Changing focus within the body. A little trick I use.

      There are always times when pain visits our body. Constant and dulling pain can really wear away at our spirits and give way to many kinds of thoughts which limit and distress us. There are many ways to distract ourselves or give us some temporary relief, but sometimes we have to just deal with it. In order to preserve our will and courage in dealing with pain, it helps to find a way to take our focus off of the area of the body under distress.

    A simple technique I've started using is to shift my attention from discomfort to the pressure I'm feeling from the force of gravity. This could be the pressure felt on the bottoms of your feet while walking or on your thighs while sitting. The advantage of this method is that it is always available to you unless you're free falling through space.

    If gravity is the reason you're in pain, then I guess you'll have to come up with something else to focus on!

The Body: The Source of All Evil

If there was one facet of my existence I would gladly rid myself of (assuming I could migrate to another medium of existence), there's no doubt I'd choose my body. I was watching a television show with Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse-Tyson. He said something to the effect that there would be a tremendous change in our planetary dynamic if all life forms simply subsisted on energy from our sun. Life wouldn't then rely of the consumption and destruction of other life.

Where my thoughts tie together is in the knowledge that so much of our weakness, temptation, destruction, irrationality, and suffering spring forth from the body. It is so pleasing to spend time in the world of ideas, imagination, spirituality, and other non-material pursuits and then suddenly realize your ass itches and you can't think of anything else.

Philosophical Punch in the Mouth Vol.5

Another doozy from Seneca:

Have you anything that might induce you to wait? You have exhausted the very pleasures that make you hesitate and hold you back; not one of them has any novelty for you, not one of them now fails to bore you out of sheer excess. You know what wine or honey-wine tastes like: it makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand flagons go through your bladder – all you are is a strainer. You are perfectly familiar with the taste of oysters or mullet. Your luxurious way of life has kept back not a single fresh experience for you to try in coming years. And yet these are the things from which you are reluctant to be torn away. What else is there which you would be sorry to be deprived of? Friends? Do you know how to be a friend? Your country? Do you really value her so highly that you would put off your dinner for her? The sunlight? If you could you would put out that light – for what have you ever done that deserved a place in it? Confess it – it is no attachment to the world of politics or business, or even the world of nature, that makes you put off dying – the delicatessens, in which there is nothing you have left untried, are what you are reluctant to leave. You are scared of death – but how magnificently heedless of it you are while you are dealing with a dish of choice mushrooms! You want to live – but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying – and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead? Caligula was once passing a column of captives on the Latin Road when one of them, with a hoary old beard reaching down his breast, begged to be put to death. 'So,' replied Caligula, 'you are alive, then, as you are?' That is the answer to give to people to whom death would actually come as a release. 'You are scared of dying? So you are alive, then, as you are?'

It can be disconcerting or liberating, depending on how you look at it, to be persuaded that your own death wouldn't be so bad.

Why I refuse to cry

Many people claim there is a therapeutic benefit to the act of crying. I happen to agree with them. There have been times in my life where I've indulged in the practice as a way of managing overactive emotion. However, for over a year I haven't shed a single tear. I've been close. I've wanted to. To the popularized layman perspective of Stoicism, the accusation might be that I'm repressing emotion, hiding from things, and presenting a masculine barrier between myself and what I feel.

The reason I've withheld all my tears (and plan to continue doing so) is because I see the act as physically legitimizing my rejection of the reality I'm faced with. I don't claim any special immunity to strong emotion or misfortune. I just don't want the universe seeing me wailing with dissatisfaction with what I've been given. If I dislike what I've been given, I can leave anytime I want. I see crying as being disrespectful to the totality of existence. The choice to withhold tears is a line I've drawn to check any unwarranted emotional responses. Responses that I've been given, at this point, decades to prepare for the oh-so-easily predicted misfortunes life can bring us.

Let's be honest. We know misfortunes can and will come. We know why. Sometimes it's pretty clear when. Given this, it's merely our job to do a little homework and we'll be ready when the test comes. I, for one, am not going to cry because I didn't want to do my homework.

The Fulmination of the American Crisis 2 of 2

There's a premise I'd like to share before starting my personal discussion. This idea is that there are two world views: 1) The world view of those who do not have to worry about basic necessities. 2) The world view of those that do have to worry about necessities. The world is not the same place for either of these views. The key difference being the number of choices/opportunities the persons possess. The Stoic recognizes how easily he can move from one view to the other and disciplines himself to neither be broken or falsely assured by either transition. To disclose, I do not have to worry about basic necessities in the short term. This combination of my prosperity and knowledge of its fleeting nature has left me with a feeling of responsibility towards those struggling beyond myself. The dilemma I've had my entire adult life has been the question, "What do I do now that I'm taken care of that pays respect to the realities of my and others' (American) life?" This question becomes increasingly difficult to answer in a place where you see everything as broken. This is not the broken that is fixable, but the broken that must be replaced.

Within the last year, I received a Master's degree in Childhood Education (grades 1-6). Becoming a public school teacher is my attempt to be part of something positive and to create personal meaning for myself in terms of work satisfaction. Despite my cynicism, I could see myself finding that satisfaction in the work once I became experienced and could create a proper classroom. However, there would be a certain blindness and blissful ignorance I'd have to impose upon myself to accomplish that. I'd have to pretend that those who are making the important decisions in education aren't totally disconnected from what human beings need to flourish. I'd need to ignore that schools are, in many lights, institutionally inhumane, abusive and demoralizing to the student. It's really hard for me to ascertain what is really the function of schooling. Do you learn anything? Sure, but what is left after you consider what you forget and what you never use/need/care about? Do you really need twenty years(pre-K through Master's) of theoretical learning before you attempt a profession? Ludicrous. Don't forget the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on each person in those 20 years. Education is an industry that you come out of knowing how to...take tests. Anyways, I could keep ranting, but the point is to highlight how, in America, even trying to do something that should be noble and satisfying is perverted and corrupted.

The dilemma being, as always, what do I do now? I could put aside my philosophical differences with schools and commit to being an entity inside of schools that does its best to bring something human to what can feel and become inhuman. This was my first instinct upon moving into teaching. I convinced myself that I could eventually climb to a position of power (principal/superintendent) and create policy that would improve the experience and enrichment of my students. The reality I see inside of schools is that the ability to make that kind of difference is shrinking everyday. Schools have had the bottom line business model imposed upon them in the form of test scores instead of profits. I've been trying to examine this model of thinking. Consider this analogy:

       -I work in a Nazi Work/Death Camp. I take part in all the day to day functions that I'm responsible for. Maybe I don't pull any triggers or turn any switches, but I'm part of the system. However, every day I bring some of the Jews some food or some medicine or some other helpful item. Am I really serving the Jews by giving them these scraps of sustenance in an otherwise awful existence? Or could I do something more for them by leaving and maybe helping those who haven't been brought to camps? The question I'm trying to answer being, "Can you really serve a positive purpose from inside a dysfunctional and failed system?" It's really a hard question to answer.

     This question is not only applicable to my career dilemma but to most parts of American life. How much does my participation make me complicit in this mess we've created? My taxes go towards all these failed ideas. At what point do you need to divorce yourself from the system as much as you can in order to be healthier and say something about what is going on with your own actions. Don't people need to start living their solutions instead of just suggesting them?

If you interested more in the education topic, I recommend this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded#at=689

Technology and the Stoic (Human)

 Being an aspiring Stoic, I continually examine myself and my world under the scrutiny of whether those entities exist "in accordance with nature". As someone who has grown up alongside the digital and technological revolution (I'm 32), I can't help but notice my linear growth compared to its exponential explosion. And as I continue my trod towards middle age, technology continues to blast itself into our daily lives and into the far corners of the universe. (I define technology as the gadgets, machines, and digital systems we use to accomplish tasks and entertain ourselves more efficiently in terms of space, time, and effort.) The only part of me that has kept any pace at all with technology has been the mental dissonance I acrue from living in an increasingly digitized era.

I realize the time may be too late to ask this question towards any large scale practical purpose seeing as technology certainly stands no chance of being rejected or merely halted by our global civilization. But, I'll ask anyways because there is still a poignancy to the issue in terms of our day to day existence. We still must decide on an individual level how we immerse ourselves into our world on a technological basis. My question being, "Does the technology of the industrial age and it's conceivable future applications stand in discord with nature?"

There are a number of ways to look at this question and neither Rufus or Chrysippus are going to have any answers for us anytime soon. Hopefully, my words may inspire a few of your own and we can address together what I see as the most dynamic force and period of change in human history.

-One of the fundamental premises of Stoic logic is that humans are social creatures. Now that we have jet planes that can get you anywhere in less than a day, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, cellphones, and text messaging I wonder if our social relations have improved at all. Certainly they are more convenient and expedient. My experience tells me that (as with many technologies) we've created many unforseen complications and removed essential components from the experience of communication and interaction. What we've gained in access and speed I perceive we've lost in humanity. We've been disembodied to a degree. We've become a world of avatars that has left many, myself included, feeling on the outside looking in on nowhere. Am I the only person who thinks it's funny and yet telling of something wrong that I get e-mails from someone sitting 40 feet from me in the same apartment?

-What indictment of technology is made from the fact that enough nuclear firepower stands available to wipe out humanity many times over? If that's antiquated 20^th century gibberish to you then what about genetically engineering human beings and computerized intelligence vastly superior to our own?

- From an agricultural standpoint, we've come to point where our meals depend on the fossil fuel technology we use to harvest and distribute our food. Our populations grow while relying on this, perhaps finite, resource. The future of food and maybe the environment itself seem rather precarious since we are now surrounded by problems created by technology that can only be solved by better technology. Is this a paradigm that can exist indefinitely or is technology bound to collapse upon itself?

- If there was consensus on technology being detrimental to the quality of our existence, then where would we draw the line? Electricity perhaps? Technology of the kind we experience today seems to be very much an all or nothing proposition seeing as it is made of highly interdependent systems.

Despite the tone of this essay, there is still a part of me that entertains the idea that this is an unavoidable, necessary, and perhaps benign part of the human experiment. As we have been given this intellect and reasoning capacities, we were bound to invent such wonders. But if put to task, the stronger impression I get is of a people, a species who may end up learning a very harsh lesson about the limits of their capacities and that of the planet they live on.

Lastly, I'd like to share an anecdote from my own adventures in undigitization. Over a year ago I stopped carrying a mobile phone. Since then, I can count on one hand the number of times I could have really used it. The big surprise has not been how well I've gotten by without it, but the amount of social pressure I've received from family and friends to be on the grid. As with being mostly alone in my philosophical pursuits, I'll take my solitude in this matter as another vote of affirmation.

The Fulmination of the American Crisis 1 of 2

     Trends work in such a way that early on in their formation they have an uncertainty about their own sustainability which, when removed, clears the path to no longer being a trend but something legitimate. For instance, cell phones were at one time a trend and are now ubiquitous.

    The beauty of trends is that they can be reversed and mostly just fade away. America, my home, has passed the point where the problems ailing its vital systems (democracy, economy, foreign policy, education, health care) can no longer be referred to as trends. For many years, I've quietly observed and analyzed the American socio-political landscape. The perplexing and intellectually comical conclusion I've come to is that the rate at which the number and magnitude of our problems ascend is inversely proportional to the intelligence of our responses to them. In other words, the worse things get, the dumber we respond to them. 

• Wall St. blows up the global economy? Bail them out, punish no one, and do no regulatory reform of consequence.

• Radical Islamists not associated with any flag fly planes into buildings? Start two wars of occupation killing over a million people (us and them) and costing trillions of dollars.

• Democracy overrun with corporate money and influence? Make a supreme court decision allowing them unlimited monetary access.

Given the premise that the trend of bad decisions is not a trend but a worsening status quo, then it is only a matter of time before we implode, revolt, fragment, or fade into irrelevancy. Maybe I'm going overboard but part of me feels like that can't happen soon enough. This country has become a terrible joke to me and I don't see the will or the intelligence in the people to do anything about that. Undoubtedly, I am cynical. However, that's better than being foolish. Which is what you'd have to be in order to suspend reality long enough to see the hope you thought was coming in '08. 

(Part two will be a reflection of how this problem interplays with my aspirations, plans, and reality.)