On Language

Hola mi gente,
I would rather have a straight up racist like Trump and his gang in the White House, than a racist like Hillary Clinton. Hopefully people are waking up.

On another note, I will be on WBAI’s “On the Count” this Saturday, November 19^th at 11AM. Check us out on the radio or the internet. Click here for more information.

Language

The Tower of Babel

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
 -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I have a friend. He is pretty smart, having first graduated from Harvard and then finishing his graduate studies at Columbia. He loves his sons dearly and oftentimes comes to me to discuss child-rearing practices. He points out that sometimes I come off as a “Philosopher King,” which is the aspect of my personality he loves best. He doesn’t like it when I’m “dicking around,” as he calls the aspect of my personality which loves to goof off (I happen to enjoy my dicking around, by the way).

Which was why I was surprised when, in asking his son to do a task, he told him, “And make sure you don’t spill any of the water?”

He had asked his seven-year-old son to bring me a glass of water. It was filled very close to the top. What do you think happened? Yup, he spilled the water almost as soon as his father asked him not to spill the water.

I have a co-worker who has recently met a woman with which he’s considering marriage. He came to me with some concerns. I noticed, as the conversation progressed that he was talking in terms of how things could go wrong, rather than how they should work.

Now, let me clarify that the aim of this post is not to make value judgments; we all have different ways of processing information. My intention here is not to judge. Rather, I am going to simply point out how our mind works how a familiarity with its mechanisms can assist in creating lasting change.

Language is a very powerful characteristic of change. It shapes the world we live in. Whenever I am involved in a social change project, I am often reminded of Einstein’s thought experiments. For the sake of brevity, I will not go into detail about them, but simply note that they entailed Einstein placing himself in an imaginary scenario in order to better understand a particular problem. 

In one of his most famous thought experiments, Einstein asked himself what would happen if you chased a beam of light as it moved through space and caught up to it. Following the line of this thought experiment, Einstein eventually laid the groundwork for his special theory of relativity.

What is important here is that Einstein’s thought experiment compelled him to imagine a world that did not exist. In doing so, in immersing himself in that world, he had to act and behave as if that world existed. Furthermore, in order to properly envision such a world, he had to develop a language (theory) for it. In the process, he changed the world. What is needed to create lasting change is the capacity and will to envision a world that we want and the language necessary to create and sustain it. Unfortunately, that is what is missing from our collective political consciousness today. This is why we in the United States have Trump as president-elect.

At the micro level, observe almost every parent and you will hear people say things such as, “Don’t do it,” “Don’t think about it, or the famous parental admonition, “Don’t you dare say/ do that!” This is why punishment, as a parental tool, fails miserably. At the macro level, this is why punishment as a solution to crime, lack of access to education, and poverty has failed miserably, in the process making the United States an apartheid state. In both instances, the failure has been the failure of creating a language that sustains a vision.

If I were to tell you right now, “Don’t think about Eddie sodomizing you,” what immediately happens in your mind? Well (your protestations notwithstanding), you find yourself thinking about Eddie sodomizing you. The same thing happens when you tell your child, “Don’t spill the water.” The way our brains work is that in order to erase a negative (i.e., “Don’t let Eddie fuck you in the ass… ”), we first have to think about it. Our brains don’t know how to put things into negative language. In order to know what not to think of, our brains first have to think of it.

We all have people in our lives who, with good intentions, tell us what not to do. What they are actually doing is putting our attention exactly in the direction they feel in wrong. A few examples include, “Don’t say ____ anymore,” “Don’t worry,” “Don’t panic,” “I don’t think you’re stupid.” Using negative language is also something we do to ourselves. We tell ourselves we won’t think about something and we do. This is repression and we often mistake it for morality. For example, I am sure Weiner has struggled with posting dick pics on social media. Other examples include: “I won’t do that again (usually followed by, “Dear God!” LOL), “Don’t piss me off,” and “Don’t smoke,” just to name a few. We tend to think of what we don’t’ want to do, and then do it anyway.

Part of changing our society and even our personal idiosyncrasies is changing the language that supports them. One way is to understand that we can take our negative thoughts and state them in the positive. Instead of saying what we don’t want, we can instead envision and state what we do want. Try it.

Think of a negative statement you’ve been making to yourself, and experiment by turning it into a positive one, right now… 

Yes… now.

Instead of saying to yourself, “don’t worry,” try asking yourself “How would I like to feel?” Instead of saying, “Don’t smoke,” try saying, “I would like to be smoke-free.” This not only feels better, it actually begins creating the mental conditions (actually making the synaptic connections) that reorients your brain and prepares you to achieve more of what you want, by focusing on the positive things you want in your life.

At the societal level, this was evident in the Clinton campaign. When running against Bernie Sanders, who was spearheading a wildly popular political movement and what he (and others) envisioned, the Clinton campaign settled in what we could not do. The language of the Sanders campaign was composed of declarations of what we could do. The Clinton campaign settled smugly into a faux “pragmatic progressive” that failed and failed miserably. The same happened with the general election where, say what you will about Trump, he was able to offer a vision and language of making “America great again.” The Clinton campaign was basically bereft of vision and language that did not counter the bleak status quo.

From a statistical perspective, about 80% of the people who make New Year’s resolutions stopped trying altogether by the end of a month. What I want to say here is that the vast majority of people who achieve change in their lives experience difficulty and fall off the wagon, sometimes many times, before they eventually get it. If you smoked a cigarette, try being smoke-free over again; see how long you can be smoke-free. Very few people get it the first time, people, so give yourself a break, and focus on the positive things you want in life. But in order to do that, you have to have a language that resonates with the kind of person you want to be or the world you want to live in.

In the end, whether we want to make personal changes or change the society we live in, we first have to create a language that helps manifest such a world. As this election shows, we are not even close and some of us believe -- use language -- that is self-defeating. 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Responding to Fear

Hola mi Gente,

 Have you ever felt that someone or some thing, or some situation is just right? Have you ever followed that inner feeling? How was that?

Responding to Fear

Nothing in life is to be feared; it only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

-- Marie Curie

A shadow is created by blocking, deflecting, or otherwise obstructing light. Wherever fear comes into existence, it lives, grows, and remains a part of us by embedding itself between the light of creative vision and our intuition. It is the shadow, not a lack of ability, that is the biggest obstacle we face today as a global community. The shadow, as I see it, is the space between what we want and what we get. It’s the distance between who we are and who we are meant to be, with the biggest, deepest, and widest gap occurring between the present crisis and our vision.

Look around at what has so many of us mesmerized: paranoia, worry, doubt, disease. They cast a spell on almost every aspect of our lives. Fear prevents us from seeing or feeling clearly. It blocks the natural flow of our creative energy and hampers our ability to be radically innovative. We seem to be caught in a collective state of generalized anxiety that makes solutions impossible or paralyzes their implementation. When we do manage to get started, it is fear that often calls us back at the first sign of disappointment or problem. Fear, as a friend likes to say, keeps us “stuck on stupid” as in the example of the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. It stunts our growth and suffocates our awakening, causing us to repeat painful and habitual patterns of behavior and making us lose sight of our vision (or uncommon sense). In order for us to envision and create a greater society we must get past this fearful landscape.

Historically, creative people have often felt separated from their communities. It’s as if their ability to see clearly between what is and what could be serves to stigmatize them. Innovators are often ridiculed, their ideas and insights too far ahead of the curve of conventional wisdom. This isolation strikes fear within us: we fear that if we express our ideas, or rock the boat a little, or act on them, others will ridicule us. Shit, we are in the midst of an election cycle predicated on fear. The truth is that our visionary thinking is the only thing that will save us. But people are afraid to follow their own ideas. They’re sure they will be perceived as crazy, or radical, or -- gasp! -- outside of the political norm.

We are defeated not by our uniqueness, but by our fear of the unusual, the new, the strange. We live in a society obsessed by numbers and norms, with its averages, means, and medians spurring us to believe in something called “normal,” which has little to do with being real. The idea of “average” or “typical behavior” is nothing more than a mathematical conceit.

Similarly, we fear information that challenges our ingrained worldview. Most of the resistance we see today is really about killing the messenger than a defense of reason. Those frantically screaming against health care as a human right, or decrying free education, or those who have made it their business to discredit all forms of science, are protecting hidden agendas composed of fear and loathing.

We fear losing as self-doubt zeroes in on the space between our potential and insecurity. We’re not thin enough, smart enough, or committed. As a nation too many focus on what we can’t do, rather than what we’re capable of. We’re too late with too little. Such doubts and fears make us hesitate at a moment in time in which we can ill afford to hesitate. Others fear innovative ideas succeeding and taking hold because it means their worldview was wrong -- fear of success. Many fear death, or loss of control. Whatever the case, it’s fear-based living at a time of crisis.

A sure recipe for catastrophe.

The people who insist that true innovation cannot be implemented demonstrate a complacency that’s both ignorant and disempowering. Awakening to our full potential is not a spectator sport. If we’re going to respond the challenges we face, we must act and act thoughtfully with foresight. Whenever a group tries something different, there’s an initial period of turbulence. Many people, fearful of new ways, mistake the turbulence for change itself and decide they would rather go back to the “good old days.” In this way, we dismiss the world of potential and vision for a past that never existed. 

If we allow ourselves to be led by a creative vision, we will never lose. We can let go of right and wrong, winning and losing, approval and disapproval. Right now, we are on the cusp of a new world emerging and behind us an old world imploding upon itself. The only rational response to fear is to fully embrace this new world. Our potential can only be realized by working collectively. This new world has been on the cusp for a long time and it has nothing to do with some bullshit calendar and everything to do with being awake, and we have heard it speaking all our lives.

Stop the fear, motherfuckers.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Thinking Outside the Box

Hola mi Gente,

I will be voting for a third party candidate this coming fall. I am voting my conscience.

In other news, my beloved Mets are on a winning streak, the sun is shining, and the promise of spring is everywhere. Life is good.

* * *

The Unisphere, 1964 World's Fair, New York City

The Human Potential

We throw our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

-- Anonymous

Just the other day when I mentioned that only a mass grassroots movement would be able to address the inequality and racism in our country, a Facebook friend dismissed that idea by stating, “Yawl have been trying to do that for decades.” 

Whenever I hear this crap, I have to wonder how otherwise intelligent people seem to have forgotten that grassroots movements have been singularly responsible for bringing progressive values to fruition. The civil rights movement wasn’t a Democratic Party project. It was a movement. The reason women have the right to vote is because it came from the demands created by -- you guessed it -- a grassroots movement. Over and over, if you look at our shared history, you can’t help but come to the awareness that anything we have that is worthwhile came from the ability of a small group of people to continually bring positive change.

The thing that I most detest regarding the Clinton campaign is how it rests on the myth that we can’t do anything. Her campaign rests on the notion that what we claim are the core values of the progressive project is impossible. Single-payer? No we can’t. Free postsecondary education? No we can’t. If one were to do an analysis of the Clinton campaign’s platform, you can easily come away with the feeling that its motto should be, “No we can’t!” If this were the 1950s, the Clinton campaign and its supporters would condescendingly dismiss the notion that diners should be integrated.

I like to think that I have the mind of a scientist and the heart of the poet. I believe that only when we fuse the two that we arrive at true wisdom. Better put, wisdom is found at the intersection of the mind and heart -- when they become one. I’m not saying I am wise, just tryin’ to get me some integration up in this piece I call “Eddie.”

Without this important integration, we are blind and our rational minds are literally half-cocked, as blind in its quantifying obsession as the superstition it ridicules. Idolizing the power of reason does not banish the old passions and irrational fears. Reason without passion is an illusion of control based on a myth of predictability. Our obsession for certainty grew out of a misunderstanding of science in its original sense. The word science comes from the Latin scientia, knowing.

I know I’m losing you, but hold on for a moment. LOL!

Our ancestors spoke of “science and conscience” in one breath. They pronounced it “con science” (with knowledge). In ancient Latin, conscientia meant knowledge with another person. In English, it came to mean “a knowledge of one’s inner truths,” or as the Oxford English Dictionary quotes, “deity in the bosom.”

What I call uncommon sense is science tempered by the heart. Rather, reason tempered by passion. This is science not the scientism we have made into a modern god. Our inordinate obsession with mindless materialism threatens, well, our material existence. Take, for example, the unquestioned assumption of the power of free markets or global neoliberalism to alleviate social ills. Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that there is no such thing as a “free” market: all markets are supported by government institutions. This allegiance to free market ideology is something similar to a superstition. A superstition that demands that only that which generates economic growth is worth doing undermines our sense of responsibility to our communities, to our ecology, and to our quality of life. An awakened consciousness would tell us there is something terribly wrong with this form of thinking.

We have to wake up... We have to become aware of the collective dysfunctional behavior patterns that keep us mired in ignorance. Our ability to become awake is more vital to our future than anything on our political agendas. Our intuitive sense tells us that specific problems all revolve a few core issues:

Can we become kinder, more rational beings?

Can our intelligence be enhanced?

Can we transcend the boundaries of our ego-centered goals and see the bigger picture?

Visionaries throughout history have debated the issue of human potential. Revolutionary philosophers have argued that “ordinary” people are potentially smarter and more evolved than they’re cracked up to be. I tend to agree.

Today, the issue of human potential is literally life and death for our species. In the Dark Ages, sailors refused to travel beyond a certain point because they feared falling off the edge of the earth. Today, we have a similar counterpart: some call it a “Flat-Earth Psychology” -- the assumption about human limitations. On the other end of the spectrum, there is exists a human potential movement. Just as in the Dark Ages, there were people who knew the earth was round and dared to journey past human-created limitations; today there are small groups of people who “dare to dream while in the day. People who dareto have visions. Visionary thinking is uncommon sense in action. Vision is an imagined goal that serves to organize our intelligence and set fire to our reason. Vision sees beyond limitations and prepares us to grasp the larger picture -- the world beyond a particular road.

The ability to see the possible and how to get there is the human potential for evolution and social progress. Vision is the cutting edge of human intelligence. Throughout history our ability to think experimentally -- or “out the box” -- has shaped us. What marked our Paleolithic ancestors was their remarkable ability for creativity and inventiveness.

I can’t help but think that there are forces today, as one conservative pundit proudly proclaimed, that “sit athwart history.” Those were the very same forces that dismissed the notion that we could put a human being on the moon before ten year’s time. Yet, that is exactly the kind of vision we need today, but we consigned ourselves to be led by a flock of fools too enamored of ideological dogma. We need to wake up before it’s too late.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…