EATING THE MENU

Many US Americans' lifestyles illustrate what i call 'Eating

the Menu'. Imagine going into a restaurant, sitting down

at a table, and reading a menu of all sorts of mouthwatering

pictures of food. But when you've made your pick, instead

of ordering the food you start EATING THE MENU ITSELF,

especially the pictures of the dishes you are most hungry

for. Mmmm, colorful pictures depicting delectable enticing

meals---and when you're done your stomach feels full, but

somehow you don't feel well-fed.



Why is that? You've done what you're supposed to---gone

to the appropriate place to engage in a normal and funda-

mental activity.....and somehow it doesn't work. But only

you are aware of that. Everyone else is eating the menu

happily; they seem to be enjoying themselves. But deep

within, you are aware of a vague feeling of dissatisfaction.



That feeling of dissatisfaction must indicate that something

is wrong with you, however, because the people around

you don't seem to be having a problem. Everything appears

normal with them and they are going about the business of

going about their business. Only you seem to be disturbed.

So what do you do? If you're like many people you quash

that vague, half-conscious feeling and proceed to go about

your own business. But the feeling doesn't go away, it just

lies in the back of your mind and makes you feel ever

so slightly......hungry.



Many people will insist that nothing is wrong with their

eating habits. Unpleasant realities can be kept at bay in-

definitely by means of the thousands of distractions that

our consumer society provides us, but for some life's

distractions are like eating fast food: the more you eat the

cheesier it gets and the cheesier you feel. But if all you

ever eat is fast food, you probably don't know the differ-

ence.



At the risk of sounding trite, let me compare life to a

banquet. [Qualifier : Only if you have enough to eat and

are not being shot at.] As small as this planet has turned

out to be, it is not just plain fare. To the contrary there

are more wonderful things about it than we could pos-

sibly know or experience in one lifetime. But many of

us are not privy to all the many facets of life simple be-

cause we are not aware of them.



Before we can know, we have to be able to see. Looking

is not seeing; seeing in the sense i'm speaking of in-

volves the ability to focus and concentrate on an object

or idea without judgment or undue mental static. Thus

in order to really see things, one must be able to exper-

ience them directly, beyond the filter of social program-

ming. When we see, we are no longer eating the menu,

we are enjoying our food. (Or not. When we actually

experience what we eat, we might decide that we don't

like it after all, in spite of the fact that everyone else

seems to be enjoying it.)

SPECIES INSANITY: ITS CAUSE AND CURE

There are any number of reasons why people behave,
individually or collectively, in the destructive ways they
do, including over-population, ethnic competition, eco-
logical degradation, exploitation, lust for power, neuro-
logical disease, world views at odds with reality, and low
self-esteem. However, there are two fundamental issues
i would especially like to point out at this time.

First and most basically, there are multiple aspects of the
human psyche that easily lead to such behavior. To make
use of one explanatory system or point of view (POV)---
Sigmund Freud's---unconscious elements of our minds,
collectively called by Freud the Id, are full of self-serving
and socially uninhibited tendencies that are all too willing
to make themselves manifest. These primal psychological
energies work on 'us', i.e. our conscious sense of who we
are, to behave in ways that are often destructive to our-
selves and others.

Secondly, for US* Americans especially, a combination of
anxiety, a sense of meaninglessness, and a programmed
distractive consumerism work together to make us uncon-
scious of much of what goes on around us, even if an in-
creased consciousness would benefit us all.

As for the cure, that will take much more blood, toil, tears,
sweat, and ink.

*Every citizen in the Western hemisphere is American. Citizens of the
United States of America are US Americans.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: THE END OF EVERYTHING

I have no hesitation in saying that today we are at the crossroads
of human history simply because previous societies have risen
& fallen but there was always somewhere else to go. Today
we don't have that luxury. The Earth is an artifact of our species
& there are no luxury suites on the Moon.

Today the world is far over-crowded and natural resources have
been dangerously degraded. Ethnic/religious/ideological groups
are warring w each other with increasingly powerful weapons, and
people without sufficient psychological resources are engaging in
horrifiyingly destructive behaviors. And we are all terrified.

To put our troubles into even greater perspective, we are also wit-
nessing one of the major turning points of all Earth history.
So far in the history of the biological Earth, there have been five
major species extinctions. The dinosaurs died out in the last one,
the Cretaceous. We are in the middle of the sixth one today.

Already the fossil record of our time---should anyone be around to
read it--will reveal this. There has been much controversy over
the causes & origins of previous extinctions, but there is no doubt
as to the agent of destruction in our present crisis.

Plainly it is a plague of biological origin, all the more dangerous
for being a complexly-organized species that multiplies with
great rapidity and wantonly destroys other species as a by-product
of its own insatiable appetites. In spite of many attempts to arrest
this epidemic, including episodes in which tens of millions of
individual organisms have been destroyed in a brief amount of
time, the species itself continues to proliferate at an alarming rate
of speed.

Of course the species i am speaking of is Homo sapiens, also known
as US.


MAN THE RIDICULOUS

Instead of Homo sapiens, 'Man the Wise', perhaps we shd be
known as Homo ludicrens, 'Man the Ridiculous' since our col-
lective actions have resulted in worldwide biological degreda-

tion & destruction. We are quickly reaching a point wherein

we will no longer be able to sustain life on Earth as we know

it, yet we are unable to stem the human-made tsunami that is

now looming over us. Presumably we are rational creatures

who can plan & carry out complex transactions that will result

in enrichment & enhancement for all, yet in reality we are un-

able to do so. In fact, given the commonplace that "only a sick

animal fouls its own den", we must consider ourselves to be

sick as a species---sick, as in mentally ill.

MAN THE INSANE

Schizophrenia, the thought disorder that prevents the sufferer

from comprehending the difference between reality & his/her

distorted view of it, is a fundamental form of human illness. A

person suffering from such a disease is liable to engage in be-

havior destructive not only to him/herself, but to others as well,

and at the same time will be helpless to undo the resulting

tragic consequences. Enlarge this concept from the individual

to the species and you can see why such a diagnosis might be

collectively appropriate. This Western mental-illness model

can provide a helpful perspective for understanding such an

irrationally destructive species as our own. In other words i'm

saying

WE'RE CRAZY.

Please understand i am not saying that everyone is literally schiz-

ophrenic, just that many if not most people are so tied into a dis-

torted mind set that they have no idea what a real reality might

be or how destructive their delusions are.

I Said To The Sun, Good Mornin, Sun

Today is March the 12th, two days past the return to blessed Daylight

Savings Time. Now we have an extra hour of sunlite in the evening,

the days are getting longer, the birds are becoming active once again

as are the red squirrels & gray squirrels (no chipmunks yet). I heard

the whistle of our broadwing hawk the other day & the showy

cardinal is singing its thrilling love song.

It's Spring, Ladies and Gentlemen, the best time of the year by far for

me. I saw my 1st flowers at Bard College the other day: snowdrops,

i believe. Seasonal Affective Disorder begone; here comes the sun. I'd

love to say that i love all seasons equally but the fact is Winter makes

me tired and confused. I feel old in Winter; Spring is refreshing and

revitalizing.

There are two kinds of time: linear and circular. Linear time is what

we experience as history; it only flows one way and sometimes faster

than we want it to, much faster. This is time for the 'civilized'.

Circular time is what our ancestors experienced: Spring to Summer

to Fall to Winter to Spring again over and over, time out of mind.

This kind of time is timeless. People are born, live, have children,

grow old and die of course, but it's the same land that housed their

ancestors, the same seasonal round that comes and goes and comes

and goes.

The Chinese have a saying: Happy the people who have

no history. The Original People had no history; history only came

with the Europeans, who cd not get rid of their own history, so

they traveled to the New World to lose themselves and wound up

lost. But it's possible, still, to regain that sense of time of the ances-

tors, by going outside every day and spending some time checking

out the weather and the season. Weather is our Mother's emotions;

by being affected by the weather we sow a relationship with the

Earth, Gaea. There is nothing deeper than this.