Faith, or, Mind Fasting

In my last post I explored the religious concept of "asceticism" and suggested one way of understanding it that could be of use for modern people, even atheists.  I would like to suggest that another term, "Faith" can be of equal use if given a slightly different understanding.

Let me introduce this idea by suggesting that modern people find themselves in a strange sort of bind, one that probably never existed even 30 years ago.  That is, modern education and media give people the illusion of an almost Olympian view.  Part of this is the 24 hr news cycle that allows someone with cable television or access to the internet the ability to fuss about news all day long.  It also allows someone who is a little more directed the ability to see endless blog postings and journal articles on almost any subject---and from almost every different perspective imaginable.

At the same time, people find themselves living in a huge complex world where we are more and more at the mercy of forces that we have no direct control over.  Our technology is so complex that almost no one understands how some of our most commonly used machines (such as the computer I am writing this blog post with) operate.  Our system of government is so huge, and the laws governing its operation so complex, that almost no one knows how the decisions that govern his or her life come about.  Finally, almost everything we use comes from a complex globalized commercial system that not only means we don't how to make stuff, we don't know how to fix it, or even where it was made in the first place.

The net result is that we can see a lot more stuff going on than we used to while at the same time we feel a lot less control over out life.

Contrast this with the world I grew up in, only forty years ago.

At that time there were only two pipelines for information:  newspapers and the CBC.  A copy of the London Free Press showed up six days at week at the farm.  The mail man also delivered copies of the Winnipeg Free Press and the Family Herald.  In addition, we listened to the CBC radio news at noon.  If we were interested, there was also a CBC television news at night, although I rarely remember seeing it.  (Probably I had to go to bed before it came on.)

There are two things to remember about this.  First, the newspapers and CBC were subject to Editorial control.  That means a person who had a lot of experience in the news business had to make a decision every morning about which stories would or would not make it onto the page or in the newscast.  Space and time was limited, so there was a genuine filtering-out process.  Moreover, there was a belief that certain minimal standards of accuracy had to be met in order to keep the support of the customer.

Secondly, these media were delivered to my family at a set time.  If my parents had wanted to learn more and immediately, it wouldn't have mattered.  They had to wait until the newspaper was delivered or the signal was sent over the airwaves.

Both of these aspects of the news meant that people were able to keep a certain sense of balance and calm in their lives that does not exist with the plugged-in "news junkie" of today.  First, people who are looking for evidence of a preconceived notion weren't able to seek it out.  Editorial control stopped the positive feedback loop of "confirmation bias".   As a result, there were no people living in "echo chambers".   Secondly, because people had to wait between news delivery, there was an imposed period of time where people were able to spend time in reflection and contemplation of a world that had nothing to do with what the media was saying.

This last point deserves special emphasis.

Because the world was a simpler, smaller place people had the experience of having more direct control over their lives.  In a small town, people had more influence over decision-making.  In a simpler time, there were fewer regulations governing what someone could or could not do.  (To cite one example, I just had a hot water tank changed in my home.  You used to be able to turn your tank heat down in order to save gas and prevent burning yourself in the hot water.  Now it seems that the government has found that the bacteria that causes Legionnaires Disease can grow in cooler hot water tanks, so plumbers have to install mixer valves and encourage people to keep their tanks set on "hi".  One more complexity and one less thing the home owner can do for himself.)   Rules and regulations fence us in more and more as the years go by, which gives everyone a sense of increased helplessness and impotency.

So paradoxically, while modern technology has given us the illusion of omniscience, the complex society that supports that technology repeatedly rubs our noses in the fact that we have precious little control over almost everything.  We have the vision of a God and the power of a worm.

Cassandra taken into slavery

The ancient Greeks had a myth that dealt with this sort of situation.  It involved Cassandra.   She was supposedly the daughter of the king and queen of Troy and was so beautiful that Apollo fell in love with her.  As a "gift" he gave her the power of prophecy.  But because she rejected him, he cursed her by ensuring that no one would ever listen to her warnings.  She is the personification of powerless knowledge.   She knew that the Greeks were hiding in the Trojan horse and begged the Trojans not to bring the statue into the city.  But they didn't listen.  She lived to see all her family killed and ended up a slave in the household of the Greek hero Ajax.

Of course, the Greeks weren't the only people who understood this sort of situation.  All through human history wise men and women have been able to see problems that they had no control over.  Roman philosophers no doubt understood that rampant corruption and internal politics would inevitably weaken the army to the point where the barbarians would be able to sack the Empire.  Men of science understood that the church was causing great harm by silencing and murdering men like Galileo and Bruno.  No doubt many people of sensitivity have been consumed by helpless horror while watching holocausts happen to people around them---not just the Jews, but also American Indians, slaves, Armenians, and so on.

There is a famous prayer that directly accesses this issue.  It is attributed to an American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, but he seems to have wondered if he had come across from some other source and forgotten where.

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

Reinhold Niebuhr

(Variations are often used in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.  It is also, I think, sometimes falsely attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.)    A similar viewpoint has been offered again and again in human history.  Consider the following which is supposed to come from a "Mother Goose" rhyme.

For every ailment under the sun
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.

And this 8th century Buddhist text:

 If there’s a remedy when trouble strikes,
What reason is there for dejection?
And if there is no help for it,
What use is there in being glum?

(For further info, check out the Wikipedia article on the "Serenity Prayer".)

What I think we are dealing with is a somewhat more sophisticated version of the Christian ideal of "faith".  But the faith in question isn't of the "turn off your brain and believe every stupid thing you are told" variety, but rather of the "this seems so horrible, but we need to believe that somehow God will somehow make it 'all right' in the end".    If it were the former type of faith, then there would be no need at all for the serenity prayer, because people wouldn't get so concerned in the first place.  It's the cognitive dissonance between feeling that God is both just and all powerful, yet there being horror in the world, that leads people to want to appeal to things like the Serenity Prayer in the first place.  

I would suggest that for people of discernment the idea that "Trusting that You will make all things right" just doesn't "make the nut".  I would suggest, however, that the version from Mother Goose and the Buddhist Saint might suffice, but only if they added in some extra bits.  It is logically true that fretting over things you cannot change is simply not worth the effort.  But just telling people that this is so is not sufficient to actually get them to stop fretting. 

The Daoist sage Zhuangzi does offer a practical suggestion to how to deal with this problem, however. He suggests that we adopt a specific meditation technique known as mind fasting.  He introduces this concept in Chapter Four of his book through the mouth of the sage Confucious.  

Zhuangzi

Confucious said, "Make your will one!  Don't listen with your ears, listen with your mind.  No, don't listen with your mind, listen with your spirit.  Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things.  The Way gathers in emptiness alone.  Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.  (from Chapter four of the Zhuangzi.  The Google Texts version.) 

 The point he is trying to make is that there is a way of controlling the sorts of things that your mind chooses to fixate upon.  It is a learned skill, however, and only comes about if a person works at learning how to control what his mind does or does not choose to focus upon.  This is just like the ascetic who chooses to do a food fast and control what he put into his mouth.  In the same way, a sage learns how to control what he does or does not put into his conscious mind.

This takes two practical forms.

First, a person can choose to avoid looking at certain types of information that serve no useful purpose but instead cause worthless agitation.  In the case of modern people, this can take the form of a "new fast".  This involves refusing to look at websites, television or listen to radio that is part of the so-called "24 hr news cycle".  If someone chooses to do this, I would suggest that they very quickly realize that almost all the news that they have routinely consumed in the past has almost no real importance.  Indeed, most of it is trivial, sensational crap, much of which is irrelevant and or factually wrong.

Laozi makes a similar point in the Dao De Jing when he says:

Colors blind the eye
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart. 

Secondly, beyond turning off the avalanche of mind churning crap, people can learn to pick and choose what it is that they decide to think about.  This is the process some Daoists call "holding onto the One".  This is a process of reminding yourself that you are alive, that you are a human being and that you have the ability to pick and choose what it is that you are thinking about.  And moreover, that you choose to think about things that are of benefit for you, not things that cause you needless distress.

Please note, this is not the same thing as praying to a non-existent God that all things will be "made right" by some sort of miracle. It is instead, understanding how the human mind operates and refusing to allow it to run wild and make your life miserable.  The Dao is the sum total of "how the world works", not some old guy in the clouds.  But in many ways the end result is similar.  It is possible to live a life of value and worth, a life that benefits your fellow man, but one that doesn't involve constant mental anguish, if you learn to control the mind through fasting.

The similarity comes from the fact that deciding to learn the kung fu of Mind Fasting or Holding onto the One, is very similar to praying to "God" to give you faith.  On a practical level, they are both practices that you have to work at and which you get better doing with experience.  On a theoretical level, however, there is a world of difference.  The Dao as I have described it above, integrates perfectly with the modern worldview whereas the God of the Bible is an absurd holdover from the bronze age.  In doing so, I am trying to separate the practical value that "faith" has offered people for generations from the nasty ways in which the term has been used by ecclesiastic authorities to violate and abuse.

Unfortunately, as long as faith is defined by submission to a non-existent God, the religion leaves believers wide open to manipulation by ecclesiastic authorities who abuse their trust.  The Pope gets to decide what God does or does not want us to take "on faith" (simply because there really is no God who can step in and tell people directly that the Pope---or anyone else---is wrong.)  This means that the emphasis is not on learning how to control how our minds work, but rather on what we do or do not choose to focus upon.  The Daoist version, in contrast, is on learning how to control the mind and leaves what it chooses to focus upon up to the individual.

This is the difference between outside discipline and self-discipline.  It is analogous to the difference between an army recruit who is chased through boot camp by a drill sergeant and ordered to exercise and eat a certain type of food, and, a martial artist who freely chooses to exercise and eat right.  Unfortunately, for many people who would dramatically benefit from mind fasting, the church's attempts to impose their definition of faith on them in their youth has "poisoned the well" and keeps them from benefiting from this useful discipline.  This is why so many people who could really benefit from developing a "faithful" approach to life recoil in horror from the suggestion.  As a result, I would suggest for people who simply cannot accept the ideal of "faith" should instead be exposed to the concepts of "mind fasting" and "holding onto the One" instead.

Asceticism

I've been thinking a lot about two issues that have enormous bearing on environmental sustainability.  The more I think about them, the more I think that we can learn a lot about them by considering two old religious ideals that have pretty much died out as parts of our shared cultural inheritance.  This blog post will be about "asceticism", the next one "surrender".

My wife and I obsess about why it is that so many people we know simply will not, indeed seem incapable of comprehending the possibility of, "doing without".  I know people who are very aware of climate change, the necessity of everyone cutting their carbon footprint, who would be considered by most other people to be "radical environmentalists"---yet still jump on a jet plane for a vacation in Paris, Thailand or Iceland.  It's as if the whole idea that someone should try to "live their values" is beyond their ability to comprehend.  In order to understand this problem, I would suggest that it would be useful to consider a religious value that seems to have died out in modern society.

" Asceticism" is very similar to the Daoist principle of "kung fu", or, intense training to develop mastery of some ability.  But the emphasis isn't on learning a particular skill so much as learning to control one's mind or passions through either doing without some normal want or need, or, insisting on doing some particular arduous task.  

Simon Stylites

The first ascetic that I ever heard of was a fellow by the name of Simon Stylites.   This was an early Christian monastic who retreated to the deserts of the Middle East (ie:  he was a "desert father") in order to live a life of contemplation.   He is famous for residing for many years on a pillar.   I remember that the school teacher who mentioned him absolutely dripped condescension.  Obviously, this guy was a poor, foolish person who threw away his life in pursuit of some silly superstition.  (Or at least that was the lesson I learned in my childhood.)

An Anchor Hold

There were other Christian ascetics.  For example, in medieval England it was not unknown for a church to have a resident "anchorite".   These were people---both men and women---who had applied for and been granted the privilege to live in a cell (or "anchor hold") that was attached to the side of the church.  There would be a hole in the wall near the altar called a "hagioscope" or "squint", through which the priest would be able to hand the bread and wine of the Eucharist to the anchorite.  Often, there would also be a window or grate on the outside of the hold, through which the Anchorite would be able to give advice to members of the community who were seeking words of wisdom.  Food and water would be passed in, a chamber pot out, but the anchorite was not supposed to ever leave the anchor hold.  Anchorites took this vow seriously, sometimes to the point of remaining in a burning church or one that was being looted by pirates.

OK.  So what has this got to do with flying to Thailand on a vacation?

The point I want to make is that at one time it was considered---very broadly speaking---a good thing to tame our desires in order to live in accordance with our values.  In itself, living on top of a stone pillar or in a room attached to a church is absurd.  But if you do it as a way of showing your contempt for the things "of this world", it is a heroic statement about the depth of your religious faith.  It was inspiring to other people.  Indeed, Simon initially started living on top of his pillar in order to avoid the mobs of people that went out to see and meet him.  These people found his example to be inspiring, if not perhaps, something that they would emulate themselves.

In contrast, people in our society are taught (just like I was as a child) that this is weird, strange behaviour.  We are taught to "enjoy" our creature comforts.  That "doing without---just because" is weird, strange and even somewhat subversive.  (When I was in university I lived without a television set.  My family thought that this was so strange that they made a point of bringing me one----and ordering me not to give it away.)

Even more so, in some instances, doing without is seen as bad, immoral behaviour.  When I was a teenager I was pretty much indifferent to my personal attire.  I can remember applying for a position with a service club where I would be an exchange student in the USA.  I found out that the reason I didn't get selected was because I didn't wear a set of "good shoes".  As a matter of fact, what I wore---some Adidas sneakers---were the only shoes I owned.  I can also remember my parents complaining about the people who lived on the local Indian reserve.  They said that they knew many of the people made very good money working in the USA building skyscrapers, but they still lived in crappy houses.  I wondered about this for years until it finally dawned on me the the Iroquois weren't materialistic like my parents----they just didn't care what their houses looked like.

Just another bad day in the Middle Ages

I think that it is easier for societies that were less materialistically "advanced" or "rich" than ours to understand that there is more to life than creature comfort.   Indeed, I think that they had their noses rubbed into the fact on a very regular basis.  They knew that famine, disease, war and God only knew what else were always around the corner conspiring to take away everything you owned and loved on a moment's notice.  If the crops failed, you would watch your children starve.  If the Viking's showed up, you could see your parents murdered and yourself sold into slavery.   The plague could arrive and kill off  most of your friends and family within a week.

Pretty brave guys, no?

Ultimately, all you could really call your own was your interior life.  For the Six Nations people I grew up near, their courage was valued much more than their homes.  This is why they make such good warriors before and ironworkers now.  It was also why people of Middle Ages were inspired by Anchorites and Ascetics of all sorts.  They saw in their example a way to transcend the horror that lurked behind everyday life through developing control over the appetites and passions of existence.

Of course, modern people only see kooks who were voluntarily living wretched lives. But I think it only looks that way from the vantage point of someone who has central heating, nice clothes and good food.  If you were living with the livestock, had lice, and had to live on porridge most of the year---and worry about all Hell breaking loose at any moment---you might value the ascetics ability to "rise above" the material elements of life.

I think in a similar way people who really care about the fate of the earth and humanity because of things like climate change should be willing to manifest a little asceticism in their lives.  If you really do care, then you should be willing to avoid unnecessary flying.  If it means taking a few days to travel by train, then so be it.  The discomfort of sleeping in a coach seat or waiting hours for a connection is not nearly as bad as being walled up in a cell or living on a stone pillar for the rest of your life.  But it is showing the people around you that you really do care about Mother Nature, and you have enough control over your body that you can suffer a little bit for it.

Siddhartha, Tantricism, Environmentalism, Dao

Herman Hesse

I just got finished reading Herman Hesse's book Siddhartha.  For those of you who haven't read it, Siddhartha follows the life of a Brahmin (or religious caste member) who lives at the time of the historic Buddha.  Siddhartha studies with his father to learn the religious lore of the Hindus, then sets out to join a band of ascetics (or Sadhu) to seek wisdom.  Eventually he gives this up and meets with the Buddha.  Instead of taking vows and becoming a monk, however, he decides to cast his study away and learn about "the world".  He becomes enamored with a courtesan, a wealthy businessman and finds himself becoming more and more enmeshed in lust, greed, etc.  Eventually, he becomes disgusted with this life and walks away to live "the simple life" as a ferryman.  He gains real peace here, but eventually his old love, the courtesan, passes by with their son (whom he never knew about.)  She dies from a snake bite, leaving the son with her father.  He tries to be a good father, but they have very different ideas and the son runs away.  Eventually Siddhartha realizes that the son had to leave him just as he left his father years ago.  Realization ensues.

A Sadhu

Stated in bald terms, the plot doesn't seem any more insightful than any other.  And indeed, one of the points that Hesse makes is that all paths can be banal or the road to realization---it depends on the individual.  For Siddhartha, who was always a brilliant "outsider", it was easy to study philosophy, do austerities, and meditate.  What was difficult was to understand ordinary people:  their desires, loves and frustrations.  Indeed, Hesse always describes the young Siddhartha as having a "mocking edge" in his voice.  And the older one describes ordinary folks as "the childish ones".  It is only after he fully enmeshes himself into sex, greed and love that he begins to understand these others and stops seeing them as "childish" but instead as part of the whole of humanity.


When I read this book it occurred to me that what Hesse was really writing was not, as it is often understood, either Buddhism or Hinduism, but rather Tantra.  This is a medieval outgrowth of both Buddhism and Hinduism that suggests that it is important to embrace and understand the world around us instead of rejecting it.  I suppose the best example of this Tantric attitude that I can think of comes from the Daoist popular novel Seven Taoist Masters.  One figure decides that he is too consumed by lustful thoughts, so he creates a bunch of "fairy gold" out of pebbles and goes to live in a brothel.  After doing so for a few years any obsessive interest he may have had in sex has been burnt out of him.


Another aspect of Tantra is the idea of the human Guru.  The idea, expressed very well by Hesse, is that the teaching is pretty much irrelevant compared to how it is applied to day to day life.  And you can only get a feel for how to live the life if you have experience with someone who does a good job.  So Siddhartha meets the Buddha and is far more impressed by how the Buddha walks and interacts with people than with the specific doctrine he is teaching.  Later on, he lives with an old "working class" ferry man who becomes his exemplar of how to live a realized life.


Unfortunately, to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, "religion poisons everything---even enlightenment".    And Tantric religion has often resulted in Guru slavery and sexual exploitation.  That is, gurus stopped being people you choose to emulate because you can see they are superior human beings and instead became tyrants who order you to do whatever crazy thing comes into their minds.  For example, "learning from the senses" becomes "sleep with me because it'll make you enlightened".  The people who publish  Down the Crooked path do a very good job of explaining the excesses of tantra.


What got me thinking about writing a blog about Siddhartha is something else, though.  My wife and I are united in our environmentalism.  We are also people who follow a non-religious Daoist path, although she is much more emotionally repulsed by religion than I am.  I find it interesting to study and believe that there are useful things to learn from that study.  She just finds it a disgusting mess of corruption and filth.


So be it, it's eerie how much we have in common otherwise.


But I have been thinking about Siddhartha and the "childish ones".  I often find myself looking at the people around me, the ones who blithely continue living as if things like climate change do not exist and feel no personal responsibility for it.  I've always found this totally and utterly mystifying.  My wife and I both go through periods of profound concern, anger and even despair over the attitudes of the people we meet.  It's as if they simply don't care.


I recognized myself in Hesse's book in Siddhartha when he looked on the merchants, working people and courtesans as "the childish ones".  The book has got me thinking.  Did Hesse understand something about the human heart that I have missed?  Am I missing out on a critical insight because I have never really felt what it means to be a direct participant in life instead of an observer?  Maybe.  Certainly, being married has really changed some of my attitudes towards life.


And what is that insight that Siddhartha came to?  It was the basic Hindu/Buddhist/Daoist idea that we make a mistake when we see a person as an individual.  This applies both to the idea that there is an atomistic soul that exists from birth to death-----Siddhartha at 5 is not the same man he is at 50.  (Buddhists call this idea anatta.)  Moreover, humanity, biota, the entire universe, are all parts of a big process. The metaphor that is used in the novel is a big river.  Stand on a bank and the river never moves, but the water flows by and disappears.  He's talking about what scientists would call a "homeostatic process".  Our bodies exist through this----old cells die and disappear, new ones come, but I the body still exists.  The flame on a candle is also a homeostatic process----the wax melts, burns off, but the flame continues.

Water Cycle

Human society is a homeostatic process.  The environment is filled with homeostatic processes:  the carbon cycle, the water cycle, etc.  The President retires, another one is elected to office, and so on. A part of wisdom comes from understanding the big picture and accepting that all of us are eventually replaced.  In Hesse's book, this is the wisdom of the Buddha.

Carbon Cycle

I often hear others talk about about this sort of thing by sprinkling in the phrase "I don't give a damn".  I don't give a damn if I die.  I don't give a damn about the future.  I don't give a damn about---.  I always feel really sad and hurt when I hear this.  Now I think I know why.  That phrase "I don't give a damn" means two things to me.  First, I think it is usually not true.  People do give a great deal about the situation but it hurts them so much to admit it that they are in denial about it.  Secondly, it can also mean that they are so angry with people's behaviour (i.e. the "childish ones" of Hesse's novel) that they cannot feel any emotional connection with them.


I think Hesse understood something important.  His character Siddhartha grew to identify with the "childish ones" through experiencing their lives.  He also learned to love them through his son.  At that point, he most certainly did give a damn, for the first time in his life.  But it hurt terribly to do so.  But by accepting the hurt and learning to get through it, he was able to see the wisdom of the River/Dao.  He could begin to love people and still see them as parts of a greater, homeostatic process.  You can see the river and still love the individual drops of water.  And if you allow yourself to do both, I would argue that life becomes bearable again.


I hope that people who do see how badly we are screwing up the environment can learn to love all the people who seem totally oblivious to the harm that they are doing.  And I hope that those people can come to see that their concern, and the actions they do, are part of the Dao----just like the actions of the people who are creating the problem in the first place.  We are all drops of water in the river of life.  The future may or may not come out the way we want, but that is the Dao's concern, not ours.  And this is not something to be sad, angry or happy about.  It is just the background of our lives.  

The Kung Fu of Skepticism

In my last post I laid out my concerns about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).  Basically, I suggested that they are being developed as a means of propping up an inherently unsustainable agricultural model, one that I think will eventually collapse and be replaced by something that I called "Daoist Agriculture".

But in doing so, I avoided the question that raised the issue in the first place.  That is, the book and movie titled "Genetic Roulette".   I'm going to do something that I try not to do and which I usually criticize others for doing, I am going to pass judgement on something that I have only skimmed over and not actually seen in it's entirety.  If someone thinks that I have been totally unfair, please mention it to me----but please cite an actual place in the book or movie so I can look them up.  I tried to watch the movie, but after 20 minutes I ceased being able to take it seriously.  Similarly, I glanced at the book and had the same response to it.

When I mentioned this response to my wife, who had suggested I watch the film in the first place, she complained that unless one is a scientist it is almost impossible to know whom to trust.   This is a significant problem, so I thought I'd explain why it was that I don't trust this movie and the book that goes with it.  In doing so, I'll illustrate some "rules of thumb" that I rely upon to try and navigate complex issues.

The first thing that I found disconcerting about the film was the way it shamelessly used the rhetoric of film-making to reinforce its message.  It used ominous sounding background music a lot.  The thing about emotional appeals like this is that it is very easy to "short-circuit" the part of our minds that is logical and reasonable.  Once you by-pass people's rationality, you can often stampede them into accepting all sorts of dubious claims.  That is why philosophers and scientists can often seem maddeningly unemotional when you talk to them.  They have consciously chosen to develop one particular style of being that they have found is more reliable than others.

This was the first red flag.

Secondly, the movie introduced the issues in question through the use of rhetorical questions that I found extremely suspicious.  As memory serves me (it is no longer possible to see the movie for free, and I refuse to pay for another viewing), the film starts out with a series of open-ended questions that suggest that things like obesity have been caused by eating GMOs.

When I saw this, I immediately thought about Occam's Razor.  That is the rule of thumb that states that if you see more than one explanation for a phenomenon, you should opt for the simplest one.  In the case of the growth of obesity in North America, it makes a lot more sense to suggest that it is a combination of the change in people's diets and the decline in physical activity that I have personally witnessed over the past 50 years, instead of GMOs.

That was the second red flag.

The third thing I noticed was the fact that a lot of medical doctors were being interviewed for this documentary, instead of research scientists.  MDs are not scientists.  In fact, the job of being an MD really should select for different types of people than that of scientists.  That's because the role of the MD is to deal with the individual and the specific---this patient who has that particular disease.  Instead, the job of a scientist is to look for the general trend and to try to remove as much as possible, the viewpoint given by one person.   MDs are almost inevitably going to be basing their understanding on anecdotal evidence.  And that can get you into a lot of trouble when you try to make broad generalizations.  That's because human beings are so darned complex that there can be a huge number of variables at work when any given symptom manifests itself.  For example, my joints are aching right now.  Is it because I'm getting a cold?  Because of the change in weather?  Because of food I ate for lunch?  To be totally honest, I don't have a clue, and truth be told, I don't think anyone else with the same sort of symptoms can tell either.  That is why scientists go to enormous lengths to create double-blind experiments with as large a sample of the population as possible.  The hope is that if you don't know who got what (ie "double blind") your personal bias ceases to be an issue.  And if you have a lot of subjects, you can hope that all the other variables (food, weather, etc) will cancel themselves out in the final number count.

This was the third red flag.

Another thing that I was concerned about was the publisher that printed the book that the movie was based upon.  I had never heard of "Yes! Books", and when I did a Google search I couldn't find it.  That makes me a little concerned that the book might be self-published.  If you look carefully on the back cover it says distributed by Chelsea Green Publishing.  I simply cannot find any evidence that "Yes! Books" exists as a corporate entity that publishes anything except books by Jeffrey M. Smith.

This is an issue because publishing houses need to exercise caution when they publish books.  First of all, because they are liable to lawsuits if the books make fraudulent or libelous claims. Secondly, because they can destroy their reputations if they put out a "stinker".  This is why it is generally useful to take more seriously a book from a prestigious publisher than something that is self-published or comes from something like a "New Age" publisher.

Bjorn Lomborg

I admit that exceptions can happen, but when they do people often raise a fuss in response.  A case in point comes from the notorious Skeptical Environmentalist which was published by one of the most prestigious English publishing houses:  Cambridge University Press.  This press was absolutely vilified by the scientific community by lending its name to one of the most notorious examples of "junk science" that has ever blighted public discourse.  The author of this book, Bjorn Lomborg, has been cited for academic misconduct in this book by the body that governs Danish academics and the prestigious journal Scientific American actually devoted an entire issue to debunking the book.

This was the fourth red flag.

Jeffrey M. Smith

After seeing these other items, I decided it would be a good idea to do a Google search for the author, Jeffrey M. Smith.  Low and behold, I came across this website.  It appears that Mr. Smith has a history as a supporter of transcendental meditation and there are actually pictures of him "demonstrating" "yogic flying".  Of course, it is possible that this was a "youthful folly" that he has left in the past.  It is also true that people can have all sorts of eccentricities that have no effect on the soundness of the arguments they put forward.  But as a general rule, people judge people by whether or not they appear to have a shown a sound grasp of reality in their previous life.

This sets out a fifth red flag.

The next stage of my investigation is to do another Google search, this one for "Criticism Genetic Roulette".  And if you do that, you come back to a different part of the same site that produced the above picture.  The site seems to refute every substantive claim made in the book and movie about GMOs being unsafe to eat.  I quickly glanced at the arguments in support of a couple of these assertions (there is a TON of evidence cited on this website), and they seemed to be referring to legitimate, peer-reviewed scientific journals.

At this point, I have my sixth red flag.

I admit that something might come along and change my opinion, but until that happens I'm of the opinion my time is better spent doing something else.  And any fears that I might have had that GMOs are poisoning our citizenry have been dissipated.

That is not to say that there is nothing of value in the book and movie.  After all, a stopped clock is still correct twice a day.  But IMHO, neither one has any credibility with me so I would never believe anything they say because they say it.  If I believe any of the issues raised in either has any value, it is because of authorities I have seen outside of it, not because it is raised in the documentary.

And, as I pointed out in the previous post, I do have issues with GMOs.  But the evidence I've seen has to do more with the social implications for farmers rather than anything else.

But I hope that the exercise of explaining why I don't trust Genetic Roulette will help readers walk the minefield of public policy.  To recapitulate, the six tests I put this book and movie through involved answering six questions:

1. Is the book or movie trying to manipulate our emotions instead of talking to our reason?
2. Is it trying to suggest a cause for a problem that is more easily explained by a mundane reason?
3. Are they citing authorities who are outside of their field of expertise?
4. Is the publisher reputable or is the publisher a company with either no track record or a bad one?
5. Find out what you can about the author.  Is he someone you can trust?
6. Look to see if anyone has raised any questions about the book.  Is that person more or less trustworthy than the author?

What I have gone through in the above is a type of "kung fu".  As I've mentioned before, kung fu is not martial arts, but martial arts can be kung fu, which is nothing more than proficiency gained through diligent practice.  Practicing the kung fu of skepticism means that you have made a decision to look at as much of the world through a specific lense that will give you a greater chance of separating truth from fiction.  As my wife's question about understanding things without being a scientist implies, science is a skeptical kung fu, one involves very careful evaluation of all statements in a given field.  But ordinary people can develop the sorts of rules of thumb that I've used above to separate truth from what Jon Stewart calls "Bullshit Mountain".  In fact, the internet makes it a lot easier to identify baloney because of Google searches and the ease with which someone can post evidence that undermines misleading information.  In addition, there are several really good sites devoted to helping people identify baloney.  Here're a few:  

Snopes:  An excellent site that debunks urban legends.  In fact, it's fun to just browse it.

Quackwatch:  This site is devoted to debunking fraudulent medical claims.  

Science Based Medicine:  Another site debunking fraudulent medical claims.

Skeptical Inquirer:  This is great magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).
Skeptoid:  Oops.  Forgot to add this great and very entertaining resource.  Sign up for his weekly podcasts---you'll be glad you did!

Ancient Daoists were able to survive in the wilderness because they understood the way of nature.  But people are part of nature, and human civilization is yet another manifestation of the Dao.  If we live in a technological civilization we need to understand the Dao of science and technology if we are going "ride the dragon" and "fly with the phoenix".  The kung fu of skepticism is a key skill that all Daoists must learn.  

The Dao of Agriculture

My wife recently saw a movie that had her all in a flurry about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), it's title is "Genetic Roulette" and it purports to show how dangerous genetically modified food is to eat.  It started a very heated argument between the two of us.  Since then I've been spending a lot of time thinking on the subject and thought I'd share my ideas with my readers.

Before I get too involved in all of this, let me state clearly what I think about GMOs.   Like in most things, I always stand to be corrected if I see some evidence that supports changing my opinion.  Having said that, I do not like GMOs, because I think that they are destructive to family farms and the environment.  As I see it, there are currently two competing models of agriculture fighting for control of the food supply.

Masanobu Fukuoka

 On one hand there are what I would call "Daoist" models that try to work with nature and mimic the systems were in play before human beings came on the scene.  The great guru of this approach was Masanobu Fukuoka.   He was trained as an agronomist but suffered a physical and mental collapse after the end of WWII.  This resolved itself in an insight that people blind themselves to what is going on around them by thinking that they know more than they actually do.  After wandering around Japan like a crazy person telling people that they didn't know anything, it occurred to him that he should put this insight into practice and use it to work a farm that he had inherited from his father.  He set out to let the plants and trees on his farm to "just be" and see what happened.  The results were disastrous, as the carefully pruned, mulched and fertilized orange trees were destroyed by insect pests.

He didn't give up, however.  Instead, he realized that farming with nature is not the same thing as being a passive observer.  So he carefully observed natural processes at work in nature and developed agricultural techniques that mimicked them.  For example, he realized that the process of tilling the soil to plant seeds also made conditions ideal for weeds too.  After experimentation, he found out that all a seed needs to germinate is a small coating of clay that mimics the effect of being buried in the soil.  So he learned how to create little seed envelopes that covered each seed.  Once he had these, he found he could simply broadcast the clay pellets onto last year's stubble and get consistent germination---but only of the crop he was planting, not the weeds.

Joel Salatin

This type of farming is not a specific technique, but rather a kungfu, which means the example of Fukuoka can inspire similar attitudes in others but cannot be copied and moved all over the world.

One North American who has used a similar attitude to create a very different system is Joel Salatin, who operates Polyface Farm.  His system is not based on fruit and rice, like Fukuoka's, but instead works around livestock production, based on trying to recreate the plant and animal relationships in a prairie.  To simplify, he carefully monitors his pastures to ensure that his cows graze the grass only enough to stimulate new, tender, nutritious growth but not long enough to harm the plants and select for tougher, less valuable types of grass.  When this point is reached, he moves the cows onto another part of the farm----which mimics the way wild grazers constantly migrate to better pasture.  After the cows have left, Salatin then moves in mobile chicken coups that bring in his flock of chickens.  These birds eat the maggots in the cow patties left in the field but in the process also spread the manure evenly so no part of the pasture suffers from being smothered.  This mimics the actions of the birds----like prairie chickens---who used to follow the herds of bison across the great plains.  At this point, it is necessary to monitor the grass so it doesn't start to toughen up or "waste" energy on seed production before the cows are brought back into the field.

Using this principle of "working with nature" or, what I would call, "understanding the dao of the farm", both Salatin and Fukuoka were able to create farms that were more productive than their neighbours while using a fraction of the effort and outside agricultural inputs (e.g. fertilizer, pesticides, etc.)  At the same time, they also found that they were increasing the value of the soil.  In Salatin's case, he has transformed a farm with the worst soil in the county to one of the best.

Norman Borlaug

In contrast to this "Daoist farming", there is another, dominant type of farming---usually identified as the "Green Revolution", but which I would suggest is better described as "industrial farming".  It is usually associated with the American agronomist Norman Borlaug.  But I would argue that it owes just as much to industrialist thinkers like Henry Ford.

The important things to understand about industrial farming is that it has two key elements:  dependence on fossil fuels, and, integration into a global industrial machine.   And because of those two underlying issues, it invariably follows the dictates of international capitalism.

Fritz Haber

Modern industrial agriculture is based on the assumption that it is possible to cheaply purchase various fertilizers that are energy intensive to create and transport.  Probably the most energy intensive of these is so-called "fixed nitrogen" which is created from nitrogen in the atmosphere.  Traditionally, farms used to be limited to the amount of nitrogen that could be recycled through things like manures or fixed by plants such as legumes.  But during the First World War a system for artificially fixing nitrogen was created by an chemist by the name of Fritz Haber.  It uses a great deal of energy, because it is difficult to get nitrogen gas to bond with the other elements that make it useful for plants.

Green Revolution agriculture not only needs to bring intrinsically expensive inputs, like artificially-created fixed nitrogen, but it also has has to create international markets to ship crops and products all over the world.  For example, another constituent of artificial fertilizer, potash, is only available to be mined in a very few places in the world.  This means that an international potash trade needs to be created that will allow it to be shipped where it is needed.

Once we have these artificial inputs in hand, it became apparent that traditional varieties of crops couldn't maximize the potential from these inputs.  That is because those breeds had been developed in an environment where these types of nutrients were not plentiful.  This meant that once you start using the artificial fertilizer, you also eventually stop saving seeds and start buying them from international corporations.

And once you start purchasing these things from international corporations---like Canada's Potash Corp. and the USA's Monsanto---the farmer no longer can get away with selling his harvest to his neighbours.  He needs hard currency and the best way to get that is to sell on the international market. And because there are inevitable fluctuations between the price he gets paid and fertilizer costs, it is inevitable that the farmer needs to go to a bank to borrow money to tide him over through hard times.
Once they get into the clutches of a bank, many farmers almost inevitably find themselves caught up in a debt spiral that ends up with them losing the land and being bought out by a neighbour.

The same process has occurred in India, Missouri and Ontario.  It happened to my family farm---which had been owned by my ancestors since 1811.  This is why small-scale, mixed family farms are becoming a rare thing.  It is why when I ride the train to St. Louis to visit my wife Illinois appears to be one giant corn field.

So what's the problem?

The issue for me is that we are running out of cheap energy as we enter into Peak Oil .  Measured in terms of output per input, industrial agriculture is grotesquely inefficient.  It isn't that far-fetched to say that modern people eat oil.  In fact, the only way in which industrial agriculture is "efficient" is in terms of output per man-hour of work.  In terms of soil conservation, environmental sustainability and output per input, it is the worst, least efficient system.  As the price of oil continues to ratchet up, this is going to get worse and worse.  This will put more and more stress on farmers and consumers until eventually our farms start to fail catastrophically.  My understanding is that this is already happening, as I have been told that the largest fraction of income for farms in Ontario comes from the off-farm job that farmers and their spouses use to subsidize their operation.  I have also been told that the only farmers who are making money are small-scale producers, predominately organic farms.  (I.e., the guys who are following some approximation of the Daoist system mentioned above.)

A cutworm and the damage it did.

As I see it, GMOs are sort of a "last gasp" technology which are attempting to prop-up the unsustainable industrial agricultural system.  They do not benefit family farms, which have other mechanisms for dealing with the issues that GMOs address.  To cite one example, a specific type of gene has been inserted into GMO corn that renders it resistant to various pests, including cutworm.  On our farm cutworm was controlled through crop rotation and by cultivation.  In mono-cultured areas---like that giant corn field called Illinois---the fields are not cultivated but instead follow "no-till" systems because it is the only way farmers can cultivate such huge fields with giant machines without suffering from severe erosion.  As well, because the only thing being grown is corn, there are no crops that can be rotated with the corn to starve out the pests.  (In our case, we used to grown mixed wheat and mixed oats, which we added to the pig feed.)

It turns out, however, that there seems to be evidence that GMO resistant cutworms are now emerging through natural selection.  If this is true, and I cannot see why it won't eventually happen even if these reports turn out to be false, then industrial farmers will find themselves forced to find some other "magic bullet" to protect themselves from the effects of creating a system of farming that goes against every rule that Mother Nature has created for making a strong eco-system.

The important thing to realize about industrial agriculture is that once it has been created it is damned difficult to switch back to something that is closer to Daoist agriculture.  The old infrastructure of barns, houses, fence rows, the small-sized equipment, etc, are all gone.  Even worse, the old knowledge that informed farmers is totally gone too.   This is really important, as farmers do a lot of things simply because their father did it that way without knowing why.  To cite one example, when I was writing this blog post I mentioned the necessity of tillage to control cutworms.  I didn't know it was important until I looked things up---I thought that crop rotation was the only thing needed.  But if I was still on the land, I would still have been tilling the soil and watching the flocks of seagulls following the tractor, not knowing that they were eating the cutworms that I had unearthed with the discs or cultivators.

New farmers not only don't know a lot of the theory of how to farm, they don't even know how to do small-scale farming from a "monkey see, monkey do" perspective.  This disconnect between the past and the future is going to cause huge problems when it becomes simply too expensive to do Industrial agriculture anymore.  That's why it is so important to try and support Daoist agriculture whichever way we can.  That's why I don't support GMOs, they just allow a dying dinosaur to live a little bit longer and cause even more chaos when it eventually collapses.

Please note, though, the above critique says nothing about GMOs being unhealthy to eat.  But I've written enough already for more than one post.  I'll save that discussion for later.

Addendum:

It became clear to me after responding to some comments that I had not made myself nowhere clear enough about the distinction between what I am calling "Daoist Farming", "Industrial Farming" and old-fashioned "Mixed Farms".   I am not suggesting that our agricultural system needs to return to the way things were done a hundred years ago.  That would result in mass starvation, amongst other things.  But I would suggest that it will be easier to transition from old fashioned Mixed Farms to Daoist Farming than it will be to transition from Industrial Farms to Daoist Farming.  Indeed, Daoist Farming is a much more sophisticated form of Mixed Farming.  But the differences are still profound.

Another point I need to emphasize but didn't in the above post, while Daoist Farming is a type of organic agriculture, all organic agriculture is neither sustainable nor Daoist in nature.  There is a type of "big organic" agriculture right now that is dependent on inputs that simply cannot be sustainably provided.  For example, kelp is used as a feed additive in some organic dairy systems---there simply isn't enough kelp around to do this universally.   In addition, some types of big organic use expensive transportation nets, exploit cheap farm labour, etc.

There is nothing like a head-to-head competition between Industrial and Daoist agriculture:  one is huge, the other microscopic.  But I would suggest that in the long run both environmental issues and peak oil make the universal adoption of Daoist agriculture inevitable.  And the key scientific discipline guiding agriculture during the transition will not be genetic engineering but rather restoration ecology. The business model that will make big bucks for the future will not be holding patents on specific life forms, but rather in offering consulting services for farms that need to be totally changed from the ground (literally) up.  I'm not sure that any farmer will be able to afford to pay for these services, so I see a bright future for open-source farming, too.  I do not predict a sudden collapse of our agricultural system so much as a general increase in stress as farmers flail around desperately as them attempt to get out of the bind they find themselves in.  Biotec firms will offer "silver bullets", but I suggest that they will at best only work for a short period of time and at worst bring their own new set of problems.  The result will be enormous interest in new ways of raising, processing and distributing food.  The new, emerging techniques will be spread over the internet, which will speed up the transition far faster that it would have otherwise.

In the interim, I think it is good idea for anyone who can to learn how to grow a few veggies for themselves and to start shopping at the local farmer's market.  Resilience is a key survival mechanism during times of rapid change.

The Dao and Wicked Problems

My wife and I have been having discussions lately around a set of different questions that all have one thing in common, they are what I believe are known as "wicked problems".   I'm no expert on these things, but the more I think about them, the more I think that Daoism and Daoists may have a special insight into these problems and have something like a way of coping with them that other folks might find useful.  Consider what follows to me more wild speculation than a fact-based discussion.

People have thought about these sorts of things since the 1970s and have come up with a list of things that describe a "wicked problem".

• The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution.
• Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
• Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong.
• Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique.
• Every solution to a wicked problem is a 'one shot operation.'
• Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.

These points are somewhat spare, so let me illustrate them (at least insofar as I understand them) with examples.

The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution.

This is to say that wicked problems do not allow us the luxury of waiting until we understand everything before we have to take action.   This may be because of simple practical considerations, such as being locked in the room with a ticking time bomb---we have to defuse it before it goes off, whether we know enough to confidently know which wire to cut or not.   Or it might be that we simply cannot know the answer until we attempt a solution---we won't know whether or not we can safely remove the bomb's outer casing until we do so and see if it is attached to a tumbler switch.

Wicked problems have no stopping rule.

A "stopping rule" is some limit that controls how far a problem can go.  If a person with a gambling problem goes to Las Vegas and is only allowed to wager the money in his pocket, the "stopping rule" is that once he has lost that money, he cannot lose any more.  But if he can use a credit card, or borrow against his house, or, even worse, go to a loan shark for money, the lack of a "stopping rule" means that he can end destroying his life and bankrupting his family.

Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong.

It isn't immediately obvious that a solution is "right" or "wrong" for a wicked problem.  Indeed, some solutions might be quite acceptable for some people, but not for others.  Over-population could be solved by government-enforced family planning (e.g. as in China), or, enhancing the role of women in all world societies.  Each of these might theoretically work, but every one would have very sizable opposition from elements of society.  If you are part of that opposition, the problem seems "wrong".  If the opposition is strong enough, then the solution isn't really a solution after all, because it will prove unfeasible in actual practice.

Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique.
and
Every solution to a wicked problem is a 'one shot operation.'

Wicked problems are the ones that are so big that they tend to be pretty much unique.  Think about things like the environmental crisis, political reform, etc.  Because each of these problems comes with its own set of complex issues, there is no set of problems that can be solved with a generic solution.  This means that each of them has to be solved on its own terms.  So unlike demolition experts who once they've defused one bomb can be sure that the same technique will work with all future examples of the same model, a wicked problem bomb will always be totally unique every time they face it.  Moreover, there is not even any reason to suppose that the same sappers would be involved in defusing the next bomb anyway.  This means that wicked problems never allow people to gain any experience, self-confidence or authority with which to deal with them.

Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.

Many simple problems come with a limited set of alternatives.  In the classic short-story, you only choose from two doors----each of which has behind it either a lady or a tiger.   But in a wicked problem you usually have a very large---if not infinite---number of solutions, or, ultimately none proposed at all.  (This latter case leaves you to your own devices, which, in a way, is also an implied large number, as you  have to investigate and try to find on your own.  The number being limited by your own knowledge and imagination.)   It isn't a question of cutting the red wire or the blue, but rather of seeing a tangled mass of wires on the bomb and not having a clue of which does what.

As I see it, a great many wicked problems confront us both as members of the human race and as individuals.

The environmental crisis, for example, is a wicked problem because it easily fills all the criteria listed above.  Moreover, it not only presents a wicked problem for the human race as-a-whole, it also presents a wicked problem for any individual who is concerned and wants to "do their bit" to try and become an agent for solving the problem.

Consider, for example, the point of where someone should draw the line on being an exemplar of sustainability.  We can try to have as small a footprint as possible on the earth.  But the act of doing so will inevitably result in diminishing our ability to have any influence on the rest of the human race.  If you try too hard, you run the very real risk of being seen as a "nutcase" by the other people you meet.  And this not only will result in their ignoring whatever it is you have to say to them, it could also "damage the brand" to the point where they dismiss all environmental concerns as being "kooky".  Even if you avoid this problem and become an exemplar of environmental issues, you run into the fact that all the avenues that a person has in our society to have some sort of influence on society-as-a-whole come at some sort of ecological price.  (For example, the server farms that support the internet use a great deal of electricity, and, my laptop uses rare-earth metals that are mined under horrible conditions.  So even this blog post comes at the expense of Mother nature.)  

Even more mundane problems have wicked tendencies.

For example, consider the issue of trying to eat a healthy, balanced diet in harmony with nature while trying to keep within a tight budget and please family members who may not have similar dietary concerns.  Or, think about how one develops an exercise regime that deals with health concerns that come from a person's individual history.  In both cases we don't know enough to even begin to have some sort of simple and easy solution to the complexity.

All sorts of people will offer simple solutions to wicked problems, but IMHO these are pretty much useless.   With regard to the environment, people will suggest that you support a specific political party, purchase some sort of enviro-product, etc.  On the individual level, there are fads such as drinking wheat-grass juice or doing "hot" yoga.

These sorts of things miss the point that wicked problems are invariably the result of systemic crises and cannot be solved by any single remedy.   Indeed, because the crisis is systemic, any given remedy that is offered may actually make things worse rather than better.  Wheat-grass might give you the runs and ruin your food budget.  Hot yoga might make your bad back worse.  Manufacturing the battery on your electric car may poison the water table.     And voting for the Green Party might split the vote and result in the Conservatives getting elected.

The grim fact is that you simply do not know what the results of your actions will be, yet by the mere fact of being alive, you have to act.  That is the essence of a wicked problem.

Traditionally people didn't find themselves confronted by so many problems because they simply didn't have all that much choice in the first place.  Government was controlled by "higher ups", so none of the fretting we do about politics existed.  Food was just what our people always ate and we cooked the way our parents, grandparents, etc, always cooked it.  Again, exercise usually consisted of work.  If it didn't, it usually involved some sort of ritual game or martial exercise that again had been handed down from eons past.

The modern age is very good at sticking people with uninformed choices.  We can choose between different political parties in democratic elections, but things are so darn complicated that only fools think that they understand what's going on.  The same thing with food, exercise, etc.  The free market gives us a myriad of options, but this leaves us wandering in a sea of ignorance that our grandparents would not have even known existed.

When I first started thinking about all of this stuff, it occurred to me that the reason why I have been so attracted to Chinese culture---and Daoism in particular---is because it offers the promise of a complete system that integrates an understanding of how society works, physical exercise, food, and aesthetics all bound together.  This means that once I decided that I was a "Daoist", I had the beginnings of an integrated vision of how to spend my life.  This was very relaxing after spending a life feeling like I'd cast adrift on the cultural vortex that capitalism made of Western civilization.

More to the point, I think that Daoism actually offers a way of looking at and dealing with wicked problems.  Mind you, I don't think it offers anything like a solution.  Instead, it suggests that we look at the world around us as a complex whole, or "Dao" instead of trying to break it up into individual bits.  And it doesn't give us anything like an algorithm for solving problems.  Instead, it suggests that a lot of problems simply need to dealt with through our gut instinct.   And in the process of making those instinctive decisions, we need to "let go" of any hope of understanding or solving the problems that confront us.  Instead, we need to accept that we are simply leaves flowing down the river of life.    

The War in Man's Soul

I've recently read a fascinating anthropology book about the creation of monarchies as a mode of human organization, and, got married.  The two aren't related, of course, but the former got me thinking about the big picture and the latter introduced me to a lot of new human relationships, which helped me understand the theory better.

Eli Sagan's book, At the Dawn of Tyranny, argues that human societies develop oppressive monarchies in order to break down the instinctive bonds that connect people into kinship---or family-based---societies.  The argument is that it requires a truly ferocious government in order to get people to start thinking about it first instead of parents, cousins, siblings, aunts and uncles, etc.  And until people start thinking that way, the "rules" get bent so often in favour of what the Chinese would call "filial piety" that it is impossible to run anything larger than an tribe or small village.  

The kings in these emerging tyrannies are able to overcome people's commitment to kinship because they are bloodthirsty tyrants who practice large-scale human sacrifice, fight brutal wars, and, break up families through migration.  Sagan argues that this situation is a transitional phase, though, as once the state is firmly established, more "institutional" monarchies emerge who's job is to protect the existing state of affairs by creating a more benevolent style of leadership that gains the support of the population through religious indoctrination rather than fear.  (As I've mentioned before the "God in the Sky" looks an awful lot like the King on his throne.)  Kinship societies do not seem to believe in an Abrahamic God but instead seem to follow the Daoist model of an impersonal force like the Dao plus a multitude of nature spirits.

Getting married shortly after reading this book allowed me the luxury of seeing how kinship actually works.  My wife's family is far smaller than mine, but it is more closely knit.  She lives with and takes care of her mother, who has health issues.  In addition, once the wedding was announced, her sister and brother-in-law moved Heaven-and-Earth to attend the ceremony.  As well, much to my surprise, a couple of my closest friends also made the thousand mile trip to another country to attend.  (Indeed, they absolutely insisted on attending.)  Family matters!   

When I crossed the border, however, I ran afoul of the Tyranny that Sagan was writing about.  I have a bad habit of telling the truth to people and when the "Homeland Security" guard asked me where we were going to live after getting married I foolishly started a rambling account of how we were going to have to figure that out.  He cut me off and acted like I'd just spit in his face and called his mother a whore.  I got sent to an office to cool my heels for an hour and another person (who didn't seem to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed) told me that while he believed me when I said I was going back to Canada, I'd better bring a whole portfolio of documents next time I come (it appears that a passport simply isn't enough anymore.)  

In retrospect, it strikes me that that guard with the attitude problem was just doing his bit to reinforce the point that the state is more important than family.  I'm just glad that I don't live in the sort of state that Sagan describes, or else he might have broken my arms and legs and left me at the side of the river for a crocodile to eat.  (One of the numerous unpleasant things that used to happen in the country that existed where modern Uganda now sits.)  

Having digested this bit of anthropological insight, it occurred to me today that there is more than just a war between family and state going on in our souls.  There is also a deep war within that involves a conflict between the household and the economy.

This conflict manifests itself in things like the way the family home has transitioned from being both a source of production and consumption to becoming just a place of consumption.  In my short lifetime I have seen people stop growing their own food and then stop cooking it.  With the younger generation I increasingly see people who no longer know how to sew their own clothes or do household renovation and construction.   In all of these transitions, people have become less and less independent of the economy.  As I see it, this is a very similar process to what has happened when the early monarchies fought against kinship as a means of social organization.  

My wife is getting back on her feet after a very long spell of significant ill health.  One thing that she is trying to figure out is just how much she can do to make money without threatening her recovery.  This is a difficult concept as the demands of the workforce don't really allow a lot of "slack" for people with subtle problems.  She is a very hardworking, intelligent, creative person.  But she finds it very hard to follow the rhythms and schedules of a complex organization.  She needs to be able to work when it suits her instead of when it suits someone else.  

As near as I can see it, this is a purely modern phenomenon.  I grew up on a farm, and in the old family farm system individuals had a great deal of personal autonomy which allowed them to set up their daily work pretty much as they saw fit.  Of course, agriculturalists have to work in harmony with nature, but that is really different from having to follow the dictates of the time clock and the moods of a boss (or a border guard.)  I can sympathize totally with my new bride, because I remember all the struggles I've had in my life trying to accommodate myself to the basic unreality of the workplace.  (In my case I've managed to find work where I had a maximum amount of autonomy----mainly by working night shifts and odd "generalist", "minder" type jobs.)   

It seems to me that anyone who tries to live in harmony with nature instead of human society (and nature includes things like the promptings of our hearts) is going to find herself in the same sort of dilemma that faces my new bride.  

I suspect that is disconnect with the modern world is what fuels a lot of the "back to the land" impulse that has been around as long as I have been alive.  For most people this manifests itself in wanting to move to the countryside, which remains only a pipe dream for most folks.  Personally, I don't find this dream terribly appealing because my experience in the countryside has taught me that in order to live outside of a city you have to either be independently wealthy of drive long distances in order to find employment.  As someone who cares about the environment, I do not see how this is helping save the planet. Moreover, I don't see how locking yourself into long commutes will bring anyone much peace of mind.  

IMHO, the "Hacker" movement is a much more positive development.  This involves people who refuse to be mere passive consumers of technology and instead want to learn how to modify and create.  One example is the "Ifixit" website that allows people to share information and access tools and parts of expensive, high-tech gizmos and work around the "planned obsolescence" that is built into things like IPhones.  Another are the co-operative "Hacker Space" workshops that are sprouting like mushrooms all over North America.  One last example are the "urban sharecroppers" who will grow large vegetable gardens in suburban lots and sell the results in Community Shared Agriculture programs and farmer's markets.

I'm close to retirement so hopefully I will be able to move in with my American wife once I stop having to go to work.  (How's that for alienation----my work forces me to live 1,000 miles from my wife!)   In her case, she thinks that the best option is to try and opt out of the money economy as much as possible by being very frugal and self-sufficient in an urban setting.  To that end, I've been doing some of the "heavy lifting" of setting up a garden for her and showing her how to do some of the food preservation techniques I learned in my childhood.  Hopefully she will eventually be able to find some sort of work that doesn't harm her health.  In the meantime, saving money on the food bill through an intensive garden is a good way to augment the income.  (It was certainly a key component of my family's support when I was young.)

It is hard to live in a cesspool without getting dirty, but it is possible to lesson the disconnect between our hearts and the world around us.  But the first step is understanding that the conflict exists in the first place.  One of the many thousands of things I love about my wife is the fact that she sees the problem.  Most people do not.