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Life Arts    H2'ed 11/9/10

NOW WHAT?

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It is now clear that this election was not about what we like to call "the issues," but about personalities. How prepared are they to be our representatives? But they are not that anyway, they represent the generous donors of their campaigns. Is s/he able to stay calm in areal debate about real issues. But across the gap we donÊ »t have the same issues, do we?

Meanwhile our wealth is rapidly being siphoned up to the wealthiest of the wealthy, and the wealthiest corporations (in the U.S, corporations are also persons, although they can be many other things as well). That kind of Brutal Capitalism is a bad idea, has done bad things to this country, and probably the world. It may be doing bad things to our species: its obsessive attention to money, wealth used as power, is destroying the planet, ignoring global warming. Too busy grabbing yet more imaginary money as the Ship of State is tipping over to the right.

That neighborly chat is an itch in my day. I keep going back to it.

Why is it that I have no trouble communicating with the cats, the chickens and ducks that live here? We don't speak the same language, true, but we all have learned to read the other quite effectively. They make abundantly clear when they want food. I make abundantly clear when I don't want a rooster on my doorstep. They come like a plague of fowls to get me if they want something and I have learned to read their intention. They behave differently if they are afraid of the neighborÊ »s (on the other side) dogs than when they cannot find enough food in the rain .They scrap among themselves, snatch food right under the nose of the rooster who always has the right of way. But on the whole they all get along reasonably well. Why can't humans get along? We are all one species, after all. We should be able to pretty much leave each other alone, everyone do their thing. But no, it does not work that way. The animals, of course, have no guns.

Have we always been like this? I think about that a lot. I remember the last century, and the first half of the last century. One thing was that we did not know so much. We knew what happened in our neighborhood, but there was little "world news." The world was far away. If some people fought other people we did not know it, and certainly we did not know why they fought. Now we know too much. Perhaps that is why we hide in some hidebound ideas, getting our daily dose of reinforcer each on our own side of the gap.

But more important, animals cannot lie; I can. My species can imagine, we can fantasize that the people on the other side of the river are not really people at all, they are subhuman, because they do not believe in our god. They have their own, they say. But to us they are terrorists, whatever that means. We, humans invented ethnic cleansing, a program to systematically eradicate people who are of our species but they have different hair or different dreams. Our trouble is that we can imagine and believe. We have beliefs that are dearer to us than what we experience. We believe that what we believe is the only true belief. A triple positive that somehow adds up to a negative. Why can't we leave well enough alone? My neighbor and I disagree about ideas, but we are neighbors. We laugh together about stupid chickens and crazy drivers. So, why the gap?

My neighbor and I smile and wave to each other in the morning. Hi, how's things? Fine, fine. Off to work, see ye later!

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Robert Wolff Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

robert wolff lived on the Big Island, called Hawai'i

his website is wildwolff.com He passed away in late 2015. He was born in 1925, was Dutch, spoke, Dutch, Malay, English and spent time living and getting to know Malaysian Aborigines. He authored numerous books including What it Is To Be Human, (more...)
 

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