We Can't Go On Like This

It’s been pointed out all over the place in 2017: this is the first time in worldwide human history that obesity is a bigger problem than starvation, more people die of old age than from infectious diseases, and people who commit suicide outnumber those killed in all the wars, terrorist acts and violent crimes combined.

The LA Times ran an interview with a filmmaker last Sunday, who said something about “these profoundly dark times…” and I had to wonder, as I often do when I often hear people say things like that, “WTF is she talking about?” Maybe it’s an ignorance of history thing. It mentioned that she was 38, which means she was born the same year I started college at Stony Brook. In those days unemployment was about double what it is now, inflation was like quadruple, violent crime rates were the highest for the last 60 or 70 years. I remember mentioning AIDS to a friend in Ohio, and she said, “that’s the disease that old Jewish people get, right?” In New York City, the Dakota was black, Trinity Church was black, all the subway cars were covered inside and out with graffiti (which at least was not all black). I assumed they were supposed to be like that. I have no idea what Times Square looked like because nobody went there unless they wanted to score drugs and/or get mugged.

But the thing that struck me most about my first year back in college was the way every conversation about the future was marked by the same caveat.

“In 15 or 20 years, if we’re all still around…”

“In the future, if we haven’t blown ourselves to bits…”

“The next generation or two, provided anyone survives the nuclear holocaust…”

And this was a couple of years before Jonathan Schell’s Pulitzer winning book “The Fate of The Earth”, a reasoned scholarly analysis of the likelihood and possible aftermath of nuclear war between the US and the USSR which deteriorated repeatedly into a rant that was essentially “OMG we are going to fucking obliterate humanity!”

Those were dark times. Too dark even to be profound.

Did I mention the garbage strike in NYC? Not only dark, but stinky were those times.

So what is wrong with these times? What’s wrong with living longer and healthier than ever? Is it somehow bad that worldwide poverty has been cut in half in the last 20 years? Is their something evil and scary about the fact that crime rates everywhere have trended downward for almost 40 years?

Okay, yes, we might could go to war with North Korea, which has a few nukes and coupla ICBMs, but hasn’t yet figured out how to combine the two. In the eighties the US and USSR could wipe out all civilization with a fraction of their waiting nukes; as Winnie Churchill said “the rest would just make the rubble bounce.”

And yes, too many people still don’t have the rights they should have and aren’t treated fairly as they should be. But would they want to go back to the way things were 40 years ago, or 100 years ago?

Yes, there have been 7,500 tragic, unnecessary American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 16 years. Is that worse than roughly 60,000 deaths in the 10 years of the Vietnam war. Or 400,000 deaths in 4 years of WWII. 700,000 in the Civil War.

In short, the vast majority of everyone you’ll ever meet today is healthier, wealthier, safer and happier than they likely would have been in any other period in history. I refer you again to Steven Pinker’s book “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, the reading of which should be a universal prerequisite to getting an internet connection.

So why has the suicide rate in the United States surged to the highest levels in 30 years? Why are the best-selling prescription drugs all antidepressants? Why are so many people scared or angry or hopeless? Are these times really that dark?

Yes. Yes they are. Because while scientists and doctors and yes even politicians have made our material life better in the last couple of centuries, our spiritual world has been swirling down the toilet. Our religions are burnt-out husks of ancient spiritual guidance systems. Our so-called spiritual leaders hopelessly cling to these failed institutions, but they have no idea how to help us connect to the Divine. The people know this, and they are abandoning traditional religions in droves.

The fastest growing “religion” in the US is “spiritual but not religious”. NOT Atheists, agnostics, secularists, humanists. The vast majority of Americans still believe in a higher power, but they have no idea what it is or where it is or how to connect to it, or even what to call it.

The ills of our time are all spiritual ills. Greed, pride, prejudice, fear, hatred, hopelessness. These things don’t happen around spiritually healthy, truly Spirit-centered souls. These things are killing us. We can’t go on like this.

So what can we do? I’ll tell you. Check back on Labor Day 2017 for Part 2.

Spirituality & Health Magazine

I recently picked up the May/June 2017 issue of Spirituality & Health. I'd glanced through a few copies in the jury room when I got called for jury duty a few months ago, and thought I should maybe check it out, but I was really delighted when I finally had a chance to read an issue carefully.

The first columnist, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, startled me by expressing some basic beliefs that are very close to mine, beliefs which I thought made me an outlier in the world of spiritual thought. For instance, someone asked "If you weren't born Jewish, would you choose to be Jewish?" He replied (in part) "I suspect that I would find Judaism too complicated, tribal, and political for my taste. I don't think I would join any religion, but rather immerse myself in the wisdom and contemplative practices of all of them, and weave my own spiritual path from them." I'm guessing this is pretty much what he has done, though he still wears a yarmulke and calls himself rabbi. My objections to the Southern Baptist faith I was raised in are different, but the path I've found sounds like it's much the same as his.

On the afterlife, he says: "...You and I are unique, temporary wavings of an infinite and undying 'ocean' we call God. When we die, we don't go anywhere; we simply return to the 'ocean' that waves us." In my writings, I've called it a big ball of spiritual energy, or I've suggested we are pieces pinched off of a big ball of spiritual play-doh. The idea is that we continue to exist after death, by being reintegrated into the One Spirit; any individuals born or reborn later will be a mixture of the spiritual energies we've all contributed to this 'ocean'.

One reader says "you seem to be so open-minded as to be almost empty-headed. What do you stand for?" Shapiro then describes himself as a Jewish practitioner of Perennial Wisdom, and goes on to list the 4 common traits of this wisdom (or philosophy,) pretty much the way I have paraphrased them in my own writings.

Finally, I loved this answer in the July/August issue (the first I've received as a subscriber):

Can you recommend a guru I can follow? "Any of the Hasbro egg-shaped Weebles will do. 'Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down' is their core teaching, and you would do well to embrace it..."

Divided We Fall

The things that make us all alike are much more numerous and important than the things that make us different.

The most recent scientific consensus is that 99.5% of the DNA of every human being on the planet is exactly alike. If a strand of your DNA was the length of a football field, the part that makes you different from everyone else in the world would stretch about a foot and a half. Easy first down. Maybe it's reasonable to spend 0.5% of your day pondering these ironclad genetic differences. That's 12 minutes -- or 8 if you sleep. A coupla commercial breaks. For the rest of the day, think about the fact that everyone else on the planet is almost totally, completely, exactly like you.

We want to think of ourselves as unique and special, and of course, you are. Go talk to yourself in the mirror; no one else in the world has that face or that voice. No one else in history has the exact same talents and fears. But what mostly makes you who you are is not the 0.5 things that make you different, it's the 95.5 things you share with every other person in the world. 

People tend to divide themselves into groups based on skin color, education, the language they speak, the country they or their ancestors came from. These divisions make our lives smaller, they make our world smaller. They cut us off from opportunities to make friends, to do business, to experience new games, food, art, music. What's more, too often it seems to me that the public personalities who emphasize these divisions, the people who encourage us to divide ourselves into these groups, are not really trying to help members of their group or any other group. They are trying to gain more power or influence for themselves, trying to herd people toward their personal cause, for their personal benefit. Divide and Conquer, as the saying goes. It's never Divide and Help, or Divide and Heal.

Check out the sea of humanity roiling through your local mall or ball game or concert. People come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors, children and elderly, excited teenagers, weary parents. And every one of them wants to be safe, to be healthy and free from hunger and fear. They all want a new cell phone and Netflix. They want to enjoy life. They want to be loved. They want all of those things for their children. And they are each connected to and part of the one Divine, just like you are.

Advice on Making Decisions

Of course the Divine has a plan. But it doesn't have to tell you what it is.

One of the hardest things about the spirit-centered life is learning to connect with the Divine without expecting any results. You hear catchphrases applied to various tasks like "it's the journey, not the destination", or "the joy is in the process, not the product"; our meditation and mindfulness needs to be done with that kind of attitude. To experience the Spirit and be aware of its presence at all times is not so much a goal as a path; not the endpoint, but the guiding light.

OTOH, while on this planet in this body we have to make plans. We have to decide on careers, partners, hobbies -- some of us multiple times for each. On a daily basis we have to decide how to dress, what to eat. If the Divine doesn't hit you with some gold tablets or vandalize your bedroom wall with graffiti that points the way forward, you still have decisions to make. Here are some ideas: look at the choices in front of you, write them down if that helps. Then ask a couple of questions:

1. Which option is the best use of my talents and abilities?
2. Which option will be of most benefit to my community (or spiritual eco-system in SpiritMode speak)? 

If the answer to number 1 is clear right away, do that. If not, go on to question 2.

DO NOT, under any circumstances, try to "follow your passion". This is one of the big fallacies of late 20th century. I actually had a therapist tell me " don't think about what you 'should' do, concentrate on what you want to do". It took me a couple of confused and rudderless years to realize that being guided by your own desires is a trap.

Just think of Buddha's most famous directive, the 4 Noble Truths:
Life is full of suffering.
Suffering is caused by DESIRE.(emphasis is mine of course, Buddha didn't use italics)
We can end suffering by eliminating desire.
We can eliminate desire by following the 8-fold path.

Or chapter one of the Tao Te Ching:
"Without desire, we see life's true essence.
With desire, we see only it's physical manifestations."

Who are you going to trust, the founders major religions, with 3000 years of history and billions of followers,  or the writer of some self-help book? (You might also ask yourself which "self" that writer was trying to help).

One more thing to remember: If a decision is really, really hard, then it doesn't matter. A lot of people have a hard time accepting this. But if you come down to 2 or 3 options, and the benefits and pitfalls of your options are so close that you can't make up your mind, clearly they all have equal chances of success or failure. So draw straws, throw darts, toss a coin. Then get to work. The time and energy you waste agonizing over a decision is costing you, too.