Barbarity and Stupidity!

Morality: 

descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or

normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.

Yeah. I have always been a bit leery of folks who talk about "morality." Usually, it means that they have some ideas they want to impose on other folks. Lately though, even just simple codes of conduct seem to be under assault. Powerful people show no concern for any morality or code except, whatever is good for them.

Man, if you have a whole society or group living by that code, barbarity and stupidity seem to reign supreme. Yes, that's not bad, the Age of Barbarity and Stupidity. Fits. So what to do? Try to be smart, humble, lean to the light. Call out the bullshit and lies. Maybe this assault on "political correctness" is really a rallying cry to be stupid. Let's not be stupid!

Maybe that can be the counter-movement! Let's Not Be Stupid!

Buying Stuff!

Buying Stuff. Seductive. You get why people dig Capitalism - owning, selling, buying shit for profit. Don't forget the pleasure part of the equation, right? We like buying shit.

Usually I am pretty frugal. Counting my pennies. Spending as little as possible. But lately I have been on a bit of a buying frenzy.

Buy new boots to replace the old, beat boots. Suddenly, every step is a bit more springy. Every step.
Buy new razor blades to replace, the old, dull blades. Suddenly every shave is close & smooth.
Buy a new travel mug to replace the old beat mug. Suddenly every cup of coffee is tasty & bright.
Buy a new guitar tuner to replace the old one. Suddenly tuning up that beat old guitar is easier. More tuneful.
Buy a new book, a big fat tome. There's hope, promise in those unread pages.

Like I said, buying stuff, seductive. Do we transform, renew ourselves by the shit that we buy? That is how it feels.

Grab them by the Pussy President, Psychopath or Sociopath?

This story made me sick to my stomach this A.M.

"He knew what he signed up for..." - The Grab them by the Pussy President tells Widow of slain Soldier.

Makes you wonder, what's the difference between a Psychopath & a Sociopath?

"A psychopath doesn’t have a conscience. If he lies to you so he can steal your money, he won’t feel any moral qualms, though he may pretend to. He may observe others and then act the way they do so he’s not “found out,” Tompkins says.

A sociopath typically has a conscience, but it’s weak. He may know that taking your money is wrong, and he might feel some guilt or remorse, but that won’t stop his behavior.

Both lack empathy, the ability to stand in someone else’s shoes and understand how they feel. But a psychopath has less regard for others..."

"The Man in the Oval Office is a Soulless Coward..." - G. Popovich

I do think there is a "change of consciousness" in the air...

One great thing, (really), about our current "Grab them by the Pussy President" - people are speaking out. Folks who maybe before were silent, just did their thing, ignored Politics, avoided controversy, didn't want to takes sides, are now speaking their minds. Of course, there's lots of noise, and stupidity. But then again, there are some amazing, cool, and admirable people, like Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich weighing in, and it's glorious: 


“I’ve been amazed and disappointed by so much of what this President had said, and his approach to running this country, which seems to be one of just a never-ending divisiveness. But his comments today about those who have lost loved ones in times of war and his lies that previous presidents Obama and Bush never contacted their families, is so beyond the pale, I almost don’t have the words.”

“This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others. This has of course been a common practice of his, but to do it in this manner – and to lie about how previous presidents responded to the deaths of soldiers – is as low as it gets. We have a pathological liar in the White House: unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office and the whole world knows it, especially those around him every day. The people who work with this President should be ashamed because they know it better than anyone just how unfit he is, and yet they choose to do nothing about it. This is their shame most of all.”

And I am also encouraged by the #MeToo Campaign:

Now is the time to speak up! We need to hear the voices. We need to know. We need to shine a light on the darkness.

I do believe that a "change of consciousness" can happen in a instant, a blink of the eye. That is why I have always, always been a "hopeful" progressive. I do think if women, and men, speak up about their experiences in the world we can all grow, and heal, and together, we can create a new reality. Dark times, yes, but there is always, always the Light...

Losing Day by Day...

Yes, this is good. There are "Win/Win" deals, and "Win/Lose" deals. Our current "Grab them by the Pussy President" is experienced in the Win/Lose dynamic - "for me to win, you have to lose." The only deal he's really good at, and satisfied with is the Win/Lose kind.

Unfortunately, what the "Grab them by the Pussy President" doesn't understand: the world is now a vast interconnected global network. Win/Lose is counterproductive and besides the point. Much of what this Cretin is doing is actually Lose/Lose. He loses, we all lose too. That's his fucking brand. Losing day by day.

A New Collective Mind.

Yeah, I don't feel any affinity for Human Beings who lord it over other Human Beings. Just not cool. What is it with this "power trip," and with this old, retro, male dominance thing? How is it that America ended up with "The Pussy Grabbing President?" Just not cool. 

I do not feel part of the male fraternity. I do not identify with men who strut around trying to be the "Big Monkey Man!" I do not like bullies. Fuck. Fuck the Patriarchy. We need more Women to stand up. We need their voices. We need their influence. We need strength. Something is seriously wrong. Maybe it is time for a new paradigm. A new collective mind.

I am thinking things are so bad, all around, that a new thing, a new idea, a new way of life is birthing, right before our eyes. Maybe these are just the birth pangs? Here's hoping!

Pretty Damn Low!

You almost want to turn your eyes away. Such a nasty story unfolding. Harvey Weinstein's Hollywood. Yes, I am aware of the old Hollywood "Casting Couch" cliche. But the depths, the scope and the breadth of the depravity that this man unleashed on young women over the decades is shocking, disgusting, gut-wrenching. Powerful man attacking, humiliating, intimidating, assaulting, raping, young actresses hoping for a role in a movie. The mind reels. Weinstein was a relentless, voracious, sexual predator. Very sick and twisted. And of course, there was a company behind the man. Supporting, enabling. There were those who knew, and were silent. And the few brave women who had the courage to come forward early on were ostracized, shunned, shouted down, silenced and bought off with coercive NDAs. Many more brave women coming forward now and their voices, their stories are finally coming to greet the light of day. A necessary cleansing. It kind of puts the whole Hollywood thing in a new, terrible & terrifying light. Revenge of the Ugly vs. the Beautiful. The Old vs. the Young. The Powerful vs. The Powerless. Man vs. Woman. You wonder, how is it possible? How deeply does power corrupt a man, a soul, a mind? How ugly can a human being get? How can others look away? How low can people go? I guess pretty damn low.

The Days Roll Out.

The days roll out. Silence and Thunder. Sunshine & Gloom. Joy & Doom. I feel like a Ping-Pong ball bouncing down the street. Up or Down? Feels the same. The Universe is Indifferent. That is the Universe as I understand it. On my own. All alone. Connected to everything.

Vanishing Point!

Power. Intrinsic? Extrinsic? Embodied? Bestowed? A combination? Who has it? How to acquire it? How to wield it? How does it vanish? We watch a powerful man implode. Power vanishes in an instant. And you realize that power can be stripped away, can be withdrawn at any time; one day a man has it all - money, fame, public applause, people fear him, people do his bidding, people close their eyes, people bow down to the power. And then, in an instant, new information comes to light, a change of consciousness, and it all vanishes right before our eyes. It is an awe-inspiring spectacle. Everything changes. In an instant. 

A Fall from Grace, Terrifying, Awesome...

To watch a "fall from grace," is sort of terrifying, awesome. Powerful Man. Falls. The "scales" fall from everyone's eye almost simultaneously. You wonder, how did someone so unworthy, last for so long, in such a position of power, doing such dastardly, disgusting things to so many people?

It is like that fable, right? One day someone points out that the King is naked, unclothed. He has always been naked, and he isn't really a King at all, just another naked human being.

How many people were silent? How many people just put up with the abuse? How many folks knew what was happening, but just walked away? Complicit. The word of our times.

Powerful Man has it all.  Money. Fame. Power. For years he lords it over everyone else. Then the truth comes out. And it all falls away. This Powerful Man thrived on an ugliness beyond imagining. We watch the great unraveling and wonder at the vanity, the hubris, arrogance and ugliness of a Man.

A Belligerent, Thin-Skinned & Really Unpopular Moron!

I've said it once, I will say it again... you can't argue with a Moron... Forbes goes inside the Moron's head, do you really want to go there?

Of course, our current Secretary of State was a bit more empathic. He describes the Moron as a "F%#king Moron." That works for me!

It's hard to keep coming up with creative insults for this particular Moron. Kevin Drum gives it a go, and I'd say not too shabby: "Trump is not only a belligerent, thin-skinned moron, but also a really unpopular one."

That works for me too!

"Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing..."

Looking for something this morning... I found it... a little bit of that life-death thing. Some kind of "in the bone" wisdom...

"The Five Invitations: Zen Hospice Project Co-Founder Frank Ostaseski on Love, Death and the Essential Habits of Mind for a Meaningful Life."

"In Japanese Zen, the term shoji translates as “birth-death.” There is no separation between life and death other than a small hyphen, a thin line that connects the two. We cannot be truly alive without maintaining an awareness of death. Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight. She helps us to discover what matters most."

AND...

"In the horror of my own suffering, I always had held out the hope that one day someone would rescue me. I had imagined that I would be saved by love coming toward me. Just the opposite. I was rescued when love came through me."

The essential lessons:

Drawing on his work with the dying and on the healing of his own life, Ostaseski outlines the five central “invitations” — habits of mind, orientations of spirit — through which an untruculent acceptance of death can become a love-expanding, life-expanding force:


1. Don’t wait.

2. Welcome everything, push away nothing.

3. Bring your whole self to the experience.

4. Find a place of rest in the middle of things.

5. Cultivate don’t know mind.

No Good Way Out of This Loop!

I heard a conversation this morning with Daniel Kahneman "Why We Contradict & Confound Each Other." 

Let me try to badly sum up the show...

We don't know what we don't know. We don't know why we believe what we believe. And what we don't know is greater, and possibly more significant, than what we do know. We don't believe in what we can't see, and what we can't see is possibly greater, and more significant, than what we do see. We don't understand ourselves. We don't know why we believe what we believe, but we believe we do know, and we make up reasons for why we believe what we believe, even if those reasons really have nothing to do with why we believe what we believe. 

And there is no good way out of this loop. We are "victims" of our circumstances. And our lives are bounded by unreason, illogic and randomness. We are over-confident and filled with hubris and bias, and we are blind to these basic, fundamental facts. 

Good morning.

Less "Great Men" Please!

Unfortunately, this quote never, ever grows old or out of date:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887.

And often those "great men," are only great in their own fevered, ego-saturated heads. We need less concentrated power, fewer "great" men, more humility, more grace & more compassion.  

Give me a humble monk like the Dalai Lama any old day. Interesting times. The "great men" in industry, politics, entertainment are being exposed daily for their "absolute corruption." Maybe in these crazy days there is a necessary cleansing happening. One can only hope.

I'm Not a Worrier!

I am not a worrier. Not by nature. I am good at burying my fears and carrying on. Still, of course, there are deep, primal fears, like ominous black thunderclouds hovering over us, everywhere, at all times. A collective fear. Think of the many billions of human beings on the planet at once, all carrying some primal fears deep in their beings, and this fear seeping out into the atmosphere. In the ether. We smell it, taste it, breathe it, feel it.

This morning, for some reason, fear wells up, or descends upon me.  What if that freaking Idiot does something really, really, horrifically stupid? My go-to position is: expect the worst actions for the worst reasons...

How bad? How much worse? Me thinks there is no bottom to this well. No end to the depths of horror that are possible. Not a cheery thought-train. Not what I want to be ruminating over this morning. I pour another cup of coffee, and type these words. Sometimes just  typing is therapeutic.  I express what's going on, and by expressing, maybe there's a little "letting go."

I am not a worrier. Really, I promise. I am not...

Death of a R&R Optimist!

Tom Petty has died.  A great, made in America, r&r optimist. Born and raised in "nowheresville," (Gainesville, Fla) at a young age, he decided to live the r&r dream. And he did it. He brought along some other characters on his journey, musicians he worked with over a life-time, including the guitarist Mike Campbell and the keyboardist Benmont Tench.

I think it's fair to say, even though Petty got all the accolades, (Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, inducted into the R&R Hall of Fame with the Heartbreakers, hit singles and albums),  he and his work is still probably underrated.

If you've ever been in a car, just riding around town, windows down, listening to the radio, and a Tom Petty song came on, you always, always turned the radio up loud. It was just the natural, and right thing to do. Exhilarating.

Optimist? I think of some the titles and lines from of some of his great songs: "You don't have to live like a Refugee," "Running down a dream," "Even the losers get lucky sometimes," "I won't back down," "I'm FREE, FREE falling." Even a song about falling sounds uplifting, the emphasis is on the FREE part.

And that ringing, chiming Rickenbacker guitar? The sound is undeniable. Passed down from the Beatles, (see "Hard Day's Night") and the Byrds (just about any Byrds' song). Every chord rings with a shimmering possibility. 

I wrote about Peter Bogdanovich's 2007 film about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers here. Streaming on Netflix, an epic opus! I think my companion and I will watch it once again soon, in tribute to the man. Yes, shocked and saddened. I took the death of this r&r optimist pretty hard.

The highest accolade I can think of, applies to this man, in the way he lived and played through the years- "He was a cool guy!"

Shocked and Saddened...

Shocked and Saddened. 

Kind of a theme around here lately. Events conspire. Hard to process. The news can be so deflating. We carry on. We must. Sometimes that's all we have in our arsenal. No magic kit-bag. We are alive, and we do living things. Live things love hanging around with other live things.  We honor those who have passed, we carry on. Look forward to a better day. We must. That's the way of life.

A Terrible & Difficult Legacy...

Yesterday, Morrissey's line "It takes strength to be gentle and kind," was ringing in my head. I guess a reminder to myself that Human beings can be gentle and kind. Also empathetic, compassionate, and loving.

Of course, at the same time, it's clear for all to see that Human Beings can also be murderous, blood-lusting, nihilistic, selfish, greedy, horrifying.

Reminds me of Sigmund Freud and his idea of the "death drive." 

I fall into the rabbit hole of Freudian Psychology. Eros = "the tendency toward survival, propagation, sex, and other creative, life-producing drives." And Thanatos = "the drive towards death and self-destruction."

Can it be there is a constant battle going on? Forces inside our heads, fighting it out, moment by moment? Sometimes it does feel that way. And it is sort of exhausting, and deflating. Horrific events happen and we are all left to wonder, "How can it be?" 

What is wrong, and what is right about the Human Being? Every act of kindness reflects on us all. Every murderous act reflects on us all.  A terrible and difficult legacy.

Stupidity in Action.

We hear horrific stories. We hear tales of the Lone Wolf. We hear horrific tales of human beings unleashing their hate on others. What to say? How to process? There is hatred & madness in the world, hatred & madness in the hearts and heads of men and women. It is terrifying. Sad. No good answers here. It's probably not a good idea to let "average citizens" own "weapons of mass destruction." That seems like a pretty stupid idea. We should be smarter than that, we are smarter than that, but there are determined organizations & individuals who fight the idea of any rational gun policy. Would a rational gun policy stop every incident? Probably not, but maybe it could prevent some of this horror? Worth a try. To not even try? Stupidity & negligence, in action. 

Selling Spiritual Transcendence One Song, One Show at a Time!

Two whitewolfsonicprincess' shows yesterday, an afternoon benefit show, (just an acoustic trio), and then a full-band late night show. Two very different shows. Very different feels. One was in the blazing light of a fading fall afternoon. The other a cool late night bar, a cozy, well-lit music room. One comment is still ringing in my head from a post-show conversation: "We came to see you guys to get some spiritual transcendence." Now that is the good work for sure!