Posts
This is my reply to
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-I-Resigned-the-Paterno/134944/
(Michael Bérubé has just become the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of
Literature at Pennsylvania State University, where he is also director
of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities. He is president of the
Modern Language Association.)
My stuff follows:
Too often, humans in groups under stress, define themselves, not by what they are, or do, or wish for, but by whom they are not. And so, when their self-image breaks, they seek a scapegoat, some One, to blame. Yet seldom, in large scale misfortunes, does an impartial investigation find a single individual at fault. Always or nearly always, the fault is complex, multi-formed, an unfortunate conjunction of many strands of causation, impossible to trace to a single source. The" black swan" phenomenon, the " rogue wave".
For those alumni and teachers proud of their University, maybe they'd best follow the Buddha, be non-attached. Let not your self image be dependent on any but but yourself. My school, or any group I belong to, may indeed become a scapegoat for other's anger at their life circumstances. Especially in this media-ocene era of advertising using false news to pursue the advertiser's self interest. I refuse to be judged by someone who blames me, who am not at fault, for their idea of my group’s fault. Nor will I debate with them, unless they first discuss with me, their experience of me personally, and of my group.
other notes:
I can’t predict the most mundane outcomes of any action. And likewise I can’t assign a cause to any but the most mundane result. So in seeking to make healthy an individual, plant or person, or a group, I’d best look to the health of the environment, the ecosystem, and let the individuals care for themselves in that. Who am I to declare that what I call illness should be eradicated, its “cause” rooted out, and destroyed? Perhaps, likely, this supposed illness is but a message of some imbalance in the state of being of the ecosystem, which requires co-operative remediation, not detached surgery.
We need a new kind of languaging in our reporting of the news of events. We need to refer to imbalances, not individual causes, not individual failures . We as humans are entering an era of the worst environmental, and media mediated lifestyle stress, we have been under since the last ice age. We will not do our best to survive, unless we find a different way of communicating and deciding action, than seeking individual causes, and blaming others for our plight.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Balance of Life
The Balance of Life
Wolf is well aware
Who are his friends
Who will help
Him feed his family
Who threatens
Their wellbeing
He knows
That first of all
It is his duty
To what he knows
To do daily
That is his best
Work and defense
Paying attention
Being aware
Using all their gifts
As they were taught
The Wolf people
Have survived 20 million
Of years
As we count them
Having eliminated the wolves
We are now threatened
By viral plagues
Borne by burgeoning numbers
Of small creatures
Once food
For those wolves
We have always been
A major source of imbalance
To other life on this planet
Who are now acting together
To restore the balance
With or without
Us
Oct. 17 2012
Wolf is well aware
Who are his friends
Who will help
Him feed his family
Who threatens
Their wellbeing
He knows
That first of all
It is his duty
To what he knows
To do daily
That is his best
Work and defense
Paying attention
Being aware
Using all their gifts
As they were taught
The Wolf people
Have survived 20 million
Of years
As we count them
Having eliminated the wolves
We are now threatened
By viral plagues
Borne by burgeoning numbers
Of small creatures
Once food
For those wolves
We have always been
A major source of imbalance
To other life on this planet
Who are now acting together
To restore the balance
With or without
Us
Oct. 17 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Choose What You Get
Choose What You Get
If I were a thistle seed
Floating
Questing
A safe place
Good earth
To make a new
Home
I would fear landing
A patch of desert
Or a wild river
In flood
After a seldom rain
But she
Has not my fears
Just takes
What comes
Makes her best of it
Sept. 23 2012
If I were a thistle seed
Floating
Questing
A safe place
Good earth
To make a new
Home
I would fear landing
A patch of desert
Or a wild river
In flood
After a seldom rain
But she
Has not my fears
Just takes
What comes
Makes her best of it
Sept. 23 2012
The Manifesto of myself
The Manifesto of myself, Donato, Myeengun enaaniibwid gini waabmiigyan Standing Wolf Whoseesus
After years of thinking and writing poetry and other forms of screed about the problems of being a rational human person in a culture where rational thought and action is almost non-existent, I am now approaching a few notions by which I wish to live my life, (what is left of it), and live in hope of finding other like-minded people to enjoy what we've got, while awaiting the inevitable collapse.
Some basic definitions.
I need adequate food , shelter, clothing, and companionship, including the space for being heard, for hearing, and for some shared intimacy.
My habitat forms the container for all I need.
In my daily preoccupation I maintain my container , my habitat, and find my bliss in it.
I no longer subscribe to beliefs. I make statements, definitions and declarations about my perceptions of my world and the ecoculture I inhabit. Anything that sounds to you like a belief I hold, must be just my clumsy wording.
I enjoy playing with my thoughts and ideas and experiences, and those communications from others. I say none of it has any ultimate meaning, except what I give it, or borrow from others. I say there is no "hitching post" in the universe, and I'm not willing to listen to any arguments that there is.
What follows are my thoughts on the components of an ecoculture in which I'd like to find myself living.
About health.
My health proceeds from mental, emotional, physical and spiritual imperatives.
I strive for two states of being only. By myself alone, in Meditation. With others, in the world, in Loving.
Mental: the calm and scope of the Mystic. { like Osho, and Jesus the man). The rule of first rationality, and above that, intuition.
Emotional: Expressing all the emotions, according to, aligning with, my needs and truth of the moment.
Physical: Riding my bike everywhere…
Spiritual: Following the Red Road of North American Native spirituality. Jesus was God become flesh. To me this story symbolizes there is no God outside myself. I am responsible for everything, and accountable for very little of it. Everything is holy, when I remember that, everything.
About food.
Food is Medicine. Grow my own to the extent possible. Be Vegan. Eat nothing that ever had a face on it.
About ownership.
Morals of ownership for profit and wealth accumulation vs service.
It is immoral to pay less than a living wage to employees. Whoever does that is not fit to be an owner. The business is not fit to exist, if it can't support its employees.
It is immoral to charge more rent than the renter can afford to pay. Whoever does that should not be in the renting business.
Bottom line: We approach ownership as if the welfare and rights of the owner were all that matters. Whereas, the right to own something must be preceded by that things right to exist, and the right for a building to exist, or a business to exist, is no different than the "right" of any living or non-living thing to exist. Its "right to exist" is only a form of words. "Rights" aren't applicable. What applies is whether the thing in question is acceptable in the web of life; its existence contingent on its ability to be afforded by those who create or use it. If people can't afford to live there, then the building doesn't have a "right" to exist. If the business can't afford to pay employees a living wage, then the business has no "right" to exist.
The capitalist law of value says that profit making for wealth accumulation is the sole necessary and sufficient condition for ownership. Instead, the economic law of value should put habitat sustainability and service to all of life as the preconditions for the right to exercise hegemonic stewardship over land and business property. In other words, everything in our habitat should be regarded as "commons" and the only ownership rights should be those of exercising hegemonic control through stewardship activities.
About stewardship:
What I am thinking is the grass and the wolves don't have an automatic right to exist and accumulate whatever they need for their welfare. Their activities and their proliferation are controlled by the needs of other life forms in their habitat, as well as the needs of the habitat itself (weather, volcanic activity, etc.). I have been used to calling their methods "competition for resources". But now I see that's a human word. It's not a word they recognize. I think they would more likely use words like "adjustment" or "compromise" . Even to the trading of one life form for another (if that is what is needed for the on-going welfare of the whole). I am certain that humans can be no different.
If we continue to deny this, and assert human rights for consumption of planetary resources as superseding the rights of all other life forms, then we will be extinguished. We all know at some level the process is well underway. What I am saying is that, recognizing the inevitable decline we face, I must banish the words "right to ownership" altogether from my vocabulary, and substitute instead the words "right to stewardship".
I want to live in culture that recognizes that everything that exists has a life and has both a right and an obligation to take part in the continual adjustments of all members necessary for the sustainability of the whole. I want we humans to change our moral attitude to recognize that this is what is happening, and our survival as a species depends on our ability to recognize and adjust to that fact.
As but one example, our large factories have come to have an independent life of their own. They grow, and coerce their employees and their management (so-called) into causing their further expansion. And they grow without regard to the necessary adjustments and compromises with other life if they are to continue to exist. The only reason they get away with this is that their human employees and so-called owners are in thrall to them and their outputs, and so do not insist they exercise responsible stewardship over the rights of their habitat.
You think it's too far-fetched to say a building has a life and therefore has rights and obligations, as it takes part in the "web of life" on earth? Well, If I assist in bringing a child into the world, I am in no doubt I have brought forth a living creature which has rights and obligations, and that my act has consequences to me as well as to all other life and non-life in the habitat. The same is a true if I take part in erecting a building, or taking part in any other enterprise that alters or adds to the habitat in any way.
Another bottom line. I see that the governance system humans globally have adopted, based on the rule of the capitalist laws of value, cannot sustain itself, is evidently crumbling, as the global economic system based on the US dollar collapses. I'm sure the end of cheap oil and the collapse of food, water and air resources from global warming will extinguish whatever is left of it. We don't have to do anything about it. We can't prevent it, nor hasten it. I hope that out of the chaos a new human culture will arise. But I greatly fear the onset of severe widespread destruction and misery that will accompany our journey henceforth.
About existence.
The only time I exist is right now, the past gone, the future not here. And right now is infinitesimally small, no time, in fact. So I don't exist anywhere in time. What I do is create experiences. What i have been used to calling "time", is really "creation", the bringing forth, on this instant, of the new. So I am a creator, a hologram of creation, and I exist in creation, not in time.
Meaning:
To say something has meaning is to say it is part of some so-called "higher" more inclusive structure. But everything is part of the whole, a member of the whole. The whole, since it is "all there is", is undefined, has no meaning. So nothing has any meaning except that which I say it has, which is just my words. Words have consequences, but not meanings. Consequences are momentary paths which appear to me to be present in the chaos but which disappear.
Cause and effect:
A cause may appear to me to be the precursor of a consequence. But everything depends on everything else. And consequences are momentary paths which appear to me to be present in the chaos but which disappear. I better withhold judgements, try some other method of communicating or deciding.
Worry:
Make everything be an experiment. Nothing to worry about. Just assess the outcome, and move on.
If you want to be happy
And live a good life
Make everything an experiment
And live without strife.
Donato Cianci Oct. 1 2012
After years of thinking and writing poetry and other forms of screed about the problems of being a rational human person in a culture where rational thought and action is almost non-existent, I am now approaching a few notions by which I wish to live my life, (what is left of it), and live in hope of finding other like-minded people to enjoy what we've got, while awaiting the inevitable collapse.
Some basic definitions.
I need adequate food , shelter, clothing, and companionship, including the space for being heard, for hearing, and for some shared intimacy.
My habitat forms the container for all I need.
In my daily preoccupation I maintain my container , my habitat, and find my bliss in it.
I no longer subscribe to beliefs. I make statements, definitions and declarations about my perceptions of my world and the ecoculture I inhabit. Anything that sounds to you like a belief I hold, must be just my clumsy wording.
I enjoy playing with my thoughts and ideas and experiences, and those communications from others. I say none of it has any ultimate meaning, except what I give it, or borrow from others. I say there is no "hitching post" in the universe, and I'm not willing to listen to any arguments that there is.
What follows are my thoughts on the components of an ecoculture in which I'd like to find myself living.
About health.
My health proceeds from mental, emotional, physical and spiritual imperatives.
I strive for two states of being only. By myself alone, in Meditation. With others, in the world, in Loving.
Mental: the calm and scope of the Mystic. { like Osho, and Jesus the man). The rule of first rationality, and above that, intuition.
Emotional: Expressing all the emotions, according to, aligning with, my needs and truth of the moment.
Physical: Riding my bike everywhere…
Spiritual: Following the Red Road of North American Native spirituality. Jesus was God become flesh. To me this story symbolizes there is no God outside myself. I am responsible for everything, and accountable for very little of it. Everything is holy, when I remember that, everything.
About food.
Food is Medicine. Grow my own to the extent possible. Be Vegan. Eat nothing that ever had a face on it.
About ownership.
Morals of ownership for profit and wealth accumulation vs service.
It is immoral to pay less than a living wage to employees. Whoever does that is not fit to be an owner. The business is not fit to exist, if it can't support its employees.
It is immoral to charge more rent than the renter can afford to pay. Whoever does that should not be in the renting business.
Bottom line: We approach ownership as if the welfare and rights of the owner were all that matters. Whereas, the right to own something must be preceded by that things right to exist, and the right for a building to exist, or a business to exist, is no different than the "right" of any living or non-living thing to exist. Its "right to exist" is only a form of words. "Rights" aren't applicable. What applies is whether the thing in question is acceptable in the web of life; its existence contingent on its ability to be afforded by those who create or use it. If people can't afford to live there, then the building doesn't have a "right" to exist. If the business can't afford to pay employees a living wage, then the business has no "right" to exist.
The capitalist law of value says that profit making for wealth accumulation is the sole necessary and sufficient condition for ownership. Instead, the economic law of value should put habitat sustainability and service to all of life as the preconditions for the right to exercise hegemonic stewardship over land and business property. In other words, everything in our habitat should be regarded as "commons" and the only ownership rights should be those of exercising hegemonic control through stewardship activities.
About stewardship:
What I am thinking is the grass and the wolves don't have an automatic right to exist and accumulate whatever they need for their welfare. Their activities and their proliferation are controlled by the needs of other life forms in their habitat, as well as the needs of the habitat itself (weather, volcanic activity, etc.). I have been used to calling their methods "competition for resources". But now I see that's a human word. It's not a word they recognize. I think they would more likely use words like "adjustment" or "compromise" . Even to the trading of one life form for another (if that is what is needed for the on-going welfare of the whole). I am certain that humans can be no different.
If we continue to deny this, and assert human rights for consumption of planetary resources as superseding the rights of all other life forms, then we will be extinguished. We all know at some level the process is well underway. What I am saying is that, recognizing the inevitable decline we face, I must banish the words "right to ownership" altogether from my vocabulary, and substitute instead the words "right to stewardship".
I want to live in culture that recognizes that everything that exists has a life and has both a right and an obligation to take part in the continual adjustments of all members necessary for the sustainability of the whole. I want we humans to change our moral attitude to recognize that this is what is happening, and our survival as a species depends on our ability to recognize and adjust to that fact.
As but one example, our large factories have come to have an independent life of their own. They grow, and coerce their employees and their management (so-called) into causing their further expansion. And they grow without regard to the necessary adjustments and compromises with other life if they are to continue to exist. The only reason they get away with this is that their human employees and so-called owners are in thrall to them and their outputs, and so do not insist they exercise responsible stewardship over the rights of their habitat.
You think it's too far-fetched to say a building has a life and therefore has rights and obligations, as it takes part in the "web of life" on earth? Well, If I assist in bringing a child into the world, I am in no doubt I have brought forth a living creature which has rights and obligations, and that my act has consequences to me as well as to all other life and non-life in the habitat. The same is a true if I take part in erecting a building, or taking part in any other enterprise that alters or adds to the habitat in any way.
Another bottom line. I see that the governance system humans globally have adopted, based on the rule of the capitalist laws of value, cannot sustain itself, is evidently crumbling, as the global economic system based on the US dollar collapses. I'm sure the end of cheap oil and the collapse of food, water and air resources from global warming will extinguish whatever is left of it. We don't have to do anything about it. We can't prevent it, nor hasten it. I hope that out of the chaos a new human culture will arise. But I greatly fear the onset of severe widespread destruction and misery that will accompany our journey henceforth.
About existence.
The only time I exist is right now, the past gone, the future not here. And right now is infinitesimally small, no time, in fact. So I don't exist anywhere in time. What I do is create experiences. What i have been used to calling "time", is really "creation", the bringing forth, on this instant, of the new. So I am a creator, a hologram of creation, and I exist in creation, not in time.
Meaning:
To say something has meaning is to say it is part of some so-called "higher" more inclusive structure. But everything is part of the whole, a member of the whole. The whole, since it is "all there is", is undefined, has no meaning. So nothing has any meaning except that which I say it has, which is just my words. Words have consequences, but not meanings. Consequences are momentary paths which appear to me to be present in the chaos but which disappear.
Cause and effect:
A cause may appear to me to be the precursor of a consequence. But everything depends on everything else. And consequences are momentary paths which appear to me to be present in the chaos but which disappear. I better withhold judgements, try some other method of communicating or deciding.
Worry:
Make everything be an experiment. Nothing to worry about. Just assess the outcome, and move on.
If you want to be happy
And live a good life
Make everything an experiment
And live without strife.
Donato Cianci Oct. 1 2012
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Don't Take it Personally
Don't Take it Personally Unless You Want To
Please note that whatever I say here is just Donato talking to himself...use it freely, take it personally, if you wish. Otherwise trash it..
Please note that whatever I say here is just Donato talking to himself...use it freely, take it personally, if you wish. Otherwise trash it..
Right Living in the Age of Uncertainty
Right Living in the Age of Uncertainty
1. Do not feel guilty about being uncertain. Do not be impatient, too swift in trying to get back into control.
2. I don’t know what’s right for my children to do with their lives, or how they should live, but...
3. I can invite them to participate in basic life rituals that give them the grounding to use their own healthy intuitions to make their own decisions and be accountable to themselves for the outcomes.
The Rituals
Rite of passage: birth and first foods and first relationships
safe exploration of the world born into
Rite of passage: to adulthood, First bleeding for women, Manhood ceremony for men
Union for the sake of children and of their future (members of a creative universe, we
cannot escape our duty to take part)
Learning and practicing survival skills: gardening (as an extension of our body as garden, not mechanism), communicating, making, doing
Creating our individual Death Song
Rite of passage: Celebration of Death
1. Do not feel guilty about being uncertain. Do not be impatient, too swift in trying to get back into control.
2. I don’t know what’s right for my children to do with their lives, or how they should live, but...
3. I can invite them to participate in basic life rituals that give them the grounding to use their own healthy intuitions to make their own decisions and be accountable to themselves for the outcomes.
The Rituals
Rite of passage: birth and first foods and first relationships
safe exploration of the world born into
Rite of passage: to adulthood, First bleeding for women, Manhood ceremony for men
Union for the sake of children and of their future (members of a creative universe, we
cannot escape our duty to take part)
Learning and practicing survival skills: gardening (as an extension of our body as garden, not mechanism), communicating, making, doing
Creating our individual Death Song
Rite of passage: Celebration of Death
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Farmers and Banksters
Farmers and Banksters
Food security threatened
Owners of megafarms, shareholders far from the actual farms, don’t know, or if they do, don’t care, that their products and methods of farming are destroying the nutrient value of the soils, destroying the soil itself at rates much faster than it is being replaced. Modern genetically modified seed grains, are eliminating multi-varieties of ancient grains, replacing them (often by government and corporate free trade agreements forcing small farmers off their land) with monocultures which are susceptible to epidemic disease and may even be poisonous (wheat allergies are common now, likely because the wheat we eat is not is not the same as that our grandparents ate).
Increasing populations and global warming, and excessive water consumption to grow meat protein instead of plant protein, are rapidly depleting planetary supplies of fresh water, and there is no apparent solution to this.
The use of pesticides and herbicides and genetic modifications to seed grains needed to make large scale mechanical farming “successful” or in the short term, “profitable”, are destroying insects and other life, particularly, honey bees, and soil microorganisms, on which most food plants depend for pollination, and therefore, for their usefulness as food for us.
People die quickly without access to food and water. Local wars and riots involving millions will flare over this.
Security of community and culture threatened
The banksters and all those in the “ financial world” have demonstrated they don’t understand how their products affect the global economic culture, and the risks to that culture, and the risks to local cultures which it has supplanted. Everywhere in the world governments and banksters (mega-merchants) have combined to encourage people to put their present and old age security in the hands of an illusionary fiat money economic system which is now on the verge of total collapse and not one of those responsible has the least clue how to replace it, or what would work.
People become apathetic or violent when their culture collapses. When the world wide “American Hollywood Dream” culture collapses, the worst of human addictions to consumption will manifest in severe withdrawal symptoms, local predatory warfare, widespread epidemic disease and psychological depression.
Final Note
Humans finally left the Garden of Eden when we invented thinking and science as “manipulation of nature” not “wisdom” (thanks to that old witch burner, Francis Bacon) and used it to develop factory scale farming and global transportation based on cheap petroleum energy. (Cheap only because the dire and horrendously expensive environmental costs have never been counted).
Our mantra should be the living moral attitude of “conservation and reduced per person consumption”, not the pursuit of mechanical “efficiency and effectiveness” . Our bodies are gardens , not mechanisms. We live in a world of gardens, not of mechanisms. Our every decision should take into account, should spiritually respect, the differing points of view of everything, all of life, and non-life.
Donato Aug. 14 2012 (from May 14 2012 journal)
Food security threatened
Owners of megafarms, shareholders far from the actual farms, don’t know, or if they do, don’t care, that their products and methods of farming are destroying the nutrient value of the soils, destroying the soil itself at rates much faster than it is being replaced. Modern genetically modified seed grains, are eliminating multi-varieties of ancient grains, replacing them (often by government and corporate free trade agreements forcing small farmers off their land) with monocultures which are susceptible to epidemic disease and may even be poisonous (wheat allergies are common now, likely because the wheat we eat is not is not the same as that our grandparents ate).
Increasing populations and global warming, and excessive water consumption to grow meat protein instead of plant protein, are rapidly depleting planetary supplies of fresh water, and there is no apparent solution to this.
The use of pesticides and herbicides and genetic modifications to seed grains needed to make large scale mechanical farming “successful” or in the short term, “profitable”, are destroying insects and other life, particularly, honey bees, and soil microorganisms, on which most food plants depend for pollination, and therefore, for their usefulness as food for us.
People die quickly without access to food and water. Local wars and riots involving millions will flare over this.
Security of community and culture threatened
The banksters and all those in the “ financial world” have demonstrated they don’t understand how their products affect the global economic culture, and the risks to that culture, and the risks to local cultures which it has supplanted. Everywhere in the world governments and banksters (mega-merchants) have combined to encourage people to put their present and old age security in the hands of an illusionary fiat money economic system which is now on the verge of total collapse and not one of those responsible has the least clue how to replace it, or what would work.
People become apathetic or violent when their culture collapses. When the world wide “American Hollywood Dream” culture collapses, the worst of human addictions to consumption will manifest in severe withdrawal symptoms, local predatory warfare, widespread epidemic disease and psychological depression.
Final Note
Humans finally left the Garden of Eden when we invented thinking and science as “manipulation of nature” not “wisdom” (thanks to that old witch burner, Francis Bacon) and used it to develop factory scale farming and global transportation based on cheap petroleum energy. (Cheap only because the dire and horrendously expensive environmental costs have never been counted).
Our mantra should be the living moral attitude of “conservation and reduced per person consumption”, not the pursuit of mechanical “efficiency and effectiveness” . Our bodies are gardens , not mechanisms. We live in a world of gardens, not of mechanisms. Our every decision should take into account, should spiritually respect, the differing points of view of everything, all of life, and non-life.
Donato Aug. 14 2012 (from May 14 2012 journal)
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