MY CLAIM TO FAME

I had been assigned to working for two years in alternative service as a result of attaining status as a conscientious objector with the Selective Service and had found a job as a “child care worker” or houseparent at an institution for “emotionally-disturbed” children, called Greer, A Children’s Community, near Millbrook, New York. I was houseparent to ten young boys, ages four to ten, in a “community” consisting of perhaps fifteen home-like buildings housing boys and girls, ages four to eighteen, who were mostly children removed from homes for neglect and abuse but whose families were unwilling to put them up for adoption or into other foster care. Though the institution termed these children as “emotionally-disturbed,” they provided no counseling or mental health care whatsoever, except, of course, for the psychiatrists who prescribed medications to keep the children “obedient” and “stable.” When the boys attained the age of eighteen, they were turned out into the world by being given the choice of joining the US Army or Navy. The children lived on site and also attended a grade school on site, though I am unsure about whether or not there was a high school on site.

          “My kids,” mostly from Harlem, had been removed from homes due to severe drug use and violence by parents, which also included neglect; in once case, their baby brother had starved to death in the same bed with them. Some of the children from other places had parents who had died and either no family to care for them or family that was fighting over custody, in the case of one brother and sister, very well-educated, and used to having servants take care of them. All the children, having had severe trauma in their lives, could fit into a category of being “emotionally-disturbed,” often with violent episodes of PTSD. They sometimes behaved quite viciously as if they were little feral creatures. But they were not “disabled” physically, were verbal and could be “age appropriate” in their social responsiveness and behavior, while also easily be pushed or provoked to aggression, including aggression towards adults.

          The institution had weekly meetings attended by administrator, a social worker, a psychiatrist, the “child care workers” (houseparents), and anyone else they deemed necessary. At this particular meeting, which occurred when I had just begun my job, there was also a school teacher from the on-site school that the children attended. She was fresh out of college (as I was too) and quite inexperienced in teaching children who were to be considered “abnormal” for many reasons, including trauma, death of a parent or sibling, physical abuse, neglect, and absolute lack of formal education. The teacher was white and very soft-spoken—not authoritative whatsoever. I note that she was white because most of these little boys were African-American and had never dealt with a white woman as their teacher. She was in tears because the children were utterly “disobedient, disruptive, and disrespectful.” She couldn’t even get them to sit down, much less listen to anything she had to say. When I started caring for them, I found them to be so distracted and restless that I had to use a much louder voice and also “bribe” them with food they liked to get them to behave and be manageable. I suggested as much to the teacher but she just didn’t feel confident enough to believe it could work. I have to wonder if she was even being paid, and that this was some kind of “apprenticeship” for the acquisition of “teaching credits” on her part.

          Everyone at the meeting, except for me and the other houseparent, at the suggestion of the psychiatrist and administrator, decided that all the children should be “put on Ritalin immediately,” since this would allow the teacher to assert some authority and establish adequate control in the classroom. They said they would “revisit” the medication for the children once they “settled down.” That same night I was provided with the Ritalin and told to give a dose to each child before school the next day. I hadn’t even heart of Ritalin and what it was for, so I thought it might help the situation and gave it to each boy the next morning. When they got home from school that day, they were like little zombies and immediately went to bed and didn’t wake up until I woke them up the next morning. I knew this was bad and that I was not going to give them any more Ritalin. I was expected to give them Ritalin daily. At this point I knew that the boys and I would have to “make a deal” to save them from zombietime.

          The next day was a Friday, a school day. After getting them up, I told them all that I would let them stay up to watch Creature Features on Friday night, would get them pizza, make them ice cream sundaes, give them hot dogs anytime from now on if they would simply keep the secret and behave well in school and be nice to the teacher. “But she’s a honky lady (indicating, I surmise, their dislike of white, young, women social workers from the Department of Social Services),” they complained, to which I said, “Well, if you want Creature Features (which was past their bedtime), pizza, ice cream sundaes, hot dogs, and other good stuff, being nice and obedient to the white teacher isn’t such a big deal, is it?” So we made the deal and I dumped the Ritalin in the toilet—every day for the next almost two years.

          The following week, at the next staff meeting, the young teacher attended, this time with tears of gratefulness, at the “profound expertise” of the psychiatrist and administration, who soundly patted themselves on the back at that meeting, and at every single meeting for the next almost two years. Once or twice, soon after this meeting, I brought up the idea of “revisiting” the continuing necessity for the medication and was told not to “rock the boat,” since “what is working is working.” It was approximately twenty-two months later, as, once again, the psychiatrist and the administrator were crediting themselves for “having done such a fine job” in medicating the children so as to produce such “consistently excellent behavior,” I said, “In truth, the kids immediately attained all that excellent behavior on their own with only a kind suggestion on my part and their overwhelming desire to show respect to their teacher and, of course, to me.” They all stopped congratulating themselves and stared at me in utter silence. “And just what do you mean when you say ‘on their own’?” I said, “After the first day, when they returned home like little zombies, I dumped the Ritalin in the toilet, and they promised me they would behave well, which they have—for the last almost two years. They just decided, as a group, to behave, and knew nothing about the Ritalin they were supposed to be taking.” By the next moment, everyone, except the other houseparent, whose cooperation I had also engaged (but who was not suspect because I took full credit for dumping the med), was in an absolute rage, screaming at me that they would call the police and have me arrested for “endangering the children.” My response: “You’re the ones who endangered the children. Obviously, the results speak for themselves. And I would love to tell this story to the Poughkeepsie News. So go ahead and arrest me.” I was fired immediately and told to leave on the spot. 

There are lots of other stories within this one. I'll share one. The boys had to attend a music class with old Mrs. Parks, who made them sing a song when they got to class, which went like this: "Hello Mrs. Parks, Mrs. Parks, Mrs. Parks. Hello Mrs. Parks, how are you today?" The three older boys refused to sing. It may have been one more racial thing and they may have simply felt humiliated having to sing such a silly "honky" song. And so Mrs. Park's smile cracked and she sent them to the Principal's Office, who then sent them home to me, telling me to "deal with them." When they sang the syrupy sweet song to me, I understood their dilemma, even with the promise they had made to me. So I started thinking about what we might do to alleviate the situation. I had a solution but it had to be their solution and they had to arrive at it. So I suggested that they find way to sing the song perhaps with more "suitable" words. I started singing it very slowly with them. Very slowly, after mentioning that they could use words that rhyme with the words in the song. Very quickly, on their own, they were singing, with big smiles on their faces, "Hello Mrs. Farts, Mrs. Farts, Mrs. Farts. Hello Mrs. Farts. How are you today?" The very next day, I received a call from Mrs. Parks in which she praised the boys and praised me for "talking some sense into their heads." And I noticed that Mrs. Parks was also a little hard of hearing. "Praise Jesus," I thought.

Since we're on the subject, one of my other favorite bumperstickers: BEJESUS LOVES ME!

ON IMPARTING WISDOM

One must refrain from imparting wisdom because such wisdom is always partial rather than whole (or impartial, for that matter). “Part of the truth,” therefore, is not the truth, and is, in this respect, untruthful, though not a falsehood, a lie, which, I would say, require deceitful intention. When I had happened to inquire of the Yijing of what it might have to say, it did say, in so many words, know yourself internally before you express yourself (externally), or, find your inner wisdom before you attempt to express any wisdom to others. It seemed to make the point that, in its opinion (which is that of the universe, after all), I am quite unillumined. I took this in, already instinctively (or even intuitively) having published nothing of my “wisdom” in my blog. I also interpreted myself to be quite Daoistically tuned-in, having already followed the instructions, not even knowing why. And since then, I have been thinking: “One finds one’s place, not by doing nothing, but by trying, making mistakes, and thus further defining oneself.” Knowing this to be utter bullshit, I knew that I wanted to “keep form” by once again doing the wrong thing, since that is “my way” and it just “feels better.” I know “good advice,” and even “true advice,” and have always made the mistake of not following it adequately, which indicates that I at least knew it and yet “took the plunge” anyway: the plunge of “imparting wisdom,” which may be like gas passed as one, having taken the plunge, hurtles towards oncoming oblivion, twisting and turning in the wind.

GODS SEEING THROUGH OUR EYES

As I sat on my redwood perch in the deep Forest of Nisene Marks yesterday, I allowed my head to gently rest on my chest, and closing my eyes, I feel asleep in the absolute silent stillness of the forest, far off any electrical grid, surrounded by sixteen “offspring” of three mother redwood trunks, cut down between 160 and 100 years ago. I don’t remember what I dreamed but as I awoke, before opening my eyes, I realized that we are gods come down to the earth and in these bodies, seeing it all through these eyes, living it all in these bodies and their lives, which we forget are also our divine lives. I opened my eyes then and saw the forest as if I were a newborn babe and it was all absolutely new to me. I deeply inhaled in utter amazement at the beauty of the forest and moved my old, wrinkled hands before my eyes, as if I had never seen them before. They too were amazing to me. I climbed off the great tree trunk and, with my walking “stick,” clambered down the steep twenty-foot path, and then out of the forest to the fire trail and lot where my car was parked. Everything I saw and smelled stayed “new” pretty much until I got to the parking lot maybe twenty minutes. By then I was already thinking that I had to go by either Gayle’s or Dharma’s and get a nice meal for my wife and myself. Pesto pasta from Dharma’s, I decided. I could talk with my old friend, Josh, behind the counter, or exchange a joke with Bernie, the owner, whom I knew, what, 35 years ago, when he started McDharmas, and was sued by McDonalds and had to change the name. Babba Hari Dass, a teacher of Ram Dass, and guru of his ashram at Mt. Madonna, a few miles south of here, had died. Josh told me about his cremation and how he got to place a carnation on the exact spot of Babba’s heart before he was burned up. That’s why I like talking to Josh.

It would be good if we could remember just who we are. Gods, pure beings, are looking out through these eyes of ours. If we could realize this and keep realizing it in our lives, the world would be a much different place. I do not subscribe to religion or to such belief in religious gods, which are presented falsely but perhaps well-meaning clergies, who are nevertheless corporate-minded, bottom line in mind, which is a bit harsh because there are good people and aware people everywhere, including there. One has to trust the sorrow within oneself. We know on some level our plight as human beings. We feel the split between spirit and flesh as though the twain cannot meet, though we know also that it does and must, for here we are in the world of matter as most divine beings of pure spirit. We must learn to live as if all of us, each of us, were worthy of love and kindness. It would seem that trusting others in this kind of existence would be utterly impossible, for people do not even bother to know themselves enough to come even close to trusting or knowing themselves. Instead they allow themselves to be lead like sheep to the slaughter by those who would manipulate them to their own ends. Sometimes there are no reference points for us. Sometimes there is nothing online to explain our thoughts or what we know to us. There is no backup. We have to move forward in our thinking, our own thoughts—divine thoughts, if you will, that arise from some place within us of which we are totally unaware. These thoughts are which ultimately move the world to a better place. And we are thinking them and understanding them even now at this moment. We cannot give up on ourselves, on our ability to know things, to know what to do, to know what is right. Such is our destiny.

TECHNOLOGY, A-I, IMAGES & THE DEVOLUTION OF HUMANITY

The devolution of humanity. We do not necessarily regress into animalism; rather, we “progress” into technology and “artificial intelligence.” We become as machines, even seeing this as a good thing, as progress of the human race—a race we are bound to lose. We focus on, via technology, images, which we share with each other and the world without communicating to each other what it is that we actually see. We see only what we see; no one sees the same thing or even attempts to explain what we see to others. Everyone is particularly imprisoned in their own point of view, their own world. But we have even lost the awareness and self-understanding necessary to articulate our thoughts regarding what we see, how we see, or even how we feel about it. We are no longer aware that we are even meant to communicate our thoughts to others. We see and share an image, believing that we are all in agreement about what it is we are seeing, even though we do not know what others are thinking and feeling about the image we have all seen. We believe we are building a great ziggurat reaching up to God in Heaven, so progressive and artificially intelligenced and robotized, until we realize that the tower is collapsing and crumbling around us; until we realize that we have not been in communication whatsoever regarding any plan or understanding of what we are doing. For we have not only lose our ability to think for ourselves, we have lost our ability to think at all. This is the devolution of humanity who let the machines think for them.

Such are my initial thoughts. I think that the technological focus on image resulting in the loss of communicative skills and even the awareness of the need for communication may be worthy of thought. The devolution of humanity is already known as the Kali Yuga, but now we can see just how the unraveling is occurring. It is no accident that we are now governed, both literally and figuratively, though an increasing level of insanity.

JOKES, NIETZSCHE, ETERNAL RECURRENCE, AND "AMOR FATI"

Sometimes when I’m driving, I find myself noticing women drivers whom I find attractive or even beautiful. Any woman under 70 is lovely to me. However, when I was engaged in this distraction recently, I was pulled over by a policeman--who gave me a citation for erotic driving.

One joke leads to another: A werewolf says to another werewolf, “Let’s go and get a burgher.”

Now to proceed to a new perspective (for me) on Nietzsche’s concept of “eternal recurrence,” which I believe I misunderstood even though I read Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return. I had mistakenly interpreted Nietzsche’s idea with the Hindu notion of reincarnation repeating itself in exactly identical cycles interrupted by pralaya, which might be seen as “the ending of all,” before a new “creation” in which all is repeated. Nietzsche doesn’t subscribe to any belief in God, reincarnation, or afterlife. Instead, he upholds a notion of “eternal recurrence” in which the life one is living is to be repeated endlessly, for which he says he has proofs but which I do not comprehend or would accept if I did. His aphorism is “amor fati,” or “love your fate,” which is to say, “choose you fate” as opposed to being at the mercy of it, or “live your life rather than having your life live you.” I believe that Nietzsche is speaking metaphorically in order to provoke the reader to come to terms and live his or her life as it is, rather than as it is not. In other words, BE WHO YOU ARE, which is the Socratic dictum, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” Take the plunge and start where you are, rather than pretending you are somewhere else or better. Such philosophizing becomes trite very quickly, but my point is that I’m glad I now have a better understanding of the notion of eternal recurrence and what it actually is meant to lead us to. This whole process of “being who you are” is, in my estimation, learning who you are not, piece by piece, until finally you realize “you” are not who you think you are and never will be. There is an absolute irony and one must learn to hold that reality of “being and not being” at the same time, which is right now. And my thought about that is: TOO MUCH IRONY MAKES ONE OVERWROUGHT.

          I arrived at this point of view regarding Nietzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence after reading a rather interesting “psychoanalytic” book, When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession by Yalom.

Here’re a few brief quotes:

“To live forever with the sense that I have not lived, have not tasted freedom—the idea fills me with horror.” Then … live in such a way that you love the idea.” (252)

“… we must live as though we were free. Even though we can’t escape fate, we must still butt our heads against it—we must will our destiny to happen. We must love our fate.” (274)

          Nietzsche emphasized the idea of “will to power,” which I “understood” but didn’t really understand. It is quite subtle and rather dark and untrusting, such as, when someone says “something nice” to someone else, it is a ploy to attain power over that person. Nietzsche sounds pretty paranoid and with am “inferiority complex” to me, though his understanding and analysis of our shadow aspect is spot on. He exhorts us to “live” so strongly, I think, because he was utterly afraid and alone. He noted that in order to live, one had to first die, and to be able to tell the truth required devastation of oneself first. I don’t mean to just touch on this and then stop but I will take up aspects of it in due time.

          This blog is called “fragments” and so it is.

SOURCES OF OUR THOUGHTS & OUR ABILITY TO RESPOND TO THEM

In reading about various modern philosophers, such as James, Dewey, and others, what appears is the notion of “our thoughts” as “ours” as distinct from “our thoughts” as “not ours” but, rather, as coming at us and into our minds, thus causing us to “reflect upon them,” to “think about such thoughts.” This reminds of James’s metaphor of consciousness or thinking as a flock of birds (or of thoughts) in flight, but only thinking when the flock stops and perches, thus “thinking about itself,” “gathering its thoughts,” as it were. One understanding, perhaps of the Greeks, is that our thoughts comes from the gods, who are seemingly interested to see what we will then do with them. Isn’t this supposed to be a great source of their entertainment in Olympus? So we receive the thoughts and then try to “make sense” out of them, try to determine how they might be best applied in our lives or even in the lives of humanity.

          These “thoughts that comes at us” seem like they very well could be sent to us by the gods or by God for those who “believe,” or that they are the thoughts, the overall penetrating collective consciousness of humanity as a whole, perhaps having been initiated by those overlording gods watching down. Having had many “organizing thoughts” that seeming came “out of the blue,” I am willing to subscribe to some overweening source of such thinking consciousness, be it divine, collective, or both. How many times in my life has “something” stood directly between me and impending death? How many times have I “sensed” danger and moved instantaneously in my muscular intelligence with nary a single thought? Is this the body’s wisdom of survival and preservation or could it be my literal auric “guardian angel”? Am I to find myself, an unbeliever in the manufactured “blue-eyes Jesus” or the “protector of the good Catholic (or even simply Christian) sheep,” paying homage to my guardian angel, who could very well be right here in some kind of fashion at my side? That something could so personally care about me brings tears to my eyes and a hope welling in my heart. And it could also be an inherent, even divine, part and aspect of myself. Could such a self-caring and self-protective aspect be a vital element of each of us? Is this seeming metaphysical reality a literal part of our physical being, seeking to protect and preserve us from harm? All I can honestly say is that I am clearly aware that I have been saved from harm and from death many times in my life, and it seems as if that protection was even external to me, or at least external to my awareness, my consciousness, my thinking of it.

I believe in what I would call “the fatefulness of each moment,” in one’s responsiveness to “what happens” in each moment. It’s not that things are “meant to happen,” but rather that we can mean ourselves to respond accordingly, which is to say, to comprehend ourselves enough to know how to respond in the moment. In other words, we learn from whatever occurs; we learn to respond in a way that enables us to be who we are in life. It is as though, when something happens, we ask “What is this that’s occurring?” “What is happening right now?” And we take it in as though we were observing it not so much as ourselves, but from a distance. “How best do I respond to this if I do not have to be limited to being myself with all my known responses?” So whatever happens, we are able to transcend our reactions, our limited responses, and incorporate a more knowing, a more inclusive response that is therefore more effective, more appropriate, wiser. Thus, I am able to truly learn from whatever happens how to be a better human being, on a personal scale and also on an interpersonal, collective scale. “Not-self” becomes a very good vantage point from which to respond. If “I” am not there to react emotionally in anger, hatred, vengeance, fear, desire, craving, habit, etc., the response does not cause one more chain reaction. I may attain a level of acceptance and of understanding, even appreciation, or even wonder and mastery. There is no “hope,” no “God,” no expectation that the outcome or result must be any particular way. It is as it is. To attain this level of understanding is profound.

THE ERSATZ BODHISATTVA

Did I “give up nirvana out of compassion for humanity”? Perhaps. Or else I simply had to choose to return for my own karmic purposes. But a “poor substitute” still may somewhat suffice in a world lacking even that.

          Well, let’s start at the beginning. But, hmmm, which one, and was that a beginning, an end, or a replay? At what point, then, to plunge in? Suddenly, great waves of sorrow even at the thought of “going there” once again. I am sometimes hammered by desperate dreams of repetition in which I present the same series of numbers or letters endlessly in an attempt to finally “get it right” even though it really is exactly the same as it was endlessly before. Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence all over again. There is no “doing it over and over until we get it right”; there is simply do it over and over, the eternal sameness. This would drive anyone insane.

          Is it that we all inherently know this, and so choose to be born into the distraction of being in bodies, in flesh, identifying with such, dying to such, and then again choosing to repeat the cycle until bodies themselves as potential forms end, but then finding another form in which we might find almost ultimate distraction, until finally the pralaya occurs, and we are once again absorbed into ourselves-as-nothingness?