Doubt As Doorway To The Original Sin

Doubt would seem to be especially problematic from a Judeo-Christian perspective. After all, it was the 'seed of doubt' planted in Eve's ear by the serpent in the Garden of Eden--as told in the Book of Genesis--which is believed to have catapulted Humanity into a whole other realm. And that realm has not been kind to us! Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Toil. Fruitless labours. Painful births. Dukkha all around. Enough for everyone and everything.

So, if doubt itself is mythologically portrayed as being responsible for Humanity's Fall from Grace then one can see how there may be anawfully aversive relationship to doubt from a psychological perspective. It ends up generating a certain degree of dis-comfort within those who have been privvy to the tale of doubt in the Garden of Eden (especially those exposed to that story in a formative way, which generally means in childhood).

This story of doubt in our heads, pervading our culture, and at the epicenter of our Civilization, can create a climate where certainty and conviction are valued tremendously over any inkling of uncertainty or vagueness. And yet, being that we are not omniscience beings with an omnipresent perspective on anything, it stands to reason that doubt is essential if we are to be honest with ourselves. In fact, doubt may be a more honest path aligned with self-awareness than any sort of certainty or raw conviction. Doubt is the path of humility... and by that I don't mean humility of the self-depracating variety but of the intensely self-aware variety that takes into account or partial and incomplete understanding of things.

If only Cain and Abel were capable of doubt. If only Jew and Palestinian were capable of doubt. If only George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were capable of doubt. If only Karl Rove and Richard Pearl were capable of doubt. If only Adoplh Hitler and Joseph Stalin were capable of doubt. If onmly Jim Jones and David Koresh were capable of doubt. How much different would the world be? How much more benign?

How much more friendly would the world be if we were all a little less certain in our understanding of others; such that we were not so quick to judge and determine that so-and-so is a such-and-such? How much less likely would we be to pull the trigger? How much less likely would be to think a child is deserving of abuse; or that a lover is in need of some smacking around? How much different would the world be if we prevaricated in those intense moments were lives hang in the balance: where imminent death and destruction are only a doubt-free moment away?

Whadda Ya Mean Your Not Sure?!?!

The self-assured man. The confident, take-no-prisoners approach to life. We know it well. Some of us live it. Others live with it. And still others see it portrayed in the movies via the psychologically narrow portrayals of the hero who doesn't bat an eye, questions nothing, but just does. The pure doer. The man of action.

Though a sure stereotype the 'pure doer' has more than his share of problems--as well as generating much the same for others. The pure doer--with American President George W. Bush certainly standing as a prime example (so much so that he is almost a caricature of the overly self-confident man, the one presuming absolute knowledge in the face of a world rife with uncertainty, incompleteness, and relativity--read Heisenberg, Godel, and Einstein lately Prez)--is the one who doesn't waver; though perhaps he ought to. The pure doer is the total opposite of someone like Shakespeare's arche-character, Hamlet. The pure doer has no time for questions, no time for self-reflection--which last I checked was one of the chief characteristics of being-human, the capacity for reflection.

What if the pure doer, the heroically self-confident and self-assured, is under the sway of, and allegiant to, a primarily animalistic tendency--meaning, a far more base evolutionary impulse that we could say verges on the in-humane? The one who just does without any inclination to doubt the course of one's actions is, like I said, the obverse of Hamlet. That Hamlet who has become a sort of modern archetype of the human psyche in light of our ever-increasing knowledge of the world: our knowlede of how and where paradox reigns; of how and where contraries are inherent in almost everything we do; of how and where no 'thing' seems solid or certain; of how and where all that we commit to seems to come with an almost terrifying cost, the awareness of which freezes us in near total impossibility. Like Hamlet. Not unlike Hamlet.

The pure does just does, though. This is why the pure doer is one whose life is not unlike a 'bull in a China shop.' As the more reflective former Secretary of State under President G. W. Bush put it, 'If you break it you fix it.'

The heroic archetype---the complex of the pure doer acting on us psychologically--is awfully naive though. There is a sense that if one just charges in then everyone will gladly welcome us, bow down before us, praise our very name. The heroic complex, in the current world of increasing awareness of relativity is a complex that is more and more problematic each and everyday. It is a psychological complex fitting for emergency situations--when urgency of action is paramount. But as a form of politics it makes life hell for more people than it could ever be said to save.

Eroding Self-Importance & Our Healthy Doubt

At one level we need to believe in what we are doing in order to even get the momentum to get up and running. If there is not a sense of import and/or urgency to our actions then they probably never even get off the ground, i.e., they remain just dreams, imaginings, wishful thoughts and thinking.

At the same time, our sense of self-importance relative to whatever we are involved in must go through periods of intense doubt and self-scrutiny in order to remain authentic. The healthy doubt and that necessary erosion of self-importance relative to our work can serve to keep us in a state of penetrating inquiry as to whether or not we are really whole-heartedly invested in what we say we are... or pretend to be.

For instance, when we are feeling doubt around a particular area of personal investment--a relationship, a career, a hobby, a vocation, a sense of duty and calling--we may need to bring an abrupt end to such a pursuit--its time may have come. Or, we just may need to re-evaluate the whole situation and adjust ourselves in some way so as to better actualize our capacities in synchrony with external conditions and circumstances.

Doubt, in such a sense, is really a necessary growth factor in all of our pursuits. I suggest that doubt is what we need to become more comfortable with because it keeps us honest with others as well as with our self--not to mention our work. Doubt is like the sense that we can do more; the sense that our time may be better spent; the sense that our calling has shifted; the sense that an old road, well-traveled is reaching its end; the sense that our spiritual practice needs to shift into another realm. It is as if doubt is 'hidden potential' within us forcing us to question what we are currently involved in because there is something yet waiting in us to be born, to emerge, to flower and grow, unfold and unfurl. Doubt today is the seed of tomorrow's hope.

But only if we entertain that doubt. Only if we walk with it. Only if we have a conversation with doubt. Then tomorrow's hope reveals itself, in the face of doubt.

Worldviews In Crisis: Nature's Fatal & Formative Blows

Seminal events happen to each and everyone of us. In one way or another there are births and deaths--beginnings and endings, findings and losing, gains and losses--that forever alter the topography and trajectory of our lives. Someone is born into our lives. Someone leaves us unexpectedly (which forms the underlying emotional tone of my last published work, Buddha & Shakespeare: Eastern Dharma, Western Drama). In either case, whether through emergence or departure, our world is thrown into a state of crisis. And by crisis I mean that which is both upsetting as well as potentially transformational.

To paraphrase the Buddha, 'Birth is crisis. Death is crisis. Sickness is crisis. All of this is crisis.' Or, to quote a lady that I happen to be a fan of, Victoria Lansford www.victorialansford.com 'The truth hurts... and sets you free.'

But why should the truth hurt in setting us free? Why should that which leads to freedom be so upsetting? Why should being stripped of our illusions be so painful? Is it because 'ignorance is truly bliss' and we adore our beloved ignorance? Isn't that why people can often be heard saying, 'I don't want to hear it?'

Perhaps it is because we are more the creatures of habit than we like to confess in all honesty. We grow comfortable in our little traps. Growth is painful. We have to 'let-go' of certain things in order to be capable of embracing others. And yet, while we are being asked to 'let-go,' by the seminal event in our lives--a crisis--we see nothing on the horizon to fill the space of what we are being asked to give up; which can quickly result in making our grapsing and clinging all the more tenacious. We may even feel like we have to 'hang on for dear life!'

The metaphors of death and sacrifice in terms of our being initiated into 'new ways of being' are not without considerable merit. Those metaphors exist--and have existed--for a reason. Psychologically speaking the death is real. I repeat, psychologically speaking the death and dying process is a literal one in terms of world-views, emotions, feelings, images, and self-conceptions. A crisis brought on bu birth and death literally forces us into a place of deep re-imagining. We become a father or a mother, a husband or a wife, a widow or a widower, and in doing so we have to re-imagine who we are. We have to die, in so many ways, to who we have become prior to this one event we cannot so easily dismiss or deny. And, in spite of all the sweet talk of 'transcend and include' ala Ken Wilber and Integral Spirituality, the process itself can be far more harrowing than what those cute little words would seem to indicate. There are parts of us--sub-personalities, if you will--that refuse to move on... that don't want to leave our psychological New Orleans. That don't want to evacuate. That don't want to change with the times. That resist the impetus that is the crisis: that is the painful, hopeful, challenging, difficult, enlightening, transformational, death-dealing and death-defying opportunity brought to bear upon our whole being via a seminal event.

Can't Even Imagine The Pain

I simply can't imagine what a parent must feel in the face of powerful forces that are going to impact one's son or daughter so directly--forces beyond one's ken and control. Hurricanes. Homelessness. Unemployment. Dislocation. Disease.

Death.

The level of pain and heartache that clearly commences in the wake of being unable to protect one's child has to have no comparison in this-world. I suspect that it is the greatest of all pains, the most momunmental of all tragedies--not to suffer a loss romantically, but to feel powerless and impotent in being able to protect those whom we have been blessed and given to care for: our children.

If it happens to us when is there not a time when we don't look back and wonder what we could have done differently. If only could easily become a way of life. If only I had left sooner. If only I had not stayed. If only I had called. If only: the life of regrets.

Perhaps because there is no other greater duty in life than to care for our children, it crushes our spirits like no other loss when we feel ourselves to have failed in some way, in that regard. Mothers and fathers alike suffer when faced with circumstances and/or conditions that they cannot overcome; forces that they as a simple human-being pale in comparison to; forces that verge on the godlike, the demonic, the catastrophic. Forces with names like Katrina and Rita. Names that sound like they could those of our friend, and yet names that leave us separated, disjointed, homeless, and grieving, no doubt, for lifetimes to come.

Every parent knows that they can fail at everything else, and as long as they feel themselves to have done their duty in caring for and protecting their child they are ok. You can fail at a career. You can lose a dream. You can be a fool in the eyes of the whole world for what you have done. Still, if your son or daughter feels loved and appreciated and cared for---and you know you did your best on their behalf--then that is all that matters. I said, then that is all that matters!

Unfortunately, for each of us, and for parents especially, there are forces beyond our powers of determination. Contrary to what some New Age gurus and wanna-be prophets proclaim--the complete powers of creation are not within our jurisdiction. We are as much prey to forces as we are predator to the same. We are as much those who must adapt and deal with unforeseen circumstances and conditions as those who define the circumstances and conditions. All of which leaves us vulnerable to being 'acted upon' in ways that we seem to have little say in. We are like the Biblical character Job, one who suffers gravely all of these tragic events and wonders why: 'God, what have I done? Have I displeased you in some way? Have I not held you up? Have I not been honourable in your eyes? Have I not loved enough? Why God? Why must I/we suffer so? Why is such ruin being visited upon us?'

That level of suffering and affliction seems to make us what we are, a philosophical-being--one prone to religion, susceptible to spiritual inquiry. Homo sapiens. One seminal moment in time--a personal and familial tragedy we could not control or contain--becomes the centerpiece of our psychological lives as we ask and ponder and pray and contemplate and seek and question and query everyday the nature of a single split second when everything changed. Everything.

The event that we cannot undo. The moment when we watched in horror as our son or daughter cried their last. A fate no parent should suffer. God... I can't even imagine the pain.

That's Awesome!

Before... and this is the crucial phrase here... before a child's sense of innocence and wonder are crushed, trampled upon, beat to hell and back--via a dawning awareness of some of the harsher realities of the world being handed to them, they are so full of wonder over even the smallest, most trivial of things. The things that we overlook as adults, the things that we take for granted, the things that we have grown accustomed to--if not habituated to--are for children some of the 'coolest things in the world.'

So much is decidedly novel to the child. It means that the capacity for wonder as a child is that much greater than it tends to be for adults; adults who end up going through life as if it were a 'routine' to be habitually re-enacted day after tiresome day. You know, the 'same old same old.'

I think it was some dude named Jesus that said one must become as a 'little child' if one were to know the Kingdom of Heaven. The Zen Buddhist parallel of this is epitomized in the late Suzuki Roshi's 'beginner's mind': where each moment is realized as fresh; where nothing about the world is stale or flat.

And that is the thing, isn't it? The 'world-as-it-is' is never stale or flat. The world is constantly emerging in total and unequivocal freshness. Each moment is raw and naked. It is we, we humans, who become stale and flat in terms of how we perceive--i.e., in what I call the attitudinal stance we take towards each moment. If we are a vibrantly aware of the novelty and freshness of each moment then the world can never be boring, stale, or flat. The world will be seen as singing with life and sex and frivolity--with so many 'cool things' that are for the child within all of us so many reasons to be astounded at the awesomeness of it all.

The Philosophical Pragmatism of Children

Children are awesome. They really are. Of course, in a world hell-bent on being productive and efficient and getting things done 'on time' children can be a pain-in-the-ass. Really. Children in a world of efficiency are a problem. Children take time. Children--if we are to honour them--require us to slow down and address their questions and concerns.

And what is a child's question generally referenced to? Something pragmatic and practical. If I am working at my friend Brice's house and his second oldest son Gavin sees me using tools he wants to know what their name is--number 1--and what it is used for--number 2. The child's pragmatic philosophy is centered around two fundamental questions: what is it called--its name; and what is it used for--its purpose.

To me the notion that children are dubious 'Romantics'--thank you very much Ken Wilber, who has certainly been no friend to childhood philosophy/spirituality (and pardon me if I am wrong here)--who have these pie-in-the-sky notions of what things are--i.e., that children are wraught with the pernicious offshoots of mythical and magical thought and thinking--belies the central facts evident to anyone who has ever spent any time with a child (can you hear me now Ken?), which is that children are deeply pragmatic.

To suggest that children are all about fairies and unicorns and dragons and monsters is to create a caricature of children. It is offensive to anyone who cares about children, period! For it paints a prejudiced, one-sided picture of children and their philosophical tendencies that does not even an iota of justice to the child,n or to what a parent might be able to glean from the philosophical pragmatism of his or her children.

The truth is that children ask all sorts of questions. Not just 'Why is the sky blue?,' but also 'What is that called,?' and 'What's it for?'

And I would dare to say that children ask more of the latter type questions than the former: questions that have to do with creating a sense of intimacy and familiarity with the world around them. And gosh dang it folks--who couldn't love that!?!

The Conspiracy Against Wisdom

Any parent knows the inquisitive nature of a three or four-year old child. Once langauge is in place look out!! 'What's this?' What's it for?' 'Why?' Endlessly pointing to things, picking things up, looking at things, wondering, asking, asking all those questions... Good Lord the questions!!

Many a parent is put to wit's end by a child's innate curiousity. It can be exhausting. And that may be the danger for the parent, the child, and the world of the future that the child will one day inhabit. Why? Well, when the parent grows weary of the child's questions the parent may be liable to snapping at the child and making the child feel some sense of guilt or shame relative to asking questions.

In short, the parent can send the message to the child that kills wisdom at an early age: Questions are bad! Don't bother Mummy and Daddy with all of those questions? Don't, in other words, bother endeavouring to better understand the world around you.

Obviously children are not comfortable with ignorance. Children have an innate bent towards understanding and wisdom. Children want to know. They are thirsty for knowledge. They have an innate predisposition to overcoming ignorance. And yet, if there is conveyed to the child a sense of the 'bothersome nature of too many questions,' then the child can quickly come to a place where he or she is forced to be content with ignorance. So the result is that very thing that the child aches to overcome, to dispell, to do away with--namely, ignorance--becomes the very thing that the child is forced to live with everday thereafter, lest he or she upset his or her parents with yet another question. And we all know that the child doesn't want to do that!

Then the child goes to school, where there is pressure to know and understand before one has even been taught. You know what I am talking about--the reticence on the part of children to ask questions lest they be seen as 'stupid' by the other classmates.

Again, be content with ignorance: Don't ask the questions because a) you will upset and bother the busy parent; and b) later in life you will ridiculed for being stupid by your peers.

It all tends towards a Conspiracy For Ignorance.... or, if you prefer, A Conspiracy Against Wisdom.

My Life With Homo Ignoramus

I can remember getting drunk as a teen-ager with friends, and then, rather than shagging me a babe for some extracurricular activities I would have this tendency to want to wax philosophical. It should be no surprise that I heard on more than one ocassion--'Dude, you are getting too deep. This is a frickin' party man. Lighten up!'

Of course, to me, in my own mind, I was not the strange one. I wasn't the wierd one. Hell no! The wierd ones were the one who didn't seem to give a rat's ass about the 'Big Questions' in life. The wierd ones were the ones who were happy to not know, understand, inquire, wonder, ponder, investigate, look, observe, pray, meditate, or contemplate anything, anyone, or anywhere. It floored me to no end to think about how no one seemed to care. No one even seemed interested.

It usually left me with myself--alone, walking out underneath the stars, looking up at the night sky wondering to myself why no one seemed interested in the world around them except to the degree that the world was able to satisfy some basic need for pleasure. 'Is he/she going to fuck me?' 'Will I get laid tonight?' 'Am I going to get lucky?' 'Does so-and-so really like me?'

Poor, pathetic Dave here was outside sitting underneath the tree, listening to the obnoxious laughter and hysterics of a game of quarter-bounce: 'Drink mother fucker! Drink up!'

Don't get me wrong. It is not that I am disparaging people I grew up--friends or family members, teenage acquaintances, etc. and so forth--as much as I just don't get how people don't seem to care about what strikes me as THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS A HUMAN CAN ASK!

Me? I desperately wanted to understand more. I didn't (and still don't) want to walk through life blind to so much of what is going on just because I didn't care to ask the big questions. I didn't want to stumble into a teen-age pregnancy... or end up in the hands of the law... or fall into a job that I was going to hate for 30 or 40 years or more. I felt something else and other stirring. I couldn't fake like I was having a 'good time' sitting around a table bouncing quarters into a shot glass just so I could get my best friend smashed (or the girl from the next town over to the West of us, the one none of my buddies had gotten to yet).

Besides, I felt like if I really cared about the world---about the people close to me, about my frends and family--then I had to become wise: I had to find a way to understand more, to grow in Wisdom, to discover the Truth, to find the Way. All of those rich metaphors for becoming 'fully human' were goading me out of the smoke-filled rooms and into the open air; in order to have a conversation with the Cosmos, simply because no one else wanted to dance the Big Questions of Life and Death with me.

And I still don't understand why so few want to consider the implications of Wisdom in our lives... or the disconcerting lack thereof. Especially when the world around us--those we love, cherish, and hold in our Heart all seem to be in such desperate need, need of Wisdom: in need of a species that will finally live up to its name: Homo sapiens.

Philosophical Musings As Grounds For Revolution

Even something so simple as wondering how we can live a better life has as its basis a fundamentally philosophical disposition. To even consider life's possibilities is to tend towards philosophy; and this follows whether we consider our own possibilities or those of our children.

My argument--or contention, if you prefer--is that we are all philosophically inclined in that we want to live the best life imaginable, that we desire understanding, that we thirst for knowledge. We are Homo sapiens!

Obviously if there were not more or less skillful ways of existing there would be no need nor rhyme nor reason for wisdom... or for the love of wisdom. Yet there are more and less skillful ways of existing which tend to predispose us as human-beings to endeavouring to understand how best to live.

Developmental psychologists argue that a child's initial mode of learning is through modeling and mimicry. The child attempts to repeat what the child sees and hears and notice and is aware of. Children are born imitators of that which they see. The unfortunate side of this is that if the world around the child is not setting an example of grace and ease and well-being and strength and tolerance and compassion then the child will be less prone to mimicking those sorts of behaviours. After all, in the early stages of development there is not capacity for reflection on whether or not what the child is modeling and mimicking is proper and fitting (or if there are other ways that might be more skillful and beneficial in the long-run). It is not until later in development (pre-frontal cortex, the seat of abstraction, the emergence of forethought and better judgment) that the child becomes capable of reflecting on the 'ways of the world' modeled to him or her, and whether or not those are in fact the best ways for existing.

It may emerge with something as simple as 'wondering.' There is a sense of 'Hhhhmmmmmm.... is this all there is? Are these the only ways we can exist? Must racist remarks be a part of our world? Do we need to perceive certain ethnicities as beneath us? Is that really wise? Is that in keeping with what is ultimately True?

Philosophical tendencies in humanity. Feminism. Civil rights. Emancipation. Reformation. The Declaration of Independence. When someone begins to wonder if all that seems to be is all that really is, that is when the world starts to shake. It is that quiet wondering in secret that is the ground of Revolution. Has been. Is now. Will be.

People pondering: The world starts to tremble.

Notes On A Love That Is Not Blind

What could be more valiant and virtuous than a 'love of wisdom'--a loving wisdom? After all, haven't many of the pronouncements made by arguably the world's brightest human lights been related to the disasterous consequences of ignorance in human affairs. And if they are right--Christ (the Kingdom of Heaven is among you and you know it not), the Buddha (avidya, and the mighty conceptual errors owed to such 'ignorance'), Ramana Maharshi (and the Self that is posited as MIA--mising in action)--then only a love for wisdom and understanding is alone capable of undermining the root causes of unnecessary human suffering.

It could mean nothing more than that those given to love are those given to philosophy. Love wants to understand the 'ways of being-well.' Love wants to know how to touch and teach and hold and comfort without coddling and co-depending. Love wants to understand. Love grows in wisdom.

So, contrary to popular opinion, love doesn't want to be blind! Love wants to see... to realize... to be made wise. So love asks the tough questions rather than just assuming love's knows best. Love asks, 'How would you like to be held? What would nourish you best? What is your favourite meal? What can I do for you that would make you feel loved?

In short, to love is to ask the question, 'How might love best be expressed in this situation?'

Which may mean that being philosophical is taking out the trash, cooking a meal, delivering your grandmother to the doctors, or even helping a stranger pick up items that have fallen from her shopping bags. It is philosophy hitting the streets. Right where it needs to be! Set free from the pointless debates over intellectual minutiae that have little to do with love and everything to do with semantic quibbling.

Philosophy: two words: Love: Wisdom.

Philosophy As Loving Wisdom

Imagine stumbling around most of your life not knowing up from down, in from out, or right from left. Imagine not being able to orient yourself appropriately to the world. Imagine not being 'wise' to what is going on. Or maybe you don't have to imagine. Maybe you live--at least part of the time!

The etymological roots (Greek) of the word 'philosophy' have to do with the 'love of wisdom.' Philo = love. Sophos = wise. Loving wisdom.

Philosophy, then, is not about big words like epistemology and phenomenology and qualia, or pithy little Latin references like a posteriori and a priori. Philosophy is an affair of the heart. Real philosophy is erotic.

Philosophy is a form of love. It is one of the aspects that Love can take on in this-world. And there is, dare I say it, romance inherent in the original intent behind philosophy. It is a romantic vision of what the world--the human world, our relationships and our politics--can be like if we become wise, if we grow in our understanding, if we learn more, if we remain devoted to what is Good, True, and Beautiful.

Philosophy, then, if it is real philo-sophia, and not just pure mental masturbation, is from the Heart. The Heart is the locus, the center-point of our inquiries. We want to grow wise because we love... because we care. And better loving comes about through 'loving wisdom'--through philosophy.

Our Innate Thirst For Understanding

I would argue that everyone is philosophically-inclinced; to the degree that we want to understand the events in our lives. A world that makes 'sense' is important to us. Thus, there is a desire so deep and so pervasive in the very constitution of what it means to be human that compels us to try and discern the rationale behind the reality. Why are things the way they are? Is there some 'grand conspiracy'--an invisible, secret cabal controlling the events that are, well, beyond our own personal control? Or is everything sort of haphazard and random, with only minimal human control able to be exhibited on any one level of our lives?

I would also contend that when things are 'going well' we don't seek to understand the reasons and the rationale behind why things are the way they are. We are just grateful. Maybe even a little superstitious so we don't dare ask too many questions or pose to many queries, lest we jinx ourselves. Besides, when things are going well we are often caught up in the 'flow of events' to the point that there is no sense of separate self-hood that wants to look back and reflect on events so as to analyze them for their logic. This is why, as I mentioned yesterday, there is a mutual relationship between suffering and philosophy. Suffering is good for philosophy, for psychology, for religion, for inquiry of any and all sorts--even scientific.

Let me hit this one again: If things are moving along nicely you are just enjoying yourself and the world you are in harmony with. There is no need to ask, to inquire, to investigate. Just enjoy what is! Just being caught up in the 'flow' is enough.

However, if things are not moving along so nicely you are not enjoying yourself! So there is an inhernet incentive to inquire and investigate into the potential reasons why things are not going so smoothly. Philosophy, psychology, and religion seem to me to emerge in that context--the context of suffering. Dukkha (Sanskrit for 'unsatisfactoriness') is like the thorn in our side that compels the questions that compel the philosophy.

The happy, meanwhile, are somewhere 'immersed fully in the moment.' ; o)

The Basic Human Freedom & Right To Inquire

When we suffer, or are made to suffer, when a tragic fate befalls us we each become a little like Hamlet, wondering why this is happening to us: who are the main players in this tragedy, what are the reasons for why we are suffering--the unnamed and unknown sources behind our tragic dilemma.

Something deeply philosophical strikes us. We can't help but ask 'Why?' We can't help but inquire. There is something basic and fundamental behind the right to ask questions about the nature of our suffering. I mean, who hasn't? Who hasn't pondered the nature of a tragic confrontation with one's fate or destiny? Who, in short, has not waxed philosophical when suffering has imposed itself upon us?

Philosophy doesn't stop nor cease. People might consider philosophy to be this arcane, high-faultin', esoteric display of erudition--an edneavour inherent with big words that few can pronounce correctly, let alone understand. But if you have ever sat on the front-porch with your Granny or your Gramps, and listened to them tell a tale of and about their life--a tale from the distant past--then you have had a course in being philosophical. Because when you boil it down, to be human is to be philosophical--no matter the conditions. In fact, some would even argue that the more we suffer the more we ask and inquire as to why things are the way they are. Suffering of the sort found in the counties and districts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Lousiana don't make us more material, as much as more philosophical. The result is that questions we may have not asked for a long time suddenly come out of everyone's mouth. And it's probably high-time they did.

The irony is that something so seemingly brute and raw as a natural disaster could serve to collectively dispose us towards being more prone to inquire--meaning, far more philosophical.

Philosophy As Our Shared Inquiry Into 'Why?'

Something happening in a cataclysmic way--via an act of Nature such as Hurricane Katrina (even though questions of human induced 'global warming' could possibly be tied to the intensity of the storm itself)--are not immune from philosophical inquiry. Even those who have not gone to Dartmouth and majoured in Political Philosophy, or taken an introductory course in Philosophy at their local Community College, still ask the question 'Why?'

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina people began to wonder why help was not more forthcoming. Was their only a material reason for the lack of help (i.e., roads out, bridges washed away, supplies were short, masses of citizens and government not yet mobilized), or was there a political reason, a racial reason--a reason based upon the division of classes that still so much exists in what is supposed to be the most free of all Nations?

To me, the prevalence of the 'Why?' question is direct evidence for humanity's inherent philosophical tendencies, even in the immediate aftermath of a monumental tragedy. People want to understand. People thirst for meaning. Why are troops mobilized so quickly for white-folk and not for black-folk? How come so many underprivileged African-Americans were forced to ride out a Category 5 Hurricance in a football stadium of all places, only to be shuttled to another one in Houston days later? Why are so many left to live (or is it die?) in squalor?

These questions have been with us for some time now. It is only the nature of recent events that have stripped away a Nation's denial and shown us how much work there is yet to be done in the name of social justice (work to be done on both/all sides of the divide). Questions that have been asked by some of the world's greatest social prophets---Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X to name but some of the most prominent few. Questions that make philosophy as important as it ever, as important as it is now, and as important as it will be well into the future. So long as there are those who are made to suffer more than others are, we will ask 'Why?'

Who The Hell Needs Philosophy At A Time Like This?

Considering the nature of recent events in the Gulf Coast region of the United States, with estimates placing more than a million people suddenly homeless, one wonders what if any merit philosophy holds at such a time. After all, people's primary concerns are material--i.e., where am I going to live? where is my family? what am I going to eat? how are my babies going to survive? how are we going to do this? how?

Surviving makes especial sense at such a time. There is no wonder or shock to people's concerns. Yet, there may be wonder as to how and why people can wax philosophical at a time like this. When people are suffering in droves over basic material concerns that have to do with their day-to-day survival, then how can any merit be seen in a blog such as this, or in detailed commentaries and analyses of the situation as a whole? Who the hell needs philosophy now, at a time like this?

This is not an apologia for my own tendency to want to inquire and write on those matters inquired into. Or maybe it is? Maybe this is my own way to try and rationalize to myself why I still feel led to write when so many are suffering what still comes so easy to me. I turn on the faucet at the kitchen and water comes out---clean water! I lay my head down on a pillow and go to sleep reastfully. I still have a home. My friends and family are all accounted for. I am very fortunate. I know this. I have counted my blessings on more than one occasion over the past week. And stilll, still I see the separation of class and race and I wonder 'What the fuck is wrong with us.' Did it take a friggin' hurricane to blow away the American denial regarding class and race?

My gut reaction is that yes, yes it did. It took a Category 5 Hurricane, of monumental--some say, epic, even Biblical--proportions to shatter the illusion held in American political circles that class and race are but the issues of the past. Now, suddenly, shockingly, anyone with eyes to see the misery and devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina is able to realize that class and race are still THE CENTRAL ISSUES pertainging to any whole-scale politics of liberation.

It is scray to think about just how much class and race have fallen out of our political discourse. It is frightening. The American lackadaisacalness with regards to authentic, liberative political discourse has to be disconcerting to the rest of the world, as well as the American population now suddenly confronted with the monster of race and class that has been shut-up and locked away for far too long.

Perhaps Americans grew weary of discussions regarding race and class after all of the hardships (as well as victories) of the Civil Rights-era. Maybe there was a false sense that victory had been won and now we could all get on with our own lives--one nation under God.

But are we really 'one nation under God?' Or are we still a nation divided by race and class? Races that are 'left-behind.' Classes that are 'left-behind.' 'Left-behind' to suffer the trials and tribulations of a monumental tragedy--something eerily resembling the Christian Rapture, popularized in, not so strangely enough a series of Contemporary Christian books entitled 'Left Behind'--as others are given the means to safe passage to another world; a world where a lack of life's vital necessities, as well as human decency and dignity are not in such short supply?

Perhaps we are onto the true meaning of what is meant by 'Left Behind.' That the primary demographic that such a series of books caters to are precisely those people with the social, economic, and political means to get out of the 'eye of the storm,' if you will. Those who are not 'chosen' are... you guessed it... 'Left Behind.'

And should it really be considered a coincidence that this all happens under the watch of a President elected to office twice by a political base heavy in so-called 'Evangelicals'---those who are precisely the ones who are not to be 'Left-Behind?'

Check that: The ones who weren't 'Left-Behind.'

Appreciating A Little Sex In Your Politics

It is relatively silly to think that in depriving the lower--in any way, shape, manner, or form--that the higher will stand to profit. Unfortunatley, though, this silly sort of thought and thinking is what much of the spiritual and religious rhetoric has been oriented towards: robbing the base in order to prop up the penthouse.

No one would even dare consider that there would need to be an effort to deprive the roots of a tree in order that it will be allowed to grow all that much higher. The ascent of the tree is not fostered by depriving the roots of that same tree. Yet consider the attitude of humanity towards what is considered base and underground and beneath us. Consider the human attitude, in general, towards that which is seen as being 'lower' than us in some sense. The aversion to the base--to that which winds and wends its way through the dark humus of the Underworld--is such that there is this mad and vain hope that we can deprive the below in order to accentuate the above.

Sacred texts have tended to include the example of Trees as somehow being synonymous with the life of a human-being. In the Book of Genesis there is both the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Everlasting Life. The Buddha sat under the proverbial Bodhi Tree during his Enlightenment. Trees are somehow profoundly archetypal in how they convey, symbolically, the nature of what it is to be human. Even our arteries and veins branch out, our nervous system as well. Dendrites in the brain also exhibit a very Tree-like nature.

And what do we know of the Tree? Could it be that the Tree-above is one with the fate of the Tree- below? The leaf-Tree and the root-Tree are joined in a common fate and destiny. To the extent that the root-Tree is deprived then that is the extent to which the leaf-Tree fails to unfold its potential. We simply can't rob Peter to pay Paul without some dire consequences arising along the way.

It is as if the lower chakras, in a sense, feed the higher chakras. Our sexuality and passion nourish from below our psychology, our politics, our art, our science. Perhaps it is high-time we grew wary of being led or informed by those whose politics is devoid of sex and sensuality.