Author: Scott

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

~ Oscar Wilde

Just because you’re uninformed or uninterested in something doesn’t mean you should ridicule it.  That just shows your ignorance and insecurity.

Stay curious and humble and if you disagree or aren’t interested in something after learning about it, just ignore it.

If you’re moved to change something you disagree with, use a positive method, with humility and respect – as much for yourself as for others.

As we begin to recognize that our desire and our incessant grasping of an impermanent world leads to chronic frustration and suffering, we sometimes set out to reduce or remove that frustration and suffering by snuffing out desire.

Put another way, if we’re experiencing hard times, sometimes we have the good sense to stop the bad habits that lead to those hard times and make better choices.  But, while doing that, hopefully we realize to be successful we can’t just stop bad habits – we have to stop wanting to practice those bad habits.  Merely suppressing desire often backfires into even bigger relapses and more complex problems.

As we wage war on our desires, we might be wildly successful and become very pure in our actions and even our thoughts.  But, eventually we’ll realize that desiring not to desire is still a form of desiring.  We’ll find ourselves still grasping at an elusive objective.  For a practical example of this, just talk to any long-time church goer about their problems with pride.

This particular mental roadblock might be frustrating and confusing at first, but if we reach this point we’ve actually made a very important breakthrough.  We’ve discovered we cannot not desire as we desire not to desire.  That might sound silly, but that silliness perfectly underscores the ultimate double-bind, the awareness of which can be a key to our happiness.

If we stay alert and honest we’ll realize the thing that’s so impossible about this “desire-quandary” is that there’s nobody there to get out of the bind!  There is no separate me, nor is there a separate you.  We act, talk, and think like there is.  The thought of “me having to work on myself” illustrates an embedded notion of a separate self.  But, all that thought really amounts to is a reference to a non-existent concept called ego.

Ego is not real and is not an object, a person, or a thing.  Ego is not even a complete concept.  It’s just a component of a concept.  When we say someone is ego-less, what we’re really saying is they’re more authentic, more “together”, they don’t seem to have a separate mind, body, and spirit.  They’re genuine.  Likewise when we encounter someone with a “big ego” they’re not together.  They have a sense of self that’s separate from who they really are.  They’re not real.  Big ego people are annoying, whereas we’re all attracted to ego-less people.  They’re fun to be around.

In reality, ego is no more than a set of social rules we all agree to use to identify who we imagine ourselves to be.  Ego is nothing more than a habit.  A habit which must be broken before we can ever get on with the important work of understanding who we really are.

~ Scott Kinnaird

Hence a certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization.  Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past.  For as knowledge grows or alters continually, it clashes with mythology and theology, which change with geological leisureliness.

Priestly control of arts and letters is then felt as a galling shackle or hateful barrier, and intellectual history takes on the character of a “conflict between science and religion.”  Institutions which were at first in the hands of the clergy, like law and punishment, education and morals, marriage and divorce, tend to escape from ecclesiastical control, and become secular, perhaps profane.

The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and-after some hesitation- the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become anticlerical.  The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea.

Conduct, deprived of its religious supports, deteriorates into epicurean chaos; and life itself, shorn of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth.

In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death.  Meanwhile among the oppressed another myth arises, gives new form to human hope, new courage to human effort, and after centuries of chaos builds another civilization.

– Will Durant, The Story of Civilization

Conflict is caused by strong attachment to certain views. All phenomena is transient and rises and falls based on what’s happening in the present moment. When we view any conflict, including political conflict, through this particular lens of reality, the illusion of white hats vs. black hats disappears. It instantly becomes apparent that truth, devoid of any filter, doesn’t exist.

“Robert Redford has a dim view of American politics, says David Hochman in Playboy. As a younger actor, he made several films about the corruption and compromises at the heart of political ambition that, he hoped, would make Americans demand more of their leaders. “I once had great hopes that people would see movies like The Candidate and All the President’s Men and say, ‘Hey, if we’re not careful, we might get snookered.’ I discovered we Americans enjoy the distraction of entertainment, but aren’t really interested in the deeper message. We don’t like to look inward; we don’t like darkness.”

“His cynicism was reinforced when he received a Kennedy Center honor in 2005 and spent an evening hobnobbing with Washington’s elite. “Here were sworn enemies, the leaders who beat the shit out of each other all day in public, but the minute those doors closed for the state dinner, the daggers went away and it was one big happy family. I saw former Republican Senator Bill Frist weaving through the tables, and he came over to Ted Kennedy and started massaging his shoulders and laughing like they were the oldest buddies in the world. Everybody was crossing the aisles and chuckling, and I said, “Oh, I get it! It really is just a game.”

From “the Week” magazine, Oct 19, 2007

Behind the curtain they’re all buddies. They yuck it up and cut deals with each other, but then continue to bash each other for the cameras, just like NASCAR and WWF, so we’ll all stay distracted and entertained while they devalue our dollars and shred our liberties.

As long as THEY can keep all of US arguing, then we won’t notice they’re all in on it together, and the joke’s on us.

Politicians and their TV and radio stooges want to define us all as separate from each other; men vs women, gay vs straight, black vs white, rich vs poor. That’s all ridiculous. It should be US vs THEM because they’re supposed to work for us, but we’ve let them turn it around to where we work for them.

WE are the citizens and THEY are our elected officials. We need to act as one body and hold them all accountable to our needs, not theirs.

The past is gone. The future never arrives. In truth, there is no life outside of this moment.
~ Leonard Jacobson

Now and then
You must long for the
Freedom of the deep woods
I, too, cherish
Such thoughts.

– Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)