Discuss: Elegy for a Toxic Logic

Thanks Jen, and all.  It’s pretty clear that we enlightened ones are not much less inclined to stake our lives on a logical position; but while we know we need a new world order, we also know we can’t live on melting ice. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that Gregg couldn’t stomach working for Obama?

In our world everything has name and form. Everything that has name and form follows the flow of time and space— always changing. Not one thing remains the same. Buddha taught that our world is impermanent. If we completely attain impermanence then we can find the one unchanging thing, the one unmoving thing. Since everything is changing, mountain becomes water, water becomes mountain. Everything appears and disappears.

What changed in the US power structure? BIG BROTHER IS TIGHTENING HIS GRIP.Did all the guns and bombs get laid down? THERE WILL BE MORE, MANY MORE. Is economic inequality lower? THE BOMBS AND GUNS HAVE TO BE PAID FOR. Are the jobs and decent housing and medical care flowing now like wine? THEY WILL DISAPPEAR BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES…THAT’S CHANGE. If this is a crisis that brings “opportunity,” why are the same Clintonians and neoliberals and neoconservatives guarded by an expanding police and judiciary enjoying a banner weekend while the merest protest merits 22 years?  THEY HAVE OBVIOUSLY FOUND INPERMANENCE.

I’m not from NH, but just across the border in ME so I do get NH news, and I’m quite pleased that Gregg couldn’t stomach working for Obama. I do wonder, however, why he was picked in the first place.

The US power structure will not change overnight. And maybe it won’t change substantively at all. Maybe what will change will be the rest of us, maybe reality will shift, forcing the power structure to follow suit. We can’t possibly expect total transformation in less than a month. We’ll be lucky to get it in four years, or eight years. This is the razor’s edge we’re on.  Negativity and shouting will get us nowhere. Perhaps, Gera Rosy, you’re right and all is doomed. Well, here we are anyway. I’d still rather focus on the possibility and opportunity that is always present in every moment.

The article seems opposed to free markets.  This is the old left-right paradigm straw man.  We haven’t had free markets, rather markets distorted by privilege.  Check your Adam Smith.  Free markets means inexpensive land, widely distributed, and absence of monopolies and special corporate privileges.  This is the opposite of the Wall Street speculative market.  Ane I’m afraid that Obama is going to bouy those up.

Right now there might be an opportunity for proper change worldwide, but I don’t see the tiniest inkling of it. All measures in USA and UK to help with the economy crisis, seem to be about proping the old system up, even more stuff o sink into the mud. The material world is finite. If our dreams are for more wealth, more material possesions some of us will be dreadfully disappointed.

to auvery eva:  this is exactly the issue:  the world (and all of our resources) is finite. 

None of us (well most of us) can imagine what this world will look like when oil runs out and we can no longer produce/ship/package/store/prepare food as we do every day just as one little example….What?  no grapes from Chile in the winter? 

We cannot imagine it because precious few of us has EVER even known the real work of food production…myself included.  I’m already starting to bless my coffee (of all things!) every day.

This is just one piece of a huge puzzle.  So many things need to change, but in this stimulus package, there is a plan to expand I-95 (the already choked and packed east coast corridor) to 12 whopping lanes of water -hogging concrete rather than, let’s say adding more train service!!!  WHY?  Hmmm?  Let’s see?  More oil consumption?

Business as usual, guys.  Business as usual.

What I’d really like to know is where can I go?  Who can I work for to help change things.  Each day, I feel like a sitting duck.

If we are looking for change in the old power structures, we are looking in the wrong place. I see change all around me in the people in my community, who are working to start up a farmer’s market, who are giving classes in community ed about growing your own fruit trees, who are opening storefronts for yoga and reiki healing, who are walking and bicycling instead of driving everywhere.

And especially I see change in myself. Every little change I make, towards gratitude, love, and believing in abundance, brings greater learning about how I can take care of myself and my people and my place in a better way.

I agree with Ms Solnit, that the economic meltdown could and should be seen by us, as an opportunity to re-invent our lives and economies based on caring for each other and the earth, rather than about greed and money. WE the People are the only ones who can create the world we want, we can’t wait for someone to do it for us.

If we look at the world and the awful mess we’ve gotten into, it’s very easy to get discouraged and feel disempowered. Or to get angry and strike out, trying to bring the monster down, only to find ourselves in prison. If we look within our own hearts and minds, we find that real change is possible, and this is where it all must happen. One little step at a time.

There is no substitute for brilliance other than experience. How then can you put so much faith on a president who after only four weeks has already blundered several times? I agree that change is in the air and things will get better, but all in due course. That course will last another ten to twenty years.