Environmental Vow: Part Twelve

The Ethic of “Self-Actualization”

The decline of faith and honour as motivating emotions only partially explains why so many people seem incapable of motivating themselves beyond despair in order to deal with environmental collapse. A decline in a previous emotion doesn't explain why nothing better has come along to replace it. We also need to understand the motivation that most people have used to fill the void left when these two older ideals disappeared. The best label that I can think of to describe this replacement is “self-actualization”.

The term itself is most strongly associated with Abraham Maslow (it seems there is some debate about the actual origin of the phrase.) In a nutshell, his overall psychological theory posited that human beings are motivated by what he called the “hierarchy of needs”. These are hierarchical in that one particular need needs to be met before the next one presents itself to the human being. Starving people will take great risks to get food. But once someone has enough food and water, their willingness to take risks declines dramatically. And until someone has a certain sense of security in their life, no one cares about what other people think of them. Finally, until someone feels a certain level of self-confidence about one's place in the commuity, no one is going to invest much effort in following their particular dream. In Maslow's view, therefore, “self-actualization” is the pinnacle of human achievement.


The meaning of self-actualization is encompassed in the title. The idea is that each individual (i.e. “self”) has a certain potential to achieve a variety of things. Once the lower-order essential needs of that individual have already been met, then a drive manifests itself to work on and realize this potential (i.e. “actualize”.) Maslow summed this up by saying “What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.” According to this theory, people who have achieved this goal, tend to manifest the following personality traits:

• They tend to have a realistic appraisal of both themselves and the world around them.
• They tend to be interested in solving the problems that they see in the world around them.
• They tend to be spontaneous and can at times be unconventional in behaviour.
• While capable of being gregarious, at times they embrace solitude as an opportunity to focus on developing their skills and potential.
• Self-actualized people do not become jaded with the world. Instead they continue to experience a sense of wonder all through their life.
• They also often experience what Maslow termed “peak experiences” of seemingly profound emotional importance.

Maslow's theory makes a lot of sense if you understand the time at which it was written. The Great Depression had ended, the Second World War had been won, and modern technology was promising limitless material wealth. For the first time absolute want was gone for the vast majority of people in Western nations. Secondly, the great totalitarian threat posed by the Axis dictatorships had been removed which meant that many people felt safe and secure for the first time in decades. Finally, the postwar growth of the welfare state and the spread of democracy to the whole of the “Western world” implied a great “leveling out” of the old class structures that had once placed the majority of citizens in a precarious social position (think, for example, of the great strides we have made in civil rights.) And indeed, during the 1960s it seemed that huge numbers of people were following the dictim of “What a man can be, he must be.”

I'm prepared to give Abraham Maslow the benefit of the doubt as to what exactly he intended with this theory. He was attempting to offer a descriptive definition of the sort of life that he thought the very best of humanity pursued. Unfortunately, this viewpoint inevitably morphed into a prescriptive ideal that was offered to individuals who were perplexed about how to live their lives. Probably the most famous prescriptive statement in this vein was by Joseph Campbell: “My general formula for my students is 'Follow your bliss.' Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it.”

Unfortunately, this ideal became debased to the popular “do your own thing”, which often ended-up being bastardized into not much more than simple ego gratification. And, if we think about the implications of what his theory says, the spread of this “dumbed-down” version shouldn't come as any great shock. First of all, the ideal of “self-actualization” makes no mention whatsoever of anything outside of the “self”. The traditional virtues of faith and honour were not inward directed towards the individual, but outwards directed to either God or society. To replace this outward focus, the most that Maslo could come up with to replace this was the concept of “peak experiences”.


“Peak experience” was the label that Maslow used to identify what had previously been described as a “religious” or “mystical” experience. It is very clear from his little book, Religion, Values and Peak Experiences, that he was consciously trying to come up with a way of describing the experiences of religious people in terms that excluded all reference to “God” or any other sort of supernatural reality. In effect, he was trying to pull out what he considered the “core” of spirituality from the incidental cultural and historical effluent (e.g. “religion”) that had built up around it.


This may or may not be a valid thing to do, but the practical result of his particular formulation (and all its subsequent popular incarnations) makes the entirety of the “peak” experience revolve around the ego of the individual experiencing it. This completely inverts the traditional relationship that exists between religious mystics and their conception of the Divine. If you read the literature of mysticism you will find time and again that mystics humble their ego to embrace the “God within”, “Buddha Mind”, “Brahman, “Dao” and so on. Ultimately this puts the religious mystic into the headspace where their prayers boil down to not much more than “Thy will be done, Lord”. Because Maslow decided to pull out all the---what he thought “extraneous”--- religious stuff out of mysticism, the casual reader cannot help but think that the only option left is to understand “Peak Experience” as being not much more than “My will be done.” As a result, mysticism ceases to be about shrinking the ego in order to embrace the universe and becomes instead a glorification of the ego.


This becomes obvious if you think about how one of the supreme virtues under the Maslow viewpoint, “spontaneity”, can very easily slide into being an out-and-out vice. As I have pointed out above, the ritual and routine of monastery and regiment have proved essential to inculcating the willingness of individuals to place the needs of the many before the desires of the individual. The ideal of spontaneity turns this totally on its head and suggests that it is a very bad thing to think of the greater good and the long-term instead of the here and now.


If the Benedictines had viewed spontaneity as an ultimate virtue, they would never have submitted to the routine of the monastery---which involved things like rising in the middle of the night to chant the divine service. It is also very hard to believe that they would have drained the swamps and built the abbeys that were necessary to tame the howling wilderness that Europe had become after the barbarian invasions. And if soldiers in the Allied armies of WWII had valued spontaneity very highly, it is doubtful if they would have submitted to the tyranny of drill seargants and “official regs”. And the end result of that would probably that we would all be currently living under some form of totalitarian nightmare.


It is understandable that a psychologist living in Maslow's time and place would suggest that spontaneity is a virtue and that the highest good is to “self actualize”. He was writing when the USA was going through a post WWII boom that had brought prosperity beyond the wildest dreams of any other human civilization. Moreover, he was addressing a population that had suffered regimentation and external discipline that was also unparalleled in human history. Millions of self-employed farmers had been forced to migrate to the cities and learn to follow the dictates of the clock and foreman on an assembly line. Moreover, because of conscription, almost all adult males had been forced to submit to military discipline while in the armed forces. Given the extreme regimentation of personal life in the 1940's, 1950's and early 1960's, it was almost inevitable that some sort of backlash would present itself. And once prosperity and peace took away the fear of poverty and invasion, people were ready to accept any notion that suggested that submitting to authority was not only annoying, but wrong.


But if an entire civilization gives itself over to “doing its own thing” it becomes fundamentally incapable of dealing with any sort of existential problem. I would argue that one of the reasons why our society seems incapable of dealing with the environment is because far too many people have bought into a watered-down and bastardized version of Maslow's philosophy of life. As a result, they think that any idea that they should “do without” and “suck it up” for the greater good is not so much unnecessary as it is existentially wrong or even immoral. The ordinary members of the public who are simply casting about for an excuse to do nothing can latch onto this ideal and use it to ignore any calls for sacrifice. And the people who are in a leadership position in the environmental cause refuse to use the language of morality, civic responsibility and self-sacrifice because they buy into the Maslovian “ur-philosophy” of the West to the point where they feel it would be “wrong” to use such language.


Of course anti-environmental politicians and religious groups have no such scruples. They routinely mobilize their followers using the language of morality and sacrifice. The fact that liberals refuse to engage in this sort of discussion reinforces their belief that the Left is a danger to society specifically because it is “amoral”. In their description, liberals are proponents of “situational ethics” who do not understand the difference between right and wrong. Unfortunately, these right wing people who do have an ethical bedrock have chosen a bizarre set of fundamental issues to ground it upon. Most seem to believe that denying the right of women to have an abortion is far more important than preventing wars that kill and maim innocents through “collateral damage”. Many also seem to believe that preventing the use of contraceptives is more important than preventing the spread of terrible diseases like AIDS. For almost all, the right to use private property trumps all attempts to deal with poverty and structural inequality, or any other calamity such as environmental collapse.


The ethical choices that the Right grounds its politics upon have convinced Liberals that it is fundamentally wrong-headed to even use the language of morality. This discredits appeals to morality of all sorts---which in turn reinforces their commitment to the Maslovian worldview.


Society seems to be stuck in the self-reinforcing situation that Yeats described all so well: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”. People of good will who might get involved in saving the planet if there were any sort of leadership find themselves adrift, which leads to despair. And people of good will who might be able to be leaders in the fight for Mother Nature find themselves intellectually incapable of actually pursuing this goal in an effective manner because their commitment to the self actualization ethic makes it impossible to articulate the environmental crisis in terms of moral faith and/or patriotic duty.

Living Without a Car

In my last post I mentioned that I've taken a vow to never own an automobile. A fellow asked me to write a few words about this, so I'm making the time to do so now.

I tell people that I decided to never own an automobile or fly in an airplane again as part of a pledge to limit my footprint on the earth. It was relatively easy to do both of these things because my interest in travel pretty much died-out at an early age. Moreover, I grew up in a family of traditional peasants from Southern Ontario. People in that class never did travel much because they needed to be present twice a day to take care of their livestock. (Farmer's called it "being tied to their cow's or pig's tail".) In a couple decades of marriage my parents went on one two week vacation to Chatham Ontario, and only because my father had won the trip by selling seed corn and my brother and I were old enough to take care of the chores while they were gone.

Of course, times change. And it is essential for country people to drive cars. I got my driver's license at 16 like everyone else, and did things like drive to movies. But one thing I did do from a much earlier age was drive tractor. And sitting in a tractor seat for 10 hours a day taught me to hate sitting on my butt bored out of my skull. Long distance driving ultimately seemed to be more of the same, so I never really thought that "road trips" were all that cool. That was reinforced by a job that I had one summer for the Ministry of Agriculture---it involved spending 10 hours a day driving down dusty back-roads auditing crops.

What this did for me was dramatically lower any interest I might have had in acquiring a car. Everyone else in my family moved heaven and earth to get their first one, whereas I just built my life around doing without. This meant I tended to live in the older parts of town, which were built before most people bought cars and where it is still possible to live without one. Once in a while I would rent a car, but eventually so many years had gone by without doing this I let my license lapse and can no longer legally drive.

A lot of people find it hard to believe that anyone can live without a car, but this is easily refuted by the fact that many people do. The issue is one of adaptation. Without a car large areas of the community are simply off limits for living, working or shopping. If might be that there is public transit, but unless it is very good---and in many places it isn't---it just isn't worth the hassle. This needn't be quite the problem you might think if you just build your life around it.

I live close enough to work that I walk there every day. I also live close to the down-town, the farmer's market and transit hub. In a world without autos, this would be a "desirable" place to live. It once was, as you can tell by all the once very nice homes that have been converted into cheap apartments and rooming houses. I bought one with another person, which we have converted back into the top/down duplex it once was. We paid a very low price for it, but it needed a lot of work. My friend the Mayor tells me that as the price of energy increases and the city intensifies, our neighbourhood will only improve in value while the more remote suburbs will collapse in value. Paradoxically, in my town the cheapest place to live is the one where it is easiest to live without an auto.

I say "paradoxically" because you save a pant load of money not having a car. The average middle-class person in Canada spends about $8,000 annually on their transportation. Since a bus pass in our town only costs about $72/month, or $864/year, the pass costs a little under one tenth of a car. I don't use a pass because I rarely take the bus and either walk or bike. For larger purchases, I have a bike trailer that I got for $100 (I got a heck of deal by buying a prototype from a person who owns a company that builds them.) For even bigger purchases, I will take a bus and hire a cab to bring home what I've bought. I also bike over to lumber yards and have things delivered. I also have friends with pickup trucks who are usually more than willing to do barter deals where I help them with stuff in exchange for the odd dump run or trip to the building supply store. If worst comes to worst, if you look at the classified advertisements on things like Kiiji or Craig's List, there are always people you can hire with pickups who are willing to do your small jobs for a modest fee.

Needless to say, if you are saving $8,000 a year on not having a car, this gives you a lot of flexibility with regard to other things. This raises an important point, however. Some people see not having a car as a way of avoiding the necessity of making that extra $8,000 per year. In a sense this is true, but people have to remember that it is much, much, much easier to live a modest lifestyle on a middle-class income than on a poverty one. Really poor people can't buy homes in areas where it is easy to live without a car. They can rent, but one of the things that comes from low rent is instability. Land lords that only ask for cheap rent are usually "land banking" the building until they can tear it down and build something new. This means that people on reduced income often find that they have to pack up and move over and over again.

This is not only wearisome and potentially expensive (there are always moving costs---even if it is just goodwill amongst friends), but it stresses the lifestyle you've built up. People who live without cars exist in an ecosystem in the same way that hunter/gathers do. If you move a culture from one area to another, there are problems in that people lose some of the cultural knowledge about where the best hunting, fishing, plant gathering areas, etc are. In the same way, if people have to pack up and move on a regular basis they have a hard time building relationships with neighbours and don't learn important survival skills like where the cheapest necessities are to be had locally.

Another thing to consider when doing without a car is what sort of impact it is going to have on your personal relationships. In North America many family members have adopted lifestyles that are totally car dependent. This means that if you opt out of owning a car you could end up being frozen out of family events like Thanksgiving and Christmas because it is impossible to get to the homes of people hosting these events without an auto. Also, just because you decide to not own a car doesn't mean that any significant others you may have in your life want to do so. This means you run the risk of either "bailing" on these connections or ending up forcing people into becoming your chauffeur. If you do end up relying on others to drive, it is imperative that you make big efforts to show how much you appreciate this by doing things like offering to buy gas, take people out to supper, etc. You are saving a lot of money buy not owning a car, show that you appreciate the help with some of that money saved.

One other thing that you should remember is that it changes your consciousness dramatically when you stop driving. It means that you no longer can do things as spontaneously. You have to plan out your itinerary around transport so you don't end up wasting time on extra trips. It also means that you have to be careful to only buy as much as you can carry on your back or on your bike in one trip. My ex and I really noticed this fact when we got involved. She ran around in her car from place to place and would make plans on the fly. I would carefully think out what I needed and how I was going to organize my trip to get it. The car enabled her to do what she did whereas not having one forced me to do what I do.

Another thing thing people probably won't think about unless they try it, is how not owning a car changes your understanding of velocity. If you drive a lot you get used to several ton objects flying around at very high speeds. This is a very odd and dangerous state of affairs, as our annual accident reports will bear out. If you don't drive or even ride in cars much, you being to start experiencing how very odd this state of affairs is in a visceral fashion.

This means that I am literally afraid of cars. I see them roaring down the street, controlled by people who have precious little control over their emotions and who are not terribly bright or self-conscious. This makes me very careful when I do things like cross the street or ride a bicycle. It also absolutely terrifies me when I ride in a car. I usually try to hide in the back seat and recite mantras in order to avoid freaking out. Unfortunately, people often force me to ride "shot gun" because of their misguided attempt to show me "respect". This makes things even worse. If I don't watch myself, I end up flinching or even crying out at various situations---which bugs the hell out of drivers. Lately, I've developed a strategy that helps by envisioning Daoist immortals flying around the car and defending it. This at least keeps me from freaking, which helps. (I doubt the driver would be helped much though if he knew what I was doing.)

One last point. Part of living without a car has to mean living where it is possible to do so. I read somewhere that during the last big hike in gasoline prices that poor Americans suffered much more than poor Canadians. Poor Canadians tend to live in urban areas and are serviced by public transit. Poor Americans tend to live in rural areas and drive everywhere. I suppose it is possible to live in rural areas without a vehicle, but it would be a lot harder than it is for me to live in the middle of a Canadian city that has done a lot more than most to keep its downtown viable. But then again, choosing where you live is part and parcel of the whole livestyle.

Dealing With Ruffians

A few nights ago I was walking home from work and I noticed a young man across the street leading a dog down the side walk. He was obviously very drunk and was yelling out the lyrics to some stupid pop song. He decided to come over to my side of the street and started walking a little in front of me. (I could smell the alcohol from several paces.) He started yelling/singing again and then decided to address me by calling me "homey" (whatever the Hell that means.) I made some sort of non-committal response that seemed to not be good enough, so I just tuned him out like I do every other drunk I meet.

At one point he stopped and let me pass him, then he started walking behind me. (This is not a position I like to be in with someone like this.) I tried to distance him with a fast step, but he kept up. He also started yelling at me and saying that I was "anti-social". At this point I was watching my shadow like a hawk so he couldn't sneak up on me. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have been too terribly concerned, but he had a dog with him. This meant that if he attacked me I would not have to just fight him, but the dog also. This dramatically changed the dynamics of the situation.

Luckily, before things got too out of hand I made it to a little strip mall where a lot of people were outside a bar smoking. When I walked into view all eyes turned on this little freak and I knew that I was safe from an attack. He went into a corner store and I continued on home.

I did a lot of thinking about this over the last few days and even considered purchasing some sort of weapon to defend myself. In Canada, your options are few. Guns are out of the question. Mace is supposed to be illegal, but you can buy bear spray in an outdoors store. I looked into it, but it didn't look like it would work in the situations I sometimes find myself in walking home at night from work. It would also be hard to explain to a policeman. I also looked into a spring baton of the sort the police carry. It too is illegal in Canada. A cane would be ideal, but I'm still young enough that there really isn't any need and it would look odd too.


Eventually, I found something called a kubotan that is legal to carry. At work, I found a pocket flashlight in our toolroom that is a very good approximation that I can keep in a pocket of my work trousers where it is very easy to access and is convenient to carry. I think my decades of taijiquan will allow me to use the thing with some dexterity if need be. My plan is to carry this thing on me every night.


Some readers might find this thought process and final decision an odd thing for a religious person to follow. I would suggest, though, that it is quite logical.


Religious like me are marginal people who live in the edges of society. Many hermits, monks and nuns live in the wilderness where land is cheap, distractions few, and the police a long way away. Urban hermits and religious communities on the other hand, tend to live in rough neighbourhoods and often deal with "unsavoury" characters. Part of this comes from not devoting your life to career and making money, which means that many religious simply cannot afford to live in the "nice" (and safe) part of town and avoid unsavoury characters. It can involve making a commitment to work with the poor and disenfranchised. As a result of these choices, religious people often have to make some sort of compromise when it comes to personal safety.


There are several ways in which religious people can deal with this problem. Probably the most important is by embracing poverty. If you own nothing worth stealing, then people will not bother you. Unfortunately, this will not work if people are so desperately poor that even minimal possessions are worth stealing. I once met a Buddhist monk who told me about being on a pilgrimage in India where he was set upon by bandits. He was travelling by foot, which meant he didn't have the safety afforded by riding in a bus or train. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and his begging bowl, but that didn't save him. The thieves stole his saffron robe and his sandals---which left him nothing but his underwear. At that point they proceeded to beat the crap out of him. (Being a good Buddhist, he dealt with the ordeal by reciting his order's version of a Metta teaching.)


Nor will it work if people have spread crazy rumours about you. A community of Buddhist Monks in Arizona found this out after local youths got it into their heads that they were funding their temple by smuggling heroin into the country, that they had a safe full of money and a solid gold Buddha statue. (They were slaughtered.) It also doesn't help if you offend powerful people in the process of trying to help the poor, like these Jesuits.


In my case, because I live in a rich society and have made a commitment to be an example to others that you can live in harmony with nature without being materially deprived, and, because I am specifically not part of a greater religious community, I have to have an income and savings. This means that the vow of poverty cannot be a line of defence. Moreover, it would not have helped with this drunken fool any more than it did for those Theravada monks in Arizona or the martyred Jesuits I linked to above. And because I live as a hermit and have to work for a living, I cannot even use special religious clothing as a way of defending myself, either. (I doubt if anyone in my town would even know what a Daoist robe is anyway.)


What this leaves me is another strategy that has been developed by religious people to survive at the margins of society: the martial arts. It doesn't really come out much in kung fu movies, but I suspect the real reason why Shaolin and Wu-Dang (I tried to come up with a link for Wu-Dang Shan, but all the links I could find were so "Disneyfied" that they made me gag) kungfu came about is simply so monks and nuns---as hermits, in abbeys or as cloud-walkers---could defend themselves from ruffians.

This doesn't mean that every person who came out of a temple was some sort of superman (or woman), but it did mean that a lot of folks did have some sort of training. And training makes a huge difference when you are in a fight with someone who has never had any at all (which includes a lot of ruffians.) Moreover, it doesn't matter if most religious never really got any training. If you never knew whether or not that monk or nun you attack might be someone who can kick your ass in a fight, you might give all the ones you meet a wide birth. Why bother running the risk when you know that none of them is going to have a lot of money anyway?

Anyway, that's the calculation that I follow. I work nights because this allows me to have the sort of "slacker" job that means I can follow my religious vocation. I also walk because of my vow to never own an automobile. If the walk gets too dangerous, maybe I'll go back to riding a bicycle or start carrying a cane.

Environmental Vow: Part Eleven

Problems With Honour:

In much the same way that people have learned to question the faith that motivated past generations, so they now question traditional definitions of “honour”. To understand why this concept has declined as a human motivating force, I think that it is important to understand exactly what role that it played in society. I believe that if we do so, we can see the decline of “honour” as being a somewhat natural result of changes in the way that people relate to each other.


While, as I suggested earlier, the concept of “honour” has always played a role in developing the group cohesion necessary for the creation of an effective military force, I would suggest that we need to understand that the primary locus of “honour” is the individual officer or man, not the collective being of the “regiment”. If the overwhelming majority of men in a regiment feel that their personal honour is dependent on their being brave, the incidental result is group cohesion and because of this we talk of the “honour of the regiment”. But the fact is that only individual people can respond to this emotional complex. The collective is just an intellectual abstraction. And that individual concern about one's “honour” is the result of specific social and economic imperatives. Once these ceased to be of importance to most people, the concept itself began to decline. I would suggest that one can see this point if one looks at the history of dueling in Western society.


Dueling grows out aristocratic societies where power is directly associated with ones military prowess.


Ancient Vikings, for example, settled various legal disputes through a practice known as “Holmgang” which was a form of ritualized combat. The idea was that a man could challenge any other man to combat over disputed money, land, a woman, or a simple insult. If the person challenged refused to fight, then he would be declared “nioingr” and he would then be considered an “outlaw” and in some jurisdictions have all his land and money confiscated. If, on the other hand, the insulted of the parties is killed in the duel, a modest payment (one half of the normal fine for simple manslaughter) would have to be paid to the family of the dead. If the insulter died, that was considered his own fault and no penalty was levied.


The important thing to understand about individual combat like the “holmgang” is that one's “name” or “honour” was seen as being directly tied to one's ability and willingness to fight to defend it. This was implied in the ritual that one went through to become a medieval knight. Nowadays people believe that all that was involved was kneeling before a king and being tapped on the shoulder with a sword. But in the beginning the feudal overlord actually slapped or punched the knight in the face. The idea was that this was the last insult that the man would be able to accept without having to fight for his honour. And, as we see in the “holmgang”, “honour” was not just some sort of emotion felt by a person---it had legal, social and financial importance. Refuse to defend your honour when called to holmgang and you risk being declared an outlaw (that is, no longer being defended by rule of law which meant than anyone could rob or kill you with impunity) and having all your property seized. The ultimate idea is that any sort of priviledge that one enjoys in a feudal society rests upon your ability to fight. Whether it is your land, your wife or your title, if you are too weak to defend it by sword, you did not deserve to possess it.


Social customs like dueling and the holmgang come about as a way of introducing fairness into an inherently unfair situation. That is because the combat involved at least has rules that attempt to “level” the playing field. Without the rules of the holmgang, for example, the Viking Chief with the largest group of retainers would simply send his men out to steal whatever he wanted. At least with the holmgang a poor yet strong warrior had the chance of fighting a duel with the mightiest chief and winning. And the threat of being challenged to holmgang no doubt served as a check on the arrogance and abuse of power by the powerful.


In the same way, in societies with extremely weak and corrupt legal systems; where police simply did not exist; and where communications were so primitive that one could escape justice simply by riding a horse for a day or two into another jurisdiction---people were pretty much “on their own” when it came to defending themselves. Even in the 18th century, if you did not stand up to bullies by yourself, they could and would rob you of everything you owned. That is why gentlemen were expected to know how to fight with a sword and gun. And the rules of the duel were similarly codified in order to “level the field”. That is why, for example, the person who was challenged was allowed to choose the weapons (so an expert with one weapon couldn't challenge people to a type of fight where they didn't have a chance.) The institution of dueling was a logical social response to the intractible problem that the strong tend to prey upon the weak.


People forget how very common dueling used to be right on up until the early 19th century. While statistics on the subject would probably be impossible to find, one indication of how common it once was is to consider the number of famous individuals who had fought duels at one time or another in their lives. Four British Prime ministers who ruled between 1780 and 1829 fought duels (William Petty, Pitt the Younger, George Canning and the Duke of Wellington---although only Pitt and Wellington fought while actually holding the office of PM.) In 1777 one of the signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Button Gwinnette, died as a result of being wounded in a duel. In 1804 the then sitting Vice-President of the USA, Aaron Burr, shot and killed a previous Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton in a duel. One could go on and list dozens more very important people from various walks of life. Below the very wealthy and famous, there existed the ordinary gentry, who also seem to have been involved in dueling to a significant degree, if one can believe the literature of the 18th and 19th century. Amongst the common people, although there is less evidence, I suspect that it was also common for people settle slights to their “honour” by violence. One piece of evidence for this comes from our language. If you have ever wondered what the term “at loggerheads” means when two people are arguing, it refers to a sort of low-class duel between two non-gentlemen fight using a tool that consists of a iron bar with a heavy weight on one end (i.e. a “loggerhead”.)


Laws had existed for hundreds of years to discourage dueling but they had been routinely ignored by all and sundry because the institution served a useful purpose by protecting the weak from bullies. People who fought duels took pains to ensure that there were no witnesses and that fights took place in areas of disputed jurisdiction. But even if a case came to trial and enough evidence existed, judges and juries still refused to convict. But as societies have become wealthier and more complex, governments eventually created modern police forces and court systems that have made dueling no longer a necessary defence for the weak. It became possible for middle-class individuals to hire lawyers to fight their duels before a judge using arcane arguments instead of having to meet with pistols at dawn. When this new way of doing things became part of everyday life, popular opinion turned away from dueling. It no longer served a useful public function and instead just became ridiculous. At that point anti-dueling laws began to have teeth because judges and juries started to convict. Eventually the practice died out.


As society changed, however, the concept of “honour” continued to exist although it ceased to serve its original purpose. The necessity of protecting a person's legal and financial standing in the community by force had disappeared. But the secondary purpose, that of encouraging group solidarity during time of war, still existed. Without the objective necessity of having to defend one's self in a lawless world full of bullies, “honour” increasingly became something that the government wished to inculcate in the young instead of an essential survival skill. As a result, it became something that was taught at school and imposed by social sanction. Children were forced to memorize stirring poems of heroic sacrifice. There were encouraged to read “ripping yarns” about soldiers and explorers. And if as young men they refused to respond when their country called, there would be young women to hand out white feathers to any young men who were not in a uniform. In effect, “honour” had become a tool used by nation states to mobilize its citizenry for total war.


The First World War brought this entire edifice crashing down because it sent thousands of the Western World's “best and brightest” to a very nasty doom for what turned out to be a very dubious cause. The revulsion many of these men felt for the way that they had been “played” is expressed by some of the so-called “war poets”. These were highly-educated young members of the British elite who found themselves suffering and dying as junior officers on the Western front. Take a look at the last stanza of Wilfred Owen's poem about a gas casualty, “Dulce et Decorum Est”.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

This decline hasn't been complete or uniform. Just as there is still a percentage of the population that still believes in the “Olde Tyme Religion”, there is still a fraction of the public that can believes in the jingoistic glories of military service. But that percentage has declined dramatically in most nations. This decline has been masked to a certain extent for two reasons. First of all, for many people the iconic image of war is World War II. And that conflict was quite exceptional because it could easily be seen as an absolutely necessary war. This meant that a lot of people who were very jaded could still be convinced to put on uniforms and fight to stop the institutional racist insanity of the Axis powers. Similar support for the cold war existed in the beginning (for somewhat similar reasons, given the brutality of Communism) but began to wither away when the moral ambiguity of proxy wars in places like Vietnam became obvious. “Luckily” for the military, by that time the increased mechanisation of warfare meant that there was no longer the need to mobilize huge conscript armies. A small volunteer force of highly-trained “professionals” is all that is needed today. This means that there are still generally enough people around who believe “Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori” to fill the recruitment quotas.


But just as in the case of religious faith, those individuals who are most engaged in environmental issues consist of that fraction of the population that is most likely to cast a jaundiced eye upon any appeal for honourable sacrifice. You cannot appeal to people to “do without” or make exceptional effort in order to help the nation or future generations get through our current environmental crisis if the entire coin of honourable sacrifice has been totally debased in their eyes. Once people have been badly swindled they find it very hard to believe even the most honest of appeals. Again, just as with religious faith, we are back into the Yeats territory of “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

A Celibate Floats Uneasily on the Sea of Sex

I was walking on a bright sunny May morning today and was struck by how essential sex is to the natural world. I think that a cotton-wood tree was in the neighbourhood, because I could see the white fluff that they use to disperse their seeds all over a part of my walk. There were also flowers all over the place---yellow dandelions, mauve lilac, white lilies-of-the-valley, blue ground ivy and periwinkles, etc. There were also butterflies zipping all over the place---mostly feeding on the dandelions. Birds were singing loudly too.

Of course people walk by this all the time, but I was thinking that from the point of view of evolutionary biology this was literally a massive "light show" of sexual selection in action. The flowers were competing with scent and colour display to attract pollinators. The Butterflies were not only polinating the plants they were feeding on, but the bright colours of their wings were similarly advertising their interest in being polinated themselves. (Butterflies are, when you get down to it, not much more than flying flowers themselves.) And the birds singing were mostly males who are loudly proclaiming their territorial control over prime nesting areas so females may be attracted to nest and reproduce.

Of course, it isn't just animals that get into all of this. Humans do too.

I noticed the "bikers" roaring by on their large, noisy motorcycles. Ultimately, most of their macho posturing boils down to an attempt to attract a certain type of female. As such, there isn't much difference between the loud roars of the Harleys and the rutting calls of a bull moose. Similarly, I passed a young girl who was obviously a bit chilled in her t-shirt, sandals and short cut-offs. But her attempt to show as much skin as possible without breaking the law is also a mechanism aimed at attracting the most "dominant" or "domestic" male possible (depending on the reproductive strategy her DNA had programmed her for), who would hopefully impregnate her, help her buy a house and raise children.

People are hard-wired to be consumed by this stuff. I know that I have spent years and years totally crazy with sexual desire. It is only through a combination of hard, hard discipline, and luck (seemingly bad at the time, perhaps good in the long run) that I have managed to arrive at my current age (51) without having reproduced. I say "luck" because I know that if I had had children I would have had just about everything I currently value taken away from me. I would never have been allowed the time to read, think, practice neidan, write, etc. Instead, I would have had all of my energy sucked into obeying the demands of wife and children.

Even though I have gotten to my present age and have worked hard at telling myself that it would be a disaster to give into the demands of my DNA to reproduce, I still fall prey to the same old delusions once in a while. For example, the other day I met one of the exceedingly small number of single, attractive women I know. I thought to myself, maybe I could ask her out on a date---. But once I got talking to her I quickly remembered why she is still single (whenever she talks, her voice is one long scream informing anyone who listens how damaged she was by her crazy childhood.) I walked away from this brief, but nutty encounter with this woman wondering at the strength of that old DNA voice in my ear that kept me from just walking on by. After all, in a more disinterested mood I could have easily predicted every different element of this interaction.

I've been single most of my life, but I have been involved with women at times. The last relationship lasted almost ten years and only ended a couple years back. One of the more annoying things that my ex once said to me was that "spiritual people", like priests (and I know that she was also referring to me) are like "children" in that in some ways that they are silly and immature. Since she really believed this, I never tried to argue with her about it---I know that there was nothing I could have said to change her mind.

I think that what she was saying in her condescending and inarticulate statement was that she and I live in totally different worlds. For her, having children is absolutely everything in the universe. Since I, and all other spiritual people, are interested in other things that the desire of our DNA to replicate, this means that I have never "grown up" in the sense of entering puberty. This ultimately drove us apart. She moved out of town to be near her daughter and grandchildren. And I am still in my hermitage, trying to push down the feelings of sexual frustration and loneliness that my genetic heritage have programmed into me. We each followed the ultimate value of our lives.

Of course this situation may seem odd to someone with a naive understanding of Daoism. After all, how can it possible be "going with the flow" or "being like water" to live a celibate life when literally every cell in my body wants me to get some woman pregnant? This is where the "Dao of Pooh" stuff falls apart. The fact is that there are practical elements to spiritual practice, and unless a person is so wealthy that they can afford to hire someone to raise the children, do all the housework, and live a life of leisure, it is impossible to find the time to do kungfu while being married or even involved with another person. There is a trade off, of course, and some benefits come from celibacy. But it is a battle none the less.

Having said all of that. Lots and lots of people have no option with regard to sex. There are profoundly ugly people who never have a hope of having a sexual relationship. There are disabled people in the same boat. There are people who are so poor or oppressed that it is not an option either. Every element of sexual frustration also exists with them. Moreover, as for having children, hordes of people who are having children really shouldn't anyway because of the grotesque over population of the earth. So it ultimately is an indulgence to complain about any situation a spiritual person finds themself in.

But that doesn't stop the DNA screaming in my ears----.

Environmental Vow: Part Ten

Problems With Faith:


One of the more popular definitions of “faith” comes from George Seaton who said “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to”. Of course, the point of disagreement over the ages has tended to be what particular things a person should faithfully believing in. From time to time the details have changed. But if you ask most people the response would suggest some sort of literal belief in God or Gods and some promise of life after death. This is the “consolation of religion” that lightens the burdens of life. Even religions that in essence do not offer these specific consolations have eventually ended-up expressing them in their more popular varients. This is why the Buddhism and Daoism of ordinary people (whose core texts do not really support the concepts of life after death or divine beings), have a rich cosmology complete with Heaven, Hell; and, Saints and Gods who offer divine intervention in exchange for prayer. Many people who believe that they will end up in heaven, or at least be reincarnated, are more sanguine about either their own or their loved one's death, and all the other travails of existence.


There are people who still literally believe this sort of thing, but since the Enlightenment the spread of rationalism and science has managed to dramatically reduce their numbers. This decline has taken two forms. First of all, the number of people who make any pretence of there being a life after death or any supernatural beings who directly intervene in public affairs has declined dramatically----especially amongst our educated classes. And amongst those who still espouse some sort of support for these beliefs, many have progressively pared-away the practical elements of them to the point where it is very hard to understand exactly what they might be.


Some people might naively believe that this sort of faith hasn't really declined because they fear the power that fundamentalists believers exert in various societies---especially the USA and Islamic nations. That influence, however, comes more from the intensity of the beliefs that these people hold, not their numbers. That is to say, it only takes a very few people to make a terrorist attack. Even the influence of fundamentalists in democratic states like the USA and Isreal are dramatically magnified by the moribund state of both democracies. If voter turnout increases in America---as during the election when Barak Obama was elected president---their influence declines dramatically. Similarly if the Isreali electoral system was reformed in order to remove the power of the fringe religious parties, then the influence of fundamentalist Judaism would decline with it. The point that cannot be denied, however, is that these fundamentalists are motivated in ways that go beyond those of secular people, which is exactly the power of “faith” that I am suggesting is missing from the rest of society.


The key point to understand about fundamentalism is that in a sense this “ism” is really a “wasm”. That is to say that fundamentalism can only rise up as a distinct and identifiable movement if there is a dominant alternative worldview for it to rebel against. This particular point of view only arose as a specific social movement because people who think this way feel marginalized by the rest of society. In contrast, the faith that the adherents of this worldview hearken back to from ancient times was not one particular viewpoint that someone chose and reinforced by attending a specific type of church or mosque. It was the air almost everyone breathed from cradle to grave. Indeed, contrary to the quote from George Seaton, the real faith of the past, the one that sustained most people was not in conflict with common sense, it was so pervasive that it was common sense itself. Looked at from this point of view, the rise of militant fundamentalism is not an indication of the strength of this worldview but rather evidence of its weakness. And if one really looks into the history of fundamentalism, she will see that the term itself was coined by a group of late 19th Century evangelical Christians who were explicitly reacting to modernist tendencies in well-established mainstream American Protestant denominations. As the same modernist revolution has spread around the world and undermined the old order in other places, so too has reaction against it.


The decline of this olde-tyme faith does leave us with the question of why it withered away only to be kept alive by a rump of “die harders”?


As I see it, “Faith” has suffered for two reasons that while closely allied are best kept separated.


First of all, science has managed to dramatically change the world we inhabit in that there is less and less of it that is “a mystery”. Our ancestors didn't know what the planets, stars and the sun were. They didn't know why the tides come and go, they didn't know why we have summer and winters, they didn't know why children look like their parents, or why the sky is blue. In fact, they knew precious little about just about everything. If you are in the habit of not knowing much of anything at all, then it is a lot easier to accept that there is a hidden world behind it and a lot more mysterious stuff in that too. We inhabit a much different universe than that. Not only do we know a great many things about the world around us, we have gotten into the habit of thinking of mysteries as something that we just haven't figured out yet and which will probably be “more of the same”. Since the religious faith simply doesn't “mesh” with this new “common sense”, it just seems silly to more and more people.


Even worse, at the same time religious faith became harder and harder to accept because it clashed with our scientific worldview; it also began to clash with our politics. Church institutions are often very hierarchical and unresponsive to the wishes of parishioners. But beyond the sheer “bloody-mindedness” of ancient bureaucracies and archaic leadership structures, there are deeper problems. The very idea that ancient, obscure, often badly-translated texts can answer all the questions of the modern era is something that simply jars against the sensibilities of a body politic that believes that society can and should change; and that our sense of “right and wrong” can change as people learn more about themselves. An issue even more at odds with modern sensibilities is the notion of deities altogether. People have given up on believing that we need to have a king on Earth; why would they accept that we still need one in heaven? Again, the key point isn't whether or not people believe in the existence of God, but rather that the whole thing seems rather silly to modern sensibilities. And once a religion appears ridiculous, it is totally moribund.


I believe that there really is no honest answer to the questions modernity has posed to naive religious faith. It may have offered consolation to our ancestors, but it cannot be accepted now except at the price of walling our minds off from everything the Enlightenment has brought us. And at the end of that road lies not paradise but rather people flying airplanes into buildings. Moreover, it is specifically those people who are most aware of modern scientific discoveries and engaged with civil society who understand the problems we face and therefore suffer the most from environmental despair that are least able to accept the olde tyme faith. The poet W. B. Yeats sums up the situation nicely in the lines “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

The Dao of Fear and Anxiety

I cannot think of where to find the citation, but I remember coming across a scholarly essay where the author made the point that there is a significant element of fear in some of the key texts of Daoism. Primarily, I think that the scholar was referring to the tendency of Daoists to want to leave well enough alone and avoid sticking your neck out.


At this point in time, the best example that I can think of is the story where a representative of a king was sent to recruit Zhuangzi for an important post. The official found the sage at the bank of a stream fishing. When asked if he would accept the job, the Daoist replied by comparing a live turtle in the river before them to a dead one who's body was revered as a sacred object in a famous temple. Which one would the messenger rather be? The reply, of course, was the live one. Zhuangzi then sent him off saying that he'd like to continue to be able to waddle through the mud like that turtle before them.


This anecdote can be read several ways, but surely one of the more obvious ones is that it is a reference to the fact that getting involved in the bureaucracy of a minor state was a very dangerous job back in the time of Zhuangzi---many people ended up losing political intrigues and on the executioner's block. But ambitious people still pursued these jobs because they were attracted by the wealth and power that could be had. And Confucians also sought high office out of sense of duty towards the state.


I think about this sort of thing because I often find myself wondering if I made a mistake by not pursuing high office of one sort or another. Indeed, many people have told me repeatedly that I could have become a professor, a recognized clergyman, a manager, an elected official, etc, if I had just tried to pursue this sort of thing. I've always justified avoiding this sort of thing because I couldn't handle the grotesque compromises that the people I've known in these situations have had to accept. Surprisingly, as I got to know many people in these sorts of positions, it became clear to me that most of them do not see the problems that I do, so they do not end up feeling that they are "sell-outs". This doesn't change the fact that I would have felt that I was selling out by getting involved in a career path, but it does explain why so many other people cannot understand why I didn't. They simply do not see the pitfalls and land mines that I do.


This insight came to me most clearly when I was asked to participate in a panel discussion after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I sat on the stage with a Catholic priest, an assistant minister of the federal government, a representative of the Israel lobby, etc. What struck me was that these people hadn't a clue about the existential horror that constantly exists at our feet and the grotesque results of the foolish choices that we all too often make.


I remember the priest prattling on about how everything bad that happens takes place because of God's plan. I looked out into the audience and I saw a little boy who looked like he had lost all his hair due to chemotherapy and he was absolutely transfixed by this statement. I also heard the government member going on about how she felt totally drained by the absolute horror of what had happened that day.


My response was to read from the DaoDeJing about how "Heaven and Earth are not humane--", to point out that more people die in traffic accidents every year than did at the Twin Towers, that the death toll that day would have been a very quiet day in WWII, that it is important to remember that the whole world looks like a nail to a hammer and how we must fight against the temptation to go blundering around like a wounded bear in reaction to the events. Alas, my fears all came true and my advice all went way over the heads of the other people on the podium.


As I write this post I wonder about that priest. How does he not feel a sense of intense shame when he talks about "God's plan" to someone like a child suffering from cancer? Is the pain there but not expressed because he feels constrained by his social role? Or is he just oblivious to the absurdity of saying that a kind and loving God is torturing an innocent child for some ultimately groovy purpose?


I also wonder about that politician. Because she indulged in venting her naive emotions, does she feel any guilt for the orgy of violence that resulted? Does she feel any culpability for the carnage that has and still is taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan? For the erosion of our civil liberties? Does she even think that it is job of a politician to try and control the emotions of the mob during times of national emergencies? Or is she just another stupid member of the "human herd" who just follows along with what everyone else is doing?


As a result of thinking about these issues, I've come to the conclusion that because of the time we Daoists spend in introspection, we end up seeing much more of the world around us than those people who simply follow on some sort of normal career path. This eventually makes it very, very difficult for us to slip into a normal sort of role.


This is somewhat similar to the story of the expert archer who was asked to see if he could hit the bull's eye when standing on the edge of a cliff. His fear for his safety rendered his aim worthless. Yet if he were unaware of the cliff, his aim would be flawless. In a sense, my failure to pursue a career comes from my awareness that most of the powerful people I know are standing on moral high-wires, yet don't know it. If they saw things the way I do, they probably couldn't do the job either.


Having said all of that, I have in many ways attempted to exert some force for good on society. But the ways I have chosen have all been as a "hidden" force. Instead of joining a mainstream political party and pursuing office, I've very involved in organizing a powerful Green Party that has had a significant influence on public debate. I sued Walmart to protect a Jesuit retreat centre instead of taking office in the Catholic Church. There are other examples I could cite, but the point is that I have tried to do things in a way that minimizes both the credit and the culpability that I could gain from the action. (Certainly nothing I have ever done has resulted in my making any money!)


As I get older, though, I become more and more aware that it is not a good thing to live a life in fear of any sort. Being overly cautious and careful only results in a regret and a bad death. I hope that as I continue on my path that I do not end up becoming so consumed by awareness of the difficulties we all face that I end up being totally immobilized---.