Be ye lamps unto yourselves

El Cabrero has often fessed up here to his soft spot for Buddhism, for both family and personal reasons. As world religions go, it seems to be a good bit less bloodthirsty than most, particularly those of the monotheistic variety--and I say that as a member of one of the latter.

One of the things I like about it is the way the historic Buddha told his students not to accept anything on the basis of faith or authority but to investigate things for themselves. On his deathbed, he assembled the monks and told them that the important thing was the dharma or teaching, not the teacher. He urged them to be lamps and refuges unto themselves.

I just finished reading a book about a self-identified Buddhist community that seemed not to have gotten that memo. Here's a short version: a leader of a New Age group was "recognized" by a visiting Tibetan lama and was said to be a tulku or reincarnation of a spiritual teacher. The group set up a community that was more of a personality cult than a Buddhist center. Families were broken up; money misappropriated; at least one student was physically abused (not to mention questionable conduct by the leader who was regarded by members as a holy being who could do no wrong).

The saddest part wasn't that the person in charged abused authority. After all, there are spiritual as well as sexual predators (and often they are one and the same). The saddest part was that otherwise intelligent people surrendered their critical thinking in unquestioned obedience to a leader whose every action, no matter how arbitrary, was said to be have been undertaken to "save sentient beings." Kind of like a domestic abuser who only hurts family members "for their own good."

And for all the talk of saving sentient beings from suffering, it didn't seem like a whole lot of that was done in any practical sense.

The problem with this kind of unthinking obedience to any human or human institution (even those claiming to be divine) is that once you give it, it's only a matter of the luck of the draw whether one obeys a Hitler, a Stalin, or the Dalai Lama--and I'm pretty sure the Dalai Lama would agree. You've thrown away the only thing that can distinguish between them.

I feel another Dylan quote coming on--one the real Buddha would have approved of. It's called Trust Yourself and it's from Empire Burlesque. Here it is:

Well, you're on your own, you always were,
In a land of wolves and thieves.
Don't put your hope in ungodly man
Or be a slave to what somebody else believes.

FROM BAPTISM TO AFGHANISTAN. It's all there in the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes From Under the Fig Tree.

SCHOOL OF COAL. Here are two items on the controversy over Marsh Fork Elementary School and Massey Energy

SHOPPING AND/OR CITIZENSHIP? Here's an item on ethical consumption and its limits.

CHEW ON THIS. British chef Jamie Oliver is bringing his reality TV show to Huntington WV, just a half hour or so away from Goat Rope Farm, after that city was declared the most unhealthy in America. Two things that jumped out at me were the 15 pound hamburger from Hillbilly Hot Dogs and the person who had this show confused with American Idol.

NOT THAT ANYONE HAS ASKED FOR MY OPINION, but as President Obama mulls over the future of US involvement in Afghanistan, I keep thinking about Alexander the Great's exit strategy: marry a princess, declare victory, and get the hell out of there.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Forethought

Hesiod and the Muse but Gustave Moreau. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Welcome to an ongoing series about Greek tragedy, along with links and comments about current events. The topic at hand is the myth of Prometheus, which is the subject of Aeschylus' play Prometheus Bound. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

The earliest source on the myth of Prometheus is probably from the Greek poet Hesiod, who probably lived in the 8th century BC. He left two major works, Theogony and Works and Days. The former is one version of how the universe and gods came into being. The latter has some of that, along with advice on farming. Prometheus appears in both.

Hesiod's vision of the origin of things is anything but serene and orderly a la Genesis. The universe began with a void or chaos and many struggles, wars and reversals led to the triumph of the Olympian gods under the leadership of Zeus.

Prometheus, whose name means forethought was a Titan, a member of an earlier generation of immortals. He could foresee the outcome of the struggle between the older generation of Titans and that of the gods and sided with Zeus in the struggle.

His foresight wasn't much help in keeping him out of trouble. He initially enraged Zeus by a trick over a sacrificial meal. A dispute arose as to who got which part of a sacrificial ox. Prometheus tricked Zeus by disguising the best portions and allowing Zeus to choose. Zeus picked the part that just contained fat and some bones, while the humans got the good parts.

Zeus retaliated by withholding from men the secret of fire (and by creating the mischievous race of women to plague mankind, but that's a different story). You probably know the rest of the story. Prometheus stole the divine fire and gave it to humans. Then, according to the Theogony,

Cunning Prometheus he [Zeus] bound with unbreakable and painful chains and drove a stake through his middle. And he turned on him a long-winged eagle, which ate his immortal liver; by night the liver grew as much again as the long-winged bird had eaten in the whole day...

Thus it is not possible to deceive the mind of Zeus or escape his judgment. Even the trickster Prometheus, Iapetus' son, was not able to escape the heavy consequences of his anger. In spite of all his cleverness he lies helplessly bound by a great chain.

The punishment wasn't destined to last forever, but we'll see tomorrow that it lasted long enough.

IT'S ABOUT TIME. The new federal budget will expand protections for workers.

THE FAT FOOD INDUSTRY (AND A RECIPE) here.

CLIMATE CHANGE. From Coal Tattoo, here's a look at the prospects of climate change legislation.

SENDING MESSAGES. Here's an interesting article on evolution and consumption.

ANNALS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. Here's an item about path finding sociological research that involved walking around with untied shoelaces (for real).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lucky us (?)

Tibetan wheel of life and death, courtesy of wikipedia.

According to Buddhist teachings, I'm a pretty lucky guy. And if you're reading this, you probably are too, just by virtue of being human. Buddhists believe (metaphorically at least) that without attaining enlightenment, sentient beings are destined to cycle on and on in Samsara, the realm of birth and death.

Depending on karma, one can be reborn in any of six realms, which range from heavens to hells. All such states are impermanent, but some are more or less pleasant than others.

Believe it or not, being born as a human is one of the better gigs. It is believed to be the only one in which one can make progress towards waking up and escaping the endless cycle of coming into being and passing away. Those born in other realms are either too ignorant, miserable or blissed-out to make any headway.

According to some Buddhist teachings, human birth is really, really rare. As in imagine a blind tortoise at the bottom of the ocean that swims to the surface once every hundred years in an effort to put his neck in a wooden yoke floating on the surface. He's got a better chance of doing it than most beings have of being born as a human.

One doesn't have to take this literally to get the point that people do have a vast potential if they choose to develop it. Still, if we're the lucky ones, I'd hate to think what the other gigs are like...

ANOTHER NOD TO THE ODYSSEY. A few months back, there was an extended series here on the Odyssey of Homer and what it might have to say about the difficulties and dangers some combat veterans face on their homecoming. This item from the Jan. 2 New York Times is a case in point.

FROM HOMER TO VIRGIL. Speaking of the classics, in the Aeneid, Virgil speaks of the goddess Rumor (aka Fama or Ossa) as "nimble as quicksilver among evils." Here's a good AP article by the AP's Tom Breen on popular rumors and hoaxes of today.

HARD TIMES HAVE COME to the "bubble bourgeoisie."

STIMULUS. Will it be bold enough?

FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND. This weekend I attended a memorial service for William C. "Bill" Blizzard, who died in late December at the age of 92. He was the son of West Virginia labor legend Bill Blizzard, who led the historic miner's march of 1921. The march, which culminated in an armed struggle between union supporters and coal company thugs known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, was the largest workers' rebellion in American history.

An activist himself who paid the price more than once for his convictions, Blizzard was a writer and photographer and, as strange as it may sound these days, a gentleman and a scholar. In 2004, he published the result of years of research into the WV labor struggles in the book When Miners March. May light perpetual shine upon him.

My tribe diminishes...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A bridge of silver

This picture has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

You can get good advice in brief and even random conversations sometimes. As I mentioned yesterday, I got some very good advice about dealing with people when I began working in the public library of one of my state's major cities over 20 years ago.

The advice was, in essence, never corner a crazy person. Since then, I've added the following: we're all crazy sometimes. Pushing someone into a literal or metaphorical corner where there's no way out but through you can cause a situation to escalate out of control. I've tried to avoid doing that over the years and it's been pretty useful.

Conversely, providing people with a graceful and face-saving way out of a bad situation can smooth the waters. Possibly one reason the American Civil War ended as civilly as it did (and didn't turn into a decades-long guerrilla war) was the courteous and generous terms offered to Robert E. Lee's army by Grant.

Years after that conversation in a library, I stumbled upon a similar thought in--of all places--Francois Rabelais' (1494-1553) hilarious and bawdy novel Gargantua and Pantagruel. (The book also offers an interesting and amusing menu of toilet paper substitutes, but I'll leave that to the Gentle Reader to discover.)

In that book, the genial giant Gargantua puts it like this:

...according to the true military practice you must never drive your enemy into the straits of despair, because such a plight multiplies his strength and increases his courage; which was cast down and failing before. There is no better aid to safety for men who are beaten and dismayed than to have no hope of safety whatever. How many victories have the conquered wrested from the hands of the victors when the latter have not been satisfied with moderation, but have attempted to make a complete massacre and totally to destroy their enemy, without leaving so much as one alive to convey the news! Always leave every door and road open to your enemies. Make them a bridge of silver, in fact, to help them get away.

LUXURY SHAME. Newsweek reports that some very rich folks are trying to make their consumption a bit less conspicuous in hard times.

STRESSED OUT. The number of Americans feeling that way has increased in recent times according to a psychological survey.

CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO less severe moral judgments, recent psychological experiments suggest.

ZZZZ. Here's another plug for taking a nap.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TWO BIRDS

Metaphors are an important and inevitable way of looking at the world. Some cognitive scientists think we're basically wired for metaphor. I even remember reading a book about the American Civil War that suggested one reason why the Union prevailed was that Lincoln made better use of metaphors than Jefferson Davis.

(The author had a point, but I tend to be of the same mind as the ill-fated Confederate General George Pickett, who mused that "the Union army had something to do with it" as well.)

We need good metaphors if we're going to start thinking and moving in the direction of a just and sustainable economy. I stumbled across a pretty good one in the introduction to Bill McKibben's book Deep Economy:

For most of human history, the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both. That's why centuries since Adam Smith have been devoted to the dogged pursuit of maximum economic production. The idea that individuals, pursuing their own individual interests in a market society, make one another richer and the idea that increasing efficiency, usually by increasing scale, is the key to increasing wealth that has indisputably produced More. It has built the unprecedented prosperity and ease that distinguish the lives of most of the people reading this book. It is now wonder and no accident that they dominate our politics, our outlook, even our personalities.

But the distinguishing feature of our moment is this: Better has flown a few trees over to make her nest. That changes everything. Now, if you've got the stone of your own life, or your own society, gripped in your hand, you have to choose between them. It's More or Better.

STICKING WITH THE THEME, perhaps the "age of heroic consumption" is at an end.

GROW IT. Local food banks are urging gardeners to donate fresh food to help feed the hungry. Beware the flood of zucchinis!

SPEAKING OF FOOD, this article argues that sustainable farming is the way to go and that globally we can expect women to take a leading role.

REST, REST, PERTURBED SPIRIT! Insomnia and poor sleep quality has been linked to suicidal symptoms in college students. I think it's nap time.

SPACED OUT. Here are a couple posts from Wired Science about how the location of extraterrestrial life, if it happens, might affect religion.

MEDICAID. This Gazette story discusses the current state of Medicaid in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE MARKET GOD

"The Worship of Mammon," a 1909 painting by Evelyn De Morgan, courtesy of wikipedia.

Back in the 1990s, Protestant theologian Harvey Cox wrote an interesting essay called The Market as God.

In it, he chronicled the rise of a new "religion," which is a parody of biblical monotheism.

In that theology, The Market is all wise, all good and all knowing. It too is a jealous god and becomes most wrathful when anything (like taxes, labor laws, regulations, or public spending for infrastructure or social services) gets in its way.

For true believers, The Market can do no wrong. If the global economy wipes out some communities or kills lots of workers on the job, we are supposed to remember that its ways are not our ways nor or its thoughts our thoughts.

Although humans have probably been exchanging things almost as long as we've been around, this elevation of Market to deity status is pretty new. As Cox put it,

Since the earliest stages of human history, of course, there have been bazaars, rialtos, and trading posts -- all markets. But The Market was never God, because there were other centers of value and meaning, other "gods." The Market operated within a plethora of other institutions that restrained it. As Karl Polanyi has demonstrated in his classic work The Great Transformation, only in the past two centuries has The Market risen above these demigods and chthonic spirits to become today's First Cause.

Initially The Market's rise to Olympic supremacy replicated the gradual ascent of Zeus above all the other divinities of the ancient Greek pantheon, an ascent that was never quite secure. Zeus, it will be recalled, had to keep storming down from Olympus to quell this or that threat to his sovereignty. Recently, however, The Market is becoming more like the Yahweh of the Old Testament -- not just one superior deity contending with others but the Supreme Deity, the only true God, whose reign must now be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals.

Alas, the Market=God equation makes for bad religion and bad economics. Markets, generally speaking, are a good thing. I buy most of my stuff on them. But like any human institution, they sometimes fail and are always shaped and influenced by other factors, including values, communities, laws and policies.

The less we think of it as a God, the more likely we are to make markets work as a good.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, here's a critique of the "gospel of consumption."

STUFF THIS. Self-storage is an American growth industry. Could this be the market's way of telling us we have too much stuff?

STUFFED AND STARVED. A new book argues that obesity and world hunger are flip sides of the coin of a messed up food system.

TWISTED PRIORITIES. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute highlights more skewed priorities and anti-labor bias.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CAMERA OR RIFLE?

Caption: You'll put your eye out.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is writing for social change or social conservation, whichever is appropriate at the time. There are also links and comments about current events. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

El Cabrero had an interesting dream a few weeks ago. No, it wasn't the recurring one about trains and tunnels. It was about writing.

In the dream, I was given something that looked like a rifle but could take pictures like a camera. Point and shoot, just like a firearm. Then I found out it could also function as a rifle if I flipped a switch.

My first thought was that this could be really dangerous and the results could be tragic if you didn't know exactly what you were doing at the time. As the gun safety folks say, one should assume every firearm to be loaded and presumably that goes for every dream camera/rifle too.

(Full disclosure: although there are a couple firesticks at Goat Rope Farm and I can shoot fairly straight, I'm not a big gun person. I don't bitterly cling to them anyway...Sorry, I couldn't resist that one.)

((OK, I know there are some smirking Freudians out there shouting "phallic symbol!" That's fine, since I'm an occasional Freudian smirker myself, but it really didn't seem to be about that. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes a dream camera/rifle is just a dream camera/rifle.))

When I woke up, I knew right away the dream was about writing. Here's why. Writing for positive change (or positive conservation) takes different forms. Sometimes it involves directly attacking injustices, making arguments, etc. That would be rifle.

At other times, it's important just to capture an image of what is going on,tell a story, state the facts, present credible research that would hold up to critical investigation, or just accurately convey information. That would be camera.

Of course, there's some overlap. A good argument (rifle) should be backed up with facts and clear reasoning (camera). And sometimes just presenting the facts (camera) can help improve an unjust situation. But the message I got from the dream was that I needed to know what I was doing when I picked that thingie up.

There have been plenty of times when I've attacked policies head on in print (rifle) and I'll probably do it again pretty soon. But that isn't always what the situation requires.

For example, El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia just overhauled a major public health care program and the changes are confusing to lots of people. Not jumping through the right hoops can mean not being able to get some important services. I've just about finished writing a consumer's guide to the new system. In it, I tried to just state the facts as clearly as possible, keeping my opinions out of it. Yep, camera.

Doing research about public policy should be mostly camera as well, even if you have strong beliefs about what should be done. You want the results to be as reliable as possible, meaning that other people looking at the information would find the same things, and you want it to be valid, meaning that the conclusions you draw follow from the data.

The main thing is to know what you're doing when you're doing it.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY? The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute points out that

In a selection of 19 countries with comparable per capita income, the United States provides the fewest maternity leave benefits in both length of leave and paid time off (see chart). This is considered separate from any disability insurance for which one may qualify. In fact, the United States falls two weeks short of the International Labor Organization's basic minimum standard of at least 14 weeks general leave. It is also the only country not to guarantee some amount of leave with income.

LABOR'S REVIVAL? This article suggests it's closer than we may think.

URGENT DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS UPDATE. Their genes are weird too.

EVANGELICAL MANIFESTO. Here's yet another sign that the religious right doesn't have a lock on the opinions of evangelical Christians.

CONSUME THIS. In a National Geographic-sponsored survey of 14 countries, US consumers ranked last in terms of environmentally-aware buying habits.

MAGICAL THINKING. Ancient people sacrificed to appease the gods. We buy insurance.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

AUTHORITY AND VIOLENCE

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

When all is said and done, El Cabrero would wager that most of the sins of the world are not those of rebellion but of obedience. Far more people have been killed or injured by fairly "normal" people following the orders of authority figures than by sadists or sociopaths, who are fortunately rare.

[Note: a while back on this blog, I did a series about the classic and shocking (literally, sort of) experiments of Stanley Milgram on obedience to authority. You can find it by searching the archives.]

Even though normal people have strong resistance to killing or hurting others, especially at close range, authority figures can overcome that resistance. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, the following factors contribute to the likelihood that soldiers in war will obey authority figures and engage in lethal violence:

*the proximity of the authority figure. During World War II, for example, Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall found that nearly all soldiers would fire when their leaders were present and encouraged them to do so. But when the leaders left, the firing rate dropped to 15 or 20 percent. Similarly, in Milgram's experiments, subjects were more likely to shock the victim when the "scientist" was in the room giving orders to do so rather than when the orders were given over the telephone;

*the respect for the authority figure. Known and respected leaders are more likely to be obeyed than unknown or discredited ones;

*the intensity of the authority figure's demand for killing; and

*the perceived legitimacy of the authority figure's authority and demands. As sociologist Max Weber noted, in the modern world authority is legitimized by bureaucratic laws, rules and procedures rather than by tradition or charisma. Socially sanctioned authority figures giving lawful orders are more likely to be obeyed than random individuals.

In such cases, as Milgram noted, people often stop functioning as autonomous moral individuals and enter into what he called the "agentic state" in which they function as a small part of a larger group. The effect is amplified with training that emphasizes unquestioning obedience.

The sad truth seems to be that most people taken one at a time are fairly harmless. Put them in a group based on hierarchy and command and all bets are off.

THE GROWING DIVIDE. A new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute looks at inequality on the state level. Here's a brief summary and here's the data on El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

ON A RELATED NOTE, here's Krugman on consumer attitudes as the economy tanks.

CONSUMPTION AND HAPPINESS don't necessarily go together.

SAY WHAT? Can cell phones help combat global poverty?

IS THIS BIGFOOT SEASON? The hunt is on in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED