Allan G. Hunter's Blog, page 54

Spring and the Urban Outlook

Looking out of my window, at the chilly beauties of an approaching Spring, I felt strongly how transformative it is to gaze upon something beautiful each day. I live in an urban landscape, and often in winter it feels gray and uninspiring. At such times it doesn’t really even feel bleak and grim, which would at least be a powerful effect. No; it tends to feel drab and bland.

It seems that we need either beauty to look on, or grim majesty, or both at the same time – if you want to go to things like mountain views and the Grand Canyon.

If neither of these things is available then I suspect that we tend to look on objects for comfort – the sleek lines of a car, the harmony of new furnishings or possessions. We substitute things for what we don’t have from Nature. So we find ourselves slipping away from Nature and focusing on more trivial concerns. One’s house may look out on an urban street devoid of trees, but the kitchen, ah, the kitchen is a haven of good design.

Perhaps the fixation we have on possessions and precious things is, at its heart, no more than a disappointment in the conditions of urban and suburban blandness. Perhaps the cure for compulsive consumerism is a walk in the woods.

The people who blew themselves and others up in Brussels ...

The people who blew themselves and others up in Brussels did so in a way that bears questioning. The targets were hardly high status or specific. These were the softest of soft targets, and the killing was without anything one could call discrimination. It was simple butchery.

What can we do with people who just want to kill someone, anyone, and themselves too? We can’t do much, because anyone who embarks on this course of action is already beyond anything we could consider rational thinking.

What we can do is quietly reassert human decency. We can be kind to each other.

We can also choose to remember that Brussels is stronger than this. Its people withstood an occupation by the Kaiser’s armies in World War One. It survived the Nazi occupation in the war that followed. And it did so without ceasing to be populated by decent human beings.

This is a strong city, stronger than the cowardly acts we’ve just witnessed. We must remember – we are stronger than these actions because we know how to be kind.

One of those days

Do you ever have those days when a whole lot of stuff just goes wrong? Yes, I know you do. Don’t lie to me.

Those are the days when you discover your car’s tires need replacing, but you can’t find the time to get to the shop and you need the car every day anyhow. Then your cell loses its ability to recognize your voice for texting; you type instead and promptly lose a glove. Your email locks you out. And so on. Death by a thousand tiny cuts.

It drives us all nuts, of course.

Unless you decide to treat it as a reminder. All these things are gentle nudges telling us just how good we have it when it all works perfectly. These are things we take for granted when we should take them for gratitude. And then we realize that we can, actually, survive without all these things being perfect.

So next time this happens think of them as being like having slightly less icing on your cake today, slightly less cream in your coffee. You’ll be just fine. Trust me.

America and Greatness

A certain astonishingly crass politician claims he can make America great – although he gives no actual plan for how that might happen or what he means by greatness. I think he means it’ll make him and a few buddies wealthy. Well, that’s just folks for you.

But we can make America great in a very different sense if we agree to be kind. A civil and just society is one where people have decent opportunities, where wealth is not concentrated so that those who have less are crippled by it for life, and their children with them. And their children after them. And their children.

A great country cherishes its resources. And people are the greatest resource we have.

Folk Tales and Religion

 

One of the things I’ve been working on for some years is the folktales we know and cherish — even if Disney shreds them before our eyes just to make a buck.

What seems to be emerging is that quite a few of the better folk tales aren’t just psychologically revealing but they are also of great age. Going back in time and seeing them as “teaching tales” we discover that there is not very much difference between the popular tales of antiquity and religious tales. Both seem to depend heavily on metaphor; and both seem to use humble and practical every-day experiences as their bases.

This is particularly interesting when we get to the Bible, since folk tales were given a moralizing spin. So Noah’s Flood, a story about how God got rid of all the sinners, is based on earlier myths of the flood – stories that are almost ubiquitous in human societies, BTW. The precursor of our Flood story seems to have been an actual tale in which inhabitants of the Tigris valley were instructed on how to build large boats to survive the river’s periodic catastrophic deluges. We have some interesting ancient cuneiform clay tablets that indicate exactly this.

So, at what point does religion co-opt folk tales?  Or are folk tales actually an off-shoot of very early religion?

This is not written to suggest there is no value in Biblical stories. On the contrary: once we see where some of the stories most likely came from we can begin to appreciate that religion may well be a wider and more prevalent subject than it seems to be these days, days in which one single book is declared to the the be-all and end-all.

Honesty and Car Repair

I used to go regularly to a certain car muffler repair chain for my oil changes. I liked the manager, trusted him, and he always did right by me. Then he was moved on, and another person replaced him.

Next oil change I’m told I need to replace my front struts ($1500). I get a sense from the manager that he’s not entirely honest. I decline. I check the struts. I ask an expert. Nothing wrong with them. I’m glad I trusted my instincts.

I take my car for an oil change 3 months later. I go to the same place because they have a coupon that is really a bargain. But this time I’m fully on my guard. And sure enough, the manager tells me the sway bar needs replacing ($1300). I decline. I look at the manager long, gently, and without malice of any kind. I tell him I think he’s mistaken. I’m hoping he will notice that I know he’s trying it on. I know there’s nothing wrong with the sway bar. Still, later I have an expert check it. It’s fine.

In a new frame of mind I go for yet another oil change some months later, same place, same bargain price. Now it turns out my transmission needs flushing ($400). I decline because I know this is not true. The manager of the joint doesn’t quite seem to have cottoned on that I have seen through him yet again. I gently point out that he seems to be constantly suggesting repairs that I don’t want. I’d like him to be honest so we can be just ordinary people doing ordinary things. I’d like him to be aware that this isn’t doing him any good. (Later I checked the transmission, the fluid of which had recently been changed. It’s fine. The “sample” I had been shown was not from my transmission, evidently).

I feel I’ve given this person three good chances to act in an honest way, and he refuses to see me as anything but a “mark” he can trick. I don’t dislike him. He hasn’t actually cheated me – merely tried to. I’m just a little sad that he views the world this way. He must have a really unpleasant life if he sees other human beings as fools to be exploited.

I don’t know that there’s any way I can encourage him to change.

I’ll probably still go back there for my oil changes. Perhaps something may alter him at some point.

Peak Stuff and Affluenza

The Guardian UK (my morning read for news that gives a little perspective to USA items) had an article yesterday about how people, at least in Europe, are getting tired of “stuff”. Yes, they’re buying less, shopping less maniacally, and tend to be less swept up in trendy buying.

Affluenza seems to be dying, if not dead.

It wasn’t a scientific article backed up with serious analysis, although there was plenty of data that supported the claim.  People really seem to be buying less, hanging on to what they have, and avoiding shops.

What the writers didn’t say is that this desire to have less is in all probability not a zen approach to life, but could most likely be a response to tightening wages — and a certain lack of faith in materialism that is closer to depression than to minimalism. We could even say that in certain sectors they may well be giving up hope.

Me? I’d like to know whether they buy more alcohol than before, and how their entertainment choices have changed. Do they stay home watching Netflix/Soccer and drink and smoke themselves into a stupor?

Is it merely the mask of a massive sense of depression? Recessions will do that to a population….

Waking

These days I find that I’m waking feeling, well, renewed. No, I don’t mean that manic burst of wide-mouth grinning that the cereal commercials show us, nor the extraordinary things you see people doing in the ads after they’ve inhaled a caffeinated soda. I wake each morning feeling as if I’m having that wonderful first clear day after a heavy cold has left. I’m not bursting with whatever it is we think we’re supposed to burst with. Rather – I’m feeling washed clean. Not new (I’m still aware I’m resident in an aging body) but some how dusted off, polished, set right, and ready to go into a world that has beauty in it.

Sting put it this way: “I woke this morning and something had changed, like the rooms in my house had all been rearranged”.

All real change happens in the Unconscious.

Thank you, Unconscious, for whatever it is you’ve been doing.

 

Guns on Campus

In case you missed it, the University of Houston, Texas, has asked its faculty to be especially sensitive and perhaps remove certain topics from their syllabi — all because Texas now has a new bill that allows anyone to carry a concealed weapon on campus.

The fear is that students who do not like the class conversation will, presumably, whip out a handgun and make a point with a few shots for emphasis.

I’m a college professor. Sometimes I have to relay things to students that might be hard for them to hear. Sometimes I even have to fail them, which neither of us actually likes.

Fortunately I don’t live in Texas, or I might be scared by all this gun toting.

What it amounts to is this: the NRA now is in a position to hold us all to ransom.

The Land of the Free just took another step to becoming the Land of the Silenced.

Flint and……

Plenty of outrage these days about Flint and the appalling lack of oversight (or any sight at all) of the water quality. Good. It’s only by protesting that things can change.

But think for a minute: can Flint be the only place this happened? Really? I doubt it. Put it this another way, in terms of another scandal – was Volkwagen the only company that lied about emission standards? It turns out almost everyone was doing it. Yes, almost every major car manufacturer was fiddling the numbers. Can water be any different?

Have a glass of water.