Influence: A Casual Primer

There's a timeless quandary (that I like to think I reformulated rather well): if the speed demon on your rear bumper is an asshole, and the Sunday driver in front of you is an idiot, what does that make you?

In the least this conundrum gives me a bridge from awareness of self toward discussing influence on the external world.

Our presence in the world has direct effects, more or less governed by the laws of physics.  The fact that our actions are influenced by ideas might be seen as more subtle, and I think it important to consider the how and when of passing advice or insight on to someone, be they friend, foe, or stranger.  How one influences and how one is influenced will vary greatly from person to person, and at least in my blog, I have some comfort in the fact that you've chosen to come here, and have the full opportunity to simply ignore the contents or to respond with a public comment or by contacting me directly to challenge the positions I present.  Most positively this creates an exchange of ideas.

In real time an act of influence can be received very badly especially if it wasn't requested.  One might fall back to the philosophy of live and let live, alas though that may serve at best as a baseline, it certainly isn't an honorable course of action when a parent is abusing their child in public, when two people are about to start a fight, or when one sees someone bringing harm to persons, property or society.  The Universe inherits our actions; I think it obvious that those actions should on whole be responsibly motivated.

Now I'm not saying one should intervene without reflection.  Jumping between two brutes is foolish when calling the police is a better option, at least for a middle class white person like myself.  Still, calling the authorities, or challenging a person or group to think more deeply upon their imminent actions, one ought to step forward, in safe fashion, to influence the situation with perspective and heartfelt goodness in mind.

My recent attempt to influence what I saw as improper involved sending a letter to an organization who I felt overstepped proper behavior (the letter in its entirety follows this post).  I contacted LAHIA (Love and Hope In Action), a proverbial soup kitchen, with the hope to improve the services they advertised.  Whether they will take heed of my gentle chastising or ignore it entirely, only time and perhaps telepathic omniscience can tell.

In the end, it is positively prudent to take sufficient time to ruminate upon the possible effects of our influence in the world, and then take courage to implement them, with reflection along the way. Indeed, live and let live is probably sufficient for most of the benign situations.  Nevertheless, there will be time when immediate intervention to prevent harm is called for and there will be times when we ought to consider, with compassion, planting shared seeds, that build upon the common ground of a better world for all.

As an afterthought, perhaps a new adage will serve:  when you expect traffic, perhaps it's better not to drive at all if only because you're more likely to talk with others on the same footpath.

Who's the fool

Where apathy rules?

You've got to want it

You've got to want it

If you don't want it

It remains the same

It's a heart of darkness

That wants to play that game

If there's no defiance

It remains insane

If it's all compliance

It's a runaway train

                                                                                                             -- Runaway Train (Geddy Lee)

To the LAHIA Management, 

      Having participated at Manna on Main Street in Pennsylvania, a food kitchen and pantry for those in need, I was looking forward to my volunteer experience at LAHIA so that I might help out the local community in need.
      Boy was I surprised.  I was saddened to witness an intimidating prelude to providing food to a roomful of people that were looking for a friendly meal.  For at least 30 minutes a LAHIA volunteer lectured these waiting, hungry people on the necessity of bringing Jesus and God into their lives.
     Please recognize the potential psychological damage you are doing by treating these people like children who must learn their religious lesson before they are permitted to eat.
      I suggest you look within your Christian belief and find true kindness.  I believe it would be appropriate to open with a minute to announce the generosity of LAHIA, volunteers and sponsors, and even to suggest these people consider attending a service.
      I am in process of writing a journalistic article about LAHIA on my GoodnessFirst.com blog.  I welcome your response that I might include it in the article, and hope a little input from me might have you reconsider how LAHIA treats the people they serve.

Respectfully,  

Brian Bohmueller

Consciousness: The Journey Within

Now that we have 2015 rolling, let's start off with some basics.

It seems to me you can't get any more basic than consciousness itself; without it we would not be able to have any experience of the world let alone follow up those experiences with creative discourse to hone our execution of goodness.

The book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris most recently encouraged me to further explore the foundations of consciousness. Throughout my life, I have explored a number of avenues of inquiry: by rote learning and religious inquiry of moral absolutes has given way for me to ongoing and expansive scientific inquiry of the Universe and humanistic/naturalistic inquiry of an evolving ethical stance.

What lies beneath?
[Douglas Harding's Headless Self Portrait]

The path of investigating my own consciousness seems to me to be an entirely different direction of inquiry from any other. The meditative journey seeks to provide an immersion in the most basic levels associated with our sapience.  Within our minds numerous thoughts from the truly chaotic to the tediously ordered are born, dance and die as we go about our everyday tasks.  I use the term "thoughts" here in the most basic sense, as in anything that causes neural activity (ideas, sensations, emotions, unconscious brain to body signals, et al).

Meditation is a path to examine the conscious landscape.  I am currently a beginner meditator, so my intent here is primarily to stir your interest in pursuing consciousness exploration for yourself.  The simplest mindfulness meditation requires only that you set aside some peaceful time to pay attention to your mind, listening without judgment to its activity.  In practice, this usually entails entering a relaxing posture and focusing on your natural, recurring breath.  The subsequent observations gradually expose you to the waves and whitecaps within the ocean of minds, and perhaps a sense of the water itself.

Personally, I have meditated many times over the past year and I have found growing peacefulness in building a greater awareness of self, or rather the layer beneath self.  At first I noticed a lot of distracting ideas, sensations, and emotions; there is definitely import to observing these for what they are, but also to simply let them go and not focus on them.  (focusing on these would result in "contemplation" of the very thoughts meditation seeks to observe beneath).

Now one might label this pursuit of consciousness as a strain of mysticism.  I am convinced there is nothing supernatural involved, no union with an imagined, collective universal existence, no shared insight with a contrived deity.  Instead, I feel the meditative observation of our inner minds brings us closer to the most basic mystery of our mortal existence.  In this exploration, we may be able to temporarily peel away the  onion skin of brain function to examine the gift of consciousness that evolution has provided all sentient creatures.

Your exploration of consciousness may vary, of course, as you are your own individual. Nevertheless, the natural progression has delivered to us a common operating system.  Finding time to explore the inner most mind at a personal level seems an obvious place to not only find a joyfulness in the simplicity of being, but to also understand a commonality between all of us to further support empathy and compassion in our lives.

-------------

(As for Sam Harris' book overall, I give it a solid "okay."   Though interesting at times, the first third lurches with academic neuroscience knottiness.  Still I found the later chapters a down-to-earth collection of mindfulness meditation guidelines and numerous personal anecdotes.  In particular, Harris relates his experiences (both grand and grotesque) with gurus, psychedelics and other landmarks in his search for his root consciousness.   Still I recommend it, if only to stir your intrigue; another meditation book I verily enjoyed is  Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World)

Resolution MMXV!!!

Happy New Year!!!

Possibly the Fluffiest Goodness First Post of 2015

Once again the annual integer change requires the resolution generation ritual.   Truly, resolutions have merit in that they can give us goals to obsess over focus on!

As such I feel obliged to make my Goodness First resolutions public.

Resolution One: I will strive to bring my readers thought provoking weekly articles here on my Goodness First blog all year long! (yes, this one counts.)

Resolution Two:  I will strive to respond mindfully to each comment posted or emailed to me.  (Privacy preserved as requested though I reserve the right to share subsequent inspirations without substantial remuneration )

Resolution Three: I will strive to include any requested topic in a Goodness First weekly post. (As such, a discussion of Fairness is in the works... and possibly Upside Down 2-liter Bottle Storage Efficacy)

Happy Resolution Making To Anthropomorphized Viral Felines All!

A Smileful of Thanks

The carnivorous human bearing of teeth (aka smile)
is said by some to harken from a toothy display of  healthiness!

Spending time with family over the Thanksgiving holiday has me thinking (and ostensibly feeling) upon what being thankful is really all about.  On the surface, it seems self evident that gratefulness is a positive mental state to aspire to, but what exactly does being thankful mean?

I feel thankfulness exists as part of the process of being aware of self and other.  When we have a positive experience (perhaps mixed with negative and neutral experiences), we then recognize internally this experience (ideally isolated to a single precious thing) for that which it is, something which has the quality of being positive, and then, most importantly, we mindfully acknowledge the experience, bathing in the endorphin buzz results.  That last bit is the truly thankful moment and it does seem to me to be fully internal.

Of course, if we choose to communicate our experienced thanks externally to others, well then, that is an added plus, which perhaps can cause a whole series of thankful moments, domino effect style riding out across the planetary sphere and forward into time immemorial.

And so as I ride the cusp of the current moment, I am thankful for the ability to develop and share my sometimes grandiose and sometimes piddling ideas here on this blog with you.

(Thank you for reading and responding!)

The Cusp of Being

The Present is all there is.

The Past is a continuum of often deathly silent Presents that can haunt, inspire and distract.

The Future is a pyramid of possible Presents to imagine ahead with bittersweet uncertainty.

Be Present.

Overcoming Despair

Know thy enemy.

If Goodness were to have an enemy, I believe it would be Despair.

Despair (the incarnation thereof, from Neil Gaiman's Sandman)

Evil, if it exists is a psychotic aberration, a storybook concoction to distract us from the true horror around us, among us and even within us.  Despair, on the other hand, is all too real, whether in the form of an unhappy professional's Monday morning commute, a monthly mortgage on a lonely house, or an itchy scalp that won't go away.  In life, the multitudes of challenges we face, from ticks to terrorists, not a single one is inherently evil, they are merely dark facets of reality, the requisite shadows of anyone who seeks light.

In a previous blog post I commented on that eventual state of darkness, we must all one day face, death.  There are many who will cite scripture and authority to support the delusional position of an afterlife to combat such a despairing destination.  In my opinion such a delusional position distracts us from the challenges in our lives, in building towards a "heaven" here on Earth.  Still, there is an element of merit in such a belief in a second chance, if only that if we fuck up our one true chance in life we can feel good in those moments that are otherwise rife with despair.

Death in all likelihood actually holds for us the ultimate peace of nonexistence, an assured peace once we have lived our whole life, a tapestry woven of threads of joy and suffering.  At first blush, we might think being positive in every moment and ignoring the dark patches is a worthy way to live.  If one is to live with integrity, however, one must confront the presence of suffering by other living things, so long as we don't permit it to drown us in an ocean of despair.

Dare to stare despair in the face!  Indeed, there is so much contradiction in this life that living sincerely can make staying on a sane path difficult at times.  Too many examples shatter the idea that Goodness occurs naturally and of its own accord in this world.  We celebrate the immensely expensive military killing machines and the humans who wield them ostensibly to seek peace, hardly considering the despair and hatred we stir in our  fellow humans.  At an even more fundamental level we destroy life to sustain our nutritional lives, rarely taking a moment to contemplate the plants and animals that were confined, killed and converted into delicious food.

And so we live in constant suspension of disbelief, trying to see only the Goodness in the walk through the world while forgetting the suffering we cause with each footfall.  We pretty much ignore every planetary issue that is obviously driven by human population, reveling in increasing our numbers while our planet cries at every additional billion humans we add to its overladen environment.

I wish I could provide a better light at the end of this dark tunnel.  Alas, the hard truth is living as individuals and groups with the most positive intentions will never result in a despair free existence.  Perhaps being honest with oneself about the state of despair is the ultimate irony, as sometimes I do wonder if the religionists are wielding evolution's gift of self delusion to their advantage, by potentially living happier lives for the benefit of the human species and at the cost of all others.

Still, I believe conscious existence is the silver lining facet in an otherwise despair seeded world.  Sure, at any moment we can opt for ultimate silence, alas once invoked you will lose any chance at the rainbow glimmers that permit us to dance on the head of Despair.

Life is problems. Living is solving problems.  One of those problems is Despair.

(Endnote: I contemplated holding off posting this until Monday, to avoid adding a downer to the weekend, alas, better to present Despair on a Friday, methinks, if only because the glorious promise of a weekend has the best chance to confront such darkness)

Thought Transfer Protocol X

Often taken for granted, humans have evolved and developed this magical thing we call language, Since getting the Goodness word out is critical to living life fully, I think it's worthwhile to highlight the various language mediums we use everyday to communicate, each providing advantages and pitfalls along the way.

Face-to Face-Talking:  As old school as it gets.  Tens of thousands of years of invested ancestral research layered on top of our evolved senses and processing power lets you speak vocally and importantly integrate hand, face and body gestures to get across the point to your listeners.  This mode of communication is still popular in the modern day for those of us who aren't total shut-ins.  Of all the implementations of language, talking face-to-face is inherently the most satisfying, as it provides reward feedback loops wired for millions of years by evolution and further programmed by cultural upbringing.  Its biggest disadvantage is its ephemeral nature; "whisper down the lane" unreliability added  to "foot-in-mouth" inaccuracy hinder its effectiveness.  Still it remains the truest real-time use of language humans use in the current day.

Letter writing: Victorian in essence, but surprisingly popular up until the dot com expansionist era.  Surprising how many post cards, holiday cards, romantic notes and other written thoughts were shared pre-2000 as the primary method of communicating with people too distant geographically or temporally.  There is an art to constructing a written letter that is joyful at its core; sadly the art of cursive handwriting itself is definitely on the extinction list given the current Millennial Generation's addiction to the QWERTY interface.  Writing in general has the advantage of providing the writer an opportunity to reflect before bringing pen to paper.  Books in essence are organized letters to unknown future readers and have served as the foundation of cumulative understanding until the more recent digital days,   The semi-permanence of the written word can also be a disadvantage as one (or a group) can be held accountable for their statements, as they should, especially when updated information contradicts older ideas.

Telephony:  Fully implemented in the 20th century, this convenient mode of vocal conversation sought to emulate FtF talking, sans the presence of gestures, eye contact and physicality.  Sound quality can greatly effect the conversation, and unless you have an agenda or a personal knack in holding a deeper conversation, I find this medium can devolve to "how's the weather?" pretty quickly.  Still, this near instant ability to converse with people at great distances permits coordination of good works and rapid spread of big and small ideas.  Given so many have mobile phones nowadays, I would love to see true voice conversations regain a foothold in our culture.

Email:  The electronic letter was both the savior of written correspondence and the ruin of the handwritten letter.  Email's double-edged sword has definitely increased the amount of non-realtime communication, with all the written letter benefits of being able to be reflective, and easily edit ones words.  Since the late 90's people across the world have discovered this free, near instant, spell-checkable medium.  Too bad 90% of email has gone spam; still if you want to share a deep thought or a brief anecdote with a friend, it can't be beat for convenience, even if the artistry of the email is pretty much relegated to ones choice of font.  Done right, and email exchange can be an effective way at sharing meaningful, personal information.

Texting:  The age of smartphones infected us with the need for greater instant gratification.  Where a phone ringing could be ignored or an email silently filtered to trash, texting inherently requests a near immediate reply in our current culture.  Absolutely great for quick "I'll be theres" and "Pick up milks" alas the tendency for text blurbs to be terse makes them horribly inadequate for deeper conversation.  Unfortunately, the ease of texting use has strong armed its domination of the conversational paradigm.  The result is a dramatic loss of conversation quality, especially when someone misses your text or by choice ignores replying for days.  One can only hope texting will find its way to a place where it simply seeds the beginning of a conversation through a more appropriate channel.  On the other hand the flirtatious use of sexting can be just what the doctor ordered in a romantic exchange.

Blogs and Facebook:  These are the partylines of the 21st century.  Facebook in particular is the collective blog for the masses, having all the makings for a massively detailed, broadly shared multimedia journal. Sadly FB can also be an idea scrambler and even a thought black hole.  Aggregating hundreds of friends' posts into one magazine layout is at the same time enjoyable as it is frustrating for reader and author both.  By design it is not a one-on-one interface; instead, it is a customizable "what's up with my friends and family" space.  As such, it actually permits people to share deeper messages in a well thought out manner.  The major drawback is the messages are untargeted, and a shared, mindful thought may get totally ignored. In FB, one lives for the LIKE, the smallest bit of acknowledgement that what was shared was actually read.  Comments are even more treasured for their relative scarcity, as a typed response gives the author more feedback to go on, whether positive or negative.  FB also suffers from media spamming, and re-re-shared posts that too often have no added creativity by the sender, further diluting the meaningful posts that are actually accessed.  Blogs on the other hand can achieve more successful localized sharing, if only because the readership is more topically targeted.

Twitter: I've tried to use Twitter, alas the streaming idea fragments it generates has been too much of an anonymous jigsaw puzzle for me to assess accurately.  It certainly is used a lot, so I imagine it fills a gap the other mediums lack, particularly in specialized situations like national coups and TV series real-time commentary.  Personally I have eschewed Twitter if only because FB, email and texting have informationally satisfied my communication wants.

In the end, the challenge for each one of us is to utilize these mediums to the best of our ability, whether to improve our relationships with others or to increase the productive outcome for personal and group projects or to otherwise assist us in pursuing good works.

In what ways do you leverage language creatively and effectively?