thanksgiving/giving thanks

(image CC BY-SA)

let the unknowable be as it is,
and give thanks to all being for being

be well: be beyond the mind

“The Earth is my witness.” :: flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

beyond what any being needs to simply be, all want is in the mind

so then to want

to have or not have this or that,
to do or not do this or that,
or even to be or not be this or that

is pointless anguish, dukkha,

while to be well,

being aware of being aware of being beyond the mind
and doing no more than need be done to be and let be,*

is to be beyond the mind

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be well

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being beyond the mind :: *with loving-kindness, compassion, empathic joy, and equanimity (search)

on collective narcissism

excerpt follows

Robert Scheer – “I’m half Jewish and half German” – points out that high culture didn’t stop Germany from sliding into fascism:

… they still had the best music, and they had the best science, and they had all of this in Germany. And it didn’t save them at all, it didn’t help them at all. And I have always found that very depressing when I apply it to the United States. 

CH: Well, because I think that the problem was that—I mean, just as under Stalinism, there was a war against culture, replaced with faux culture. You know, the whole attack on Jewish science was part of Nazism and Stalinism. So you’re right, except that it shows how swiftly a society that reaches those cultural heights can be reoriented towards barbarism. And I would argue that that is one of the fundamental dangers in the United States, is the war we’ve made on our own culture. The Nazis made, had a huge movie industry, and they didn’t make—they made some horrible propaganda films. But most of it was fluff, was garbage, was Hollywood-type entertainment. And you know, mindless entertainment; spectacle. Spectacle—fascists do spectacle very well. Stalin did spectacle very well. And that creates a kind of cultural milieu where people lose the capacity to think critically and self-reflect, which is what authentic culture is about; that capacity to get you to look within yourself, look within your society. And it’s replaced with this collective narcissism, which has been on display at this convention. And that’s very dangerous. And we’ve seen Trump ride that collective narcissism, and exploit it through right-wing populism, and do what proto-fascist movements always do, which is direct a legitimate rage and a cultural narcissism towards the vulnerable. Undocumented workers, Muslims, homosexuals, you know, on and on and on. So the destruction of culture is a key component—actually, my first book, “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” and the wars that I covered, noted that a culture that goes to war destroys its own culture before it destroys the culture of the enemy.

RS: But basic to that manipulative concept, obscuring your own responsibility—the denial of, say, Jesus, who may not have existed but it was attributed to him in Luke, of the Good Samaritan—trying to understand the other, and that the other also has a soul, and so forth. Obliterating that, making people throwaway people, whether they’re the people you deal with in jail, or the people we’re bombing. As the Democratic convention is going on, a Democratic president is randomly killing people with drones and what have you. And you even had Madeleine Albright get up there to a standing ovation—I was stunned—and she’s a woman who at one point defended the bombing, starvation, actually, in Iraq, and you know, this is the price you pay. And I was thinking about that; essential to this whole narrative is that idea that Reagan pushed—he wasn’t the first, but the Germans had it too—that you are the city on the hill. You are the place that God is watching.

CH: Right. Well, that’s what the collective narcissism is about. And with collective narcissism, means you externalize evil. So every moralist—I mean, having covered war, I know how thin that line is between victim and victimizer. I know how easily people can be seduced into carrying out atrocity; I’ve seen it in every war I’ve covered. And I think the best break against that is understanding those dark forces within all of us, and the capacity we all have for evil. That’s what makes Primo Levi such a great writer about the Holocaust. And so collective narcissism essentially says we—it creates a binary world, as you correctly point out, where other human beings embody evil, and when we eradicate them, we have eradicated evil. And that, of course, propels a society into committing atrocious acts of evil in the name of good. And that’s what the Nazis did, and I would argue that’s what we do in the Middle East; that’s what we do in this vast system of mass incarceration; that’s what we do in our internal colonies; that’s what we do to our poor.

RS: And that’s what we do in our foreign policy. And there is a common theme that we saw at both the Republican and Democratic conventions. And it was surprising to me how much they had in common in this respect: that we are the aggrieved. It’s like the people in Germany after World War I, who became convinced that they had been victimized by the rest of the world. Right, whether it was Jewish bankers in New York, or it was the French, or the Allies, or what have you. And it was interesting, we’re recording this at the point when Barack Obama’s going to speak at the convention tonight. But last night, listening to the speeches, they had you know, first responders; 9/11 was a big theme, because after all, Hillary Clinton, senator from New York, and she had the credentials of having been around during 9/11 and so forth. And it was all about, you know, this—first of all, sort of a continuation of the idea that no other people in the world have ever been attacked in this way. Right? You know, we are a nation—

CH: Well, it’s the—you know, all of these societies that descend into this, I think what you correctly called barbarism, sanctify their own victimhood. This is what’s killed Israel. And you sanctify your—once you sanctify your victimhood, it’s beyond understanding. And it gives you a license, or you believe it gives you a license, to do anything

[full audio and transcript]

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bearing witness: the story of StoryCorps


TED Talk by Dave Isay of StoryCorps [deyv AHY-sey ov STAWR-ee kawr] in March 2015
All we know is stories. Some are helpful, some not. These are.

at 14:45, from the transcript:

I'm going to tell you a secret about StoryCorps. It takes some courage to have these conversations. StoryCorps speaks to our mortality. Participants know this recording will be heard long after they're gone. There's a hospice doctor named Ira Byock who has worked closely with us on recording interviews with people who are dying. He wrote a book called "The Four Things That Matter Most" about the four things you want to say to the most important people in your life before they or you die: thank you, I love you, forgive me, I forgive you. They're just about the most powerful words we can say to one another, and often that's what happens in a StoryCorps booth. It's a chance to have a sense of closure with someone you care about -- no regrets, nothing left unsaid. And it's hard and it takes courage, but that's why we're alive, right?


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a good death: “the kind most people would choose”

Nino Sekopet, an extraordinary end-of-life counsellor, on the questions he most often faces

from the article the tweet links to:

A Dutch actress with terminal cancer came to see Sekopet, along with her son. She was unflinchingly realistic and decided that in order to avoid lots of “bulls–t,” she wanted to end her life with VSED. Their conversation was almost buoyant with laughter, simply because that’s where that family was. “That’s a very light, almost funny, cheerful death that’s stayed with me,” Sekopet says.

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lightly edited copy from DWD Canada:

  • It is legal to end your own life in Canada and has been since suicide was removed from the Criminal Code in 1972
  • You have the right to refuse any and all treatment, even if refusal might hasten your death
  • You have the right to stop treatment after it has started. Ethically and legally, there is no distinction between discontinuing treatment and refusing it in the first place
  • In Canada, nutrition and hydration by tube is considered medical treatment. You have the right to refuse or stop it
  • You also have the right to turn down food or drink and the right to refuse to be fed or given drinks by others
  • The above is referred to as Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking (VSED) and is supported by many palliative care providers

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Be sure to choose palliative care that includes informed use of glycerin swabs to relieve thirst, and so on. With no fluid intake you are likely to lose consciousness in a week or so and – without intervention – never regain it. Please read this Guardian piece: 'It was a good death, the kind most people would choose' (Sophie Mackenzie on why her family backed her mother's decision to stop eating and drinking when faced with terminal cancer).

from this page on the DWD Canada website:

Document your wishes. When it comes to end-of-life decisions, what you've put in writing will carry more weight than something you've mentioned in passing. Clear, written instructions will also make it easier for your substitute decision-maker to act on your wishes. So write them down! You can use the forms in our Advance Care Planning Kit or have a lawyer or notary draw up your documents. It's up to you.

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