Towards a Better Understanding of Moral Foundations and the Need for Peace Literacy

I know it's been a while since my last post. Since moving to Campbellsville, Kentucky, I am sad to say, I have not been on my bicycle much. Instead, I've been driving my dad's Cadillac to and from Lowe's where as I have been working for about a year-and-a-half. Now I can add more recent "retail sales experience" to my already lengthy resume. I don't really mind that. While I was in Santa Barbara, CA I noticed there were quite a few jobs in retail for which I was slightly under-qualified. That won't be the case in the future no matter where I eventually choose to settle down!

Even though I am off my bicycle, my efforts to "wage peace" or to support others in their efforts have continued. Most recently, I had the honor and privilege to do the final proof reading of Paul K. Chappell's forthcoming book, Soldiers of Peace: How to Wield the Weapon of Nonviolence with Maximum Force. Once again I found myself inspired by his insights and new conceptual frameworks for understanding how to continue to move forward towards a better world.

I reference some of those ideas in what follows along with another important book by Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

In sum, I am more limited in my traveling these days, but taking the time to continue to "study" and to write occasionally. The material below is from a recent post to The Blue Moon Turtle Blog, but I felt it was just as relevant to this blog and my ongoing efforts to "wage peace", so I decided to post it here as well. As always, feel free to comment below!

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So here we are, several months into the Trump Presidency. Oh, and in case you didn't realize it, my last post was about him! That's right, I've been aware of emotional/psychological "arrested development" in adults for almost 25 years now! Most of it is caused by childhood trauma; i.e. bad parenting...but then, that has a multiplying effect generation after generation, so it is no wonder so many people are struggling with ordinary "adult" life, even in this highly technologically advanced society. As Paul K. Chappell points out in his forthcoming book, Soldiers of Peace: How to Wield the Weapon of Nonviolence with Maximum Force -  in spite of all of our advancements in technology, we are "preliterate in peace". In other words we aren't all that good at simply knowing how to get along with one another!

I recently encountered someone with whom I shared a great deal in common...except for "beliefs about God (and Jesus)." I walked away from that encounter convinced that he was more interested in how I believed than how I loved, just as I was more interested in how he loved than how he believed. In spite of everything else that we could have shared, mismatching on this point caused him to decide to end the relationship before it really even got started. It saddened me and left me feeling a bit "mad", as in "crazed" by this crazy maddening world that left us unable to relate with one another more functionally. He said he believed that "everything happens for a reason". If he had met me 15 years ago, I would have agreed with him. Now, I think things happen, and we try to glean some greater meaning from those experiences, especially when they are particularly "Dynamic" or traumatic. This encounter was both for me, and I'm trying now to channel my response into more productive writing, as I will admit, I've gotten a bit complacent living here in the heart of the "Heartland" in Campbellsville, KY!

Nevertheless, I have continued to "study" and one of my recent "text books" was Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics. Wow! What a tour de force in presenting his research on "moral foundations" in a clear and concise way! I appreciated the content as well as the structure of its presentation. Definitely one of my new favorite books!

As summarized here, Haidt describes five "moral foundations" for which there is strong evidence: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, and Sanctity/Degradation; and one for which the evidence is not quite as strong, but still important to consider, Liberty/Oppression. The moral foundations are things most people can grasp intuitively, or at a "gut" level, what he refers to as "intuitive ethics". However, through culture we learn to give more emphasis to some of the foundations rather than others, or to express them through specific, sometimes very elaborate behaviors and rituals. That's where things start to get messy and conflicts arise: not from conflict over the foundations themselves, but through conflict over their interpretation and behavioral expressions that vary considerably across nations, cultures, religions, and political parties. What Haidt seems to call for in his writing is a deeper recognition of our moral foundations, what we actually share in common, and less emphasis or distraction by all of the different ways humans can embody and express those foundations.

Also, as I have seen for myself, almost every one of our "intractable" social issues arises from an unresolved conflict between moral foundations. For instance, the abortion issue pits "care" for the unborn against the "liberty" of a women to have control over her own body. State sponsored "welfare" is about "care" for those in need, but again, it is in conflict with the "liberty" of taxpayers to control their own resources, or to freely choose to support other charitable organizations rather than have their money taken from them and used through the government bureaucracy. (Keep in mind, this applies to those who are against "corporate welfare" and "bailouts" as well!) There seems to be a general pattern of thinking that goes: "I want my individual liberty (to do whatever I want), and if I make poor choices, I (also) want the government to be there to take care of me (even if I have no respect for the government and its authority)."

The above statement reflects what I have referred to here as an "Individual Biological Moral Code". Haidt also points out that the U.S. represents more of an "individualistic" society, where it is believed that "society is there to serve the individual", while at the other end of the spectrum, China adheres to a more "collectivist" view where the "individual is there to serve society".  As I recently discussed with Paul K. Chappell, I wonder if either of these cultures would be able to continue as they are if it were not for their interactions with one another? Our individualism is great for generating new ideas, new technologies, etc., but not all that great for finding people willing to do the rather monotonous work of reproducing them. The Chinese are not known for innovation, but they do just fine reproducing products designed in the U.S, something I can speak to very directly given my many years experience working in the production-line sewing industry!

Finally, Haidt suggests that we are "90% chimp and 10% bee". In many, many regards our behavior is similar to that of lower primates. We form bonds with certain members of our society and not with others. We form hierarchies. We will care for our own infants as well as infants belonging to other members of our family group (as necessary), but may even kill the infants of non-related members or of rival groups. We can be faithful or unfaithful to our sexual partners.

In addition, however, we also have an enormous capacity to cooperate with a much larger group of otherwise total strangers in order to share a common experience (like a rock concert) or achieve a common goal (like winning an election). That's the "10% bee" part. Furthermore, as Yuval Noah Harari explains in his book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, it seems one of our greatest talents as humans is to tell stories (like those expressed by all religions concerning the nature of "God" and/or the Universe) as a framework for moral behavior, which can be applied to a much, much, larger group of otherwise unrelated individuals.

Which brings me to one of the points of Haidt's book that really stuck with me: Moral development, learning how to function well and peacefully in a society with other human beings, depends on one's association with a smaller group or "moral community" in which one can be held accountable for one's actions. There has to be some kind of feedback system that allows for "course correction". If you do not grow up in such a community, if you do not feel at least some concern for the good opinion of others, or at least, feel some sense of dependency on others for your overall survival and well-being, then you can behave however you want, without any real moral development taking place, even throughout the course of your entire lifetime!

Furthermore, if you are inclined to think highly of yourself for being one member of the "global community of humankind" without any real connection to a smaller community, one to which you feel more directly accountable, then, again, you can actually live your life as an otherwise immoral person, with no one to stop you, unless your immorality leads you to break laws for which you can be removed from the larger society through incarceration.

This brings me to one final, more recent observation: There are many minority groups in our society whose individual members take great pride in being part of those groups based on their race or gender preference. What is more obvious with race, but maybe less so for some with respect to gender preference, is that both of these characteristics are an expression of a person's biology, over which they have little or no control.  No one consciously chooses to be "Black" or "White," "Asian" or "Hispanic," etc. I have yet to meet a homosexual who claims they are choosing to be homosexual any more than someone else chooses to be heterosexual. And even with religion, at least until fairly recently, a person would be hard-pressed to find others who did not agree with or follow the religion of their birth. Granted, there are opportunities to "choose" to "believe in Christ and accept Him as your Lord and Savior" within various Christian communities, for instance, but if you don't, you may also face shunning or excommunication. At the very least, as long as you continue to be a part of that community, you will also continue to feel the pressure to choose as those in your family/religious community have chosen before you.

So, to a great degree, with regards to race, religion, gender preference, physical disability, etc., no one is actively choosing these identifiable characteristics. However, if there is anything truly unique in the animal kingdom with respect to human beings, it is our capacity for choice with regards to how we behave in our relationships with other human beings, in our relationships with non-humans, and in our relationship with this planet we live on. In his book, Peaceful Revolution: How We Can Create the Future Needed for Humanity's Survival, Paul K. Chappell describes several "muscles" that all human beings can learn to strengthen including the "muscles" of hope, empathy, appreciation, conscience, reason, discipline, and curiosity. These are aspects of our shared humanity that (apart from some forms of mental handicap) we can choose to exercise, no matter what the superficial dictates of our biological, religious, or cultural heritage.

Therefore, rather than focusing so much on the things we can't control, like what race or culture we were born into, or how our brains were wired during development to affect our gender preference/identification, or how intelligent we are, it seems we would be far better off focusing on those human qualities or capacities that we can control, and measuring ourselves, and holding each other accountable, according to how we exercise or demonstrate those capacities. In addition, rather than merely identifying as another member of "the whole of humanity", or even some other broadly recognized majority, minority, secular, religious, or political group, we need to come to embrace and appreciate the importance and power of smaller groups and communities to shape individual and collective moral behavior, to allow ourselves to be held accountable, ideally, for our capacity to exercise our truly human "muscles" of hope, empathy, appreciation, conscience, reason, discipline, and curiosity!

Finally, to begin to bridge the seeming gaps between secular and religious beliefs as well as political ideologies, we need to give more direct consideration to the underlying moral foundations of Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression rather than seeing only the surface expressions that vary so widely from culture to culture, religion to religion, and between political parties. 

We must realize we all hold individual responsibility to be Moral Actors and to mature as Moral Actors through the course of our lives and to be held accountable by the smaller communities we either grow-up in or consciously choose. No matter how technologically advanced we become, our long-term success as a species and our individual and collective well-being in the here and now depend on our learning to live together more peacefully.

In Soldiers of Peace..., Paul K. Chappell explains that the majority of human beings were once illiterate with respect to reading and writing. At a certain point in human society we realized that learning to read and write was critical for our survival. Now we have reached another critical point in human society where we are mostly "illiterate in peace", and our survival depends on our becoming "peace literate". I look forward to continuing to take part in and contribute to that ongoing education effort!

Sincerely and Respectfully Yours, In Peace...

“You Get What You Play For!” - 2016

Although I have tried hard not to get sucked into the ongoing dramas of Election 2016, I have enough friends who are posting about it on Facebook and Twitter, and the topic has come up in the break room at work as well, so that my efforts to resist have been futile. This morning I awoke with my brain generating ideas that I felt needed to be shared, so here I am, sharing them, in spite of my resistance. 

Back in 2014 I wrote a post here entitled, “You Get What You Play For!” In it I made a distinction between what I called a “Social Moral Code” and an “Individual Biological Moral Code”.  As an example, one could say that “The Ten Commandments” are a type of social moral code in that they establish certain rules regarding how people should interact with one another (and with “God”).

By contrast, an “Individual Biological Moral Code” only applies to individuals. I proposed that the "rules" of such a “code” might be, “If it feels good do it!” and “Survival of the fittest!”

If you take, for instance, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” from “The Ten Commandments,” it’s pretty easy to understand how this applies in a “society” or “community” of people:  For very primal reasons, as well as for legal ones (regarding the transfer of property to one’s legitimate/blood-related offspring), both husbands and wives might take issue at having a third person’s DNA brought into that mix!  Resulting interpersonal conflicts could in turn be disruptive to the stability of the affected families and to the larger community. In fact, seven of the ten commandments address issues of interpersonal and community relationships. That’s what makes “The Ten Commandments” a type of “Social Moral Code”. Contrast that with, “If it feels good do it!” and the distinctions are clear. Whether married or not, if it “feels good” for me to have sex with another person, so be it! 

Furthermore, if it “feels good” for me to drink until I’m so intoxicated that I can’t see straight, but I want to drive anyway, so be it! If it “feels good” for me to speculate recklessly on the stock market with other people’s money, so be it! If it “feels good” for me to eat my way into disease and disability and expect “the government” to pick up the tab, so be it! If it “feels good” for me to have unprotected sex all the time, with one partner or many, and bear children that I cannot otherwise afford to raise, and expect "the government" to pick up the tab, then so be it! If it “feels good” for me as a man to act in a sexually aggressive way towards women, because it satisfies a deeper biological drive to increase this species’ chances of reproduction, then so be it! The list goes on and on and on, and ALL of these things can be justified as “moral” under an Individual Biological Moral Code, founded on the principle, “If it feels good, do it!”

As I have suggested above, the second principle of this Individual Biological Moral Code is “Survival of the Fittest”. In this culture, “fitness” is usually recognized as celebrity and/or material wealth. Once again, those who achieve greatly in either or both of these categories, no matter how they actually got there, can justify their positions because they are simply “playing by the rules”. There are no greater measures of “fitness” required – like personal integrity, honesty and fairness in one’s business dealings, voluntary care for the health and welfare of one’s employees, let alone members of the larger whole of society. Consequently, just like in the natural world, this adherence to an Individual Biological Moral Code leads to a highly skewed distribution curve with a few “apex predators” at the top and the vast majority of “feeder species” comprising the bottom of the curve. It should come as no surprise then, that that is exactly what the "wealth distribution curve" looks like for our society!

Nevertheless, if you are thinking it is time for a “revolution” – think twice! If all the “revolutionaries” want to do is Trade Places with the current “apex predators”, without a fundamental change in The Moral Code Itself, then that Distribution Curve Will Not Change! Sure, it might change for a generation, but if we persist with the same Individual Biological Moral Code guiding us, we will eventually be right back where we started!

So it is not the players that have to change, it’s the real, underlying moral code that we've agreed to that has to change. Furthermore, it is my contention that in order to create such a new and better code, we first have to come to an agreement that a) Human Beings are SOCIAL not Solitary creatures, and b) Our ability to function cooperatively with larger and larger groups of individuals has been a hallmark of our evolutionary development. Therefore, an Individual Biological Moral Code WILL NEVER WORK for the Social species that we are! Consequently, we have to develop and agree to a different code, a Social Moral Code.

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In his book, Peaceful Revolution: How We Can Create the Future Needed for Humanity’s Survival former Iraq war veteran turned peace activist, Paul K. Chappell, discusses seven “muscles” he feels we need to learn to “exercise” and strengthen in order to create a better future for all of humankind. These “muscles” are as follows: (realistic) hope, empathy/respect, appreciation, conscience, reason, discipline, and curiosity. The development of these muscles helps us develop our full potential as mature human beings, human beings who are capable of interacting more functionally and peacefully with one another.



Along with our own "Bill of Rights" and  the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on December 10, 1948, these could form the basis of a new Social Moral Code.

Another principle to consider is that expressed in the title and elaborated in the book, Extreme Ownership… by Navy SEAL Officers Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. “Extreme Ownership” is not one of those things that “feels good.” It demands both vulnerability and courage to acknowledge and accept full responsibility for one’s decisions and actions and their consequences. It is especially important for those in positions of leadership, but it has implications for every person’s life on a day to day basis as well.

It has been my observation that there are many in the world today who, for various reasons, are waiting on “God”, “Jesus”, “The Government”, “Extra Terrestrials”, etc., etc. to either swoop in and solve all of our problems or bring an apocalypse. In other words, they are not accepting “Extreme Ownership” for any of these problems themselves. I’m afraid that is the “double-edged sword” of “faith” – for some it makes them feel more responsibility and accountability, for others, it relieves them of responsibility and accountability. Like the underlying “Individual Biological Moral Code” that I believe is currently guiding us, this dual aspect of “faith,” when it comes to responsibility and accountability, is another foundation of our culture that needs to be reconsidered with respect to how it might aid or compromise establishing a more beneficial “Social Moral Code”.

To summarize: We might change the players, but the outcome, the “skewed curve” of wealth distribution in this society and others, and all of the “inequalities” that it perpetuates, will not change until we actually change The RULES of the Game we are playing! In my mind that means we have to change from an Individual Biological Moral Code to a new and better Social Moral Code.

In either case, it bears repeating, “You Get What You Play For!”

Thoughts on a Boston Globe article "When did parents get so scared?"

Hi, Everyone!

I know it's been a while. Of late I have been trying to figure out what I am going to do with the rest of my life! As I have been living with my friend in Columbus, GA, in exchange for room and board, I have become the "house manager" - taking care of food prep, dish washing, laundry, pet care, etc., while he and his oldest daughter, who is also living with us now, focus their attention on college.

I've also been continuing my own "studies" including Sam Harris' first book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Patricia Churchland's textbook, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of Mind-Brain. In addition, most recently, I have been in contact with Valeri Lantz-Gefroh, Improvisation Coordinator at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science in Stony Brook, New York. Since I saw Alan Alda give his presentation at the National Institutes of Health when I worked there, I have been thinking the improvisation classes would be of benefit for the NAPF Peace Leadership Workshops as well. In the course of talking with Valeri, she explained that there was a position being added to the program for which I might qualify and I let her know of my interest. I'm not anticipating anything to happen right away, but given my history, I could definitely imagine working for them! In the mean time, I still have my boxes to finish sorting through here in Columbus, and at least one or more yard sales on the horizon.

This article, When Did Parents Get So Scared?, came to me via Gregory Caremans from whom I took the Master Your Brain: Neuroscience for Personal Development course via Udemy not so long ago. It was associated with another of his courses, Neuroscience for Parents: How to Raise Amazing Kids. Since I was even more overprotected than most as a child, given my mother's mental illness, I have very personal experience to relate to this article. However, what I'd like to add is what I have learned more recently about everyone's tendencies toward negative bias.

Rick Hanson writes about negative bias in his book, Buddha's Brain: Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. I came to understand his ideas through the Brain Smart webinar lecture series presented by the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine. He explained that the brain has a specific area in which it registers negative experiences, especially those that may be life threatening. Where our lives were once more directly threatened by predators, etc. in the wild, many of us today feel just as threatened when our beliefs and points of view are challenged. In other words, it is our "identities" that are at stake, not just our physical lives. Thus, negative experiences can take many different forms other than just threats to our physical well-being.

Furthermore, as I also learned from Paul K. Chappell, the most common human phobia is being attacked by another human being and the media focuses its attention on such negative stories because it knows we will, too. The above article makes the point that now that we can access media coverage from all over the world, we can be impacted indirectly by negative experiences far more often than we would ever actually be impacted directly. Unfortunately, this just exaggerates our negative bias that much more and, according to this article, there seems to be a growing generational effect.

From my own study of childhood development, especially from reading The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, Stages of Faith by James Fowler, and The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton, I came to an understanding of how young children especially tend to internalize the directives they receive from adults as if all of them were a matter of life or death. As Lipton points out, these messages get programmed into the deep subconscious through the various "hypnogogic" states that infants and young children are in up until the age of six or so. Again, in a more primitive environment, knowing what tracks to follow and what tracks to avoid, what plants were edible and what plants were poisonous, really were matters of life or death. Nevertheless, that is not the case in modern society when it comes to having the latest technology or wearing a particular brand of tennis shoes! I dare say there are children out there who do harbor deep rooted fears that their very lives actually depend on such things! (I've written more about this here.)

It is part of the challenge of our now much more complex society to find ways of mediating the effects of this constant bombardment of information - being able to recognize what is actually relevant to life or death or happiness, for that matter, and what is not. Although society has grown so much more complex, our brains, especially the lower limbic parts, are struggling to keep up. As Rick Hanson points out though, there are ways to combat the problem: We have to learn to very, very consciously and deliberately pay more attention to positive experiences! In addition, from Brené Brown's point of view, when we are inclined to "forebode joy" in any given moment, our best defense is to consciously choose to Be Grateful for each moment of joy that we do get to experience.

As Sam Harris writes in The End of Faith..., and I would offer, this applies to each of us as individuals as well as to our children:

You [or your child] could die at any moment. You might not even live to see the end of this paragraph. Not only that, you will definitely die at some moment in the future. If being prepared for death entails knowing when and where it will happen, the odds are you will not be prepared.... And as if this were not insult enough, most of us suffer the quiet discomposure, if not frank unhappiness, of our neuroses in the meantime. We love our family and friends, are terrified of losing them, and yet are not the least free merely to love them while our short lives coincide. (Page 37)

I would offer, as well, love is not the opposite of fear. Faith is the opposite of fear - that is the kind of faith that Sam Harris talks about, not faith in a system of unjustified beliefs, but rather faith in the Greater Processes of Life in this World that we are coming to understand. This kind of faith is what can help us transcend our fear and keep our hearts open to loving and appreciating every moment that we have with one another, every moment that we have with our children, and every moment we get to experience joy!

Each of us will eventually die. Some of our closest friends and relatives will die before us. Some will die after us. This is one thing that is certain for our physical bodies, in this lifetime. (What one chooses to believe beyond that is up to them.) However, I, for one, have come to believe This Is It! This is the one life each of us has to live and for parents, it is the one life they will shape for each of their children, for better or worse. Will those children live their lives cowering in fear or will we teach them, as Brené Brown suggests, to "Dare Greatly"?

Having lived both sides of that dichotomy, I would definitely recommend the latter!

To end I will quote from the movie "Strictly Ballroom":

A life lived in fear is only half lived!

Farewell and Thank You - Santa Barbara and Company!

I have so much to be grateful for.

I want to say "Thank You!" to the people who helped me in so many different ways during my most recent "tour" in Santa Barbara as well as my preparations for Stage III of my cross-country cycling adventure:

Thanks to Johnny and Kelly for allowing me to stay with them when I first got to town. I had met Johnny at the 2012 SOL Food Festival while he was promoting the Santa Barbara Time Bank. When I was looking for hosts upon my return, he and Kelly were the first to step up. I am grateful for their ongoing friendship and support, for their introducing me to more of their friends in the community including the Fishbon Artists Collective and especially for Kelly's great food during my stay with them as well as in preparation for my going away party.

Thanks to Karen for allowing me to stay with her and to commute to work with her while I was on my temporary assignment at the City of Goleta. In addition, she passed down a couple of pairs of pants that I really needed, both of which have become important parts of clothing I am carrying with me on this trip.

Thanks to Andrea and Mercio for helping me move my things for my temporary stay with my "host" Christie in Goleta, and Thanks to Christie for offering to let me stay with him and for being a sensitive and communicative companion for my last couple of weeks in Santa Barbara.

Thanks to all of the folks at Bici Centro and the Santa Barbara Bike Coalition - for all the hard work they are doing to increase bicycle infrastructure and optimal bicycle use for the South Coast region, and for letting me use the front room for my going away party, as well as helping me with last-minute bicycle maintenance and repair, and financial support. (Thanks especially to Matt Dobberteen for his generous donation to both the building purchase and my travel fund!)

Thanks to all of my friends - and "representatives" of the various circles of which I have become a part in Santa Barbara - Jay from the Conscious Creators (and other) Meet-up group(s); Dave, Veselina, and Marge from the Love Grid; Mike from Community-Planet Savvy Investors of Santa Barbara; Bob and Jacky (and her husband Michael) from Woodland Toastmasters, Winston, Ernie and Tamarah from my days "working the streets" as an "Intellectual Busker", Bob from The Santa Barbara Time Bank for his support and photo contributions, and Alicia and Rob from Fishbon and the Fishbon Storyteller's Cell. Thanks to all of you for your friendship and support and for coming to see me off, and for your contributions to my travel fund!

And to my other friends who have offered their support in various ways: Dr. Joe (Migliore) and Jackie for keeping my neck straight and for emotional/moral support, to Kenji and Martin of Santa Barbara Japan Photography Group for letting me hang-out with them while they take (really great) pictures (!), Eleanor for letting me store some of my stuff in her storage unit, Ed for the honey (a long time ago :) ) and for the bag of home-dried fruit to take on my journey, John for hooking me up with a new pair of sturdy tires for a very reasonable price as well as connecting me with Channing at Old Man Mountain Racks to get my rear rack repaired, to Lori and Kent at Traffic Solutions for the REI Discount Coupon so I could save a little on my replacement micro-fiber towel, and for many of the folks at the City of Goleta and FCP, Inc. who became more like friends while I was working temporary assignments at their offices.

(I'll also add a "Thank You..." to the recent employer who hired me and then let me go with my first week and another week's severance pay, as that was all the money and incentive I needed to get myself back on the road!!...More on that in a post to follow.)

And Thanks to Anders Johnson for his ongoing friendship and support, the frequent pleasure of his company and intellectual discussions, and for the beauty of his art-work that is graciously installed all over Santa Barbara and beyond!

And finally, I want to say "Thank You!" to everyone at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation including their Peace Leadership Director and author Paul K. Chappell for the many, many years of hard work they have invested in making the world a safer and more peaceful place for All Living Beings - and for All of Our individual and collective efforts to build better relationships and better communities. I appreciate being able to Do What I CAN Do to help them in their efforts, and, in my case, that means riding my bicycle cross-country spreading their message of hope backed up with clear, persevering, and strategic action (such as the recent lawsuits filed by the Marshall Islands).

As I have explained to people over and over again, I have felt a special, Dynamic Quality and "resonance" with the place and the people of Santa Barbara, and it has not been easy saying "Farewell" again, especially without knowing how long it might be before I will be able to return. But, in the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger: "I'll be back!"

...And in the mean time, I will keep you all posted as best I can while my ongoing journey unfolds!

You Get What You Play For!

Robert Pirsig is the best selling author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. He is also the author of another book, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. I've read both books. Most recently I finished reading Lila... for the third time. I can't say there are many if any other books that I have read three times in my life, but this one was definitely worth it.

Furthermore, as I have a much clearer intention of writing my own book, in this reading of Lila... I allowed myself the freedom to underline and write comments in the margins. Because of this, I feel I digested these ideas much more thoroughly than in the first two readings. In addition, over the past couple of weeks I have been very intentionally bringing these ideas into conversation wherever appropriate, and I am finding more and more instances where Pirsig's perspectives do have relevance.

So, to offer a brief summary:

In Lila... Pirsig challenges the "subject-object" metaphysics of scientific materialism replacing it with his "Metaphysics of Quality". In this "Metaphysics of Quality" he sees the first division of reality being between "static" and "Dynamic" Quality. Furthermore, he sees reality sub-divided into what he calls "patterns of value" that exist at different levels; i.e. there are Inorganic Patterns of Value, Biological Patterns of Value, Social Patterns of Value, and Intellectual Patterns of Value. There is an implicit evolutionary hierarchy here as well as "moral codes" that exist at the interfaces of each level. For instance there are certain "moral codes" that guide the interactions of biological patterns of value with inorganic patterns of value. As expressed by various cultures around the world, there are "moral codes" that guide the behavior of individual biological organisms within various societies (and this could actually be said of non-human as well as human societies, although human societies tend to be the most diverse and complex). As exemplified in our "Bill of Rights", there has been an advance in recognizing the place of "Intellectual Freedom" even in the midst of a Society - for instance, with Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion.

About half way through the book, Pirsig points to the Victorian era as representing the last point when "Society" was seen as the highest expression of human development. To know if something was moral, all one had to do was answer the question: "Does society approve?" With this guideline, both biology and intellect were seen as subservient to the prevailing social moral codes.

However, during WWI this "virtuous and noble" Victorian society saw fit to send millions of its young men to their deaths. With the introduction of the Gatling Gun, the casualties were enormous and gruesome. Those who survived were left to question how such a "virtuous and noble" society could be so willing to sacrifice so many of its members. In addition, there was an increasing shift away from those social moral codes as the perspectives of scientific materialism framed the world as not having, nor needing any kind of moral codes to guide it. Everything was seen to be happening by "chance," or the seemingly random assembly of molecules that eventually led to the appearance of complex human beings. Furthermore, since neither a "moral" nor a "society" could really be studied, like a scientist studies a microbe under a microscope, then these were essentially disregarded as having no real "existence" at all, let alone any "value".

Therefore, the generation that followed WWI embraced Intellectual Freedom over social moral codes and traditions. In order to determine if something were "good" one needed only to appeal to one's intellect and the "proofs" provided by science, including anthropology. For instance, if free sexual exploration as teenagers was "good" for Samoan society, than it could be "good" for every other society as well. Pirsig sees the shift of the power base from the Old Victorians to the New Intellectuals exemplified in the election of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the first president to have also been a university professor.

It is from the rising Intellectual Class that the ideas of social engineering via socialism and communism came into vogue. And from Pirsig's point of view, WWII was really a war between the Old Guard of social moral codes and social authority (represented by Fascism) and the New Guard of Intellectuals and scientific materialism dominating society. And the New Guard ultimately won that battle.

From my point of view, the development of the atomic bomb, though pursued for military reasons, was also a pursuit of the intellectuals and the scientists, again without any regard for the moral implications of their work. It was only after their success, and the use of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that those moral implications became much more obvious, especially to Robert J. Oppenheimer. He became a voice against the use of the weapons later in his life, a challenge to the New Intellectual and Scientific Elite, and he was branded a traitor as a consequence.

(Even to this day, many people question the MORALITY of ever developing, let alone using the atomic bomb. But keep in mind, scientific materialism cannot consider morals. The scientific method provides no tools for observing or studying morals. Morals are beyond the purview of science as we currently know it. The "morality" of creating atomic weapons was never at issue, only the facts of the science of creating them, and who could discover those facts and implement them first. If we are going to let the assumptions of scientific materialism guide us, this is logically where they lead.)

By the '60's and '70's a new rebellion took place. This time it was initiated by fairly well-off and fairly well-educated young men and women who not only continued the attack against "society" and "social moral codes" started after WWI, but also began to attack the Intellectuals and Intellectual Institutions that had grown up since then. The new answer to the question "Is it right?" or "Is it good?" - became "If it feels good, do it!" Interestingly enough, as Pirsig points out, many of these young people began to steer their lives towards adopting the social patterns of Native Americans; i.e. more gentle rearing of children, simplicity, speaking directly, and being closer to nature, among other things. However, he also goes on to point out, that this kind of "laid back" approach to day-to-day life does not "fit" well in an urban setting, where there are other expectations - like being on time to do a job where other people are depending on you.

I guess the most important take home point I got from reading this chronicle was this: The revolutionaries of the '60's and '70's made no distinctions between biological freedom and intellectual freedom. I have realized that "If it feels good, do it!"is the most primitive motto of all individual biological organisms. However, even within the first colonial organisms, some of that individual biological freedom had to be sacrificed for the benefit of living more safely and securely within a group of similar individuals.

That most basic pattern of sacrifice of individual biological freedom for the benefit of being part of a collective has replicated itself throughout the evolutionary tree. In other words, some of the most primitive single cells that organize themselves into colonies "understand" that complete "biological freedom" is not "moral" if you want to live in a group with others like yourself. And yet, back in the '60's and '70's this "moral code", that even the members of a Volvox colony could understand and value, got thrown out the window and was replaced with the idea that every individual should be free to do whatever they want, no matter how it affects the people around them. In other words..."If it feels good do it!" and following that - "Survival of the fittest"...

So here we are roughly 50 years later, and if you judge by that particular moral code; i.e."If it feels good, do it," and "Survival of the fittest", then the Big Corporations and the Big Governments and the Most Powerful Countries are also the most "moral"! Hey...they're just "playing by the rules"! Everyone has decided those old Victorians were idiots and didn't have any clue about how to be part of a society. Furthermore, the intellectuals got off track since they could not see a "moral" or see a "society" in any kind of meaningful way, and, consequently, they had nothing to offer to replace the social moral codes of the Victorians.

Now our technology has completely outpaced our Moral Maturity as far as evolutionary progress is concerned. As I listened to Noam Chomsky speak recently on "Security and State Policy", I completely understood why, when it comes to Security of the Society - i.e. the Majority of the People living in this country (for instance), none of our leaders really care if we get blown up by terrorists, as long as They don't get blown up by terrorists, as long as any of their financial backers and corporations do not get blown up by terrorists. They have no sense of being Part of a/Our Society, or accountable by any "social moral codes" that include all of the rest of us. They are just doing their own thing for themselves, while they feed off the rest of us, and off the rest of our labor and intelligence.

However, if you can imagine that a "society" is a real thing. That we are part of a society that is simply a different level or type of "organism" or "pattern of values" to use Pirsig's term, then the 1% are like a cancer that has been growing and growing and growing, building more and more avenues/blood vessels through which to channel the resources of this society/organism to themselves.

There are some people out there who are thinking, like many medical doctors think about cancer, that we're going to have to "radiate the entire body" in order to kill off the cancer. Those are a lot of your violent revolutionaries and apocalyptic thinkers. Of course, such a violent and radical approach risks killing the body itself. Violent revolution can be that kind of "chemotherapy", in that it can destroy the "innocent/healthy" cells as well as the "cancerous" ones, and there is a very good chance that the patient will die - that the patient will not have enough functioning parts left to survive after the cancer is gone.

In his books, Paul K. Chappell writes about violent approaches to resolving major conflicts as being similar to using amputation of a wounded leg to prevent infection rather than antibiotics. He asserts that the key is better understanding. Just as medical doctors have made progress in understanding how the body works, so they know it is better to give antibiotics rather than cut off a leg, so the populations of the world must better understand the nature of conflict in order to find a more precise way of dealing with it that does not involve violence.

Interestingly enough, (and I think without really knowing it) Paul K. Chappell has offered a new version of a "social moral code" that we might aspire to, especially in his book, Peaceful Revolution. And knowing Paul somewhat personally, I'd say he would have probably been quite comfortable in Victorian society! I will not say that he has All of the Answers, but a lot of his work certainly points in a general direction that I feel needs to be considered seriously, especially in light of Robert Pirsig's ideas as well.

One of the strategic instructions of Paul's work centers on the teaching of Sun Tzu in The Art of War: Never attack your opponent at their strongest point. Our government in combination with the current corporate powers, has the most highly trained and technologically advanced military, police, and security forces in the world. Consequently, to try to dismantle any of that through violent revolution would be devastating for all concerned. Again, that is more like the "radiate the entire body to destroy the cancer" approach. And in this case, the cancer has a much stronger immune system than the body itself. Instead, as Paul suggests, we have to attack them at the level of their Moral Authority, where they are weakest.

However, in order to do that, as a society, we have to be functioning with a Higher Moral Code ourselves...and that means we have to understand the difference between "biological freedom" and "intellectual freedom". We have to fully understand that we cannot have total "biological freedom" and be part of a stable, sustainable, society or world for that matter. Consequently, when we say we want more "freedom" we are going to have to be very, very clear about what that means. From my point of view, that needs to mean we want more "freedom" to create new forms of society and community that are not at the mercy and threat of the political and financial "cancers" that have grown up in our midst.

Think of the movie,The Wolf of Wall Street. This movie epitomizes the ideas of "survival of the fittest" and "if it feels good, do it". Those ideas make up the (biological) "moral code" we are actually functioning under, especially here in the West and it is the same "moral code" we have been exporting throughout the world for decades now. However, if that really is the "moral code" we have (mostly unconsciously) agreed to in this society, ever since the revolutions of the '60s and '70s, then those who manage to "survive" the longest and make the most money to "do whatever they want", are the MORAL VICTORS here!!!! And we have NO RIGHT TO BE COMPLAINING about them!!!

Furthermore, if the people who want to challenge them only want to displace them so a New Group can continue to "survive" at the expense of the rest of "society," then that means that those "displacers" are Not Representing a "HIGHER MORAL CODE". Such "displacement" of the "current powers that be" without a Change of Moral Codes is NOT GOING TO MAKE FOR ANY FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE for "society", and that means for Most of the Rest of Us and for the World!...

Really take some time to think about that...

...However, if each of us is willing to recognize that, no matter how loosely we may be held together right now, we are already a part of a Society of Humankind. And to actually make those bonds stronger, we have to recognize that there is a Different Moral Code to guide our behaviors as part of this Society. That Moral Code means giving up at least some elements of our "individual biological freedom"; i.e. to "do whatever makes me feel good," or "reproduce as many babies as I want to, with or without a partner, with or without the means to support them," or to "eat as much crap as I want to even if my bad health negatively impacts the people around me and the medical system that supports us," or to "consume all kinds of resources that I really don't need just because I can," or "Let me speculate in the stock market for short-term gains at the expense of long-term financial stability", etc., etc., etc. If we can collectively move beyond the biological moral code of "if it feels good do it" and "survival of the fittest", and once again find our path to a new, and actually, More Intelligent "Social Moral Code" then, and Only Then, will we be in a position of Moral Authority over those elements of our society that are currently in power - elements that are clearly not functioning with anything like a Social Moral Code except maybe "Honor Among Thieves"!

And, maybe, hopefully, we can turn this mess around in time, and help to renew the other critical component of our survival here - the Earth itself, upon which ALL biological organisms and societies and free thinkers depend.

To Summarize...

You cannot have Biology without the Earth, you cannot have Society without individual biological organisms working cooperatively to sustain it, you cannot have Intellectual Development without a Society that is there to educate its members and to give them the tools of self-discipline to regulate their biological drives so that they can be productive and contributing members to that society, and you cannot have Intellectual Freedom without a Society that understands that without it, there can be no New Ideas that help to keep Society as a Whole moving forward.

I am grateful for the society of which I am a part, in spite of its obvious problems. I am grateful for the opportunities I have had for gainful employment that have allowed me to sustain my biological needs and to further my education. I appreciate the technology that is available to me to continue to expand my knowledge of others ideas and to communicate my own.

And I am grateful for all of the people in my life who read my blogs, who are critical thinkers and communicators themselves, and who are doing whatever they can to make the world and this society a better place for all of us to live and grow and develop our full potentials as human beings, both individually and collectively.

I have hope for the future, knowing what I know now. But I do feel a certain Urgency in spreading these ideas, as the clock is ticking for how long we can keep going down the path we are on. I would hate to see all that we have managed to create here "go to waste" when so much of it can be salvaged with a fairly simple shift in understanding; part of which again, is understanding the difference between biological and intellectual freedom and the critical role a healthy, functional, society plays in mediating between the two.

I welcome your questions and feedback...

More on "Telling the Good Stories" in Response to Dylan Ratigan

This was what Dylan Ratigan had to post today: "Peeking Behind the Curtain" where he shares the latest on his work with J.R. Lewis in presenting the "Thousands of Stories of Hope..."

In my previous blog, I expanded on some of the ideas Dylan shared in his talk to TZM San Diego especially with regards to his idea that our life stories become the myths for those around us, maybe even for people we do not even know.  With the technology we now have available to communicate our stories, the telling of these stories can affect the broader population "asymmetrically" in a much more powerful way than we might be able to bring about change "linearly"; i.e. by "going door to door".

This is what I have to add to the consideration at this point.

First of all, I appreciate the fact that our brains naturally pay closer attention to negative and threatening information or stimulus, especially when it might relate to our physical harm. This is why the news broadcasters almost always focus on the Bad News - who shot whom, etc., etc.  They show it because that is what they are also trained to pay attention to and it is the same kind of information that keeps us paying attention to them and all of the commercials in between these (mostly) negative stories.  This is something that Paul K. Chappell and Lt. Col. Dave Grossman have pointed out in their work as well.

Just recently, I was listening to an NPR broadcast including an interview with neuroscientist Dr. Mark Waldman. In my follow-up research I came across this TEDxConejo talk he presented in March 2010. In this talk, Dr. Waldman also points to how the brain responds much more strongly to threats and even the simple word "No", for instance, as compared to the word "Yes." It's simple: Our brains naturally respond more strongly to any information that pertains to survival.  Furthermore, as Dr. Waldman explains, and what many spiritual masters before him have also communicated: We Become What We Meditate On. The very neurons of various parts of the brain will restructure themselves according to the thoughts and feelings we focus our attention on most often. And since our natural tendency is to focus on Negative input and Negative emotions and Negative thoughts, then we have to work extra hard to give our attention to positive input, positive emotions, and positive thoughts if we are going to be able to counter those natural tendencies.

Consequently, as Dr. Waldman explains, if you have a relatively positive concept of "God", no matter what any of your other religious beliefs might be, and if you "meditate on" that idea of "God" consistently, then it will have the same positive effect on your brain as it will on anyone else's who meditates in much the same way that you do, but on their relatively positive concept of "God".  Apparently, the "big idea" of "God" has a very particular effect on the brain, just as other "big ideas" or concepts like "Love" and "Truth" might have on the brain.

Nevertheless, the main point is you have to work extra hard at focusing on the positive in order to counter the natural tendency to focus on the negative. In fact, according to what I heard from Dr. Waldman in his NPR interview, there needs to be at least a ratio of 3 to 1 of positive to negative, and better yet 5 or 7 to 1 in order to reverse the effects of negative focus.

I know that for some people this is all "old news", and the idea of "thinking positively" has become cliche'. But from what I'm seeing of Dr. Waldman's work, there's a lot more science to back-up the "hearsay" these days, and more specifics on exactly how it works and how to make it work most effectively.  Furthermore, I can certainly speak to my own life experiences, having grown up with the ever present fearful concerns of my paranoid schizophrenic mother, only to do a 180 degree turn away from that by the time I was 20 and she went into the mental hospital, and then taking on an even more deliberate contemplational/meditational practice in my early 30's. Although I do not meditate as intentionally now, I know my overall state of being, maybe as a result of the "restructuring of my brain" from my meditational practice, is, on the whole, pretty positive, and focused on the positive, most of the time. And, most people who are around me for very long pick up on that as well.

You may be wondering at this point: How does all of this tie-in with the work that Dylan Ratigan is now doing?

I've been thinking, for all of the negative stories that each of us might be exposed to through the media each day, we might make progress restructuring our "cultural brain" by making sure we've got at least Five to Seven Positive Stories to counter and eventually reverse the effects of each of the negative ones.  And it seems Dylan's mailbox is full to overflowing with those positive stories.  Furthermore, once other well-intentioned communicators like him start to catch on to this basic strategy for asymmetrically changing the way people think and behave in the world, we could see the media filling with positive stories A LOT MORE positive stories to the point where the negative one's are no longer the one's that are shaping our concepts of ourselves or the possibilities for humanity and this world that we inhabit.

The more I think about it, the more I am also seeing that there are organizations who have already been doing that - TED is definitely one of those. Nevertheless, there is also a very personal and individual responsibility that each of us has to more consciously and intentionally decide on where we choose to focus our attention, even with respect to the thoughts and feelings that are constantly playing in our minds and hearts.

As Dr. Waldman shows in his talk, each of us needs to tap into the "Big Idea" of our own lives and learn to spend more time meditating on that and letting our brains be shaped by that "Big Idea" whatever it may be.

So...what's your "Big Idea"? What's Your Story? What is the Myth that You living out for those around you and for the world? And, finally, what can you do to make it the Very Best Story it can possibly be?

Starting a "Conversation" with Dylan Ratigan

Since I have been back in Santa Barbara, I find myself getting up fairly early in the morning and going straight to my iPad. In this way, my mind is most engaged when it is "fresh".  Of late it seems Dylan Ratigan is getting up even earlier than me and he is now posting something to his page every day, and I'm starting to recognize something of a discipline there, something that I would like to emulate.  But it is a little annoying in that I keep finding myself in a "responsive" mode; i.e. I keep finding myself wanting to "respond" to what he has already posted for the day rather than (at least at this point) initiating the dialogue myself. Admittedly, there is kind of a masculine/feminine dynamic there with which I am completely familiar; i.e. the masculine as more "initiatory" and the feminine as more "responsive", but to the degree that I have been "initiating" much more of the course of my life and thoughts in the last two years, I'm not sure I like being in this more "responsive" mode, but, that seems to be the way it is, so I'm just going to go with it.

Today Dylan shared a video of his talk to "The Zeitgeist Movment" in San Diego.  For a guy who comes across as very rational and grounded, I was kind of surprised when he started talking about quantum mechanics and, lets call it, human harmonics; i.e. how our thoughts and feelings resonate out into the world and manifest the world around us. He begins to explain his consideration of all of this around the 6:20 mark. At around the 7:25 mark he shares his realization that "the rate of vibration dictates what manifests", and further at 9:30 "it is our internal rate of vibration that dictates the external reflection, not the external reflection that dictates the internal."

This brings to mind one of the primary Wisdom-Teachings of Adi Da Samraj (with which I am very familiar): You never "communicate" anything but your actual state of being. And, as Dylan goes on to say, he found himself empowered by the idea that he could control that "vibration" within himself rather than feeling at the mercy of the often seemingly overwhelming forces around him.

I would offer, from more of Adi Da's Wisdom-Teaching the idea that the "ego" is an "Activity of Self-Contraction", which Adi Da illustrates with the clinching of a fist. It is most often experienced emotionally as fear, sorrow, anger, and un-happiness; all re-active rather than pro-active emotions. One of Adi Da's most important demands of His devotees was to Become Responsible for this habit of "self-contraction" of "reactivity", and to learn to transcend it through various meditational and relational disciplines. From my own now 16 years of "practice", I know that it is I who am choosing what I am thinking and feeling in response to what I experience externally, and I have, in most instances, learned to transcend my "reactivity" and, therefore, to "self-modulate" the "frequency" of that experience and therefore what I "project" into the world. I'm glad to see that Dylan has assumed responsibility for this within himself as well and that he is using the opportunities he has to share the concept with others so that they might also become empowered as he has been.

At the "NAPF Evening for Peace" event recently, someone asked me how I stayed "grounded" - and it made me pause, because it was hard to say that it could be attributed to any one thing.  Besides the Wisdom-Teaching of Adi Da Samraj, especially addressing "the ego as the activity of 'self-contraction'" and the need to transcend the habit of reactivity, there was probably one other book that had the most significant impact in this area and that would be The New Guide to Rational Living by Albert Ellis. I have an extended quote in this blog On Loving Yourself . I was reading The New Guide to Rational Living in the early 90's with Adi Da's work crossing my path starting in the late 90's, and I guess you could say I have been "practicing" ever since! And now, it seems, there are others like Dylan Ratigan who are also starting to pick up on these basic principles, which is very heartening to see.

At 16:50 Dylan begins a commentary on the military that really struck home and it is something that I  have seen/heard Stefan Molyneux butt his head against over and over again, even in one of the most recent live Sunday shows I was able to listen to.  I feel this particular point deserves a very direct quotation. In referring to the military Dylan says:

"We have pre-identified the 1% of our population that has a predisposition to do things that are way more fucked-up than most people are willing to do [including sacrificing their own lives], and that's a good thing to know about a group of people because that means that that group of people may be willing to do a lot of things in our own domestic society, like decide to build a bunch of hydroponic organic greenhouses in every city in America, or decide to convert every city in America to a sustainable energy matrix...[etc.]"

Or, I will add, write a series of books on "Waging Peace" like Paul K. Chappell, or ride their bicycle and 230 pounds of gear cross-country "Pedaling for Peace" like yours truly!

At around 21:47, Dylan starts to address another subject that is close to my heart: archetypes and mythology.  He speaks of the "Mythology of Power" and how that is portrayed in popular media and culture.  When we (or our children) see these mythologies portrayed to us, they offer to us focal points for our own identification and aspiration. I know I have communicated this somewhere, but I'm having trouble finding a reference right now. Nevertheless, given the influence of these "stories" in our lives, I too have come to the conclusion that we need to consider writing different stories. 

For instance, why do we have these stories of human beings as fundamentally "sinful"?  I've tried to address that question in one of my most recent Blue Moon Turtle blogs, "What Is So 'Imperfect' about Being Human?". Another "story" that I would like to re-write is the one about how a lone crazy scientist, Zefram Cochrane, in creating and testing a ship with warp-drive, finally brought us to the attention of an advanced, and Peaceful, alien race (as portrayed in the Star Trek: The Next Generation movie, First Contact.) For anyone who might have paid attention to the landing of the Mars Curiosity Rover...that was by no means a "solo effort"!  And why shouldn't our cultural advancement be even more important to the interest of another extraterrestrial race rather than just some technological advancement? (My current theory is that we will not be able to get human beings beyond the moon anyway if we don't learn to manage our global resources, including intellectual resources, more cooperatively and, therefore, more efficiently. Furthermore, it is inherently hard to make that kind of progress when repeated armed conflicts keep destroying the basic technological infrastructure of a society as well as the potential intellectual capital stored within every human being that is traumatized or killed in the process!)

At 23:20 Dylan begins to draw a diagram, illustrating a trajectory of "possibility", relative to current "reality" and overcoming the "gap" between the two that is mediated by "fear".  He points out that "reality" is changing more slowly in part because people are living longer; i.e. it takes longer for change to take place as new generations arise in the wake of the older generations passing away.  However, he also offers that our current technological capacity, albeit a double-edged knife, has as much power to help resolve the problems we face as it may be contributing to creating and/or perpetuating them, and it is moving faster than the older generations and "reality" can keep up.

It is at the 26:00 mark that Dylan offers what I think is a Very Critical Insight: There is no way to address the "fear gap" between current reality and actual possibility with what he calls a "linear solution". Instead, he offers an "asymmetrical solution" and that involves changing the Myths that are guiding individuals and the culture rather than trying to directly change the people and the culture itself.  And although I have had the same intuition on my own fairly recently, I have to give him credit for tying all of that into a well-defined framework.

Finally, at 28:15 Dylan begins to offer more specifics as to How to Change the Power Myths, and this is where it again becomes much more personal for me and my work as well as the work of  Paul K. Chappell. As Dylan points out:

"When you think about myths and power, it is always better to meet the audience where they are. In other words, it is easier to take an existing myth and meet the audience where they are with that myth, and then take them on a journey with that story, that hero, than it is to invent a new myth, that you wish everybody would believe in, but they're just not there....In this country, for better or worse, we have mythologized our military and our soldiers, and our marines - for better or worse, it doesn't matter.  The opportunity is to meet that mythology where it is.... The fact [is] that [some of] our marines and our soldiers have already decided...[as these people here have done] to meet the audience where they are...with the myth, and take them on a journey to this location [of new possibility]. They alone will never get us to that location, but they can take that mythology and project it back into our society in a way that will naturally manifest that."

He goes on to say that each of us are, in effect, our own story, our own myth, for at least one and probably for many, many other people around us, even if we do not know it.

"You are a story. And that story is the most powerful thing that you actually have to contribute to this world, because it is as those stories are told that the generations around us will decide that they want to be like those stories. And the greatest thing we can actually do is to create stories that are in the arc that we want to go in."

And I agree with that!

Thank you Dylan Ratigan, for sharing your insights and Your Story with the rest of us, and thank you for the renewed inspiration for me to continue manifesting and telling My Story as well!

Part I of "I've Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night!..."

...And...I now have INTERNET ACCESS again!!!! Yeah!!!

To All of My Readers:

My sincere apologies for not being able to keep this blog updated more effectively over the last three months. During my time in Austin, Texas I was moving around a lot between various hosts, many of them students, and in many situations I did not have internet access. I've also had some issues here and there more generally with getting my iPad to recognize wifi transmissions so I could connect where it was available. Finally, preparing a full blog takes quite a bit more time and effort than I can squeeze in with only an hour here and there, especially when I have to use at least some of that time available for checking my e-mail, etc.

Nevertheless, I am back in Santa Barbara, CA now with a comfortable living situation and INTERNET access, and I figured it was time I posted an update here...finally!

Starting from the last weeks of July...


I began my official tour of Austin, Texas with a stop at the home of John and Eve Koonz. As I mentioned in my previous blog, John and Eve are living examples of how ordinary people are making a difference in their homes and in their own back yards.

They keep chickens, and they grow meal worms to help utilize food waste and to have protein rich snacks for the chickens. At first glance, the meal worm habitat might seem "icky", but it did not smell and it was actually quite fascinating to see the bugs going about their business.



John and Eve also dry their clothes outside, commute regularly by bicycle and/or public transportation, and, as I had the opportunity to experience very directly, they were supportive and very generous WarmShowers hosts. John was particularly helpful in planning my route to my second Austin host and even accompanied me through some of the trickier parts of that journey.

Saying Good-Bye to John Koonz in Austin, Texas

My Beverly Hills host asked me not to share pictures or her personal info on my blog. Nevertheless, I am very grateful to have experienced her hospitality and she helped me connect with Pastor Karl Gronberg of the Gethsemane Lutheran Church as well. That connection eventually led to my staying at their "Hospitality House" for a couple of nights.




From the Beverly Hills address I made a little side excursion with the Austin Sierra Club members via MeetUp. We toured the Mayfield Park well known for its Peacocks.





While staying with Austin Sullivan, I went for a hike through the Barton Springs Greenbelt along with his brother's fiancé, Kira. We mostly followed the relatively dry creek bed, and then it started to rain. Given that it was summer in Texas, it was actually a welcome shower.





On the trailhead we found a turtle. I kind of recognized it, but picked it up to take a closer look. That's when it urinated on me and the smell was all I needed to confirm that it was a "Musk Turtle"!



At my host on Beverly Hills Dr. and at Chad Greene's house, I did not have access to the internet. So to keep myself occupied while I was "resting", I selected books to read from those available to me. Since I spent so much of my young adult and adult life reading more non-fiction (and a lot of "self-help" style books), I decided to read some of the shorter classics that I've heard about but never actually read. These included War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

From Chad's I had a short but Very Hot 4.5 miles or so to Anika Fassia's house. Thinking that it would be a fairly easy ride, I was not as careful as I would normally be and failed to use my damp camp towel under my helmet, and I did not have enough water either. Reaching the peak of the last of a few decent hills, I found myself growing a bit nauseous and light headed, so I pulled off to the side of the road, got onto the sidewalk/curb and rested, holding my bicycle up while I did so. At that point I was probably less than a quarter mile from Annika's house, but every time I stood up to get back on my bicycle, I started getting dizzy again. What was even more frustrating was that there was what looked like a public pool within 50 yards of the concrete retaining wall that rose up over the sidewalk behind me, and that wall was also blasting heat all around me.

Eventually I recovered enough to walk my bike across the multi-lane road to the opposite sidewalk, and down to the street where Annika lived. Even as I walked though, I was still not feeling well, so I had to stop again, within what turned out to be about 20 yards from Annika's house, and sit on the curb once more. Eventually, she and one of her housemates came out to meet me and we all walked back to the house together. All in all, it was a "lesson learned" to never take the heat for granted, no matter how short a ride might be!



One thing I noticed shortly after I got settled in the house was that it seemed Anika's guest bathroom toilette was not shutting off properly. When I helped her understand that the water was simply flowing out and through the sewer pipe, she welcomed my assistance in figuring out how to repair it. At first we tried a new flap, and then once it was clear that was not enough, and that the leaking was coming from the valve itself, we decided to replace that as well, "we" as in Anika paid for the parts and I installed them!

And here I am "modeling" the finished repairs.

Another benefit of staying with Anika was being around for the beginning of an artistic transformation of her living room fire place. Artist Stefanie Distefano was in charge.

Me and Anika at the beginning.

Stefanie at work.

The Completed Fireplace

What was particularly cool about this project was that Anika got together with all of her friends to make many of the tiles that Stefanie eventually assembled into the mosaic. Along with her friends, I appreciate the investment of energy and attention that Anika has chosen to put into her relationships, her home, and into her neighborhood and community in Austin, Texas. And I'm really glad she has chosen to be a part of the WarmShowers community as well!

From Anika's I was generously transported back to the northern part of town by Pastor Karl Gronberg of the Gethsemane Lutheran Church. I felt it was okay for me to accept his assistance since I had already covered the distance by bicycle previously, and I would be leaving on my own to travel back south in a couple of days. While staying at the church "Hospitality House" I was once again without internet, or television, but I did have access to Pastor Karl's library in the house/office next door.

One of the books I pulled from the shelves was a massive volume entitled Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology by Gerd Theissen. On Page 9 I read: "The Bible was able to become one of the most important textbooks of human behavior and experience precisely because in it 'dominating' models recede and models that first fail, but overcome are so numerous."

In other words... It is full of UNDERDOG Stories! (Something that Paul K. Chappell also writes about in his most recent book The Art of Waging Peace....)

Boy! Did that set my mind on a tangent?!

What I have come to appreciate from reading Lila... by Robert Pirsig is that...in truth...the evolution of Life Itself is an ongoing drama of all kinds of Underdog Stories! (More specifically, the interaction of what he describes as "static" and "Dynamic" "Quality".)

The bottom line is...the actual probability of ANY of THIS existing is so remote, that for it to have all arisen the way it has means THE Underdog - i.e. Life Itself - is WINNING, beating the odds, over and over again, and...moving the process of evolution towards more and more highly evolved and adaptive organisms - including human beings, who, for all their presumed "faults" (i.e. "sins"), have the greatest capacity to Interact Dynamically with their environment(s) than any other organisms on this planet! (Although...some research is pointing a finger at viruses and bacteria that may be living out their very own "underdog stories" and using Us to help Them!)

And now we are in a stage where we are evolving our cultures to catch up with our evolving technologies. I'd say we got a little ahead of ourselves with nuclear weapons, among other things, and Now it is time to re-evaluate Why we are doing the things we Can do, with more of a moral compass for what we Should Do. Furthermore, we have a Central Nervous System - the Internet - that we never had to work with before and it is slowly but surely linking all of us as individual cells into a more coherent, Body Human, that includes more and more individual human beings.

That's a lot to be thinking about, so I'm going to pause this update for now. I will add though, that I was able to share some of these ideas at the talk I gave to the Millville Quaker Friends Meeting in Pennsylvania, and the talk was very well received. (I promise I will share more about that in a future post.)

As always, I am grateful for ALL of the different experiences I have been able to have on this, my own "Underdog Journey", and I am grateful to ALL of the people who have helped me along the way!

Please stay-tuned for "Part II" of this blog series...Coming Soon!

What Happens When You "Just Do It"?

Just Do It!

So the Nike slogan says.

As I have been "just doing it" over the last couple of years; i.e. jumping in, working things out, learning as I go, with my current cross-country bicycle journey, I have come to better understand how important that is. Granted, there is a bit of a quantum leap to be made from the idea to the action, and I appreciate how hard that can be sometimes, but, nevertheless, at some point, if you're clear on what it is you want to do, or attempt, at some point you "Just Do It!" and the most valuable part of the experience will come from everything you will learn In the Process of "Just [Doing] It!"

When I entered upon this journey, I did bring some skills to bear:

1) Being able to navigate a bicycle safely on the roads, something I learned to do in my late teens and through bicycle commuting well into my 30's after that. I also had some skills in maintaining and repairing bicycles as I worked in several bike shops over the years.

2) I know how to sew. I started sewing when I was seven years old and I worked for three different industrial sewing manufacturing companies between my late 20's and early 30's. As it turns out, I actually utilized those skills significantly in either creating my own gear, like my tent, or reinforcing the gear I had, or in making various bags and pouches to organize and store all of my gear...

...not to mention sewing many sets of "Bell's Baggy Bottoms" (and matching head-bands...) that are designed especially for riding a bicycle (or for relaxing or sleeping comfortably off of the bicycle).

3) I understand how to eat in a nutritionally efficient and cost effective way - as necessary (meaning, when I am on the road, I am more than happy to also eat pretty much whatever my hosts put in front of me, or the very rare restaurant or "fast food" meal). My "Food Basics" series of blogs goes into much more detail about my general diet preferences and practices.

4) Educational Background - I spent my last five years of college education attending the University of Maryland University College taking most of my classes on-line. I chose this university in part because it put a Heavy Emphasis on research writing; i.e. we had to do one or more research writing projects in every class. As I wanted to strengthen my own writing skills in this area, I was glad to have the added pressure from Having to do so regularly in an academic environment. Furthermore, especially in my last year, I "bulked up" on my Government, International Relations, and Political Science classes ending with an Introduction to Constitutional Law. This was in addition to a full "Social Science" curriculum including everything from Anthropology to Neuroscience. In other words, I had the background to integrate everything else that I was later to learn from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and from Paul K. Chappell.

5) Written and Verbal Communication Skills:

a) Journaling - In addition to the writing work I completed while in college, I have been "journaling" for over two decades now, which, I must say, has been probably one of The Most Important things I have done to develop my own "self-awareness". I consider it a form of "active meditation" in that not only does the process help me to become much more aware of my thoughts, the physical exercise of Writing Them Down almost always results in additional insights and understanding, especially if I am struggling with a particular experience, relationship, concept, or feeling.

b) Public Speaking - I participated as a member of Toastmasters International, a public speaking club, for seven years, which gave me multiple opportunities to practice not only my public speaking skills, but also my leadership skills as I acted as Vice President of Education for my club for most of those seven years.

c) Marketing and Sales Copywriting - Just prior to the end of my enlistment in the U.S. Navy, I attended two multi-day, professional seminars where I was introduced to various principles and techniques for sales copy-writing, website related development, and "search engine optimization". Unfortunately, I did not get to put all of the information I received to immediate use, and so I see this as one of the "weak spots" in my skill set. Nevertheless, I still have all of the instructional materials and when I have the time and opportunity to Focus More on those skills in particular, I am confident that I can improve.

d) General Writing Skills - Besides being a highschool student of the indominatable "Ivy Hawkins" (who, by the way, also taught my Mother when She was in highschool), I had the opportunity to attend a two day seminar at the National Institutes of Health conducted by Duke Rhetoric Professor George Gopen. The focus was on "Writing from the Reader's Perspective". Although I do not edit my writing here with a fine-tooth comb, in future writing, I will be putting much more of what I learned to good use. If you are interested in some of the basics of what George Gopen teaches, you can find more in this article: "The Science of Scientific Writing". (And don't let the title distract you too much, the principles apply well beyond the fields of science.)

e) Computer Literacy and Networking - Again, I would say I'm doing "okay" in this area, but there is definitely room for improvement. As I think I have mentioned already elsewhere in this blog, I've struggled just to get pictures to load on this "Blogger" platform using my iPad. And I certainly have not excelled in developing videos, etc., etc. So, again, given more time and focus, I'm sure I could develop those skills further.

6) Tracking and Primitive Survival Skills - In May of 2011, I attended two weeks of training in Primitive Survival Skills through Tom Brown Jr's Tracker School. It was Really Intense and loaded with useful information. Although I have not been forced into a primitive survival situation during my travels thus far, there is something to be said for having more confidence on the road - should that ever be the case.

7) Self-Discipline - I feel I need to give credit where credit is due and I owe a lot of credit to my eight years in the U.S. Navy for helping to strengthen my self-discipline and "will power". Knowing what I know now about the development of the Frontal Cortex in the first 25 years of life, and how learning more self-discipline during those years is critical to being able to practice it later in life, I really wish I had joined the military in my early 20's rather than in my early 30's as I suspect some areas of discipline might be more "second nature" to me now than they are. Nevertheless, I will continue to do the best I can in spite of what I feel now as a deficit in development of that part of my brain and one that I do not know that I can further develop or recover at this point in my life. (Questions regarding further development or recovery are ones I hope to pose at some point to Human Behavioral Biologist and Stanford Professor Robert Sapolsky.)

So these are the skills and abilities I brought to the table when it came time for me to "Just Do It!" And I have learned more along the way as I have been "Just Doing It!" I have refined my equipment load and maintenance. I have made some progress in utilizing internet networking, etc., but again, I can feel my weaknesses there.

And there is something else that is coming into play that may surprise some of my readers: In actuality...I'm a closet introvert! I honestly do not "enjoy" attracting attention to myself, although, in order to spread the message I feel needs to be spread, and in order to continue to fund this journey that I am on, I have to draw at least some attention to myself, and I have to at least let people know what my needs are so that they can support my journey if they so choose. Otherwise, the journey comes to an end - or - another "interruption" while I figure out some other way to make it work practically and financially. (For more info on this please check-out my "Please and Thank You" page.)

The last advantage/benefit from "Just Doing It" is that with each person I talk to, with each challenging argument, with each question, I have more opportunities to Practice Communicating and to let the ideas and answers come in that unique synergistic way that almost invariably results from that kind of Relating Directly With Other People. And although my internet and marketing skills may be weak, they have become stronger with my efforts thus far, and I have certainly had more ideas about how to approach marketing and fundraising even if I haven't had the wherewithall to follow through on all of them.

As I have explained to many people along this journey, I feel all of my skills and abilities, both the developed and undeveloped ones, are being called upon for me to do what I am doing right now, and it is definitely some of The Most Satisfying and Meaningful Work I have ever done in my life...as well as the most challenging! Nevertheless, I am doing what I feel "I" can do, because of the skills and abilities I have. Not everyone can do exactly what I am doing in exactly this way, but I sincerely feel that everyone is called upon to do What they CAN Do as well these days, to help make the world a better place for now and for the future of humankind and all other beings on this planet.

After "Just Doing It!" again for this past spring and summer, I may have to take another break, and "Just do..." something else for a while to re-build my energy and resources. In other words, "The Plan" is still in flux - as it has always been - and I will keep everyone updated as the details solidify.

In the mean time, I once again Thank Everyone who continues to support my efforts and the Cause of Peace! And if you are not "Just Doing It!" yourself in some way in your own life, then, maybe it is time you did?!