The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Essays

Confessions of a Jesus Freak

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1970s One Way PinI grew up in an Evangelical Christian home. My family attended Northwest Christian Church in Decatur, Illinois, and some of my earliest memories are of riding in the backseat of my parents’ car on the way to Sunday Morning services, singing “church songs.”

Northwest was part of a decentralized “non-denominational” denomination that arose from something called the Restoration Movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Their aim was to restore Christianity to its earliest roots, under the credo “Where the Bible speaks, we speak, and where the Bible is silent, we’re silent.” Although each of the Christian Churches (or Churches of Christ, as they were sometimes called) was independent of any central denominational authority, they were associated with each other through educational institutions and informal networking between the congregations. In our region, Lincoln Christian College (now Lincoln Christian University) was the predominant center of the faith, along with a campground retreat called Little Galilee Christian Assembly, near Clinton, Illinois.

By the time I was in elementary school, I would spend a week each summer at Little Galilee, and once in high school, I would also volunteer at camp, spending as much time there as possible during the summer months. I remember the smell of fresh air, the warm sunshine, the jovial family atmosphere in the dining hall, the bracing refreshment of the pool, the quiet serenity of evening Vespers Service near the lake, pop and candy bars from the canteen, and the sweet possibility of holding a pretty girl’s hand on the long walk to campfire at the end of the day. I was also one of the kids who actually loved Bible study.

Most of all, though, I loved the fellowship, and in particular the fellowship of singing together. There were countless moments of pure joy, caught up in the feeling that we were all one, united in love and bliss.

I was a good little Christian boy, and took seriously what I had been taught – that it was our responsibility to help others find salvation from the fires of hell by accepting Jesus as their Lord, getting baptized, studying their Bible, and doing their best to understand it correctly and live their lives accordingly.

Sometimes we would ride a bus from camp into a nearby town with paperback copies of the New Testament to give away (in a new English translation called Good New for Modern Man). We would go to a shopping center or other public place, and try to strike up conversations with people, offering them the Good News, and inviting them to learn more. We called it “witnessing.”

I stuck to the script, and shared the Bible quotes saying that “all have sinned” and the “wages of sin are death” and that “God so love the world that he sent his only Son” to redeem us from those sins and save from the death we so rightly deserved. But in my heart what I truly wanted to share with people was that feeling of unity and love.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, in case you haven’t heard, a lot of people were turning away from traditional ideas, traditional mores and traditional styles. Clean cut kids trying to recruit people to church were just about as square as you could get. Then somehow, overnight, we weren’t quite so clean cut anymore.

The Jesus Movement, as it came to be called, started on the West Coast as Hippies and other young people began to turn to religion in hopes of finding what they had not found elsewhere. They (mostly) left the drugs behind, but brought with them a healthy portion of counterculture ethics and aesthetics, and suddenly “Jesus People” or “Jesus Freaks” seemed to be blazing their trails everywhere. I was quick to catch the spirit.

We had our own style, our own way of speaking, our own sense of priorities and (most important to me) our own music. One of the very first songs I learned to play on guitar was Two Hands as performed by Children of the Day. I wore a “One Way” pinback on my guitar strap and long bangs covering my eyes, as summertime sweat soaked a chambray work shirt and moistened the dust on a pair of rope sandals.

“They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love” was almost a protest song. Traditional churches had gotten it all wrong, and we were going to change that. As teenagers, we knew better than our parents, and certainly better than the stuffy ministers and elders, with their rules and their neckties and their Brylcreem hair. We were sure that we knew better, and we were also sure that we were better. In our superiority, we were free in our condemnation of their hypocrisy – and their general lack of hipness. Jesus was a long haired, sandal wearing iconoclast too, after all.

The Jesus Movement didn’t last long. Much like our older Hippie siblings most of us got caught up in the pursuits of material reality. We wrapped up our educations, started our jobs, created our families, and gradually took the exit ramps from much of our idealism.

Krishna PinIt is fifty years down the road now, and I realized last week that I never entirely found the exit. I don’t thump on the Bible anymore, and I’m unlikely to try to tell other people what they should do or how they should live. I don’t have any interest in railing against hypocrisy, setting towers alight or tilting at windmills. But that yearning to share the feeling of unity and joy and love? It’s for sure still there, whether I like it or not.

As I pin on a badge that says “Everyone is Chanting Krishna’s Name” and pick up a guitar, I’m that starry eyed kid all over again.

The Inward Turn

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For much of my adult life, I have been “a political activist.” This activism took many forms, some having to do with electoral politics, some having to do with community organizing and advocating. All of these activities were conducted with the best of intentions, and with the goal of “making the world a better place.” My attention was ever focused on injustices, and problems, and the people who were responsible for causing them.

On April 28th of this year, I attended a Zoom call for a socialist reading group that I had first organized years ago, and found myself feeling tense and frustrated almost beyond description throughout the entire call. It felt like a recurring, tedious nightmare. Afterwards I took a breath and realized that this chapter of my life had come to an end.

I had begun what might best be described as “a turn inward” a year or so earlier. The more I delved into the stillness, the less attraction the huge contentious ball of negativity held for me. Increasingly, as time passed, I saw political organizing and activism as massive wastes of energy. Still, I was hesitant to entirely turn my back on activities which had been at the center of my life (I would even say had largely defined my life) for such a long time.

Finally, though, engaging in struggle as a way to effect change got to be incompatible with what I was coming to believe about the fundamental nature of our world. This was a hard realization for someone who considered himself a Marxist, but ultimately it was too compelling.

So I just stopped.

I stopped attending meetings and calls. I removed myself from various groups on social media. I handed off projects and websites to others, or let them die. I stayed away from political discussions. I quit attending and promoting community actions of a political nature. Throughout the 2020 election cycle, I was, for the most part, mute.

For some of my erstwhile comrades, my friends, and even some of my immediate family, this change in my thinking and activities seems to have come as an unpleasant shock. The need for change has, perhaps, never been greater. The Trump years brought one catastrophe after another for working people, and particularly for the most oppressed among us. To turn one’s back on struggle, to forswear outrage, to be one less pair of boots on the march, one less voice raised in resistance, one less caller getting out the vote, one less hand being lent to the organizing efforts – I suppose it appeared to be something akin to betrayal.

For me, at last, it comes down to this. If people are hungry, I should feed them. It is as direct and simple as that. The moments that I spend and the material contributions that I offer to immediately relieve suffering or need are worthwhile, and are enough. This sort of effort does not require that I propagandize, or argue, or cajole, or sit in judgment of others. It does not require that I join a mutual aid group on Facebook. It does not require a stirring up of any emotion other than compassion. It does not require shouting, or the clenching of fists, or the carrying of signs or the drawing of lines in the sand.

I won’t go so far at this point as to say that the clenching and the shouting and the marching is a waste of everyone else’s time, but there is no question that it would be a waste of mine. It brings out the worst of my judgmental, impatient, unpleasant tendencies, and if  “the good fight” cannot be conducted with a smile on one’s face and with love in one’s heart, then it ceases to be good, and becomes just a fight.

Energy goes where attention is placed. If attention is placed on nastiness, negative people, and negative states of mind, then all of the energy goes into an endless, recursive tsunami of negativity. This is the current state of politics in America, and I refuse to contribute any further to it.

Perhaps it is naïve to place one’s hope in the spirit of love. Or perhaps one day that spirit will give rise to a mass movement toward peace and justice and light and life and redemption. I do not know. But I do know that I am contented, despite all of the madness swirling around us, for the first time in a very long time.

I have been accused, very directly and pointedly, of exercising privilege as a grey headed white straight cis male in my refusal to opt out of that contentment. If it is necessary to be angry and outraged and addicted to one’s own stress hormones in order to demonstrate concern and compassion and solidarity, then I will plead guilty as charged. But I suspect that all that is truly necessary is the spirit of love, and the works which are attendant to it.

So I will continue to give my attention to feeding people and to nurturing that spirit of love.

And that will have to be enough.

On the Election of 2020

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Here is the current situation. We have an administration in power that is unprecedented, at least in my lifetime, in its ineptitude, corruption, destructiveness, callousness and hypocrisy. It has proved itself unwilling to conduct its affairs according to the most base standards of decency. It has, by every conceivable measure, made things worse for all of us. Not only has it made things measurably worse, it has created a political climate which will make it inestimably more difficult to begin making them even slightly better, regardless of the outcome of the 2020 elections. It continues to pose serious dangers to the lives, health and well-being of everyone in our society, and across the globe, and especially the most oppressed and vulnerable among us. It is shocking and unconscionable that such an abomination could rise to power in “the greatest democracy” on the Earth.

On the other side of the political aisle, we have a party which is so desperate to stave off any fundamental change that they have nominated a doddering, glib, gaffe-ridden career politician, notorious as a puppet of the insurance industry, with a sordid history which includes multiple, credible complaints of sexual assault.

It appears, two weeks out from the Presidential Election of 2020, that the Biden/Harris ticket may prevail, although many of us have the uncomfortable sense that we may have seen this movie before.

The frantic exhortations about this being “the most important election in history” might have some validity, except for the fact that the Democrats offer nothing as an alternative to Trump other than a return to everything that got us into this mess to begin with. For many decades now, up until this very moment, they have paid lip service to everyday working people, while attending to the whims of their corporate lords and masters. They have ignored each and every one of the most urgent problems that we face, from murderous cops to the public health crisis to looming economic disaster to a climate emergency that poses the prospects of near-term extinction for our species (along with much of the rest of life on this planet).

So, it is fine, I suppose, for people to encourage us to vote for this garbage as a temporary respite from outright fascism. But it is dishonest, and sickening, for them to ask us to place any other hope in a Biden Presidency, or in the party that he leads.

I have spent most of my life as a political activist. I volunteered on my first campaign as a teenager, when a friend of our family ran for State’s Attorney in the county where I grew up. I was a “Yellow Dog Democrat” for more than 30 years, always voting a straight punch in the general election. I’ve marched, and I’ve donated, and I’ve phone banked, and I’ve walked precincts and I’ve organized. I’ve drank the Kool Aid, and I’ve served it up. I’ve been a jubilant winner on election night, and a dejected loser.

We have come to the point where there’s not enough Kool Aid on the planet to make any of this palatable, and there can be no jubilee in sight.

So, where might we find any glimmer of hope in all of this madness?

For me, any path forward falls outside of the realm of electoral politics. Although I cannot find it in my heart to discourage a vote for Biden from my friends who live in states which will be legitimately contested, I absolutely refuse to place any faith in him or his party to lead us into the light, either in the weeks to come, or in the imaginable future.

We have to find the way ourselves, and we have to start by looking in the right direction. That direction is not right, nor left, nor forward, nor upward nor onward.

It is inward.

Chanting the Names

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Ram, Sita, Hanuman PosterI began chanting the Sadaksara occasionally from the time I first obtained a Tibetan mala many years ago. Over the past year, as I took up the daily practice of meditation, I have alternated between it and the Adi Mantra (which we learned from Chand Shiva Singh, our Kundalini Teacher).

As my wife, Claudia, began her daily practice, she first used the Kirtan Kriya and then the Siri Gaitri Mantra.

Although all of these mantras have deep spiritual significance, none of them invoke (or make reference to) particular deities.

Over the past few weeks, though, I have been learning about the rich devotional tradition of bhakti. Much of that practice centers on repeating the names of various Hindu gods and goddesses.

Raised, as I was, in an Evangelical Protestant Christian home, I was taught that this sort of activity is akin to devil worship. Even the reverence of Christian Saints practiced by Roman Catholics was considered to be idolatry in our church. When I became Catholic, it took considerable study and soul searching for me to overcome this knee-jerk aversion stemmed in my upbringing.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that an idolater is someone who “transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God.” Most Catholics, I suspect, would take this to be a prohibition against reverence to any god with a name coming from a tradition other than that of Judaism and Christianity.

Here is what I have come to believe. Our notions about God, and our faith traditions, are limited by our human capacities. Although we Catholics believe that scripture is inspired, we must also accept that the human beings who wrote the scriptures experienced the same limits of language and culture that we ourselves face. We are all trying to understand and describe something that is far beyond our ability to comprehend and convey. We can have an experience of the divine, but we can only approximate that experience when we try to conceptualize or describe it.

All of the world’s major religions have something to add to our understanding of why we are all here, and how we ought to pursue our lives. For me, Christianity in general, and Roman Catholic Christianity in particular, do better on the whole in the tasks of informing my conscience and nourishing my spirit – but I did not become Catholic because I believe that our teachings reveal the “one and only truth.” I do believe that there is truth to be found in the teachings of the Catholic Church, and in the way that we worship and work together. But this does not mean that we cannot also be nourished by the practices, and guided by the wisdom, of other religious traditions.

One of the great lights of kirtan in our age, Krishna Das, says that the practice of bhakti is singing to the loving presence that is always present within us and around us. “This loving presence may be called by all these names.”

In recent days, I have found great nourishment and comfort in singing the names of Rama, Sita, Hanuman, Krishna, Radha, Durga, Shiva – the list goes on and on. These names, for me, represent aspects of God, not beings who are distinct from God. I believe that learning their stories and chanting their names is another way of bringing more light into my life, and more love into my heart. I suppose that greater compassion will be the ultimate test of whether or not this is true.

All One.

 

Diving in to Bhakti

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About seven weeks ago, my wife and a couple of her yoga friends did a Facebook livestream from the Align Light studio where they shared the Siri Gaitri mantra. It was a beautiful meditation.

Unfortunately, after the live session, Facebook removed the sound, because they had used recorded music and the platform’s AI recognized it as copyrighted.

The idea struck me immediately that we could remediate the problem by recording the music ourselves. So I grabbed my handy recorder and guitar, played some arpeggios, then decided to add some keyboard sweetening. After a few hours I had the basic track together. We refined it over the next few days, adding some reference vocals and such. Done. It wasn’t what I would consider to be “listening” quality, but it was fine for the background to chanting.

It hadn’t occurred to me that this would be anything other than a fun, one-off project. But then my wife said “we should record Long Time Sun too.” So I got out the recorder and guitar again, and this time decided to add a bass guitar track in addition to guitar and keys. I had learned some things from the process for the first recording, and was noticing things during this second one that could be improved as well. Before I knew it, I found myself saying “the next one of these we do, I’ll want to start with a click track.”

By now I was absolutely hooked, and began searching all over the Web for anything I could learn about Kirtan music and devotional chanting. At this point I was still thinking of the music as a pleasant and interesting hobby or diversion. Then, something odd happened.

Although I already had a vague notion that the chanting had a spiritual basis and spiritual benefits (we chanted at the end of Kundalini Yoga sessions and our instructor always spoke about the deeper meaning of the chants), I hadn’t realized that it is at the very center of some folks’ devotional life. The practice already had a pretty firm grip on me, and now it pulled me in. It suddenly felt as if every thing that I have experienced throughout my life, from the time I was a small child, was leading to this moment of discovery.

Claudia and I continue to chant together every evening, and now I’ve added an afternoon session to my daily practice as well. I’ve also begun to read the Tulsidas Ramayana, and to consider how singing the names of Hindu deities each day relates to my life as a faithful Roman Catholic Christian. I’ll be writing more about that in the days to come.

In the meantime, we’ve ordered a harmonium. 🙂

Three Concepts that will Change Your Life

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Einstein said “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” So I’d like to share three absurd ideas with you. If you study them, follow their implications and apply them to your daily activities, these absurd ideas are guaranteed to change your life, dramatically, and for the better.

Though these ideas may seem to be rooted in religious mysticism, I would encourage you to set any notions about religion or theology aside for the time being. These concepts are consistent with our best current scientific observations and thought.

Concept I: 99% of Everything is Nothing

This statement sounds like metaphor or hyperbole, but it is literally true. In fact, it is an understatement. All of what we perceive as material reality, things that seem so solid and durable, are actually vast chasms of emptiness. This is the case whether we are talking about a brick wall, or diamond ring, or the Rock of Gibraltar, or a planet or our own bodies.

When we take a close look at an atom, we see that it is not something “solid” at all. It is mostly vacuum, with itty bitty particles flying around at great speeds and at great distances from each other relative to their size. Even on this level, it would be accurate to say that they are “99% nothing.” When we delve to the subatomic level, things get even weirder and more ethereal. It becomes difficult to make a distinction between what is a particle, and what is a wave. Quantum theory suggests that what we perceive as matter is actually more a collection of fields of probability, rather than something certain and solid.

Although the experience of a baseball bat striking one’s skull will not seem less solid as a result, the fact remains that more than 99% of everything is nothing. It’s a bit imprecise, but not untrue, to say that it’s all essentially vibrations. When people refer to the “vibe” of a location, event or person, they can be speaking literal truth.

Which brings us to our next concept.

Concept II: All Is One

This one sounds like a very crunchy Hippie dream, doesn’t it? It reminds me of the old joke about a Buddhist Monk who walks up to a hotdog vendor and says “Make me one with everything.” Cliché though it may seem, this one is true as well.

These vibrations that are at the foundation of what we experience as the material Universe are, in fact, a single vibration. Our best theoretical explanation of how our Universe began describes an infinitely dense single point which contained all that would become time and space. From this initial singularity, energy was sent forth (in the “Big Bang”) which would create all things, sustain all things, and is all things. This sending forth continues today. The Universe continues to expand.

Think of the striking of a gong. Depending on where you stand in relationship to the gong, you will experience the feeling and the sound in a particular way, and you will experience variations as the sound waves travel through time and space. Someone close to the gong will experience something different than someone across the room, or down the hall. And everyone’s experiences of the sound and percussion will change with the passing of time, all from a single gong strike.

This is, I think, an apt metaphor for our Universe. Although things seem to be separate, there is an essential unity. The Universe isn’t filled with different things, as much as different expressions of the same thing. More than 99% of everything is nothing, it’s all vibration, and it is, in fact, a single vibration. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I won’t go about citing the research here. It’s easy enough to access the scientific literature on all of this should you so desire. I’ll include a couple of links to very basic explanations at the end of this article. For now, suffice it to say that I am a skeptic, and I have become convinced of the truth of these statements.

The first two concepts lead to the third, and it is the one that can be applied practically to better our lives.

Concept III: Thoughts Become Things

Since everything we experience as material reality is really a collection of vibrations which emanated from the single source, it follows that everything we experience is connected in ways that aren’t always immediately apparent to us. It may seem odd, at first, to consider that something “invisible” or “immaterial” such as a thought, can have an effect on material things. Perhaps it would be helpful to think for a moment about “invisible” forces such as gravity or magnetism which we know can exercise action at a distance. We also know from observations of a phenomenon called quantum entanglement that physical properties of paired subatomic particles remain correlated, even after they are separated by large distances in space (or even in time).

This third concept, admittedly, seems even weirder and New Agier than the first two, but there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that it is true. For me, the very well studied and documented placebo effect alone is evidence enough. If thoughts do not become things, then there would be no need for double-blind studies, where results must be shielded not only from participants, but also from the intentions of observers and researchers.

Again, if you remain skeptical of this concept I would encourage you to look at the research yourself.

So, how can we use this concept to improve our lives?

If you want to change your life, change your mind.

At the top, I promised that if you incorporate these three concepts into your life, it will change dramatically and for the better. I know that this can happen, because it has happened to me.

As we pass through life (or, rather, as life passes through us) we accumulate experiences, associations, notions and memories. Whether we consciously attempt to make sense of it all or not, our minds and our bodies are drawing conclusions. We learn as best we can how to survive, how to avoid pain, how to enjoy pleasure. The problem is that some of the lessons that our minds and bodies assimilate, some of the habits of attention and daily activity, are neither necessary for survival nor conducive to happiness. We take in and practice patterns that become the stories of our lives. No matter how hard we strive to change, we find ourselves experiencing the same things over and over. “It figures,” we say. Over time, we program ourselves to obtain the results we obtain. To change the results, we have to change the programming.

If we want to change things for the better, we have to begin with confidence that our thoughts are inevitably, assuredly, creating our experiences. And the only way we can have that confidence, the only way we can know, is to discipline our minds and observe what happens.

There is a large variety of approaches and methods which have been demonstrated to be effective in changing mental programming. While I won’t presume to prescribe what will work best for you, I will be happy to share three simple practices which have worked for me.

Go on a mental diet. Uell S. Andersen recommends this in his book Three Magic Words. In practice it means dedicating yourself to thirty consecutive days without entertaining a negative thought, about anyone, anything, or any situation. It doesn’t mean that you won’t *have* negative thoughts, but you must not entertain them. Don’t feed them, don’t dwell on them and especially don’t express them. When a negative thought comes, immediately refocus your attention on something else. This can be difficult at first, and I’m not sure if I’ve actually completed thirty consecutive days yet. I do know that it is much easier for me to avoid nurturing negative thoughts now than it was only a few weeks ago.

Practice gratitude. I set aside several specific times each day to recount the things for which I am thankful, and I keep a gratitude journal as well. This has had the effect of bringing a wealth of positivity to my life. It may be the single most effective practice of these three.

Meditate every day. I had tried to meditate at other points in my life, but found it difficult. This time, I kept it very simple. I use some of tbe frequency audio recordings from Brain Sync, and also their guided meditations. I take a twenty minute break mid-morning from my work day, and sit with my eyes closed, listening to the Grace and Gratitude recording. Sometimes I also chant for a few minutes with a Tibetan mala that I’ve had for years. No worries about technique or formalities. Just sitting and trying as best I can to not let my mind attach itself to anything. I usually try to focus attention on the sensation of breath as is enters and leaves my nostrils. That’s it. I find that I’m so much more productive with the rest of my time that I don’t miss the twenty minutes from work. In the evening I’ll spend another half-hour sitting with one of the guided meditations.

I’ve not found any of these activities to be difficult or onerous in any way, and the improvements in the quality of my life have been tremendous.

In case you’re wondering, the ideas presented here are not original to me. They are part of a tradition of American thought that first found rise in the mid 1800s as Emerson and others began to study Indian monist thinking. I would encourage you to study and consider these ideas, and I welcome discussion about them.

Resources

What is Quantum Mechanics?

The Universe: Big Bang to Now in 10 Easy Steps

What is Quantum Entanglement?

Three Magic Words

Brain Sync

Can Tarot cards predict the future?

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We all know the cliché image of a fortune teller, often in Gypsy garb, turning up cards to predict someone’s future. Many a movie plot is hung on such a scene. For people unfamiliar with the Tarot, this is the image that likely first comes to mind when it is mentioned.

I have come to think of the Tarot in a different way. I think of it as a practice which allows me to bring to the surface issues and ideas that are significant in my life, but may be hidden from my conscious thoughts.

I won’t go into further detail on that at the moment, because I think it’s important first to approach the question posed in the title of this essay. Divination is considered by many to be equivalent to conjuring demons, and by many others to be firmly in the realm of charlatains, the ignorant, the foolish and the superstitious. So its reputation as a vehicle for fortune telling casts a shadow of suspicion on the Tarot. Before we can discuss other uses of the cards at any length, it seems to me that we ought to answer this basic and fundamental question. Can the Tarot be used to predict the future?

First, let me ask a rhetorical question. If you see your child with a shoe untied, and you warn them that they had better tie their shoe, or else they will trip and fall – and they don’t tie the shoe, and they do trip and fall – did you predict the future? Obviously, literally, you did.

More precisely, you observed a set of circumstances, and noticed that a particular outcome was possible (or maybe even likely). There was nothing unnatural or abnormal about this. In fact, most of us do it all of the time. Each time we get in a car, and choose the route to a destination, we’re doing our best to predict the future. Should I avoid 5th Avenue because there may be a train at the crossing this time of day that will delay my arrival? Do I have time to stop for a cup of coffee, or will that make me late to work? How long is the line at the Starbucks drive through? Should I be especially attentive to my driving along this stretch of road, since it’s known for speed traps?

We’re constantly using what we remember and what we observe to make decisions in order to predict (or perhaps to create) the outcomes that we desire. Whether it’s a trip to the grocery store, or retirement planning, this sort of activity is such a fundamental part of our normal, everyday lives that we scarcely even notice it.

So we’ve established that we all do our best to predict the future much of the time. We actually accomplish this feat much of the time too, from predicting that when we rotate the faucet on the left the water will get warmer, to predicting that our intended will make a suitable mate. Perhaps there are no guarantees that our predictions will be correct, but an awful lot of the time, they do seem to be.

Let me ask another rhetorical question. If there was a way to obtain additional information that might be relevant to the question at hand, would that change the essential nature of this process of predicting the future? Let’s say that you could add a radio traffic report to the mix during your morning commute, or a GPS device. Would there be anything fundamentally different about the way the process works? Anything weird or spooky or paranormal about the increased accuracy of your predictions then? Of course not. You’re just expanding your view, and making use of information to which you didn’t have access before.

So here’s one final rhetorical question. What sort of information might a deck of cards offer that could possibly assist in this process? Since we’ve already established that we do, indeed, literally (and almost effortlessly) predict the future with varying degrees of accuracy every day, the key to the question at the top of this essay is whether or not the Tarot can reliably add any valuable information to the process.

I suspect that it can.

Remember our cliché Gypsy, telling fortunes in a tent or a creepy shack? Here’s what’s wrong with that picture. It gives the impression that the information we seek belongs to a realm that is apart from the natural world, and apart from us. In fact, the information that we can access through the Tarot, although “extraordinary” in a sense, isn’t unnatural or unusual at all. It’s just information that most of us are unaware of or tend to ignore much of the time.

If you’ve ever had the experience of misplacing an item, looking all over for it in frustration, finally giving up, relaxing about it, and then walking into another room and immediately finding it right there in an obvious place, then you know precisely what it is like to gain insight from the Tarot. Your unconscious mind knew all along where that misplaced item was. After all, you’re the one who placed it there! The knowledge of where you had put the item was with you all of the time. You were just temporarily unable to bring that knowledge to your conscious mind. The harder you tried to remember, and to retrace your steps, the more inaccessible the information became. Once you gave up, relaxed, and your unconscious mind was able to work without interferance, it led you right to the misplaced object.

In the same way, the images and traditions of the Tarot, like so many other such systems from cultures the world over, offer an opportunity to delve into information that is waiting there for us in our unconscious minds. The information isn’t unnatural or apart from us. It doesn’t come from demons or ghosts or the Gypsy. It’s right there inside of us all the time. It’s just that as we go about our ordinary lives, most of us don’t take the time to explore the tools that can help to bring this information to bear on our conscious thoughts and decisions.

Just how it is that the Tarot works to help us access the thoughts and patterns of the unconscious mind is a subject for another article, perhaps. For now, I’ll only say that I have found that it does so in my own experience.

There is also the notion put forth by Carl Jung that there exists a vast “collective unconscious” where unconscious minds of all times and locations meet in some way. I won’t argue that possibility one way or the other, but it’s certainly interesting to consider the storehouse of knowledge and experience that might be waiting should such a notion be true. For me, it’s plenty enough to be able to explore my own puny little personal unconsciousness.

Before we close, I’d like to add one other note about our Gypsy friend. I want to make it clear that I don’t mean to denigrate her, or the many brilliantly skilled real life practitioners of the art of interpreting the Tarot. There are legions of Tarot readers who are gifted, serious, and dedicated to helping others plumb the depths of special knowledge that awaits in the psyche. You’re more likely to find one of these marvelous people at a table in your publc library than in that shack at the edge of town these days though.

So, can the Tarot predict the future? Maybe not like in that movie scene where the Gypsy turns up the Tower card, there’s a dramatic music crescendo, and then a cut to a burning building. But if we accept that we routinely use information available to us to “predict the future,” and also accept that the Tarot can help us uncover another source of useful information, then I believe we have our answer.

What do you think?

Learn more about the Tarot at my Cards of Light website.

Refuting Arguments Against Socialism

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This essay began as another in the series of articles meant to explain socialism to kids. I intended to draft it as best I could, and then rework it with simpler language for the younger audience. I may still do that, but decided to publish it here, as is, for adults. Questions and constructive feedback are welcome, as always, in the comments.

Common Arguments Against Socialism

Over the years since people first began talking about socialism, there have been many arguments made against it. Here are the three most common arguments made against socialism today, and some responses from a socialist’s point of view.

Capitalism is already the best imaginable system.

Folks sometimes argue that, for all of its faults, our current system is the best that could ever possibly be imagined. They say that the “free markets” under capitalism create the most wealth and freedom possible. They say that the system rewards hard work and genius, and gives us all of these marvelous products that make our lives better. Medical breakthroughs, iPhones, interesting foods – anything that we can dream, we can have – quicker, better and cheaper than ever before. Under capitalism, they say, the common working person lives like a king, and things just keep getting better and better. The “hidden hand of the market” is wise, and if we just let it do its work without interfering, everyone will be happier, healthier and more fulfilled than at any other time in human history. They will also often cite examples of people who grew up in extreme poverty and rose to great heights of wealth and power under capitalism, and then tell us that this would not be possible under any other system. If they can make it, we can too!

It is true that many people, especially people in the United States and other “developed” countries, seem to be doing pretty well. We have enough to eat, homes, cars, gadgets, and plenty of free time to enjoy them. So for a lot of us, this argument rings true. But when you step back and look at the facts, you see a very different story.

Half of the world’s children, 1.1 billion kids, live in poverty. 736 million people around the globe live in what is defined as “extreme poverty,” surviving on less than $1.90 a day. Even in the United States, a relatively wealthy nation, almost 50 million people, including 16.2 million children, live in households that lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis. One out of every five children in America go to bed hungry at some point each year.

Under capitalism, competition for access to natural resources, especially fossil fuels, has led to war after war for more than a century. Seizing Iraq’s oilfields was one of the main objectives of the British during World War I. The oilfields of Indonesia were a major motivation for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the U.S. to enter World War II. Over the last five decades, as many as half of all the wars between nations have been linked to oil, and oil-producing nations are also more likely to face civil wars over control of the oil field profits.

Beyond the wars (and terrorist acts) linked to oil, we also know what the addiction to fossil fuels is doing to the climate on our planet. It is not unreasonable to say that the human race could be facing near-term extinction due to climate change, and the capitalist system is directly responsible. According to the Climate Accountability Institute, just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions which are driving the disastrous warming of our climate.

Poverty, war, terrorism and climate disaster are just a few examples of things that make socialists doubt that capitalism is “the best system anyone can imagine.” In fact, we dare to imagine a better one. Socialists dare to imagine a world where no one ever has to go to bed hungry. Socialists dare to imagine a world where the profits of a few dozen companies don’t threaten the very existence of life on the Earth.

Okay, capitalism has its problems, but under socialism, nobody would do anything and we’d all starve.

Another common criticism of socialism is that if everyone’s basic needs were met, nobody would work, and the whole society would break down. There would be no punishment for laziness, and no reward for working hard or being smart. The system would basically take things away from hardworking people who deserve them, and give those things to lazy people who don’t deserve them.

This criticism says more about life under capitalism than it does about socialism. Under capitalism, we are conditioned to compete with each other. The idea is that if we work harder than other people, or are smarter than they are, or more creative, that we’ll get a reward. We’ll get the reward because we deserve it. So, by definition, people who don’t get the rewards are lazy and stupid and lack imagination. So, naturally, we think that a system set up to meet human needs can’t work, because people are naturally lazy and stupid and if someone isn’t cracking a whip over them all the time, they won’t do anything, because “that’s just human nature.”

There are a lot of things wrong with this argument, but I’ll point out three of the major flaws.

First, it’s just not true that under capitalism the people who work hardest or are smartest or otherwise most deserving get the rewards. Some of the smartest, most creative, most conscientious, most hard working people in the world have barely enough to survive and to take care of their families. And some of the laziest, dumbest, most good-for-nothing slackers on the planet have all the wealth you can imagine. Go say hello to anyone working in a warehouse or at a fast food restaurant, and you’ll see an example of hard work that isn’t properly rewarded. Turn on your television, especially when our President is speaking, and you’ll see an example of the opposite.

Second, people already do things all of the time out of a sense of duty, or obligation, or love, or joy, without any thought about monetary reward. Every time that someone in your household cooks a meal for you, or cleans house, or folds laundry, or takes a dog for a walk, that’s an example. Some of the most meaningful and important work that people do every day is not motivated by the prospect of a paycheck or the threat of starvation.

Third, we know from history that there were societies based on cooperation and meeting everyone’s needs. Life may have been hard sometimes for these “primitive communist” societies, and they had their problems like everyone else, but they managed to survive and be happy without the need to coerce people to get them to work. People worked hard, and worked together, because it was their way of life, not because of threats or incentives.

So the notion that once our basic human needs are met that we would all just put our feet up on the couch and watch Netflix all day has no basis in fact, except for the cruel facts of life under capitalism. We dare to imagine a better world.

But socialism never works. It always ends up with people standing in line for hours just to get a loaf of bread. And it also always ends up with horrible monster dictators like Stalin and Mao, and they kill millions of people. Nobody is ever free under socialism.

Attempts at establishing socialist societies have definitely failed. And some of the boldest and most promising experiments have turned out the worst. But this does not mean that all attempts at socialism are doomed. The failures of the past have had their roots in the conditions of a particular time and place. There’s nothing baked in to socialism that makes it more vulnerable to social problems or murderous tyrants than other systems.

We shouldn’t dismiss the criticisms or make excuses for failures and atrocities, but we also shouldn’t allow the dream of socialism to be defined by those failures and atrocities. Early attempts at difficult and complicated things often fail. We can learn from those mistakes and begin again.

When someone brings up the issue of “freedom” under socialism, there are several questions that should be asked. Freedom for who? For everybody? Is everybody really free under capitalism? Are people free to leave a job that they hate? A job that stresses them out? I suppose so, at least in theory. And they are free to starve too. In theory we’re free, but in reality not so much.

Under socialism the goal would be a society where people are truly free to develop themselves to the limits of their potential. Is that even possible? Frankly, we don’t know, but we do dare to imagine a world where, in the words of the Communist Manifesto “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

The goal of developing a truly democratic global socialist society is daunting, there is no doubt. Karl Marx believed that it is through the process of struggle, the process of revolution, that we will become “fit to rule.”

So let us begin.

The Robots Are Coming!

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At CES robots stole the show. Are they coming to steal your job?

There’s never a shortage of amazing gear and far fetched gadgets at the annual Consumer Electronics Show. From the latest home entertainment systems, to smart appliances, to novelties like light-show lamps and diving drones, it’s usually a challenge to pick out the single most significant product or trend. But this year’s exhibition, held January 5th through 8th in Las Vegas, seems to have had a clear winner. At the very top of the list for many analysts (and consumers alike) were the robots.

As reported in USA Today, Amazon Echo’s Alexa app has helped to break new ground and draw attention to the possibilities available from a voice-activated personal assistant. Layer on top of that technology the ability of the new robots to see and move, and the implications are staggering.

Robot nanny, anyone? Kuri is an adorable little home security device on wheels, sporting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, an HD video camera – and complete with chirps, beeps and facial expressions reminiscent of Pixar’s WALL-E. It’s being touted as a way to keep tabs on pets (or even children) while away from home. Such products are also being discussed for their ability to provide “companionship.”

Beyond the convenience of a robot that can follow you around your home, understand your commands and play music or assist with household tasks, this new technology is already starting to have a significant impact on the way many of us work. In the logistics industry, in particular, robots have created something of a revolution, with Amazon, once again, leading the way.

In 2012, Amazon bought a robotics company called Kiva Systems, quickly changed the name to Amazon Robotics, and took the technology off the open market, reserving Kiva robots for the company’s own use. By the end of 2015, they had some 30,000 of the picking-and-placing bots deployed at more than a dozen fulfillment centers across the United States. Warehouse workers who once walked more than ten miles a day in their duties can now send a Kiva to the shelves to gather items for an order. Other logistics firms have followed suit, with some laying claim to even smarter, more efficient robots, which (unlike the Kivas) don’t require the entire facility to be designed around them.

Another example from CES of robots that may have an impact on the labor market is a robot barista from a Chinese firm called Bubblelab. According to a company spokesperson, the idea is not to completely automate the process of delivering your caramel macchiato, but to free the human barista to chat with you more.

Robotics has already had a huge impact on manufacturing, of course. It’s long been quipped that the factory of the future will have a single employee. That employee will be there for one job – to feed the dog. The dog’s job will be to make sure that the human employee doesn’t touch anything.

From the beginning of the Industrial Age the debate has raged on concerning the likely effects of technological advances on our work and our quality of life. Each new wave of technology holds the promise of freeing workers from the drudgery of hard physical labor and mindless, repetitive tasks. Each new wave also poses the threat of displacing workers from their jobs, or of relegating us to the role of “just another cog in the machine” there to serve the needs of the equipment.

Paul Krugman and others have focused of late on the shift of income away from workers as a result of capital based technological changes such as the move to more robots in the workplace.

Should we fear the robots, or welcome them?

We certainly won’t settle these arguments here. The wide ranging consequences of these new technologies are almost too numerous to imagine. But maybe we’re contemplating the wrong question. Rather than trying to predict what the likely impacts of the rise of the robots will be, maybe we ought to be thinking more about what we would like them to be.

What about the idea of a shorter work week, in safe and pleasant work environments, with pay and benefits that allow us to support healthy, thriving families? These goals may have less to do with the prevailing technology than with the ability of workers to organize and to make those demands.

Let’s return to the logistics industry for a moment. Although robotics has profoundly changed the processes (and expectations) of the industry, it hasn’t removed human beings from pivotal roles. The first year that the Kiva robots were deployed by Amazon, they still hired an additional 80,000 seasonal workers for the holidays, up 14% from the prior year. The potential of logistics workers to wage struggle at the point of production remains strong.

The same can be said regarding other industries based on our most advanced technologies. The successful strike last year against Verizon by the Communications Workers of America and the IBEW is one example.

A lot has changed in the hundred years since “Smilin’ Joe” Ettor was organizing workers for the IWW, but his words still ring true, even in the age of looming robot overlords. “If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists.”

Whether we’re talking about the impact of a mechanized loom, a robotic assembly line, or a troop of droid legal assistants, workers still hold vast reserves of power in our economic system. Maybe it’s time we started acting like it.

What Do We Do About Elections?

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Americans who want a more just, peaceful and habitable world face a dilemma when it comes to electoral politics. We know that people like Donald Trump and his insane clown party make things demonstrably and exponentially worse for everyone except the already wealthy and powerful. We also don’t want our resources and energy to get sucked into the black hole of Democratic Party politics, where social movements go to die. It’s also nearly impossible for candidates who share our values to get elected as third party or independent candidates.

To borrow an analogy used to explain the laws of thermodynamics, we can’t win, we can’t break even, and we can’t leave the game.

Here are some thoughts, and links, outlining the situation facing us, and what we can do.

We don’t want people like Donald Trump in power.

As much as it is possible to oppose the most abhorrent tendencies and candidates during election season, we ought to do so. The best example to follow was set by thousands of Chicagoans on March 11th of last year.

We should vigorously oppose these people as candidates and in office. We should recognize and draw attention to candidates or organizations that represent a dangerous departure from the status quo.

But we also have to oppose that status quo, for reasons of strategy as well as principle.

We must oppose the GOP, but we can’t let our efforts be coopted by the Democrats.

For many people, the election of 2016 was something of a watershed. We’re seeing thousands of Americans, perhaps even millions, who are engaged in activism for the very first time in their lives. At the Women’s March on Chicago January 21st, a sizable minority (if not a majority) were first time protestors, including my own mother-in-law, who is in her late 70s. Reports from the airport protests against the Muslim travel ban recount the same phenomenon. In the town where I live, a group of mostly first time activists is organizing itself. Attendance more than doubled from their first meeting to their second, with no actual attempts at recruitment or publicity. Enrollment into membership of the Democratic Socialists of America nationally has more than doubled since election night.

All of these are healthy signs for the beginning of a mass movement with the potential to truly transform our society. Democrats seem to have taken note, and many have begun to show up at the protests, to make public statements in support, and to adjust their strategy and tactics to draw energy and power from the nascent movement into their party. Many of the new activists that I’ve met see a realignment of the Democratic Party as more than just a worthy pursuit. It is their main goal. There’s already a focus on the 2018 mid term elections, and on Bernie Sanders’ down-ticket strategy, as if electoral politics within the Democratic Party is a viable path (indeed, the only viable path) to political power.

Here’s why this poses a danger, and why people who are committed to positive social change ought to be on guard.

The Democrats have a long history of repelling attempts at realignment to the left. The DNC’s reaction to the Sanders campaign was described by some as almost an “autoimmune response.” Recently, Kim Moody of Labor Notes wrote about the massive impediments currently facing folks who seek to reform America’s “second party of capital.”

Here’s a real life example of how things can break bad. In 2011, the people of Wisconsin took part in the largest sustained workers’ resistance movement in American history. When their newly elected Governor, Scott Walker, tried to destroy the public employee unions, tens of thousands of people flooded into Madison, making it impossible for the state to continue with business as usual. For awhile, it seemed as if the people would prevail, repudiating Walker and his GOP cronies in the Wisconsin Legislature, and turning back the attack on workers’ rights. The energy got funneled into a recall election effort, and by January of 2012 more than 1 million signatures to recall Governor Walker were submitted to the state Government Accountability Board. When the election was held that June, Walker prevailed over Democratic candidate Tom Barrett with 53% of the vote. The Democrats had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and Walker’s position was stronger than it had been to start with. Also, he was even more obligated to the Koch Brothers and other corporate interests who funded his campaign during the recall election.

We also need to resist the temptation to support Democrats as the lesser of two evils, mainly because it undercuts our credibility with the masses of people who have not yet been won to our way of thinking, but who have seen enough of candidates like Hillary Clinton to know that they offer no real solutions to our problems. We can’t be honest brokers of information, committed to the truth, if our default position is that any Democrat, no matter how distasteful, is preferable to any Republican. In other words, our support should be reserved for those candidates that we can support unreservedly.

What about independent or third party campaigns?

The most successful third party Presidential candidate in decades was Ralph Nader. He received 2,882,955 votes nation wide, less than 3% of the total votes cast, running as the Green Party nominee in 2000. The most successful independent candidate was Ross Perot, who got about 8 1/2 percent in 1996. These numbers do not inspire hope.

Seth Ackerman recently did a marvelous job of explaining the implications of ballot access laws and party structures across the United States. To make a run outside of the two major parties, even for local or state elections, is beyond daunting.

Yet the prospects of a candidate not beholden to corporations and other reactionary interests being elected as a Democrat are equally dim, as the Kim Moody article mentioned earlier makes clear.

When we put all of our hopes for change into who we elect, we are meeting the enemy on their field of strength, and our field of weakness.

Some things are overdetermined. The money, the laws, the media, disenfranchisement and voter suppression, party structures – all of these factors paint a bleak picture when it comes to electoral politics. So we would be foolish to sink the bulk of our energy and resources into the electoral process.

On the other hand, elections do have consequences, and they also offer a rare opportunity to get people thinking when we already have their attention.

It’s a rigged game, but we can’t opt out.

A friend of mine who was in SDS back in the day tells a story about the election of 1968. He and some of the comrades were in Union Square leafleting on election day, encouraging people not to vote in the contest between Humphrey and Nixon. The message was “Don’t vote. Boycott the polls. A big abstention sends a message, too.” The response from passersby was nearly unanimous. “Don’t vote? What kind of a choice is that?”

Election campaigns are one of the times when even people who aren’t very “political” tend to pay more attention. Regardless of the candidates involved or the outcome, it’s an opportunity to advocate, to inform, to educate, to hold up a mirror to our society, to point to a vision of a better one, and to generally propagate our ideas. In some cases, it is also an opportunity to actually attain some measure of political power within the system, on those occasions when we are able to succeed in electing folks who will represent our ideas and platform.

Okay. So if we can’t win, we can’t break even, and we can’t leave the game, what can we do?

In terms of elections, we need to move away from the “tail wagging the dog” sort of approach where we merely choose from among candidates offered to us. We should determine our own platform and programs, decide who will run for office from among our own numbers, decide whether they will run as independents or on one or another party ballot line, work hard to get them elected, and hold them accountable to the group once they are. The Ackerman article referenced above concludes by outlining a model for this sort of effort nationally. The standard by which we ought to discern whether or not a campaign is a good use of resources has been best stated by Jen Roesch. “Will directing energy into an electoral campaign help to give confidence, advance and project existing struggles and the broader resistance, or will it act as either a substitute for those struggles or a drain on limited resources?”

In situations where we currently have less (or perhaps little) influence over who is on the ballot, we can still use the occasion to hold up a positive vision for society. During primary season in 2016, I supported Senator Sanders, noting that every day he was “out there railing against the corporate stranglehold on our lives” it was “another opportunity for people to wake up and to feel a sense of what might be possible if thoughtful, decent people came together in large numbers to demand thoughtful, decent government.” During the general election, I supported the Green Party’s Jill Stein for similar reasons. Among the candidates still in the race, she best gave articulation to the ideals of peace, justice and equality. I found that to be of value, despite understanding that she was not going to win the Presidency.

In short, I think we need to keep a great deal of flexibility, work to build strong and durable organizations, and approach each election cycle with an examination of what is most likely to move our work forward given the circumstances of the moment.

For now, the bulk of our energy will likely still be spent outside the realm of election campaigns, and I think that’s as it should be.

Our first priority is to organize with others on the local level to work on initiatives that will make lives better in our own communities. These projects should be practical, winnable, should emphasize solidarity, and should increase our numbers, our level of organization and our confidence. The projects may, or may not, involve interaction with elected officials, election campaigns and the formal political structure.

Secondly, we should connect our local efforts with those in other regions (nationally and globally) through affiliation with other established organizations.

Finally, we should look for opportunities (and create opportunities) to bring the struggle onto the field of electoral politics. But we should do so with an eye toward building our own organizations, secure in the knowledge that we can’t elect our way to the kind of society and world we want anyway.

Participation in elections offers an opportunity for organizing, provides a platform to speak truth to power, forces other parties to defend their views, and presents a visible measure of the strength and maturity of the working class. These are the things we should bear in mind when deciding what to do about elections.