Helpless But Not Hopeless

 

Me solarized in Photoshop

Helpless But Not Hopeless

It’s taken me 75 years to get to this place: Bobbing around in my kayak in the rosy,  luminescent water of Jenness Pond at dusk, my rational mind took flight, merging me with the beating heart of  the Earth. 

During my lifetime, the Earth has taken a terrible beating.  When I was born, the oceans were practically as pure as when the Vikings roamed the seas. Now, plastics pollute the oceans and clog the gullets of the fish and birds the reside there. Each year another 8 million tons of plastic waste escapes into the ocean. “That’s the equivalent of setting five garbage bags full of trash on every foot of coastline around the world.”^⁠1

Experts agree that this “Great Acceleration” started around 1950: that’s when a sudden and dramatic jump in consumption began, followed by a huge rise in global population, and an explosion in the use of plastics. Facing up to what we have done is mortifying. Yet, that is the first step in forging a deeper, more intimate, and sustainable relationship with our home.

Growing up, like most Americans, I thought the Earth was the most solid, unchanging, and boring entity imaginable, immune to human harm: An inexhaustible treasure house, a self-service supermarket for humankind.

My whole life has been a re-education project, prompted by books like Small is Beautiful, Silent Spring, Practice of the Wild, The Spell of the Sensuous – and most recently, Timefulness: How Thinking like a geologist can help save the world by Marcia Bjornerud. She’s opening up my eyes and heart to how sprightly, tempestuous, and turbulent the Earth really is.^⁠2

To us in human time, mountains are the embodiment of stability and strength, but, in geologic time, mountains are fluid and fleeting, rising up by volcanic action, eroding away to nothing, and then starting over again, time after time over the eons. Through that and other examples, Bjornerud shows how all of nature is alive, even rocks. That’s why she calls them verbs, not nouns.

This Great Acceleration  has created massive changes to the Earth. Now a single mine in Canada’s tar sands region moves 30 billion tons of sediment annually, double the quantity moved by all the worlds’ rivers combined. The weight of the freshwater we have redistributed has slowed the Earth’s rotation.^⁠3 And last week, we learned that the rapid melting of the Greenland icecap is causing the Gulf stream to weaken and the jet stream to wander. 

Scientists tell us that, thanks to our meddling, we can’t predict the future because there are too many imponderables. Uncertainty reigns in the face of enigmatic geologic forces infinitely greater than ourselves. 

Yet we're like narcissistic teenagers living for the moment, insisting on having things our way. Our political ideologies and religions have brainwashed us to believe we are unique, the apex species anointed by our gods to have dominion over the Earth. But now, having tipped the balance too far, we see our vanities and hubris are like an early morning mist about to be blown away by the first breeze.

What can be done? The first step is to admit we have a problem as folks do in AA. The next step is to re-define what it means to be 'helpless', as Kurt Spellmeyer accomplishes with a brilliant juitsu move in the current Tricycle Magazine: He reframes being helpless as a transcendental experience rather than – as our macho society scornfully regards it – 'a moral failure, a cause for shame, or a condition to be over come by heroic acts."

"Not until events escaping their control bring people face-to-face with their helplessness will they discover that they belong to something larger than themselves: an ‘unlimited body,’”^⁠4  To my way of thinking, this ‘unlimited body’ is the body of the Earth itself, the entity to whom indigenous people have always bowed down to. 

The turning point won’t happen until we hit rock bottom: when worsening conditions from accelerating climate change render us so  vulnerable and unprotected that we will have no choice but to reach out for assistance and solace  from our neighbors, great and small,  while they, in turn, will be reaching out to us. This collective outpouring of compassion will unleash  a tsunami wave of action powerful enough to save what is left of our home. And, as a side benefit, we will restore meaning and honor back into our lives.

When that happens, Spellmeyer tells us, our feelings of resignation and powerlessness will be transformed by "an embrace" as the world encircles us in its arms and whispers, “relax, you're home." 

xxx 

¹ Ibid.

² “Timefulness: How thinking like a geologist can help save the world” by Marcia Bjornerud. Princeton University Press. 2018

³ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/aeon-deep-time/505922/

⁴ https://tricycle.org/magazine/hope-in-buddhism/

A Rant

What is the "The Common Good?"

I take umbrage with Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist for the NYT,  for having the gall to tell me, a staunch liberal, what I believe. He praises paleoconservative Sohrab Ahmari’s new book, “The Unbroken Thread.”  for giving a "moral voice … against the values of elite liberalism, above all its disdain for limits, from moral taboos tor national borders.”^⁠1 

In the real world, when the right and the left fight over freedom versus limits, it’s not a clear-cut matter. As Max Boot recently wrote, conservatives are willing to accept substantial infringements on civil liberties to combat criminals and terrorists. Yet, they insist on dropping our guard against a pandemic that has already killed over 600,0000 Americans. In this case, it is liberals – following a long American tradition that started with George Washington – who want to limit freedom to save lives by mandating vaccinations and mask-wearing.^⁠2

 

Certainly, liberals often have more elastic boundaries than conservatives: We believe that individuals should have the freedom to determine their gender, whom they can love, and how. We don’t like abortions but want the  mother to have the freedom to decide rather than passing a law; we are in favor of rehabilitating folks who break the law, not punish them for being sinners; we would like teachers to teach our children about our complete history, warts and all, in order to do better in the future. We recognize that some problems  like nuclear proliferation, climate change, and Covid-19 can not be solved within single nations and require international cooperation. 

In other areas, we are adamant about enforcing stricter limits than conservatives. We are more conservative than conservatives about not rushing into making humans guinea pigs to genetically modified food, nuclear power plants, pharmaceutical products, and toxic waste dumped into the environment. We favor of conserving our natural resources and protecting the diversity of all life forms on earth.  We  favor of guns for hunting and target shooting but would ban assault rifles with large clips, which facilitate the unhinged to commit  mass murder. We favor zoning laws for reasons of health and safety.  

Many decisions are difficult, finding the sweet spot between too much regulation and not enough. The underlying goal is not freedom at all costs  but what promotes the common good.  Achieving the right balance requires a willingness to come together in good conscience to negotiate a solution we can all live with.

In a manifesto that Ahmari wrote in 2019, he asserted that the new right’s greatest priority was  “to resist efforts by liberals…to oppose the desire voters are expressing for a politics of the common good.”^⁠3  On this point,  I agree with him: voters are clamoring for a "politics of the common good."  

Poll after poll shows a substantial majority of voters across party lines view clean water, a quality public education, adequate food, and housing as fundamental human rights that the federal government should secure. More than 7-10 voters across party lines support guaranteed sick days, paid family and medical leave, and increased assistance for low-income people.

Further proof comes from polls that consistently show the  “happiest people in the world” live in countries like Finland and Denmark, where citizens are guaranteed these human rights.  President Biden is now working with Congress to extend more of these rights to all Americans. Yet conservatives oppose this common good. 

Another aspect of conservative thinking has a religious component that goes back to the birth of our nation, based on the Calvinist notion that hard work is a sign an individual will achieve eternal salvation; meanwhile, those less industrious go to hell. Some conservatives still use this as a cudgel to deny aid to the poor and needy, claiming they don't deserve it

One offshoot of this doctrine was made popular in the 1800s by Russell Conwell,  a Baptist minister, who equated poverty with sin and claimed that anyone could become rich through hard work alone, without the need of divine intervention. This notion became known as Muscular Christianity.

Speaking of Muscular Christianity, a recent book, "Jesus and Johne Wayne,"now on the bestseller list, explores why evangelicals' were drawn to our former president. The author argues that their support is not a shocking aberration but a "culmination of evangelicals' long-standing embrace of militant masculinity, presenting the man as protector and  warrior.”^⁠4

All of the above makes me question Bret Stephens's assertion that it is the liberals who have rejected all limits and moral taboos. Instead, to  my way of thinking, it is this new breed of conservatives who have abandoned long-standing, conservative doctrine around reason, tradition, and moral principles. Perhaps, as Timothy Snyder has written in the NYT: when conservatives give up on truth, they concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place.^⁠5 “ 

People like our former president.

xxx

¹ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/opinion/what-should-conservatives-conserve.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20210804&instance_id=37008&nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=30753738&segment_id=65288&user_id=273ae8c1ede4fde7d59a2b0627accb92

² https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/10/vaccination-mandates-are-american-apple-pie/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3460ff8%2F6113f26f9d2fda2f47ef9f59%2F61015b7e9bbc0f0fbeed5be1%2F47%2F72%2F6113f26f9d2fda2f47ef9f59

³ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/books/review/the-unbroken-thread-sohrab-ahmari.html

⁴ https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/07/16/jesus-and-john-wayne-evangelicals-surprise-bestseller/

⁵ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html

The Pittsfield Epidemic of 1900, Covid-19, and ancient myths that won’t die

 

"Vertical landscapes of the High Caucasus" 
by CharlesFred is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

One time on the way to Pittsfield with my father when I was a boy, we took an alternate route on an old dirt road.  As we drove along, he pointed to a spot in the woods and announced, “that’s where the old Pest House stood, the place they put people who got sick with smallpox.” My fertile, young mind immediately conjured up scary images of a haunted house.

The smallpox epidemic, my father was referring to, broke out in 1900. According to local historian and author Larry Berkson. Pittsfield responding to it in an impressive manner, compared to our fumbling efforts today against Covid-19: “The infected houses were quarantined as was the practice in those days…Those who became infected were treated in a “special hospital” which immediately became known as the “Pest House.”^⁠1

In addition, the Pittsfield School Board placed a notice in the local newspaper declaring that State law required all school children to be vaccinated. The School Board was also charged with enforcing the law and empowered to impose severe penalties on offenders. When it was discovered that some of those quarantined persisted “in going out,” a strict watch was instituted on those premises “day and night by special police officers.” 

I came across this local history while  reading a new book, “Until Proven Safe,” by Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh, an extensive treatise on quarantines. The authors would approve of Pittsfield’s response  because it employs all the elements they say are essential for a quarantine to be successful: good leadership and community support, carried out with compassion and respect. The authors assert that today, it’s imperative to be able to take effective action as Pittsfield did because “Quarantine is the best—sometimes the only—tool we have to protect ourselves against the new and truly alien. It buys us the time and space we need to respond.”^⁠2

The stakes grow higher each day with epidemics popping up like weeds: just since the year 2000, the world has been afflicted with SARS, MERS EBOLA, Zika, and now Covid-19. The trend will surely accelerate as time goes on due to increased global travel, climate change, and over-population which leads to logging rain forest interiors and disturbing remote caves.

Twilley and Geoff trace the history of quarantines since the first recorded successful one in 14^th century Italy.  Despite technological advances today in areas like testing, tracking, containment, and ventilation, the ability to quarantine is still essential: “it is a question of civility, of a politics and culture of collaboration that allow for awareness of shared responsibility in the face of an unknown disease.” “We will never have public health if we do not think of ourselves as a public.”^⁠3

Despite the success of that first quarantine in Venice, old superstitious myths persisted: “Even after the bubonic plague had burned through Europe for nearly a century, there was still no consensus on what caused it or how to prevent its spread.^⁠4“ At that time, conspiracy fanatics did not urge folks to drink bleach, but they did promote everything from  unproven medical practices “to acts of genocidal terror, such as slaughtering a city’s entire Jewish population in an attempt to appease the wrath of God.”

 I will close by examining one thread of Twilley and Manaugh’s research: the irrational nature of our human response to alien pathogens.  Specifically, I want to explore a dark history that may explain the recent upsurge in violent attacks against folks of Asian descent – and the likely reason why our former president referred to Covid-19 as the Chinese flu, his voice oozing with loathing.

The authors trace the roots of this behavior to an ancient myth that won’t die, extending back to ancient Greece and Rome. The theme of this folktale is how seemingly harmless strangers turn into monsters.”^⁠5   According to the authors, this myth created the idea of the West, defining it as “an act of isolation against a monstrous other that lurked somewhere in Eastern darkness.”^⁠6 

This medieval story was repeated so many times that it became accepted as fact, resulting in maps to being redrawn to establish this mythical boundary between West and East. Conveniently they picked the Caucasus Mountains, which, also according to myth, is the origin of the Caucasian race. In short order, “Caucasian” became the name white Europeans adopted to classify themselves in opposition to other races.

The very notion that the West – Europe – came into being in opposition to the “dark” East  reeks of racism. We need  to expose this ancient archetype that lives in our collective unconscious to the cleansing light of day. Otherwise, despots like Trump will continue to resurrect this demon, buried in their followers – and all of us for that matter – for their own nefarious ends.

xxx

¹ https://suncookvalley.com/pittsfield/2012/12_26_12/

² Twilley, Nicola; Manaugh, Geoff. Until Proven Safe (p. 17). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

³ Ibid, page 345-5

⁴ Ibid. page 25

⁵ Ibid, page 28

⁶ Ibid, page 30-31

Adopting a new myth to live by, which is really an old one

Just as fish don’t know they live in water, we don’t know we live in a myth. The myth we are living today tells us we are rational  beings with big brains like computers, separate from and superior to our bodies and nature. According to this story, our goal on earth is to maximize personal pleasure and profit. When we do, something magical happens: the hidden hand of the marketplace magically transforms our personal greed into the common good.

Growing up under the spell of this myth, I regarded the Pawtuckaway Boulder Field as merely a bunch of big rocks strewn about from the last ice age. However, the older I get, the more I am mesmerized by this spot. It has become my sacred spot.

Something happens as soon as I pass over the last ridge and descend into the valley of the boulders. I feel the temperature drop and sounds fade, like being ushered into the cool stillness of a great cathedral. Time slows to a crawl, and I find myself being lulled into a deep, meditative trance. Along the way, if I am lucky and the light is right, I come across great, hulking personages, some two stories tall.

Perhaps they are stone guardians, put in place to protect this sacred spot by the Pennacook, a peaceful, indigenous people who once dwelled here until broken and emasculated by the White Man.

The Pennacook, like indigenous people in general, live by a different myth than ours, one grounded not in being the apex species but an interdependent cog, part of a living earth. One can make a strong case that the best hope for the earth and its inhabitants, including us, is to readopt this old indigenous myth as our new myth.

According to historian and mythologist Arther George, a functioning myth must reconnect us to what the ancient world called the center of the world: “a sacred spot where the divine, in the heavens and the underworld, connected with the earthly… at the heart of reality.^⁠1

In more straightforward language, a sacred spot is a temple or sanctuary where we can interact with our deities and experience transcendence. I’m aware this likely sounds like New Age mumbo jumbo, something acknowledged by Gary Snyder, poet, scholar, and Pulitzer Prize winner: “This ancient aspect of religious worship remains virtually incomprehensible to EuropAmericans.”^⁠2 

One aspect of this indigenous worldview comes from reverence for their ancestors, as Chief Seattle made clear in his famous 1854 speech: “Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours…”^⁠3

 More insight comes from anthropologists who study aboriginals in Australia, the oldest human race on the planet, many of whom still live as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Their respect for nature comes from a deep connection to the land-based on “inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness.” This practice is the basis of their spiritual expression and, ultimately, their way of life.^⁠4

Rather than being consumed with making progress – competing to see how much each individual can accomplish and how much stuff he can create – they believe that connecting to nature leads to “a deep understanding and knowing [that] can be reached through contemplation and silence.” As a result, their pace of life is slow and measured: “they don’t mind waiting because they want things done with care.”^⁠5

 I practice transitioning back to this ancient way of being at Pawtuckaway: By defocusing my mind, while staying still and relying upon intuition, I can feel myself slipping into the living world of indigenous life. Entering this animate world is like smelling the first spring flower: The oppressive weight of our modern myth starts to dissipate, like throwing away useless gear from a heavy backpack.

xxx

¹ “WillMythology Save Us?” Conversations with Willi Paul and Arthur George. FromPlanetshifter.com Magazine

² Gary Snyder, “The Practice of the Wild.” page 81

³ https://suquamish.nsn.us/home/about-us/chief-seattle-speech/1854 oration, ver. 1

⁴ https://sites.coloradocollege.edu/indigenoustraditions/sacred-lands/3300-2/

⁵ Ibid

America Moves from Churches to Self-Storage

Demolishing St Charles Church in Dover NH
CC Jean Stimmell: 2017

Across our country, churches are being abandoned, demolished, or repurposed into  hip businesses and condominiums. Meanwhile, self-storage units are breeding like the Japanese beetles in my garden because we can no longer shoehorn any more stuff into our homes.  It appears we have forsaken the spiritual goal of becoming one with everything to embrace the consumer creed of having one of everything.

Statistics don’t lie: self-storage facilities have become  a $40 billion-a-year industry with over 49,000 storage facilities nationwide.^⁠1  More than 10% of Americans now rent units, giving each of us 5.9 square feet of storage space if it was divided up equally. 

This trend defies logic. When I was growing up in the 1950s, families were larger than they are now, but our houses were half the size – yet still big enough to hold all our stuff. Why, then, one must ask, do we need off-site storage now. One primary reason is because Madison Avenue, in cahoots with Wallstreet, has conned us into buying ever more stuff. It has been said this corporate advertising campaign is the largest single psychological project ever undertaken by the human race.^⁠2 And one that will have a sorry ending.

 Back in the day, when houses were small, we fixed old stuff when it broke.  It’s empowering to use our ingenuity to restore things to working order. After all, having evolved from tool-using primates, it’s in our genes.  I know the satisfaction I get from fixing things around the house. I get particular pleasure from working on my Farmall Cub tractor that I inherited from my father, who bought it in 1946, after coming home after fighting in WWII.

Things were built to last back then and, because customers did much of their own repair, they were designed to be easy to work on. In the process of ratcheting up the disposable society, we have lost all that, and in the process, stripped away the sense of dignity and integrity that comes from living a simple lifestyle based on self-sufficiency, a way of life fundamental to our forebearerse.

Today we can neither sell nor give away our stuff – that is no longer the newest and coolest on the block – because no one else wants it either. At least we could take those excess possessions to the landfill to give them a proper burial. But no, that would force us  to face up to our mindless addiction. So we do the easy thing and put it in self-storage, out of sight, out of mind. And  then, all too often, in the end, abandon it to the auctioneer’s gavel.

In the big scheme of things, what good is all this stuff? We are born onto this earth without stuff and will leave it without stuff, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That being the case, why do we mindlessly accumulate it?

Paul Wachtel has a compelling answer in his book, The Poverty of Affluence, written back in 1983. He suggests our commitment to consumption is a frantic attempt by us, as individuals, to buy stuff as a substitute for the group solidarity and sense of community that used to give our lives meaning – that is until economic growth tore it apart.

Buying more stuff can be an escape from tedium. But, in the end, our precious possessions will mean nothing, as they lay scattered haphazardly about the landscape, like bones beneath an owl’s nest from what was left of her prey.

xxx

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

¹ https://www.sparefoot.com/self-storage/news/1432-self-storage-industry-statistics/

² Alan Kanner & Mary Gomes, “The All-consuming self” in Ecopsychology, ed. Theodore Roszak, 1995

Moral Injury and the Fate of the World

Sand Dunes at Hampton Beach State Park
CC Jean Stimmell

 

Back in 2019, I wrote a column for the Monitor^⁠⁠1 about “moral injury⁠,” a label first given for a malady afflicting Vietnam vets: the guilt and betrayal they felt(and still feel) for not doing 'what's right.' Moral injury, now recognized as a universal human reaction to war, has been described in history going back to the 8th century BC when Homer wrote the Iliad.


 

Recently I listened to a podcast by Stephanie Kaza, professor emeritus of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont, who has extended the concept of moral injury to include the guilt we feel for the part we are playing in the destruction of the natural world.


 

I don't want to discount the seriousness of moral injury: it can cause severe depression and suicide. But Kaza's podcast made me wonder if there might be a silver lining, revealing society's deepening facility to feel the pain of others: We seem to be gaining empathy for life's creatures, large and small. Could it be we are rediscovering the animate world of our indigenous ancestors who saw all of nature as aware and capable of feelings? 


 

During my own life, I've seen a significant shift in that direction. 


 

I grew up in an avid hunting family in the 1950s, competing with each other to see who could shoot the most ducks, grouse, and pheasants each fall. Even as an eager participant, I remember feeling terrible about the suffering I caused when the kill was not clean. Then, in college at Columbia, I was assigned three white rats to use in psychological experiments to test various hypotheses, often using electric shocks as negative reinforcement, resulting in one of my rats going insane. It's hard to believe today that such behavioral research was cutting-edge psychology in 1963. I slink down in my chair as I write this, mortified at how I have treated animals. After that, something even worse happened: my tour in Vietnam. 

 

I have changed over my long life, as has society. Folks treated dogs as canine alarm systems back in the day, often keeping them chained outside, even in winter. Dogs were expendable, having no more legal protections against abuse than slaves had against their plantation owners. Now dogs are revered by their owners, pampered, treated almost like children. And that kind of loving care continues to extend to a wider variety of pets – including a pet chicken friends of mine adore. 


 

All around us, we are waking up to and gaining empathy for, what the ecologist David Abram calls, the more-than-human world. While we have long felt a close connection to certain animals, like the great apes, with whom we share as much as 99% of our DNA, we are now gaining an appreciation for the intelligence of birds like ravens, whom our Maine neighbor, Bernt Heinrich, has written about.

 

A recent piece in the NYT points out similar intelligence in various other birds before discussing species like the cuttlefish, who are closer to insects than humans. Despite having green blood, no bones, and a body like an iridescent football^⁠, they retain "the full portfolio of mental abilities as these birds.”^⁠2   Of course, we can’t leave out the cuttlefish’s star cousin, the octopus, whose extraordinary abilities have been the focus of several recent books. In praise of them, Sy Montgomery, National Book Award finalist, has written, “If I have a soul, and I think I do, an octopus has a soul, too.” 3

 

And that's just scratching the surface: recent books like Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard show how intelligent and relational trees are: She explains how old mother trees connect all the forest trees through a 'jungle of threads and synapses and nodes… 'communicating and responding to one another by emitting chemical signals… identical to our own neurotransmitters.' 'The older trees are able to discern which seedlings are their own kin [and] nurture the young ones and provide them food and water just as we do with our own children."^⁠ 4

 

Shedding our thick rhino-skin myth that we are superior to all others, that we are the only species who can think and feel, is our best hope to survive and flourish in the future.

xxx

 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

¹https://www.concordmonitor.com/Moral-injury-28573439

 ²https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/science/cuttlefish-cognition-cephalopods.html

³“The Soul of an Octopus” by Sy Montgomery.

⁴Simard, Suzanne. Finding the Mother Tree (p. 5). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Musings

St Pete Beach, 1/12/19
CC Jean Stimmell

This column marks the end of an era in my life that began 28 years ago when I quit stone masonry to get my Master's Degree in counseling psychology. As of the first of this month, I have chosen to retire as a therapist by letting my license expire.

In another milestone, Coco, our plott hound, who had been in-home hospice care, was put to sleep on June 21st. She was laying on the rug, unable to get up when the vet arrived but was able to wag her tail at, who had become her new friend. The vet gave her that final shot while Coco munched on dog treats out of my hand and then dozed off peacefully to join Socrates and Buddha chasing rabbits in another realm.

All of this is a long-winded way of announcing that my byline will be shrinking. This week also brings to a close a recent series of columns, showing how we are interrelated at every level: from biology, psychology, society, ecology, to quantum mechanics.

Our connectedness is something we have most often taken for granted. That's why it is so troubling today how many of us have skidded off the tracks, rejecting our inter-relatedness to celebrate macho individualism and unfettered freedom.

It seems to me to be an adolescent kind of thing. I sure felt that way growing up, craving the freedom to do whatever I wanted. I was wilder and crazier than most. But I internalized the interlocking nature of rights and responsibilities fighting in Vietnam, raising a family, and just growing older.

I wonder what kind of parents could justify pursuing their right to freedom if it was detrimental to their family rather than working together for the common good. Looking outward, local, state, and national governments are extensions of the family, instituted provide essential services and establish common rules so we can all get along together. 

Covid-19 points up the fact that in some areas, our responsibilities are international. As Covid ceaselessly mutates into deadlier variants, none of us will be safe until the whole world is vaccinated. The same goes for nuclear weapons and climate change: the only solutions are global.

But I don't hear much about the common good today. Instead, we are paralyzed at every level of government by a consuming fear of the Other, magnified by social media, dark money, and unscrupulous politicians. What's it going to take to lure us out of our bunkers of identity-based grievances to see the big picture: To marvel and take comfort in what both religion and science are telling us – that we are not separate but one.

To scientists, it is indisputable that we are utterly interconnected. The theoretical physicist, Carlo Rovelli, boils down quantum mechanics to its core that everything in nature is relational: "a photon, a cat, a stone, a clock, a tree, a boy, a village, a rainbow, a planet, a cluster of galaxies . . . These do not exist in splendid isolation. On the contrary, they do nothing but continuously act upon each other."^⁠1 Roveii readily admits the parallels with Buddhism. Over the years, the Dalai Lama has returned the favor by touting the scientific method as our mightiest tool in the pursuit of the truth.^⁠2

The bedrock of Buddhism is well-stated by the scholar Christina Feldman: "The process of dependent origina­tion is sometimes said to be the heart or the essence of all Buddhist teaching…[which says that] everything is interconnected—that there is nothing separate, nothing standing alone. Everything effects everything else. We are part of this sys­tem."^⁠3 

She goes on to say something with which Rovelli would agree. It is a message that freedom-loving patriots today need to take to heart: Freedom is not found by trying to bypass our inter-relatedness:

 "It is not a question of transcending this process to find some other dimension; freedom is found in this very process of which we are a part. And part of that process of understanding what it means to be free depends on understanding inter-con­nectedness, and using this very process, this very grist of our life, for awaken­ing."^⁠4

Let us hope we all wake up before it is too late.

xxx 

¹ Rovelli, Carlo. Helgoland (pp. 74-75). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition

² https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/10/16/dalai-lama-science-spirituality-destructive-emotions/

³ https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/dependent-origination/

⁴ Ibid