The Fantastic Human Being

 

Hello fellow Homo sapiens,

Imagine yourself like those two kids. You have it in you.

Throughout the ages, there have been controllers who put their fellow humans in boxes, huts, chains, on gallows, crosses, electric chairs, or made to drink poison.

Controllers have used manipulation, coercion, blackmail, belittlement, ostracizing, ignoring, blaming, threatening, propaganda, lies, excommunication, and deportation to control people and thus gain power. And we use such tactics to attempt to change people's thinking.

Yet look at those faces above. Feel their joy.

You know that Homo sapiens are hard to control.

Toddlers rebel against control. As parents, we tried to control them, schools tried, and governments tried—often with extreme tactics, yet out of this came individuals who fought for peace, advancement, freedoms, liberty of thought, and expression.

These people were artists, adventurers, philosophers, scientists, and ministers. Many had no desire to change the world, but they worked on their passions and passed them on.

They inspired and motivated others to action.

Think of the Buddha, Krishna, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Antony, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, and John Lennon. All were peacemakers. Most lost their lives to controllers who believed in violence, not discussion, and yet…

The Peacemakers changed the world.

I read that the actor Steve Martin became popular at the end of the Vietnam War when a "Wild and Crazy Man" made people laugh. He came at the perfect time and place. We needed absurdity. 

We need laughter now. Laughter is a little heart massage--or maybe it's a big one.

And cream rises to the top.

And individuals will improve on a phone until it is a hand-held computer resembling a Star Trek communicator.

I heard this story (Twilight Zone music here) that in space, there are spaceships built on the same design they have used for thousands of years. Yet if you gave one of those ships to a Homo sapiens, he would try to improve it.

That desire to Make Better is built into us.

We can't help it.

Perhaps that is one of our strengths as Homo sapiens. If we are lost in the jungle, we would try to protect ourselves by making a weapon. At night, we would build a hut. If that hut fell on us that night, we would make a better one the next night. We would search for landmarks to get back home. We would look to the sky and say," I think that star was over there the first night I was lost, maybe I'm going in the wrong direction."

Put restrictions on people, and some young whippersnapper will poke his head up and find a way around it. (Or a not so young person.)

Take the individual who worked for the government and believed that certain secrets should be shared with the world.  It was not an attempt to give them to an enemy.

He downloaded them on a microchip and placed it inside a Rubik's Cube. He had constantly fiddled with that Rubik's Cube; thus, the people he worked for and with were accustomed to seeing him with it. On the day of the microchip escape, he threw the Rubik's Cube to the guard as a sort of joke, that way he got past the detector.

"I define a hero," exclaimed actress Shailene Woodley, "as somebody who against the judgment of other people, if they believe something will positively impact the world and they choose to do it and honor their integrity, that's what I (sort of) consider a hero, no matter how big or small a feat they create."

Take Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who asked the President to be merciful to scared people. Yes, she called him out in a Church Service, she embarrassed him, yet if she had said it in private, it would not have caused a ripple.

People get ready

There’s a train a-coming

You don’t need no baggage

You just get on board

All you need is faith

To hear the diesels humming

Don’t need no ticket

You just thank the Lord

Songwriter: Curtis Mayfield

 

“It has always been a coalition of the faithful that have brought about change.”—Bishop Mariann Edgar Buddes

 You know we want to be FREE. Being controlled isn't in our genetics. We're a lively bunch, a faithful bunch, we're tired of lies and mayhem. Let's get on that train.

Listen on YouTube to the Bishop Mariann Edgar Buddes’ 2022 sermon on her epiphany that challenged her courage. “Finding Courage in the Face of Injustice.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne6SQH4qMYU

Oracles of the Day

 

“One of the hardest things to make a child understand is, that down underneath your feet, if you go far enough, you come to blue sky and stars again; that there really is no “down” for the world, but only in every direction an “up.” And that this is an all-embracing truth.”

…It is also what “we grown children find it hardest to realize, too.”—Anne Gilchrist

 

Occasionally, I randomly open a book to see what it offers for the day. After the above I found this morning, I opened Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones, (1986) page 48 (30th Anniversary Edition), and this spoke to me.

“A writer must say yes to life, to all of life, the water glasses, the Kemp’s half and half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer’s task to say, “It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café’ when you can eat macrobiotics at home.”

Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist—the absolute truth of who we are—several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop those details from becoming.”—Natalie Goldberg.

At first I wasn't going to blog this week--declare Tuesday a day of mourning, but then I wrote my apologies, and now I can't help myself--well, I could, but I don't want to. In times of trouble, I turn to my computer and books for solace. I am passing on what I found this morning for the artists out there (all of you are) and those suffering for what they fear to come.

Before my last post, titled “I Apologize,” I began writing about writing and on being an artist, then decided it wasn’t addressing what I felt was important. I’ve changed my mind. Becoming an artist is important.

 Once, a prominent psychiatrist told me that writing is self-aggrandizement.

What an idiot.

I don’t care how many credentials he had, he still missed the point, traumatized me, and besmirched all literature.

If you have decided that you are imposing your great wisdom on someone, then you might be accused of aggrandizement, but if you want to become an artist—that’s a different story. (The psychiatrist disagreed with the writer of a book I was reading.)

An artist wants to express himself, which takes many forms—artistry is creative expression.

Art is where your heart is.

And HOPE is right beside it. We have to believe there is hope for the future. We have to HOPE that we aren’t all tied up in Plato’s dark cave, only seeing shadows, not the real things.

A scientist HOPES his theory is correct. A singer HOPES her audience likes her song. A songwriter, HOPES his lyrics ring true.

Every artist who sits down to his work begins the hero’s journey. Every time. Over and over. He leaves his comfortable ground to set out, not knowing what pitfalls will befall him. He or she HOPES they live to reach their destination, and they HOPE they have something to offer the tribe. 

The writer-artist doesn’t write to impart wisdom; he writes to find himself, and through that self-discovery, he HOPES to motivate others to do the same.

Who was it, Issac Asimov, who said “I write to find out what I am thinking?” Maybe it was Joan Didion who wrote a book with that title.

That is something my friend, the psychiatrist, did not understand, for if you follow Natalie Goldberg’s way of thinking that writing is a therapeutic experience, it might put him out of business.

Then there is old procrastination (Steven Pressfield calls it resistance) in finding something else to do besides THE WORK. THE WORK (your artistry) is scary, that’s the reason we put it off.

Hemingway said writing was opening a vein.

Liz Gilbert said to enjoy your creativity.

I enjoy writing. While writing, I am in the flow, and time is a no-thing. My demons aren’t as scary to me as Hemingway’s was to him. Or maybe he thought one must suffer for their craft. Published writers have an additional problem; they want to match or exceed their earliest work, which burdens them.

Steven Pressfield found that once he declared himself a writer (found his calling) and he sat down at the typewriter, typed out a few pages he later threw away—he was freed.  A few minutes later he was at the sink washing 10 days of stacked up dishes—and humming.

Suffering comes in the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

While hunting for a different picture I had recently placed in my files, I found this one. I hope that bull didn't land on his once upon a time rider.

P.S. Hey, it looks like I got my follow button back. How about a follow?