Animals

Homo sapiens is an animal species. Yes, we are animals. We have a wider range of brain function than many other animals, but we are animals. We have instincts, impulses and resulting behaviors which are not controlled by thought or intention. Our bodies exist and survive by means of purely unconscious and unintentional neuro-muscular contractions. We breathe without intent. Our hearts beat without intentional control, if we are fortunate.

 

We are now acutely aware of behavioral anomalies and behavioral norms due to electronic media. Even taboos about sexually explicit information are being shattered by the Web and video. Unfortunately, we are also being exposed to the ruthless violence of which all people are capable when the frontal lobe becomes polluted, diseased or deranged by life's circumstances.

 

Those in power would be wise to look closely at human animal behavior under stress. The social bulwark which contains human stress against impulsive violence is falling with routine environmental stress caused by overpopulation and resultant climate change. Religion will not succeed to raise the bar of nonviolence. It is religion, after all, which has enabled violence in the name of "God's chosen" of various stripes. Civil government, even in pacifist and generous Sweden, is unable to counteract the irritability that comes with constant environmental deterioration. The riots of the past few days are evidence.

 

In Oklahoma, after a most deadly tornado took its toll on a badly constructed and overpopulated area (given the known natural environment there), the city manager stated for media, when questioned about the value of prevention, that lives could not be valued in dollars but construction costs could. Therefore, he would not push for higher, tornado-proofing building codes in his city. He also indicated he was a religious person.

 

Animals in a deteriorating environment will react to survive. If obstructed or repressed, they will become violent. If they become violent in sufficient numbers, many lives will be lost and the environment will be further deteriorated. This is all biology. It has nothing to do with an all-powerful entity. It is measurable by science. It is treatable by scientific application of sex education, environmentalism and appropriate government intervention. Homo sapiens is an animal species, and we are the only scientific animals. This increases our responsibility for our planet and to each other.

If

If The Prophet of Islam were alive today, he would most likely be a jihadist.

If the Buddha were alive today, he would most likely be a secular Buddhist.

If the Christ of the Bible were alive today, he would most likely be a secular humanist and socialist.

Parable

 

A single woman retreated to the country to live a life in harmony with Nature. She lived in a small cabin without electricity. She pumped her water with a bicycle-powered  pump into a cistern which also collected rain.  She fueled the cabin by carefully gleaning wood from the surrounding forest. She installed a highly efficient wood stove with some alterations made to her chimney to accelerate burning and diminish ash. In a clearing, she planted a garden for food. She dug a root cellar in the shade of her cabin. She built a hen house and got some chickens and a rooster. And she took a piglet from a neighbor to raise for cooking fat, winter meat and summer bacon. Her old car was seldom used. The bicycle got her to the nearby village for mail and dry goods. Her life was the work of living. She rose early and retired early. Her neighbors respected her lifestyle and visited her often to offer what they could. She did likewise for those whom she respected.

A married man with an MBA lived in Manhattan with his wife and three children. He worked in banking. His family had made a fortune raising millions of chickens for slaughter in cramped commercial chicken barns. He was educated in Ivy League schools. His family occupied a large four -bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. His children went to school every morning in a hired car with the au pair, a young woman from Haiti with a college education. On weekends, he and his family often took the garaged Lexus SUV up to the country to their large country house, which was maintained by a live-in caretaker, a poor divorced farmer from the local area who had little education and had lost his farm.

The banker's property abutted the single woman's small land holding. The wooded area of the properties were not formally divided by wall or fence. The banker and woman met occasionally while walking in the woods. They exchanged neighborly greetings from a distance.

The banker's children grew to adolescence. They took to drinking and smoking dope in the woods where they drove their all-terrain vehicles. On several occasions, they disturbed the sleep of the single woman by prowling around her cabin and stirring up her animals in the middle of the night. She decided to complain to the banker and walked over to his country house one weekend.

The banker was annoyed that she had walked up to his house unannounced and had rung his bell. "Why didn't you call me first?" he growled without inviting her in. "I have no phone," she said blandly. The banker grudgingly asked her in and looked skeptically at her soiled boots as she walked across his Italian-tiled foyer. He offered her a seat in the foyer while he stood above her. "What's this about?" he asked.

The single woman was surprised by the banker's immediate coldness. Her local friends were cordial and hospitable whenever she visited on a whim. "I'm sorry if this is a bad time, but I have to tell you that your children have been coming over to my place in the middle of the night and disturbing me and my animals. It has happened several times now, so I wanted to nip it in the bud. I thought you should know so you could take care of it."

The banker smiled at the woman with a pitying look, the look he reserved for panhandlers in the city. "What makes you think it's my kids?" he said slyly. The single woman answered neutrally,"I know your kids. I see them all the time and their ATVs in the woods."

The banker took a deep breath and exhaled with exasperation. "Look. I've been wanting to talk to you for a while, so I'm glad you came over. I think we can come to a mutual solution. I've been wanting to buy you out. We can smell your wood smoke and your pig when we walk in the woods. I can hear your rooster some mornings off in the distance. It's annoying. I could give you more than the market price per acre. It's a win-win. Besides, a single woman like you has no business living out there alone in the middle of nowhere."

The woman had not expected his callousness. Her life was surrounded with a Nature she loved and respected. Her neighbors and friends were a tough lot, but they were honest, respectful and hard-working. Her own life was hard, but it was a life she chose and wanted to keep. It was a life she could feel good about in relation to her environment. This banker's dissatisfaction with her proximity on the basis of his occasional walks in their woods  and a polite complaint about his spoiled brats stunned her.

She stood. "No," she said. "But I will warn you that I will defend my property and my animals in the middle of the night if we are disturbed again. I will also let the local police know about the problem, just so there's no confusion if some unfortunate accident befalls a forewarned malicious trespasser. As for your money, I have absolutely no need of it. Good day." The woman walked out of the house and off the man's property.

The banker poured himself a drink in his paneled study. He sat in his leather office chair and used the remote to turn on his wall-size TV. "I'll get her to sell out to me...it's just a matter of time," he thought to console himself.

Duplicity

The interplay between thoughts and words often leaves us feeling we must be duplicitous to function socially and ethically. The current social practice of politically correct speech, even when it is inane, is an example of duplicity. Pretending, for example, that I do not notice the difference in skin color between myself and a brown person may avert discomfort in superficial circumstances, but it may also obstruct candor and mutual learning over time. Skin color dynamics are hard-wired into most human societies, whether we choose to acknowledge this or not. Denial does not lead to any substantial resolution of a human problem.

 

The recent debacle of the Tea Party crying foul over IRS applications for non-profit status is an example of a more sinister form of duplicity. The abuse of non-profit status is omnipresent in the U.S.. Many savvy folks make themselves a charity to provide themselves with a posh lifestyle as CEO while getting volunteers to do the hard work of actually doing some socially responsible activity. The Lance Armstrong example is quite stunning. By becoming a brand, Mr. Armstrong became a media celebrity with an international aristocratic lifestyle. While hiding behind his yellow-band charity, he cheated at his sport to stay in the spotlight. This kind of duplicity is harmful to the cause of human development for individuals and for society. It breeds cynicism and hypocrisy.

 

Internal recognition and open acknowledgment of feelings of duplicity are courageous behaviors in a society which pushes to repress and deny in the name of some holy conformity of manners. Refusing to participate in a life of duplicity, rationalized by some grand ideal, is the stuff of coming out, of liberation, of true personal salvation.

Perspective

I often do a simple perspective exercise, especially when frustrated or angry. I use memory of satellite imagery to zoom out from my location to a space view of Earth. Then I zoom out further and further, until this galaxy is barely visible from deep space. I relish my feeling of liberation among the distant stars. I breathe deeply as I do this visualization. I have gotten good enough at this to be able to use it in a stagnant supermarket line. Rather than watch the octogenarian lady count out the thirty-seven pennies from her coin purse, I do this visualization.

 

Perspective is mutable. This is perhaps the most important survival skill of the human frontal lobe. Changing perspective can make the difference between violent rage and compassionate understanding with practice. Changing perspective keeps us from getting stuck and depressed. Some rely on expensive travel vacations to change their perspective. This must be nice, but it is the wealthy and lazy person's method. Changing perspective in the loud shared bedroom of an urban tenement takes courage and practice. It is much easier to turn to religion.

 

In a way, I am my perspective from moment to moment. My perspective could be grounded in a negative self image, for example. Then I would be defensive and possibly aggressive as a defense. If I maintain some control of my perspective by practicing the use of my own brain, I can proactively affect my perception and mood. This is all part of the foundation of practicing compassion in everyday life.

Gardening

Walnut tree flower by Peter Petraitis
 

Anyone, except the rare green-thumbed savant, who has planted an urban garden knows it takes work. The initial work is just observation. Logging the light on the imagined garden plot is essential. Buying the right seeds/plants for the right light saves time, frustration and money. While logging the light, preparing the soil for planting saves time. I'm a fan of cow manure, rotted leaf mulch and a little new soil. I stay away from commercial fertilizers whenever possible.

 

I planted a random wildflower garden this year with a bag of pre-mixed varietal seeds. It is about 2-3 inches high now. I see little cosmos babies, and there are already full-grown violets, blue and white. The rest will be a surprise. Around the base of the red maple in front of the house I have boxed the sidewalk-cut to discourage irresponsible, law-breaking dog owners from using it as a depository for dog feces. One such phantom vandal had taken to toileting his huge dog there daily. I felt like I was tending a horse barn. No more.

 

Using large amounts of processed city water is unnecessary, if planting is done wisely. A bucket under a drain pipe is a common site in my neighborhood. I have found that plants do just fine when left on their own in an area that gets at least some shade every day. I'm not growing leafy vegetables of fruit trees. Mine is an urban garden, a collection of postage-stamp areas. My goal is to beautify, to provide insects with some habitat and reduce the amount of pollution and carbon dioxide. It's a minor contribution, but millions of minor contributions could make a significant difference in the environment.

 

Plants, like animals, in my opinion, have their own lives, quite independent of mine. They are not simply there for my enjoyment. They are life forms. I try to afford them some respect as a caretaker by reading up on what they need. The same applies to the animals which have symbiotic relationships with the plants in my garden plots. I don't use industrial insecticides or weed killers. These things are poison for the whole environment. I love watching the bumble bees weave their impossible flights around my property. Peskier critters can be discouraged with all kinds of gentle methods. Again, it's just a matter of practical education.

 

My battle with intrusive skunks under my deck and porch earlier this year made me more appreciative than ever of my place in my environment here in the city. Solving that problem nonviolently and non-toxically increased my optimism for my own ability to live in an urban environment as a relatively responsible person. So much of simply being human in this northern urban environment is destructive to it: Petro-chemical heating and electricity, petro-chemical transport, mass-produced food, plastics, etc..

 

Gardening is a practice of learning more about that urban life. Its results bring something to my environment. It is an extension of my internal process of development within my human social environment. Gardening is a practice of learning, of paying attention, of nurturing, of contributing. It is a practical form of what I consider my humanism.

Dreams

I enjoy examining the chaos of my dreams. The dreaming brain is a hard drive working without an operating system. Different programs intermingle. Mothers merge with strangers. Strangers morph into animals. Animals speak French or gibberish at will.

 

The chaos of dreams enforces my enthusiasm for the development of consciousness. The value of working with my hard-drive (brain) with an operating system (practice) is immense in the scope of evolution. Yet so much of this value is wasted on homo sapiens.

 

I know from working with those who are mentally distressed that tracking and discussing dreams are methods toward recovery. Dream journals are established tools of therapists, writers and visual artists. The wealth of random thought in dreams can provide clues which can lead to insight and behavioral change.

 

Last night I dreamt of some Humanists I have known. We were engaged in a meeting. The dialogues in the dream have left me with much to consider... about myself, my practice and those with whom I have interacted. Isn't this marvelous? I feel my brain's full work is often done in the background of my awareness. Meditation, which I do daily, is one way of accessing the fruit of that labor. Dreams are also a valuable channel for accessing what is going on beneath the surface of my awareness.