The Stranger

“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”-Camus

When I get to points like this, there's little I can do or say to really make myself feel better besides laughing at the absurdity of everything.

'Cause right now, I'm like the Dude in this scene of The Big Lebowski and I need a "Stranger" to set me straight:

Why am I like this? I'm frustrated. At myself, at society, at humanity in general. Maybe a cynical eye is blinding me to the wonderful possibilities in this world, but it surely seems like the bad guys are winning. What does that even mean? The bad guys are winning? Am I living in a fucking soap opera? Thankfully, no, although I do understand the reason that people create drama - to entertain themselves and to distract from the ultimate downer, death (whoofa). In the past few weeks, I have been thinking about a few different aspects of life, but I haven't had cause enough to sit down and write a coherent, fluid post. Maybe this will end up being disjointed in the end, but maybe not. The two main threads I keep coming back to are "time" and "freedom."

Way back in the spring, in my initial post, I had contemplated pulling an all-out Thoreau, moving to some remote area and never looking back. While that urge has hit me more than a few times since then, I have yet to do so. Is it out of cowardice on my part? Or inertia? Or is it that I am not ready to give up on this path yet? In this pondering of why I haven't left for sincerely greener and more isolated pastures, I come back to the idea that I can find what I am looking for wherever, and can also find sadness, frustration and discontent wherever I run to. So if I move to Montana or the Yukon, my new locale will not solve my problems? Nope, not quite. But there is something that I think can be taken away right here, or wherever your "here" may be -that comes from this sort of quiet lifestyle, and that is the dissolution of time. Why does time seem to move more slowly in the American South? Or the countryside? Or, hmm, anywhere but a world-city like the NY-Metropolitan area? Because it actually does. There's not that infernal, constant ticking looming over every aspect of life in those areas further removed from the bustle of modern society. The tendrils of constant connectivity to the life-force of the city are weaker. Don't get me wrong - I love being in NYC. If I lived there, I would be OK with it. But I would probably have to walk a lot to be able to get out of the hustle-and-bustle headspace of the rat race.

Smashing our concept of time and its effect on our lives is something I am trying to cultivate. Can I speed through my chores to sit on a computer for an extra 20 minutes? Sure, but what if I just spent time actually peeling potatoes for the act of peeling potatoes?  What would I get out of that? Would there be some sort of satisfaction in this rote action?

This practice of being present is a Zen realization on the importance of everything that you do, according to Alan Watts - “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.” Not especially enlightened or creative, but this type of mindfulness, I have found, is important in feeling as though you're not constantly under pressure. Similarly, and in a much lighter vein, according to Ron Swanson of Parks and Rec, I should never half-ass two things, but "whole-ass" one thing because the outcome will likely be more satisfying if done right. It's funny how libertarian, manly-man carnivore Swanson coincides with the Zen attitude that I admire and try to emulate, but I think it takes repeated efforts to show us humans that the way to contentedness always takes the same (but in a good way), measured steps even thought it may come to us in different packages (Alan Watts, Ron Swanson, Winnie the Pooh, The Dude, etc).

I go in and out of modes of being - sometimes I am pretty good at just "peeling the potatoes" and other times I am full of frenetic energy that leaves me wanting to punch through walls (or faces). This wildness, when trapped in our regimented social order, is a bad combination. It furthers my frustration, leading to feelings of despair and hopelessness. Millions of questions fly through my mind - how can people not SEE that this way of life is stifling creativity, destroying dreams, destroying the planet, etc? Is there a solution to this sort of trapped feeling? Yes and no. I don't expect everyone to sympathize or even understand the sentiments I am expressing here. Which is OK as long as others can even consider that there may be some alternatives to what we're doing now, as a society. This is what Rousseau was getting at with the corrupting nature of society. And for whatever reason, I am bad at suppressing these feelings sometimes. But that also begs the question, should I even have to? 

Ultimately, "peeling potatoes" is what I need to continue to propagate within myself because the hours of worrying over all of the elements that I cannot control is truly a wearying, thankless task. I am in good company though because even Ron Swanson has had some missteps along the way of becoming a true master of life.

A Nation of Wimps

Rant!! Strong language ahead. I do have a point though. 

I recently had a small epiphany about the benefits of taking a gradualist's approach. And as much as it pains me to admit it, the "slow and steady" approach may be the only way to actually effect real change over time. While making pancakes this morning, I was thinking about this and realized my problem with gradualism in the recent past* was that I was conflating it with, to put it bluntly, being a pussy. There is a difference - the gradualist, while critical of the revolutionary spirit, shares many of the same goals as the revolutionary, while the pussy is totally hell-bent on self-preservation. Many times this cowardly individual thinks their inaction is the right course - they're pacifistic, stoic, unflappable -yet, these adjectives are euphemisms for what they really are - a pussy.

Pussies come in all ages, shapes, and sizes. They are not always outwardly meek and unassuming. Bullies fall into this category - fearful of something in their own personalities or lives that they cannot control or change, they seek out a scapegoat over which to exert control, often rallying others around their cry. Historically, there are many, many examples of this type of behavior. Hitler would be the ultimate example - culling favor among the downtrodden, encouraging them to do his bidding, and then taking the easy way out before he could answer for his activities.

Within our own, modern society, the cowardly have gathered the reins, steering everyone toward self-interested activities, breeding fear and mistrust, and discouraging critical thought. A quick look at the top headlines on Yahoo! News or CNN.COM is enough to make even the most vapid among us wonder how selfies, Dancing with the Stars and celeb marriages constitute news in any sane universe. And so we slog on, with these ridiculous headlines and more and more personal uploads of our friends' children, pets and dinners clogging up every moment of quiet reflection we may have. A friend recently said to me, "these are the times we live in now," referring to cell phone culture. I can accept that - to a degree. Why do I have to buy into a culture I have no interest in? If I weren't into BDSM and that suddenly rose to the forefront of popular culture, I wouldn't accept it completely either. I can live with people being on their phones all the time or updating everyone on their every move - different strokes for different folks - but that doesn't mean I have to adopt something just because it's popular and because my refusal to ultimately makes them question their own actions and beliefs. It's similar to the religious right's claim that Christianity is under attack in a country where nearly 85% of the population identifies as Christian. How much more do you want? Apparently 100%. One of us-one of us.

We see the pussification of the next generation starting at an early age. There are a lot of conservative circles that have jumped on this topic - decrying the wussification of America and the loss of the strong, virile men of the past. For the FoxNews crew, their focus tends to be on women (and evil feminists) somehow making everyone sensitive by leaving the house (their natural habitat) and boldly demanding that they be allowed equal footing. Yet, this Psychology Today article explains more of what I am talking about. There's obviously some overlap with the conservative movement mentioned, but the Nation of Wimps argument documents the current focus on shielding every individual from the gaze of the world around them, from judgment even in the slightest degree because it might lead to hurt feelings. For sure there should be accommodations for students with learning disabilities and processing issues. Accommodations for students who climbing the academic ladder, are TigerMom-ed out but cannot psychologically handle it should not exist. It's like finding a loophole in the tax code. My kid gets extra time on the PSAT because she has trouble with gestalt thinking (see Psych Today article). What?? Yes, most children have a hard time with that until they develop beyond a certain age and have shed the myopic, insular tendencies of adolescent thought (Everyone is looking at my pimple! Someone will make fun of the way I read out loud in class! My thigh gap is shrinking!).  By accommodating that behavior, we're continuing to cultivate that tendency. We're infantalizing instead of raising children. Parents hovering over their children, and subsequently anyone who comes in contact with their child (principals, teachers, coaches, friends, parents of their children's friends) has become all too common. The helicopter parent has also started to follow their child to college and into the workforce. Your boss reprimanded you because you were late? Have your mom call and complain. When will the child learn to advocate for themselves? There is a massive disservice being done to this child for life in the name of love (and surely in the name of control).

These trends also occur within the classroom. Modern education reforms (from promotion of STEM careers, to new forms of testing, to ending teachers' unions) smack of the same values. The underlying principles of streamlining and standardizing the student experience from K - 12 ensures that they're ready for the post-high school lifestyle of being a good, productive worker bee in a standardized, consumer-driven market. Their parents can rest assured knowing exactly where there child will be and what they will be doing at all times of the day. I am sure someone is working on closed-circuit cameras in classrooms so that parents can watch from afar at any time (less cute than the puppy cam or panda cam by a long shot).

Children also learn to compete against each other at an early age -for grades, attention from their teachers and for friends. And in the wired, media-heavy culture we have created today, they're also learning how to compare their own accomplishments and qualities with endless streams of photoshopped pictures and unrealistic expectations for beauty, love, friendship, success....(you name it). Some teachers that I work with ration out grades - only so many students can receive an A, B, C, etc - forcing students into a fabricated bell curve. Some even post their students' averages (up to and including decimal points - a 93.3 for Marcus versus a 93.4 for Johnny) in the front of the room so that the children know exactly where they stand, breeding competition through public examination. There's no community in a classroom like that. How could there be? Teachers like that are not guides toward personal enlightenment  and achievement. Their transactional approach of filling students with information, only to have it repeated back to them exactly as it was given, is egoistic and poor practice in the end. The end product of years of being taught in such a manner are people that  are incapable of shrugging off these societal-set standards for their own intuitive values. Over and over again have they been forced to compete and be judged by external forces that you're left with a populace that's afraid, and really unable, to think for themselves. And for what? Check out this Alan Watts wisdom, set to animation by Matt Stone and Trey Parker and ask yourself what we, as a society, are doing to ourselves and our children by continuing to promote these trends.

*P.S.: Confession: My distaste for gradualism was so strong for so long has a similar story to the reason why ex-smokers are the most annoying types of non-smokers: I used to be a gradualist. So here's the story -my high school was not highly competitive academically. Being intelligent was an afterthought for the administration at the time. However, within the honors and AP classes, there was competition driven by some of the students, and more likely, their parents. For 4 years, I excelled, studied to get the top grades in every course, and then when it came to that end point, my classmate whose mom was on the Board of Education ended up having a higher weighting to his lower numerical GPA for taking a computer literacy course over the mechanical drafting course that I had taken. For a long time, this pissed me off. I had done everything right, played by all of the rules, taken challenging classes, worked hard, and for what? To have someone with "political" connections come out ahead in the end. Not very shocking honestly, but it taught me that even if you follow every direction to a T, the predicted outcome may be thrown off course by some virtual wrench at the last minute. This obviously didn't throw me into a revolutionary spirit but it did affect my outlook on the efficacy of gradualism. And when you come back to the revolutionaries, versus the gradualists, I guess that would be my greatest criticism of the gradualist approach. It's more controlled, and can surely adapt to conditions down the pike, but there's a naïveté to that. The virtual wrench can be thrown in at any moment, derailing years of planning and progress. Not to say that the revolutionaries aren't naive about their approach either - throwing in all the chips when you're pretty sure the other side has every advantage is risky, and oftentimes, stupid and nihilistic.