So to get back into the habit I thought I’d start with with a meme-y analyize-your-itunes-library since I always think its interesting to see how it changes every year.

So I gave up.

This summer I found myself in a Creek with nothing to do.  It was a lazy day on vacation and we had no plans until the evening.  It was too shallow to swim, so I was just floating.  Without trying to I started to drift.  I closed my eyes and just felt myself being drifted along by the current.  The movement distracted myself from everything else so I didn’t have to try to meditate…suddenly I just was.

Of course because I was in such a state of meditation…and having done so accidentally…I didn’t even realize I was meditating.  It wasn’t until a dragonfly landed on my nose that my meditation was broken and I realized that I realized that I was doing it.  Before losing the feeling I allowed myself to drift into meditation again and after a while I wasn’t even aware of the movement and I was just aware of my breathing.

I was doing it.

I was meditating.

No great words of wisdom in this post, but I thought it might be interesting to share with anyone that was trying to meditate but finding it hard.  The stillness…the awareness of gravity…the weight of my body…somehow I couldn’t escape that until I was floating downstream on a lazy afternoon.

Many issues came to mind…healthcare, taxes, crime, racism, sexism, classism, the military industrial complex, the agricultural industrial complex, the healthcare industrial complex…but these are all issues for which the inquirer was looking for the root cause.

To answer this question, I’ve started to curate a series of shows called the “Exquisite Corpse”.

Example:

Exquisite Corpse by Mick Stern, Ken Krimstein, and Monte Wolverton

The Exquisite Corpse is a collaborative game where three artists work together on a single drawing.  The catch is that they don’t work “together”.  A paper is folded into thirds in such a way that at any given time a viewer can only see the top, middle, or bottom.  The first artist starts in any section that they want.  In the example above Ken Krimstein started in the middle, drawing the torso.  He extended the neck and the legs just past the fold, so that when the paper was folded again the next artist would know how to connect to his drawing but not be able to see it.

The “enforced ignorance” is so that no artist influences the other in terms of content or style.  Whatever Ken was going through in his life, he wanted to draw a man just having learned how to fly.  Mick Stern drew the top part, seeing only the neck (if you look close, you can see where Ken’s lines extend past the fold) and nothing else.  Mick is different than Ken and therefore wouldn’t want to draw the same picture except through the artificiality of agreement.  Where Ken wanted to draw a man surrounded by clouds, Mick wanted to draw a tribal figure alone on the emptiness of the blank page.  Mick’s ideas are clearly different than Ken’s.  The drawing finally ended with Monte Wolverton who didn’t want to draw flight or tribal figures, he wanted to draw a figure submerged into the depth of the ocean rather than raised to the heights of the sky.  How different can you get?

If they were able to see each others’ sections, they would have to deal with the difference between them…what makes them different and what drives them apart from each other.

This is where I think that the “problem of America” lies.  We know that there are differences between us and we assume that our differences drive us apart from each other.

At one point early on in the Surrealist movement when they were developing the exquisite corpse game, one artist wanted to move from drawing to painting.  Breton didn’t believe that the exquisite corpse should be done without folds, and since the painting variation involved covering parts of the canvas rather than folding them, all those that participated in the painted exquisite corpse were excommunicated.

Breton didn’t say much about the fold, but I find it to be the most exciting parts of the drawings.  Because Ken’s drawing “reaches” out over the fold, the corpse has two necks rather than just one.  The legs, likewise, have a “double exposure” where the marks of two different ideas over lap.

This is the solution of the problem of America.

Our differences don’t need to separate us and cause divides, they can be the thing that join us.  The way to do this is to reach out to people that disagree with you.

If I purposely sought out three artists that habitually drew men in tweed suits flying through the air, it would make for a very uninteresting corpse.  If everyone had the same passions, we would predictably have a picture of a ma with a tweed suit flying through the air.

Likewise if I sought out people that weren’t passionate about ideas, it would make for an uninteresting corpse.  If everyone played it safe we might have the head of an average-looking man, wearing a blank tee-shirt, and jeans…or worse yet a stick figure!

Instead because passionate people reached out across boundaries (see where the metaphor is going?) we have the drawing of a tribal chieftain flying through the air while is barnacle-encrusted legs are firmly standing on the bottom of the ocean.

I learned this lesson from a friend of mine that is very active in the Second Amendment Society of New Jersey.  My personal belief is that less guns in a society makes citizens safer; his belief is that more guns in a society makes citizens safer.  As expected, putting the two of us in a room set us both off.  We argued for as long as the first meeting, the rift between us growing wider and deeper, and we both assumed that that meeting would be our last…neither of us having anything to learn from each other.  Then that fateful question that changed the game.

“Don’t you want New Jersey to be a safer place?”

“Of course!”

“Well, how are you going to make that happen?”

The answer was insightful and intelligent.  I of course didn’t agree with it, but instead of focusing on the things that separate us we suddenly shifted focus to the thing that joined us…the thing that made us the most passionate…the thing that brought us “on the same page”.

…and there’s that metaphor again.

We can either accept the fact that people are brought together by their arguments because they are passionately interested in the same issues (No one ever counters an argument against universal healthcare with a pro-union argument.) or we can ignore the fact that we are “on the same page” and draw lines in the sand. across the fold.

That metaphor almost got me all the way through.

1) I got kittens.

2) I celebrated my 4th wedding anniversary.

3) I curated my first art show.

4) I took a road trip from Charlotte, NC to New York, NY.

5) I taught myself to meditate.

6) I came to grips with several aspects of Christianity.

7) I made a threat that might just be an empty threat, but I’ll use my blog to prove that it’s not.

8) I gained two more points on the purity test (or did I lose them?  I always forget).

9) I applied to be on Wipeout.

10) I suddenly have vertigo when I sleep.

Stealing in general is wrong, but perhaps it’s not so bad to steal from a big company.

Lying in general is bad, but perhaps it’s not so wrong to lie on your taxes.

That’s the great thing about being atheist.  Since you making up your own moral code instead of being given one by a god, no one is going to be mad at you if you make exceptions to your own code or bend the rules a bit.

Being a Christian sucks.

Seriously.

It does.

There’s no gray area when it comes to the morality of Christianity.

Taking something that belongs to someone else is always wrong, regardless of the circumstances.

Telling lies is always bad, regardless of the circumstances.

I’m not one to judge, because ain’t none of us perfect.

I know that lying is wrong, but when I need a personal day to catch up in my personal life…it’s just easier to tell my boss that I’m sick rather than to explain the fact that I need to go to Brooklyn for a special event.  I doubt my boss really cares either what I do with my personal days, so she doesn’t really care what  excuse I use.

…but…I have to recognize that as a Christian, whenever I lie I go against the will of God.

I know that stealing is wrong, but if I’m at the cafeteria and there’s no one there to take my money at the register…it’s really the cafeteria’s fault that I can walk straight through without paying for my meal.

…but…I have to recognize that as a Christian, whenever I take something from another person I go against the will of god.

I also have to recognize that event if I am not sinning directly, I am responsible for the final outcome of my actions.  You can’t get out of the responsibility of your actions, just because you act indirectly or use another person as a tool to commit the sin.

If I ask my coworker to lie to cover for me, that lie belongs to both of us.

If my friend works for a bookstore and I ask him to swipe some reading material for me, that theft belongs to both of us.

Perhaps you think that lying to your boss isn’t “that big a lie” or that stealing from a big box store isn’t “so bad” because you’re stealing from a corporation rather than a person.

If you’re an Atheist, bully for you!  You’ve chosen to live by your own moral code, and…you know…I really can’t fault you for taking advantage of that.

I’m not going to fault a Christian for that either as long as you recognize that you’re acting outside how Jesus instructed you to live your life.  As a Christian you can lie to your boss or steal from a company as long as you’re willing to either say,

“What I’m doing now is a sin.  I know God will disapprove, but right now I feel that certain circumstances are making this act necessary and I hope that God will understand.”

…or…

“What I’m doing now is not a sin.  I know that the teachings of Jesus are contrary to my actions, but he lived 2,000 years ago and really his teachings aren’t that applicable to the current situation.”

If you are a Christian and you are acting contrary to Jesus’ teachings and you cannot say either of the above, you are a hypocrite.

If you lie to your boss and think, “God has truly blessed me for my ability to lie to get out of going to work.” you are a hypocrite.

If you steal from a faceless corporation and think, “God has truly blessed me by making this bounty available to me” you are a hypocrite.

That’s why it sucks to be a Christian.  Atheists can live by a rule of relative morality so they can justify any action they use to take.  As a Christian you’ve always got to measure your actions against the teachings and example of Jesus Christ.

Crap…I didn’t even mention killing.  This is where being a Christian gets really sucky.

Taking the life of another human being is always a sin, regardless of the situation.

I know that killing is a sin, but if I find myself alone with a child molester and a weapon he deserves to be killed, and possibly by killing him other children will be prevented from being molested.

…but…I have to recognize that as a Christian, whenever I kill I go against the will of God.

Maybe he deserves to die, but that’s not a Christian’s call to make.  Only God can make that call.

I also have to recognize that event if I am not sinning directly, I am responsible for the final outcome of my actions.  You can’t get out of the responsibility of your actions, just because you act indirectly or use another person as a tool to commit the sin.

If I support the armed forces and cheer them on as they kill, that killing belongs to both of us.

The killing of Osama bin Laden brought this to mind.  Are you a Christian that cheered when Osama bin Laden was killed in our name?

Did you say “What the armed forces are doing now is a sin.  I know God will disapprove, but right now I feel that certain circumstances are making this act necessary and I hope that God will understand and forgive.”

…or…

“What the armed forces are doing now is not a sin.  I know that the teachings of Jesus are contrary to their actions, but he lived 2,000 years ago and really his teachings really aren’t that applicable to the current situation.”

If instead you said “

If you lie to your boss and think, “God has truly blessed our country with our ability to kill of Osama bin Laden.” you are a hypocrite.

Sorry to break it to you.

That’s why being a Christian sucks.

Because it’s hard.

It’s really…really hard.

You cannot support the actions of anyone who sins, which means you cannot support the actions of anyone who takes human lives, which means you cannot support the actions of the armed forces.

Again…ain’t none of us perfect.

Perhaps the taking of a human life is the solution to a problem…but it is not the Christian solution.

Kind of makes you wish you were atheists, doesn’t it?

I really want to support the armed forces, but as a Christian I cannot.

If you are a Christian and not willing to say “I know that the teachings of Jesus are contrary to my actions, but he lived 2,000 years ago and really his teachings aren’t that applicable to the current situation.” you cannot either.

I know.

It sucks.

Hopefully it will pay off in the long run, you know?

In both versions, the enemy of humanity are the Cylons, a race of robots that have been at war with humans for generations.  What’s different is who built the Cylons.

In the original series the Cylons were originally a reptilian alien race that waged war with Earth, and when they realized that they had fought themselves nearly to death they built a mega-army of highly intelligent robots to take their place.  The robots adopted the name Cylon and took the place of their creators as they also took over the society from the dying race.

Obviously the seventies was a time of rampant Xenophobia, a time when “others” seemed to poses the biggest threat to our civilization.  These “others” that we feared were so foreign to us that we could not understand why they wanted to destroy us, but it was clearly not our fault.

In the reboot the Cylons were created to be servants to man, but given too much intelligence and decided to overthrow the oppression of their human masters.

This gives me hope.  I feel that we are at a time when we realize that the greatest threats of violence and terrorism may come from afar, but we know that it is a situation that we created ourselves…that our forefathers birthed the hatred and violence that is currently threatening us and we are trying to cope.

Hopefully it will not take a global cataclysmic event like the robot apocalypse for us to band together as brothers and deal with the mine fields we set in our past to explode in our future, explosive devises of our own creation that we can no longer blame on aliens from other countries.

Hopefully we’ll figure out that we having nothing to fear but ourselves long before it comes to that.

The subway wasn’t crowded, but if you wanted to sit you would have to stake your claim on a half-seat between two people taking up more than their fair share of a seat.  I was lucky enough to find the last seat between two empty seats and the row was immediately filled by two women on either side of me.  The woman on my right definitely had to squeeze in…which she did.

Ten seconds go by until the much larger woman on her right elbows her…hard.

“That’s what you get for not saying ‘excuse me’.”

“What?”

“That’s not nice.  Where were you raised?”

At this point I was starting to formulate a response for this poor woman that seemed at a loss for words:

Nice?  Do you think elbowing people is nice?  Where were you raised that you think it’s appropriate to elbow someone to teach them how to be nice?

Something like that…I was formulating it in my head and checking the temperature of the train, but the encounter was brief enough that by the time I had my “Do you think elbowing people is nice?  Where were you raised?” ready to go just after she had humphed and headed to the other end of the car.

“I was about to back you up.”

“What?”

“You can’t behave like that, elbowing strangers just because they don’t act the way you want them to.  I was going to put her in her place.”

Various people around me nodded in support.

“Well, you also can’t yell at everyone that doesn’t act the way you want them to.  What’s the difference between an agressive gesture and agressive words?  You’re still using violence to make someone behave the way you want them to.  You just wanted to do it verbally where she did it physically, but it’s really the same thing.”

The train was quiet.  No one knew how tor respond…except for me.

“Um…” was as much as I had.

“You can’t answer violence with violence.  Answering a gesture with an elbow is the same as answering an elbow with shouting.”

I noticed that she was speaking with an accent and asked where she was from.  Turns out she was Dutch.

It seems that it’s a very American thing to force people to act the way that we think is appropriately and we often feel better about it because we do it more civilly than our enemies…whether it is more civil diplomacy or dropping bombs more civilly.  According to my Dutch friend, though, it’s the same thing: aggressively forcing someone to behave the way that you think is “right” is rarely appropriate.

I guess I’ll stop arguing with subway evangelists…

>sigh<

race,

mice

pace

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a problem of faith in this country…but I feel that it’s far, far worse than blind faith.

Blind faith would be looking at a bag of M&M’s and saying, “This bag is full of nothing but red M&M’s.”

To which I would say, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, very sure.”

“Why don’t we open up the bag to find out?”

“I have no interest in doing so.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know that there is nothing but red M&M’s in the bag.”

My recent conversations with people that hold unwaveringly to their views no matter what evidence is brought their way is far, far more dangerous.

People who hold these views might say, “This bag is full of nothing but red M&M’s.”

To which I would say, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, very sure.”

“Why don’t we open up the bag to find out?”

“Yes, let’s do it.”

He opens the bag and pours the multi-colored M&M’s on the table.

“Okay, this one’s red.  See?  This one’s red, too!  Didn’t I tell you?  Red, red, and red!  Well, this one doesn’t have an M on it, so it doesn’t really count as an M&M.  I’m just going to throw this one out…and this one…this one, well, it’s hard to make out what letter that is.  This one’s red!  This one…hey, are you hungry?  I’m just going to eat a few of these.  Look at this one!  This one’s got a W on it!  That’s got to go.  These, too.  These all get thrown out.  This one’s red…and this one.  This one…well, this one’s kind of misshapen.  Let’s throw out all the imperfect ones…except that one.  That one’s red…and that one.  See?  All the M&M’s in the bag were red.  What did I tell you?  Not another one in sight!”

“Blind faith” is passive ignorance…it’s just unwilling to go out and question current beliefs, but “Unwavering faith” is active ignorance.  It’s disregarding any and all evidence that doesn’t support what you want to believe.  It’s choosing to be ignorant.

Why would you choose to be ignorant?