Designing a Life

Hello all,

I hope my hiatus from writing has thrown anyone off kilter or out of contact ... this week has been mucho hectic ... much more chaotic than I’d thought it would be. My wife often tells me that I’m overly optimistic about how long things tend to take (erring on the side of under) ... and this was a classic case of proving her correct (although she needs little confirmation about this one ... living with a confirmed optimist requires such adjustments). We had a crew in that helped with packing (four guys two days) and then another crew to move us from one set of apartments (yes we had two – one to live in and one to work in) to another single apartment (nine guys, three trucks ... BIG TRUCKS!). Although our new apartment is bigger than either of the other two it’s still proving to be a challenge to fit in what we must and get rid of the rest. I’m also a confirmed pack-rat – you can just never tell when you’ll need something again ... especially if it’s a book. SO there have been mountains of boxes, and now after almost a week there’s only a few foothills left. If anyone’s looking for some deals on used books I’m your man!

So ultimately things are getting back to “normal” ... which of course is hardly “NORMAL.” However, I am back at the keyboard and looking a life with a new view (out the office window in our new place here in Princeton to be specific). What’s been interesting has been getting to know how familiar I’d become in ten years in Ridgewood. Living there became “normal” us (from my perspective), it was simply where my family and I “were from whenever I thought about my “place” in the world. I know the streets there, the stores, the shops and restaurants ... all the local features for miles around. I know the ways in and out, the traffic patterns ... even many of the people I can expect to see or meet at different times in different places during the day. Ridgewood became my base during the time I lived there. I knew how to organize myself and my life based on the environment and the features present in it.

This, of course, gave me a sense of security and comfort. It’s harder to throw me on my ‘home turf’ and now although I’m in my new ‘home’ it’s still not home base for me yet. I think this transition to a sense of “normal familiarity” will take some time. It will be interesting to learn where my ‘local joints’ turn up and what appeals to me in this new place we’re in. I’ve already found some things I like about the place itself that were part of the original appeal to move here. I’ve found some others that I thought would be more appealing then they are now that I’m here. And yet other things have begun to show up that I hadn’t even thought about or known about before we’d moved that are showing up to be part of the appeal of being here. All and all I’d say we’re beginning to settle in already (or at least I am).

This seems to be the way of things, we become familiar and we forget that we were even NOT familiar with the way things are now. The only time this becomes different is when we’re old enough to long for the “good old days” that never were – except in the memory of the the now nostalgic person longing for those days of yore (should be days of lore if you ask me). However the danger in familiarity is in throwing it towards the future, hoping that what will be will resemble what was – and then compounding the danger posed by assuming that what is is what was. I think we’re living through a strong period of this kind of thinking right now. Although we seem to be on the cusp of change, a massive change in the societal and cultural firmament we find ourselves embedded within. We are mostly comfortable and we really don’t want anything to disrupt that comfort, so we seek to appease the gods of comforts.

I was watching a National Geographic Channel special program on 9/11 last night and I won’t bore you with old news except to share the quote that they chose to end the show with”

“The difference between us is that we love death. The U.S. loves life.” - Osama Bin Laden

This of course is a chilling reality that Bin Laden seeks to bring to the attention of the “West” - that mythical place that exists only in the imagination of some. However, what he’s gotten so right is the social ontology of the people of the “West” the cultural premise we’ve come to live by. Our focus in the “Modern Western World,” which places like China and Singapore have begun to join with great urgency, is on the material aspects of the here and now. There is little concern for what was and little more for what will be. The “loss” of G-d as a fundamental feature in the cognitive plane of the average “Modern Western” thinker causes us here to love life more than death. Yet when the relationship with G-d in reference to securing a meaningful place in the hereafter becomes predominant as an escape from the reality of the present then death becomes the lover and life the executioner. This is where we find ourselves to a great extent today ... facing the demons of our familiarity and comfort.

I’ve seen this war in Iraq positioned as a “war for (or over) oil.” I think not, yet I do find the relationship we have with oil interesting (I’ll come back to that). What we have is a rather a singular approach to the consideration of what is meaningful opposed by a radically different consideration of what is meaningful. These cultures are opposed even in their relationships with time and space, the fundamental fabric of “reality” and social construction. When and where must be agreed upon before much other social interaction can occur. The question of “Where are we?” and “When is it?” reside ubiquitously in the background of virtually all interaction. “Are we here or there, is it now or then ... these questions ring in the background of social interaction and define us. So where we now find ourselves is in the drawing of lines of relationship to the ideals of the society and culture we want to spawn, and yet we are building much of it based in a past we’ve become overly familiar with today.

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.” - Sir Winston Churchill

So what is our relationship with our past, what expectations do we hold about “How the world ‘should’ be?” These are forming the basis of the lines of division I refer to above. However I think those who are old enough to hold the power and those old enough to really be considering what this means have no idea about what’s coming, who’s coming up the ranks from behind. I think a new vision is about to manifest on the planet and it will be in response to the vision that created the planet as we know it today. The seeming paradox of shrinkage and expansion will collapse into a singularity, where the large will become the small and only by being large enough will it be possible to sustain the smallness that’s desired.

Now for instance in the “modern” developed world we are much more “road’ dependant than “oil” dependent. Oil can and will be replaced by other fuels, but cars will for the foreseeable future still need roads to ride on The idea that we are “entitled” to free, accessible and uninterrupted travel on such roads is for most people in our society and culture “normal.” It is the way it is ... and SHOULD BE! Yet the world as we know it is a product of post WWII thinking, the desire for free, accessible and uninterrupted movement of the military if and as necessary was the impetus for building the roads we now enjoy. Our highways are the lifelines of military supply logistics should we have ever needed them. Yet the unintended result was an unsustainable movement away from the centers of production to the edges ... dependent upon these highways we all now take for granted. SO much so do we take these roads for granted we’re willing to give up our relationship to nature to have them.

This also then begins to raise for me the questions of what else will I put up with to have what I want. What am I willing to say or do because I think it’s the way the world actually is? I’ve supported the idea of challenging the structures that allowed 9/11 to come to pass, while acknowledging that those who are now “fighting” this war (not the soldiers who actually fight and die, but the ones who pass the laws and give the commands to get them there) are in actuality cleaning up their own mistakes of the last 50 odd years. The past two American administrations being in my opinion especially guilty of setting up this scenario (Bush 1 and Clinton 1). Now Bush 2 is doing the only thing that makes any sense to do ... and that’s to reset the field and the rules we’re going to be playing by as we go. Yet he’s getting grief for it as though there’s some better solution that someone’s proposed.

“It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.” -  Sir Winston Churchill

Now what everyone wants is to just go back to the illusion of comfort they perceived existed before in some way. The selectivity of the memory is to sort for what is desired to be remember, unless we’re forced to do otherwise. SO the machine begins spewing propaganda to insure we’ll “remember’ correctly and project just as correctly along the lines the spewer wants us to be taking. This is the most fundamental of large governmental efforts at social construction. The efforts that use language and communication to ensure we’ll remember what we’re supposed to ... and thereby “see” the world today framed in these memories.

Now do not get me wrong I do not think this is a one side or the other situation. It’s an element of all mass movements, of which government is the largest sanctioned mass movement of all. Propaganda is necessary to keep people together and living side-by-side beyond a tribal size of probably 250-300 individuals in daily contact. We have to be told and endlessly reinforced about who we are, where this is and when it’s all happening. And to do this it requires the creation of “other’ as well. A clearly defined “other’ who’s very presence will prevent “our” way of life from continuing. Just take a look at Osama’s rants (you though I was going to say Bush, didn’t you?).

SO what do most people want ... for it all to just go away. To go back to the ‘good old days of lore.” They hope that they can bury their heads in the sand and let it become someone else’s problem. Look at how well received Clinton’s strategy of international non-involvement went down – some of the most prosperous years in recent times for America and her allies, and the worst for everyone else – Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Bosnia ... then 9/11 (yes I’m making a connection between all this). Now we in knee-deep and there is no way back, there are no ‘good old days’ to go back to ... regardless of what the 55 year old hippies become yuppies become soon to be retirees worried about their pensions and way of life want to believe. The movement of the sixties that was about retreat to preserve what you’ve got, while proclaiming it’s out of the respect for the diversity of others falls short when you continue to consume four to ten times the world’s resources as your next most successful neighbors, and thousands of times more than you furthest.

“Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.” - Sir Winston Churchill

This is where we are, maybe we should never have gotten here, but who’s to blame? Who do you point at when you find yourself saying the world is corrupt, or evil, or not what it should be? Do you point outside yourself without looking within, or do you first remove the plank from your own eye so to see more clearly?

“One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.” -  Sir Winston Churchill

What do we do next, where do we turn? (Do you see the implicit pattern of time and space yet?) This is the question that I am desperately attempting to raise with these posts here on this blog. But to do it from raising the awareness of what it takes to keep us stuck where we are and what might be possible once we’ve loosed ourselves from the position we’ve built ourselves into. Yet this would require a major shift in the level of recognition of the “average” individual with regard to the contribution they make to the construction of reality as we know it, as well as the skills to remove themselves from the agreements that have possessed them.

When we turn ourselves over to the “wisdom” of government without assuming the responsibility to be active participating citizens of that government then we have given up all hope.

“For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else.” - Sir Winston Churchill

It seems to me that the key in building the future we want is to become the voice of the future as the Lorax became the speaker for the trees. This wave on radical new thinking that is rising up behind us, the embodiment of youthful zeal and promise still needs shaping. In every age there is a voice to be heard, but the voice that will shape it and the voice it will become remain in the hands of those present to foster or forget  ... and  in so doing leave it to those who would wrest this zeal and promise for their own ends and means. When we do this we have indeed given up and failed our children all, leaving them voiceless as so many in the world today find themselves – yet we can choose the higher call.

“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” - Sir Winston Churchill

That’s enough for today ... but you can expect more to come ... of course!


Joseph Riggio
Princeton, NJ


And for good measure ...

“The price of greatness is responsibility.” -  Sir Winston Churchill