Daoism and the Dominant Paradigm

At work the other day I was asked to cover up some furniture with so that when some contractors came in to do some construction work they would be protected with dust. It wasn't a terribly difficult job, but it put me in a totally foul mood. This carried on with me for the rest of the shift, over the night, and on into breakfast the next morning.

I mentioned my emotions to my partner, Misha, and we talked about them over bacon and eggs. We came to the conclusion that the reason why I was so annoyed was because I had been asked to do a half-assed job that served almost no useful purpose, and, which resulted in totally unnecessary waste to the planet---and there was effectively nothing at all I could do about it.

The thing is that I was asked to use plastic film to cover up the stuff. And plastic film is useless at this job---even though most people use it. It doesn't drape properly, it is repelled by static electricity, and, it is so light that it gets moved even by the slightest air current. You can't tie it up with string, it is slippery so it slides off items easily, masking tape doesn't stick well to it, and, it actually attracts dust which doesn't stick to it (that's a neat trick)---which means that when you take it off a piece of furniture the dust will slide off it onto what you are trying to protect. For these reasons, I never ever use it for this purpose at home. Instead, I have a heavy-canvas drop cloth that I've used for years. It has none of the problems I've mentioned above, and on hot sunny days I can clean it off with soap, a deck brush, and, a garden hose.

So part of my funk was just about the half-assed, ridiculous job I had been asked to do.

Another part of this exercise in futility was the fact that once the work was done the plastic film would be removed and tossed into the garbage, and from there into a landfill. I'm a bit of an expert on our local municipal government as well as a manual labour drone, so I know about how much time, money, and, political anguish goes into solid waste issues in my town. So the idea that we would create another bit of stupid garbage in order to just go through the motions of protecting some not-terribly valuable (and easily cleaned) furniture just seemed irritating as Hell. 

My partner Misha took this annoyance and ramped it up a notch by pointing out that there is no sense at all blaming any of the people involved in this process. Each one of them exists in a system of thought and organization that creates a logical justification for the decision to do something inherently wasteful with only marginal utility. That is, the idea that the cost of disposal and the impact on the environment are rarely part of the design criteria of any decision. And, that in many cases it is more important to be seen to care about an issue than it is to actually accomplish anything. Until society decides to put an actual cost on environmental destruction, it is called an "externality" and ignored. And, in order to ensure the smooth functioning of a large, horizontally-organized institution, it is very important to let each individual know that their concerns are being considered by management. This means that people are rarely told "No, that's a dumb idea" and instead are told "OK, I'll get someone to do that right away."

The really annoying thing about all of this is the fact that as a species we are skating very close to the edge of an existential environmental disaster. I personally believe that we have already overshot the carrying capacity of the earth  and we are causing a lot of very expensive and deadly extreme weather due to anthropogenic climate change. And yet, none of this seems to filter down to the level of ordinary human behaviour around things like construction. There is nothing at all like a consensus around having to get "all hands on deck" to save humanity, instead it's just "the same old, same old." Until the government makes a collective decision to take climate change seriously and mobilize society to the same extent it did to fight World War Two, it is ridiculous to expect most ordinary people to just spontaneously "get with the program"---because there really isn't any "program".

We can mobilize the public to fight a war,
why can't we mobilize them to save our civilization?

When I'm able to get my rational mind to keep my emotions under control, I realize that as Daoists my lovely Misha and I have isolated ourselves from the rest of the human population. We see things so differently from people who "buy into" the "Dominant Paradigm" (DP) that sometimes we must seem like Martians to ordinary folks. And it goes the other way too. I often find it hard to understand how these people think. Mostly, however, I find it profoundly frustrating to be around what I call "DP'rs". I know that they cannot do any better, so there is no sense blaming them for their individual choices. But that doesn't mean that I am not annoyed with the casual and unconsciously brutal way they affect the natural world and future generations. To a large extent that's why I have spent most of my work life trying to avoid being around them. But sometimes I cannot avoid interacting with DP'rs, and this generates negative emotions.

I suspect that this has always been the way with Daoists. It's true that global environmental destruction is not something that loomed large in ancient China, but there was always the casual brutality of the ruling class towards the peasants (that's why Daoists were involved in the Yellow Turban Rebellion), or, the tendency of military leaders to smash and destroy anything or anyone in their way (that's why Changchunzi met with Genghis Khan to try and soften his aggression towards the Chinese people.) When you make the effort to "embrace the void", "hold onto the One", and, "follow the watercourse Way", you find yourself more and more estranged from DP'rs.

The Dao is Not Sentimental

The first part of Chapter Five of the Dao De Jing is like vinegar to many people. But I think that contains a deep truth that everyone should understand.

Heaven and Earth are not humane (jen),

They treat the ten thousand beings as straw dogs (ch'u kou).

The sage is not humane (jen), 

He treats the hundred families as straw dogs (ch'u kou).  

Ellen Chen trans.

I thought about this after I saw yet another weepy news story about the recent bombings in Brussels. Society is flailing and the news media is sending story after story over the airwaves. But let's think about this. According to Wikipedia, there were thirty-five deaths and three hundred injuries. Lets compare that death toll to a real catastrophe, like World War II. That war lasted a little under six years (Sept 1/39 to Aug 14/45). The total deaths due to the war in that period---including soldiers killed due to battle, civilians due to war crimes, disease, and, starvation---are estimated at between 70 and 85 million. This means that at the most conservative estimate of casualty estimates, 70 million, about 32,000 people died every day during WWII. If we want to get a little closer to home, let's consider the number of people who've died in Iraq and Syria.  According to the website "Iraq Body Count", 242,000 people have died there since the American invasion. And in Syria, according to Wikipedia, 147,000 people have died in the Civil war.

Seen from this perspective, it strikes me that our society's collective reaction to a few minor terrorist attacks is wildly, crazily, insanely, over the top.

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In contrast. I've been watching the way our political classes have been responding to the prospect of runaway climate change. Various celebrities and elected officials, for example, have been going on about how unfair and "over the top" it is to expect Alberta to not be allowed any way of shipping their tar sands oil to market. In contrast to the minor casualties predicted from the terrorist attacks, there are serious climate scientists who are arguing that climate change will do things like flood all the coastal cities of the world, disrupt seasonal rains in many areas, and cause the deaths of millions---if not billions---due to drought, starvation, and disease.

Look at these two YouTube videos to explain the two points of view.

It seems so crazy that so many people go berzerk about a few people losing their jobs in Alberta or a tiny number of commuters getting blown up by bombs, yet seem so totally blase about millions of people dying nasty horrible deaths due to climate change. What makes it even worse is that the majority of these other people will admit that climate change is real, they just don't want to do anything about it. The person in the second YouTube video is bang on, if you won't do anything about preventing climate change, no matter what you say, you are still a denier.

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What's going on here? It seems to me that the big problem is sentimentality. By that, I mean an emotional reaction that is un-tempered  by rational thought. Take a look at the following poster that I see on the my local bus.

What exactly is the argument here? Did a video tape slap this crying child on the side of her head? Was she strapped to a chair and forced to watch it? Was she forced to take part in the creation of a pornographic movie? Was her mommy neglecting her because she wanted to watch or make pornography? What is it? Frankly, I don't know. I suspect people are just expected to see a crying child and come up with their own ideas. This is the problem with sentimentality, it isn't based on evidence, reason or much of anything at all. But a lot of people build their lives around it.

And the thing to remember about the anti-pornography laws is that they were used to do things like prevent birth control information. Margaret Sanger, for example, found that her pamphlets written to spread information about birth control methods were considered "pornographic" and banned under the "Comstock Laws". In addition, any attempt to portray non-"traditional" sexual orientation was also considered "pornographic", which is why the gay friendly bookstore "Little Sister's" found it's gay-friendly materials being seized at the border by Canada Customs and Revenue agents.  Since women who don't know about birth control often die due to self-induced abortions and gays of both sexes often commit suicide because they cannot find a place in society, anti-pornography laws are of life-and-death importance.

Margaret Sanger, Icky Pornographer

The thing to recognize about the anti-pornography poster that I put up above is that the "hurt" that it is referring to is the sense of "icky fear" that people feel when they are confronted by emotions and urges that people don't know how to understand. For a lot of people who haven't come to terms with their "animal nature", lust is something that is profoundly scary. It puts the lie to the idea that people are somehow different than all the other animals in the world.

In fact, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. wrote a short story about this issue, titled "Welcome to the Monkey House". The title refers to the discomfort that many people feel when they visit the monkey house at the zoo. It is clear to everyone---not matter how much they might deny it---that there is a profound resemblance between human beings and monkeys. (We are all primates, after all.) But monkeys have none of the inhibitions surrounding their bodies that human beings do. In

Kurt Vonnegut, Supporter of Icky Pornography

Vonnegut's story, this discomfort leads a druggist to develop a drug that inhibits human sexual desire and the government promotes it as a means of population control. But a rebel underground fights against this program and instead encourages a different type of birth control that leaves people's instincts whole. When a woman makes the transition from supporting the establishment and instead becomes a rebel (called a "nothing-head"), her first batch of birth control pills comes with the label "Welcome to the Monkey House".

In other words, going into the "Monkey House" is admitting that some aspects of being a human being---such as lust---should be admitted and accepted instead of ignored and denied. Women do want to have sex, so just preaching abstinence is not going to prevent unwanted pregnancies. (Not to mention the women in abusive relationships who have no choice in the matter.) Homosexuality is an innate condition, not a chosen lifestyle. So not allowing anyone to discuss it openly will not prevent it, but it will make it almost impossible for many young people to understand what they are going through. Wanting to keep on having good paying jobs in the oil patch is not going to change the horrendous consequences of runaway climate change. And refusing to put a few deaths from terrorist attacks in a larger context is bound to severely damage a free society.

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Sentimentality is defined by Google as "excessive tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia". And the sentimental response to terrorism, job layoffs, and, pornography is dangerous. As human beings our sentiments need to be tempered by our reason and experience. If we don't, we thrash around like wounded bears, creating pain all around us.

That's why as Daoists we need to always remember to not be excessively sentimental. And this is part of the point that the famous "vinegar tasters" painting is meant to express. The rational way of looking at the world needs to temper our feelings. One of the traditional ways that Daoists used to teach this idea is through this image. A Confucian, a Buddhist and a Daoist are depicted surrounding a vat of vinegar, which all three are tasting. From the expressions on the faces of the Confucian and the Buddhist, you can see that both consider this a bad-tasting element of life that must be fought against or endured. But the Daoist smiles, because he sees it as just another part of existence and something that must be accepted on its own terms and even enjoyed if possible. Pornography doesn't really "hurt", it is just our inhibitions that cause the pain. A transition to a carbon-free economy is essential to avoiding disaster. And whether we like it or not, we are all going to die, so freaking out about a very small number of terrorist killings is not really necessary.

Wisdom of the Ages---May We All Absorb It!