It is very easy to judge someone for a horrible act that you could never imagine yourself committing. It is also very easy to fear extreme and unlikely events like shark attacks, and terrorist acts much more than it is to consider the more likely and common dangers that claim many more lives like driving a car. However, just as we fail to evaluate risk for what it is, we also fail to recognize that evil is far more commonplace than headline making horrors like school shootings and pedophile rings. 

You don't need to know about the resent revelation of the largest child port ring in history, or the ongoing starvation and slaughter of civilians in Syria by all sides of the conflict to know about evil. You don't even need to be aware of the large portion of the world that worries about getting food and clean water every day. 

You also don't need to have taken part in causing these things to be guilty of evil. 

Many often look at such horror and ask why. One could just as easily look out the window and ask the same if they knew what they were looking at. This is because, as always, that which goes unnoticed can and often does lurk under the surface like some Leviathan. Ignorance is not bliss and that which you do no know can indeed kill you. The evil comes from these things doing so to others. 

Consider the clothes you wear. Now consider that the majority of the cotton used in the garment industry comes from Central Asia and is produced by what is essentially slave labor. Now consider that the agricultural practices employed to produce it have irreversibly destroyed the environment of the region and will continue to do so. This sort of thing doesn't go on the labels.

Consider the technology we use (I’m using a MacBook Air to write this). Not only the manufacture of the final products, but the procurement of the materials is extremely exploitative to the people involved. It’s easy to decry the ongoing wars in Central Africa. Not so easy to admit they are fought for resources that go into the technology your lifestyle is dependent on. 

Consider that 1 in 5 American women reports sexual assault at some point. Now consider that that number is much lower than the actual number of sexual assaults. Men in the audience, ask yourselves some hard questions about your past and current relationships and consider the possibility that you may be a part of this. 

These are only a few examples. The are sensational, which draws the attention. However, the key  thing to remember is that all events have other events that lead to them. Nothing happens in isolation. To this end, complicity is as much of a contributing factor to evil as is the act itself because it sets the conditions for it to actually happen. 

We are all guilty of complicity to one extent or another and thus all guilty of evil to one extent or another. Thus the question that will ultimately arise is so what? Another less damaging, but ultimately ineffective response is to blow up the issue into some major metaphysical-existential crisis. Workers rights. Global poverty. The 1%. This is all nothing more than hope soon to be swept away for lack of a path to reach it. As lofty and noble as such thoughts are, they are nothing more than good intentions, and few things have caused as much harm as good intentions. 

Rather the answer, as always, is to actually do something right now. Rather than making the problem so large that it is either non-confrontable, or comfortably ignorable, look out the window. See what is going on right now. See reality for what it is. Have lunch with the homeless alcoholic. Ask the hard questions of those you are close to. Make decreasing the suffering of others a habit rather than voting for someone who states it as a campaign goal. 

If evil is banal, so too can be its opposite. 

It is very easy to judge someone for a horrible act that you could never imagine yourself committing. It is also very easy to fear extreme and unlikely events like shark attacks, and terrorist acts much more than it is to consider the more likely and common dangers that claim many more lives like driving a car. However, just as we fail to evaluate risk for what it is, we also fail to recognize that evil is far more commonplace than headline making horrors like school shootings and pedophile rings. 

You don't need to know about the resent revelation of the largest child port ring in history, or the ongoing starvation and slaughter of civilians in Syria by all sides of the conflict to know about evil. You don't even need to be aware of the large portion of the world that worries about getting food and clean water every day. 

You also don't need to have taken part in causing these things to be guilty of evil. 

Many often look at such horror and ask why. One could just as easily look out the window and ask the same if they knew what they were looking at. This is because, as always, that which goes unnoticed can and often does lurk under the surface like some Leviathan. Ignorance is not bliss and that which you do no know can indeed kill you. The evil comes from these things doing so to others. 

Consider the clothes you wear. Now consider that the majority of the cotton used in the garment industry comes from Central Asia and is produced by what is essentially slave labor. Now consider that the agricultural practices employed to produce it have irreversibly destroyed the environment of the region and will continue to do so. This sort of thing doesn't go on the labels.

Consider the technology we use (I’m using a MacBook Air to write this). Not only the manufacture of the final products, but the procurement of the materials is extremely exploitative to the people involved. It’s easy to decry the ongoing wars in Central Africa. Not so easy to admit they are fought for resources that go into the technology your lifestyle is dependent on. 

Consider that 1 in 5 American women reports sexual assault at some point. Now consider that that number is much lower than the actual number of sexual assaults. Men in the audience, ask yourselves some hard questions about your past and current relationships and consider the possibility that you may be a part of this. 

These are only a few examples. The are sensational, which draws the attention. However, the key  thing to remember is that all events have other events that lead to them. Nothing happens in isolation. To this end, complicity is as much of a contributing factor to evil as is the act itself because it sets the conditions for it to actually happen. 

We are all guilty of complicity to one extent or another and thus all guilty of evil to one extent or another. Thus the question that will ultimately arise is so what? Another less damaging, but ultimately ineffective response is to blow up the issue into some major metaphysical-existential crisis. Workers rights. Global poverty. The 1%. This is all nothing more than hope soon to be swept away for lack of a path to reach it. As lofty and noble as such thoughts are, they are nothing more than good intentions, and few things have caused as much harm as good intentions. 

Rather the answer, as always, is to actually do something right now. Rather than making the problem so large that it is either non-confrontable, or comfortably ignorable, look out the window. See what is going on right now. See reality for what it is. Have lunch with the homeless alcoholic. Ask the hard questions of those you are close to. Make decreasing the suffering of others a habit rather than voting for someone who states it as a campaign goal. 

If evil is banal, so too can be its opposite. 

Mediocrity Does Not Lead To Valhalla

It is a tail as old as time, the effort to establish some semblance of a Utopian society. In the same way, it is just as old a belief that there were such a thing as the good old days.
In a liberal democracy that no longer engenders actual awareness in its citizens, the natural trend toward policy becoming nothing more than the sum of all special interests leads predictably to frustration at the ends of the political spectrum. This frustration provides a convenient rallying point for those demanding "change", or declaring "not my government", and "this will cause our society to crumble". The demand for progress and the longing for the good old days both fail to seize the present moment. Instead, in the vacuum we have whatever chaotic wind suits the fancy of the listener based of of what social leaning they allow to inform their life choices.

Humans in a group, not ever wanting to be seen to be outside of the group, now have the easy option of the viral repost to demonstrate their activism for or against whatever cause is trending today. Just remember, it is always easier to be braver from behind a computer screen than in public. It's always easier to go the distance when there are no lasting consequences apart from infuriating the appropriate group, or being validated for being in tune with the progressive agenda.


Something else people in groups tend to lack ability in is recognizing scale. The small becomes very large. What is in fact negligible as a threat becomes life and death. I remember the Anthrax scares. People calling in mold in the fruit bowl as if someone had dumped infectious powder in their homes. In the same way, we make small grievances into life and death final stands for all that we deem right. The term micro aggression comes to mind. Pay attention to the date stamp on this post, future readers. Go back in the history books and don't fall pray to the trending belief that history is actually subjective to the beholder. What happened last week was not a micro aggression. It was an evil crime. And forgiveness on the part of those aggrieved is the strongest and surest way to correcting this evil.

And yet, out of the woodwork we have those saying that to expect forgiveness is demeaning, and that it is even not appropriate anymore, as if the rules of the universe have been rewritten for the postmodern age. And what of what happened yesterday? Legal equality for an institution that is, in its essence, an institution of the law, and yet there are those who say this is the end of our way of life and will destroy the very foundations of our great society. Little do they seem to grasp that there will be more heterosexual divorces this year than there are ever likely to be gay marriages.

It is true that that there are those in the society who hate. There always have been and there likely always will be. They are to be dealt with accordingly. However, hate in the apposing positions of the mass society is not what we are now facing, thus making the evil, as most great evils are, banal enough to creep everywhere it pleases unopposed. To call any of this hate is to downplay what hate actually is. Hate requires involvement. It requires commitment. These positions increasingly require neither apart from the ability to agree with whatever your self identified social position instructs you to believe. And believe people will continue to do because it is far simpler and far easier to stand for something that you are told to than it is to find the truth in the noise, appose the norms in the way the truth often requires, and suffer the consequences of valuing the truth more than acceptance. People who have to do nothing but believe will often do fairly extreme things.



The collective adherence to whatever position instructs it creates a troubling group mentality that can be quite savage in its lack of touch with reality.

However, as always, there is hope. But it is best to give up hope in favor of something far more effective. That is to search out the truth, even when it is against the norms. It often is. Seek what is right, and make every effort to shepherd some semblance of sanity and civility into the storm of chaos that increasingly surrounds us.


To do otherwise leads to mediocrity, and mediocrity does not lead to Valhalla.

The Tools Of Ignorance

It is said that you do not have to be the sharpest tool in the tool shed, just a tool, so long as you are a useful tool. 

If this is the case, ignorance is vindicated by all of her children on a daily basis owing to the degrees of distraction the modern world is constantly addicted to. One week we are assailed with images of a woman who used to be a man, and in nearly the same instant exposed to cries of indignation for valor stolen by the same. This, of course, completely ignored the view of the individual put front and center, and whose narrative was so completely coopted by other interests towards no clear end other than more outrage. The next week we are assailed with accusations of someone posing to be an ethnicity she is not. For personal gain none the less, and not that being the above was ever a choice aspired to for personal gain. So much has been lost by so many for being the wrong color. But it is the most recent events that prove the degree of shock and awe required for the shortest period of depth and focus. 

Future readers will be able to look back in history to identify what happened only a few days before this entry was made, and thus I will not go into depth here apart from to say in agreement with anyone else with the slightest bit of reason that we have a problem. 

However, the extent of my agreement will end there. Only a few short days after so much evil waste of life and we are once again throne to the winds of chaos and distraction. We are even now assailed with talk of gun control, and systemic racism. We are told we have a gaping and ignored wound. We are made to believe this is a huge problem, which is no batter now than when we first began. These are indeed signals in the noise, but the constant feedback loop creates only more noise. Gun control, systemic racism, and ingrained hatred are indeed grave problems, but they are so in the same way a high fever is a problem caused by an underlying illness. They are symptoms of a deeper malady, one that has its roots in the same distraction that causes us to flit from one outrage to the other while all the wile never actually paying attention and never actually doing anything. Never really caring beyond a viral repost, or declaration of solidarity that doesn't require walking out the front door. 

Our deeper malady, our underlying medical condition as a society is the glorification and passionate devotion to ignorance. In mass we have become very good tools of ignorance indeed. We love to point to public figures and ridicule them for their absurd religious views, or their dramatic falls from grace, while ignoring the fact that we are the ones who lifted them up in the first place, or at least allowed it to be so. We allow the debate to continue on that more control will lead to less violence, while never backing down from extreme positions that will never be supported. We talk of systemic racism while ignoring what goes on every day and night on the other side of our home towns. We do what feels right rather than what is right. We support emotions rather than reasonable policies. We act out of emotion rather than even creating reasonable policy. We look to the closest relative advantage, rather than considering the great disadvantage in such a short sighted view. We unite is mass outrage against spectacular acts of evil, while never stopping to examine the banal evils we engage in every day. Do you really think that cotton you are wearing is free trade? The children in Uzbekistan who more likely than not picked it would disagree if they knew what free trade was. How about those rare earth components in you iPhone? Where do you think they came from? How about those drugs you insist are your legal and civil right to consume? How many people died as a result of the money you paid for them? What about those girls on the Internet? No one is so open in every sense of the term for no reason. What about the gas in you car? The water in your cup? The food on your table? Do you really think your existence is a victimless crime? 

There are second and third order effects to everything. There are many more shades than black and white. And there are a million and one excuses as to how it got this way and to explain whose fault it really is. 

While there are indeed second and third order effects to everything and there are more shades than black and white, for anyone who truly cares, who will do rather than repost, the only one to blame is you. Grand policy and sweeping legislation may be beneficial, even needed. Nothing though is more required every moment of every day than the involvement of the singe individual for good. 

One does not have to be the sharpest tool, but you do have to walk out the front door to be a tool for good. The objective isn't emotional satisfaction. It is justice.  

The Near Side Of The River Styx

The one thing we all share in common regardless of what age or status we were born to is that we all entered the world alone, and we will all leave it equally alone.  Much has been said for nature verses nurture determining the course of our lives between the two poles of loneliness.  Some are born to high status.  Some into garbage dumps.  Some die surrounded by loved ones, and some die on the street corner completely alone.  Regardless, we were all born and we will all die.  What happens between the two is not so much about the conditions that the one started and the other ended, but more about the choices we make between the two.  You see, of all the things out of your control, you will always have control over your own reaction, if you so desire.

Freedom is a choice.  It is a choice to accept the position as a single individual who is solely responsible for his or her actions.  The tempest of reality brings its force to bare on all.  It is always your choice how you will respond.

All humans suffer.  The degree to which we suffer depends on the station to which me were born, but all suffer.  To negate this is to ignore reality.  To the degree that you suffer, make it meaningful.

Be that dark figure on the near shore who catches those who can't pay the fair across the River Styx.  By that one to talk to the homeless alcoholic on the street corner.  Be that one to care.  Be the single individual who is willing to be the change you so desire.

Be truly human.

Strange Dreams

The following is an interesting account of an adventure had by someone I know, which borders on the insane, but perhap the readers of this space are into that sort of thing. 

I found myself in seated meditation in a temple with oppressive tropical heat carried on the breeze through the hall. A sent of curry and fish oil carried on the same breeze. The rounded script recording the sutras on dried banana leaves, carved such so as to not destroy the medium gave away the language. I was in Burma, and my saffron robes give away my station. I am a monk, seated in meditation, searching for freedom from suffering.

I sat and I chanted. Breath in. Breath out. My pronunciation of the ancient words in a continuous and ever complexifying rhythum indicated a mastery of the practices of my sect. I strove to detach. Thought. No thought. Focus. No focus. Mind. No mind.

I had walked this path before. I had walked it for many years at this point. The final objective known for what I believed, but not for anything here to fore experienced or seen. And then a trance. And then a vision.

I was transported into another state of awareness. Perhaps not elevated, but perception none the less altered. Perhaps relaxed to see what was already there, and what had always been there. The distractions of physical samsara faded. I saw instead what lay beyond them, and it was yet even more suffering. The desert of gray below and in the sky stretched to the horizon. If anything, the view was more troubling in the absence of the physical attachments I had strived so long to detach from. In something so close to a void, it had always been assumed one would reach freedom from attachment. But here more than anything I was made aware of my own attachment to mortality. Even beyond the physical I was still bound to death and rebirth. Or perhaps I was simply bound to death in this place so bland and between light and dark, so devoid and yet so vivid as to call into question the deepest fundamentals of what we believed about extinguishing the flame. About Nirvana.

Perhaps I was in this trance forever. Perhaps only a few moments. The shift was as extreme as a flame being extinguished, only in revers. A light had appeared on the horizon. Or maybe it was the horizon. So massive the thing as to transcend the notions of time and space so normally visible in the physical samsara. It was as if it transcended ages, not only worlds. It was a ship, a vessel I knew in one look from the third eye could hold all below Nirvana. Perhaps it could hold that too. I would have fled, had I not forgotten my own body and had I not felt some very distant, yet very deep memory triggered by the vision.

The ship sat on the clouds above, which did not seem so gray anymore in the shadow of something so radiant. And then a voice. "See and understand. I have brought a ship great enough to hold the worlds. And so it shall for all below shall be raised above to Golden City beyond samsara. Beyond Nirvana. Beyond all comprehension. " And then I saw before me what I had only understood before to be an instrument of death. A cross of wood. And before it, a river of blood. I heard again, "all things in the worlds must die to be raised to life again. The cycle of death and rebirth you know well. I have died so that all the worlds my rise forever to the Golden City. Come and bathe in my blood, which will flow through all the worlds." I waded into the river, and I heard again, "I am the one you have heard about. The one you have been waiting for. The one the Buddhas spoke of. I am the Mesia."

At this I descended into the river, and all went dark. I awoke to find myself thrashing about at my desk, the sound of the highway outside, and my alarm clock about to go off.

Changing Seasons

It is nearing the end of the year. The season has shifted, and with it, life has made itself more scarce. Whether it be the trees barren of leaves, the grass dead in the frost, animals in hibernation, the birds flying over the horizon, or simply the sun lower in the sky in the interludes between long cold nights. The whole world dies to one degree or another and each element in it's own way. And then, it comes back to life more forcefully than before.

Eons of experience points to the seasons eventually changing, life returning, and the cycle continuing. It is the natural order of things, and a process we have long come to expect and take for granted. Those who went before from the majority of cultures found spiritual significance in the changing patterns. Some spoke of thin spaces as the seasons changed. The natural and the super natural getting closer as we were driven closer to each other to avoid the cold. Death always brings near the other. Some saw the need to placate the gods with blood sacrifices when they sensed them approaching in these times of shifts to darkness. 

Newer faiths capitalized on the older customs and adapted them to convey new messages. Whether Christianity, Islam, or consumerism, the innate urge to commune with the other is a powerful force, and one for which we still sacrifice greatly for the chance to turn what is into what be wish it could be. 

Some would see the rampant consumption and mass placating of social anxieties to be noise confusing us from the signal  for the "reason for the season". I see it as something coming from our deepest being. We wish more than anything else to be connected, and most of all to the Divine Other. Whether we recognize it or not, it is as fundamental as breath. Nearly as fundamental is our notion that to get something, you must give something. Thus the sacrifice.

As with everything though, there is a deeper pattern. Something over the horizon. A longer trajectory. 

All things die. However when death passes, life reemerges more forcefully than before, as surely as the grass after the thaw, and cherry blossoms in spring. It is such on more than the obvious level. We sense the thin spaces. Our traditions originated from fundamental ideas about the world. Even if the original meanings have long since been covered in noise, we still sense it. 

I commemorates this time in memory of when the Divine stepped through the thin space into the physical, soon to die, and then, to rise. And with this resurrection, the whole world will follow. The ultimate winter, and the ultimate spring to follow. Such is the sacrifice all our attempts only pointed to. Carried on the winds of ultimate compassion, there is a ship large enough to hold all the world. 

Death is still among us and overtakes all things. Belief in that not yet seen requires faith. We are creatures of faith regardless of its object. 

I chose to have faith in the notion that the true height of mastery is not to bring good from good, but to turn that which is broken and dying to even greater good. This is what I see as the nights are long and cold and life retreats. This is what I look forward to when spring comes again.