Hard and Easy Paths to Realization

A long time ago I had a conversation with a Zen priest. It was when I was still much more engaged in "cloud-walking" (ie: finding out spiritual people from various traditions to see what I can learn from them) than I am today. Someone mentioned him to me, and it turned out that he worked as a sculpture technician in the fine-arts building right next to library where I work. So there was no excuse not to seek him out.

He was a gruff old man who was very close to retirement. He'd gone to Korea as a soldier during the war and ended up staying on in one of the Temples. I mentioned that I was interested in Zen and he did his best to discourage me. Transcendental meditation was, he opined, a much easier way to find some wisdom in life. He said that there was a temple in Toronto, but I had to be "hard core" or they'd simply throw me out the front door. This is a fairly standard trope from Zen---it's not supposed to be an easy way to gain realization.

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Teachers have tended to create easier forms of gaining wisdom "for the masses". These include things like reciting mantras

and performing devotional rituals.

These are very standard moves across all religions. Christianity emphasizes devotional practices, but it also has most of the others too. For example, there is a tradition of chanting in Eastern Orthodoxy that is focused on repeating the mantra "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a poor sinner". (The Eastern Church usually says that this is nothing like Eastern chanting, but that's nonsense.)

People practicing a specific posture in a Hatha Yoga class
Photo by"Trollderella", c/o the Wikicommons

Mention "yoga" to most people, and they will probably think of something like the above picture. This is what is known as hatha yoga, which has recently become something of a fad. (I will speak of it no more.) But the actual word "yoga" means something like the word "kung fu", a diligent practice that is used to gain insight and knowledge. It has a slightly different emphasis, though. "Yoga" comes from the same root word as "yoke", so the emphasis is on committing yourself to a certain practice or path. (Sanskrit and European languages come from the same source, so there are similarities like this for certain words.) "Kung fu", in contrast, emphasizes the individual's hard work leading to personal excellence or realization.

Indian spiritual teachers have codified the different spiritual "tactics", or "yogas", or "kung fus" one can follow in pursuit of spiritual insight and named them accordingly. Chanting correlates with Japa Yoga, devotional practices correlate with Bhakti Yoga, the route of good works (think Gandhi) is called Karma Yoga, ritual is covered by Tantra Yoga. I'd suggest that Zen is most like Jnana Yoga, or, "the path of knowledge".

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The path of knowledge exists in opposition to the path of devotion or ritual. It's about actually knowing the truth instead of having faith or being a loving person. This is an important point, and one I rarely see spelled out in any detail.

Personally, I've always been consumed by wanting to know things. This isn't just a question of curiosity. More importantly---for me at least---it's a strong ethical commitment to the idea that we shouldn't make decisions without finding out the truth that underlies the situation. This has made me the "odd man out" for most of my life because I tend to get absolutely furious with people who are quite happy to "fudge the facts" or even lie in order to get their way. This recently came home to me in an argument I had with some folks about a Canadian academic who has been spreading a bald-faced lie about an abstruse part of Canadian governance in order to whip right-wing Americans into a frenzy. The result has been that this guy seems to have made a fortune on social media and public speaking engagements convincing people that Canada is on the verge of being taken over by radical Muslims.

My argument is that this sort of behaviour should be grounds for dismissing this guy from his tenured university position and revoking his Phd---along the lines of taking away a doctor's license for malpractice. The response by most people has been to suggest that I have a screw loose and I simply don't understand the importance of freedom of speech, and, tenure. What I'd argue is that yes, I do understand the importance of free speech, but these folks don't understand how much damage fake news can have on the lives of innocent people. A small percentage of people actually believe this stuff when they hear it and believe that they need to take action. The result are terrorist attacks on Muslims, like the recent one in Quebec City that killed six and wounded nineteen others.

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I raised the above example not because I want to rehash the issues of "fake news" and the tremendous resurgence of Fascist demagoguery our society is currently going through, but simply because I wanted to point out a strange way in which my mental processes are different from almost everyone else. That is, I do not blame the person who picks up a gun and shoots others nearly as much as I blame the person who bombarded the shooter with propaganda about the perfidy of the victims in order to raise money or promote a political agenda. At least the shooter has the courage of his convictions. But the propagandist may not---and I suspect often doesn't---really believe what he is saying, but just does so to take advantage of the gullible.

In effect, I am making the same point that the Gospels make in Matthew 7:15, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." 

Later on, Christ also makes a very strong statement in a similar vein. When asked "Who is the greatest in Heaven's domain?", he replies that saying that it is the people who are like little children. But then he goes on to say that

"Those who entrap one of these little trusting souls would be better off to have millstones hung around their necks and be drowned in the deepest part of the sea!" (Matthew 18:1-6, Scholar's Version of the Gospels)

If this wasn't strong enough, Jesus goes on to curse the people who try to fool the gullible.

"Dam the world for the traps it sets! Even though it's inevitable for traps to be set, nevertheless, damn the person who sets such traps." (Matthew 18:7) 

Looking at these quotes from the Gospels has got me thinking. I've never wanted to put a millstone around the neck of one of these Alt-right propaganda types---but I have contemplated tying ropes attached to cement blocks around their necks and tossing them through holes cut in the ice covering Lake Ontario. (I was actually startled to realize that Jesus's level of rage is comparable to my own. Wow!)

The point I'm trying to make is that the sort of deep, crazy anger that I (and presumably Jesus, too---I can't get over that) have against the "Grima Wormtongues" of politics and social media is actually quite rare. In fact, I've found that most people not only can't understand why I get so upset about this stuff, they are often genuinely concerned about me and the "crazy ideas" that I hold. I suspect that part of the reason is that people simply cannot see the incredible damage this sort of thing can cause. I suppose that ultimately, it's like a good chess player who can see how awful a play is because he looks several moves ahead. The bad player simply doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. In the same way, for example, I get crazy angry about what is going to happen to other people in the future because of climate change, whereas the folks who can't see this just think I am flipping out about absolutely nothing.

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So what has this got to do with Zen Buddhism and Bhakti yoga?

Well, the path of knowledge really is too difficult for most people to follow. It involves a constant struggle to fight against your preconceived notions and to stare totally honestly into the face of reality and accept what you see---no matter what. In Zen the mythical story of Bodhidharma staring at the wall of cave for years in order to deepen his understanding illustrates the awful effort that you have to put into tearing away all your illusions.

Bodhidharma staring at the wall
I got the picture from a site without attribution,
But it said it was from the middle ages, so I'm assuming it's public domain.

This sort of horrible, painful effort is common in most religions. Christ on his cross, Daoist stories about students being boiled alive by their masters, even Gandalf's fight with the Balrog from Lord of the Rings, are all metaphors for the enormous struggle that has to be fought in the pursuit of wisdom. But where the path of wisdom parts from others is that the people who follow it often do not encourage their followers to embark on the same journey---they suggest something easier. That's what my neighbour the Zen priest was doing. He was trying to discourage interest in Zen and suggested something easier: transcendental meditation.

Even transcendental meditation is too hard for many people, though. That is why religions instead turn towards the paths of faith and devotion. "Faith" is the idea that we simply have to have hope that it all makes sense in one way or another. If life is a terrible horror for most people, have faith that there is a life after death and everyone gets their just rewards there. Or if that doesn't work, have faith that there is a great God in the sky who's great intelligence is so beyond us, that he sees a way in which it all does make sense. If faith doesn't work for you, there's always devotion. You school yourself to love god or the church or the rituals so much that everything else becomes of secondary importance. The point of faith and devotion is to stop even trying to make sense of things, because it just hurts too much to make the effort.

I can understand this. Most people don't have the time or inclination to put their entire life into the process of gaining wisdom. I put in ten years studying philosophy. I've spent enormous amounts of time meditating, meeting with spiritual teachers, going on retreats, reading sacred and philosophical texts, studying martial arts, etc. Most folks would rather have a career, raise a family, travel, etc. For them the path of knowledge is simply not a "live option".

A proud young man came to Socrates asking for wisdom. He walked up to him and said, “O great Socrates, I come to you for wisdom.” Socrates, recognizing a pompous fool when he saw one, led him down to the sea and took him chest deep into the water. Then he asked him, “What did you say you wanted?” “Wisdom, O great Socrates,” said the young man.
Socrates put his strong hands on the man’s shoulders and pushed him under. Thirty seconds later Socrates let him up. “What do you want?” he asked again. “Wisdom,” the young man sputtered, “O great and wise Socrates.” Socrates pushed him under again. Thirty seconds, thirty-five, forty – then Socrates let him up. The man was gasping. “What do you want, young man?”
Between heavy breaths the fellow wheezed, “Wisdom! O wise and wonderful…” Socrates jammed him under again – forty seconds passed then fifty – then he let him up. “What do you want?” “Air!” the young man yelled. “I need air!”  “When you want wisdom as much as you have just wanted air, then you will begin to find wisdom.” 

(Quote from a blog that I don't endorse, but this is a widely used apocryphal story and this version is just as good as any other for the purposes of this post.)

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I can remember when I was "cloudwalking" with Roman Catholics that this decision to pursue knowledge instead of faith was always an unbridgeable crevasse that separated me from them. They simply couldn't understand my commitment to knowledge, and for a long time I couldn't understand their insistence on faith. The other day I woke up with an insight simply about how much different my life would have been if I hadn't had that bizarre obsession with wisdom that Socrates talks about in the above story.

Wisdom is a funny thing. My experience is that it always comes at the price of suffering. Even if it isn't the result of having a particularly painful experience, I have found that deep realization often comes from a period of something very like depression. What happens is that for days I feel deeply introverted and unhappy with life, but then a moment comes when the clouds part and I understand some deep mystery of life that has perplexed me for a long, long time. John of the Cross called this "the dark night of the soul", Saint Ignatius called this process "desolation followed by consolation". My dear sweet wife simply calls it the alternation of Yin and Yang.

John Stuart Mill
Image c/o Wiki Commons,
a pretty smart guy.

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The question of happiness and the pursuit of wisdom is something that a lot of people have thought about. It is especially relevant to Utilitarians, or, the school of philosophy that says that moral issues can be settled by creating the greatest amount of good (ie: "utility") for the greatest number of people. One of its founders, John Stuart Mill, raised the wisdom question in the following way:

 “It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. 
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.” (Utilitarianism)

The important point here is "they only know their own side of the question". That's why realization is so mysterious. You either get it or you don't.

It's even worse than that. A few people are "fated" to seek knowledge, but most don't. When I was talking to that Zen priest all those years ago, I mentioned something about having had a wild, weird childhood that shattered any illusions I might have had about ordinary life. He instantly responded with "that's just the price of admission" and mentioned his time in the Korean war. (No specifics, but I suspect that he saw some bad craziness. My understanding is that the Canadian contingent got more than it's fair share.) This is where the issue of "fate" or "karma" kicks in. Some people are like Socrates and need knowledge the same way most people need air. Most folks just aren't like that. They are content to just rely upon faith or devotion.

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I understand why people lean upon faith. A lot of very bad things happen in life and if it doesn't make any sense (and, to be honest, a lot really doesn't---life is absurd.) It can be a tremendously useful strategy to simply force yourself to assume that it all makes sense and go from there. And devotion is simply a variation in that theme. "Jesus loves me this I know, 'cause the Bible tells me so---". You can't love God unless you have faith that he exists and gives a damn about you and your petty concerns.

But if you hear a particularly scary story about climate change, or you get bummed out because of some horrible atrocity being committed against people on the other side of the planet, or watch YouTube and some horribly trained police officer kills someone, or read about some corporation fudging research to get a dangerous medicine put on the market, or,----you fill in the blank----you still have to wake up in the morning, put your boots on, and, head off to work. Lots of people just don't bother paying attention to the world around them. Lots of others don't really care all that much about what happens to other people. But there are still lots of sensitive types who get upset about this kind of stuff and they don't know how to deal with the pain. For them, faith can be a tremendously good thing because it helps them continue to be functional in a world that they experience as a never-ending horror show.

I finally get the appeal of faith. But it simply doesn't work for me. My mind just isn't designed to work that way. That's why I'm a Daoist who is committed to the path of knowledge instead of the path of faith or devotion. We need people to seek out knowledge because that is how our society moves forward. But I also suspect that we also need people who have faith to keep the the wheels moving.

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Out comes the begging bowl. Believe me, I probably hate writing these "asks" more than you do reading them. But if I don't remind people that the guys who tap their fingers on the keyboards and rack their brains coming up with the ideas deserve to make some money too, we continue to support the illusion that all this stuff on the Internet just comes for "free". Not likely. And the guys who do the coding and work on the advertising, and the managers and investors that stand behind them, certainly aren't working for free. In fact, they are making astronomical profits. Do you like that? If not, then remember to support the "creatives" in the best way you can. Toss something in the tip jar, do a little subscription, buy a book, or, just tell your "friends" on social media that they might like to read this blog.  

Courage, Language and Daoist Literature

I've recently watched two movies for "old souls":  Logan, and, Arrival.

For those of you who haven't watched the films, here's a brief synopsis---spoilers follow, if you care about such things.

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A cosplayer representing the Wolverine,
photo c/o the Wiki Commons

Logan is set in the Marvel X-Men universe, and the Logan of the title is Logan Howlett:  the Wolverine. The twist is that this is a dystopian version of that universe, one in which private corporations have released a genetically engineered virus into the environment to stop any new "mutants" from occurring naturally. This allows them to use their stockpile of samples from the existing mutants to create their own altered human beings to use for experiments to create "super soldiers".

At the same time, Charles Xavier ("Professor X") has developed a debilitating form of brain disease that manifests itself in occasional seizures that affect the people around him because of his psychic abilities.  In the past one of these seizures killed off most of the remaining mutants.  This leaves only Wolverine and Caliban---who have to keep him doped-up on heavy meds to prevent future seizures---to take care of him in an isolated, abandoned metal recycling facility in Mexico.  Logan supports this crappy lifestyle by working as a limo driver for bored, rich teens in the USA.

For those of you who have never read Marvel comics (I suppose some of you still exist), the Wolverine has the ability to heal almost instantly from any wound. He is also very, very strong. The ability to heal has kept him from aging, which means that he is at least a couple of hundred years old. Through most of that time, he was used by the government in one way or another. During both world wars, for example, the Canadian government used him as a soldier. When the American government learned of his abilities, they performed experiments on him to learn how to control him, and replaced his bones (and claws) with a special super-metal called "adamantium" (which only exists in fiction.) This made him into a weapon that is impervious to almost anything. It was Charles, "Doctor X", who saved him from this life.

Unfortunately, the adamantium is also poisonous. And at the time of this movie, it is finally over-whelming Logan's innate healing ability. It is making him an old man, and, it is killing him. Logan is in constant pain, which he tries to deal with by almost constant drinking. He also limps.  And coughs, almost constantly.

A plot and drama ensued, but that's really not what I'm interested in.

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I said that this is a movie for "old souls".  What I meant was that I can really identify with Logan. I am in significant pain at times, which I do self-medicate with by alcohol. I also limp. And I also cough, a lot.

One other thing that matters in the movie is the relationship between Logan and Professor X. Charles Xavier (played the incomparable Patrick Stewart), is a paraplegic and confined to a wheel chair. Underneath the gruff, macho exterior it is very obvious that The Wolverine loves this man very deeply. He works at a job he loathes to provide for him. And no matter what happens in the movie, the first thing he does is look out for Xavier's needs. When Xavier is eventually murdered by one of the super-soldiers (who looks just like a young version of Logan), he collapses emotionally. At this point, he ends up being taken care of my a young girl who was also created to be a super soldier, but who managed to escape due to help by nurses at the research facility.

The old macho guy who's always had to fight turned into a nurse maid for a beloved father figure. And who also ends up being nurtured by a young girl. Like I said, a story for old souls.

Eventually, Logan dies. And in the process the girl he's the genetic father of, and who he's saved, is crying at his side---calling him "daddy". His last words are "so this is what it feels like".  When I heard the words I knew that on one level the script was referring to dying. But my immediate response was to think that this is what it feels like to be vulnerable, to care about others to the point of  making yourself vulnerable to extreme, horrible emotional pain, and, to accept that others can feel the same way about you.

As I said, a movie for old souls.

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For those of you who haven't seen Arrival, it deals with a linguistics professor who's been asked to help the government learn how to communicate with an alien species that has just arrived on the planet (called the "Heptapods"---for their seven tentacles.) Unlike most science fiction shows that gloss over the difficulty of learning the language of a totally different intelligent species, this movie bears down on that issue and comes up with an innovative answer.

Basically, the movie is based on two premises.

The first one is that learning a language involves changing the way our brains are "wired". To understand this idea, consider the fact that English only really has one word for "love", where as Greek has a great many ("eros", "agape", "philia", "storge", etc.) What this means is that when an ancient Greek philosopher was talking about "love", he could do it a lot more accurately than a modern English speaker. To understand the point, consider this sentence that an obnoxious child might make to another: "If you love pancakes so much, why don't you marry them!"  This wouldn't make any sense at all to Plato, because he wouldn't use the same word for "liking a lot in the sense of enjoying the taste" and "wanting to spend the rest of your life living with because of a deep interpersonal bond".

The argument is that the complexity and precision of your vocabulary has an impact on how we see the world around us. A better example beyond the word "love" comes from the history of chemistry. At one time people tried to explain the nature of material objects by referring to the four states of matter:  solid, liquid, gas, and, fire. This really doesn't work very well to explain a broad range of events, so we now accept that the atomic theory works much better and most folks would probably have a hard time trying to figure out how you could use the states system to understand much of anything.

The second idea that the movie is based upon is that it is possible to create a totally non-sequential language. Western languages like English are based on the sounds that our spoken language makes. We start out sounding out the letters that make up the words, and then connect a certain sequence with specific words. But some other written langues don't work like that. Chinese, for example, is not "sounded out" from letters. Instead individual characters represent specific ideas. It is true that some characters are composed of different simpler characters and added together, but these too are representative of ideas instead of sounds. Having said that, however, Chinese characters are written sequentially one after another.

But Arrival posits that the aliens don't have a sequential sentence structure, but a holistic one.

A heptapod "sentence"
taken under "fair use" copyright rules from the Internet

As you can see, the writing looks like a coffee ring stain. But the different "splotches" aren't random, but convey a specific meaning. The issue that the movie hinges on is that there is no beginning or end to a circle, so the only way to really understand it is to just grasp the meaning all at once.

This is an important issue, because it talks about the limits of ordinary human consciousness. As this was explained to me when I was at university, Professor Amstutz (my old teacher) explained that studies have shown that there appears to be a limit to how much a person can grasp holistically. He explained this using an example from English common law. A pub used to have a cup with a bunch of wooden matches in it that people could use to light their pipes or cigars. They added a sign that said "take some home with you, if you like". An individual---what we would now call a "street person"---took advantage of this to take a lot of matches that he then used to sell for a half-penny a piece on the street to people who wanted to light a pipe or cigar, but didn't have any matches on them at the time. The pub owner called a bobby to stop this person from doing this, but the individual in question told the magistrate that the sign said he could do it.

The judge did some research in the literature and found out that when people look at a random pile of objects, on average, the most a person can count at a glance (ie:  without having to consciously mentally separate into different groupings and add together) are seven. So the judge ruled that under English Common Law "some" (as in "take some home with you") means seven or less.

This is important to the movie Arrival because it suggests that this isn't an intrinsic property of the human brain, but instead the result of how our language has "wired" it. In other words, the judge identified an issue of "software" instead of "hardware". If our brains simply have to work sequentially for more than seven items, then we will never be able to learn the heptapod language. But if this is instead an artifact of our language, it might be possible to learn the language---but in doing so it might radically change the way we perceive the world around us.

The people who made the movie didn't stop at the circle sentences. Towards the end, the heroine says that she understands their language and asks them to tell her more. So they present her with what I can only surmise is their equivalent of a book. (Actually, this image is only the same sentence repeated over an over again---but assume that the coffee rings are all different and you get the notion.)

Heptapod Book,
Fair Use Copyright, blah, blah, blah.

The important thing to understand is that the sentences aren't in any order---they are thrown all over and the reader has to understand them all holistically---just like the sentences.

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The movie is filled with flashbacks, but ones that aren't identified or labeled. At some point, the linguist (Louise) had a child, who died of an incurable illness. She also had a husband that she dearly loved, but left her. At first, I assumed that she had had all of this heart-break before the arrival of the aliens. But as the movie progresses and she learns the language, you begin to realize that this is the future. The man she falls in love with and marries is her colleague working with the aliens, and, the child is their soon-to-be conceived daughter. Learning the alien language has rewired her brain to the point where she no longer experiences her life sequentially, but rather as a holistic unity. (Presumably she started having dreams and memories before she met the aliens because the process reveals that causality works backwards in time as well as forward---how about that for an alien concept?)

This would be a really, really scary prospect for most people. Would you marry someone and have a child with them if you really knew in your guts---from direct experience---that both would end in extreme heart-break? Louise believes that she has the choice of not choosing to marry and conceive, but she does anyway because she doesn't want to lose the experience of having a man and child that she loves dearly. And you also see in the flashbacks that knowing how it will all end means that she never misses an opportunity to be as "real" and "there" as she possibly can for these two people. She really does savour every sweet drop from the cup of life---even though she knows that at the end there will be nothing but bitter dregs.

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How does any of this fit into Daoism?

What is it we do when we read books of wisdom and meditate? We are trying to deepen and expand our theoretical understanding of the world around us. We are fighting against the illusions that bind us to the here and now. We start out in life like the Wolverine---believing that we can live forever and if we get hurt, healing will come fast. But learning from others teaches us that this isn't the case, we do get old and die. Not only this, but the people we love die too. And that hurts, a lot.

Daoism offers to help people with this problem through many different mechanisms.

For one thing, it offers us stories that help us understand the most practical, best way to navigate life. Consider the story from both Zhuangzi and Liezi where Confucius meets an elderly man who has learned to swim across raging cataracts by only swimming a few strokes when the river is pushing him where he wants to go and not fighting when it pulls him away. This is how one survives in a chaotic, violent world according to Daoist wisdom.

It also helps us by offering us practices like "holding onto the One" that teach us to not get too caught up in the moment-by-moment activity around us. Instead, we learn to remind ourselves that we need to always try to understand the Dao (or "One") and how it is operating both in the processes that govern our mental activity and the world around us. If we are able to do this, for example, sometimes we are able to remember that the other person we are dealing with may be being grumpy towards us not because they hate us, but rather because they may be sick, be worried about a loved one, etc. We might also remember that giving that person a smile, or asking a personal question that shows you care, etc, may totally transform their interaction towards you into something more useful and pleasant.

It also helps us by reminding us to remember "the big picture" when we feel especially sad, angry, or, perplexed. When Zhangzi's wife dies, for example, he is very sad. But when he realizes that she herself has ceased to feel any pain at all, and has instead merely returned to the undifferentiated Dao that she emerged from when she was born, he can realize that he is really sad for himself because he knows he will miss her. And at that point, he realizes that he can choose to dwell on missing her, or, simply move on in life and find something or someone else to love. Much pain is caused by delusion, and the cure for delusion is a better understanding of how things really are.

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In a very real sense, studying Daoism is like when Louise starts having those memories of her child. I am not the old man swimming in the cataract or Zhuangzi banging on a pot and singing after the death of his wife. But those events are the memories of men who have died long, long, ago in a distant land. And by integrating their insights and experiences into my life, I am just like Louise having memories of the death of a child she hasn't had yet. I know that I too will find myself beset by awful, painful problems---just like swimming the cataract. And I too will find myself deeply hurt by the pain or even death of a loved one.

We aren't heptapods who experience our personal lives holistically. But we are eusocial animals who live our lives mediated by culture. And culture does exist holistically, and we can experience it as such. Zhuangzi and Confucius are long dead---and yet they are still alive every time we wrestle with the ideas that they have passed onto us through their writings and the traditions that they founded.

I got thinking about this because I was worried about whether my wife was entering into a psychotic episode. She is going through a stressful time right now as she has decided to sell her house and apply to be an immigrant to Canada. But in the interim, she is in St. Louis and I am living and working a thousand miles away. There is almost nothing I can do to make her life better right other than offer some words of encouragement. And when she enters into an episode, she simply disappears off my radar. She has no support network (she does live in the USA, of course), so all I can do is accept that she's "gone away" for a month or two, and just wait for her to come back.

At times like this all I can do is remember how much I love her and remember that I wouldn't trade the good times in exchange for not having the bad. I also try to remember that, like Zhuangzi and his wife, we are all part of a larger process and that ultimately we come from and end up in the same place. I also try to hold onto the One and do what helps me cope with my feelings of helplessness and sadness. Writing this blog is one of those things. 

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I put out my begging bowl and ask for support from people not just because I want money. I'm also trying to remind people that nothing comes for free in life, and we need to support others when they do something of value for the community. Many of us don't have enough money to be able to shoot off a few bucks to people writing obscure blogs on the Internet---no matter how much they enjoy them. I get that. But I also understand that lots of people who do have money would rather spend it on things like trips overseas, video games, eating out, etc.

For them I'd offer this piece of my life history. I used to do a lot of free lance writing for newspapers. There came a time when papers just got cheaper and cheaper towards people like me. That was because they knew that we see writing as a vocation and more than anything else just want to see our ideas in print. The result was no one wanted to pay me anything for what I wrote.

I accepted this as something that was happening and couldn't be avoided. Then I realized that reporters---with families to support and mortgages to pay---were being replaced by the free copy that people like me were giving the papers. And at the same time, purveyors of "junk bonds" were looting the newspapers that I was getting published in. The money was there, but I was just helping guys like Ken Thomson and Conrad Black get rich. At that point I stopped writing for the paper press.

Since then, I've been blogging. But you know what? The same problem exists on the Internet. People have gotten used to paying nothing for content, and writers everywhere are expected to work for nothing at all. As a result, the content being provided is being twisted into "click bait" and "dumbed down" so writers can pump out quantity instead of quality. This is because that's what the advertisers want. The only mechanism I can think of to push back against this problem is through getting people to pay for what they like to read through "tip jars" and Patreon subscriptions. That's why I always put these ads in my blog posts---it's so I don't go back to the bad old days of taking the food out of the mouths of people with families and mortgages.

In effect, I'm trying to help people realize that if you want to have a better Internet---free from fake news, alt-right propaganda, and other crap---you are going to have to get used to paying for it. If you refuse to pay for anything that isn't behind a paywall, you are "doing your bit" to ensure that the Internet becomes a plaything for wealthy corporations and not a meeting place for intellectuals and artists.

So, the question becomes "what do you want?"