tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19692819181752910602024-03-13T23:53:56.007-07:00Homeless TomAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-89551661420884901642011-01-06T11:07:00.000-08:002011-01-06T11:07:53.485-08:00Same as it ever was: The meaning behind the lyrics of "Once in a Lifetime"[a work in progress]<br />
<br />
The video<br />
The lyrics<br />
The meaning<br />
<br />
The viddy<br />
<br />
<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/I1wg1DNHbNU?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/I1wg1DNHbNU?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>"Once in a Lifetime"<br />
<br />
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack<br />
And you may find yourself in another part of the world<br />
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile<br />
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful<br />
Wife<br />
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here? <br />
<br />
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down<br />
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground<br />
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone<br />
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.<br />
<br />
And you may ask yourself<br />
How do I work this? <br />
And you may ask yourself<br />
Where is that large automobile? <br />
And you may tell yourself<br />
This is not my beautiful house!<br />
And you may tell yourself<br />
This is not my beautiful wife!<br />
<br />
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down<br />
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground<br />
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone<br />
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.<br />
<br />
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...<br />
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...<br />
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...<br />
<br />
Water dissolving...and water removing<br />
There is water at the bottom of the ocean<br />
Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean<br />
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!<br />
<br />
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down<br />
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground<br />
Into the blue again/in the silent water<br />
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.<br />
<br />
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down<br />
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground<br />
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone<br />
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.<br />
<br />
And you may ask yourself<br />
What is that beautiful house? <br />
And you may ask yourself<br />
Where does that highway go? <br />
And you may ask yourself<br />
Am I right? ...am I wrong? <br />
And you may tell yourself<br />
My god!...what have I done? <br />
<br />
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down<br />
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground<br />
Into the blue again/in the silent water<br />
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.<br />
<br />
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down<br />
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground<br />
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone<br />
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.<br />
<br />
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...<br />
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...<br />
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-34008801182704325332011-01-04T15:06:00.000-08:002011-01-04T16:42:58.530-08:00Purpose and Meaning<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 0.3em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-World-Adaptation-Everything-Civilization/dp/031259108X?ie=UTF8&tag=zenunboundbookst&link_code=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 0.3em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="The Evolutionary World: How Adaptation Explains Everything from Seashells to Civilization" src="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=031259108X&tag=zenunboundbookst" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td width="1"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;" width="105">Quote is from Geerat J. Vermeij's new book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=7o6pq4VR26YC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=%22the+properties+of+water+seem+irreducible%22&source=bl&ots=KOK6yyiblh&sig=whiWdSS6J644N121dAAzi-st6MU&hl=en&ei=HaEjTZzoHIG8sQPqi7ncAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20properties%20of%20water%20seem%20irreducible%22&f=false">The Evolutionary World</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=zenunboundbookst&l=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=031259108X" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;" width="1" /><span id="internal-source-marker_0.2045634761950612" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Water, a molecule consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, is utterly unlike the two component elements. It is a liquid rather than a gas at room temperature, it expands rather than contracts in the solid state, and it is an exceptionally good conductor of heat. The properties of water seem irreducible, much as our complex brain might appear to be irreducible to its many constituent parts; but in fact they arise through the interaction — the working together, or synergy — of components. Likewise in music, chords and melodies convey patterns and evoke emotions that single tones cannot. Sentences, paragraphs, and books have meanings that individual words and letters do not. Living things, too, work together to add dimensions of value, function, and meaning. Survival and propagation are themselves expressions of emergence and synergy common to all life-forms; but we humans are motivated and enriched by more than these lifewide aspirations. We perceive a greater purpose — through love, curiosity, a social conscience, helping others, and perhaps above all, through aesthetics — a deeper meaning that makes our individual lives worthwhile to others. Without that added significance, and without the intentionality that enables us to create a future according to our tastes and values, life would be empty; we would descend into apathy and callousness. Purpose and meaning, however they come into our lives, are as real and as essential as the evolved imperative to survive and reproduce.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-91537598662947359052010-12-27T12:37:00.000-08:002010-12-27T12:37:30.020-08:00The Wild Geese<strong><span style="font-size: large;">The Wild Geese</span></strong><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Horseback on Sunday morning,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">harvest over, we taste persimmon</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">and wild grape, sharp sweet</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">of summer's end. In time's maze</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">over the fall fields, we name names</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">that went west from here, names</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">that rest on graves. We open</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">a persimmon seed to find the tree</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">that stands in promise,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">pale, in the seed's marrow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Geese appear high over us,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">as in love or sleep, holds</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">them to their way, clear,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">in the ancient faith: what we need</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">is here. And we pray, not</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">for new earth or heaven, but to be</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">quiet in heart, and in eye</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">clear. What we need is here.</span><br />
<br />
~ Wendell Berry<br />
<br />
(<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Poems-Wendell-Berry-1957-1982/dp/0865471975?ie=UTF8&tag=zenunboundbookst&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Collected Poems 1957-1982</a>)<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-72089570731335573702010-12-09T10:57:00.000-08:002010-12-09T14:03:23.853-08:00Blogisattva Finalists have been announced<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LAE4C0kyN6E/TP6ZyRyAa7I/AAAAAAAADec/ejrsVYNmrJA/s1600/finalistslarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="76" n4="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LAE4C0kyN6E/TP6ZyRyAa7I/AAAAAAAADec/ejrsVYNmrJA/s320/finalistslarge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The <a href="http://www.blogisattva.org/2010/12/2010-blogisattva-award-finalists.html">Blogisattva Award Finalists (with “honorable mentions” in most categories included) were announced</a> by co- administrator Kyle Lovett at The Blogisattva Awards website yesterday to some fanfare.<br />
<br />
As founder of the awards, and administrator during its beginning spell of three years honoring English-language Buddhism blogging, I, of course, have a keen interest in the splendid resurrection of the awards, done by administrators Kyle Lovett and Nate deMontigny. [AND with spiffy new design features contributed by Anoki Casey.]<br />
<br />
The first thing I noticed as I read through the list of finalists was the women! Wooho! In the first three years of the awards the noticeable absence of woman’s voices [texty key tapping?] in the ‘competition,’ and, perhaps, in the Buddhoblogosphere, generally, was a point of controversy. In 2006, 2007 and 2008 [honoring blogs, bloggers and posts of the prior year], woman were little represented.<br />
<br />
I can’t pull together data to prove it, but I think that it was both a fault of the Awards in the ought-years, and that there was, genuinely, a paucity of women dedicated to blogging at that time. I think it is known that guys had been overwhelming dominant in the Internet and that this situation is much more level, with, well, nowadays, everybody, pretty much, hooked on the web.<br />
<br />
Many of the stalwart blogs of the awards in the ought-years have passed from the scene, changed the focus of their blog, or just aren't contenders this year. A notable exception is <a href="http://thebuddhistblog.blogspot.com/">The Buddhist Blog</a> -- which continues to be to the Buddhoblogosphere what Kellogg’s is to cereal [nope, that’s not it]. General Motors is to vehicles [nope, not right]. I’ve got it!: The Buddhist Blog is to the Buddhoblogosphere what Buddha is to Buddhism!<br />
<br />
James Ure’s TBB is a finalist in three categories and the recipient of three honorable mentions, which, with a total of six, makes him/his blog tops on the Kudos Count, both this year and, probably, all time [I'll have to run the numbers].<br />
<br />
The reason the awards lapsed after 2008 was difficulties I was having, and am having, including easy access to the Internet. I haven't yet had time for the delight of going through the Finalists List and reading the posts and blogs that have been honored. But I do see that the quality is there, and for that the administrators and judges should be congratulated.<br />
<br />
I am delighted to see nominations for <a href="http://enlightenmentward.wordpress.com/">Smiling Buddha Cabaret</a>, one blog I have followed somewhat in the past few years. And, ditto, for <a href="http://www.karenmaezenmiller.com/blog">cheerio road</a> and <a href="http://thinkbuddha.org/">thinkBuddha.org</a> — long-time blogs that I follow on my RSS reader.<br />
<br />
Congratulations to all the worthies and their nominations.<br />
<br />
BUT, it would be no fun if I didn't share at least one disappointment. Awards are like that; controversies are a part of the thought process that makes us think about what is good. I confess to being disappointed that Marnie Louise Froberg's "<a href="http://enlightenmentward.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/a-comment-on-dharma-warsignoble-silence-transcendental-egotism-and-getting-straight-with-the-truth/">A Comment on Dharma Wars: Ignoble Silence, Transcendental Egotism and Getting Straight with the Truth</a>" wasn't nominated for Best Post.<br />
<br />
Awards! Are they a Barrel of Joy, or what!!?<span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-38955896623469522282010-12-06T13:58:00.000-08:002010-12-06T13:58:53.689-08:00Blogisattva announcements on Dec 8 & Dec 12 <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LAE4C0kyN6E/TDDu5fMaJzI/AAAAAAAADKg/3D9hlCXKE5s/S1600-R/blogisattvaSm.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LAE4C0kyN6E/TDDu5fMaJzI/AAAAAAAADKg/3D9hlCXKE5s/S1600-R/blogisattvaSm.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;" width="160">The Octobuddha, preparing the awards.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>A <a href="http://www.blogisattva.org/2010/12/two-important-announcements.html">post at The Blogisattva Awards website</a> tells us that the finalists for the 2010 Awards will be announced in a post on December 8 and that winners will be announced on December 12.<br />
<br />
The post also thanks us for our patience. [What patience?]<br />
<br />
LET THE HONORS ROLL OUT!! LET THE FUN BEGIN!!<br />
<br />
Categories for the 2010 Awards are…<br />
<ul><li>Blog of the year, Svaha! </li>
<li>Best Post of the Year </li>
<li>Best Achievement in Skilled Writing </li>
<li>Best Achievement Blogging on Buddhist Practice or Dharma </li>
<li>Best Buddhist Practice Blog </li>
<li>Best "Life" Blog </li>
<li>Best Blogging on Matters Philosophical, Psychological or Scientific </li>
<li>Best Achievement in Kind and Compassionate Blogging </li>
<li>Best Achievement Blogging Opinion Pieces or about Political Issues </li>
<li>Best Engage-the-World Blog </li>
<li>Best Achievement in Design </li>
<li>Best Achievement in Wide Range of Topic Interests Blogging </li>
<li>Best Achievement with Humor in a Blog Post </li>
</ul><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-72793625561584115842010-11-04T10:03:00.000-07:002010-11-04T10:09:40.461-07:00What does it mean to be human?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TNLmww4mjJI/AAAAAAAABTA/SfXPLH3ERuc/s1600/Marlon-Brando.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" px="true" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TNLmww4mjJI/AAAAAAAABTA/SfXPLH3ERuc/s320/Marlon-Brando.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>What does it mean to be human?<br />
<br />
An essay in the Arts section of the Unte Reader blog, titled “<a href="http://www.utne.com/Arts/New-Way-to-Act-Freud-Method.aspx?utm_content=11.04.10+Arts&utm_campaign=Emerging+Ideas-Every+Day&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email">A New Way to Act</a>,” by David Doody, tells us that acting/performing has moved beyond the Method method to something new because what it means to be human isn’t now what it was.<br />
<br />
It’s a weird essay on the face of it: A declaration that being human has changed, yet that provocative statement is sublimated to the idea that acting must now be done differently.<br />
<br />
Acting as it is, and shouldn’t be, declares Doody, is one of mimicry. A performance like that of Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire is [quoting Sheila Heti],<br />
<blockquote>… a version of the human as a deeply individual, emotionally rooted being, with psychological depth, continuity of self, and a past that profoundly affects present behaviour and relationships</blockquote>Doody tells us, citing Heti, that humans today<br />
<blockquote>… have moved from the Freudian era toward cognitive behavioral therapy, meaning that “we are not determined by our past experiences….We are now in an age in which to be human means, in part, to be able to choose what sort of human one wants to be.” As Heti sees it, our actors have not followed the trend, but rather are still attempting to act the way Brando did. Even the best of this acting, Heti sees as bad, as it is only “high mimicry.”</blockquote>So, is Doody [really, Heti] right? Has the nature of being human changed because of the new trend? Was the old Army ad perhaps wrong then, but right, now? We can “be all <strike>you</strike> we want to be?” Or do we still drag the ball-and-chain of our prior conditioning in a continuity of self?<br />
<br />
At the end of his essay, Doody fully bails on Heti, who is inspired by sight of the next leap in how acting should be.<br />
<blockquote>So what, exactly, would Heti want to see replace the form of acting so commonly used today? She gives one example: the artist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/arts/design/01kenn.html">Ryan Trecartin’s videos</a>. The characters in these videos have “no personality at the core” and “[t]here is no sense that [they] have what we consider an emotional history, or have lived days and years prior to the moment they are currently living on screen before us.” Other than that, she pretty much offers only a call to duty for screenwriters and actors to discover what the next stage of acting will be.</blockquote>It’s all very odd, but surely there is some truth to the idea that human society/relationships/'senses or self' go through radical changes over the course of ages [and maybe, now, decades] that we find hard to fathom.<br />
<br />
The acting in the 20s and 30s seems wholly artificial to us. While it can be pleasurable to watch an old Bette Davis movie, her performance doesn’t fell like it is representative of a real person. Ditto Marlon Brando; he’s archly theatrical and emotionally unstable. His performance seems like “acting,” not being real.<br />
<br />
I know from reading books about how people used to think in ages past that the sense of ‘what being human is’ changes. Living in a “world” that is really only just within a few miles of where you were born is profoundly different than knowing the news of what goes on everywhere on the planet. Reading the newspapers or going online makes us different, and that difference isn’t necessarily better or ‘more knowing.’<br />
<br />
Before the Renaissance period [say, befor 1450AD], people had no real conception of history. Things changed so slowly that people didn’t think in terms of change. They thought everything was very much like it had always been. History was recorded in a jumble; there was no timeline. There was no sequence of events to tell a story of advancement or change or 'reason why/how things changed or could change.'<br />
<br />
What meaning life had was necessarily found in religion, since there was little else. Whereas today we can see the planet being in a world of dangers [global warming; terrorism] and adventures [longer lifespans; new technological gizmos; constant profound and surprising scientific discoveries], in the past, life was almost wholly one of duty.<br />
<br />
But how are we today? WHO are we today?<br />
<br />
Maybe we’re journeying to a place where living vicariously in the movies is feeling phony. Maybe we’re benumbed by not knowing who we are or what we’re supposed to be.<br />
<br />
Maybe the prior paragraph in this blogpost is phony. Maybe I don’t know what to think or write to conclude things, here. Maybe it’s annoying that I’m getting all postmodern about now, losing my seriousness and thinking more about what I want for lunch rather than being respectful of all you blog readers. [Hmmm. Hannah’s Deli!? Mmmmm.]<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-60788849833410286132010-10-25T15:27:00.000-07:002010-10-26T12:46:23.716-07:00Affirming the intrinsic worth of all conscious beings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TMYEPtKE7iI/AAAAAAAABS8/sdSyX6M4TKk/s1600/imagesCA2M9AP2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" nx="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TMYEPtKE7iI/AAAAAAAABS8/sdSyX6M4TKk/s1600/imagesCA2M9AP2.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are certain kinds of events that take us out of ourselves, that allow us to transcend or break out of the egocentric circle of concerns that all too often binds our thinking life. A possible beginning is a romantic episode in which another conscious being becomes a passionate object of interest. The being of the other assumes an intense importance that, if it lasts long enough, can mature into an appreciation of the other as a kind of hero, struggling against existential limitations to which they are ultimately destined to lose. This mature appreciation of the other would be an ugly narcissism if focused on the self; but focused on the other, it can be a model for, eventually and personally, affirming the intrinsic worth of all conscious beings.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Written by Joe Frank Jones, III, from "Introduction to The Pluralist symposium on Ralph D. Ellis's 'Spiritual Partnership and the Affirmation of the Value of Being'.(Critical essay)." in </span><a href="http://pluralist.press.illinois.edu/1.3/index.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the Fall 2006 issue of The Pluralist</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, preceding Ellis's long essay "Spiritual Partnership and the Affirmation of the Value of Being"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">---</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Update 10/26/10: I note that today the splendid William Harryman posted sentiment that one should be compassionate with oneself in his <span style="color: orange;"><strong>Integral Options Cafe</strong></span> blog: "<a href="http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2010/10/daily-om-create-time-for-self.html">Om - Create Time for Self-Compassion</a>."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The issue rages on, for me. Are there times, or people, for whom being compassionate with oneself is appropriate? Are there others of us that are better 'served' by always batting our ego down in whack-a-mole style!? I guess we each need to choose for ourself, BUT the choice we are inclined to make is, perhaps, not the best for us. </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-44949993718319643182010-10-18T10:00:00.000-07:002010-10-18T10:04:03.501-07:00Unselfishness is at the core of solving world problems<blockquote>The big evolutionary idea that I think is going to transform our thinking in the social sciences in the next 10 years is group selection. What this means is that we actually have all kinds of mental equipment for suppressing self-interest, for working for the common good, but only when we are basically at war with another team. We can be unselfish, we can be cooperative, but that is activated by intergroup conflict.<br />
<br />
If we are attacked by space aliens, I think we humans will unite pretty well. But until then, it’s just very, very difficult for us to solve any sort of dilemma that requires people to sacrifice for the greater good—unless it’s the greater good of their team versus another’s.<br />
<br />
So it’s really a shame that global warming has become so politicized. We are capable of solving some things, like taking lead out of gasoline. There are some regulatory changes that have been made that weren’t so politicized. But once it becomes politicized, it’s very difficult to achieve global cooperation. </blockquote>Quoting Jonathan Haidt, <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_understand_the_tea_party/">from a recent discussion with Michael Bergeisen</a>, posted at the Greater Good website. Haidt is best known for his 2006 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-Modern-Ancient/dp/0465028020?ie=UTF8&tag=zenunboundbookst&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Happiness Hypothesis</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=zenunboundbookst&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0465028020" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important;" width="1" />. "His [forthcoming] book focuses on the psychological foundations of our moral and political views, exploring how recent discoveries in moral psychology might help us get past the culture wars and create more civil forms of politics."<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-32134904303412788602010-10-15T09:12:00.000-07:002010-11-02T14:32:21.305-07:00Steiner is dead<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLJGRRfpyNI/AAAAAAAABSY/y4B3Qxt5nHE/s1600/war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 0.3em; margin-left: 0.3em;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLJGRRfpyNI/AAAAAAAABSY/y4B3Qxt5nHE/s200/war.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">This is the third quote I've posted from <a href="http://www.sebastianjunger.com/">Sebastian Junger</a>'s amazing new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/WAR-Sebastian-Junger/dp/0446556246/">War</a>. The first quote is found <a href="http://homelesstom.blogspot.com/2010/10/war-is-exciting.html">here</a>; the second <a href="http://homelesstom.blogspot.com/2010/10/combat-brings-consequences.html">here</a>.</div><br />
The story here is about how close Steiner came to death. Writes Junger:</div><blockquote><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLdsnDMNBfI/AAAAAAAABSk/2PWTi-SoZFE/s1600/backcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLdsnDMNBfI/AAAAAAAABSk/2PWTi-SoZFE/s200/backcover.jpg" width="131" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The book's back cover.</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="color: #783f04;">Steiner lay there unable to see or move, wondering whether the things he was hearing were true. Had he been hit in the head? Was he dead? How would he know? The fact that he could hear the men around him should count for something. After a while he could see a little bit and he sat up and looked around. The bullet had penetrated his helmet to the innermost layer and then gone tumbling off in another direction, looking for someone else to kill. (The blood on his face turned out to be lacerations from stone fragments that had hit him.) The other men glanced at Steiner in shock — most of them thought he was dead — but kept shooting because they were still getting hammered and firepower was the only way out of there. Steiner was in a daze and he just sat there with a bullet hole in his helmet, grinning. After a while he got up and started laughing. He should be dead but he wasn’t and it was the funniest thing in the world. “Get the fuck down and start returning fire!” someone yelled at him. Steiner laughed on. Others started laughing as well. Soon everyman in the platoon was howling behind their rock wall, pouring unholy amounts of firepower into the mountainsides around them<br />
<br />
“It was to cover up how everyone was really feeling,” Mac admitted to me later.<br />
<br />
Three Humvees drove down from the KOP to pick up Steiner, but he refused to go with them — he wanted to stay with his squad. When the platoon finally started running up the road toward Phoenix [the name of an outpost; not the Arizona city], Steiner found himself floating effortlessly ahead of the group despite carrying sixty pounds of ammo and a twenty-pound SAW [stands for Squad Automatic Weapon, a light machine gun]. It was one of the best highs he’d ever had. It lasted a day or two and then he sank like a stone.<br />
<br />
You start getting these flashes of what could’ve been,” Steiner said. “I was lying in bed like, ‘Fuck, I almost died.’ What would my funeral have been like? What would the guys have said? Who’d have dragged me out from behind that wall?” Steiner was doing something known to military psychologists as “anxious rumination.” Some poeple are ruminators and some aren’t, and the ones who are can turn one bad incident into a lifetime of trauma.<br />
<br />
“You can’t let yourself think about how close this shit is,” O’Byrne explained to me later. “Inches. Everything is <em>that</em> close. There’s just places I don’t allow my mind to go. Steiner was saying to me, ‘What if the bullet —' and I just stopped him right there, I didn’t even let him finish. I said, ‘Bit it didn’t. It <em>didn’t.</em>’”</span></div></div></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-81448919725943081142010-10-14T13:47:00.000-07:002010-10-14T13:52:32.220-07:00Combat brings consequences<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLJGRRfpyNI/AAAAAAAABSY/y4B3Qxt5nHE/s1600/war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 0.3em; margin-left: 0.3em;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLJGRRfpyNI/AAAAAAAABSY/y4B3Qxt5nHE/s200/war.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">This is the second quote I've posted from <a href="http://www.sebastianjunger.com/">Sebastian Junger</a>'s amazing new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/WAR-Sebastian-Junger/dp/0446556246/">War</a>. The first quote is found <a href="http://homelesstom.blogspot.com/2010/10/war-is-exciting.html">here</a>.</div><br />
The sentiment here is in ways similar to the prior quote, but says some important things about what we impose on the brave soldiers we send into tough situations to fight for us. Writes Junger:</div><blockquote><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLdsnDMNBfI/AAAAAAAABSk/2PWTi-SoZFE/s1600/backcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLdsnDMNBfI/AAAAAAAABSk/2PWTi-SoZFE/s200/backcover.jpg" width="131" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The book's back cover.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="color: #783f04;">Combat was a game that the United States had asked Second Platoon to become very good at, and once they had, the United States had put them on a hilltop without women, hot food, running water, communications with the outside world, or any kind of entertainment for over a year. Not that the men were complaining, but that sort of thing has consequences. Society can give its young men almost any job and they’ll figure how to do it. They’ll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it <em>will</em> get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for. In a very crude sense the job of young men is to undertake the work that their fathers are too old for, and the current generation of American fathers has decided that a certain six-mile-long valley in Kunar Province needs to be brought under military control. Nearly fifty American soldiers have died carrying out those orders. I’m not saying that’s a lot or a little, but the cost does need to be acknowledged. Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war (for some reason, the closer you are to combat the less inclined you are to question it), but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders.<br />
<br />
There are other costs to war as well — vaguer ones that don’t lend themselves to conventional math. One American soldier has died for every hundred yards of forward progress in the valley, but what about the survivors? … Ultimately, the problem is that they’re normal young men with normal emotional needs that have to be met within the very narrow options available on that hilltop. Young men need mentors and mentors are usually a generation or so older. That isn’t possible at Restrepo [an outpost in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan abutting Pakistan], so a twenty-two-year-old team leader effectively becomes a father figure for a nineteen-year-old private. Up at Restrepo a twenty-seven-year-old is considered an old man, an effeminate Afghan soldier is seen as a woman, and new privates are called “cherries” and virtually thought of as children. Men form friendships that are not at all sexual but contain much of the devotion and intensity of a romance. Almost every relationship that occurs in open society exists in some compressed form at Restrepo, and almost every human need from back home gets fulfilled in some truncated, jury-rigged way. The men are good at constructing what they need from what they have. They are experts at making do.<br />
<br />
As for a sense of purpose, combat is it — the only game in town. Almost none of the things that make life feel worth living back home are present at Restrepo, so the entire range of a young man’s self-worth has to be found within the ragged choreography of a firefight. The men talk about it and dream about it and rehearse for it and analyze it afterward but never plumb its depths enough to lose interest. It’s the ultimate test, and some of the men worry they’ll never again be satisfied with a “normal life” — whatever that is — after the amount of combat they’ve been in. They worry that they may have been ruined for anything else.</span></div></div></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-23305006039322134642010-10-10T16:04:00.000-07:002010-10-10T16:29:40.829-07:00War is Exciting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLJGRRfpyNI/AAAAAAAABSY/y4B3Qxt5nHE/s1600/war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 0.3em; margin-left: 0.3em;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/TLJGRRfpyNI/AAAAAAAABSY/y4B3Qxt5nHE/s200/war.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">I'm going to post a few quotes from <a href="http://www.sebastianjunger.com/">Sebastian Junger</a>'s amazing new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/WAR-Sebastian-Junger/dp/0446556246/">War</a>. The book is highly informative and brilliantly written. War, like the condition of being homeless, is something the public should know a lot more about. Writes Junger:</div><blockquote><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="color: #783f04;">War is a lot of things and it's useless to pretend that exciting isn't one of them. It's insanely exciting. The machinery of war and the sound it makes and the urgency of its use and the consequences of almost everything about it are the most exciting things anyone engaged in war will ever know. Soldiers discuss that fact with each other and eventually with their chaplains and their shrinks and maybe even their spouses, but the public will never hear about it. It's just not something that many people want acknowledged. War is supposed to feel bad because undeniably bad things happen in it, but for a nineteen-year-old at the working end of a .50 cal during a firefight that everryone comes out of okay, war is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of. In some ways twenty minutes of combat is more life than you could scrape together in a lifetime of doing something else. Combat isn't where you might die — though that does happen — it's where you find out whether you get to keep on living. Don't underestimate the power of that revelation. Don't underestimate the things young men will wager in order to play that game one more time.</span></div></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-35413765754523597652010-08-04T08:55:00.000-07:002010-08-04T08:55:50.234-07:00The banality of evil<blockquote>Someone who sees no resemblance between himself and his enemy, who believes that all the evil is in the other and none in himself, is tragically destined to resemble his enemy. But someone who, recognising evil in himself, discovers that he is like his enemy is truly different. By refusing to see the resemblance, we reinforce it; by admitting it we diminish it. The more I think I’m different, the more I am the same; the more I think I’m the same, the more I’m different … .</blockquote><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=2XvuHA9qTsEC&pg=PA200&dq=%22someone+who,+recognizing+evil+in+himself,+discovers+that+he%22&hl=en&ei=F4dZTN37BeWwnAegk5C3CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22someone%20who%2C%20recognizing%20evil%20in%20himself%2C%20discovers%20that%20he%22&f=false">From <em>Facing the Extreme: Moral life in the concentration camps</em></a>, by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzvetan_Todorov">Tzvetan Todorov</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-87720968998977321372010-06-14T11:30:00.000-07:002010-06-14T15:02:20.070-07:00Move afoot to fire-up the Blogisattva Awards<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/R4jWWwODtOI/AAAAAAAAAMo/W_GAgqQRilg/S184/blogisattva1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" qu="true" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/R4jWWwODtOI/AAAAAAAAAMo/W_GAgqQRilg/S184/blogisattva1.jpg" /></a></div>An interesting development this morning: Buddhobloggers Kyle Lovett [of <a href="http://www.thereformedbuddhist.com/">The Reformed Buddhist</a> and <a href="http://progressivebuddhism.blogspot.com/">Progressive Buddhism</a> fame] and Nate DeMontigny [of <a href="http://preciousmetal.wordpress.com/">Precious Metal: the blog</a> fame] expressed an interest in getting the Blogisattva Awards going again.<br />
<br />
<div>I said Hooray!, of course. And already things are churning.</div><br />
<div>Nate has put up a post at the Blogisattva blogsite, "<a href="http://blogisattva.blogspot.com/2010/06/blogisattva-is-making-comeback.html">Blogisattva is making a comeback!</a>" And has updated the top-of-the-sidebar scrolling marquee to read: </div><blockquote>The Blogisattva Awards are on<br />
the way back.<br />
<br />
We are in the process of<br />
selecting an independent <br />
committee to judge and award<br />
the submissions.<br />
<br />
<div>Categories will be announced</div>soon and then the nomination<br />
process will begin!</blockquote>The Blogisattvas had been awarded early in the years 2006, 2007 and 2008 to honor Buddhism blogging for the prior calendar years.<br />
<br />
Top winners from the past:<br />
<br />
Blog of the Year, Svaha!<br />
<ul><li>2006 <strong><a href="http://zenundertheskin.typepad.com/">Zen Under the Skin</a></strong></li>
<li>2007 <strong><a href="http://integral-options.blogspot.com/">Integral Options Cafe</a></strong></li>
<li>2008 <strong><a href="http://ohenrosan.blogspot.com/">One foot in front of the other</a></strong></li>
</ul>Blogpost of the Year<br />
<ul><li>2006 "Katrina's Charities"; <strong>Wonderings on the Way</strong>; Jeb</li>
<li>2007 "<a href="http://www.thisisthis.org/2006/05/12/vesak-and-the-art-of-changing-tyres/">Vesak and the Art of Changing Tyres</a>"; <strong>This is This</strong>; Cliff Jones</li>
<li>2008 "<a href="http://www.tricycle.com/node/31339">Addressing Comments from the Meditation Thread</a>"; <strong>Tricycle Blogs Jeff Wilson</strong>; Jeff Wilson</li>
</ul>The Wordsmithing Award<br />
<ul><li>2006 F Kwan; <strong>foot before foot: the photoblog</strong></li>
<li>2007 Will Buckingham; <strong><a href="http://www.thinkbuddha.org/">thinkBuddha</a></strong> and <strong><a href="http://www.willbuckingham.com/blog">willbuckingham.com blog</a></strong></li>
<li>2008 Ed Brickell; <strong>Bad Buddha</strong> [6/14/10: Ed now blogs <a href="http://runwithmu.com/"><strong>Run with Mu</strong></a>]</li>
</ul>It will be great to see the awards revived, with new blood and new ideas brought forward. You go, guys!<br />
<br />
BTW, a discussion is going on about reviving the awards in a Tricycle group, "<a href="http://community.tricycle.com/forum/topics/resurrect-the-blogisattvas?groupUrl=buddhistblogosphere&id=2758483%3ATopic%3A184329&groupId=2758483%3AGroup%3A181555&page=2#comments">Resurrect the Blogisattvas?</a>"<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-69602351826671792382010-05-15T11:09:00.000-07:002010-05-15T11:09:49.419-07:00Two civil lawsuitsAn <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/2010/05/14/2749834/nursing-home-ordered-to-pay-28.html">article in the Bee today</a> is of some interest to me, since there are two civil suits that I am aware of that have many identical elements.<br />
<br />
The alike elements are these:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>A civil suit was filed for wrongful death, filed by the decedent's daughter. </li>
<li>The plaintiff attorney is Ed Dudensing.</li>
<li>The defendent is Horizon West Healthcare.</li>
<li>The decedent is an old woman with dementia who cracked a bone and died from an infection she incurred while staying at a facility run by the defendent.</li>
</ul>Differences in the two suits include these:<br />
<br />
<strong>Suit #1</strong> went to trial and a jury awarded the daughter $28 million, which, according to the <em>Bee</em> article, is "the largest personal injury award in [Sacramento] County history."<br />
<strong>Suit #2</strong> is in litigation.<br />
<br />
<strong>Suit #1</strong> The deceased woman is Frances Tanner and the daughter is Elizabeth Pao. (Two people I'd never heard of.)<br />
<strong>Suit #2</strong> The deceased woman is my mother Mary Criner and the daughter is my sociopathic sister Carol Armstrong. (Two people I know best in the world.)<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-59837191058044335972010-01-20T17:06:00.000-08:002010-04-01T08:35:36.301-07:00HowlKiped <a href="http://theworsthorse.com/2010/01/video-howl-comes-to-the-big-screen-but-first-a-bit-of-it-on-yours/">from theworsthorse</a>: Clips from "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049402/">Howl</a>," opening at the <a href="http://festival.sundance.org/2010/">Sundance Film Festival</a>, tomorrow.<br />
<br />
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1vvzyPMa82I&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1vvzyPMa82I&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-64014821642885745432009-08-29T15:45:00.000-07:002009-10-05T11:49:01.373-07:00Compassion for oneself<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SpmtkygOUJI/AAAAAAAAA9w/wbzLxWQBU-I/s1600-h/self+compassion.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 210px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 248px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375518477787222162" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SpmtkygOUJI/AAAAAAAAA9w/wbzLxWQBU-I/s320/self+compassion.jpg" /></a>The issue of self-directed compassion has been coming up in a variety of ways lately -- in my reading [in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583919821?ie=UTF8&tag=zenunboundbookst&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1583919821">Compassion: Conceptualisations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy</a><img style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; MARGIN: 0px; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=zenunboundbookst&l=as2&o=1&a=1583919821" width="1" height="1" /> and in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1433803402?ie=UTF8&tag=zenunboundbookst&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1433803402">Transcending Self-Interest: Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego</a><img style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; MARGIN: 0px; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=zenunboundbookst&l=as2&o=1&a=1433803402" width="1" height="1" />]; in sermons at the mission; and in discussion at Loaves & Fishes.<br />
<br />
As a longtime believer in ego reduction, I come at this with bias <em>against</em> being soothing toward oneself [or, as I term it, "the dastardly deed of giving yourself a pass for doing a bunch of stupid shit].<br />
<br />
But studies this century on ego have changed the terminology and a sense of what the ego might be and what stable egos might be like. Now, perhaps, ego at its "best," is either quiet or silent, and that it might be good, for some, if not all, to direct compassion toward oneself.<div align="center"><strong>Input from the mission</strong></div><br />
While matters of outwardly-directed love and compassion come up rarely at the mission [either in the milieu of Homeless World or in the preachers' sermons], they do come up in rather weird ways. One usually-hate-mongering preacher said something I've been mulling over: "God doesn't love you (and everyone else, equally) because of who YOU are, but because of who HE is." The line got hardy approval from the congregants. [Congregants DO hear of how they are much loved, but not about how they should themselves love.]<br />
<br />
My immediate reaction was <em>"What the hell!? If He doesn't love us for who WE are, individually, but wholly because He is who He is, then He must love us conceptually, and not for ourselves. And, truly, one can only love a being for his/her unique constituent of qualities; otherwise, it ain't love."</em><br />
<br />
[But, then, God being God, knowing us from the inside, as the Christian preachers claim, He may ONLY be able to know us as particular persons and NOT as conceptions. He knows the numbers of hairs on the head of each of us, it says in the Bible (<a href="http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=Matthew+10:30&version=9">Matthew 10:30</a> & <a href="http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=Luke+12:7&version=9">Luke 12:7</a>.)]<br />
<br />
Later thoughts of mine on the matter were even less damning: We can evoke love of others. We have that power. We can direct ourselves toward loving our enemies (as Jesus famously instructed), for example. At least we might if they are not so narcissistic that they are constantly game-playing. [I don't think a mentally healthy person can love someone whose authentic self is fully shielded. "There's no there there," as is said by psychiatrists about sociopaths.] Still, I insist loving the particular person is necessary for it to be <em>love</em>; people (as opposed to God) cannot love someone conceptially.<br />
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From what I understand, when Jesus said "love thy neighbor as thyself," one interpretation is that he meant "love they neighbor <em>instead of</em> thyself." For him to have meant "love thy neighbor in the same manner as one loves thyself" -- which is the usual interpretation -- presents curious problems. For one thing, we don't know ourself in the same way we know others. While we may <em>think</em> of ourself in the third-person, we never <em>experience</em> ourself in the third-person. Our relationship with ourself is radically different than the relationship we have with others. We can't bestow love to ourself in the same way we can to others; the two "loves" are wholly, radically, spectacularly different beasts.<br />
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It's a more than a little like comparing <em>making love</em> to <em>masturbation</em>. These are greatly different experiences because you can't be "the other" to yourself.<br />
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To my way of seeing things, <em>compassion</em> necessarily comprises an element of ignorance that we don't have about ourself. [While we are ignorant about things relating to ourself, when we are compassionate toward ourself, the same "ourself" that is bestowing the compassion is receiving the compassion, thus it is fully informed. Compassion we give to ourself is directly, overtly twisting what we immediately beforehand had seen as the truth.<br />
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Compassion toward another is given from a different viewpoint, different worldview and from a base of different data about the situation than what "the other" is going by. Compassion, because of its otherness, is <em>enlarging</em>. Compassion you direct at yourself is skewing and screwy and very much NOT a second opinion, from another perspective.<div align="center"><strong>Beyond the self</strong></div><br />
In their paper "Beyond the Individualistic Self" by Drs. Korsgaard and Meglino in <em>Transcending Self-Interest</em>, the writers/researchers tell us that those who attempt to be both self-regarding and other-regarding end up with conflicted decisions and end up choosing self over other. Thus, only those who are "Other Oriented" benefit from full-throttle compassion.<table border="1" width="40%" align="right"><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2" colspan="2"></td><td colspan="2"><p align="center">Other-Interest</p></td></tr><tr><td><p align="center">Low</p></td><td><p align="center">High</p></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2"><p align="center">Self-Interest</p></td><td><p align="center">Low</></p><td style="color:#aaaaaa;"><p align="center">Mindlessness <span style="color:#ff0000;">Thanatos</span></p></td><td style="COLOR: #aaaaaa"><p align="center">Other Orientation <span style="color:#ff0000;">Quiet Ego</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><p align="center">High</p></td><td style="color:#aaaaaa;"><p align="center">Rational Self-Interest <span style="color:#ff0000;">Noisy Ego</span></p></td><td color="#aaaaaa"><p align="center">Collective Rationality <span style="color:#ff0000;">Phobos</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><br />
In the chart at right, you can see the four types of egos that result from different combinations of high or low interest in self or others.<br />
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<strong>Mindlessness</strong> is a category that includes individuals who are low in both self-and other-interest. This mode of behavior is posited to involve functioning in obedience to commonsense rules. Behavior has been documented extensively in research on automaticity [Bargh & Chartrand: "<a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/54/7/462/">The unbearable automaticity of being</a>."] and mindlessness [<a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/archives/16/mindlessness.html">Ellen Langer on Mindlessness</a>, or, see her 1989 book <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Ellen-J-Langer/dp/0201523418/">Mindfulness</a></em>].<br />
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<strong>Rational Self-Interest</strong> [High in self-interest; Low in other-interest] is egoism in its most-rigorous form (i.e., the "noisy" ego). Individuals pursue only self-serving goals. This type of reasoning underlies classical economics [unfettered capitalism!] and value expectancy models of attitudes and motivation [Ajzen: "<a href="http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.27">Nature and operation of attitudes</a>"].<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>Collective Rationality</strong> [High in both self- and other-interest] Individuals engage in rational judgment. While <em>trying</em> to maximize outcomes for both self and others, self-oriented goals triumph according to studies [That is, a self-serving bias wins out [Bazerman et al:. "<a href="http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2002/11/why-good-accountants-do-bad-audits/ar/1">Why good accountants do bad audits</a>," in <em>Harvard Business Review</em>.] [Also, see DeDreu et al: "<a href="http://www.blogger.com/Motivated%20information%20processing,%20strategic%20choice,%20and%20the%20quality%20of%20negotiated%20agreement.">Motivated information processing, strategic choice, and the quality of negotiated agreement</a>."]<br />
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<strong>Other Orientation</strong> [Low in self-interest; High in other-interest] Individuals are focused on benefitting others and apply principles or norms of behavior to meet these goals, obviating the need to consider personal consequences. [The "other" may involve a pair or group within which the self is subsumed.] This is the 'extreme' in quieting the ego. [See Meglino & Korsgaard "<a href="http://jom.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/33/1/57">The Role of Other Orientation in Reactions to Job Characteristics</a>" in the <em>Journal of Management</em>.]<br />
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But another view comes from Dr. Kristin Neff [in her Transcending Self-Interest paper "Self-Compassion: Moving Beyond the Pitfalls of a Separate Self-Concept" and from Dr. Paul Gilbert, editor of <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Compassion-Conceptualisations-Research-Use-Psychotherapy/dp/1583919821/">Compassion: Conceptualisations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy</a></em>.<br />
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Writes Neff, "Self-compassion can be thought of as a type of openheartedness in which the boundaries between self and other are softened -- all human beings are worthy of compassion, the self included. In this way, self-compassion represents a quiet ego, because one's experience is not strongly filtered through the lens of a separate self."<br />
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I'm not sure I understand Neff, nor that she makes a good case for self-compassion, generally, but in case histories in Paul Gilbert's book I can see how some individuals are aided in overcoming trauma by soothing themselves with inward-directed compassion. For most of us, though, I have to think that loving ourselves is necessarily non-compassionate because of the self-other conflict that ensues.<br />
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At her website, <a href="http://www.self-compassion.org/what_self_compassion_is_not.html">Self Compassion</a>, Dr. Neff writes, "When individuals feel self-pity, they become immersed in their own problems and forget that others have similar problems. They ignore their interconnections with others, and instead feel that they are the only ones in the world who are suffering. Self-pity tends to emphasize egocentric feelings of separation from others and exaggerate the extent of personal suffering. Self-compassion, on the other hand, allows one to see the related experiences of self and other without these feelings of isolation and disconnection."<br />
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Well, maybe so. Certainly Dr. Neff has <a href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/neffk/pubs/listofpublications.htm">researched the matter extensively</a>. But I cannot see that people applying what they want to be compassion toward themselves doesn't become, really, self pity. One's relationship with oneself is, necessarily, self-oriented so only self pity occurs when one feels sorry for his- or her-self. Feeling sorry for others is the 'road in' for having compassion for others. Feeling sorry for oneself always, it seems to me, becomes self pity.<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-59428218788174068422009-08-10T16:37:00.000-07:002009-08-11T12:02:16.070-07:00Homeless Tom honored by Progressive Buddhism blog and Four Honest Scrappy blogsThis blog was honored in a blogpost two days ago, "<a href="http://progressivebuddhism.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-twelve-best-buddhist-blogs-by.html">My Twelve</a>," in the much esteemed <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Progressive Buddhism</span></strong> blog as one of the "best Buddhist blogs by individual practitioners." Thanks to Kyle Lovett for his very kind commendation.<br /><br />With only a couple exceptions [ones I was unaware of], the blogs Kyle cites are excellent Buddhism blogs I have long read and admired. Those blogs I was unaware of are ones <em>I am now aware of</em>, have read them, seen they are mighty fine, and added them to my reader.<br /><br />Of <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Homeless Tom</span></strong> [the blog], Kyle wrote,<blockquote>Tom Armstrong is one of the most strong willed men I know. He has been through a lot of hardship in his life and he still has managed to be a powerful voice for all Buddhist bloggers with his annual administration of the <a href="http://blogisattva.blogspot.com/">Blogisattva</a> awards and his Zen Unbound project. He also is a tireless advocate for the homeless and still finds time to write some very insightful and compelling stuff. He says what he thinks, and doesn't back down from talking about any subject.</blockquote>Kyle also commended the individual blogs of several of his co-contributors to the Progressive Buddhism group blog. Again, these are some of the outstanding Buddhism blogs in the Buddhoblogosphere.<br /><br />----<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SoBrJQvwiWI/AAAAAAAAA9A/lm3my_tNiqE/s1600-h/honest_scrap1-300x290.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 193px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368408562683906402" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SoBrJQvwiWI/AAAAAAAAA9A/lm3my_tNiqE/s200/honest_scrap1-300x290.jpg" /></a>I am embarrassed to say that I had not acknowledged til now [and mostly didn't know about] kudos this blog has received from other Buddhobloggers in the expansive "Honest Scrap" awards. "Honest Scrap" winners are tasked with bragging about receiving the award, naming seven blogs they find to be awesome and inspiring and then listing ten honest things about themselves.<br /><br />The magnificent and kind TMcG, blogger of <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Full Contact Enlightenment </span></strong>[formerly <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">TMcG buddhablog</span></strong> ], wrote in her blogpost "<a href="http://fullcontactenlightenment.com/2009/05/honest-scraps-sounds-tasty/">Honest Scraps being handed out...</a>" of May 23, 2009, <blockquote>I’ve been reading Tom’s blogpost from the days of <a href="http://zenunbound.blogspot.com/">Zen Unbound</a> and his journey on the path has been one which gives a strong first person account of the voice of homelessness. He’s whip smart, creative and a fresh voice and I believe he needs to get a book deal - STAT. I learn so much from him.</blockquote>NellaLou of <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">enlightenment ward</span></strong> was magnanimous in her Honest Scrap blogpost of April 30, 2009, "<a href="http://enlightenmentward.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/yikes-honest-scraps-makes-a-visit-here/">Yikes! Honest Scraps Makes a Visit Here</a>," writing about <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Homeless Tom</span></strong> [the blog],<br /><blockquote>I have followed this blog since it’s inception and often been challenged by Tom’s astute viewpoint. I don’t always agree but I always pay attention here.</blockquote><strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Monkey Mind</span></strong> blogger [and minister at Rhode Island's largest UU Church], James Ford, was generous in his May 7, 2009 post "<a href="http://monkeymindonline.blogspot.com/2009/05/honest-scrap-comes-to-monkey-mind.html">Honest Scrap Comes to Monkey Mind</a>":<br /><blockquote><u>Homeless Tom</u> is Tom Armstrong's project. Tom is a Buddhist thinker and Dharma bum who is currently homeless in Sacramento. He is a first rate writer and a very interesting thinker.</blockquote>Nathan, who has a fondness of squirrels and is an Honest Scrap winner for his blog <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Dangerous Harvests</span></strong>, wrote kind words about <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Homeless Tom</span></strong> [the blog and the fellow] in his May 13, 2009, blogpost "<a href="http://dangerousharvests.blogspot.com/2009/05/blogosphere-awards.html">Blogosphere Awards</a>":<br /><blockquote><a href="http://homelesstom.blogspot.com/">http://homelesstom.blogspot.com/</a> is such an eclectic experience. This guy writes about so many things, from homelessness in Sacramento to zen, to Christianity, even the Talking Heads.</blockquote>I am grateful to Kyle of <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Progressive Buddhism</span></strong>, TMcG of <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Full Contact Enlightenment</span></strong>, NellaLou of <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">enlightenment ward</span></strong>, James Ford of <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Monkey Mind</span></strong> and Nathan of <strong><span style="color:#ff6600;">Dangerous Harvests</span></strong> – nice and talented people, each, who ride herd on wonderful blogs. Tomorrow, or in a day or two, I will properly meet my Honest Scrap obligations. I bow.<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-81014559162746194492009-08-05T16:25:00.000-07:002010-12-15T10:16:45.049-08:00On Jail, part I: Warehousing the Rabble<table align="right"><tbody>
<tr><td><iframe style="WIDTH: 120px; HEIGHT: 240px" marginheight="0" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=zenunboundbookst&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0520060326&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no"></iframe></td></tr>
</tbody></table>The following is from the beginning of John Irwin's classic study of jail existence, <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2947.php">The Jail</a>, published in 1986 and still considered relevant and keenly insightful. The blockquote is a rather long chunk of text – sorry 'bout that – but I believe worthy of your attention.<blockquote><span style="color:#663333;">In a legal sense, the jail is the point of entry into the criminal justice system. It is the place where arrested persons are booked and where they are held for their court appearances if they cannot arrange bail. It is also the city or country detention facility for persons serving misdemeanor sentences, which in most states cannot exceed one year. The prison, on the other hand, is a state or federal institution that holds persons serving felony sentences, which generally run to more than one year.<br />
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The public impression is that the jail holds a collection of dangerous criminals. But familiarity and close inspection reveal that <span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>the jail holds only a very few persons who fit the popular conception of a criminal</strong></span> – a predator who seriously threatens the lives and property of ordinary citizens. In fact, the great majority of the persons arrested and held in jail belong to a different social category. Some students of the jail have politely referred to them as the poor: <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">"American jails operate primarily as catchall asylums for poor people."</span></strong> Some have added other correlates of poverty: "With few exceptions, the prisoners are poor, under-educated, unemployed, and they belong to minority groups." Some use more imaginative and sociologically suggestive labels, such as "social refuse" or "social junk." Political radicals sometimes use "lumpen proletariat" and argue over whether its members are capable of participating in the class struggle. <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Some citizens refer to persons in this category as "street people,"</span></strong> implying an excessive and improper public presence. others apply such labels as "riffraff," "social trash," or "dregs," which suggest lack of social worth and moral depravity. And many police officers, deputies, and other persons who are familiar with the jail population use more crudely derogatory labels, such as "assholes" and dirt balls."<br />
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In my own research, I found that beyond poverty and its correlates – under- education, unemployment, and minority status – <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">jail prisoners share two essential characteristics; detachment and disrepute</span></strong>. They are detached because they are not well integrated into conventional society, they are not members of conventional social organizations, they have few ties to conventional social networks, and they are carriers of unconventional values and beliefs. They are disreputable because they are <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">perceived as irksome, offensive, threatening, capable of arousal</span></strong>, even protorevolutionary. In this book I shall refer to them as the rabble, meaning the "disorganized" and "disorderly," the "<strong><span style="font-size:130%;">lowest class of people</span></strong>."<br />
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I found that it is these two features – detachment and disrepute – that lead the police to watch and arrest the rabble so frequently, regardless of whether or not they are engaged in crime, or at least in serious crime. (Most of the rabble commit petty crimes, such as drinking on the street, and are usually vulnerable to arrest.)<br />
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These findings suggest that <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">the basic purpose of the jail differs radically from the purpose ascribed to it by government officials and academicians. It is this: the jail was invented, and continues to be operated, in order to manage society's rabble.</span></strong> Society's impulse to manage the rabble has many sources, but the subjectively perceived "offensiveness" of the rabble is at least as important as any real threat it poses to society.</span></blockquote>From my experience – a year in Homeless World Sacramento and forty days in Sacramento county jails – I believe Irwin is right, except that the radical fringe has withered and there are no longer protorevolutionaries in our midst.<br />
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I do believe, whether it is overt or blithering, a lot of effort is made in Sacramento to hide or impair the homeless in jails and in VOA's terrible Winter Shelter (an extra-legal jail) that violates people's freedom and keeps good people from re-entering polite society. It is a tragedy; something straight out of Chuck Dickens and Vic Hugo. [<em>Oliver Twist</em> and <em>Les Miserables</em>]<br />
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It is all especially sad because leaders in our homeless-help organizations are participants [albeit unwitting, I hope] in keeping the underclass corralled and under thumb and eerily tranquilized.<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-53111670349531936062009-08-04T11:07:00.000-07:002009-08-04T14:31:21.634-07:00Homeless Lit: The Scarlet Letter<table align="right"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SnNnemEOfHI/AAAAAAAAA8g/dg20280K-cQ/s1600-h/the_scarlet_letter.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364745356440403058" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 10px; WIDTH: 183px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SnNnemEOfHI/AAAAAAAAA8g/dg20280K-cQ/s320/the_scarlet_letter.jpg" border="0" /></a></td><tr><td width="10"></td><br /><td valign="top" width="183"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 1.2em;font-size:78%;color:#993300;" >Title page, first edition of <em>The Scarlet Letter</em>, 1850.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><blockquote><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 1.2em;font-size:78%;color:#666666;">This is the third in an ongoing series of posts looking at homelessness in literature. Prior posts in this series: <em><a href="http://homelesstom.blogspot.com/2009/01/homeless-lit-cannery-row.html">Cannery Row</a></em> [1/30/09] and <em><a href="http://homelesstom.blogspot.com/2009/03/homeless-lit-tenants-of-moonbloom.html">The Tenants of Moonbloom</a></em> [3/18/09]</span></blockquote><p>In an NPR program last year about Hester Prynne, the heroine of <em>The Scarlet Letter</em>, <a href="http://scarletletter11.wikispaces.com/NPR+Transcript">one of the co-hosts commented</a>, "one of the first things you learn about Hester Prynne is that she is drop-dead gorgeous."</p><p>Indeed and how! And it's far NOT a trivial factor at understanding the book and the journey Hester has in it. <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext92/scrlt13.txt">From the book's text</a>:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;color:#663333;">The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too...</span></blockquote><p>Also of significant importance in understanding this brave woman of literature is that from the beginning of the book she suffers <strong>a double whammy of homelessness</strong>. She was sent away from her homeland, England, to the wooded outland of a new continent, America, to a newly birthed town called Boston. Her husband, who was to follow her there, is presumed lost at sea since he had not arrived in over two-years' time. And, she is in jail with no abode to return to. As if she doesn't have enough problems, a babe is in her arms and the letter "A" is embroidered in scarlet on a patch at her bosom, an indicator of sin of some sort that readers of the book are left to guess at. <em>Adultery</em>, you think? </p><p>We are told, in the book's fifth chapter, that upon release from jail, Boston's leaders allow Hester use of an abandoned "small thatched cottage" on the outskirts of the community. From the text:</p><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;color:#663333;">In this little lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the licence of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot.</span></blockquote>Thus Hester, in fiction <em>alas</em>, became America's first known beneficiary of transitional housing.<br /><br />Though it most readily seems <em>the scarlet sin</em> had made her at outlier, it was <em>the homeless "sin"</em> that best fits the depiction of her alienation from the whole of the Puritan society where she was. Most Homeless World Sacramento folk will feel the sting of the words that follow, from the text: <blockquote><span style="color:#663333;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; nor, should it succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in the universal heart.</span></span></blockquote>BUT, Hester is a very, very resourceful homeless person that all of us aware of the homeless condition have to applaud! First off, despite her sad circumstance, she is a very very good mother to her young daughter, Pearl. And Pearl is this wild and intelligent child that is beguiling and a delight. The Hester-Pearl relationship is one of great benefit to each, as we would hope for any mother-child relationship.<br /><br />Early in the book, clergymen consider taking Pearl from her disgraced mother for the benefit of the child. Somewhat ironically, it is Arthur Dimmesdale, the child's secret father, who voices the Puritan wisdom of why mother and child should be kept together such that they <em>can</em> stay together and <em>do</em> stay together. Wise words, these! Every homeless-family agency in Sacramento should mark these words, which follow (from the text): <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;color:#663333;">"God gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements--both seemingly so peculiar--which no other mortal being can possess.<br /><br />... [Hester] recognises, believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought in the existence of that child. And may she feel, too--what, methinks, is the very truth--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her! Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman, that she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow, confided to her care--to be trained up by her to righteousness, to remind her, at every moment, of her fall, but yet to teach her, as if it were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will bring its parents thither! Herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as Providence hath seen fit to place them!"</span></blockquote>Of course, Buddhist heathen that I am I don't personally buy in to the Providence idea, but it is interesting and likely sound Christian reasoning.<br /><br />To Hester's great credit she quickly gets to work laboring to fund the effort to take care of herself and her treasured Pearl. She begins a cottage industry, becoming a successful entrepreneur at her art, needlecraft. From the text: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;color:#663333;">By degrees, not very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her needle-work was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the dead.</span></blockquote>Hester becomes more and more of a success as a person such that she makes major contributions to other poor people in the Boston community. Poor as she is, she is considerate and compassionate toward others. It comes to pass that the staunch Puritan society comes to appreciate Hester's many able aspects and basic good character. <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;color:#663333;">Hester never put forward even the humblest title to share in the world's privileges--further than to breathe the common air and earn daily bread for little Pearl and herself by the faithful labour of her hands--she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty, even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's robe. None so self-devoted as Hester when pestilence stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. <span style="font-size:100%;"><strong>She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble</strong></span>, as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creature. There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's bard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such emergencies <span style="font-size:100%;"><strong>Hester's nature showed itself warm and rich--a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand</strong></span>, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. <span style="font-size:100%;"><strong>She was self-ordained a Sister of Mercy</strong></span>, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her – <span style="font-size:100%;"><strong>so much power to do, and power to sympathise</strong></span> – that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Abel, so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.</span></blockquote>There is much much more to the novel -- about the men in Hester's life and the moral of the tale. And things come to a quick resolution of sorts that is somewhat dissatisfying. But all that is not our concern here. As a homeless person, Hester had spunk! She boldly took on the challenges in the unfair predicament she was in and always always forged forward, finally making a better life for herself while facing up to her responsibilities as a parent and as a compassionate member of a community.<br /><br />Right on, Hester!<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-86549517524999071172009-07-30T13:55:00.001-07:002009-08-03T15:40:06.765-07:00I'm baaaaack!Howdy, y'all. Just a word to let you know I have returned from the hoosegow and am now, again on patrol of the homeless-, sacramento-, and buddho-blogospheres – to the extent the probation departmento of the Sacramento justice system allows.<br /><br />The county jail facility in the city of Elk Grove where I've been for the past 32 days was interesting. I hope to blog about it soon. My biggest complains are that the dorm was noisy as hell much of the time which was nerve rattling and cognitively impairing; that cops/guards were excessively meanspirited, though I recognize they have a tough job, sometimes; and that the <em>culture</em> of black twentysomethings seems to be in particularly bad shape. Among many positive surprizes: My fellow inmates [and certainly including those who were black twentysomethings] were overwhelmingly interesting and sociable people; there were many acts of kindness coming from my brother inmates; and the level of chess playing was very advanced.<br /><br />One thing I come away from my experience not understanding is the purpose of jail. I come away wondering what theories there are 'out there' on what jail is supposed to achieve.<br /><br />Sure, basically it should be <em>punishment</em>. Is it proper, then, for inmates with the means to be able to buy items from the commissary, and have phone use, totalling more than $600/month, whereas poor inmates must make do with <em>welfare</em>, which consists of small quantities of basic toiletries, two stamped envelopes, two sheets of paper and a stubby pencil? Shouldn't punishment be wholly a function of time served and be equal, as can be otherwise, comparing one inmate with another?<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-25363392686556531732009-06-29T12:01:00.000-07:002009-06-29T12:06:08.406-07:006/29 Bleak House update<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SYs3-ekfqMI/AAAAAAAAArw/JPJSiJ6MMWk/s320/bleak_house3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; width: 199px; height: 180px;" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SYs3-ekfqMI/AAAAAAAAArw/JPJSiJ6MMWk/s320/bleak_house3.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);font-size:85%;" >[FYI, Bleak House is the name of a Charles Dickens novel about a very long running legal dispute. I've snagged the title for my own very long running legal imbroglio.]</span><br /><br />I'm scheduled to go to jail on Monday, today. Good friend Steve Curless has kindly offer to take me to <a href="http://www.sacsheriff.com/organization/court_&_correctional_services/RCCC/index.cfm">Rio Consumnes Correctional Center</a>.<br /><br />You can click the link below to see the case record.<br /><br />At the bottom of the record, you can see the sentence: 60 days; three years formal probation. And then there's what you don't see: Lots and lots of fees and charges. The sentence or trial is likely to be appealed.<br /><a href="https://services.saccourt.com/indexsearchnew/CaseNumberList.aspx?SearchValues=ARMSTRONG,THOMAS,EDWARD,4160766">https://services.saccourt.com/indexsearchnew/CaseNumberList.aspx?SearchValues=ARMSTRONG,THOMAS,EDWARD,4160766</a><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"><strong>Update:</strong> I wasn't accepted into The Sheriff's Work Project. I was told that this was because I was living at the Union Gospel Mission. I was given a time to report at the <a href="http://www.sacsheriff.com/organization/court_&_correctional_services/RCCC/index.cfm">Rio Consumnes Correctional Center</a>: 6/29 @ 2pm. I will serve for 32 days only, so long as I'm not cited for causing any problems. The reduction in time comes from eight days served when I was initially picked up on a warrent last July, before being released on my own recognizance. And a 20-day reduction, which is the standard 1/3rd-time reduced for good behavior.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 51);"></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 51);">To send me mail [after July 1 and before July 20], you should use this address:</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><blockquote><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Thomas Edward Armstrong, Xref 4160766</span><br />Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center<br />12500 Bruceville Road<br />Elk Grove, CA 95757</p><p></p></blockquote>Remember, I'm only going to be there for thirty-two days, so I won't really need anything. And, not to worry, anybody, I will certainly be OK -- much as I am OK in Homeless World. If you write me, kindly send paper and a stamped return envelope so that I can write you back. <a href="http://www.sacsheriff.com/organization/court_&_correctional_services/RCCC/inmate_mail.cfm">Here's info on what the jail will allow inmates to receive</a>.<br /><br />I'll be offline until ~August 1. Til then, y'all.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-64518811927334157532009-06-25T12:15:00.000-07:002009-06-25T12:29:55.848-07:00Happiness is virtue itself<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SkPQJz0bApI/AAAAAAAAA8Y/3mFwsThlo_M/s1600-h/rightpath.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5351349649193763474" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 235px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SkPQJz0bApI/AAAAAAAAA8Y/3mFwsThlo_M/s320/rightpath.bmp" border="0" /></a><div>I thank my always-great <a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-8637-Sacramento-Spirituality-Examiner">friend Steve Curless</a> for pointing out a <a href="http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2009/06/david-loy-rethinking-karma.html">blogpost in Bill Harryman's splendid Integral Options Cafe</a> which discusses a modern view of karma via an article by the excellent David Loy that was <a href="http://www.tricycle.com/columns/my-view-rethinking-karma">in <em>Tricycle: The Buddhist Review</em></a>.<br /><br />I've snagged a snip from the article that greatly appeals to me, that is both central to the article and relates to the sermon by Jimmy Roughton last night at the mission.<br /><blockquote>As Spinoza expressed it, happiness is not the reward for virtue; happiness is virtue itself. We are punished not <em>for</em> our "sins" but <em>by </em>them. To become a different kind of person is to experience the world in a different way. When your mind changes, the world changes. And when we respond differently to the world, the world responds differently to us. Insofar as we are actually not separate from the world, our ways of acting in it tend to involve feedback systems that incorporate other people. People not only notice what we do; they notice why we do it. I may fool people sometimes, yet over time, as the intentions behind my deeds become obvious, my character becomes revealed. The more I am motivated by greed, ill will, and delusion, the more I must manipulate the world to get what I want, and consequently the more alienated I feel and the more alienated others feel when they see they have been manipulated. This mutual distrust encourages both sides to manipulate more. On the other side, the more my actions are motivated by generosity, lovingkindness, and the wisdom of interdependence, the more I can relax and open up to the world. The more I feel part of the world and genuinely connected with others, the less I will be inclined to use others, and consequently the more inclined they will be to trust and open up to me. In such ways, transforming my own motivations not only transforms my own life; it also affects those around me, since what I am is not separate from what they are.</blockquote>I love this snip because I think it is certainly true, even as I stumble often in living up to its sentiments.<br /><br />Jimmy Roughton, I think, would agree to the core of it, but it would have to be cast in conservative Christian terms. He would <em>not</em> go for the idea of our being punished not <em>for</em> our "sins" but <em>by </em>them. And I think he would see things as Christians achieving the aims of the idea by separating from the secular world.<br /><br />The whole of the article the snip comes from makes the point that a modern-day understanding of <em>karma</em> can view it not as merit and punishments passed on to a future life, but as the benefits and difficulties we give ourself (and others) near-immediately in our current life.<br /><br />I have more of a <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/">pantheist</a> take on things. I think that we are each "the whole of the reflected moon." Each of us is the complete consciousness package, though we are imperfect in differing ways. Karma is immediately felt in what we do to and do for each other.<br /><br />Neither I nor David Loy sees karma as a means to rebirth. The stumbling block is that there seems to be no mechanism to accommodate it. But unlike Loy, I think that there is a capital-S Self that we all/each are that prevails.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-40491164175472657682009-06-24T11:55:00.000-07:002009-06-24T12:51:37.599-07:00Strange justice<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SRNqvAe2GGI/AAAAAAAAAdo/ie267YE-CIw/s1600-h/scalesOfJustice.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5265669745142012002" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 214px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SRNqvAe2GGI/AAAAAAAAAdo/ie267YE-CIw/s320/scalesOfJustice.gif" border="0" /></a>The <em>Bee</em>'s Marcos Breton always seems to be trying to be as controversial as possible.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sacbee.com/breton/story/1971726.html">Today, he writes</a> that there's nothing skewy about the thief who stole Lance Armstrong's $10,000 bicycle getting a three-year sentence in prison in contrast to Donte Stallworth's 30-day jail term for killing a man while driving drunk.<br /><br />The thief, Lee Monroe Crider, has a rap sheet as long as your arm. NFL-star Stallworth, meantime, is suffering punishment in other ways. Still, I would maintain, the specific punishment meted out by the justice system should be appropriate for the damage and circumstance of the specified crime.<br /><br />AND, the rich and famous should not get different treatment than the poor!<br /><br />Breton cites a fellow columnist expressing sentiments that I like: "So much for our justice system supposedly being blind," wrote Michael Mayo of the <em>South Florida Sun-Sentinel</em>. "So much for the law applying equally to all." <a href="http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/columnists/mayo/blog/2009/06/nfls_stallworth_plea_justice_b.html">Mayo's column of complaint</a> appeared a week ago in "Mayo on the side."<br /><br />Since Stallworth is rich, he was able to placate the family of the man he killed with lucre, something thief Crider couldn't do. Shouldn't this circumstance be fully outside the thinking of what penalty should be imposed on the criminal? Doesn't our criminal justice system break down if paying off the family – which clearly occurred here – is something that is allowed to happen?<br /><br />Let us face it: Stallworth wouldn't have bought off the family if what he was really doing wasn't buying his way around a broken, corroding criminal justice system.<br /><br />Breton thinks it's powerfully significant that...<br /><br /><blockquote>Stallworth has been suspended indefinitely by the NFL. He will serve two years' house arrest after his release. He'll be on probation for eight years. He will lose driving privileges for life. He'll do 1,000 hours of community service, pay court costs and make donations to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.</blockquote>I would maintain that what punishment Stallworth may receive from the NFL <strong>should be disregarded by American justice</strong>. The thief Crider in comparison is worse off, if you think about it, having never had the opportunity to get rich and have the priviledges of being a star.<br /><br />As for house arrest, let us face it: Stallworth's house is the lap of luxury. Crider, in contrast, isn't offered house arrest, even though his house is surely modest, at best.<br /><br />Stallworth, as followers of his story know, doesn't lose much from losing driving privileges since he is used to being chauffeured around and can well afford to pay for that service far into the future. Crider, meantime, probably has trouble raising the scratch for an <a href="http://www.sacrt.com/faresandpasses.stm">RT pass</a>.<br /><br />As for Stallworth's equivalent of six-months' work of community service, that is punishment, of course, but will be a rather painless work project – and will in context be of benefit to him, getting him out of his confined house. And he'll probably be able to take a chauffeured ride to and from the site of his community-service work.<br /><br />Justice in America is not in good shape. The contrast here is evidence of the inequity between what the poor get as opposed to what rich people get in our nation's courts.<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-43498702928087194202009-06-23T12:25:00.000-07:002009-06-27T09:11:00.878-07:00The collision of the finite and the infinite. Or, What Jesus was trying to tell us.<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/Sib7s2lgiUI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/RpJxN0K32xI/s1600-h/Colliding_Trains_3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343234755907324226" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 258px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/Sib7s2lgiUI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/RpJxN0K32xI/s320/Colliding_Trains_3.jpg" border="0" /></a>In my year-plus listening to nightly sermons at the conservative <a href="http://ugmsac.com/">Union Gospel Mission</a>, it is not frequent that I have been so impressed with a sermon that there's been something I've taken to heart.<br /><br />I've been very impressed <em>with the performances</em> of various preachers, including, especially, Jimmy Roughton and Tom Mooney. Both of these fellows are very organized with what they come to tell the congregation. They have <strong>something to say</strong>; they can talk without mumbling and fumbling and ever losing their place. There's an arc to what they say, with their case building and leading to a cascade of important points. Beyond that, Roughton and Mooney are mightily charismatic (and I mean that, fully, in a good way). Each is bursting with talent, bigger than life, and convinces us of his true-hearted belief in his spiel.<br /><br />Pastor Brett Ingells of Vacaville Bible Church, more than anyone, <em>does impress me</em> with messages he delivers that are stirring and have a clarion ring of truth about them. His wonderfully prepared and delivered messages <em>invariably pierce my heart</em>. Other preachers, too, from time to time "get their game on," with sermon messages that are fresh and profound.<br /><br />Still, I haven't been motivated to consider Christianity as saying anything to me to cause me to embrace it, on the whole. Pastor Brett has said some wonderful thinks about being profoundly open hearted and forgiving and loving toward those who are still "of the world." [Almost all the other UGM preachers are quick to use worldly folk as subjects of ridicule and disparagement.]<br /><br />-----<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SkEoQ0R15yI/AAAAAAAAA7g/HiT4CYqekcg/s1600-h/tgatu2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350602101669357346" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 3px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SkEoQ0R15yI/AAAAAAAAA7g/HiT4CYqekcg/s320/tgatu2.jpg" border="0" /></a>Recently I read this scruffy little book I found at the public library, called <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-According-Us-Duncan-Holcomb/dp/0940121387/">The Gospel According to Us: On the Relationship between Jesus and Christianity</a></em> by Duncan Holcomb. In just about every way, the book looks foolish and amateurish. The title is poorly chosen, the cover is silly and the foreword and first section didn't impress me. Then, the second section got me interested. And from the third section on, I was smitten.<br /><br />What the book did for me, someone who was raised outside religion, is it takes a step back and shows me the whole of what Jesus and his disciples were like and what Jesus, if you look at everything he said, was trying to do. It was a means for me to see the forest for the trees; to understand what the picture was when the pixels where assembled.<br /><br />An important first element in the understanding the book gave me was to see Jesus's general connections with everybody. Including, to my surprise, the much-derided [by the mission preachers] Pharisees. Quoting Holcomb in his book:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color:#663333;">Strange to say, Jesus seems to fit in with the Pharisees better than any other group. ... Like the Pharisees, Jesus believes in a loving Father who will bring his children resurrection and eternal life. Like them, he scorns animal sacrifice. Like them, he preaches an ethical code that transcends all other loyalties, even loyalty to country. Like them, he believes that the children of Abraham are sent as a blessing for all peoples of the earth.</span></blockquote>Of course, Jesus and the Pharisees differ with respect to the poor. Quoting Holcolm:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color:#663333;">The "poor" constitute a broad segment of society that includes shepherds and prostitutes, beggars and day laborers, fishermen and itinerant craftsmen and a great variety of the immigrant, homeless, harried, diseased, and disabled. These are people who live precariously, who eat what they earn each day, who in war or famine are the first to die. they're accustomed to insult and injury, plagued by frustration, anxiety and disease, disdained by civil authority, deprived even of the hope or consolation of religious faith. They are the ones the Pharisees call "the rabble, who know nothing of the law," and whom Jesus calls "the poor in spirit." They simply don't have the time nor money nor disposition to observe properly the intricate and resource-consuming practices of orthodox Judaism (Fasting is a sacred act, you see; starving is a profane one.) Most of them can't even read the holy books, the great code of the Jewish faith. The verdict is unhappy but, in the Pharisees' judgment, inevitable: "They are the damned."</span></blockquote>But why does Jesus preach mostly to the poor? And what is his message? It begins with a values system that is markedly different (1) from the Pharisees, (2) that in modern-day America, and (3) that of the UGM preachers. <strong>Jesus has a complete disinterest in money.</strong><br /><br />Quoting Holcolm:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color:#663333;">[Jesus] pays no mind to the financial dealings of his shifty treasurer (coincidentally, another money-obsessed peasant named Judas). He never gives alms to the poor. He refuses to arbitrate between two men contenting an inheritance. He cares not at all that the fine oil a woman uses to cleanse and anoint him was very expensive. When Jesus does mention money he turns its face value upside down: in his stories money isn't treated even as a dependable measure of material value. This of the parable of the talents, of the dishonest steward, of the laborers who worked all day in a vineyard. The monetary values here are all skewed, and our first reaction is that someone has been treated unfairly. How can a servant with one talent be expected to do as much, or even obtain the same interest rate, as someone with five? ...</span></blockquote>Jesus explains his worldview very carefully, says Holcolm. The Pharisees, with their great interest in outward behavior, have things backward. For Jesus, it is what comes <em>out</em> of a man that is his fruit, that either defiles him or is the merit of his being.<br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>What Jesus was trying to tell us.</strong></div><br />Jesus was trying to tell us, explains Holcolm, that we avoid being condemned by not condemning others. "In an astounding conceptual coup, he applies the fundamental principle of law – reciprocity – to the law itself. In this way he attempts to break the vicious circle of sin and condemnation and guilt, once and for all."<br /><br />And yet, to do his 'work,' Jesus most certainly does condemn the condemners, but from a meta-position of rising above the fray and rising above his human self. Kierkegaard, following in Jesus's path, as an imitation of Christ, would, eventually, go from being judiciously non-condemning to being condemning of condemners. [Note that Jesus often sees himself outside himself. Being ego-less, he, on occasion, speaks in the third-person, in "witness mode." It is from here, the meta-position, that he condemns.]<br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>Finite and Infinite</strong></div><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;color:#666666;">"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." ~William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell</span><br /></blockquote><br />Quoting Holcolm:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color:#663333;">Sense tends to suggest that this tangible, visible, tastable, quasi-controllable world is all that really is, or at least all that really matters. There can be no sensory window on the infinite, since "what is flesh is flesh, and what is Spirit is Spirit." (Of God Jesus baldly tells his listeners "His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen.") We're unable to understand or assert our control over an infinite realm, so it's not surprising that we might prefer our own, and simply ignore the "radical" questions, those of spirit and truth. But Jesus wants at least to call to his listeners' attention their act of willful blindness. ...<br /><br />Our spirits yearn to be liberated; our egos suppress the craving. Jesus is condemned by the religious classes for wanting to break out of the dull round of reason, to offer something more than just himself and the apprehensible world, to point beyond himself and it, to teach an infinite message instead of a finite one.</span></blockquote><div align="center"><strong>Re charity</strong></div><br />Jesus never once mentions the material value of the work done for people by charity, the common justification for such efforts offered by Christians and agnostics alike. His unique emphasis is always on the benefit to the <em>giver</em>. We often do lip service to this sentiment, but Jesus actually appears to believe that it's a greater blessing "to give than to receive." So what is the blessing provided by giving to others? How does it enrich us? It's hard to say. There are no miracles where Jesus turns lead into gold. In fact, he never construes physical wealth as a sign of blessing.<br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>What shall I do?</strong></div><br />Near the book's end, Holcomb tells <a href="http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=Luke+10%3A23-37&version1=9">the story in Luke 10</a> when a lawyer asks what he must do to gain eternal life. Jesus is amazingly clever, here, Holcomb avers: beyond what Luke realizes! Jesus turns things around and asks the lawyer, "How do you read it?" The lawyer answers rightly and is praised: "Love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." Then, the lawyer asks "And who is my neighbor?"<br /><br />In response, Jesus tells a story where a Jew is beaten and bloodied and is then aided by a Samaritan. The parable, then, casts the Jewish lawyer as the Samaritan! It is the Jew, in the story who receives the aid. You should love your enemy so thoroughly that you identify with him as yourself!<br /><br />The New Covenant, "Love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself" is, then, a single statement with only one part: You identify with Everyone, and make no distinction between yourself and others. Holcomb calls this New Covenant the "Love Commandment."<br /><br />Writes Holcomb,<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color:#663333;">How should I act? How should I threat those around me? Well, how would I like to be treated? Look within yourself, Jesus suggests, and nowhere else. The Love Commandment thrusts us into a moral universe in which we have to make the determinations of what to do, how to act. No one else, not even God, will do that for us. (Jesus often refuses to do so for the disciples: "Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?") There are no prescriptions provided to us by the Love Commandment, because it's not a traditional standard of law. If fact, it's not really "law" at all, but a way, a sign, a method of relation. Jesus points out what should have been obvious to us from the beginning -- that a moral code can make sense only within the context of our relation to one another. He tells people to act in accordance with the central human dynamic composed of Self and Other, I and Thou. Treat others based on how you want to be treated. Love others as much as you love yourself.</span></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1969281918175291060.post-45465311125082603532009-06-18T10:45:00.000-07:002009-06-23T17:39:07.630-07:00Another update from Bleak House<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SYs3-ekfqMI/AAAAAAAAArw/JPJSiJ6MMWk/s320/bleak_house3.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 199px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 180px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_F5dfgbyaCJk/SYs3-ekfqMI/AAAAAAAAArw/JPJSiJ6MMWk/s320/bleak_house3.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;color:#999999;">[FYI, Bleak House is the name of a Charles Dickens novel about a very long running legal dispute. I've snagged the title for my own very long running legal imbroglio.]</span><br /><br />The judge has sentenced me for the window-breaking incident that the jury found me guilty of.<br /><br />You can click the link below to see the case record.<br /><br />At the bottom of the record, you can see the sentence: 60 days; three years formal probation. And then there's what you don't see: Lots and lots of fees and charges. The sentence or trial is likely to be appealed.<br /><a href="https://services.saccourt.com/indexsearchnew/CaseNumberList.aspx?SearchValues=ARMSTRONG,THOMAS,EDWARD,4160766">https://services.saccourt.com/indexsearchnew/CaseNumberList.aspx?SearchValues=ARMSTRONG,THOMAS,EDWARD,4160766</a><br /><br /><span style="color:#663333;"><strong>Update:</strong> I wasn't accepted into The Sheriff's Work Project. I was told that this was because I was living at the Union Gospel Mission. I was given a time to report at the <a href="http://www.sacsheriff.com/organization/court_&_correctional_services/RCCC/index.cfm">Rio Consumnes Correctional Center</a>: 6/29 @ 2pm. I will serve for 32 days only, so long as I'm not cited for causing any problems. The reduction in time comes from eight days served when I was initially picked up on a warrent last July, before being released on my own recognizance. And a 20-day reduction, which is the standard 1/3rd-time reduced for good behavior.</span><br /><span style="color:#663333;"></span><br /><span style="color:#663333;">To send me mail [after July 1 and before July 24], you should use this address:</span><br /><span style="color:#000000;"><blockquote><span style="color:#000000;">Thomas Edward Armstrong, Xref 4160766</span><br />Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center<br />12500 Bruceville Road<br />Elk Grove, CA 95757<br /></blockquote></span>Remember, I'm only going to be there for thirty-two days, so I won't really need anything. And, not to worry, anybody, I will certainly be OK -- much as I am OK in Homeless World. If you write me, kindly send paper and a stamped return envelope so that I can write you back. <a href="http://www.sacsheriff.com/organization/court_&_correctional_services/RCCC/inmate_mail.cfm">Here's info on what the jail will allow inmates to receive</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer">~
Thanks for reading "Homeless Tom."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718601770472939313noreply@blogger.com3