“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”Albert Einstein
Not surprisingly, on Columbus Day I read about Chris and what he was up to at that time. It didn’t take more than a paragraph to realize what the world is doing today, he was doing 600+ years ago. There I was, thinking about what the hell I was going to do for my next story. I also wanted to take a break from the deeply personal ones I have been putting up recently. Trust me, the last thing I want to be is thematically predictable, because that’s boring, at least in my mind.
I know many of us are looking at what is going around us and it is hard to believe, like a ghostly aberration. There is this idea that we are better than we are and we’re not. Please don’t hang up on my yet, because I have barely gotten started. Plus, I am not at all interested in creating and sharing sad stories. Who needs my help with that?
I am not sure when we started recording and sharing our history here on earth, but it certainly goes back thousands of years. Even before that, there were cave drawings. Today, developments in science and technology have allowed us to go way back in time. Bad behavior seems to be in our psychological DNA. I can hang with Columbus to make my story.
Enslaving people in the New World was done in the name of Christianity. These native societies had highly developed cultures with their own deities and spiritual practices. They didn’t need any help. Queen Isabella was so happy when Chris returned from his first voyage. The excitement was two fold. Converting heathens to Christianity rivaled the potential riches he had uncovered. The idea of some people being of less value than others is certainly not a contemporary invention.
Let me jump to the present for just a paragraph or maybe two. The genocide in Gaza is a goddamn fact and to say otherwise is purposely, jaded stupidity, a political convenience. Now, let me tell you what will happen with a two state solution. After about 20 years, the Palestinians will develop deadly weaponry and promptly turn it on Israel. It is not because they are evil, they are human beings, doing what we have always done. There are endless macro examples of the behavior of countries, whether empire or fledgling state.
I am not going to pretend I am smarter than I actually am. I could use quotations from guys like Plato and Aristotle and even impress myself in the process. In my most erudite fashion, fuck it. There are plenty of those brilliant minds that shared how we could uplift ourselves and be better at being human. I read that Plato wrote about the absence of reverence and awe, whose presence would alter the present and future behavior of our species. I tell you, if I was sitting around in my toga and swallowing grapes, I’d pontificate with the best of ‘em. Believe me, I am not casting aspersions on those guys, because they were right. Empires have the ability to create better lives for all, but conquest is what they(we) do and have always done.
It is no different when we go micro and look at the individual, another word for me and you. Today, we have one man, who exhibits all those traits that have kept us from getting out of our own way. He is our darkness. We have gotten better at doing so many things with the passage of time. On the down side, we can now kill people without ever touching or seeing them. Time has sped up dramatically, because of our ability to innovate. It has brought out the best and the worst in us.
Genuine compassion is about as close as you can get to an express train to heaven. Believing your well being is predicated on the well being of others is beautiful. The picture perfect antithesis is Donald J. Trump. Not a day goes by without this guy putting himself above all others. This son of a bitch is a lab rat, stealing all the cheese at the end of the maze. His behavior is a perfect microcosm of all that is wrong in the world, contemporarily and historically. He owns a cancerous ego, glutinously engorging itself, while brutally starving everyone else.
I have never bothered to check how many times I have used quotes from Albert Einstein. No glasses have been invented to help us see what he saw in the macro world of the universe and the micro world of the individual. Once again, in my mind, he hits the nail on the head. I think it goes in lock step with Plato’s assessment of what seems to be so elusive to us, reverence and awe. We suffer from a kind of myopia, unable to step back and appreciate how incredible it is to be a human being. The absence of understanding is joined at the hip with the elusivity of compassion. We seem to be too goddamn lazy to do the work. We have always been happy with “what”, not really giving a shit about “why”.
It is easy to be held prisoner by the world we inhabit. It requires no effort whatsoever. Who wants to be a cheerleader for a team that has no wins? Here’s the rub, living a life is not a team sport and that’s the damn difference. Just today, I read a story about a Palestinian woman being burned alive, while her two year old witnessed it. Several people, including children, were killed in yet another mass shooting. This time, it happened at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Ore.
My worst memories of elementary school in the 50’s, were air raid drills, requiring all of us to get under our desks for a few minutes.
Every day, the schmuck in our White House says and does the dumbest things imaginable. New Yorkers knew all about this clown years ago. In spite of him and all is billionaire sycophants, I believe it is singularly important for us to be kind to ourselves and others we meet today and every day. It is just so easy to be sucked under this human swamp. We have to be better than this. We have to be better than this.
Now, I am a big fan of happy endings in my stories, not the massage parlor kind. Please, the last thing I want to sound like is some demented optimist, enjoying the view as I cascade down the side of a mile high cliff. I am a citizen of the same world as all of you. It is easy to explain and a helluva of a lot harder to understand what is going on. Like my pal, the Buddha, I do believe one voice can become a chorus, but you gotta sing to be heard.
This is me singing.
LISTEN TO IT HERE:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/19974592-what-have-we-learned