hopelesshappiness.com

What has become of the American Dream?

552,800. 3.6 million. 42.5 million. 145.5 million. 120 million. 27 million.

More than 335 million Americans, and counting. The dream for 552,800 Americans: to have a home. The dream for 3.6 million Americans per year: a miracle to escape the eviction notice tacked on their door. The dream for 42.5 million Americans: to move above the poverty line. The dream for 145.5 million Americans: savings; security beyond paycheck-to-paycheck. The dream for 120 million Americans: wealth. The dream for 27 million Americans: to keep 308 million Americans in their respective places. 120 million want to become part of the 27 million. 145.5 million want to become part of the 120 million. 42.5 million want to become part of the 145.5 million. And half-a-million would be thrilled to have a door on which an eviction notice could be hung. But alas, 27 million have all the power and 27 million want to keep 308 million in their respective places.

Realistically, we could have 335 million (and counting) all secure and comfortably nestled into the current group of 120 million.

Compassionately, with barely a ripple, we could move 42.5 million in with the 145.5 million, thus wiping out the half-a-million and the 3.6 million.

But alas, 27 million have all the power and 27 million want to keep 308 million in their respective places.

According to some, the American Dream was once about equality, justice and democracy. Then, sometime after World War II, it evolved to mean individual material wealth and success. Now, it continues to evolve reflecting today's growing wealth gap, limited minimal upward mobility, and continued dearth of equality, justice and democracy. Today's dreams (by necessity) are small; today's Americans (by edict) are complacent.

Complacent: smugly self-satisfied, agreeable, and eager to please.

According to author Ronald Wright, “John Steinbeck once said that Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

I lost all the “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” at the mention of Socialism.

At its core, Socialism reflects a desire “to remedy or alleviate certain unfavorable conditions of life in a community, especially among poor people.” (Definition found beneath “Social” in dictionary.com.) Compassion. How can that be wrong?

Do we dream a bigger, more achievable dream? To alleviate suffering? Or do we continue as complacent, entitled temporarily embarrassed millionaires, dreaming of inconsequential individual material wealth from our respective places as desired and dictated by the all-powerful minority 27 million?

Regarding movement towards equality, justice and democracy, on page 95 of Carlo Rovelli's book “There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness” he says, “The recent historic failure of real socialism has arrested this impetus, and today, barely veiled by pro-democracy rhetoric, we are witnessing in every corner of the globe an almost ferocious radicalization of inequality: the distribution of wealth is becoming ever more unbalanced in every country, and the world has witnessed the emergence of a super-rich elite in which power is concentrated. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century ideal of equality, still vividly alive just a few decades ago, is today faded and derided.”

There are solutions beyond today's (failing) consumer capitalism. Yet we keep chasing the elusive monster.

In the 2001 short film, American Dream, Bigfoot researcher Wayne Burton says, “I just want to prove to the world and to the people of the United States, …I just want to prove that we're telling the truth about this creature, we're not making this up, it's real…” In the longer 2006 film “Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie” Wayne's partner Dallas Gilbert adds, “hi-o, hey-o, ti-a, hee-a may-a, mo-mo. Noq-ti-lace, beeee-tay; mo-mo, mo-mo, mo-mo.” This to attract Bigfoot. And back to the 2001 short, Dallas also says, “I'd like to retire with about half-a-mil for my wife and myself to retire with; be able to provide the little things I was not able to provide when my kids were little; and say hey honey let's go to take a vacation; I never had a vacation in my life; that's all I've done is work all my life… …I been married 23 years… …it's about time to have that vacation.”

Chasing the American Dream.

Chasing Bigfoot.

I would posit that in most cases it is not that one wants to feel important; it is that one wants to feel more important. More important or even most important relative to their circumstance and specifically regarding other individuals within said circumstance. This is a very narrow parameter compared to the more than 100 billion humans who have ever lived, the nearly 8 billion living in this moment, and the (hopefully) billions yet to come. But when one individual has the advantage of power in a given circumstance, and that one human wants to feel more important, it is often best to not only allow it but also to acknowledge it with understanding; which may look and feel like subservience but in actuality (I believe) is compassion. The bigger challenge is me having compassion when I also have the advantage of power. With the advantage of power, compassion, no matter how sincere, may look and feel like pity, condescension, and/or ego. Based on this premise then, if compassion is the desire to ease another's suffering, an individual wanting to feel more important must in actuality be suffering. Yes. Yes! But suffering from what? Fear? Rage? Yes! And the one in the position of having less power of course is suffering from having less power; suffering in any way the powerful deem appropriate. So, yes. We all, each one of us, regardless of circumstance, are deserving and worthy of compassion. Yet not all of us practice compassion; the powerful because they don't have to, and the powerless because they perceive it, so it becomes, resignation and/or subservience that is resented. Though I believe that if we could see past the real and/or perceived layers of resentment and ego, there is actual compassion, acknowledged or not. I would like to think it is in our nature. But unfortunately, today, our nature, our affinity for compassion, is in the back seat tongue-gagged and driven by powerful slander. From James 3:5-10: “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed, and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” And in Matthew 12:36–37, Jesus says, “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” I have taken to quoting the bible some of late because as Marilynne Robinson points out (in her 2018 book “What Are We Doing Here? Essays”) “…the groups who have been so successful at claiming Christianity as their own exclusive province have also been successful in associating it with intolerance, guns, and hostility to science, among other things.” And she also says, “Always, but certainly in situations when great things are at stake, it behooves Christians to think and act like Christians. This would mean practicing self-restraint, curbing our speech, remembering that our adversaries are owed the respect due to the divine image, which no one can be redeemed enough to be excused from honoring. Dystopian media arose with this Christianity of the Right. It would lose a great part of its market share if Christian standards were applied to its product, and then the atmosphere of this dear country would change in a week.” Today, the Christianity of the Right, the untamed tongue, the uttered words from which one may be condemned, appear to be one in the same. Today, our compassion is hidden beneath ego. Today it is more important to feel more important.

So am I going to write this week? It's Friday. Due tomorrow. At first I was thinking about homelessness. Serious subject. Important subject. Sad subject. Lots of fodder. Not really enough time now due to other priorities. Maybe next week. I moved on to the fact that I want to write a cookbook. Maybe start on that? Introduction? Reasoning? Make it part of this completely ignored unread site? Nyahhh. Then I considered data processing; the cycle. Garbage in, garbage out. The integrity of the data. Analysis. Where does analysis fit? Maybe. Fodder: readily available and of little value. An apt description for all the good that my attempts at presenting serious, important, sad realities does. Hopeless Happiness. Fodder. Perhaps instead of “A Philosophy of Happiness and Hope” I should change the tagline to Garbage In Garbage Out. I input serious, important, sad realities, objective expertise, consensus fact, perceived by a vocal majority as fodder, garbage, and because (unfortunately) perception is reality, the resulting output is garbage. Collection. Preparation. Input. Processing. Output. Analyzing. Repurposing. Seven steps in which we should dig deep for information, meaning and purpose. In most instances it feels instead like we barely scrape at the surface for the first five steps, completely ignore analysis to choose convention and/or groupthink, and only repurpose according to bureaucracy, dogma and tradition. A new recipe requires collection of new information; data. Preparation is the process of sorting and filtering the ingredient list and directions to add, remove and/or alter amounts, times, temps, methods according to personal preferences based on experience and taste. In addition, preparation necessitates a mindful ordering of the unfolding to come. Input takes the ordered plan and the raw ingredients, transforming the first two steps into adaptable form (washing, rinsing, peeling, chopping, pouring, measuring, cracking, spooning, mincing, slicing, dicing, wrapping, draining, beating, softening, sifting, stirring, cutting, coating, whipping, chilling, separating, drizzling, brushing, brining, proofing, rubbing, melting, marinating, lining, squeezing, whisking, dredging, grinding, greasing, pounding, shredding, clarifying, grating, crushing, zesting, coring, drying, kneading, seasoning, rolling, blending, shaping) to feed into the processing tools for conversion into output. Processing is the simmering, heating, searing, cooking, roasting, baking, sautéing, braising, toasting, broiling, frying, boiling, fermenting, grilling, smoking, cooling, thickening, mixing, melding, mashing, dressing, thinning, glazing, smashing, fusing, sprinkling, pinching, dashing, topping, finishing, all within the processing tools working toward a desirable output. Output: service. Analysis: taste. Repurposing: improvement. My best effort is always yet to come. QIQO: Quintessence In Quality Out.

…continued

Beauty is a nuanced consideration of substantiality and (if present) essentiality. Intuition is a desire for Truth. Faith is a structuring of Intuition. Hope is an acknowledgement that Faith is precarious. Intuition, Faith, Hope are touched by Beauty and specific to the individual. Within this synthesis, where individual essentiality is present alongside substantiality, Love is the result. Love is external, active; selfless compassion that works toward Justice.

I am at a loss how to say this any better. The survival of our species and the health of our planet depends upon a selfless understanding and application of this synthesis resulting in Love.

I get it. We don't love because we don't work because we don't care because we don't have to. Accountability: the state of being answerable. Yet today being answerable only requires justification and justification is self-serving and justification does not require one to care, whereas justice is selfless and justice requires compassion, effort, love. In actuality one is only answerable for oneself to oneself yet answerable for all of Humanity to Humanity or (if one prefers) to God. Because 'we’ don't have to care or work or love does not mean I don't have to. In the end because I am only answerable for me to me, I can justify and those around me will likely agree. But to think about my responsibility to Humanity, to think that in the end I must answer to all of Humanity, past, present and future, as one, in this moment strongly encourages an essentiality to develop alongside any substantiality residing within my personal synthesis of Beauty tugging at Intuition shaping Faith driving Hope guiding Love.

Yet here we are. Still going along with Humanity and all its philosophies and economies and social structures and pretending substantial is essential, to justify. To justify our lack of Justice, our lack of compassion, our lack of Love.

Whether there is a heaven, an afterlife, a reward, or not, I am answerable.

When I consider the inanity of substantiality without essentiality, I ask the question am I better to care, to work, to love from within our system? Or could I make a bigger difference from outside? I am not at all happy about contributing to its perpetuation, but because the system is so super-prevalent, and because it appears power is necessary to have any influence, and because it appears most power comes from wealth, and because my weekly paycheck is necessary simply for my food and shelter, I have so far opted to continue from within so I am less distracted by concerns over basic needs; so I might set some small example, think more clearly, and express these thoughts more rationally. From outside the system I would have an even smaller audience and my anger would predominate, diluting, even negating any inkling of Truth I might possess. This is an example of how our lack of Love further suppresses Love. It makes sense when I recognize that the wealthy and the powerful became so thanks in large part to this same lack of Love. It is Humanity's greatest sin.

We might yet find salvation in…

• Answerability.
• Essentiality.
• Justice.
• Love.

We need to hurry.

Beauty tugs at one's intuitions. One's acknowledged intuitions shape one's faith. Faith drives hope. Hope guides love. Love demands selfless compassion that works toward Justice.

But, because Beauty is “the elegance of meaningful complexity” (Robinson, p. 113), and because my intuitions desire a shortcut to Truth, and because my faith and hope reason from emotion and ego, and because Love has become both exclusive and reclusive, I create a superficial, meaningless complexity and call it essence; though in actuality it is merely substance.

This lack of Love as described contributes to the wealth gap, perpetuates poverty, incites violence, encourages disinvestment, destroys communities and according to some, (including Jesus), is Humanity's greatest sin. Yet we have created philosophies and built entire economies and social structures from this foundation of divisive self-interest.

Shame on us. Shame on me.

If we spread every individual on Earth equidistant apart, each one of us would be parked in the center of a 16 acre square and the next closest person would be 830 feet (nearly three football fields) away. Normal face-to-face conversation, personal human contact, would be impossible. But if every one of us stood side by side and held hands we could encircle this planet 334 times; 7,959,431,958 individuals, as one, hugging the planet. In both scenarios, we are neighbours. In one we are self-centered, divided. In the other we are faithful, active. In which circumstance are we more likely to find Beauty? Which neighbour are we more likely to Love?

Notes and Quotes:

All quotes below (except for the last one) came from “What Are We Doing Here? Essays” written by Marilynne Robinson, published in 2018. All thoughts above came from consideration of this material. Because this week's thought feels incomplete and because no one reads me, I am including my process / inspiration. I may extend this thought into next week, at which time I may delete the notes below from this week's thought.

“our intuitions having to do with the way things are and become are real enough to participate in the elegance of meaningful complexity, which may be one definition of beauty, a necessary if not a sufficient one.” (113)

Bureaucracy is not meaningful and only superficially complex – meaning there is no or very little depth of reason.

“We distract ourselves from powerful, ancient intuitions of the grandeur and richness of being, and of human being, with a reductionist theoretical contraption endlessly refitted in minor ways to survive the collapse of old scientific notions that have sustained it and to present itself once more as the coming thing, with the whole history and prestige of science behind it. Those intuitions, which figure in the highest thought and art civilization has produced, are faith.” (221)

“Hope implies a felt lack, an absence, a yearning.” (225)

“Paul says love will not pass away. John says God is love. At best, hope is an intuition that this could be true, with the kind of essential truth affirmed in eternity, in the Being of God, who is in infinite ways more anomalous even than we are, more improbable even than we are, judged in the terms of a reductionism that is infinitely less useful in his case than in ours. Say that in our difference from everything else we and God are like each other—creative, knowing, efficacious, deeply capable of loyalty. Say that in his healing and feeding and teaching, Jesus let us see that the good that matters to mortal us matters also to eternal God. Then we have every reason to hope.” (236)

“John makes it clear when the claim to love is spurious. He says, “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”” (245)

“The Samaritan of the parable shows very practical consideration for the needs of the stranger he finds by the road. That is, he very impractically sets no limit to his own generosity. After providing for the stranger’s immediate care, he says he will return to pay any costs that exceed the amount he has left with the innkeeper. Would he know the innkeeper could be trusted? Certainly the parable suggests that prudence, that is to say, considerations of self-interest, should not be brought to bear when demands are made on one’s kindness and generosity. How we have struggled with this! Far more than with the sins we are so much readier to renounce, denounce, dramatize, scorn, conceal, and confess. And this sin, the withholding of kindness and generosity—love is the crucial word in this context—structures entire social systems and philosophies. In his letter, James says, “If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?” The pious inflection he mimics would have been familiar at any point in history. The Law of Moses makes specific, ongoing provision for the alleviation of poverty, rarely noted. The Hebrew prophets are passionate on the subject, also treating it as the standard by which faith can be tested, and the offense by which the favor of God can be lost. Ezekiel 16:49 says, “Behold, this is the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” This is a good illustration of the fact that there are certain sins as well as certain texts we choose not to dwell on.” (246-247)

“Thomas Aquinas quotes Ambrose: “It is the hungry man’s bread that you detain; the naked man’s cloak that you store away; the poor man’s ransom and freedom that is in the money which you bury in the ground.” And, “He who spends too much is a robber.” And, “It is no less a crime to refuse to help the needy when you are able and prosperous than it is to take away someone else’s property.” Economic polarization was perhaps more visible in his world than in ours, for those of us who live in wealthier countries away from the war zones, though it is certainly here, too. There is now a great deal of prestige associated with being far wealthier than anyone ought to be.” (247)

Matthew 22:37-40

“37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Continued...