On Rooson's comment - It is not my intention to go back to those drug experimentation days too often - these have been discussed exhaustively in my book Dream Weaver, with all the caveats and warnings necessary.  Dumb as it was, however, some of the experiences were heady and in parallel with the mystic's flight to Godhead - and, more to the point of the essay "Needle Park," I am seeing more and more that, as Rooson said, these might be having an affect on the present.  One of my neighbors, a self-described old hippy chick, said that you could tell, by the look of them, people who have smoked pot regularly at some point in their lives.  What, then, about the much more powerful hallucinogens?  Once experienced, are you never really back?  In my own life, I always had the cosmic 100 yard stare - born to it, really - but could not such powerful experiences have life-long affects? (and think of legalizing pot - my own view after talking with the neighbor is, if she is right, that our lawmakers are going to wake up to see a different America once such laws are taken away.  I am not necessarily against reform, but the possibility does remain.  The middle eastern countries have long been home to regular hashish use - could this have affected the mentality of the Arab- Muslim culture?)  But it is true - while intimations of immortality have fluttered about me always, would I ever have imagined the intensity of cosmic experience without the drugs?  The "sky being ripped away," the loss of self, the immersion in the awesome movement of nature - would I have ever really known that power otherwise?  And might it not be working on me still (and millions of others)?  

This question is perhaps unanswerable, and really not essential, because the fury of immersion in the Absolute has been experienced by many from all manner of backgrounds.  From Johannes Tauler, one of the Rhineland Mystics from the 14th century: "God is pure Being, a waste of calm seclusion...much nearer than anything is to itself in the depth of the heart, but He is hidden from all senses.  He is far above every outward thing and thought, and is found only where thou hidest thyself in the secret place of thy heart, in the quiet solitude where no word is spoken, where is neither creature nor image nor fancy.  This is the quiet Desert of the Godhead, the Divine Darkness - dark from his own surpassing brightness, as the shining of the sun is darkness to the weak eyes, for in the presence of its brightness our eyes are like the eyes of the swallow in the bright sunlight."  (taken from "Christian Mystics" by Ursula King)  And this is nothing compared to the more astounding poetry and writings from others, especially the Hindu mystics.  No place of pastoral peace is this presence of the Godhead (as opposed to God, a facet of the Godhead to which humans can relate, if only remotely), but rather what we should expect: an endless sea of seething creation written in ecstatic (and fearsome) emotions on human hearts and souls.  Too brilliant to look upon, as Moses found; unbearable, as many mystics have said, feeling that they are being burned in the cosmic forge for purification.  The analogies are not exaggerations.  Whole galaxies have been ripped from nothingness by the grand creator who is far beyond mad - is far beyond anything we can imagine.  The raging seas are nothing compared to super novas, are nothing compared to the birth of a universe, are nothing compared to what has enabled, engineered, formed from the bright darkness their birth.  

People were once proud to call themselves "God fearing", but the Christian religions of today de-emphasize this fear, or place it on judgment day and eternal damnation.  Small potatoes, I say, when compared to existence each and every moment of our lives.  While the Deists used calm logic to posit a cold and distant  watchmaker god (reflecting the rising industrial age), the mystics always and everywhere have know better: that being is in creation eternally, with all the unimaginable majesty that such an effort entails happening right now.  In some grand bargain, this has been cloaked so that we may live as the human beings that we are.  To finalize it, we have added a cloak of our own - a flat materialistic scientism to take our terror away.  But death is still there, and we feel the nameless emptiness, the call; and in the silence of a starry night, we hear the whisper, a hint att he power and the glory and the roar of creation - and the ineffable Divine Darkness that is behind it all.  FK       

Another essay today, Needle Park, under Essays.  Good Memorial Day to you all - in memory is reflection, and in reflection, just homage.  FK      

To start - had another of those clear insights this morning that defy being put into interesting (new) words.  It was about addiction; how it limits our concentration on other more important things.  But it wasn't just about alcohol or tobacco or other drugs - but also about food, prestige, and whatever else we might be chained to that distorts our thinking or robs of us time better spent.  All of which only goes back to the aphorisms of religion, which seem so trite as to be useless - but are none the less true.  All these things that tie us to selfish needs  and must be kept in moderation - that is, must be made to take second place.  As usual, way easier said than done.

Community; Dorothy Day is right - it is the one true antidote to loneliness - but she is not talking about the bowling league or the prayer chain or even marriage, but real community; that is, tying your fortunes and daily lives to a group, with the group being the focus.  It is what I was looking for in my hitchhiking travels (Dream Weaver), but realized that I couldn't find because of my own individualism.  And, truth be told, those offshoots of community that I did come across - from the hippies in Tennessee to the Jesus Freaks in Texas, to the neo-Hindus in Virginia - many are either no longer functioning, continue in a less community-oriented fashion, or have lost a good portion of their earlier adherents.  Obviously, I am not the only one who is an individualist.  As stated above in the first paragraph of the blog, most of us are addicts to something in this world that keeps us from opening up and dropping our little needs.  This is not only a problem of people in the modern West; look at what China and Russia and Vietnam, etc, felt they had to do to make community - and failed to do so even using brutal (and contradictory) force.  The truest, purist communities that I ever encountered were among the back-woods Indians of Venezuela, who really did live cheek to jowl, and well - and I bet had little of the loneliness Dorothy Day suffered.  They did have differences and some troubles, though, as one would expect; but more so, they achieved their community through exclusion.  The name of a tribe most often translates to "the people," and they mean it; if you are not of them, you are not fully human and so do not deserve human treatment (you might get it anyway, but it is not required).  


Saint John Berchmans said, "vita communis est mea maxima penitentia" (communal life is my greatest penitence), and this from a Christian saint!  The problem is, we are primarily concerned with our own self-interests.  This is 'written' in the way of the world: when I am hurt, or hungry, or bereaved, it is I who feel it directly.  Others may be concerned and share in it, but can never feel it as I.  Thus the sufferings and humiliations of the individual affect that individual the most - and cause him to protect or elevate or achieve something social primarily for himself.  This is not a quirk of a bad character, but the nature of how we experience the world.  It is rather a self-contradiction to care for others as much - or more - as we care about ourselves.  And yet, this is what is required of an open, fully-functional community.  It is why holy men - saints - are so rare and so highly valued (once they are dead, anyway).  They point the way to shared suffering, which is in sum, a loss of suffering.  The community can take away the pain and turn it into a focus of greater community - and love - and thus make suffering a positive.  This is not the only way to do it, but it is the easier and larger way - a  way of self-negation that has functional and often immediate results.


But community is, as said, contradictory to how we are built.  This is the reason for the "negation" found in religion - and disliked by so many of our time.  It is not meant to punish, but to diminish egotism and create community; it is in community that we find enduring love, and in love, not only relief from our suffering, but concrete meaning to life that extends from the ground into the heavens.  


If Karl Marx knew that what he proposed was spiritual in nature (as Dorothy Day did) he would have died of apoplexy, but his utopia was ill-served by his blindness.  Man is not made by the mode of production or its ownership, but by spirit decanted into individual form.  The not-so-well-kept secret to happiness - to utopia - is to find the unity of spirit through the unity of community.  Although this is the easiest way, it is still a Herculean task.  It is best represented exactly by those who give the most of themselves - those religious who sacrifice everything to serve others; but who is built to clean the leper?  Who can give away his cloak to someone who later will steal his shoes?  Who can live by the rules necessary for deep community without feeling oppressed?  I think only those given the spirit, the insight, and the strength.  What they gain is ultimately for themselves, but it comes through giving up the flesh in bits and pieces, often painfully and often literally.  Ah, community.  FK                

In my continuing reading of Martin's "My Life with the Saints," I have come across the not-quite saint and eternal problem to me, Dorothy Day.  I know well about her - my mother has been a life-long fan of hers and I have heard her stories throughout my life.  Then as now, she has always been (not seemed to be) a person of great compassion, courage and conviction - a person far beyond my moral station in just about every way possible.  However, her beliefs and convictions, while morally based, have created problems for me from the beginning, particularly on two aspects.  The first: pacifism.  She was an absolute pacifist, citing Jesus, and stood steadfast against the first two wars and Vietnam as well (I don't know it for a fact, but I can assume Korea, too).   In general, most are familiar with the arguments: while WWI led to WWII, once WWII was started, would it have been better to allow Nazi Germany and Tojo's Japan to take over much of the world?  We can argue the ins and outs of this (for instance, Germany would have defeated Soviet Russia without US interference, just as Japan would have stopped Mao from forming communist China), but the question raised is: is violence ever a good thing?  I go to a particular event in Dorothy's life to make my point.

In the soup kitchen that she ran in New York, an unstable and violent man threatened to kill one of the male volunteers.  He had gotten into a fight before and broken someone's wrist, so it was no idle threat.  Dorothy recounted the event as such: she and another woman wrestled the man to the ground which allowed the threatened man to escape.  After further struggles, they were able to subdue him enough to get to a phone and call the police - not to arrest him, but to have him sent to a psychiatric hospital.  But because they would not sign an official complaint, the police were unable to do this.  They were finally able to convince the hospital to take him for a few days, but they could do no more without an official complaint.  After some other trouble, they were able to get him confined for a month, but once again, not wanting him in trouble with the law, the hospital was unable to detain him for a longer period.  After that, Day believes he left on a job on an oil tanker (or something like that - she was vague).  She ends by saying (paraphrase) "You see what we were able to do without using violence?"  

This attitude cuts to the root of my disagreement with her: she was not only not able to do much without "violence" (official restraint), but she unleashed an unstable and violent man back onto the world.  He left her sphere, but he did not leave others'.  Did he kill a man at port in Alaska?  Did his widow grieve and her children grow up without the financial and moral support of their father?  We do not know; nor did Dorothy.  Instead, she seemed steadfast in her conviction that she was right, so steadfast that it seems more a moral conceit than an act of  compassion.  

This continues her view of "the system," my problem # 2. Growing up near the sweatshops of the American North East in the early 20th century, she witnessed the harsh working conditions of the poor and the immigrants.  Afterward, when unionization was beginning, she saw the multitudes of the new poor created by the depression.  These observations gave her a life-long distaste (hatred?) for the system and, it often seems, for the rich as a class, which continued until her death at about 1980.  I see two problems with her attitude.  In the first place, the system changed dramatically during her lifetime, precisely because of our democratic system.  And, second, because of this change, much of the chronic poverty in this country can now be attributed to the activities of the poor, or the poor's upbringing (usually both); that is, that many, even most, of the degraded neighborhoods and sub-cultures in America are now the results of personal choices.  Jesus told the Pharisees to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's", in effect telling people to have their personal spiritual lives come first.  The Jews of the time wanted a military leader to free them from Rome; what they got was a spiritual leader to free them from themselves.  And it is in this that I think Day was remiss.  The poor are more in need of our compassion, and with that Day had compassion in spades, as a true saint.  But logically she was missing something.   In pursuit of a political narrative she lost, in this way, her spiritual narrative.  Jesus's famous phrase, "You are freed from sin" often leaves out the last part, "go and sin no more."  We are to help, but ultimately everyone is responsible for his  own life, at least on the moral level.  In America, that would include the physical level for most as well.  

Yes, that argument could go on all night, as it frequently has.  But I have another point to make about Dorothy Day, and this one only positive: to combat loneliness (a deep problem for her), Day prescribes community, and in this I couldn't agree more.  My happiest times in life were spent in communities, even though those were always the times of my greatest challenges and poverty.  However (there is an "however"), people have problems with community.  I discovered this while living in a commune (briefly) during the early-mid seventies (describe in my book Dream Weaver - the chapter entitled "Back to the Garden).  I found there something beautiful, but something that I could not do - that is, I felt that I could not leave beside my personal goals for the greater community.  I found then that, even at the tender age of 20, I was already an individualist and nonconformist - in other words, an American.  And yet I now come to think... that perhaps part of the  problem had to do with the central authority and non-traditional theme of the commune.  Would a Christian or Buddhist community be more amenable to me and other Americans?  There is no question that modern people as a whole are consumed by loneliness - what sociologist Max Weber called "anomie."  Individuality is  part of our productive and social culture, and yet we all feel the pains of separation.  Many are part of political action groups or religious communities, but are these too part-time?  Instead, don't we really need the intensive community that was found (and is still found here and there) in the primitive tribes?  

Dorothy day was right, I believe, in pointing us to community.  But how could we re-attain this?  That for another day, FK                                        

First, a quick response to Cal: "be not afraid."  That can be taken two ways - be not afraid because there is more to being than this life, or be not afraid because things will work out for the best.  Of the first, I think that is true; of the second, not so true, at least in human time.  I wish it were; but I have seen lives ruined by circumstances both preventable and not, and nations ruined whose citizens had no choice.  This is why I worry.  If one gives oneself to God (or divine force or forces), one can be certain only of one thing: uncertainty.  It reminds me of a famous Argentinian author who was "disappeared" during the dictatorship of the 1970's.  For many months - or was it a few years? - he was tortured physically and mentally.  Broken.  He was one of the few who later was allowed to "appear" again, and it was after this that he  wrote a book (Something like, "Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number") which was made into a movie and had considerable influence in forging a code of of international conduct.  There was, then, a reason for his living hell.  That's the way it can be.  Such things take greater faith than I, at least, might have.

We will revisit that theme again, I am certain.  For now, another: what is the true self?  I have spoke of this before, that I have learned that what I thought to be myself was only a thin mask made for the ego to present itself to society, one that often becomes mistaken for the true self.  For the mystic, ANY notion of a separate self is a mask, but I do not wish to go that far at the moment, but rather stay with our temporal selves in this world.  Still, here, we hide ourselves from others and ourselves.  In "My Life with the Saints" by James Martin, he uses a few quotes to illustrate this point.  From Metz, "When the mask falls and the cave of our being is revealed, it soon becomes obvious that we are religious by  nature, that religion is the secret dowry of our being."  Deeper still, this one from Thomas Aquinas: "All I have written seems like a straw compared with what I have seen [in mystical revelations late in life] and what has been revealed to me."  Of the first, I'm certain that we all can recall times when the mask Metz is talking about has fallen, which usually happens at times when mortality is seen in its truth - that is, at times when we believe ourselves to be truly threatened.  "There are no atheists in foxholes" goes with this, but there is much more: the person who is revealed to us in such times is not only frightened or begging for divine mercy - he is fundamentally different.  This 'new' person may be braver or more cowardly than the previous persona thought he was, or more organizational, more dependent, more fatalistic, or more a fighter.  This is nothing new to people who have been in harm's way regularly, and it is the reason many people court danger.  They wish, even at the risk of death, to become more real.  

I think of this because of a dream I had the other night.  It did not have the feel of a special God dream, those coming very seldom; rather it was a blunt message of the self to the self, a special dream of a different sort.  In it was revealed a truer nature of my being, one that I have long forgotten, one of a more feral, blunt and reactive temperament that has been buried under successive layers of socialization.  It was me at, say, 5 or 10; but also me at 20 or 30, although in a more subtle guise; and still me in my 50's, but so buried that I had forgotten about it.  This "me" reminds me more of people in older times and, given my readings of late, of Jesus's disciples.  This "me" would, like Peter, have been prone to slice off the ear of the attendant who came to take Christ from Gethsemane.  This "me" would also most certainly have denied Christ three times and more to protect himself.  He would also be more prone to launch off into a rough sea, attempt to walk on water, or fall on his knees in the midst of thunder and wonders.  A "me" that is more adventurous, braver, more immediately spiritual, yet in some circumstances more a coward, more likely to take advantage of a situation, more self-centered.  That is, more the basic man.  A regular working stiff, a soldier, a fisherman, a Viking gone bravely on Western seas who falls on his knees at the maelstrom.  

I had forgotten him in my settled habits and age, but he is still there.  He is as much "me" as "me" can be.  The gray hair and steady habits are only physical and mental aspects born from age and complacency, different from a more authentic someone, much of him formed before thought and words were realized.  One does, I must believe, have a basic nature.  It is this nature which confronts the mountain cliff, and this which confronts the Ultimate while still the self.

Thomas Aquinas speaks of an even deeper self - one that is beyond the man of the world but before the saint who has gone beyond this world.  He speaks of another self that most of us have or will experience as well.  Here we are led beyond the discursive and the selfish to a pure experience which leads to a pure thought, or intuition.  I think it might be best described as the Zen moment, when the present, the "now" becomes that "infinity in a grain of sand."  You have found it in those moments where nothing else but what you are right then matters - when dreams and hopes and fears dissolve into pure being.  Aquinas, a man of both deep rational thought and faith, could only describe it in terms of "knowing." And when thinking of these two personas, it makes me think that Jesus did not chose the fishermen only because they were common men; but also because, in their simple fierceness and loyalties and fears and pettiness, they were more apt to see the truth, the "present" of eternity, than the many-layered or more sophisticated; as the first quote states, when we strip away the persona, we find the religious man.  Here, in the person who just "is" we find not only striking self-centeredness and cruelty, like a grown child, but also someone with an easy and natural ability to feel what is just beyond.  It is this man who I was looking for in my adventures with the Indians.  It is this man I discovered in my dream.  He is NOT the man of the future, for he cannot expand extensively from himself and his family and his tribe.  But he is LIKE the man of the future in his essential honesty with himself.  

So, it may be that the man (person) of the future is the man who wears no mask before and after he has seen the wordless truth of Aquinas.  He is, in other words, Peter after the Pentecost, Buddha under the banyan tree, the Zen student who is hit by "now."  He is the stripped-down self before the power and the fury who receives grace in the eye of the storm and keeps it.  He is, in other words, totally himself led by the will of the Absolute.  He is, then, maybe an answer to my own question: does God lead, or are we left to our own devices?  Yes, IT leads, but only if we know ourselves, raw skin and all.  FK                   
          

Being spring planting time, I did not anticipate a blog entry today, but feel that I should.  The last two essays have been rather bleak in outlook and I don't want readers to get the impression that all is lost from my perspective.  I had written a note to myself last week to make this week's entry more uplifting - for I am filled with hope and even joy at times with the sunrise, as with most.  However, my friend came up in a blog this week and I felt compelled to write about him. Given what happened, I should have known it would not have a happy conclusion.  

Pope John, in a speech to the 2nd Vatican Council, said: "In these times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin...We feel we must disagree with these prophets of gloom.  In the present order of things, divine providence is leading us to a a new order of human relations which, by human effort, and even beyond human expectation, are directed toward the fulfillment of God's higher and inscrutable designs; and everything, even human differences, leads to the greater good of the church."  While I can and do argue with points of view of popes and saints alike, can I argue with such a grand vision?  It is true that we have to watch it - we have all done things, or know people who have done things, that have led to unsavory ends - and this holds true for our species at large.  Yes, we have to watch it, but we did not make this world nor can we unmake it.  There is at some level, and probably at every level, intelligent design.  While rational observation shows that we may be headed towards a bleak cul-de-sac, rational observation or thought cannot explain any of the big questions.  In the end we must watch it, yes, but ultimately depend on powers beyond us.  It is from this or these that we got here, and probably from this that we will find our destiny.  No polyanism here but gloom is just as short-sighted and misconstrued - and perhaps arrogant.  


And so I will go to plow and plant with the near certainty that my efforts will pay off with growth and food.  I should be as certain that the good efforts and will of so many in this world will pay off in such bounty as well.  FK            

I have added a new essay, "Marc," conveniently under the heading "Essays," now in its own category.  I had hoped to comment on the response from Rooson about black matter, but time forces me to wait for another day.  FK 

I believe I have found the key to turning the current circle of logic - since the essay "Rainbow River" - into a spiral, a circle with some place to go.  It came to me last night while thinking about the dilemma - does a power rule in our lives beyond our knowledge, or are we stuck with the laws of nature as we know them (and therefore, in my opinion, are doomed)?  As an added catalyst, the quote by the Jesuit leader Pedro Arrupe on optimism came to play, and between the two thoughts I recalled Intelligent Design theory.  

There is much more to it than many think.  I know, because in my academic training, it was taught that time, cosmic radiation, variant genetic material, and the natural environment were what caused the evolution of the species, and any notion of the direct intervention of a divine player in this seemed childish.  Mutations were random and reacted to, and were selected by, the current natural environment.  In this I believed as firmly as Richard Dawkins,  best- selling atheist and proponent of classical Darwinism.  It did not turn me into an atheist, but rather had me happily accepted the fact that God worked through chance in this world.  And thus you can see my consternation and doubt in the last several blogs.  But I had forgotten about Michael Behe's book, "Darwin's Black Box."

As a biochemist, Behe was even more invested than I in Darwin's theory of natural selection - that is, that change came about through the actions of the natural environment on random mutations.  He was not a true religious believer of any sort, with only childhood roots to a standard religion (it's been a while since I read the book, so I can't recall the details).  But his research came up with surprising things, summed up as this: biochemical process are far too complicated to be altered by a single, random mutation, or even several of them.  To create, say, the ability of an organism to filter salt from water (like mangrove trees - this is my own example from off the top of the head) would necessitate a vast array of simultaneous changes whose probability of occurrence would run to the tens of trillions to one; in other words, for basic functional changes to occur in a species, one would need many, many times more years than our present universe has; in fact, one would need something closer to infinity (if one can get close to infinity).  The book ended with biochemical formulations that spun my head - as it should - but I was in overall shock from the other chapters of the book.  I was an anthropologist who had taught evolutionary theory and I had been only slightly aware of the Intelligent Design theory, and that only through something of a straw-man argument concerning the development of the eye.

Of course, the obvious solution to this puzzle of complexity is exactly that - Intelligent Design, or divinely guided evolution.  I have even mentioned corollaries to this before, referring to a general divine guide through evolution (Teilhard de Chardin) which struck me as more a postulate than a hard theorem.  But this is a hard theorem.  As such, it is strong evidence that a force outside our understanding intercedes in the actions of nature (for the Traditionalists, they are tired of looking to science to prove their ideas.  They know them "through the intellect" or divinely given ideas, but I am more than a little afraid to make too many of such claims).  If this is the case, then, why couldn't this power intercede in human activities?  And why couldn't it intercede on a personal basis, and even respond to prayer?  Why not?  No wonder Richard Dawkins hates I.D. so much (as another aside, if one watches Dawkins argue on TV, one becomes painfully aware that his disdain for his opposition, and his disdain for anything tainted with "spirit", emanates from some traumatic childhood experience).    

To continue on this track: why then couldn't this force intercede when I was jumping across the ice flows?  Or with any number of things, or perhaps EVERYthing.  Yes, it is true that this throws us back on the question "why do bad things happen to good people," forcing us to resort again to the bromide, "we just don't know."  But let's face it: we don't know; we don't know, as Roeker's reference to Northern Exposure says, what good might come from a broken leg.  But by opening Darwin's Black Box, it does seem we are confronted by the very real possibility that this is not a clock maker's universe, as conceived by the Deists (Thomas Jefferson was one.  I might add that none of that group of founders was an atheist.  The idea was considered absurd) - that is, once made and wound, the world would do its work regardless.  This is not logically necessary - one could still say the any such evolution was pre-planned - but it does point to a more likely scenario - that the universe is constantly in the making; that it is not a flat blueprint, but an inspired work of an improvisational master.  Seeing the drama and wonder of the world, I would have to side with the latter - it makes more sense.  And with that, perhaps I could become more of an optimist like Fr. Arrupe - to believe that God is not only there, but is able and willing to make things better.  I am still not convinced of that last, at least  as far as the human perspective is concerned (who was it who joked that this "was the best of all possible worlds"?) but I will concede that in the vast scheme of things, this might well be so.  FK                                      

What struck me first about my impressions that nature and Indians weren't perfect was: how did I get that view in the first place?  Why had I been culturally conditioned to see myself, and all my Western (modern) fellows as flawed, while viewing nature and Indians so ideally?  On the latter, Indians, I went into considerable depth in my PhD thesis.  To briefly summarize, I found that we are conditioned to believe that Indians (and others whom we see as primitive) are one with nature, and as such, in perfect harmony with it.  Nature and natural man do not make mistakes.  We do, because we are separated from our natural state by layers of civilization - and so are flawed.  Why?  Because we rely on our reasoning and not with our natural intuition.  As I think of all the blogs I have written, I still believe that we (moderns) lack sufficient intuitive powers - and it is because of this that I recommend peaceful silence on a regular basis.  

But this will not make us any more perfect than the squirrel who misses the limb in his leap.  We will function more smoothly, but not perfectly.  In the end, as Plato knew, this world might be a shadow of perfection but not perfection itself.  Perfection doesn't die, doesn't get sick, doesn't misjudge.  However, there is some truth to the idea that nature is closer to perfection than civilized man; for although the squirrel may slip, his species fits in neatly with the overall scheme of nature - that is, by in large, nature is self-regulating, and massive changes usually only occur with major geological or meteorological shifts (another sign that nature at large is not perfect - it changes on a grand scale, sometimes destructively).   Humans, on the other hand, have a reasoning mind that allows us to rise above - or sink below - the intuitive.  Reason is necessary for our species, but its overuse has proven to be destructive.  As far as we know, before about ten thousand years ago, all human societies functioned within the natural scheme - that is, we understood our place in the world.  In that we might well say that at least some groups that are more primitive in technology and lifestyle than us are closer to nature and therefore more intuitive and less destructive.  

However, reason is reason, and sooner or later it was going to jump the boundaries of natural cycles.  In hindsight, this was inevitable, just as anything in nature is going to slip, get sick, or, on a geological scale, be altered radically.  Our problems stemming from too great a reliance on the rational were bound to come about - the mechanism was built - in.  And so I go back to a question raised earlier - will we, by simply doing what we were made to do, cause our own destruction?  Or will the intuitive be returned to restore a balance?  Chinese philosophy says YES - as do just about all theological philosophies and mythologies.  With the Chinese, the balance of yin and yang is inevitable - but perhaps not before chaos.  With Christians, it is the apocalypse that must come before the second coming.  With the old Norse, it was the Ice Giants.  I suppose the question we have to ask ourselves now is, how far down do we have to go?  Like alcoholics, must we hit rock bottom to change?

I leave with a quote by Pedro Arrupe, head of the Jesuit order in the late 20th century: "An optimist is a person who has the conviction that God knows, can do, and will do what is best for mankind."  I suppose it is a weakness of faith on my part - perhaps due to too great an emphasis on the rational and experiential - but I am not so sure about that.  The Traditionalist Frithjof Schuon took it for granted that we must hit the bottom before things are to get better.  But, as I see it as inevitable that the rational would come to dominate the human and his world, is this not a mark of God's cruelty?  That IT would make a being whose suffering was as foretold as the obsolescence of a PC?  I am missing something here, I know, and perhaps am going in circles - for instance, I realize once again that adhering to spiritual principles would help us avoid the pitfalls of rational thought by hindering the overwhelming pride that the rational ego takes from temporal power (and this is a choice - with free will).  Perhaps what we are discovering is not a circle but a spiral, where we go round and round but get someplace.  But I'm not sure if I have enough faith to be an optimist.  FK        
                   

Thanks for the comments on luck, Rooson and Roeker.  I would like to expand it to include more than individual luck, to that for all people and even the planet as well.  Oddly, and not particularly to my liking, it gets back to the 'end of the world.'  As Rooson put it, a lot of "luck" is preparation, concentration and skill.  With Northern Exposure's Marilyn, luck is subjective and idiosyncratic.  But what about the world?  Or, to make it more manageable, what about just our species and how it affects the world?  The variables are too great to understand, and it seems we either will need luck or divine intervention to get us through.  Luck on this scale, however, cannot be expected by chance - flip a coin 10,000 times and it will come out very close to 50/50.  To those who think knowledge alone can do it, take a look at something as mundane as oleomargarine.  50 years ago, it was the healthy alternative to butter.  5 years ago (or so), such artificial trans fats were found to be much worse for you than butter.  Compare that to the massive changes we are making today, from social engineering to genetic modification.  To make it worse, many of these changes (I refer now to the latter) have become essential - without modified hybrid grains, we simply could not feed the world, as we could not without petroleum and its bi-products.  And yet we know that these technological innovations cannot continue in this direction forever.  On the other side, even as fertility rates are beginning to plummet, demographers are telling us that the world will become hellish without enough young to support an aging population.  Damned it you do and damned if you don't.

My question being, will we be left to our own devices and eventually succumb to natural forces as dumb luck runs out?  Or is there a guiding hand?  If we look around, we see incredible circumstantial evidence on both the individual and international scale that points to divine intervention (one of the greats is the vicious storm that destroyed the Spanish Armada and saved England - which later transformed the world).  Yet we also see sad, bad, and unjust results on all levels, from the complex circumstances that brought Hitler to power to a little kid coming down with leukemia or dying in a car accident.  I don't know.  More good will in the world would at least help - along with greater spiritual understanding to arrive at true good will, with a lessening attachment to self (which causes greed, hatred and so on).  I suppose we might say that at least behaving as if there is a moral presence in the universe might lead us beyond "luck" - for it seems that we mess with the big stuff to accommodate greed, lust and other ego manifestations, or the consequences.   I think I can say, as a partial answer to my own query, that right behavior (as defined by virtually all the legitimate religions) on a grand scale would solve the grand problems, including the survival of our species.  The little ones - i.e., the kid with leukemia - will always be with us as a part of being in the mortal world.  We perhaps can save the lot of us, then, while still having the open- ended mystery of existence - our gift, in a way, for beauty is a consequence of truth, and truth is beyond all of this world.   (At this point we come closer  to understanding the reason for the kid with leukemia - as without such things, our search for truth would end - but I leave that for another time, for I have to at least start the idea of the Indian and the squirrel).

The Indian and the squirrel: in grad school I lived on North Campus and liked to make the two mile walk to main campus everyday through the Arboretum.  It was there that I began to notice the dozens of squirrels in their scurry through the trees, and the absolute perfection of their incredible climbs and leaps.  Perfect, perfect, never missing a beat as I would have time and again.  With time, though, I came to see that every now and then one WOULD miss (years later, one missed while I was hiking with my dogs.  That was the end of that squirrel).  I began then to take notice of everything more carefully and found that everything - from birds to coyotes to deer - made mistakes, and not just with human devices or interference.  Nature, I began to understand, was sharp - far sharper than I - but not perfect.  While this may not seem much to the reader, this was something of a sea change for me.  


A few years later, I found myself living with a backwoods group of Indians in southern Venezuela who impressed me with their skills.  No, "impress" is not the word; I was awed by them.  They would walk across slippery logs carrying large loads without a tremor, climb trees like monkeys, find game that seemed invisible to me, put  together a shelter in the woods in minutes, and always in the right place at the right time.  But then the "squirrel" thing happened; on a long trek through greasy-wet mountains, I saw a few of the guys slip and fall - just like me.  They thought it hilarious, but it brought back the turning point I had concerning nature: that it is not perfect, that although it usually works very nicely, it does not ALWAYS work nicely.  I have had to think since then exactly why this was such a sea change for me, and it has to do with the idea of perfection and the nature of this world itself.   But time runs out - to finish later, FK