The Sun Also Rises : A Response to a Friend's Dilemma

Hmmm...in my mind, the core problem would have to be relativism, or better yet, in a sense, Unitarianism, it is all the same, as long as you believe in something. There must be a right, even as we respect the other person's opinion. If not, we have this dire situation of yours, where there is no "good" but we are still supposed to progress as a culture. As Lewis said “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful.” It is an impossible dilemma.

Ask yourself what the final result of following through on any line of philosophy/thought is. What is the final solution to the problem? I know that phrase is Hitlerian, but in some sense, it is only Hitlerian because in Hitler we see what happens when we follow his Aryan Nietzschian and Freudian ideas out to fullest extent. For any line of thought, there must be a final solution. With relativism or Unitarianism, you get a world where in the end, the only thing that is important is the present or the future, but with no value or reason of why they are better, the best we can come up with is survival of the fittest, pleasure, history's march forward, or inner light.

I think that what you're asking is whether there is anything solid. Ironically, I find the idea of orthodoxy and the traditional is rather revolutionary. Tradition bids us ask how Eden was or Heaven will be, and then asks us to do our best to make it here on earth. It gives us something to fight for in the present and in the future, based upon a "historic" picture of how the perfect world should be.

You should read G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. I'm really enjoying it.

As for the corruption, I feel it's always existed, but perhaps was less accepted by God-fearing men. As for men getting married and surviving, living life, I think that has always happened. What I find is different perhaps is our replacement of hard work and the desire to live a good or comfortable life with it's near-neighbor- wealth and consumption. Again, I have to say greed has always existed, but maybe it is now not only accepted, but nurtured by our society and media.

On the point of self-actualizing, I think self-actualizing is crap. I think that finding oneself or finding one's inner light is the most egotistical godless opiate that the masses are buying. To shut off the world and seek personal happiness is not only wrong; it is ignorant and dangerous.

Asking what our generation needs...I would say our generation needs to rid itself of the vain belief that whatever is current is better and that our generation is special and obviously right. Ecclesiastes and Hemingway tell us there is "nothing new under the sun."

Que linda me la traiga Cuba,
La reina de la Mar Caribe.
Cielo sol no tiene sangre allí,
y que triste que no puedo vaya,
Oh va, oh va, va.

What beauty Cuba brings me,
The queen of the Caribbean Sea,
Sunny sky has no blood over there,
And how sad that I cannot go,
Oh go, oh go, go.

Today, I was listening to Crosby, Stills, and Nash in my office building. The colors of their words kept me sane in my whitewashed tower. For me, words and music have always been a way to escape.

I am quiet when I am really pleased. My hallmark of true enjoyment has always been silence, closing my eyes, and slightly grinning. It seems sacrilegious and vain to speak in the presence of beauty.

True words or music must must evoke the visual and the emotional.

Thoughts On The World Outside

It seems that everywhere I look, there is pain. Cancer, hunger, war, unemployment, death, heartbreak, and sickness seem to be strong in this time period. Usually, it is afar, but currently, friends and family seem to have been stricken. The worst part of it is that in so many situations, we feel powerless to do anything.

The worst part is that we still have so much, despite all the things we have lost. That we have so many blessings, while simultaneously having so many curses. This human duality that allows us to exult and cry. To everything there is a season?

At The Airport

And for a moment between the taxi and flight, I have a minute. Jack Johnson plays in the background at the airport cafe, while the voices at the tables next to me vacillate in nasal Brazilian Portuguese. Yet somehow, this netherworld is a strange sort of home to me. I guess I have always been here. Somewhere stuck in-between, touching a number of cultures and people. Thick nostalgia runs over me, but I am not sure what for. Maybe it's just the note of longing somewhere in Johnson's resigned voice.

In Brazil, they don't say I miss you. They say saudade. Though it doesn't translate exactly, Saudade is the feeling of loss that falls over you when something you desire is gone.

For me, it's leaving the home, never to really return. It's being strong when I don't want to. It's leaving someone you wish you could always touch...because you must. Love? Saudade.

First Thoughts from Brasil: Again

So I feel like being in another country requires a patience that is difficult to come by. I think that my biggest hassle wherever I go is the lack of functionality. Maybe that is my fault. Maybe my comfortable egotistical modern American lifestyle has spoiled me. I want what I want when I want it, and that just doesn’t happen once I leave the comfort of the US. I guess I like to think that our nature is less bureaucratic. It seems to me that it is. I guess that’s why people pay the bribes elsewhere. It is easier to pay the bribes, than wade the mazelike government structure that is paternalistically “helping” the people.

I wonder if Obama’s administration will lead us that way. People are calling it a new day, and I guess for me, it is very positive too. The conversations about the Great American Devil have stalled, if but for a moment. I just have a hard time thinking that some well-intentioned actions have disastrous consequences.

I'm trying to get out of a haze. So many influences have crept up in my life over the past few years that I find myself tugged into pieces, disconnected from the whole. Education has humbled me. Left me dumb. Work has stripped away earlier revolutionary ideas. Pain has made me cautious of really being open.

I'm what Gladwell calls a connector. I'vea long list of people I know, places I've been, experiences I've had. But if I think about knowing, I have to ask myself is it really possibly to know everything deeply? The resounding answer is no. The circle must be small if it is going to be strong. My A.D.D. lifestyle of thirty second soundbites and commercials leaves me with a lot of numb data and no real knowledge.

But I still love all of it. The chaos. The vivid colors that shoot past me. New flavors that wind their way through my senses. Odysseus' words in Ulyssees speak power to me.

"I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."

June: "Winter" in Rio

Well, I am writing my last blog from Rio. As I sit here, the buses and cars rattling past my apartment, the water in the distance turning from bright blue to black as the day turns to night, I wonder how it will feel to be in a different reality stateside.

I have learned much about myself here, and not just culturally. I am a different traveller than I was in my university years. Some might even call me boring, but I say this is growing up. I am less surprised by and more accepting of the oddities and difficulties I see around me here. Sometimes this is flexibility and resourcefulness, sometimes it is apathy or jadedness.

I have met people. Good people. Bad people. From South Georgia to DC to Rio de Janeiro, I still find the thing that the most important resource any place has is its people. This month, I was invited to speak at the District Rotary Conference for the whole state of Rio de Janeiro. We went to a small resort town called Sao Lorenzo in the state of Minas Gerais. For me, it was a challenge to get up in front of hundreds of people and speak in a foreign tongue about my experiences. I began by thanking them for the opportunity to learn a language, but then, instead of talking about what I learned, I spent the rest of my time speaking about how I as a person had been evolved as a person due to the Brazilians and my time getting to know them. Wherever I go, I value the friendships I have made, the people I have known(some never to see again), and the time I have shared that changed me as a person. In the words of Tennyson,

"I am a part of all that I have met."

Touched. Changed. The eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth continues here and there and everywhere, leaving me an individual wiser and deeper for the knowledge of other cities, people, and cultures. Sometimes the process is painful, but in my own opinion, it is always good.

For now, signing off from Rio.