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We must learn to live in harmony with nature

We must learn to live in harmony with nature

BY ANDREW FIALA

Fresno Bee February 7, 2014

Some have prayed to God to end our drought. But drought is not about God’s will. It’s about our habits. Human beings choose how to use the rain that falls. Despite the recent showers, we still need the wisdom to adapt to changing conditions.

Drought is a relative term that depends upon long-term average rainfall. Drought in the Olympic rain forest is different from drought in California. But we may have misjudged California’s long-term average. The 20th century was wetter than previous centuries. Less rain may be the new normal.

We must respond to local conditions and new circumstances. But we often ignore the constraints of our ecosystem, insisting on our own preferences, failing to harmonize with the land and its changes.

Aldo Leopold, the great conservation ecologist, warned that contemporary American life was out of synch with the land. Unsustainable practices do not respond to the unique beauty and integrity of the local environment. Leopold’s famous “land ethic” aims to find harmony with the land.

Harmony is an interesting concept. Musical harmony joins together different tones to make a synchronized and beautiful whole. Harmonizers respond to change in creative, sympathetic and peaceful ways. They don’t insist on their own tone. Rather, they learn to blend by listening and adapting to what’s unfolding around them. Grace, balance and harmony are essential for a happy life.

Harmonious living is a central idea in the Chinese philosophy known as Taoism. Taoist myths explain that Lao-Tzu, the old master of Taoism, despaired of the disharmony of political life and left civilization behind. But before he retreated to the wilderness, he reminded people to be less like rock and more like water: to flow with the world. Taoism links harmony with flowing water. The Tao Te Ching warns that without harmony, valleys dry up and life withers.

This discussion of harmony may sound frivolous in the face of the hard reality of drought. Drought forces tough choices about distributing harms and benefits. Do we need more dams and reservoirs? Should old rivers be restored? What about the fish? What about the farmers? Ask those questions around here and you’re bound to find conflict.

That is part of the problem. We’re in conflict with one another and in conflict with the land. We don’t listen, and we don’t blend.

A Taoist would suggest that toughness and hardness are part of the problem. To adamantly insist on living in a way that is not responsive to the natural world is to miss an opportunity to harmonize.

Green summer lawns, to cite one obvious example, are out of tune with the reality of our dry summer climate. To live harmoniously in California we may have to give up green summer grass. Someone might object, “A lush, green lawn is central to our way of life. And we’ll be poorer without them. Let someone else sacrifice. I want to live how I want to live.” When each party insists, conflict ensues.

We become adamant when asked to reassess our idea of what is needed for a good life. Drought, however, requires a reassessment of priorities. A different way of living would be beautiful in its own way, so long as it harmonizes with the world.

The point is not to advocate asceticism, self-denial and miserable subsistence. Nor should we prioritize fish over farmers or vice versa. The goal is to find a way to prosper while listening and blending. To live well is to live in balance. We forget that because we’ve been taught to insist and resist, to fight and accuse. That discordant approach is typical of our disharmonious political culture. It is the same sort of culture that led Lao-Tzu to despair.

Many prefer strife and struggle. We hammer each other, proudly displaying our resoluteness. But unyielding hardness only produces short-term gains. It does not delve into the difficult process of learning to blend with each other and conform to the land.

In the long run, the weather will change us, despite our resistance — just as water wears away the hardest stone. Human civilization is a tiny pebble in the river of time. Wisdom is learning to listen and harmonize with the changing chords of the natural world.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/02/07/3756489/we-must-learn-to-live-in-harmony.html#storylink=cpy
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Focus on Improving Souls, Not Just Our Bodies

Fresno Bee, January 24, 2014

When Michelle Obama recently turned 50, People magazine asked her whether she would consider cosmetic surgery. That is an oddly indiscreet question to ask the first lady, involving a variety of pernicious assumptions about gender, beauty and age.

Obama said she wouldn’t rule out cosmetic surgery. She added that women should have the freedom to do whatever they need to do to feel good about themselves. There is no doubt that we should have freedom to pursue happiness. And cosmetic and reconstructive surgeries can be therapeutic life-changers for those who have been disfigured.

But our focus on youthful appearance represents an interesting idea about happiness. Instead of learning to accept the changes of our aging bodies, we are encouraged to stay young with Botox and Viagra.

Philosophers have long viewed physical beauty and sexual attraction as minor goods not worthy of serious consideration. Many philosophers were notoriously ugly. Socrates had a snub nose. Crates, the Stoic, was a hunchback whose deformity was mocked in the gymnasium. Epictetus, the Stoic sage, was lame. Kierkegaard, the Danish Christian philosopher, was reputed to have a twisted back. And Thoreau was described by Nathaniel Hawthorne as being ugly as sin.

Insight and wisdom may develop from the alienation that results from an abnormal visage or a physical deformity. Would Socrates have become a philosopher if he had a nose job? Would Thoreau have spent his time alone in the woods reflecting on the meaning of life if he were not so ugly?

The philosophical tradition teaches that the source of happiness should be internal, based upon virtue and integrity. The tradition warns that good looks can deceive. And it reminds us that youthful beauty fades as it must with the passage of time.

One cannot blame people for desiring the accolades that come with physical beauty. Our culture rewards good looks. Attractive people tend to make more money. A study by sociologist Rachel Gordon seems to indicate that better-looking kids do better in school.

In such a culture, it’s not surprising that people would invest in surgeries and other procedures that enhance their looks. Nor is it surprising that some become unduly obsessed with their appearance, leading to eating disorders and self-mutilation.

Our culture celebrates what some scholars call “morphological freedom”— the freedom to alter our bodies. For some, the body is a canvas to be inked and sculpted as an expression of personality. So long as we don’t create unfair competition or harm anyone else, why not do what you want to your own body?

It is difficult to see where a line could be drawn limiting morphological freedom. We put braces on our teeth, cut our hair, shave, pluck and wax. We die our hair, paint our nails, wear wigs and so on. From those widely accepted practices, it’s a short step to a culture where tattoos, piercings and cosmetic surgery have become common.

But the philosophical tradition would suggest that excessive focus on the merely cosmetic appearance of the body creates a false dream. Lurking in the background is a narcissistic concern for perpetual youth and external beauty. While the law should leave us alone unless our narcissism harms others, there are better uses of our freedom than gazing in the mirror.

Our obsession with youthful beauty tells us something about our relation to old age and the seasons of life. An ancient Chinese proverb defines filial piety — the virtue of honoring parents and ancestors — in terms of care of one’s body. The Confucian proverb says that since we received our bodies — our very hair and skin — from our parents, we must not presume to injure or damage these gifts.

It is natural and normal to resemble our parents. We honor our parents and represent our heritage in our very bodies. What are we saying about our parents or grandparents when we take radical steps to avoid looking old and wrinkled like them? What if we viewed wrinkles and gray hair with pride appropriate to the season?

It’s easy to understand the desire for cosmetic assistance in a society that rewards youth and good looks. But Socrates would suggest that instead of changing our bodies, we should focus on improving our souls

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/01/24/3731213/focus-on-improving-our-souls-not.html#storylink=cpy

 

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It’s time to stop privatizing our grief

Fresno Bee

January 10, 2014

http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/01/10/3707618/its-time-to-stop-privatizing-our.html

In December, Jahi McMath, an Oakland 13-year-old, was declared brain-dead. Her family refused to pull the plug. After court intervention, Jahi was moved into a care facility. Her prognosis is grim.

It is easy to sympathize with Jahi’s family. It is always difficult to believe someone we love is dead. It must be more difficult when your child’s body is warm and her heart is beating.

There are deep questions here about death, dying and grieving. These perennial issues are made tougher in a culture like ours that is often in denial about death.

I spoke about this with Nate Hinerman, a professor at Golden Gate University. Hinerman is an expert on dying and grieving and the editor of a book about the presence of the dead in our lives.

Hinerman suggests that pop culture makes dying appear as something unnatural — it happens by accident, at the hands of criminals or as a result of medical malfeasance. We no longer see dying as something natural or normal.

Dying happens in institutional settings, instead of in our homes. We don’t see it happening. As a result, we don’t know how to think about it or fit it into our worldview.

Hinerman is also critical of our tendency to pathologize and privatize grief. Instead of viewing grieving as a normal process, we view it as a disease that should be quickly gotten over. When it lingers too long, it can be diagnosed as depression and cured with a pill. But Hinerman suggests there is no right way to grieve.

We also think it is polite to leave the grieving alone. We avoid talking about death and loss because of our own discomfort. We use euphemisms like “passed away” to speak around the issue. And so death and dying recede from ordinary experience, leaving us speechless and clumsy around the bereaved.

Dying and grieving are thus devalued. The whole process is seen as shameful and bad — to be staved off and hidden away. The solution, Hinerman suggests, is to take these things out of the closet. We need more education about dying and grieving. We need to see the process and think about it before it happens to us. And when it does happen, we need quality care both for the patient and for those left behind.

I suspect we also need to simply admit that there is no way out of this life except through the door of death and grief. The world’s philosophical traditions have always made this clear. The path to wisdom is to admit our own mortality and to recognize that everyone we love will someday perish.

But this admission is made harder by the promise of medical science. In December, as Jahi’s case was unfolding, scientists at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging announced that they had extended the lifespan of a nematode — a small worm — by five times. A similar increase for humans would mean a life of 400-500 years.

With the elixir of immortality near at hand, death appears unfair and irrelevant. We don’t expect people to die anymore or want to think about it. It seems fatalistic and pessimistic to accept dying and grieving. Maybe modern science will fulfill the dream of the ancient alchemists and finally cure us of our mortality.

I’m not convinced that longevity would be all we imagine it to be. Life without death might leave us unable to experience the depth of care and love. Love is unique to mortal beings who are aware of our need for care and the potential for loss.

One risk of love is grief. To love someone is to be indelibly affected by their presence. We will be damaged when our loved ones die. But they will also remain present with us. Grief resonates in the empty places in our hearts where those we love uncannily dwell.

Scientific miracles and the alienating institutions of death and dying can confuse us about this. Death is not a good thing. But accepting our mortality may increase the intensity of love and life. Our lover’s beauty, our parents’ twinkling eyes and our children’s joyful laughter are accentuated by the bittersweet awareness that for all its wonders, life is usually far too short.

 

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/01/10/3707618/its-time-to-stop-privatizing-our.html#storylink=cpy
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New Year: Look both ways before you cross

Fresno Bee

December 27, 2013

http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/12/27/3686555/new-year-look-both-ways-before.html

January is named after the Roman god Janus. Janus is a two-faced god, who looks backward and forward at the same time. Janus was also the god of doorways and gates, a reminder that every entrance is also an exit and that what passes away can also return.

As the calendar turns, it’s easy to think of time as a circle. Nature is made up of repeating circular patterns. A year is how long it takes the earth to complete its orbit around the sun. Life itself makes a cycle from ashes to ashes, dust to dust. An old one dies and a new one is born.

Holiday traditions heighten the sense of recurrence. We sing the same songs, eat the same food, tell the same stories and visit the same people. We feel the stabilizing depth of decades of repetition: in the echoes of Christmas carols, in the homey spice of tannenbaum and in the flavor of Grandma’s cookies. Each Christmas reverberates with the ghosts of Christmas past.

But a week after Christmas, we resolve to leave these ghosts behind. We enter the new year with a kind of moralistic optimism, determined to make progress. Modern people tend to be forward-looking. We view nostalgia as a lazy distraction. We celebrate the progress we have made. We expect growth and expansion to continue, without decline or regress — as if things can always keep getting better.

We would certainly not want to circle back to slavery, to the subjugation of women and to superstitious mythologies. A fitting new year’s resolution is to work for further progress in terms of social justice and enlightenment.

The ritual of making new year’s resolutions celebrates the progressive, linear understanding of time and of life. To make a resolution affirms hopeful confidence and ambitious self-assertion. We think it is possible to innovate and revolutionize.

But this optimistic anticipation of improvement can cause frustration. Some things cannot be changed, despite our best efforts. There is wisdom in learning to accept things as they are. We cannot change history — or our own past biography — no matter how hard we try.

The ancient Stoic philosophers are associated with this sort of accepting resignation. They also held that time was circular. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius explained, “all things are of like forms and come round in a circle.” Things happen in regular repeating patterns. Even empires rise and fall. Complaining about this won’t change it. So Marcus advises us to find our place within the patterned whole, to do our duty, and to accept all that happens with Stoic indifference.

In the nineteenth century, this idea was explored by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche thought that there was an eternal recurrence of the same thing. The idea that everything repeats, including this very moment, can be a burden — especially if we are not happy with our lot in life. The goal, then, is to create a life you would be willing to live again … and again. The challenge is to learn to love this world just as it is.

On New Year’s Day in 1882, Nietzsche made the following resolution: “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati (“love of fate”): let that be my love henceforth!”

Love affirms the beloved for what it is, without judgment or reserve. It accepts what is. An ambitious new year’s resolution is to learn to love things as they are.

On the other hand, this can be a recipe for stagnation and conservatism. Stoic resignation may encourage the slave to love his chains. If you are doomed to be a slave, perhaps that is the best you can do. But resigned affirmation does not break the chains that bind us.

In the end, wisdom is Janus-faced, a matter of ambivalence and ambiguity. Time is a circle but also a line. Resigned acceptance is beneficial but so is progressive work for social justice. The door to the future is open: we can begin again. But we’ve also been here before: we carry the past with us. January is a time of looking both ways. And it’s always wise to look both ways before crossing any threshold.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/12/27/3686555/new-year-look-both-ways-before.html#storylink=cpy

 

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Rest required for sound moral judgment

Fresno Bee

December 13, 2013

http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/12/13/3665865/ethics-sleep-long-and-late-it.html

As the dark nights come early and the sun rises late, it’s tempting to feel the urge to hibernate. The natural world goes dormant in the dark months. Perhaps human beings should also indulge our winter lethargy.

Sleep is necessary for mental, physical and moral health. Research shows that sleep deprivation undermines moral judgment. One recent book — Penelope Lewis’s “The Secret World of Sleep” — argues that sleep deprivation distorts our emotions, leaving us “frustrated, intolerant, unforgiving, uncaring, and self-absorbed.”

And yet, our tradition is not fond of sleep. We celebrate early-risers for their ambition. Benjamin Franklin maintained that wealth, health and wisdom come from rising early. Moralists like Franklin tend to scold the lazy, indolent and slothful.

Criticism of sleepiness has deep roots. Aristotle held that wakefulness and knowledge were the highest goods. Sleep leaves us senseless and unaware — more vegetable than human. Aristotle seems to view sleep as an inconvenient necessity of the animal body.

Aristotle also suggests that we are only happy when we are awake. It makes no sense, for Aristotle, to say that sleeping people or plants are happy. The Greeks understood happiness as an activity enjoyed while conscious, not something to be experienced passively.

Aristotle even suggests that God does not sleep. The deity is constantly active, engaged in eternal contemplation. Human enlightenment is modeled on this sort of alert and attentive contemplation.

Given this background, it is no wonder that our scientific and technological culture tends in the direction of 24/7 wakefulness fueled by coffee and electricity. Some even want to hack their brains to reduce the need for sleep. We light the night and fill our eyes with glowing screens, craving stimulation, experience and knowledge.

But wisdom may require us to shut our eyes. The natural world has obvious cycles of wakefulness and sleep, including long hibernal periods of dormancy. Nature and health seem to require that we power-down and become unconsciousness.

This may explain so-called seasonal affective disorder. The winter blues might reflect a biological need for sleep in the dark and cold months. Imagine our ancestors dozing through long winter nights in their dark caves. Maybe it’s natural to snooze away the winter.

Furthermore, there are things to be learned from darkness, silence and sleep. There is more to human life than wakeful happiness. We are not gods, after all — we are mortal animals. Life ends in the long sleep we call death, when we finally might rest in peace, as the saying goes. Learning to accept the dark, sleepy and silent parts of life may be part of the process of finding peace and accepting death.

Author Peter Kingsley explains this in the book “In the Dark Places of Wisdom.” Kingsley describes an ancient practice — called incubation — through which people sought mystical dreams and healing by sleeping in dark caves and holy places. Mystical insight supposedly arises in prolonged incubation and experience of sleeping, dreaming and darkness.

The insight that Kingsley thinks we find in the dark is that “all is one.” He thinks that dark silence helps us understand the unity of the world, the illusory nature of consciousness, and the dreamlike quality of the world of appearances.

This is provocative. But it runs counter to the sort of enlightenment we associate with science and morality. Moral judgment appears to require clarity and discernment — shown in the light of reason. While the capacity for moral judgment may be improved by a good night’s sleep — we want our judges to be awake, not dreaming.

Nonetheless, the mystical insight that “all is one” may have moral importance. It points toward the brotherhood of man and goodwill to all. After all, in the dark we are all the same.

As the winter solstice approaches, we might find some wisdom in letting ourselves join the rest of the natural world in sleeping long and sleeping late. If someone like Benjamin Franklin were to criticize you for spending a few extra moments in bed these days, tell them you’re recharging your moral batteries, seeking wisdom and exploring solidarity with all things. You might even ask them to join you under the covers, to incubate a bit before the alarm clock rings again.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/12/13/3665865/ethics-sleep-long-and-late-it.html#storylink=cpy