In my long term quest to become a curmudgeon worth talking to there are certain milestones hat signal progress. I have just realized that I have already passed one of these milestones.
The milestone in question is the classic, "things didn't cost as much in my day!"
It is impossible for anyone who wishes to enjoy life to constantly update the full repertoire of our knowledge of pricing, and so we tend to develop a rough guide. Most of us know that a gallon of milk is closer to $5 than $15, but few of us know how much it is to the dime. It is extremely hard to change one's understanding of the price of goods in the gaps between actually purchasing the goods. As I have said before, the environment in which humans largely evolved was, in comparison with today, extremely static The value of a tool was simply the value of that tool for someone's entire (probably short) life. The increase in the price of items is not something that is naturally understood by most people.
Prices go up, and they go up almost constantly, and actually quite consistently since about 1970. This doesn't mean that everyone keeps getting poorer (actually, over the forty year period I mentioned above it's slightly the other way) because income increases as well. What it all comes down to is the terrifying subtlety of compound interest. You barely notice a 3% change in prices year-to-year, but you multiply that 3% over a while and the change is huge. Prices double about every twenty years. For me, twenty years ago was 1993, and that's when I really started working properly and taking care of myself entirely. That is the point where my basic understanding of prices started.
I have just noticed that I find almost everything shockingly expensive. $7 for a Big Mac Meal? I remember when it passed the $3 mark (when I actually ate them). $50 jeans? I remember when Gap jeans were cool AND cost $30. I go grocery shopping, and while I understand that I am shopping for two, and I buy nicer things than when I worked on a direct care workers wage, I still spend more than four times as much each visit. While I have thought of myself as rich, after all our income is such a bigger number than we have had before, it still seems that we should be getting further than we are.
What I am now trying to do is recalibrate all of my price and wage intuitions with updated information, simply based on a rough 20 year/double amount basis. I am not sure that will make me feel substantially less rich, but it will remove a fair amount of my frustration at what things cost.
My first full time job paid me $16,400 a year. Now that would be about $30,000. I was not well off but I could afford a used car, an apartment, food, and um cheap beer for entertainment. At the time $30,000 would have been easy-street. So, I have to understand that $20,000 a year is poor (for the USA), and $100,000 is not obscenely wealthy but rather upper-middle class. The most money I ever made was $30,000, roughly ten years ago. That would have been the equivalent of $23,000 in 1993 and $40,000 today. That was a really good wage for social work, about twice the official poverty line.
The upshot of all of this is that either everything costs twice as much as it should, or my wife makes half as much as I thought.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Comparisons
I am not someone who knee-jerks a requirement for two sides to every story. Sometimes there is a story and some people who are idiotically yelling in the face of facts. To a large extent this is what cable news shows are. Sometimes things are very complicated and you can only tell parts of the story in any given setting, like history, or psychology. However, there are times when adding the other part of the story is useful.
It has seemingly come to the attention of many people that there are some very, very rich people. These people are so rich that they can't even spend all their money. A person with the relatively tiny income of $1;000,000 a year has to spend more than $2,500 a day just to not break even. Given a life expectancy of 100 years someone with one tenth of a billion dollars would have to find ways to spend that $2,500 every day for their entire life or get even richer. At last count, there are 442 people at least ten times richer than that in the USA. There are people so rich that it is almost impossible for them not to get more rich.
Furthermore, these very rich people have power based on this money and can use that power to change the system so that it is easier for them to make more money. You know what? They do that. As a result these super-rich have been getting super-richier, particularly since Reagan.
Meanwhile, the income of your regular Janets has largely stagnated and so the gap between the very rich and the poor has grown larger. Janet thinks this unfair and has furrowed her brow and is considering whether, maybe, if this keeps up, she might do something about it. Maybe she'll write a blog post about it, or share outrage with her facebook friends. Meanwhile Janet's weird cousin is building a bunker and stashing an enormous horde of weaponry, but that's a different story.
OK, some people being so rich they can't even spend their money and others being so poor they need help to eat is a bad situation that should be fixed. Pretty much everyone I know thinks this is basically true and is outraged about the situation.
On the other hand...
In Rwanda the GDP per person (nominal) is $730 a year. Now, because there are some richer people in Rwanda, most people there will have fewer resources than that. 90% of Rwandans are subsistence farmers. 25% of Rwandans don't have a clean water supply. I think/hope you get the picture.
We have got to the point where there are three groups. The nefarious super-rich, us, the deeply poor. We seem to spend most of our time concentrating our attention, outrage, frustration, etc. on the differences between us and the super-rich. I ask you, which is really the biggest difference, the one between us and the super-rich or between us and the super-poor? I hope you got that one right.
In my opinion the inequality that exists in the world is more about us and the really poor than between we rich people and people who really are very rich indeed. When was the last time you heard about how unfair that was? When was the last time you thought about that? Have you thought that what would be really important in politics would be some redistribution of wealth from the USA to Rwanda. For some perspective, the GDP of Rwanda is about three times the US National Parks budget.
The next part that we (and I certainly include myself) tend to do is come up with a whole list of reasons, excuses, and distractions to stop ourselves from sending three quarters of our money to Rwanda. None of us are going to do it, let's be honest about that. But isn't this what the super-rich do as well? The sponging under-class of lazy layabouts throwing away their money on drugs meme is pretty much just that.
I am not saying that there isn't a huge, unnecessary, unfair inequality of wealth in the USA and that this hurts people every day. I am not saying that you are an evil person unless you give away all of your money. For Christ's sake we aren't Jesus! Matthew 19:21. I am just saying that we should spend at least as much of our time looking down as looking up.
In fact, looking down tells us for what we should be grateful. Noticing the things that should make us grateful makes us happier. It also can lead us to give to those less fortunate, and giving makes us more happy.
It has seemingly come to the attention of many people that there are some very, very rich people. These people are so rich that they can't even spend all their money. A person with the relatively tiny income of $1;000,000 a year has to spend more than $2,500 a day just to not break even. Given a life expectancy of 100 years someone with one tenth of a billion dollars would have to find ways to spend that $2,500 every day for their entire life or get even richer. At last count, there are 442 people at least ten times richer than that in the USA. There are people so rich that it is almost impossible for them not to get more rich.
Furthermore, these very rich people have power based on this money and can use that power to change the system so that it is easier for them to make more money. You know what? They do that. As a result these super-rich have been getting super-richier, particularly since Reagan.
Meanwhile, the income of your regular Janets has largely stagnated and so the gap between the very rich and the poor has grown larger. Janet thinks this unfair and has furrowed her brow and is considering whether, maybe, if this keeps up, she might do something about it. Maybe she'll write a blog post about it, or share outrage with her facebook friends. Meanwhile Janet's weird cousin is building a bunker and stashing an enormous horde of weaponry, but that's a different story.
OK, some people being so rich they can't even spend their money and others being so poor they need help to eat is a bad situation that should be fixed. Pretty much everyone I know thinks this is basically true and is outraged about the situation.
On the other hand...
In Rwanda the GDP per person (nominal) is $730 a year. Now, because there are some richer people in Rwanda, most people there will have fewer resources than that. 90% of Rwandans are subsistence farmers. 25% of Rwandans don't have a clean water supply. I think/hope you get the picture.
We have got to the point where there are three groups. The nefarious super-rich, us, the deeply poor. We seem to spend most of our time concentrating our attention, outrage, frustration, etc. on the differences between us and the super-rich. I ask you, which is really the biggest difference, the one between us and the super-rich or between us and the super-poor? I hope you got that one right.
In my opinion the inequality that exists in the world is more about us and the really poor than between we rich people and people who really are very rich indeed. When was the last time you heard about how unfair that was? When was the last time you thought about that? Have you thought that what would be really important in politics would be some redistribution of wealth from the USA to Rwanda. For some perspective, the GDP of Rwanda is about three times the US National Parks budget.
The next part that we (and I certainly include myself) tend to do is come up with a whole list of reasons, excuses, and distractions to stop ourselves from sending three quarters of our money to Rwanda. None of us are going to do it, let's be honest about that. But isn't this what the super-rich do as well? The sponging under-class of lazy layabouts throwing away their money on drugs meme is pretty much just that.
I am not saying that there isn't a huge, unnecessary, unfair inequality of wealth in the USA and that this hurts people every day. I am not saying that you are an evil person unless you give away all of your money. For Christ's sake we aren't Jesus! Matthew 19:21. I am just saying that we should spend at least as much of our time looking down as looking up.
In fact, looking down tells us for what we should be grateful. Noticing the things that should make us grateful makes us happier. It also can lead us to give to those less fortunate, and giving makes us more happy.
Chapter 15
It had been sunny and dry at some time in the past. Although that was probably today it seemed like an eternity. The rain had reached a level of malevolence to which words like, "poured" and "fell" no longer were relevant. Then there was the mud. The mud clutched, and grabbed at boots like a horde of starving beggars. In the lashing rain and the thick mud falls were inevitable, and upon arising the men would discover that the mud was stuck to them like plaster, and as time went on the mud insinuated itself through each cranny and crevice of clothing.
Heavy, wet, cloying, stinking, foul, slow, gritty, dark misery.
Ughrit was not happy. The Inn was apparently always, "just a little further." Ughrit had finished with, "just a little further" and was now more interested in "dry and extremely violent." He wrenched his vast boot out of the mud and splashed it shortly ahead, lightning flashed. A titanic boom filled the heavens. Ughrit slipped and fell face-first into the mire.
"Bugger fuck damn stupid prick fart onion-eating motherpoking rotten shit shit shit ass!"
"A light!" came a call, "up on that hill I saw lantern light."
All thoughts of swift, sloppy homicide left the exhausted mind of Ughrit and he desperately clambered to his feet, fell, writhed on the ground, swore, got to his feet again, swore some more, trudged a few yards, slipped, gathered himself, felt a stream of something organic slip into his armpit, trudged, slipped, pulled a muscle in his lower back, swore..........
Some long, long time later Ughrit stood before a door. A door from which the sound of merriment flowed. A golden glow of lantern light spilled out through a couple of windows. When the lightning lit up the world there was a sense of some vast, shambling structure behind the door, but more than that it was impossible to tell. The crew was dragging themselves along behind him, sometimes quite literally. Ughrit took out his massive axe, threw open the door and stepped in. Another titanic lightning flash seared the eyes of everyone outside, momentarily blinding the straggling trail of brigands.
Within The Addled Prophet all eyes turned to the doorway. There stood a massive figure, all in black, back-lit by the sky's fury, and emphasized by a huge, deep crash and rumble. Ughrit stepped through the doorway into warmth, light, and dryness. He was tired and miserable, but he was here to do something. He started to raise his axe when a weird looking man exclaimed, "Oh! You poor man, out there in this miserable weather. Landlord, do you think we might find this gentleman some hot water and some towels."
Ughrit was ushered to a chair near the fire in the inevitable manner brought on by considerate bustling. Ughrit could not have imagined fighting against the well-meaning little man at that moment. he sat down, leant back on his chair and simply absorbed the warmth of the fire. An unfamiliar lassitude came over his limbs and his mind slowed and relaxed. He realized that he was in a nice, little pub surrounded by people who welcomed him. A pint was pressed into his hand and he realized that this was his dream. Just this simple little moment was his dream.
The rest of the crew blundered in, singly or in pairs. While they lackadaisically brandished weapons, and yelled some uninspired battle cries, cut off suddenly, within moments they were welcomed, and brought to the fire. After a while their weapons started forming a haphazard pile in a corner, they had rare smiles on their faces, and soon some of them found themselves actually saying, "Thank you!"
Perhaps an hour later the tall and slender figure of Akhbar crawled over the doorstep. Akhbar was not an athlete. He expected blood, smashed furniture, possibly sobbing. He heard cheering, and then applause? Applause? Pushing himself up on to his knees he scanned the room and found Ughrit and the crew intermixed with what seemed to be happy patrons. Akhbar began to feel a deep sense of peace, an acceptance of his situation, a welcoming. Fearing that this could only be a magical trap set to capture or kill Ughrit and his men, Akhbar fled out into the night, desperate to get himself away from the peace, the warmth, the welcome.
Heavy, wet, cloying, stinking, foul, slow, gritty, dark misery.
Ughrit was not happy. The Inn was apparently always, "just a little further." Ughrit had finished with, "just a little further" and was now more interested in "dry and extremely violent." He wrenched his vast boot out of the mud and splashed it shortly ahead, lightning flashed. A titanic boom filled the heavens. Ughrit slipped and fell face-first into the mire.
"Bugger fuck damn stupid prick fart onion-eating motherpoking rotten shit shit shit ass!"
"A light!" came a call, "up on that hill I saw lantern light."
All thoughts of swift, sloppy homicide left the exhausted mind of Ughrit and he desperately clambered to his feet, fell, writhed on the ground, swore, got to his feet again, swore some more, trudged a few yards, slipped, gathered himself, felt a stream of something organic slip into his armpit, trudged, slipped, pulled a muscle in his lower back, swore..........
Some long, long time later Ughrit stood before a door. A door from which the sound of merriment flowed. A golden glow of lantern light spilled out through a couple of windows. When the lightning lit up the world there was a sense of some vast, shambling structure behind the door, but more than that it was impossible to tell. The crew was dragging themselves along behind him, sometimes quite literally. Ughrit took out his massive axe, threw open the door and stepped in. Another titanic lightning flash seared the eyes of everyone outside, momentarily blinding the straggling trail of brigands.
Within The Addled Prophet all eyes turned to the doorway. There stood a massive figure, all in black, back-lit by the sky's fury, and emphasized by a huge, deep crash and rumble. Ughrit stepped through the doorway into warmth, light, and dryness. He was tired and miserable, but he was here to do something. He started to raise his axe when a weird looking man exclaimed, "Oh! You poor man, out there in this miserable weather. Landlord, do you think we might find this gentleman some hot water and some towels."
Ughrit was ushered to a chair near the fire in the inevitable manner brought on by considerate bustling. Ughrit could not have imagined fighting against the well-meaning little man at that moment. he sat down, leant back on his chair and simply absorbed the warmth of the fire. An unfamiliar lassitude came over his limbs and his mind slowed and relaxed. He realized that he was in a nice, little pub surrounded by people who welcomed him. A pint was pressed into his hand and he realized that this was his dream. Just this simple little moment was his dream.
The rest of the crew blundered in, singly or in pairs. While they lackadaisically brandished weapons, and yelled some uninspired battle cries, cut off suddenly, within moments they were welcomed, and brought to the fire. After a while their weapons started forming a haphazard pile in a corner, they had rare smiles on their faces, and soon some of them found themselves actually saying, "Thank you!"
Perhaps an hour later the tall and slender figure of Akhbar crawled over the doorstep. Akhbar was not an athlete. He expected blood, smashed furniture, possibly sobbing. He heard cheering, and then applause? Applause? Pushing himself up on to his knees he scanned the room and found Ughrit and the crew intermixed with what seemed to be happy patrons. Akhbar began to feel a deep sense of peace, an acceptance of his situation, a welcoming. Fearing that this could only be a magical trap set to capture or kill Ughrit and his men, Akhbar fled out into the night, desperate to get himself away from the peace, the warmth, the welcome.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Just Some Stuff
I'll start with an update to The Latest in that the brand name pills appear to be working. After the first couple of days there have been no symptoms over nearly a month, a longer period than leading up to this change. Still, the whole thing is unpredictable, nobody really knows why the disease happens, how it works, or why some drugs seem to help. Who knows what things may come?
We went on holiday to Cahuita in Costa Rica, our favorite place to be. This wasn't a risky decision, we had been there before and loved it, but we hadn't gone somewhere together with the sole purpose being to have a nice time. Previously we had been seeing family, or friends, or a side effect of a business trip, so we hadn't gone on a proper holiday in several years. My only concern is that we had previously left the darkness of winter in the north for the warm sun of the tropics, while this time we were leaving from essentially the same weather to where we were arriving.
It was simply delightful. So beautiful, so calm, so friendly. We had our honeymoon suite, a wooden room with corrugated iron roof and a tiled bathroom, and a balcony with a view over the bay. We saw amazing natural sights, from a lion fish on a coral reef to pelicans diving for fish, to a sloth ten feet away, to the herding of bait fish into a ball by tarpon, and more and more and more....
The driving was a different matter.
Finally, someone who I had known, someone who was in a band with me for a few months, someone I would see very intermittently, who I was friends with on facebook, blew his brains out. As soon as I heard he was dead suicide was my first thought. Over the last year he had got married and divorced, he had apologized to people in general for his behavior, he suffered from bad migraines. He worked for the TSA and was one of the people furloughed during the government shutdown and was pawning his stuff to pay his mortgage. I imagine him that last night, worried about losing his house, unable to sleep from the pain of a migraine, depressed and alone, where there was no hope he could find. He had always been kind to me.
Perhaps I'm just not someone for weeping about death. Perhaps I have been around enough tragedy. Perhaps I have reached somewhere secure enough that sad things can happen and I can accept them. This is the second person I have known to kill themselves in the last three years and I take it as a new fact of life and keep going, although just as with everything, I think about it.
We went on holiday to Cahuita in Costa Rica, our favorite place to be. This wasn't a risky decision, we had been there before and loved it, but we hadn't gone somewhere together with the sole purpose being to have a nice time. Previously we had been seeing family, or friends, or a side effect of a business trip, so we hadn't gone on a proper holiday in several years. My only concern is that we had previously left the darkness of winter in the north for the warm sun of the tropics, while this time we were leaving from essentially the same weather to where we were arriving.
It was simply delightful. So beautiful, so calm, so friendly. We had our honeymoon suite, a wooden room with corrugated iron roof and a tiled bathroom, and a balcony with a view over the bay. We saw amazing natural sights, from a lion fish on a coral reef to pelicans diving for fish, to a sloth ten feet away, to the herding of bait fish into a ball by tarpon, and more and more and more....
The driving was a different matter.
Finally, someone who I had known, someone who was in a band with me for a few months, someone I would see very intermittently, who I was friends with on facebook, blew his brains out. As soon as I heard he was dead suicide was my first thought. Over the last year he had got married and divorced, he had apologized to people in general for his behavior, he suffered from bad migraines. He worked for the TSA and was one of the people furloughed during the government shutdown and was pawning his stuff to pay his mortgage. I imagine him that last night, worried about losing his house, unable to sleep from the pain of a migraine, depressed and alone, where there was no hope he could find. He had always been kind to me.
Perhaps I'm just not someone for weeping about death. Perhaps I have been around enough tragedy. Perhaps I have reached somewhere secure enough that sad things can happen and I can accept them. This is the second person I have known to kill themselves in the last three years and I take it as a new fact of life and keep going, although just as with everything, I think about it.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Blog Post Titles Considered, But Not Used.
The consequences of success in social work.
A taste of suicidal ideation.
The vulnerabilities of isolation.
The inevitable social consequences of asymmetrical power in relationships.
Useless cry for help.
Wasting away in.......
Plan B, a possibility?
You never miss your water 'til your well runs dry.
Short fiction on dying in the mud.
Chapter whatever number after the last one.
The Baroque Cycle: recommended.
Getting better at reggae, sloooowwwwlllyyy.
Conversations in bars about being an atheist.
I, Invalid?
Crazy, fight or embrace?
A taste of suicidal ideation.
The vulnerabilities of isolation.
The inevitable social consequences of asymmetrical power in relationships.
Useless cry for help.
Wasting away in.......
Plan B, a possibility?
You never miss your water 'til your well runs dry.
Short fiction on dying in the mud.
Chapter whatever number after the last one.
The Baroque Cycle: recommended.
Getting better at reggae, sloooowwwwlllyyy.
Conversations in bars about being an atheist.
I, Invalid?
Crazy, fight or embrace?
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Wellness
Do you remember the feeling that you get after a sickness when you first realize that you are well? Perhaps your experience differs from mine, but for me it is a really wonderful experience. I notice things to a very large extent based on how they differ from the things around them. When contrasted with sickness simply not being sick is great.
I feel a pervasive good feeling, a pleasure in my own body's ability to walk, or see. This pervasive good feeling extends to my senses, so that the world around me appears more beautiful. The pervasive good feeling extends into my attitude because it is based on my experience right now, and a good feeling about right now removes anxiety.
Buddhists talk about the natural state of people being ego-less bliss, achievable through years of dedicated practice. It seems to me that the second part of the previous sentence defeats the claim of the first, but it may well be that the natural state of humanity is something akin to bliss, and that the Buddhists are right that the goal is recognition of our situation rather than a change in it.
What would be a natural state? I'll assume that we can get passed the absolutely true objection that everything is natural and so the question is foolish. However, we can derive some meaning from the question and answer. A natural state is one that has not been affected by humankind, which makes the question doubly problematic, but let us assume that the natural state of humankind is one unaffected by other people. Another definition of "natural" is being in keeping with the environment around us.
The natural state of humanity would therefore be one of a person fitting with the environment they are in without thinking one way or another about other people, stresses,plans, hopes etc.. I would say part of fitting in with the environment is an absence of extra descriptors of the experience, e.g. hunger, cold/hot, and sick. The natural state is wellness, in accord with the environment in which we are, unconcerned about the cares of the world. This is as Taoist as it gets, which is why I'm a big fan of Taoism.
This may seem to be a stupendous feat, achieving a natural state of unconcerned mindfulness, but is only difficult because we habituate ourselves to non-natural states. The achievement of the natural state requires, as the name would suggest, the doing of nothing. The hardest part of doing not-doing (a favorite term of Taoism, which seems mysterious until you get how simple and direct it is) is doing not-thinking. A method that works for some people is to notice what their brain is thinking (I hope my children are happy in school), label that thought (a worry), and then let that thought drift away.
On this blog I spend much of my time, too much of my time, concerning myself with problems and worries. That's alright with me because only saints shouldn't worry less and I am a long way away from being a saint. Still, I think I give somewhat of the wrong impression as a result. Today I felt well and it was, is, wonderful. Today I looked at sunshine glinting on the water without a thought for being anywhere else. I felt a very quiet, calm sense of bliss. I realized, without words, that it is a wonderful thing to be alive.
Such moments are difficult to describe in any way other than very prosaically, such as above, and tend to be repetitive. I was somewhere when I noticed something and realized that life is good. As a result I talk much more about external problems and worries than is actually representative of my life. Most days I have at least one moment similar to the one I have described and I do try to have more. All it takes is noticing, which becomes easier if you practice, but much easier if your natural state is made constantly apparent by experiencing non-natural states. It is easier to notice how great it is to be well when you have just been sick.
I would say that the great secret of life is finding our wellness, getting to the place where we notice what we are, where we are. It is no coincidence that so many spiritual teachers implore us to, "wake up!"
We evolved to be essentially hunter-gatherers in a relatively simple environment. Such a life was greatly subject to the sudden calamity of death and disease, but it also led to long nights of restful sleep, little work, a focus on a time scale of days rather than years, and much less stimulus than at present. Why do people on vacation go to a beautiful, quiet place, where you can get food and drink without effort, sleep whenever you want for as long as you want, and try to get away from their worries? Because we want to get back to the best parts of our natural selves and we don't know how to do that at home.
I have some hope that as a global society we will move back towards greater recognition of our natural selves as various forces align themselves in this direction. The medical profession is slowly managing to shift from the goal of "health" to "wellbeing" where the experience of the patient is more important than whether all the bits work perfectly. Psychology has rather recently become quite excited about studying happiness. There are the first sprouts of moral and political systems being designed around maximizing happiness. The future of employment is that fewer and fewer people will work, and yet we will still get richer. As we learn that hard work, stress, lack of sleep, etc. cause both ill health and unhappiness, and we learn that meditation, relaxation, sleep, etc. promote both health and happiness, and societal systems move towards a happiness-based system from economic-based systems, and most people will not be able to productively work much, I see a movement towards the natural state of humanity without the lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
I feel a pervasive good feeling, a pleasure in my own body's ability to walk, or see. This pervasive good feeling extends to my senses, so that the world around me appears more beautiful. The pervasive good feeling extends into my attitude because it is based on my experience right now, and a good feeling about right now removes anxiety.
Buddhists talk about the natural state of people being ego-less bliss, achievable through years of dedicated practice. It seems to me that the second part of the previous sentence defeats the claim of the first, but it may well be that the natural state of humanity is something akin to bliss, and that the Buddhists are right that the goal is recognition of our situation rather than a change in it.
What would be a natural state? I'll assume that we can get passed the absolutely true objection that everything is natural and so the question is foolish. However, we can derive some meaning from the question and answer. A natural state is one that has not been affected by humankind, which makes the question doubly problematic, but let us assume that the natural state of humankind is one unaffected by other people. Another definition of "natural" is being in keeping with the environment around us.
The natural state of humanity would therefore be one of a person fitting with the environment they are in without thinking one way or another about other people, stresses,plans, hopes etc.. I would say part of fitting in with the environment is an absence of extra descriptors of the experience, e.g. hunger, cold/hot, and sick. The natural state is wellness, in accord with the environment in which we are, unconcerned about the cares of the world. This is as Taoist as it gets, which is why I'm a big fan of Taoism.
This may seem to be a stupendous feat, achieving a natural state of unconcerned mindfulness, but is only difficult because we habituate ourselves to non-natural states. The achievement of the natural state requires, as the name would suggest, the doing of nothing. The hardest part of doing not-doing (a favorite term of Taoism, which seems mysterious until you get how simple and direct it is) is doing not-thinking. A method that works for some people is to notice what their brain is thinking (I hope my children are happy in school), label that thought (a worry), and then let that thought drift away.
On this blog I spend much of my time, too much of my time, concerning myself with problems and worries. That's alright with me because only saints shouldn't worry less and I am a long way away from being a saint. Still, I think I give somewhat of the wrong impression as a result. Today I felt well and it was, is, wonderful. Today I looked at sunshine glinting on the water without a thought for being anywhere else. I felt a very quiet, calm sense of bliss. I realized, without words, that it is a wonderful thing to be alive.
Such moments are difficult to describe in any way other than very prosaically, such as above, and tend to be repetitive. I was somewhere when I noticed something and realized that life is good. As a result I talk much more about external problems and worries than is actually representative of my life. Most days I have at least one moment similar to the one I have described and I do try to have more. All it takes is noticing, which becomes easier if you practice, but much easier if your natural state is made constantly apparent by experiencing non-natural states. It is easier to notice how great it is to be well when you have just been sick.
I would say that the great secret of life is finding our wellness, getting to the place where we notice what we are, where we are. It is no coincidence that so many spiritual teachers implore us to, "wake up!"
We evolved to be essentially hunter-gatherers in a relatively simple environment. Such a life was greatly subject to the sudden calamity of death and disease, but it also led to long nights of restful sleep, little work, a focus on a time scale of days rather than years, and much less stimulus than at present. Why do people on vacation go to a beautiful, quiet place, where you can get food and drink without effort, sleep whenever you want for as long as you want, and try to get away from their worries? Because we want to get back to the best parts of our natural selves and we don't know how to do that at home.
I have some hope that as a global society we will move back towards greater recognition of our natural selves as various forces align themselves in this direction. The medical profession is slowly managing to shift from the goal of "health" to "wellbeing" where the experience of the patient is more important than whether all the bits work perfectly. Psychology has rather recently become quite excited about studying happiness. There are the first sprouts of moral and political systems being designed around maximizing happiness. The future of employment is that fewer and fewer people will work, and yet we will still get richer. As we learn that hard work, stress, lack of sleep, etc. cause both ill health and unhappiness, and we learn that meditation, relaxation, sleep, etc. promote both health and happiness, and societal systems move towards a happiness-based system from economic-based systems, and most people will not be able to productively work much, I see a movement towards the natural state of humanity without the lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
The Latest
I haven't been posting much recently, a possible reason may become apparent a little further down, but big deals maybe happening and someone may be interested. I'll start with what I think is the biggest deal although it may well not be what most would consider the most important.
It seems that my "magic blue pills" are no longer magic. For the last two months I have been ill on over half the days. The last couple of days I have been truly exhausted. Saturday night my hands were writhing trying to keep myself under control from the energy. The cycling between different states has been the fastest in my life, although I have had far more severe experiences in the past. It used to be that I didn't really know who I would be the next week or day, now I don't know who I will be between the morning and evening.
There are several possibly reasons:
The first possibility is that the pills have changed. This is a generic drug and while it has worked for me in the past some generics don't work for me, and industry quality assurance is very poor. Fortunately we have different insurance and are fortunate to have enough money to pay the co-pay (down from $150 to $35) for the brand name version. So my psychiatrist and I have agreed to try this approach first.
The second possibility is that my disease has simply progressed to the point where the pills cannot entirely cope. Since my disease was worsening (after all that's why I got help) this seems quite reasonable. The psychiatrist's suggestion would then be to try another mood stabilizer in addition to what I am taking now. I am extremely wary of this having seen people slowly but surely poisoned by the side effects of their medications, some of which would be considered. I absolutely despise the idea of a choice between unpredictable misery and poisoning myself. Someone with rapid cycling bipolar disorder who hates all of the possible choices they can make is an extremely, extremely bad situation.
The third possibility is that this is simply a particularly bad time for me, something that might happen every few years for the rest of my life. I have coped with much, much worse than this in the past and can cope with such periods happening once in a while.
In summary; I am going insane again and I find this quite alarming.
The other part is quite different. My darling wife has been offered, and has accepted, a new job in a different company, doing quite different things. It amounts to an enormous promotion, from an extremely advanced level of keyboard monkey to the director of an entire department of seventeen people. I am very proud of her for her courage to take this great leap, very proud of her for knowing she can do it, and most proud of her for negotiating a better compensation package. This is the sort of feminism I really like, a woman taking risks, being confident in herself, and believing that she is worth as much as any man. In the business world meekness is punished. My love has come a long way, what a woman!
Now for my selfish bit. This means we will be staying in Houston, I expect for at least three years, bringing our time here to a minimum of eight years. Or using a different scale, about 1/10th of my life. We will be moving closer to the city, closer to this new job. The area looks much more promising than where we are now, but it is still Houston and I hate it here. I hate the pounding heat in the summer (although October through March is lovely). I hate the willful ignorance, the lack of caring, the machismo, the certainty, the superficiality, the lack of creativity. I am probably, on average, happier than I was in Portland but that has nothing whatsoever to do with where I live.
It seems that my "magic blue pills" are no longer magic. For the last two months I have been ill on over half the days. The last couple of days I have been truly exhausted. Saturday night my hands were writhing trying to keep myself under control from the energy. The cycling between different states has been the fastest in my life, although I have had far more severe experiences in the past. It used to be that I didn't really know who I would be the next week or day, now I don't know who I will be between the morning and evening.
There are several possibly reasons:
The first possibility is that the pills have changed. This is a generic drug and while it has worked for me in the past some generics don't work for me, and industry quality assurance is very poor. Fortunately we have different insurance and are fortunate to have enough money to pay the co-pay (down from $150 to $35) for the brand name version. So my psychiatrist and I have agreed to try this approach first.
The second possibility is that my disease has simply progressed to the point where the pills cannot entirely cope. Since my disease was worsening (after all that's why I got help) this seems quite reasonable. The psychiatrist's suggestion would then be to try another mood stabilizer in addition to what I am taking now. I am extremely wary of this having seen people slowly but surely poisoned by the side effects of their medications, some of which would be considered. I absolutely despise the idea of a choice between unpredictable misery and poisoning myself. Someone with rapid cycling bipolar disorder who hates all of the possible choices they can make is an extremely, extremely bad situation.
The third possibility is that this is simply a particularly bad time for me, something that might happen every few years for the rest of my life. I have coped with much, much worse than this in the past and can cope with such periods happening once in a while.
In summary; I am going insane again and I find this quite alarming.
The other part is quite different. My darling wife has been offered, and has accepted, a new job in a different company, doing quite different things. It amounts to an enormous promotion, from an extremely advanced level of keyboard monkey to the director of an entire department of seventeen people. I am very proud of her for her courage to take this great leap, very proud of her for knowing she can do it, and most proud of her for negotiating a better compensation package. This is the sort of feminism I really like, a woman taking risks, being confident in herself, and believing that she is worth as much as any man. In the business world meekness is punished. My love has come a long way, what a woman!
Now for my selfish bit. This means we will be staying in Houston, I expect for at least three years, bringing our time here to a minimum of eight years. Or using a different scale, about 1/10th of my life. We will be moving closer to the city, closer to this new job. The area looks much more promising than where we are now, but it is still Houston and I hate it here. I hate the pounding heat in the summer (although October through March is lovely). I hate the willful ignorance, the lack of caring, the machismo, the certainty, the superficiality, the lack of creativity. I am probably, on average, happier than I was in Portland but that has nothing whatsoever to do with where I live.
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