested.

Me:  All of them?

Officer:  You can go down there if you want, but I'm telling you, nothing's going on.

He did give me directions to the park, but they were wrong, and whether that was purposeful or not I will not spend too much time pondering.  I finally found the park and was heartened to see a lot of people there. Young, old, babies, kids, handicapped, crazies, trannies, anarchists, hippies, and me.  

"Mike check!  NYPD.  Received a donation.  From JP Morgan.  Of $4.6 million.  Just today.  To keep us.  From protesting.  And to arrest us.  Jamie Dimon.  Wrote the check.  Call.  The mayor's office."

Jamie Dimon.  From Wikepedia:  As JPMorgan Chase's Chairman, President & CEO, Dimon oversaw the transfer of $25 billion in bailout funds from the US Treasury Department to JPMorgan Chase on October 28, 2008 via the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).^[16] This was the fifth largest amount transferred under Section A of TARP^[17] to help troubled assets related to residential mortgages.

JPMorgan Chase advertised in February 2009 that they would be using their capital base monetary strength to acquire new businesses,^[18] primarily due to the funds provided by TARP and in direct violation of TARP’s main intent; to help troubled assets related to residential mortgages and all obligations as spelled out in TARP.

Of the US's nine largest banks, JPMorgan Chase was arguably the second healthiest bank, and did not need to take TARP funds. In order to encourage smaller banks with troubled assets to accept this money, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson allegedly coerced the CEOs of the nine largest banks to accept TARP money under short notice.^[20] JPMorgan Chase was also the first of the largest banks to repay the TARP money.

So apparently, Dimon has absolutely  no trouble taking taxpayer money but does have trouble when people peacefully protest his and his colleagues' positively reprehensible behavior.  See, capitalism and democracy are what made Dimon rich.  They are what made the average Wall Street bankers salary of $88,000 a year possible.  You know what bankers do?  They go to lunches, sit around enormous conference tables and have lunches that cost over $600 for sandwiches and fruit plates.  They talk to each other.  They ruminate about poetry and talk about Willy Loman and China and speculate about gold and ETFs.  But they don't actually DO anything.  They complain loudly and openly about how they can't get anyone to come up and do some painting because those cursed union rules won't allow a worker who is not a painter to paint.  They bemoan that their gilded offices aren't clean enough.  They carp about regulation.  They read charts.  They steal ideas from each other.  

The ground was littered with signs all in the midst of creation, some saying "report your boss to the IRS", "Wall Street is oozing corruption," "How about a student loan bailout," and a poster with the hourly salaries of the Bank of America CEO ($970) and the CEO of AT&T ($13,670) among others.  This is called Occupy Wall Street and it is called that for a reason.  It is like a Hooverville (appropriate, in my estimation); people are living there.  Their belongings were covered with clear plastic or tarps, and you could see sleeping bags, food, pillows, blankets, chairs, books.  And it had all the markings of not only a peaceful protest but also a Grateful Dead show, minus the VW vans and people selling dancing bears.  

There was joy there!  So much joy!  Edward Abbey, the great curmudgeon and defender of the American west and who, in my opinion, has only had his opinions proven posthumously, said this in his work of beauty, Desert Solitaire:  "Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless."

Wall Street, you lack courage.  Show me a joyful banker.

As I was taking the train home, I was reading from Desert Solitaire (1968) and found these words also fitting:

"Suppose you were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people - the following preparations would be essential:

1.  Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance.

2.  Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities.  Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen, and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment.

3.  Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth.  Large masses of people are more easily manipulated and dominated than scattered individuals (The Repubs trying to close down Planned Parenthoods and end abortions.  Sound familiar?).

4.  Divert attention from deep conflicts within the society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test of loyalty.

5.  Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns.

6. Raze the wilderness.  Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts, and improve the national parks into national parking lots.

Abbey goes on to say that it feels like a feeble and helpless protest.  But I disagree.  It's not.   And if you say you can't change anything you're just lazy.  And a pussy.  There are things we can do EVERY DAY to make this world a better place.  I have a long list of things that I try to do every day that I won't bore you with and some days I am definitely better than others, but I TRY.  That's the point.  I try.  And today I took my butt down to Liberty and Broad to Zuccotti Park where I stood with other people who are also TRYING to do something about this crazy, contracting earth.  We listened to drum circles and when they sky opened up and dropped thick, heavy rain, we danced.  The drummers continued their rhythmic, almost primal pounding and I danced until I was soaked and then I danced more.  

It's my first amendment right, see, to dance in a park to a drum circle.  And it's also my first amendment right, Officer Friendly, to peaceably assemble with fellow citizens.  And I'll go back to that park and hopefully dance some more.

So don't give up on anything, whether this is your kind of battle or not.  Fight for what you believe in and never think for one moment that nothing changes.  Because it does.  Constantly.

Enjoying Apple Pie...Seeds and All

I am absolutely fascinated by the Tea Party.  I stare at them on the news absolutely transfixed.  They are a shiny object, I want to pick them up and put them in my pocket.  What I find the most interesting about them is the clarion call of "taking back America" and I wonder, often, what that would mean.  


I keep hearing about a return to values and the good 'ole days and my monkey mind instantly conjures up June Cleaver vacuuming her already perfectly clean floor in her adorable dress, heels, and pearls.  I'm not saying that's wrong; there is a part of me that would love to stay home (minus pearls and cleaning) and spend my day inhaling the lovely aroma of the apple pie cooling in the window sill.


Hey, I got an idea!  Let's borrow Doc Brown's and Marty McFly's DeLorean and go Back in Time with Huey Lewis and see what's happening in the 50's and then it bring it back.  Come on!


Hmm.  I like it here.  It's pre-1973, pre-oil crisis, and pre-automobile emission control rules, so I see a lot of American cars:  Buick Roadmasters, Cadillacs, and Pontiacs are thick on the road here, in fact, some 80 million of them.  You don't really see any foreign cars...well, you do see a few VW Beetles, but you won't see a ton of those until the 60's.  Of course, our American cars get horrible gas mileage and they don't have seatbelts, but thankfully, American car makers have really stepped up to the plate in our decade, manufacturing the Ford Fiesta, the Chevy Cruze, and the Ford Focus.


Oh, but wait, I'm hungry.  I want to sit in this diner and have some breakfast, so I think I'm going to order some corn flakes.  I love corn flakes.  The cute waitress calls me "hon" and let's me read the ingredients on the side of the box.  I enjoy reading the box while I eat cereal.  Whew, what a relief, no high fructose corn syrup.  Monsanto is around but they're busy making agent orange and not genetically modified seed, they won't do that until 1997, so I feel okay eating this.  See, high fructose corn syrup has 14% fructose, much more than regular corn syrup.  It disrupts your metabolism and messes with the insulin and leptin levels that regulate your appetite control.  No wonder drinking diet coke always makes me hungry.  HFCS doesn't tell you when you're full, so you keep eating more.  It may also promote weight gain because our bodies make fat from fructose more readily than from other kinds of sugar (The Journal of Clinical Nutrition).  It also elevates your triglycerides, which put you at greater risk for heart disease.


There is so much obesity in the United States that I honestly wonder that if we, in our time, were to stop giving subsidies to the corn growers which in turn encourage them to grow more corn (journalist and agriculture industry critic Michael Pollan points out that "all the corn needed for HFCS depletes soil nutrients which increase the need for pesticides and fertilizers") that we would have less high fructose syrup in our food (and really, it's in EVERYTHING) and as a result would be thinner?  


That would be a great burden off of Medicare, who treat millions of people who are older and suffer from obesity related ailments, such as heart disease and Type II diabetes.  Obesity rates have increased 214% since 1950.  Only 28% of Americans in our time are at healthy weight.  In the year 2000, it cost $117 billion to treat obesity related diseases.  That's money we could put toward the national debt.


The tea party loves to talk about fiscal responsibility, and I think part of fiscal responsibility is also being personally responsible.  We can help that in our time by buying organically grown, local foods and supporting small farmers, which could certainly be considered a small business.  And if the Republicans are right, small businesses are the driving force of our economy.  We should help them out.


I'm full from corn flakes and I see this super adorable family walking together.  It's early, so I guess they're going to work.  Let's see where they're going.  I hop off my stool and follow them down the street.  I bet he's off to work at a factory of some kind.  In 1950, America was the manufacturing superpower with the strongest and largest middle-class in world history.  25% of workers were a unionized private work force and approximately 50% of Americans had pensions.  That's really different from today, where the unions have fallen to 7% and only 6% have a pension.


From Wikipedia:  "Employee benefit plans proliferated in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Strong unions bargained for better benefit packages, including tax-free, employer-sponsored health insurance. Wartime (1939-1945) wage freezes imposed by the government actually accelerated the spread of group health care. Unable by law to attract workers by paying more, employers instead improved their benefit packages, adding health care.

Government programs to cover health care costs began to expand during the 1950s and 1960s. Disability benefits were included in social security coverage for the first time in 1954. When the government created Medicare and Medicaid programs in 1965, private sources still paid 75 percent of all of the health care costs. By 1995, individuals and companies only paid for about half of the health care with the government responsible for the other half."  

Well, let's look at taxes during the 1950's.  Surely, there must be something wrong with that era.  Hmmm...during the Eisenhower (R) administration, the top marginal tax rate was 91%.  Whoawhoawhoa!  That sounds like way too much, even for me.  Let's look closer (from Politico):


"So in 1955, for example, when the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent, that was the tax rate owed on a person's income over $300,000. That person would, however, pay 20 percent on the first $2,000 of income; 21 percent on the next $2,000 in income; 24 percent on the next $2,000 and graduated on up to the highest rate. On average, a person making, say, $500,000 would pay substantially less than 90 percent of their income in federal taxes.

The top marginal tax rates peaked in 1952 and 1953 at 92 percent for income over $300,000."

The top marginal tax rates paid by the richest Americans were far higher in the 1950s than they are now. In 2009, the top marginal rate was 35 percent on income above $372,958."

I think that's a great idea to bring back to our time!  A wonderful ideal!  The Tea Party would have that right if that's what they actually meant.  Go back in time, bring the 1950's back in the DeLorean (minus the segregation and other travesties of the mid-century) and plug it into 2011.  Workers would have rights again!  We would be eating healthier foods, driving American cars, and people earning lots of money would pay their fair share!

Bernie Sanders (I) Vermont is a hell of a firebrand.  He talked on the news today about shared sacrifice among all Americans, rich and poor, and that's an ideal that really appeals to me.  Post World War II, Americans were a cohesive, can-do group.  We had won the war and there was nothing we couldn't do.  Women went to work to support the war effort.  I heard stories from my aunts about not being able to wear nylons during the war years because the government needed the nylon.  The president said, "no nylon," and out it went.  


If that's part of this idyllic time, why can't the Tea Party stand behind that?  Why not support our neighbors and farmers and local businesses instead of caving in to monoliths like Wal-Mart (who are very good at running Mom & Pop businesses right out of business)?  Instead I read on the news about Tea Party presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann signing a pledge to eliminate porn and gay marriage.  She, and the Tea Party, are really missing the point.  It's not about wedge issues like abortion or pornography.  It's about shared sacrifice, a willingness to work toward better means for all of us, not just the bottom lines of the corporations.


After spending some time in the 1950's I'm a little depressed.  It seems that life is just more complicated in 2011, I mean, there are more of us.  Detroit, a former manufacturing superpower is practically in ruins, no one wants to pay taxes and no one cares.   We want our food cheap so we shop at Wal-Mart where all the trinkets are made in China and the food is shipped in from all over the world (doing great damage to our environment) covered in pesticides and pumped full of hormones.  


Our 2011 entitlement runs deep.  

In fact, our parents, who likely grew up in the 50's and 60's told us we could have what they had and even better.  

But I don't think we can.  Not unless we change our minds.  We want to have our 1950's notions but it doesn't seem to work in our current world.  We are the overweight adult trying to fit into our high school jeans.  They just don't fit.  But they can, if we look to the ideals and policies of the 1950's as an example and take personal responsibility for the well-being of OUR country: Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Rastafarian, Buddhist, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish.

All right, kids, back in the DeLorean, it's time to go back to the future. 

Veto Power and the Big C

A friend and I were walking down the street when he noticed my cellphone doing a serious peek-a-boo out of my pocket.   The conversation went something like this:
He: Hey, you should zip up the pocket.  Your cellphone is gonna fall out, or someone could grab it."
I:  Hm...I never even thought of that (zipping pocket).
He:  I think about that all the time.  What DO you think about when you're walking down the street?
I:  Nothing, really.

Turns out I am totally wrong, that in fact, when I walk around thinking I'm thinking about nothing, my brain, the unconscious, abyssian part of my brain, is doing all kinds of cartwheels on my behalf.  I just finished Incognito, The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman. You know when you think you have an "a-HA!" kind of moment, and then you're so proud of yourself for coming up with a long elusive solution?  Think again.  Turns out that when you hit the wall with a problem, your brain continues to recruit cells which in turn are recruiting more cells which in turn are hammering away at your problem, millions of little minions working away in the sweatshop of your brain.  Then when you're washing your hair in the shower you think "Hazzah!  I'm a genius!"  Er...nope.  You're not.  Turns out your minions solved your problem and then delivered it to you on a silver platter.

Today was a little different.  I was wandering midtown with a brain full of stuff and I started thinking about Joseph Campbell, who for some reason started me thinking about the Buddha, which reminded me of a Facebook status I had seen earlier, which in turn led me to the journal section at the Borders where I saw a journal that said on its cover "Happiness depends on ourselves (Aristotle)," which led me back to the Philosophy section where I mulled over which Joseph Campbell to buy.  Turns out I bought The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Something that has come up so frequently in my recent readings is the idea that our human experience, though we are completely egocentric whether we want to be or not, is shared.  Every bit of it.  Campbell points out that we (walking around with our cellphones glued to our heads and our Ipod cords stuffed in our ears) are composed of the same DNA and biological desires as our IPhone app deprived brothers and sisters of 30,000 years ago.  Graham Hancock, in his book Supernatural, brought this to my attention first:  In France, cave paintings from 30,000 years ago are composed of essentially the same images of caves in Africa and Mexico and 10,000 years later.  Without the aid of airplanes, how could this have happened?  How can people in Africa copy the cave paintings of the ones done millenia earlier in France?  Hancock posits that these images are released from our DNA through the Spirit Molecule (DMT) by partaking of hallucinogens such as ayahuasca.

From wiki:  "Campbell's term monomyth, also referred to as the hero's journey, refers to a basic pattern found in many narratives from around the world. Campbell expressed the idea that the whole of the human race could be seen as reciting a single story of great spiritual importance. As time evolves, this story gets broken down into local forms, taking on different guises (masks) depending on the necessities and social structure of the culture that interprets it. Its ultimate meaning relates to humanity's search for the same basic, unknown force from which everything came, within which everything currently exists, and into which everything will return and is considered to be “unknowable” because it existed before words and knowledge. He did believe, as he clearly stated in the Power of Myth, in a SPECIFIC STRUCTURE THAT EXISTS IN THE PSYCHE AND IS SOMEHOW REFLECTED INTO MYTHS (caps added).

We all know the Christian/Hebrew creation myth, so I won't bore you with that, but looking for commonalities I stumbled upon a site that listed 20+ creation myths.  I read the Hopi and the Huron.  Basically the same story with a different cast of characters.  So, who made it up?  Who's the copycat?  Is it possible that they're all correct, that ultimately, it doesn't even matter?

So if I get this right, what I'm hearing is this:  Genesis, the Hopi, the Huron, Roman and Greek mythologies, the cave paintings at Lascaux, images and stories from all over the world are all eerily similar?

The first of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths is this:  Life means suffering.  You may have been neglected by your parents and suffer from low self-esteem, may be compelled to gamble away your savings, may compulsively look at pornography, may cheat on your spouse, may eat waaaaayyyy too much when you know better, may have an eating disorder, maymaymaymaymay....pick a may, any may.  

But that's the good news, right?  WE ALL SUFFER!  How wonderfully liberating to know that we are not alone, that though we feel in the big part of our brain that NO ONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD HAS EVER FELT LIKE THIS that you're wrong.  Very wrong.  There are millions, perhaps tens of millions or more that have experienced or will experience what we are going through right now.

Now back to Eagleman.  He spoke of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and how he wrote  Kubla Khan while high on opium.  Coleridge claimed that he didn't really write it at all, in fact, many artists, poets, composers, etc. have said that their creations had nothing to do with them, that they were merely vessels for something bursting out of them, with or without the aid of opium.  So, who wrote it then?  Coleridge or the opium?  Eagleman goes on to say that really, we (the we that we think we are) don't really have much control over anything, from the mates we choose to the jobs we pursue.  The lizard brain is running the show. 

What we do have, however, is veto power.  As in the case of Anthony Weiner (heheheh...weiner), a seemingly bright, dedicated politician put it all on the line to send pictures of his well...weiner...to women he followed on the internet, putting his career and marriage in serious jeopardy.  I thought to myself, "how can a such a smart guy, who has been in office a long time and is clearly adroit in the political arena do something so effing stupid!?" 

Call it lizard brain versus conscious mind.  Conscious mind equals veto power.  There is so much going on in these cranial domes of ours (the neurons that activate neurons that activate neurons are so numerous as to be more than all the stars in any galaxy we are aware of) that we need the veto, we need our illusions, we need our myths to be a primer for survival, a map for our journeys.

Then I saw the journal that said "Happiness depends upon ourselves."  And I bought it with a gift card given to me for my recent birthday.  My big mind vetoed putting it on my credit card.

I Went Without it and it Felt Real Real Good

There is something in my life with which I have a love/hate relationship.  Well, a few things actually, but this blog is going to focus on something small.  This is what I wrote on March 3, 2011:  "There's this little, inanimate object that has all kinds of power over us, yet we treat it badly.  We throw it, drop it, lose it, then curse it when it no longer does what we want it to do.  It will give you directions, tell you where you should eat, lets you listen to its music, plays games with you, and lets you talk to it.  It cunningly teaches you to love it, to hold it, to constantly be with you, to get its little clingy fingers in every nook of your life.  If only it weren't so indifferent.  I have become chattel to its winning ways, constantly checking its little green blinking light for news!  That little green light that sends that adrenaline inducing buzz that promises 'A message!  An email!  A phone call!  Someone is thinking of me!  Oooh, Delta is having a fare sale!'"

It's practically science fiction.  You touch it and voila!  The universe is in your hands!  "Where do you want to eat, do you want to play Angry Birds oh look you haven't seen the movie Rio touch here to see Rio you haven't played Words with Friends for two hours you better refresh your gmail oh, look!  An update!  I better check my Facebook what if you missed something on Facebook remember the tranny that you took a picture of send that picture now who cares if your boss is nearby why haven't you heard from so and so it seems weird that you haven't gotten a text from so and so in 34 minutes oh wow it's 32 degrees outside is it gonna rain tomorrow you better check the weather oohhh I know you want thai food right now you better get thai."

I was tired of being chattel to its capricious whims so I made a decision to go 24 hours technology free.  I wrapped up some loose ends, told the people that I speak with on a daily basis that I was "leaving the matrix," and at midnight Saturday turned my phone off.  That also included my computer, so no email, phone, text, or Facebook.  Surprisingly, before I physically shut the phone down I had a moment of anxiety, like "what if I miss something?  Will people forget me if I don't communicate with them for 24 hours?"  This, my friends, is the definition of addiction:  "The state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that psychologically or physically habit-forming."  I have a dear friend, who no lie, people, went to the doctor for numbness in her thumb, only to be prescribed hand therapy because she had a case of "Blackberry Thumb."  It was time to walk away.

So that's what I did.  Literally.  I put on my Adidas, yoga pants, and baseball cap, put my hair in pigtails and hit the pavement.  21,000 steps worth of pavement, which with my little stride equals about 10 miles.  I did listen to my ipod (I figured that could be the exception since I couldn't actually communicate with it).  I didn't once think about turning on my phone (which I did have with me, just in case...this is New York City).  I took the trail that runs along the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan.  In my neighborhood in upper Washington Heights, there were a few bikers, a few rollerbladers, but not a lot of people.  As I traveled further south, I started noticing families having picnics, a father and young son fishing together, a younger gentleman and his grandfather having a small barbeque, young lovers canoodling in the grass.  I saw a young woman making a sash from dandelions, families pushing babies in strollers.  The Hudson, being whipped about by the wind, seemed to be flowing in two directions, both north and south, and the warmth of the sun was being held in check by the wind, nature working symbiotically.  Inhaling, the brackish water, the earth wet with black soil, the carpets of green moss growing on the rocks were practically palpable.  I wanted to stop and run my fingers through the water, to see if it felt smooth like it does in the mountains.

In fact, I was so nicely not distracted by my phone that I felt instantaneously unburdened.  And I had set the rules, not the other way around.  In fact, I put off having a phone for a few years because I didn't want people to be able to get a hold of me all the time.  It wasn't until my ex-husband convinced me to get one because I was commuting 90 minutes each way through mountainous passes. 

Now I let my electronic pet solve all my problems.  I can even blame it for things.  

I thought yesterday of being a kid, before the ubiquitousness of phones:  I came home when it got dark, if I had to call my parents I did it from a pay phone.  I used my problem solving skills.  Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I am not a parent.  You so often hear how the world is so changed from when we were kids, and I posit that yes, it is technologically different,  but how is it intrinsically different?  Why is not safe to let your kids ride their bikes around the neighborhoods?  Are the people driving no longer capable of not hitting children on bikes?  Why do parents no longer let kids go door to door for say, Girl Scout Cookies?  Is there a kidnapper lurking behind every door?  What about trick-or-treating?  Ringing doorbells has been replaced by trunk-or-treats, where instead of walking around the neighborhood, parents park their cars in a parking lot, generally a church parking lot (talk about circling the wagons) and the kids walk from car to car. Are we raising a bunch of wimps?!  Have we made the kids so completely dependent on instruction from the adults in their lives via cell phone that they are incapable of figuring things out on their own?

I will also list the contrary argument in all fairness:  My friends who have a teenager said that they put off giving their daughter a cellphone for the longest time, but once all of her friends got phones, she was left out of the group because she was unable to communicate with them via text message.  So, she got the phone, and now she's in the loop with her friends.  This I can understand.

I have to say this:  the people who invented these phones and the companies that charge us for them have tapped into something which at it's core is essentially human.  They have provided us with these overpriced objects (my phone was $400!!!) that promise us many things:  "We will bring you closer to your family, you can be in touch with your loved ones at all times, we can even save your life if you fall in a well or get kidnapped.  We will be here for you."  They have exploited our need to feel special, if only for the duration of blinking indicator light. 

After my 24 hours, I turned my phone back on.  Nothing to report.  No blinking indicator light.  But the addiction is not ended.  I find myself, even now, looking at my phone every few minutes to see if that little green light is winking at me. 

Sorry, gotta go!  Got a text!

Mindfulness-ish

I have a project this year.  I call it my "Mindfulness Project/Being Present/Being Open" (whatever I feel like calling it that day.  To that end, I always have four books in my bag:  one for fun reading, one that furthers my education for this project, and two notebooks; one for freewriting and one for for gratitude, etc.  (Yes,  my bag is heavy).  Over the course of this project so far, I have taken up meditation, am re-reading "A Course in Miracles", gone to Shaman Circles, participated in the Paradox Process, and have had the pleasure of familiarizing myself with remarkable thinkers like Hahn, Castaneda, Hancock, Chopra, Huston Smith, Ram Dass, and a few others.  I have experienced very powerful, healing things that I don't know I would have tried had I not been working on this project.

I like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness.

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way;
On purpose,
in the present moment, and
nonjudgmentally.”

 Needless to say, I'm trying.  But when I woke up this morning (as my mother would say) "on the wrong side of the bed," I just didn't feel justified in being grumpy, sad, tired, exhausted, anxious, and a little depressed.  So I took great malicious joy in slamming down my coffee mug (well, setting down forcefully...don't want to break anything...), brushed my hair with lock-yanking glee, and brushed the gums right off my teeth.  It was like this creature was inside of me saying, "ooohhhh...yes...throw something, be mad, who do you want to piss off?"  That unhinged glee turned into roiling anxiety as I walked to the train, and then I started to feel sick.  Like angry sick.


What the hell? 


This is not thinking from the higher places.

Later, I sat down on the 8th floor of the Marriott Midtown and decided to try to figure out what was going in my body and brain.  I started to just write and then realized that it didn't matter what I wrote because I already knew. 

My ego was being a little bitch.  It was like she took up in the sandbox of my mind and knocked down all of the beautiful little sandcastles I had constructed sooooo carefully  (which, by the way, is also ego, though maybe with a smaller "e").  And I was observing her decimating them, saying "well, there goes that chapter about the assemblage point, oh!  Damn, I loved that part in "Be Here Now,"  heheheheh...she's on one...funny little ego."  Not once did I say to her, "Yo...ego...you're messing up my castles.  I built those.  How 'bout you step off?" 

If I'm learning right, the trick to being present in that imagined moment would have been to simply sit in the sand and not construct anything at all, to be there with the tantrum throwing brat and let her scream.  Thich Nhat Hahn says in his book "Be Here Now" (so good, beautifully written and touching) that (and I'm paraphrasing) when you feel a strong emotion, you should be with it and hold it like you would a small child.  Treat the powerful feelings gently.

A friend of mine asked me the other day if I had noticed any changes with my reading and practices, and I said "yes.  I can't control anything.  Not that I ever could, but doing this just helps me to be okay with the not having control part." 

I breathe, I think, I imagine, I become.  Ish.

 

 

A Purposeful Reach

I am captivated by the simple gesture that touches another; the hand reaching across the table to brush away the fleck of make-up from the cheek, agile fingers delicately pulling a stray hair from the weave of a sweater, the mother as she straightens her son's collar, smiling absently as her hands gently pull this way and that, the firm hands that pry open the curious puppy's jaws, the fingers of lovers as they search the darkness of their shared bed to intertwine, the touch that confirms that, yes, I will be here when you wake.

My heart expands and groans.  Oh- it hurts sometimes to feel such love, to be the receiver of such a simple life-affirming gesture.  "I see you," it cries!  "We are here together and in this moment I am showing you my love by placing tenderly that stray lock of hair behind your ear, by closing the coat buttons that may let in the cold, by calling out as the door is closing behind you, don't forget your umbrella!"

Love is so simple yet so burdened.  What would happen if we loved unequivocally for 2 minutes?  Then five minutes.  Then five minutes more?  Would our days be filled with these gestures for mothers, sons, daughters, partners, fathers, teachers, friends, or would our expressions be those of manipulation, to get their love to quiet our screaming needs?

And when that love, that truthful gesture is withdrawn -- how the pain seeps costively, like sap from a diseased tree.  Should the tree be felled, what would the rings reveal?  Many gestures of beauty, ring over ring concentrically circling, or would our betrayals, betrayals to us and by us, ensconce the love already grown?  The darkness of duplicity only reigns in the fallen tree.  The tree that stands knows that love will always circle through.  It intuitively turns its leaves toward the sun, reaches its roots deep into the earth, and has no choice but to grow.

Written in the Sky

The sky is burning orange and the plane defies all laws of rationality as it rockets toward the deep of the Pacific.  By reason, this plane should not disobey gravity, my eyes should not turn particles of dust and rays of sun into the brilliant orange and pink that burns with temerity through slightly swollen, grey fingered clouds.

The plane lurches then drops over the mountain tops, whose snow capped peaks seem too close.  It rights itself, though the frame still shudders and my hand moves jauntily with the vacillation of the plane.  Now, a moment of smoothness as we move through a dense, smoke colored fog.  The lights on the wing blink in the darkness and I feel almost safe.

How is that I must go west to go east?  An ember of sunset burns through and the wisps of cloud evaporate like vapor.

We move through the clouds and the plane is now only lurching occasionally. I am seeking the remnant of day through my window.  My forehead presses against the cold plexiglass as I wonder, how many things had to happen in order for me to be right here, right now?  How many hands moved on my behalf unseen, to bring me here, seatbelted into this seat, hurtling through cottony grey to land next to the ocean, only to retrace my path toward home?

The sun has fled and only a string of silvery white shows that the sun ever shone and I now I most certainly belong to the night.  The dark will not claim me, for tomorrow I will step away from this ominous tube and reclaim the ground beneath me.  Now we ascend the grey and the sun once again reigns, claiming victory as its right.

This plane could fall from the sky and I could lie in pieces on the desert floor, returned to my natural state.  Without being present, what would survive? A cloud is laid flat like a plate with an incongruity of seeming trees sprouting from it and the sunset burns like a fire beneath it.  Impermanence is evident here (although by its very name it can't be known) but I know that this plane will not reject me from its womb, that tomorrow I will decide what to make of my clouds.  What form shall they take?

An unholy grid of lights erupts underneath and Las Vegas mushrooms in all its garish glory.  Perhaps the heat of the desert floor burned the clouds through; the sky is clean like flint.  Still, the wing lights blink, the plane steadies, and I press my head against the window, watching the final descent of the sun.

Why Rich People Win Maseratis

There is a woman I know who is quite wealthy.  I'm guessing that she has pretty much everything she needs and/or wants and when she passes from this world, she'll probably have trouble getting rid of it.  So, one day, as this lovely woman was passing through Grand Central, she saw a drawing to win a Maserati.  Like the car.  A car which, at minimum, costs $120,000 American dollars.  So, she puts her name in the box, thinking to herself, ooohhhh!!!  How fun!, and BOOM.  Wins the Maserati.  Now let's create someone fictitious, say someone who walks by that same drawing and thinks to themselves, "I have to have that car.  If I win that car I can sell it and pay all my bills."  They put their name in the box, too, but they don't win.  It all seems really unfair, right, that the woman who doesn't need it is the one who wins it?  She doesn't NEED the money.  She has no attachment to the outcome.  She just thinks, "wouldn't it be fun to win a Maserati?"  And she does.

This is the Law of Attraction at work.

I'm sure I've got some eye-rollers already, saying, but Erin, think about how many people put their name in that box and the mathematical possibilities in winning, etc.  This is no Secret (that repugnant Rhonda Byrne book that posited, you know, like, if you're in a parking lot and you can't find a good spot, just think about it and you'll get a good parking space).  The Law of Attraction is a metaphysical belief that "like attracts like,” that positive and negative thinking bring about positive and negative physical results, respectively.  According to the Law of Attraction, the phrase "I need more money" allows the subject to continue to "need more money". If the subject wants to change this they would focus their thoughts on the goal (having more money) rather than the problem (needing more money). This might take the form of phrases such as "I will make more money" or "I will find a job that pays very well".

And it takes work.  After listening to an MP3 on the Sedona Method, the founder, whose name I can't remember, said something like this (totally paraphrasing, by the way):  Say your feelings are like a barrel of apples, and in the bottom of that barrel are bad apples.  So, one day you have a good day and you put good apples in on top of the bad ones, but it doesn't matter, because unless you get rid of the bad apples it will spoil the rest of the barrel.  Okay.  Simple enough.  Or is it?

I'm not rich.  I get by.  But sometimes I get behind.  And that is when a bad apple gets thrown in that barrel.  I think to myself, "Oh my gosh, I forgot to pay that bill."  Bad apple.  "It's way past due!"  Bigger bad apple.  "DAMMIT, THERE GOES THAT GOOD CREDIT SCORE I'VE BEEN BUSTING MY BALLS FOR!!"  Biggest baddest wormiest apple.  Say we took that same information and looked at it like this:  "Oops, I forgot to pay that bill."  Bad apple.  "I will pay as much as I can right now." Take out the bad apple.  "Next month I'll be sure to pay it on time."  Put in a good apple.

In order to attract the things that we want, we have to be vigilant about eliminating these "bad apples" (and when you think about those apples, they could be both literal, as in people, or figurative, as in emotions).

Dr. Wayne Dyer said this:  "Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change."

In Ask and it is Given, the book on the Law of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks, they list an emotional guidance scale (#1 being joy/knowledge/empowerment/freedom/love/appreciation and the last, #22 being fear/grief/depression/despair/powerlessness) and give you some simple exercises that correspond with those emotions.  One of my favorite exercises is so simple and can be done anywhere:  "The Rampage of Appreciation", which is where you can be in line at the grocery store or post office and just appreciate what's around you.  This very act helps you to be present (I mean, it's hard to worry about the future or dwell on the past while judging a woman for wearing a bad pair of mom jeans).   And while I don't claim to know that much about the philosophy behind why being present is so very important, I can only say what we all intuitively understand:  the past can't be changed and the future is not yet here, so we must take this moment, the present, to look people in the eye, and be grateful for the company of others and ourselves.