"That's not funny!"

Some years ago, I learned about the satirical conspiracy theory "Birds Aren't Real!" (See also the "movement's" official website, here.) The whole thing was a joke created back in 2017 by a fellow named Peter McIndoe, who figured there are so many crazy conspiracy theories out there in the world that he wanted one of his very own. For a while he was very active on social media, in his self-assigned role as a "bird-truther"—spreading the word that all birds in the United States were replaced in the 1960's by surveillance drones in a massive collaboration between the Pentagon and the CIA. (See the Wikipedia article for more information about the history of this extended practical joke.)

Anyway, I thought this story was hilarious when I first heard it, and right away I ordered myself a hat like the one in the picture. A couple of years ago I lost it somewhere, and after a while I replaced it with a new one. I've had people ask me about it over the years, and I always explain. I thought everyone who knew me well had heard about it long ago.

But I was out to lunch with Debbie today, and she asked me very gingerly about my hat. I was a little surprised, because surely I had told her long ago ... hadn't I? Maybe not. So I summarized the story for her, and told her particularly about a TED talk that McIndoe gave. He explained the history of the Birds Aren't Real "movement," and then told a story about one day when he was out in public holding a sign and handing out literature. He said that people responded with raw hatred. One woman came up to him and shouted in his face, "You're what's wrong with this country!" (At that point Debbie said quietly, "I see where she's coming from," and then hastily amended her comment by adding, "Of course I don't support the hostility.") What McIndoe said in his talk was that—in that moment, as the woman yelled in his face—he felt his commitment to the movement double down inside him, even though he knew he had made the whole thing up!   

McIndoe's conclusion was that, when somebody expresses an opinion you disagree with, yelling at him is not likely to change his mind. Try compassion instead.

I thought Debbie would appreciate the story, especially as it ended with the kind of Aesopian moral one might expect from Thich Nhat Hanh: compassion is better than judgment, dualistic thinking is hurtful, I am inside you as you are inside me, we all inter-exist ... that sort of thing. She loves these moral messages when she hears them from Zen practitioners. Why wouldn't she love it in this context?

But she didn't. After a moment, she asked me when McIndoe started his "movement." 

I didn't remember. (I found the date above when I looked up the Wikipedia article, just before writing this post.) But I asked her in turn, does it matter?

She said, Well if he started it back in 2016 [I assume she meant "before Trump was elected President"], it might have been funny back then. But these days we have so many conspiracy theories and they are so dangerous, that I just can't see laughing at something like that any more.

Oops. My mistake, I guess.

Question: How many socially-conscious Unitarian Buddhists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Answer: That's not funny!

      

"Because I'm just fed up" part 2

Last month I wondered if Debbie might be loosening her grip on her progressive politics. No such luck.

I'm visiting her for a few days ... we are going to the UU-Buddhist Silent Retreat we also attended last year and the year before. Last night she mentioned again that she was going to re-register as an Independent, so I asked her why she deleted her Act Blue account.

Turns out she's just sick of getting fund-raising spam clogging her email and phone, so she thinks deleting that account might help stem the tide. Also it seems like she thinks it is better (from the perspective of Plum Village Buddhism) to be politically non-aligned, even if she still votes the same way as before.

I don't know if these moves will help keep the spam out of her Inbox, but I certainly agree with being politically non-aligned ... even if she isn't really non-aligned. But I suppose I shouldn't make predictions about the future. Sometimes big things grow from little beginnings.

Or not.

       

"Because I'm just fed up"

I was talking with Debbie this evening. We usually talk for about an hour every Friday evening; tonight it stretched for nearly two-and-a-half. Then, just as we were winding up, she added, "Oh, one more thing. I've deleted my ActBlue account, and I'm going to reregister as an Independent."

Wait, Debbie?

I asked why, and she said, "For two reasons. First, I want to see if re-registering makes me feel differently about some issues. And second, because I'm just fed up."

As usual when someone raises a sensitive topic, I responded by talking too much. What I wanted to do was to ask her "fed up with what?" But I didn't ask. Maybe I can ask that next week. I babbled about how there was research that suggested she's onto something ... that identifying with a group can change how you feel about issues where that group has already staked out an opinion. And of course I said I'd be really interested to learn how the experiment turns out. What will she end up feeling about the contentious political issues of the day. I mentioned that I have never in all my years registered with any political party, because I figure that anybody will go crazy if you give them enough rope. ("Are you trying to say, Power corrupts?" "Yes, but more clumsily. Also sometimes when you give a party power they don't really start to do evil ... sometimes they just get goofy.")

So we talked in an unproductive way for another five minutes, most of which was spent with me babbling because I was nervous. I'd like to become more self-aware, so that I know ahead of time that I'm likely to overreact this way to a potentially sensitive topic and can shut myself down in advance. And I want to ask for pointedly what exactly she is fed up about.

In retrospect it feels a little bit like this conversation with my aunt, three years ago. And I wonder: when public intellectuals like John Michael Greer say that the Democratic Party and the Professional-Managerial Class are losing control over the hegemonic narrative that has kept them in power for decades ... is this what that looks like?

               

An unsatisfactory visit, part 1

Sometimes it seems like a topic shows up on my radar and then just won't let go. I think the technical term is synchronicity. The way I understand the theory of synchronicity, I should pay attention when it happens. I don't recall whether the theory says what to do in case I don't want to pay attention.

Not Mother's house or pool, but you get the idea.

A couple of weekends ago, I drove to Big City to visit Mother. The most immediate motivation was purely sybaritic: it has been very hot lately, and Mother has a swimming pool. And in the end I got to use it a couple of times, in the mornings before Mother got up. Not that she would have stopped me using it any other time, but we were talking.

So much talking

These days, when I visit with Mother we spend a lot of time talking. Back when Father was still alive, that was less true.

I'm sure I've discussed this in an earlier post, but I just spent over an hour looking for it and I can't find it. The indexing that I have set up for this blog isn't nearly good enough. Anyway, the point I wanted to reference is that as long as Father was alive, Mother never seemed to talk very much. Father always dominated the conversations, whether in public or among friends or just at home among family. Always. On the other hand, once he was dead I noticed a major change in Mother whenever I visited her ... at any rate, if it was just the two of us. Suddenly she talked a lot. Sure, some of it was practical. But a lot of it was just talk. I finally asked her about what was responsible for the difference. She said, more or less, that when Father was alive she let him dominate the conversations because she knew it mattered to him. No other reason. (At a certain topological level, her reasons maybe aren't that different from what Marie told me here.) Anyway, now that he was gone and there was no longer any reason to worry about his preferences, she was reverting to "normal." The result is that when I visit over a weekend, I often drive there on Saturday; then we spend all of Sunday morning talking, and much of the rest of Sunday too. Finally we wrap it up Monday so I can go home and she can go to work. Of course, this weekend Monday was Labor Day, which gave us an extra day.

Anyway, we spent a lot of time talking. But this time, honestly, the talking was very unsatis­factory. I kept feeling like I said something to piss her off. I kept feeling like she was mad at me. 

An example

At this point it has been a week and a half, and I didn't take notes at the time, so I can't remember all of the discussions. But for example, she asked me how it was possible for anybody (meaning the people she sees on the news) to distrust vaccines?

I tried to explain that the world has changed since she was a girl. I said nobody distrusts the polio vaccine or the smallpox vaccine. But now there are far more of them out there, and legally the manufacturers shielded from liability for vaccine injuries. This shielding creates an opportunity for moral hazard, the circumstance where the benefits of an action (profits from selling vaccines) flow in one direction (to the parmaceutical companies who make the vaccines) while the risks (in case of injury or death) flow in another direction (to the patients who cannot sue for compensation). And I suggested that some people think the pharmaceutical companies might be tempted to cut corners in their development or safety testing, since they can't be punished if something goes wrong. So it's natural for people who think that way to be distrustful. I tried to suggest that this was very different from simply being "anti-science."

She nodded along with my whole explanation, and then asked (almost belligerently) "What about the measles vaccine?"

I don't know. What about it? Was she asking me for a complete list of which vaccines are safe and which aren't? (I can't supply that.) Or was she accusing me of being "anti-science"? I don't know what she meant, and I didn't answer her very effectively.

And then she said ....

There was more. As I say, I've forgotten most of our topics. But mostly they were as unsatisfying as the discussion of vaccines.

And then in a side comment just by the way, Mother said she was worried about running out of money. This was unexpected. Between the time Father died and this conversation, Mother always gave the impression that she was in comfortable circumstances. In the moment she went on to talk about something else totally different. But the next morning after breakfast, I asked her about it.

[See Part 2.]        

           

Fun with health insurance, part 3

You all remember how I got put on Medicaid for a couple of years, even though the program was meant for the desperately poor. I explain that in part 1 and part 2.

Well, that finally came to an end, and it seems like I didn't bother to post about it. But starting in 2024, I began to buy regular health insurance through my state's ACA website, because I was finally ruled ineligible for Medicaid.

In some sense it is silly for me to buy anything of the kind, because I haven't actually seen a doctor since 2022. My old doctor retired while I was in Scotland during the spring of 2023; I thought about visiting the new doctor who bought his practice, but at the time I was still covered under Medicaid. I figured he probably didn't take Medicaid, and I didn't feel like explaining how it happened.

Since then? Well, my ACA plan assigned me to a doctor, but I've never made an appointment. I don't feel a strong need to. Maybe she could do something about my earwax, of course. But my annual physicals were never terribly informative. My old doctor would try to put me on statins, I would refuse, and then we'd spend a few months when I tried to bring down my blood pressure using diet and exercise. Not an obviously useful way for either of us to spend our time.

Then this fall, Congress declined to extend the ACA subsidies for most income classes. I went online and found that my premium would more than quadruple! In concrete numbers, my new premium would be more than $1000 per month higher than my old one! Of course I was hardly unique in this. You must have heard the story plenty of times by now. Maybe it happened to you.

I started searching online for other alternatives. Could I go without insurance altogether? Could I buy catastrophic-only insurance? And finally I called the insurance company who has been supporting me since I got off Medicaid.

In the course of the conversation, my agent asked: 

"How much do you make every month?"

I told him.

Then he asked: 

"And that's an IRA distribution, right? In other words, the exact amount is in your control?"

"Yes."

"Because here's something interesting. If you brought home $1000/month less than you bring home today, you'd still be eligible for subsidies. In fact, your premiums would be cheaper than they are today."

Say what?

I hung up the phone and went to check whether I could get by on the reduced income every month. Could I do it for at least a year? (After a year I'll be eligible for Medicare, and all the calculations change.) Looking at my expenses over the last few years, I learned two things.

• First, I normally spend more per month than the hypothetical number my insurance agent had suggested.
• Second, I normally spend less per month than I am pulling out of my IRA, with the result that I have been building up my savings account. If I take enough money out of my savings to make up the shortfall in my withdrawals—and if, naturally, nothing unexpected happens—I'll still be in comfortable shape by the end of the year.

Sounds like a plan.

So that's what I'm going to do. It's crazy, but it is what the system requires. For one year I will throttle back my income even farther than I have already done, and I'll make up the difference with savings. And these machinations will cut more than $1000/month (or $12,000/year) off my mandatory health insurance bill.

In case you wonder why some people think the current system is crazy ... well, I guess this is part of why.

    

Sexualized politics

Marie and I had the strangest argument tonight ... admittedly after both of us had had way too much to drink. On the one hand it gave me what I think are some useful insights into how she thinks about politics. On the other hand, it made me despair of ever reaching a common understanding with her on the subject. It's not just about correcting this or that factual misunderstanding that she might have picked up somewhere along the way. For her ever to understand the way I see American politics—or as an alternate goal, using the famous Straussian criterion, for her ever to understand her opponents as they understand themselves—will require a total demolition and reconstruction of the furniture in her mind related to politics. It would have to start with massive cognitive dissonance and proceed through total breakdown. I don't want to inflict that on her, and I don't foresee it. But this means she will be a prisoner of her peculiar delusions for the rest of her life.

It all started when I was talking about something else. I was describing how people interpret moral topics, and I said that people respond far more than they realize to the intuitive picture in their head. So when a Malefactor does something bad, you get some people who see him intuitively as a saber-toothed tiger or a cave bear—that is to say, as a lethal threat to their friends, neighbors, and children. Then there are other people who see him as an erring child who can learn better with a little education. These two groups argue with each other over what to do with the malefactor; they quote studies and statistics, and delve deeply into academic criminology to argue their cases. But all this sophistication is window dressing. What really motivates the two groups is their intuitive picture of what is going on. Is he a saber-toothed tiger, or an erring child? On that question hinges the pragmatic decision whether he should be killed straightaway, or rehabilitated.

That was the theoretical point I was trying to make. So far, so good.

Marie stopped me to say that sometimes the roles switch. She said that in cases of rape or sexual crimes, Liberals are more likely to condemn a Malefactor as irredeemable, and Conservatives are more likely to wink and let it pass on the grounds that "boys will be boys."

Now, I had never used the words "liberal" or "conservative" in my discussion. So what I should have said is. "OK fine, that's one more example of what I'm talking about." Perhaps I could have reminded her that I never used words like "liberal" or "conservative" because I was trying to talk about a general disjunction in how people treat Malefactors, and not to make a political point. Then I should have steered the discussion resolutely back to the most general level possible.

Exercises in compassion, part 2

As I mentioned in the earlier post, the dharma teacher at this meditation retreat integrated his spiritual teachings with a political point of view. Occasionally this made his teachings sound distinctly un-Buddhist, like the time that he suggested that We often believe that our moral authority is proportional to the extent to which we cling to our views, and to our moral anger at the malefactors in public life. He spent several minutes describing this perspective, and seemingly warming to it. The attendees were lapping it up. Finally he said No, no, it's all false and this approach doesn't work. Clinging-to-views isn't a productive way forward after all. (But I wonder how many people truly heard him say that.)

But as he discussed these things, he introduced the concept of "pathological do-gooders," or "pathological altruism." This is when someone just can't stop doing things for others, or when someone does things for others with a reckless disregard for his own well-being, or indeed for any cost to himself at all. I think the teacher's motivation must have been that many of his listeners sub­consciously believe that to be their moral ideal. That's what they believe they ought to be doing! Of course that's crazy, but consider the audience. And much of the teacher's advice here was very sound and sober. He reminded us that "Caring is costly," and that if we cling too tightly to our ideal of eliminating all suffering everywhere, we will burn out. One of the most basic Buddhist teachings, after all, is that clinging causes dukkha, or suffering. So to the extent that he was able to wean people away from their fantasies of redeeming the world, his teaching was entirely orthodox and wholesome.

What caught my attention was one of his incidental comments. He may have been quoting another author—my notes don't say, and I don't remember for sure. But he pointed out that there is one circumstance—and only one!—where "pathological do-gooders" seem normal, and where it seems the most natural thing in the world to throw away all other considerations in order to help others.

That one, unique circumstance is war. (Then as an afterthought he included floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters as more or less equivalent.)

My first reaction was a sardonic smile: Gosh, could someone spin this into making a Buddhist argument for more wars? But then I began mulling.

In his classic memoir Storm of Steel, Ernst Jünger describes that when World War One broke out, Germans greeted it with enthusiastic idealism.

Movies made after World War Two—movies like The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956)—treated as a commonplace the trouble that soldiers had returning to civilian life, because it lacks all the unity, cameraderie, ésprit, meaning, and purpose of life under fire.

Even an antiwar vehicle like the television series M*A*S*H could not help but celebrate the common purpose of the team at the (fictional) "4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" during the Korean War. The last episode, in which a ceasefire goes into effect and the characters all go home, is both celebratory and deeply poignant. 

And surely we have all heard stories of people who accomplished deeds of great bravery and daring in wartime, who rescued their team from certain death with no thought of their own safety, who nonetheless could never settle down in peacetime and make something of themselves. The image feels like it should be a commonplace. Isn't it?

War puts all conventional values in question. 

• Rank and status? Sure, they matter. But the man commanding an assault might be killed in the next moment; and any grunt with gumption and initiative can be given a battlefield promotion to take his place.
• Wealth and acquisition? Anything you have acquired can be lost just as easily. But unexpected loot can also be found. It all comes down to luck, although some people may argue that the valorous tend to be luckier than the cowardly.
• Comfort? As if!

So maybe it is possible to understand Jünger's talk of "idealism." Maybe I wasn't crazy a couple of years ago to argue that the experience of war really is the experience of "pure dynamic Quality" seen through a Social lens. Maybe when all life is being lived on the extreme edge, it makes sense that extreme, pathological altruism becomes the order of the day.

This is not an argument for more wars. But it does leave me with some sense of why certain authors have found peacetime petty and squalid and corrupt, compared with the moral purity they feel they have touched in war.

Maybe we, as humans, truly are made for war and catastrophe, not for peace and prosperity.

It's a conundrum. 

          

Feeding a coyote

Sometimes fate arranges the perfect metaphor. If only I felt I could take advantage of it!

When I talked with Marie a week ago, she was solemn and worried and upset and frightened, all over the deportations that the Administration has recently started enforcing. Mind you, Marie is a natural-born citizen. Her parents were natural-born citizens. She looks White, though apparently if you go far enough back one ancestor was Chippewa. In other words, there is about as much chance that she'll be deported as there is for Melania Trump. But that doesn't stop her from worrying. I've mentioned before that Marie suffers from TDS somethin' terrible, so naturally she believes the very worst it is possible to believe.

What does Marie know about immigration? She is friends with two different families who both think they have to leave the United States proactively before they are deported. In one of these families, the husband in English and the wife is Canadian; their son is a natural-born American. In the other family, the husband is American and the wife is Mexican, though you wouldn't guess it unless she told you. In both families, all the paperwork is in order and has been for many years. Again, these people are not the targets of any deportation effort. But try telling them that.

So I spent our weekly call a week ago trying to talk Marie down from what seemed to be—figuratively or emotionally speaking—a very high cliff.

When we talked yesterday, she was in a much better mood. It seemed that she had forgotten her earlier worries. But buried in her chit-chat about what had gone on the previous week was the news that she had seen a hungry coyote.

Marie lives in the suburbs. This is not normally coyote country. There are wild areas within driving distance, to be sure. But for a coyote to wander all the way into Marie's neighborhood, it must be either desperately hungry or else really bad at directions.  

And Marie has been leaving out food! What's more, she has seen the food disappear. So while she can't be intellectually certain that it's the coyote who has eaten it all, nonetheless she is morally certain that she has saved the coyote from starvation!

I asked her how long she plans to keep leaving out food? She didn't give a date, but in general she wants to keep him alive until he learns to hunt for himself.

Really? How's that going to work?

Wrapping up last year

I keep thinking I should write something about the last … gosh, I guess three months of last year. I keep not wanting to do it. Not that there's anything bad about it. I just can't summon the energy.

This is an omnibus post. The only common theme is that I'm too lazy to break it out into multiple different posts. Or maybe I should say that empirically I have already observed a strong tendency not to write it. So tonight I figured, "Better to get it all written than to worry about the details." I count 14 different tags or labels on this post right now. Maybe I'll add more later. That should be a sign that it really does tell multiple stories.

October

Actually I guess I've already talked about a lot of it. In October I traveled to visit Debbie for a week, and we went on a silent meditation retreat. (The retreat lasted just a weekend, so we also spent time visiting her family.) Then I flew on to another town where Marie was attending a conference. I appeared with her at the big dinner, as arm candy, and otherwise wandered around town while she attended multiple sessions. I think I talked about this trip in this post here. (See also this one, for a slice of life around Debbie's family.)

November

In November, Mother and I joined Brother and SIL in driving all day to visit family in another state over, for Thanksgiving. I talk about some parts of that trip in this post here. There were other parts of the visit as well, but I don't remember anything so important that I need to remember it or write about it. Stan was better behaved than he was five years ago, and easily distracted with Monty Python routines. This time it was his little sister who was the terror, but not as destructively.

Alone

There is no one I can discuss this election with.

I'm not sure when I first realized this. But my friends—I mean Marie, Schmidt, and Debbie (I don't have a lot of friends)—and my family are all 100% wrapped up in the Dominant Narrative: Joe Biden may be old but he is the Savior of Democracy, Donald Trump is a would-be authoritarian, and Robert Kennedy is a nutcase. 

Me, by contrast? A couple years ago I started following Bari Weiss and Scott Adams on Twitter because I thought they sounded intelligent. But you know how it is with gateway drugs. Pretty soon I had added Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, Abigail Shrier, and Robert Kennedy. Sure, I tried to soften the impact by also following John Cleese, Bill Maher, and James Surowiecki, but it was never enough. It was only a matter of time before I was following CatGirl Kulak, Vivek Ramaswamy, Dave Portnoy, and the University of Austin. You know—the hard stuff.

This doesn't even mean that I have been completely red-pilled. Mostly it means that I have come to know—like Socrates—how little I really know about what is going on in the world. When I read accounts from the Right about What Really Happened on January 6, 2021, or about the cartons of documents in the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago, I realize that the political parties in this country are divided not by values but by basic facts. One side will assert that this-and-that happened, and it was bad. You would expect the other side to argue that it was good, but No! In fact, the other side agrees that IF this-and-that HAD happened, it would have been bad; but in fact what happened was something else totally different!

Not a normal election

This afternoon, Donald Trump was speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and someone took a shot at him. The shot apparently nicked his ear, which means it narrowly avoided doing much worse damage. Trump stood up again to gesture to the crowd before the Secret Service dragged him to safety.

People are saying, "That's it—he's won the election." Maybe, but the election is nearly four months from now. That's a long time in politics.

Other people—mostly Trump's political opponents—are saying loudly that "Political violence has no place in America." Clearly these are people who don't understand America very well. I've discussed this point before: for example, here and here, and to a lesser extent here and even here. Sorry, but in some ways we are all about political violence, even as we repeat the motto that "Ballots are better than bullets."

I don't do this

I never endorse politicians. They always disappoint you. Politics is a dirty, nasty business, and the power of the President is trivial compared to the power of the institutions that drive our government. Honestly, it's not clear to me that Presidents can achieve anything they want, let alone everything. In 2008, Barack Obama promised to close the prison camp and the naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Guess what? They are still open. So much for the power of the Presidency.

So fine, I won't endorse anybody. They are all liars and crooks, and they will always disappoint. Whatever. Now, with that said, I challenge you to watch this 30-minute advertisement with dry eyes.

  

           

Echo chamber, 3, "Lines you can't ever cross"

No, we haven't had another conversation about this same topic again. I just can't let it go.

You know, when Marie says "there are certain lines you can't ever cross," maybe I shouldn't get irritated or feel judged. Maybe I should just feel grateful that she has led such a charmed and sheltered life. Of course she has had bad things happen to her, like we all have. What I mean by the words "charmed and sheltered" is that maybe, somehow, she has reached her sixties without ever having to face her own capacity for evil.

Echo chamber, 2

I just checked, and my last post on this topic was two weeks ago. Obviously I dropped a week in my memory. (Marie and I talk every Wednesday morning, you see.) I think we've reached a terminus on the discussion, but I wish I were happier about it.

I should probably just go to bed. I'm drowsy and droopy; and while the amount I drank with dinner isn't enough to put me away, it's enough to make me flabby and imprecise. On the other hand, I was thinking earlier this afternoon (admittedly, while completely sober) that it was about time to post a follow up to the earlier note. So here goes.

Echo chamber

This morning I had a Skype call with Marie. She had been out of contact for five days. When we started the call she was troubled. By the end of the call she said I had cheered her up. So far, so good, I guess.

But God in heaven, what an unsatisfactory call!

Of course it's political!

Just saw this post on LinkedIn. Someone argues that gender fluidity is spreading across the globe and then cautions, "This is not a political matter."

Of course it's a political matter. If it's not being caused by politics, then what's causing it? Biology? Doesn't change that fast. Social attitudes, values, cultural preferences? Those are all just part of politics writ large.

She links to this video, where she talks about the rate at which these changes are taking place. Nothing else besides politics moves that fast.

          

LinkedIn on tribalism

I saw this morning a post on LinkedIn about tribalism:

Right away it put me in mind of T. E. Lawrence, at least in the movie.

Maybe there are advantages (if only a few) to aligning with nobody. (Reference any number of my earlier posts.)

          

On the incommunicability of political conversion

Two years ago I got a phone call out of the blue from an old college friend Cassius, to tell me that K—a mutual friend back in the day, with whom I had absolutely not kept up any contact—had recently died. Cassius and I went on to have a long talk about a lot of things, catching up on 37 years of past history. (Besides this post, see also this one.) During this talk (among a lot of other topics) Cassius filled me in on what had happened in the interim with K and Mrs. K. 

K and Mrs. K had gotten together while I was still a student. K's previous girlfriend had been a good friend of mine (but never my girlfriend), and the woman who later became Mrs. K had been a radical political lesbian. (I remember one spring festival on campus where she wandered around topless; her overall frame was small and her breasts were proportionally sized, but they were beautifully formed.) But somehow she and K hit it off … and then fell into bed together … after which K ended things with his former girlfriend to focus on one woman at a time. Not long thereafter K and his new girlfriend moved in together, and in due course they married. That's how far my knowledge went before I talked with Cassius.

What I learned was that since then, K had found work in some lucrative corner of the computer industry, and was able to retire at around the age of 50 (so roughly a decade before I did) to a life of elegant leisure and collecting art. Also, some time during the intervening years the K's had migrated from the left-wing politics which had been conventional on campus (back when we were all undergraduates) to something that Cassius characterized as right-wing. He didn't go into a lot of detail, but I assume this meant that they voted Republican rather than Democratic.

Cassius did say that once—only once—he asked them about their political migration, but that the conversation was not informative:

Cassius: I don't get it. You used to be on the Left. What happened to you guys, anyway?

Mrs. K: We finally opened our eyes!

What's wrong with the Five Mindfulness Trainings?

Last night, the Unitarian Sangha that I belong to recited the Five Mindfulness Trainings. This is something we do every month or two. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are Thích Nhất Hạnh's recasting or interpretation of the Five Buddhist Precepts. They also serve as the entryway into the Order of Interbeing. (See also this link here.) So they are kind of a big deal for the Plum Village Tradition of Buddhism.

Overall, or at a high level, I don't really have a problem with the Five Mindfulness Trainings—that is, if you see them basically as injunctions to be a nice person and don't look too closely at the details. But you all know me by now. When have I been able to avoid looking at the details? And when you subject them to that level of scrutiny, … well … there are issues with them. Problems. Things that don't make sense, or that really should be worded a different way. 

Things that I can't fully agree with.

Now, any member of the Plum Village Tradition will be quick to tell you that the Five Mindfulness Trainings are precepts—often they take this to mean suggestions or advice—and not commandments, strictly speaking. In principle they won't insist that you stick to every jot and tittle; but they will tell you that the closer you can come to abiding by these, the less suffering you will feel in your life and therefore the happier you will be. Well and good. At the same time, I don't feel that most of them want to hear the flaws—the misconceptions or simple errors—that I find in them. So you're going to have to hear them instead.

Seeds of doubt

As I noted yesterday, I'm staying with my aunt and uncle for the Thanksgiving holiday. And this morning I found myself briefly discussing the politics of COVID-19 with my aunt.

For years my aunt has identified herself as a "yellow-dog Democrat": one who would vote for any Democrat over any Republican, no matter what. And in general her political positions have been reliably those of the Democratic Party. But she remarked this morning that she had asked herself more than once, "If Donald Trump had won re-election in 2020, would she have trusted the COVID-19 vaccine that came out in 2021?" 

Of course, politically speaking in the USA, Democrats have tended to support the COVID-19 vaccines, and hesitancy or distrust has been expressed mostly by Republicans. But my aunt seemed to recognize that this alignment was in some ways peculiar: "Why  did those of us who believed what our government told us about the disease actually believe it, when we know that our government has lied to us before?"

This is a question I have heard many times from Republicans, when they want to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy on the issue of COVID-19. But I think that hypocrisy might be too simple an accusation. Certainly my aunt realizes that there is some kind of inconsistency here, and it bothers her. In retrospect I wonder if she was trying to elicit a firm statement from me one way or the other, to find out where I stand. If that was her aim, then I hope I evaded her. But I did suggest that it may have been no more than a historical accident that the parties aligned the way they did around the vaccines, and not the opposite way.

It's not a red pill yet, but the conversation did expose seeds of doubt. I think those are healthy, and I'm glad to see them.

__________

P.S.: My own position on the vaccines is ill-formed. I do not have strong opinions pro or con, and the information that I hear is too confusing for me to make sense of. I am intrigued by (and sympathetic to) John Michael Greer's hypothesis, but I don't commit to any specific explanation or account.