November Going Out with a Surge

A Pacific surge, that is. North spit, Humboldt Bay.

Barack in my Dreams

Last night I was taking care of Obama, he was exhausted, after some big speech or meeting. So he was napping in my bed, fully clothed (nice bed, nicer that our actual bed!).
When he woke up, I noticed he looked very young, boyish even. So I said, "What do you think? Is all this going to work out OK?" He looked tired and said, "I doubt it." Then he thought a bit more and said, "But we might as well give it our best shot, anyway."
Sounds about right to me!

The Downside of Self-improvement

Talking to an old pal last night about “Now What,” I started getting clearer on the parallels between what Louisa is interested about (“natural” movement vs. disciplined exercise) and what I care about: extending the meditation/mindfulness process into all of life, see my latest entry on my other blog

http://chsz.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-like-itbut-is-it-meditation.html

It all comes under the heading of, “Lighten up, people!” That this culture is brilliant at providing opportunities to beat ourselves up for never quite being good enough. Life is often presented as one long challenge--when we’re small, we learn how to add, but that’s not enough, next up is subtraction. When we get that, no time to rest on our laurels, it’s multiplication. And on and on, right through school, degree (maybe), job-career, engagement, marriage, home (good luck, these day), kids…one challenge after another to be overcome.

Life was more of a challenge, back in the paleolithic age, when the architecture of our brains was being tested against real-world conditions. What worked and what didn’t work was simply a matter of (in the long run), which design was most successful at passing genes on to the next generation. That’s when (I assume, it’s all anyone can do) the “life as challenge” model presumably got embedded in our brains, and here we are today, 21st century bodies with paleolithic brains. More or less--theories abound about how much brain modification has been possible, especially since the two big events of the last few million years, (1) tool use and (2) language. (Brain size has actually decreased slightly during the last 35,000 years.)

Whatever. Seems to me we sure have taken the self-improvement message to heart. I’m all for it, but not at the expense of the corollory, that if I need to improve myself, I must be inadequate now.

More later…

Lowry and McWhorter, "The Age of Obama"

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/15831

This 30 minutes discussion between two powerhouses of black thought--John McWhorter and Glenn Lowry--is fascinating, inspiring, challenging. Can't recommend it enough.

Apology for "Mission Accomplished"?

I've long viewed George W. as a Walter Mitty* character. I think B.H. Obama is a realist. Finally!

To his credit, and five long years later, Bush admitted his error:

In November 2008, Bush indicated that he regretted the use of the banner, stating in a CNN interview, "To some, it said, well, 'Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over,' when I didn't think that. It conveyed the wrong message."

* The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. If you've never read James Thurber's classic short story, do. On line at

http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=100

If you don't, be warned: coreopsis will set in.

Everyday Mindfulness

I just posted to my other blog, on Consciousness and Happiness:

http://chsz.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-like-itbut-is-it-meditation.html

This embodies a large part of what I want to promote in our post-election world. As ever, comments warmly welcome.

Charter for Compassion

I've long been a fan of Karen Armstrong, whose writing on comparative religion has consistently emphasized the similarities between faiths. I particularly appreciated her bringing atheists into her fold with this:

...some of the most eminent Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians and mystics insisted that God was not an objective fact, was not another being, and was not an unseen reality like the atom, whose existence could be empirically demonstrated. Some went so far as to say that it was better to say that God did not exist, because our notion of existence was too limited to apply to God.

I do commend this 3-minute video to you, featuring Karen and several other speakers, all promoting common cause among religions:

http://charterforcompassion.com/
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