Author Archives: Alice T4

Almost Exactly the Same

People are all almost exactly the same. I say almost because, even though we are 99.9% alike, that one-tenth of one percent difference is very important to us. That’s how we tell one another apart. Since we’re social animals, we depend on knowing exactly who another person is, even though she is almost exactly the same as we are. So we make a big deal out of that one-tenth of one percent difference.

Race, gender, class: these things help us tell one from another, along with details like body shape and facial features. But the differences are tiny. If you’ve ever seen a montage of many diverse faces, you have seen what Human looks like. In the same way, if you read the literature of any language or time, you know what Human behaves like.  We are fascinated by our tiny differences; we obsess about them. But they remain tiny.

If you doubt how much we are the same, remember what it is like to go to a movie in a theater. You laugh and gasp in the same places as everyone else there. You like the same characters and have no trouble identifying the bad guys. Also consider the fact that a good actor can play almost any role and make us believe it. How is that possible, unless we each contain in ourselves the whole range of human behavior?

There are other ways to tell how small our differences are. We think race, gender, and class are very important, and in some ways of course they are. Yet when you know someone’s race, gender, and class, you still know almost nothing about them that really matters. You don’t know if they’re kind, for example. You don’t know if they’re funny.

We will always be fascinated by the details of how each of us is unique and different from all the rest. We will always be interested in the soap opera of our secret, special, individual lives. But there come times when we have to look up from these details. We have to look at our civilization as a whole. We have to look not at personal behavior but at the behavior of our society.

When civilization has behaved so badly that we have begun to threaten our own survival, it’s time to think about what we can do differently.

Because each of us can be anybody. Each of us is capable, under the right circumstances, of every kind of human behavior. We contain in our own secret selves the complete spectrum of human behaviors. Which of the many possible behaviors we enact in our own lives is decided by our imagination of ourselves and of our circumstances.

Our imagination is tremendously powerful, though we often discount it, and even refuse to believe it affects anything. In our urban world where everything except the sky is a product of people’s imagination, maybe the power of imagination is so obvious that we take it for granted and so fail to see it. Yet imagination is the key to our future. How can we imagine ourselves saving the world?

Instead of thinking about how to change individuals, we should think about how to change culture so as to encourage the creation of healthy, sane, loving, humorous, careful human beings; how to change people’s environments so as to encourage healthy habits; how to create the people humanity needs to become.

How to make it easier to be creative, and not kill imagination first thing in school. How to make it easier to raise a family, to learn new things, to grow old. Movies, tv, video games: what do we need to teach, show, tell one another? What message are we broadcasting? What will it do to the people it reaches?

False optimism is not going to work. We can’t slap a happy face on things: life is too awful for too many. We can’t keep distracting ourselves from what we can see happening more and more clearly: the poisoning of the planet, the whirlwind we have reaped through our bad behavior. The longer we ignore the consequences of our greed, the harder they will be to make right.

If the species is going to survive, it’s time to get serious about it, and figure out how to save ourselves from this mess we have created. We have to look at exactly what our culture is: what we glorify, what we despise, whom we imitate, what values we adopt. This is crisis time. We need to pull an intervention on ourselves.

Anyone who has spent time with babies knows how smart we are and how much we can learn. Our bodies stop growing but our minds never stop. We can learn new ways of doing everything. That’s culture; we do it all the time. Every day we sing a new song.

Until recently, most of us have appeared to be frozen. We’re so used to watching life instead of living it, we’ve become passive. We have forgotten that everything around us has been formed from the action of human imagination upon the materials of the earth. We, ordinary humans, have invented it all. Our power is tremendous when we agree on something to do.

Some events in recent years indicate that we might be waking up to the crisis, and responding appropriately. Our most powerful moments have been singular and quite spontaneous. Look at how we’re self-distancing, in the complete absence of national leadership. The Arab Spring, undermined by the usual gangs of thugs though it was; the Occupy movement; the Women’s March; the appearance at U.S. airports of tens of thousands of people to support Muslims when Trump announced his travel ban; these are symptoms of a vital resilience, a resistance to the forces of death.

If we can ever convene the species and discuss the situation with everyone at the table, it is entirely possible that we can agree on our mission and our direction. We will understand one another. Because in spite of our splendidly elaborated cultures, our fascinating personal uniqueness, our endless variety of experience, we are all, finally, almost exactly the same.

Neo-Optimism

Anyone who pays attention to the world has got to despair.  Our dominant culture admires violence and promotes greed. We see where these values have gotten us.

I wouldn’t trust anybody who hasn’t felt that despair. Hope comes later, if it comes at all. If the world has not struck you with horror, you haven’t looked at the way it is.

If we continue on our path of greed and violence, our species clearly will not survive. The imbalance of power between the few who benefit and the many who suffer seems overwhelming. No hero has arisen who can bring about real change. We have plenty of information, but no answers.

In our greed and short-sightedness, we have used the resources of earth as though they are infinite. Our species devours everything in its path. We destroy the wild creatures and flora of the earth. We suck the earth’s juices and then crunch its bones. The losses mount exponentially.

If all we ever did was destroy, our species would not deserve to survive. In fact we could not have survived this far.  Without kindness and caring, no human would live past infancy. Loving is so much in the background of our lives that we hardly even notice it. We must remember that love – or perhaps we should think of it as common decency – is also part of ordinary human behavior, and, even in our current diseased society, it is the largest part.

We should also remember that we have changed our paths countless times, all over the world and in every era. We are finding our way through a wilderness of the spirit, and no one has been this way before.

We have always used our ingenuity to cope with changing environments. We can live under the sea and in outer space. We share ways to cope. We invent. We imagine. We merge our individual imaginings with others and make them reality.

This is the challenge: to imagine a world in which humanity can thrive, and to make it happen. We don’t seem likely to rise to this challenge. Yet the unlikely often happens.

Fresh currents continue to bubble up through the festering swamp of our culture. In recent years there have been the Occupy movement, climate change marches, peace vigils, “Black Lives Matter” die-ins, rallies for democracy and free speech. The organizers think they are fighting separate battles. But when we begin to recognize that our battlefields may be separate but our war is the same, we will find allies we never expected. We will find that we are much stronger than we thought.

That is when we will begin to be dangerous. That is why the dominant culture insists that we compete with one another, each cause fighting all the others for members, media attention, and money. Once we begin to cooperate instead, the powers that be will become the powers that used to be.

The only possible real revolution is nonviolent revolution. No other kind of movement can bring real change. Violence isn’t change. Violence is just more of the same damned thing. Nor can revolution bring change if it harms the innocent, because injustice is also more of the same damned thing. Peace and justice: now that would be a true revolution.

So go ahead and despair. Things are pretty dark right now.  Just try not to take it so personally. It isn’t you. It’s all of us. Your despair is a sign that deep inside you, a hero is waiting to be born.

The despair you feel is only natural, and you have a right to feel it, for exactly as long as you need to. Then get over it. Look for reasons to keep going and you will find them, in art, in nature, in children, in the people you love. Don’t turn away from the world because it is ugly and cruel. Keep moving, because it is also beautiful, and everything we love is in danger.

We have a lot of work to do. You have a part in this work, a part no one else can play.  We need you, exactly you, with your terrible history and your broken heart. Despair is one step on the path forward. You will like the next one better. Stick around, so you can take it.

After you realize the odds are against our survival, and after you give up hope that we can beat the forces that keep us on the path to destruction, you might one day realize that the game is not over yet. You will no longer be an optimist who thinks all will be well. You will be a neo-optimist, who has gone through despair and come out the other side understanding that all will most likely be lost. You will know this species is the darkest of dark horses. And you will bet on that horse to win.

Neighbors bringing food

We see feel-good stories at the end of our news broadcasts, right after they have scared the crap out of us. But the news has come home, good as well as bad.

We have neighbors and friends who are sick. When we leave our home, we walk large circles around other people, hoping we don’t get sick too. We use Zoom instead of hugging. We lay in supplies, trying not to be piggy about it.

And the friend down the street who has gotten the virus? We make soup and use our gloved hands to drop a container of it on her porch. We made enough to freeze, just in case.

Where we are

Are you a “non-essential worker”? Then slow down. Give yourself a break. Unless you’re a healthcare professional, now is not a time to rush.

For the worst reason, we have a chance to stop what we’ve been doing. We needed to stop doing some things anyway. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity.

We’ve stopped doing work that did not need to be done. We’ve stopped driving to jobs we can do at home. We’ve stopped hopping all over the planet like fleas on a dog. We’ve stopped thinking money is the most important thing.

Once we make ourselves and loved ones as safe as possible, let’s try to get over the panic. We stay at home. We wait. We are, as the Buddhists say, sitting with our fear.

When we sit with our fear long enough, it will begin to fade. Then we will be able to think.

Thank You

We are grateful for many people right now. Grocery store stockers, postal clerks, truck drivers, couriers, restaurant workers, farmers, doctors and nurses, police and fire people…It’s a long list. These are today’s heroes. They keep our civilization going.

To the people who maintain our internet, our electricity and heat, and our tap water: thank you! To news staffers, late night comics working without a live audience, techs at their stations, road repair crews, government contact persons: thank you so much!

And to all neighbors, friends, and family who are missing the presence of others like crazy, thank you too, for staying inside and dealing with the loneliness somehow. You are keeping us all as safe as possible. May you be well. This situation is temporary. I hope our gratitude is permanent.

The Trouble with Skittles

Remember when Donald Trump Jr. compared Syrian refugees to Skittles? He asked if you would eat a handful of the candies if you knew a few among them would kill you. He considered this a good reason for the US to refuse to admit any of those desperate people.

I thought that was disgusting. Then I saw some Skittles commercials. Looks like disgusting is just how they play the game.

In one ad, a boy seems to have broken out in zits; only the pimples are Skittles. A girl demonstrates her affection by picking Skittles off his face and eating them. She in turn breaks out in Skittles, smiling fondly.

In another ad, a dread-locked Black man in a Rasta cap milks a giraffe, which is nibbling on a rainbow. The “milk” streams down between his legs, turning into Skittles. You see him from the back. It looks like he’s pissing. Meanwhile, he laughs a big deep phony laugh, like this is the most fun thing ever.

I can’t even list the ways I find this offensive. But whoever designed these ads made them disgusting on purpose. After all, they want us to buy a product that is nearly all sugar. It rots our teeth, makes us fat, and increases our risk of diabetes. The whole enterprise is disgusting.

I wish the US would welcome people who are fleeing war, poverty, or gang violence. We could absorb them into the body politic with few if any bad side effects. In other words, in every possible way, they are not like Skittles.

We are this Web

We are the sum of our minds.

This new creature, Humanity, is a collective, as all complex organisms are collectives of smaller beings. Most life is collaboration.

We think that because our bodies are separate, our minds are too. But they’re not. They leak. They spread. The ripples of our thoughts rock the world.

Imagine there’s a thin bright line between you and a person you’re close to. Now imagine that person moves. The line connecting you moves with them.

Imagine there’s a line like that between you and every person you meet. The line stretches but never disappears so long as both of you exist.

Imagine the world as a web of these lines, these human connections. That is who we are. That web. That net.