Purpose-Reality-Meaning-Life & catboxes: Society, them, us, you, me

Cult of the Day

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:24:16 GMT

Cults, Countries, Sects, and Societies....Something for Everyone

Don Ray

Copyright 2008

Key search terms: cult sect Texas polygamists compound Warren Jeffs abuse indoctrinated FLDS

We hear about the cult, the kids, those strange people, the inexplicable behaviors, and we carefully avoid the realization that we are all members of cults. Some cults and their belief systems are just big enough to be called the norm. From where do these cults, including our own societal, national, majority, “normal” cult arise?

What of the wrenching changes in the lives of the cult members removed from their isolated compounds, forced to see the world in the light our society casts on it? And are the rest of us, in the “majority cult” of mainstream society, immune from such shocks?

How we all long for something stable, reliable, unchanging, and true!….something that absolves us of the responsibility to question, something that obviates the necessity for us to decide.

How eagerly we flock to cults and fraternal orders, how hungrily we ingest rules and ritual and recitation.

Inerrant Bibles, holy texts, prophecies, and scriptures, at least if in our language of choice; or colored pieces of cloth raised on poles; or prophets, preachers, and presidents; these command our unquestioning allegiance.

The leader we follow gets his instructions directly from God, and such surcease and comfort is to be found in following orders and donning the uniform, whether issued by military or marketers, patriarch or popular trend.

How irritatingly inconvenient are the nagging facts that counter holy text, slanderous fictions besmirching our leader, untidy revelations toppling beloved institution.

Usually our religious faith, patriotic fervor, and zealous loyalty can trump intellect, twisting and bending our perceptions of reality in a mental contortionist circus-act that sustains our predilection for blind following and dodges the insistent demand that we pose, and worse, have to answer, questions, with their implicit association of personal accountability.

But if any consistency is to be found through the course of history, it is that revelations bring not confirmation but contradiction.

Over and over and over, our various temples do get toppled, our armies do get routed, our leaders do get caught, and text and teacher leave us with questions instead of answers.

We cannot long rest complacent in our faiths and loyalties.

The God in which we would or would not believe allows us but brief times to blindly obey and believe, before wrenching revolutions of heart or circumstance place in our path the bridges we must cross and the forks at which we must choose. Our temples of certain faith and blind loyalty come tumbling down, to reveal the selves we will create by our response to the glaring light of uncertainty that brings the gift of freedom to we children created in the image of God.

Copyright 2008

Don Ray

A nation possessed and liking it

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:54:29 GMT

Is There an Exorcist in the House?

Don Ray

I sit in the rocking chair so as to not disturb queen ‘Tash kitty from her regal repose in “her” chair by the glass patio door. But no sooner do I sit down than here she comes, hopping into my lap, purring and purring and purring, to help me write on this morning when most people would say I should invest time in lesson planning for this morning’s class. Such pure joy she expresses, head raised, turning this way and that, eyes squeezed closed in bliss, as I pet and scruff her, her motor running, her black hair glistening like Christmas tinsel in the morning sun.

Outside, a stereo percussion concert of woodpeckers fills the neighborhood. A half dozen or so feathered Buddy Rich’s (a 1960’s big band drummer that sometimes appeared on the Tonight Show.) welcomed me down from my sunrise prayer walk.

I am working hard to see the beauty this morning. I need to see the beauty, beauty easy to miss if we let the temporal world possess our conscious thoughts.

I think incidents of possession are alive and well in modern times, more often than not possession by possessions (Symbolically, ‘Tasha is now mesmerized by the bright spot on the wall moving up and down as my watch face reflects the morning sun.)

To be possessed of course is simply to have your conscious thoughts and behavior controlled by something external to your freewill. Epileptic seizures, the standard issue Biblical demon, and today’s marketers all pretty much fall into the same category: destructive influences that take control of your brain without regard for your welfare.

Yeshu (Jesus) empowered His disciples to cast out demons, but the disciples did not have to face the legions of marketers infesting dark towers in Chicago and New York. The disciples only dealt with one demon possessed soul at a time, some poor, thrashing wretch whose mind and body were not under his control. Let’s see the disciples stand in the doorway of a big retail store on Black Friday after Thanksgiving when legions of crazed shoppers do the bidding of their possessing masters. Yes, possession is alive and well, and arguably never before so widespread.

Possession grips us en masse, possession of culture and society as well as individuals, and these consuming, possessing demons have even largely banished from our nations the faiths and beliefs that might open our eyes to once again see beauty and regain control of our selves.

So for now, the great paroxysms of consumption and sales remain in control of our daily lives. It is not readily apparent what exorcising power may save us, and we certainly do not want to be saved. But possessing demons inevitably destroy their hosts, which ironically gives cause for hope. As oil runs out, crops wither before the heat, and resources deplete, our possessing demons will lose interest when we are too poor and hungry to follow their whim. Finally free of fads and baubles, our sunken eyes may finally again open to see beauty, and each other.

Copyright 2007

Don Ray

Key words: possession, marketing, marketers, possessions, Black Friday, Thanksgiving, exorcism, exorcist, materialism, economic collapse, global warming, consumption, consumerism, sales, holiday sales, spending.

"O" the Oprah Magazine and readers' ills

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:06:06 GMT

"O", the Oprah Magazine, and what's missing from all the advice about love, sex, exercise, diet, and meditation

Don Ray

While at the clinic this week I read “O”, The Oprah Magazine, for the first time. (I know, I know, I’m woefully out of touch with modern society, a fact in which I take great pride).

I see why “O” is so popular! Article after article after article addresses the self, self-health, self-peace, self-fulfillment, self-health again, and again, about a half-dozen times. Now, no one, not even a contrarian iconoclast like me, can argue against the beneficial influence and positive impact on individual lives of all those substantive, relevant, and applicable articles on eating fish, mindful meditation, regular mammograms, and sex as we age. But oddly enough, I see this popular plethora of mental, emotional, and physical health information as symptomatic of the great, debilitating, spiritually enervating plague that besets modern society. The parade of daily breakthroughs in medical understanding has fixated our attention so resolutely on our own aches, pains, phobias, stresses, and aging that we have no awareness left for incorporating that other poor schmuck’s aches, pains, phobias, etc. In the pages after pages after pages of meditation, stretching, diet, relaxation, and general self-generated well being, I did not see any boat-rocking author saying “Oh get over yourself, and for a change do something for some poor schlemiel that is worse off than you”.

Yea, I readily saw why Oprah magazine remains so popular. No doubt its advice and information have helped people, and alleviated and prevented a host of ailments physical, mental, and emotional. And by gosh, that contribution to the quality of individual lives deserves commendation.

But sadly, the source of no small portion of the ills that beset the modern man and woman go un-addressed, in Oprah Magazine and any other popular media product today. To a degree perhaps greater than any time in history, people are bombarded with admonitions to focus on themselves, while marketing principles have effectively eliminated from popular media any voice admonishing us to seek our role in some greater Purpose, and to decrease our own aches, pains, and worries by putting them aside to make room for concern about that other guy’s aches, pains, and worries.

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, in many lands, force of law and /or societal pressure made church attendance mandatory. No, I don’t counsel a return to such enforced piety. But maybe that weekly attendance at least ensured that people would get a needed, motivating kick in the spiritual backside, a kick people would never voluntarily subscribe to, a kick missing from modern life, and a kick no media marketing-executive would dare administer.

I suspect that if Oprah Magazine defocused very far from the ‘self” and incorporated a few too many articles about “quit whining and look at some of the real suffering in the world”, subscription rates and advertising revenue would plummet. Within a year Oprah magazine would become as thin and emaciated as that newsletter I receive that describes medical mission projects around the world.

But sadly and ironically, many (though by no means all) of the readers’ ills and dissatisfactions that Oprah Magazine addresses would go into remission if people would wrest their attention from dwelling on the self, and instead turn their focused gaze to the person before them, the humanity around them, and the living Source within it all.

Copyright 2007

Don Ray

S.D.G.

Harry Potter Wands for Everyone

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:06:47 GMT

Harry Potter and the Use of Our Magic

Don Ray

Notes from April 2007

In flipping through TeleVision channels I see that the Harry Potter movie will show in a few minutes. As one of the few people in the developed world that has not seen it, in order to maintain some rudimentary connection with the society in which I live I figure I should use this opportunity to watch it for free.

So, here goes. The following will record my more or less real time response to the unfolding spectacle of special effects.

Well, certainly the beginning of the movie is a testimony for evil. No wonder this movie was so popular. It promotes personal power, that currency we most covet.

So far in this movie the initial demonstrations of magical powers illustrate pursuit of personal wishes. Of course pursuit of personal wishes is about as normal as human behavior can get. It is also the basis of all suffering, cruelty, war, and injustice.

In that context, I have to ask if even wishing for magical powers is evil (Ooooo, such a strong condemnation for a wish so popular and common!).

But back to the movie: so far it places little or no emphasis on consideration or self-sacrifice or giving a particularly large hoot about anyone else.

The writers are bound to introduce some redeeming traits sooner or later though, right?

I’m glad I’m finally getting to see such a social phenomenon. Now all these young kids are marching into a school to learn to wield personal power.

So far there is little promotion of inter-human connection or relationship.

I guess it’s akin to business school.

Ahh, how we would love magic. A little fantasy can’t hurt, can it?

It’s no worse than most things we worship in our daily lives. We wish, we wish, we want, and we seek power, usually financial, often political, sometimes personal.

Magic and our fantasies about magic surely represent a most accurate microcosm of what we seek in much of our daily life, that power, wielded through magic wand or credit card, to get us what we want.

There is little in our society that condones unity and acceptance. With everyone so focused on wielding their own magic power, little wonder that disagreement, conflict, and divorce reign supreme.

Worldly powers and magical powers are such superficial things compared to powers over the self, yet seldom does our society even condone, much less promote, pursuit of that greater power.

I’m now perhaps half way through the movie. So far I have not been able to distinguish between the good and the bad guys. Oh, the difference in their physical appearance is obvious enough. But other than superficial differences of makeup and facial expressions, all the characters in the movie seek the ability to wield personal power at the expense of others. In other words, so far the movie displays business as usual for the human condition.

Smiles versus grimaces distinguish the teams we are supposed to cheer for versus the teams deemed “bad”, but in considering the actions on both sides, the distinction seems as arbitrary as the Old Testament’s labeling of tribes as good versus bad, chosen versus cursed, though they each and all practiced rampant butchery.

The movie breaks for an ad. The ad shows two guys trying to outdo each other in their home and yard improvements. It’s pretty much the same theme as Harry’s magic, i.e., people craving power and superiority.

A later ad shows a woman peddling hair control gel. Consistent with the theme of personal power, the ad shows her pulling the bonds on a guy bound from head to foot, while she describes the complete control offered by the product.

I’ll guarantee that ad does more spiritual damage to young people than the Harry Potter movie.

Two thirds of the way through the movie, we finally see some motives that distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. It is still all about personal power, but there is a subtle difference in the tactics the two sides are willing to invoke.

Still, up to this point in the movie almost every invocation of magic involves doing something to someone, an inflicting of one person’s will against another.

Compared to most of the undiluted evil on TeleVision, especially reality TV and the quest for money, I guess this movie is relatively cute.

So, what’s the big deal about magic, other than its symbolic quest for personal power? Is there anything else about it that is fundamentally evil?

Magic’s intent is to overcome the laws of nature. In that regard, magic is a form of rebellion, born of unwillingness to submit and work within the laws of Nature, and more importantly, the Creator of those laws.

How seductive is the magic and power, the magic of Harry, the magic of hair coloring, the magic of the career.

How many people invoke their daily magical powers with the conscious intent of using them in Unity with a greater Purpose?

The very concept is so alien to our society that the preceding sentence would elicit a perplexed “huh?!” from almost every reader.

The magic, the money, the power of self over others; that is what we crave and have always craved. That craving is and has always been the wellspring of conflict, combat, injustice and suffering. Our magic wands that indulge this craving come in the form of hair colorings, ammunition clips, and investment scams. Considering what we’ve managed to do to ourselves with those limited wands, thank God that we don’t have Harry’s wand at our disposal.

Copyright 2007

Don Ray

S.D.G.

The Triggers We Pull Today

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:36:23 GMT

Bullets lead, bullets verbal

How many shots will we add today to those of Cho, Klebold, and Harris at Virginia Tech and Columbine?

Don Ray

Having just read Newsweek’s April 30, 2007 articles about the Virginia Tech massacre and its deranged perpetrator, Cho Seung-Hui; having just read extended analysis of physical, genetic, environmental, psychological, societal and cultural factors influencing mass murderers; I ask if it is possible to distill from it all any lesson that would ring relevant for our daily lives.

I note bits and pieces of the aforementioned article:

“’The feeling of worthlessness gets internalized in the barrage of messages that an individual’s fate lies entirely in his own hands – something Asian countries view as ludicrous.”

Of course we have only marginal influence over our fate. What a strange anomaly in human history is this recent, marketing driven fantasy that we are masters of our personal destiny. But we do determine what we allow that external fate to make of our inner soul.

Cho, Kinkel, Harris, and Klebold completely and utterly surrendered, putting up no resistance to the rage and vengeance engendered by the hand life dealt them.

In using lead projectiles to momentarily exert power over others’ lives by ending those lives, the killers displayed abject lack of power over the only thing over which any of us ultimately exert meaningful influence, the essence of our self.

Of course such comments will have no influence on any deranged potential killer, for having chosen the delusions of isolation into the self they would never read, or listen, to any perspective external to their own.

But in their extreme example they pose lessons for all of us.

We all feel frustrated by a worldly fate out of our control, we all resent rejection, we all fantasize, and we all fail to listen, and we all refuse to empathize.

Our bullets may be a harsh word, a tease, an insult, a scowl,or caustic sarcasm. But with each shot, of lead or of words, we have surrendered a little bit, we have allowed the circumstances that control our fate to also control our soul.

It is all just a matter of degrees.

Somewhere in the tangled maze of DNA and predispositions, parental abuse and schoolmate teasing, we exist, an individual identity, inescapably aware of our ability to make choices.

We may have no choice about what we experience and only very limited choice about what we feel. But we retain complete power and freedom of choice to at least try to add to our experience what that other person feels.

“Mass killers tend to be aggrieved, hurt, clinically depressed, socially isolated and, above all, paranoid.”

See any terms there that have not at one time applied to you, at least if you insert “a little” in front of them?

Yet even in the midst of all that we still remain empowered, by existence as a conscious, individual being, empowered to choose whether we at least want to smile at the stranger or coworker, whether we can muster the strength to smile or not.

In the tiny mustard seed of that freedom resides the root of personal empowerment.

Cho, Klebold, and Harris also teach us that we each cannot escape the nature of that Choice about our response to that living being before us.

They lived in emotional isolation from the people around them, perhaps initially not of their choice as they were socially ostracized, but eventually fully by their choice with each pull of a trigger.

Yet their chosen self-amputation of empathy did not leave them content in their delusional world of isolation. As painful, frustrating, or exasperating as we may find our interactions with others, as much as we convince ourselves we do not need them, inexorably our lives are drawn to that reality that exists only in interaction with another conscious soul.

Eventually we must know that that other person feels something because of us, in order to prove real our own existence.

For all the opportunities modern society offers to avoid inter-human interaction, the video games, take-out-food, and digitally synthesized life, still we will inevitably feel drawn to interaction, whether murderous or merciful.

Cho, avoiding eye contact, not speaking in complete sentences until recording his poisonous last words, was a demonic aberration of extreme isolation and a void of empathy. But extreme examples simply provide the clearest, undiluted examples of that which resides to smaller degrees in each of us.

The boss that bullies employees may have turned off his/her own compassion, but still must engage in some interaction, even if only intimidation. The abusive spouse may have sealed themselves off from care and sympathy, but still they must make their partner feel something in order that they themselves can feel alive.

A matter of degrees, the scathing comment and the penetrating bullet.

A matter of degrees, the empathy we choose to invoke for the person at the other end of our business policy or 9 millimeter handgun.

A matter of degrees, our claiming of personal empowerment to control our response to the inevitable hurts and rejection, betrayals and bad drivers, frustrations and exasperations.

We cannot stop the single extreme cases, Cho, Klebold, and Harris.

We can each however stop ourselves, when we see that we could listen a little better, tolerate a little longer, and by struggling to choose compassion over conflict, give life to ourselves instead of taking it from others.

Don Ray

Second Life online virtual reality

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:20:04 GMT

Second Life online virtual reality

Copyright 2007

Don Ray

Today, probably far behind the rest of the modern world, I finally hear about "Second Life", the online virtual world being created by its hundreds of thousands of interacting participants. The weblog discussions asking questions about the relative "reality" of that "Second Life" world, and is its creator the equivalent of its "god", remind me of an experience that illustrated how easily "real reality" can slip past unoticed.

In that experience, I once again saw that the learning challenged and developmentally disabled clients of the therapeutic recreation group with whom I work reveal much about all of us, whether developmentally or digitally challenged.

Our therapeutic recreation group went for its annual rafting trip, always a highlight of the summer. I get paired with 19 year old Brian.

Down the canyon we float, rippling water, flocks of geese, snow capped peaks, the strokes in a living masterpiece of Nature surround us, and we are in it all, not seeing it on a screen, but feeling it, smelling it, touching it.

Brian talks on, and on, but only about his video games, “street violence this” and “battle combat that”. Naturally I try to distract him from his inner world by pointing out the geese, the side stream, etc., but to no avail. It’s as if Brian is not even aware he is floating down a river, his mind remains so preoccupied with his litany of electronics and favorite movies and favorite CD’s. Throughout the morning Brian has been unaware of the other people in the group as anything other than objects to listen to his recital of his favorite media entertainments. (Sound familiar?)

So the raft trip goes for the first half. Then we enter the steeper part of the canyon, which from our wonderfully educated oarsman I learn was formed by a sunken graben fault thousands of feet deep in the earth below us.

Placid floating now metamorphoses into whitewater roller coaster.

By the second rapid we all get well doused, with more to come.

Brian grows quiet. The sharp slap of cold, snowmelt water no longer allows him the luxury of ignoring the reality around him.

Brian remains quiet. Throughout the remainder of the now rollicking ride, his only occasional comment is a sullen “I can’t wait to change into some dry clothes”.

Brian could be the poster child for the modern life. We have the luxury of being able to ignore real life, to pre-occupy our minds with the games and entertainment, the career and investments, all the trappings of our own synthetic contrivance, even synthetic worlds like "Second Life". Meanwhile, the beauty and majesty of real life flows past, unnoticed and unremembered, to be gone forever.

Of course real life slaps us once in a while, demanding our attention with its traffic jams and market busts, its violent crimes and cancers….and then we notice only the frustration, or pain, or fear, or grief.

Unpracticed at seeing the beauty, not open to the excitement, we see real life only as a rude imposition upon the world of our own creation.

Even as Brian waxed on in soliloquy about his video game accomplishments and favorite movie characters, there was no real joy in his voice. It was the voice I so often hear today, almost with an underlying sense of frantic, as if enough rapid fire descriptions of enough games or shows or characters or songs or movies will somehow make life real.

There’s an interesting postscript to Brian’s day of rafting though. I had noticed he had a “Calvin and Hobbes” book in his gear bag. Since I consider “Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson as arguably the highest literary, artistic, philosophical, and social commentary achievement of the late 20th century, I ask Brian the favor of letting me see his book. His response clearly illustrates that Brian is not accustomed to being asked for anything. His consternated expression revealed he is pulled between an aversion to any interaction as intimate as sharing his book, versus the social pressure of how could he say no.

He does let me see the book. I begin chuckling, often guffawing out loud. It turns out “Calvin and Hobbes” is also Brian’s favorite book. Brian finally talks about something in common with his listener. We wind up reading together.

Brian experiences the reality of in person, interhuman interaction.

Brian finally smiles.

Don Ray

S.D.G.