Tag Archives: life

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When did we lose control?

I suppose you’d need to admit that you have lost control, if you intend to read farther…

And what is control anyway? It was always fake, right? I mean, you get the house cleaned, balance your checkbook – and you sit back and say, boy, howdy, I am in control! But on another day, when you don’t get that stuff done, have you lost control? Or, even though you get that stuff done every day, something comes along, like my current favorite – RTO (return to office) – and now you’ve got an hour’s worth of commuting, which you used to use to balance your checkbook, but now, there’s just no time!

So, you say, with exasperation, “there is just no time.”. And so now, you’re not in control?

Well, the Hindus would tell you that’s samsara – it’s a cycle of chasing control, by doing things, setting goals – all the things your society tells you to do to get ahead. But you don’t get ahead – you get further behind.

Last night, couldn’t sleep, and I was reminded of a valuable truth: the reason you are unhappy is because you look for happiness in the future, not in the present. Luckily, at that moment, in the deep dark of night, I was sleeping with my warm furry dog by my legs, and my warm and loving wife by my side, with my beautiful and vivacious daughter asleep in her room down the hall. And so, I was easily able to recount all the happiness that was around me, in my immediate present. And so, was happy, and went to sleep.

Now, there have been times, I tell you, people, when I was totally alone in the night, with no money, no heat, no lovely wife, no dog, and no daughter. So don’t be fooled, or, better yet, don’t be dismayed. Happiness is not counted by the number of blessings. Instead, it’s a kind of contentment with what ever you do have, no matter the number or quantity. Because in those destitute times, I did have a warm bed, and I could feel the world around me, full of wonder, and full of love. But I had to open my mind and heart to feel that, and I had to let the material wants melt away. Not an easy task – seemingly impossible for many.

And again, at my worst times, without even the warm bed, I could always remember that my mother loved me, when she was alive. And that is not the future, nor the past. It’s ever-present.

Hate to put out a spoiler, but, you never had control, if you were busy counting up the things you controlled in your life. Without your knowing, the number of things you will NEVER control loomed like a zeppelin above your resting head. Control is a losing game, probably planted in your mind when you were very young, unintentionally, by a society locked in a battle for control – control as the carrot on the stick, which you will never taste, but always yearn for.

Looked at a different way, as long as you can know the peace of the present, as long as you can feel it, know it, and live in it, then you are indeed in control, and will always be, as long as the contentment with what (little or a lot) you do have is apparent and tangible to you. Peace.

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Why we don’t want to mimic bee society

Since I was a youth, I have heard philosophers, “tree-huggers”, and the like, extol the virtues of a bee colony, as a model for human society. Here. for your review, is the basic social organization of the typical bee colony:

Queens

Queens are the only members of a colony able to lay fertilized eggs. An egg-laying queen is important in establishing a strong honey bee colony, and is capable of producing up to 2,000 eggs within a single day. Queens mate early in life and store up millions of sperm within their bodies. While they are capable of living up to five years, they only often only live two to three years producing eggs.

Workers

Worker honey bees are the largest population within a colony. Worker bees are entirely female, but they are unable to produce fertilized eggs. If there is no queen they do sometimes lay unfertilized eggs, which become male drones. Worker bees use their barbed stingers to defend the colony, but after attacking, the barbs attach to the victim’s skin, tearing the stinging bee’s abdomen, resulting in death.

Workers are essential members of honey bee colonies. They forage for pollen and nectar, tend to queens and drones, feed larvae, ventilate the hive, defend the nest and perform other tasks to preserve the survival of the colony. The average life span of worker bees is approximately six weeks.

Drones

Drones, or male honey bees, have only one task: to fertilize new queens. Drones mate outdoors usually in midair and die soon after mating. Some honey bee colonies will eject surviving drones during fall when food for the colony becomes limited.

Swarms

Honey bee swarming is a natural part of a developing their colony. Honey bees swarm as a result of overcrowding within a hive. To create a swarm, an old honey bee queen leaves the hive with about half of the hive’s worker bees, while a new queen remains in the old hive with the rest of the workers. In the wild, honey bees swarm most in late spring and early summer, at humid times of the day. While swarming is part of the healthy life cycle of every honey bee colony, beekeepers often attempt to reduce the incidence of swarming in domesticated bees.

A honey bee swarm may contain hundreds or thousands of worker bees and a single queen. Swarming honey bees fly temporarily, and then cluster on shrubs and tree branches. The clusters rest there for several hours to a few days, depending on weather conditions and the amount of time needed to search for a new nesting site. When a scout honey bee locates a good location for the new colony, the cluster immediately flies to the new site. https://www.orkin.com/pests/stinging-pests/bees/honey-bees/honey-bee-colony

NOTE: I have seen Google’s AI alters the name “drones” to “unmanned aerial vehicle”:

Unmanned aerial vehicleAn unmanned aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. Wikipedia

The bee colony/human society thing is an allegory.

noun

noun: allegory; plural noun: allegories

  1. a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.”Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory of the spiritual journey”

Our US society has, unfortunately, lost, or never gained, the understanding or usage of literary/philosophical tools, like allegory and metaphor. So, I see the need to review such structures when I write about them – otherwise, Amerikuns will fight and stab each others’ eyes out!

An allegory is not a metaphor – I not saying “bee colonies are similar to human colonies.” An allegory is much more a passive, i.e. left to the reader, tool: I describe the bee colony, and you, the reader, make inferences or comparisons, in your own minds and hearts. I do reserve the right to make metaphors, however, like…

Queens are clearly the rai·son d’ê·tre of the colony – not at all the “leader”; rather, the source of purpose for all the other members. If our society has a “queen”, it could be argued that the President of the United States fills this role. The President, currently, is in no way a “leader”. The President doesn’t really do anything, except serve as an icon for debate. Like the Queen, the President has only a short term – 5 years for the Queen/ 4 years for the President. The Queen is a gluttonous “feeder”. The dangerous aspect of the Queen is that she produces the eggs – the germinal members of the future society.

Workers are only female. They protect the hive, and do all the work. This could remind us of other females in nature – fiercely protective of the “nest”. At some point in US society, women/mothers worked at home – worked themselves to death, were responsible for guarding the children, “ventilating the hive”, etc.

Can’t help the comparison of drones to US males – again, not a generalization here: this cannot be applied to all American men, or American Males. But for the bees, their only purpose is to fertilize eggs. Very tempted to make that into a generalization, but leaving it up to you. Note that they do not fertilize the (female) workers – they only fertilize the Queen, which tempts me again to make the comparison that American males only serve to fertilize the Führer – serve the fertilize the ideals, but not the progenitors of the race. The other sad thing is that “Some honey bee colonies will eject surviving drones during fall when food for the colony becomes limited.” This reminds me more of our corporations nowadays – the employees (not necessarily only women, clearly): when the profit margin gets squeezed, you just eject them. What the little article I am citing does not mention is that it is the female workers who do the “ejection” – by stinging the drones when the try to enter the hive.

The last bit – that of the swam – is painfully reminiscent of most human societies I see in this era – whenever a culture “feels” cramped, they swarm out. The major difference is, in bee swarming, they seek out uninhabited locations, which they gain without conflict. Since the human population is essentially over-populous, there is nowhere to go without extant populations, or, because of the avarice which seems inherent in humans (although it is, IMO, learned from the Queen), human swarms focus on inhabited locations – urban sprawl, gentrification – these all are swarms.

For your consideration: are we comparable, allegorically, to bee society? Do we want to be?

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Retirement, and other Western Myths

My dad retired when he was 62 – took early retirement, because he could. This was in the late 70’s, when my dad could go to the local car dealer, and buy, not one, but two new Toyotas – a Corolla and a Celica – with money he had saved, working as an elementary school Principal, in a small town in Iowa. That’s right – no auto financing was needed, because inflation – considered “rampant” at the time – was nascient, compared with its blood-sucking dominance today. His retirement package was 67% of his final salary, for 10 years following.

By the mid 2000’s (I’m guessing), the reality of a company-sponsored, extended retirement, was gone. Now, as with most myths, this one has taken a long time to be erradicated from the public conscience, mostly because the myth is ardently perpetrated by the headless “financial system”, with its attendant media arm. To what end, we can only guess, but it would make sense that it is tied directly to the profits invesment firms make on the corporate IRAs, which essnentially replaced the pension that my father had (and even I had, until the mid 2000’s). As you may know – although, again, many “believers” never cued into this – you put money into the company IRA, and it can be matched by the company. But where does it go? Into stocks – all of it. It’s not a savings account – it’s an investor/trading account. Your retirement dollars get whisked away into stocks, which perform well, or not. As a lot of people found out (surprise!), much of their IRA just disappeared in 2008! I know people who “called their company” to find out what the hell happened. Well, what happened was, your retirement account blew away with the winds of a market economy (yet another myth buster – that “supply side economics” they taught you in school, was gone from reality, long before they took it out of your textbook – along with the heroism of Christopher Columbus).

I don’t pretend to be an economist – as a rule, they have a pretty poor track record, anyway. But I do know that inflation hit 13% in 1980. To me, this is when the middle class (myth 3 in this post), left, and was replaced by the Debtor Class, or TCFKAM (making a joke at Prince’s expense). By this point, or soon after, every house had a mortgage and every car had consumer financing. Of course, people still thought that as middle class citizens, they should still buy several cars and sevreral houses. They just lost sight of the fact that all these things are now 10 times as expensive as they were 10 years before.

When you talk to a financial advisor today, their first quesiton is always “how much do you want per month, when you retire?” What a funny question – of course, I want like $10 million a month! But they ask this only to lead you into a discussion of how that corporate IRA is going to be the answer. But the solution they offer is for you to contribute the max amount to the IRA fund – dovetails nicely with the Wall Street profit motive I mentioned above.

In the end, you don’t have enough money to be building the kind of retirement fund you would need, AND deal with the wild inflation. So, you end the conversation with some kind of compensation – you’ll do your best to contribute more, and wait until you are 70 to retire.

But the truth is that, when you are 70, you will retire with about 1/3 of your monthly income, assuming that’s even relevant in 10 years – and that includes Social Security, assuming that’s even relevant in 10 years.

Just open your eyes. Don’t listen to NPR, or your corporate financial advisor. Look around. How many elderly people do you see working at Walmart, WinDixie, etc. (just not Whole Foods – far too elitist to hire smelly old people). I have small jobs done by people in their 70s, I get groceries delivered by people in their 70s – the middle class is gone, and so is the working class.

There’s always the conflict with the “official narrative” that keeps using the inflation rate, which is heavily adjusted, rather than the cost of living, which is hidden, to judge the economy. The official narrative wants you to keep working, until you’re sick, and then when you’re sick, you can support the medical complex until you’re dead.

So, your retirement is going to be spent in the grocery business, greeting and helping people, along with millions of new immigrants to the US (which I welcome whole-heartedly). I just want to show the connecting thread in the economy: the “class system” that is preached, is really now obsolete. There is the Market Class, at the top (until the Wall Street “casino” busts), and the Service Class, which are minimum wage (indentured slave wage, by any other name), and the Debtor Class, which lives in blissful debt, counting themselves among the well-to-do, when in fact, they are a hair away from the Service Class, where they will end up eventually.

It’s all good. You didn’t want to retire anyway! You might want to consider a career change early though, since your corporate job is going to be taken away from you when you are too old and cost too much. If you cram your Library Science MA into the last two years of your job, you will end up with a decent salary, augmented by your meager retirement and Social Security, and live within your means (finally!), at peace, and in touch with real people.

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The Tedious Process of Seeing Your Life Flash Before Your Eyes

Yeah, so that’s the cliche taggged to the last moments of life – you see a B Grade movie of your entire existence, sped up – of course! who could stand watching that shit in real time. And, you’re presumably dying relatively soon, so no time for commercials.

Well, I haven’t died yet – or so I think. Because after a certain age – can’t quite remember – but around the 50s, I started to have vivid dreams of exactly that nature: re-runs of my syndicated life moments, as an ongoing docu-drama series, or, set of series. I had a lot of great shows in my life. But they were definitely all “shows”. When I watch them again, I guess, like Clint Easdtwood, I hardly connect to that dumbshit playing the role of ME. I’m hoping that years and years of practicing yogic detachment (Buddhism inherited from yoga, sorry…), maybe that let me do this – this detached viewer.

Nah. Because I’m not detached – I’m trapped in the shit! It’s like Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”, where my sins are engraved into my skin, by some lurid gravure machine, until sufficient repetitions have caused sufficient depth, so that pieces of me start to fall off. I get stuck on that segment where people have rewound it so many times that it’s worn. But they are not sections that I would mark – in fact, the opposite: they are the small,but excruciating segments, which held the greatest shame. That moment when you remember your wife and family, but you’re on some sordid boondoggle with a bunch of youngsters, raging on chemicals, racing along some road – and, for me at least, this lasting dichometric pattern of good Kam v. bad Kam, has to skip, like a record, digging the groove deeper and deeper, until I can smell the burning vinyl. Fuck.

Let’s take an example that only I and maybe 50 people in the world will understand. I used to teach at a Catholic Seminary – ESL. I had a great love of Catholicism, and a great love of helping people from other countries, make it in the Land of Coppurtunity. So, my base philosophy was solid. On the other hand, I greatly resisted transforming these vital young men into conformists. Beside the point. I was assigned a beautiful second-floor office, with an office-mate, windows, sunlight…but I soon found a room in the basement, that had been a radio studio in some distant past! After some intensive, poinsonous mold cleaning, I moved in, and never left for 10 years. So, the dream is just me trying to find my way to the basement. Of course I’m late, because I was raised to hold the fear of lateness – I don’t believe I was ever really late, but always held the tension of being late. So, that vignette just replays endlessly: the entrance to the basement has changed over the years, as though the Seminary had come into a lot of money, and had remodeled everything, such that I can’t find the old door, or, if I do, it leads somewhere else. And then there are all the well-meaning “adults” – did I mention I have a permanent man-child thing? They are always trying to help, and, to be fair, they DID always try to help me get along, find my way – they loaned me money, tolerated my hippie shit.

In dreamland, the Seminary had evolved – a lot. Much more in control, much better financed, and well-rounded in its mission. But me – I was still stuck, wearing the wrong clothes, trying to burrow into nonentity, being on the verge of missing my first class.

While I wish this shit would end – just to sleep – I fear the way that will happen is my actual death. So I will shut up and bear it for now. Just wondering what the key is, to transfer into a new dream state, one of the present, of my successes. Probably fucking therapy. Or Ayahuasca.