Despots and fiddles

Note: I first wrote this post in September of 2011—Nine years ago. While the specifics have changed, the essence has not.

“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.”—Let them eat cake. While scholars no longer attribute this saying to Marie Antoinette, it has nevertheless remained as the prime example of disdain by the aristocracy for people in need. It exists in classic anthologies epitomizing indifference exhibited by those with means for those who suffer. In the same vane is the myth of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, which has come to mean to occupy oneself with unimportant matters and neglect priorities during a crisis.

Both of these are finding relevance in our world today. While people try to regain their footing following natural disasters or struggle to survive following extended unemployment, loss of homes, and virtually any means of support, politicians wax on endlessly concerning themselves more with how many points they can gain by confronting “the opposition” than how many mouths they can feed.

In exactly two months time the appointed Washington “super committee” must propose ways to reduce an out of control Federal deficit. Whatever means they propose must be voted on by Dec. 23. As the situation currently stands these people are no closer to reaching accord than when they were convened a month ago. During that month one of the most devastating hurricanes on record destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands and goes on record as one of the 10 costliest catastrophes in the nation’s history.

FEMA is our first-responder agency for bringing aid to such people as those who were wiped out by Irene or by the devastating EF5 multiple-vortex tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri. Every caring American expects our government to provide whatever support is necessary to assist those in need. Instead, FEMA is being held hostage by the radical fringe, lead by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor who demands that offsetting budget cuts in other programs must be found before approving new funding for FEMA. Such additional funding in the wake of costly disasters has been the usual procedure in Congress in the past since natural disasters by their very nature cannot be predicted.

On one level Mr. Cantor’s reasoning appears responsible. To go further in debt at the same time that the super committee is trying to come to terms with the future of our nation seems unreasonable. The costs must be born somehow and the source of such funding is perfectly obvious. When infamous bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, his answer was immediate and clear: It’s where the money is. So where’s our money? It isn’t in the hands of the disappearing middle class. It isn’t in the hands of the expanding poor and desperate. The money is where it always has been: In the banks. Yet it is precisely the financial institutions of our nation that are now doing everything possible to manipulate the law to ensure that we once again pay for their own mismanagement. 

They were not shy in asking us to bail them out when they teetered on the edge of disaster. We did so and they repaid our generosity by handing out astronomical bonuses to their “senior executives” and then refused to fuel our economic recovery. In the meantime, so we’re told, corporations are flush with fat profits. Why won’t they reinvest? Because there isn’t sufficient demand. And why isn’t there sufficient demand? Because people have no jobs. And why do people have no jobs? Because the people who have money won’t invest it. Does anyone but me see the Catch 22 here?

If Mr. Cantor wants to find the offsets to continue FEMA funding, then he should take a lesson from Willie, go get the money from where it exists and stop his fiddling. Rome is about to burn and we need a lot more than “cake.”

Talk without action is cheap (and worthless)

Have you ever wondered what Rip Van Winkle must have thought when he awakened after having been asleep for twenty years? Time had moved on. Circumstances had changed. It must have been quite startling, but more than likely after a few days he just went back to sleep again.

We all do that sort of thing. One day we are walking along with our norms, not even aware of anything different and suddenly a Galileo shows up and shocks our norms, and then we go back to sleep again. We adjust to whatever comes our way, before very long these shocking turns of events just blend into our norms again, and we return to our sleepwalk. So we go through these ups and downs only to have them eventually smooth out.

For most of human history, the gap between the norms and the shocks took place every so many thousand of years. Back then (whenever that was) we had the luxury of getting comfortable with our fantasies. Now the gap is getting shorter and shorter to the point that the shocks are more normal than the norms. Makes you wonder about what a norm really is when everything is abnormal. While certainly stimulating it can become a bit tiring, disturbing, and disorienting. For example, the notion of a “bully pulpit” has changed radically since Teddy Roosevelt coined the term. He meant it as an adjective meaning superb or wonderful—A Presidential platform that enabled TR to bring about needed reform of a positive nature. In the 115 years since his term, “bully” is no longer an adjective but has become a literal transitive verb, meaning anything but wonderful.

In commenting on his own failing memory, Mark Twain said, “When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.” Aging memory, like aging anything, can’t be trusted. 

I wonder if I’m alone in my reminiscing about the good old days (that may never have been)? Were they ever all that good? How far back do we have to go to find that whimsical Shangri-La? I suspect that the grass always looks greener in the rearview mirror even though when we were at that past juncture, the rearview greenery still looked more appealing. Nevertheless, we do seem to prefer the past we never had to the present we do have. We’re a curious species.

This tendency to grow accustomed to the normal status quo, however egregious, may be our undoing. It’s very curious how, if we wait long enough, what used to be unacceptable becomes the new acceptable norms. Edmund Burke, an Irish political philosopher, was once regarded as the father of modern conservatism. When you examine what he said in the 18th century, in light of today’s political environment, it’s unlikely he would still be considered as such. Among the many pearls of wisdom Burke expressed are the following:

“There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.” And “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” This latter has been recast and expressed as, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” The wording has changed but the sentiment is the same.

It has become unavoidably clear that nothing positive happens without courage and a willingness to pay a price for the betterment of all people. Examples of the small few who found it within themselves to stare evil in the face, and regardlessly pay the price, range from modern heroes and heroines such as Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman who sacrificed his career as a whistleblower to speak the truth about our current “leader,” or the 17 celebrities who actively work to protect our environment, regardless of political consequences. These are the stars who light the path of goodness that allow us to walk in relative freedom.

There are some who dogmatically cling to the idea that our current misfortunes are the result of past wrongs and we are now reaping the winds of karmic justice. Consequently, they argue, we should accept our growing demise. There is some truth to that observation but there is an alternative perspective I wrote about recently in a post called “In the world: enlightened social responsibility.” In that post, I addressed this issue by posing related questions such as, “What role do we play in this vast drama of life. Do we intercede? Or do we accept things as they are, regardless of how they appear? Do we have a responsibility to fight injustice and evil, or stand apart and watch with detachment the destruction of society?”

After all else, we create our world of tomorrow by actions taken today. We define ourselves, not by what we say, but rather by what we do. There is a single-minded purpose to Dharma Space: to promote the well-being of one and all. It takes courage to first cast aside the delusions of egotism but once we find our deepest nature, we must act from the place of indiscriminate unity, and that too takes a different kind of courage: the kind of willingly sticking out our necks and exposing ourselves to the ax of evil. If we don’t do that then the purpose of enlightenment and being a Bodhisattva stands in question.

Occupy Wall Street expanding to Main Street

The American Spring

What at first seemed like a small and isolated fringe movement in New York City is now popping up across our nation, even in the conservative heartland of Kansas City.

Meghan Whalen, a 30-year-old single mother, said she got involved with Occupy KC because of inequality. “We’re not going to come out of here tonight and say, ‘Okay, guys, we figured it out. This is the one thing why we’re here.’ Because there isn’t one reason. That’s just the truth. People who can’t swallow that and handle that, I’m sorry. There isn’t one reason. There just isn’t.”

She is right. Many overlapping reasons seem so convoluted and twisted together that making sense almost seems impossible. But as Whalen stated so well, it isn’t necessary to figure it all out to realize that something is very wrong, not only in Kansas City but across the globe. What began with the Arab Spring is now metastasizing to everyone’s spring and what is common to all of these is greed, anger, and an unwillingness to just grin and bear it any longer.

The “jobs, jobs, jobs” mantra has become a clarion call for survival falling on deaf ears of politicians and captains of industry who are immune to the suffering of those impacted by their own bad decisions. The world’s wealth is progressively more and more concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer; simultaneously, the chronically poor ranks are expanding. These two trends are not unrelated. The sucking machine of greed is depleting the lifeblood required for meaningful solutions.

The pathway to economic contraction is creating a worldwide imbalance with fewer and fewer able to meet nations’ financial needs and more and more in need. The gap between the haves and the have-nots has never been greater in the modern era than today. The middle class has been the tax revenue backbone of contemporary societies, which has enabled stability and economic expansion and is rapidly becoming an artifact of the past. The chronic poor’s ranks are expanding, and wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top of the socio/economic pyramid.

No economic system can continue for very long with such imbalance. This disparity is clearly illustrated by looking at the distribution of assets in the United States. Four years ago, 62% of business equity and 61% of financial securities were held by the top 1% of the population. In the same timeframe, 73% of the debt was owed by the bottom 90% of the population, leaving just 5% of the top 1% debt.

This imbalance has resulted in close to 85% of total wealth in our country concentrated in the top 20%’ hands and so little owned by the bottom 20% that it is nearly impossible to measure (.1%). When the gap between compensation for heads of industry is compared to compensation for the people they employ, it is understandable how much concentration is happening. This is not unexpected when you consider the following—In 1950, the average executive’s paycheck ratio compared to the average worker’s paycheck stood at 30 to 1. Since 2000 that ratio has exploded to 300-500 to 1. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the Middle Class is gradually sinking into the abyss.

These conditions of imbalance and injustice have profound effects across the economic and political landscape. It is blatantly obvious that some groups must meet the financial needs of our country. The tax base is disappearing, needs are expanding rapidly due to financing continuing war, growing costs associated with the justice system, costs of entitlement programs (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, VA benefits, etc.) are about to leap into the stratosphere as the baby boomers reach the age of qualification, natural disasters are coming one after another in rapid succession, unemployment compensation, and other contributing factors too many to identify. In the meantime, vast amounts of money are needed to finance new technologies which would ensure our competitive edge in the world market place, pay for the education and training of our population to compete in that market place and slow down (and hopefully stop) global climate devastation which is making this entire scenario worse.

Washington’s political climate has become so divisive that any clear-headed reconciliation seems beyond the pale of possibility. The population segment who can meet these burgeoning financial needs refuses to do so, and the traditional source (the middle class) can no longer. To counter this rising tide, the wealthy, in ever-growing numbers, are moving their assets off-shore and playing other financial shell games to avoid paying more taxes. To avert financial meltdown by defaulting on our federal obligations, our elected officials have chosen, as they always have, to delay, procrastinate and push the dirty decision making down the road onto someone else’s plate. In the meantime, the opposing forces have both pledged to not cooperate but instead play Russian Roulette with our heads as the target.

Taken as a whole, these intertwined conditions have metastasized to the point that no person, however intelligent or clever, can ever hope to unwind them. This complex perspective is what Meghan Whalen and millions of others sense, but can’t define. And unless we find the source leading to this entangled Gordian Knot, there is little reason for hope. What is that source, and how can we find it? Without being evasive or coy, I am now in the final phases of publishing my next book, which lays out the case. It will be available for sale sometime in the next couple of months. The title is “The Non-identity Crisis: The crisis that endangers our world.”

The Third Step.

Right Speech begins by recognizing the interdependent union among sentient beings and an enlightened intention to ensure harmony, honesty, and integrity. The guiding force must ensure growth toward removing delusions that hinder genuine wisdom discernment. Ideally, what we say and how we say it will reflect selflessness or self-service. 

Our voice has the power to bring about transformation for either good or evil. That is a tall order given the fluid nature of conditional life, the goal of emancipation, the challenge of over-coming attachments, the Buddha’s model, and the use of expedient means.

If you research the matter of Right Speech, you’ll find a set of precepts such as abstaining from lying, not using divisive and abusive speech, or idle chatter. Being steadfast, reliable, not deceiving, having conviction in what you say, telling the truth about spiritual knowledge, using words that are friendly, benevolent, pleasant, gentle, meaningful, and useful. All of these guidelines are both right and wrong. They are right as standards and wrong depending on causal conditions in light of the overall mission to free sentient beings from the bondage of suffering. An example will illustrate the difference.

When I was younger, I served in the Marine Corp and underwent training in boot camp of Sergeant Fox. Like all Marine Corps drill instructors, he had a clear mission: to prepare a rag-tag bunch of wimps (one of which was me) for war, and he had a limited amount of time to accomplish his mission. Sergeant Fox redefined the meaning of Right Speech with words that would make anyone blush, regardless of moral persuasion. He did not employ any of the conventions prescribed above, but he did accomplish his mission. What he accomplished, through expedient means, was nothing short of a miracle, and there is not a shadow of a doubt that he saved not only my life but the lives of countless others by defying every single prescribed guideline. Sergeant Fox may have been a buddha. Who can say, but I know that he embodied the essential spirit of Right Speech. His mission dictated the measure of expedient means he employed, and he was not attached to inflexible standards.

He could have clung to the letter of the law and dished out a meal full of kind and gentle words, and I would not be here now sharing these thoughts if he had. My story’s point is that there is a difference between being attached to any fixed standard of perfection (which is not a standard of perfection) and staying focused on skillful means necessary to accomplish a mission.

In the seventeenth chapter of the Diamond Sutra, The Buddha said an amazing thing. He said, “Subhuti, in the dharma, realized or taught by the Tathagata, there is nothing true or false. Thus the Tathagata says, ‘all dharmas are buddha dharmas.’” This statement requires some serious reflection. What does it mean, true or false? And what does it mean all dharmas are buddha dharmas?

Something is either true or false when it either matches or doesn’t match a given standard. In conditional life, fixed standards don’t work very well since the conditions keep changing. It is like trying to chain the tides of the ocean. A standard may work most of the time but not all of the time. Does that mean that we should indiscriminately lie or employ a harsh tone of voice? Yes and No. If there are no inflexible standards to follow, how can we establish Right Speech? The answer is Wisdom—the soil upon which the Path lies, and if that is the standard, then all dharmas are buddha dharmas since wisdom is the ground of all buddhas. But this wisdom is unconditional, transcendental wisdom, not conditional wisdom.

But doesn’t this present the risk of self-serving delusions and spinning truth? Indeed it does, which necessitates the need to reflect on the first two steps—Right Views and Right Intentions. “... no one can be called a bodhisattva who creates the perception of a self or who creates the perception of a being, a life or a soul.” 

A self being served is not a self being served because there is no substantial self. An insubstantial self goes is the ego, and the ego is a delusion. To be truly selfless is the only way to honor the Right Speech mission. When we set aside our own attachments to standards and access genuine wisdom by piercing delusions, then we have the hope of administering the right speech. Short of that, we will always find ourselves struggling to chain the tides.