Keeping Up

We're catching a lot of reality these days.

First a plague swept the planet, laying waste to technocratic pretentions of invulnerability.

And now, the global stampede to busted old right-wing pipe dreams has metastacised in the States into an actual overthrow of constitutional governance, complete with federal troops moving on citizens.

It's not just the National Guard (which would be dystopian enough). We're talking the straight-up foreign-country-occupying US Army. Which has already put boots on the ground to occupy its own.

To me, the most telling point in all of this is the fact that the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on it.

Some of those men might have had reservations. One hopes that at least one heart under that oppressive weight of medals was deeply conflicted.

But not enough.

Even Communist China has produced one general who wouldn't march, under identical circumstances, against the civilians he'd sworn to protect.

“I’d rather be beheaded," he said, "than be a criminal in the eyes of history."

And yet the Americans, who love a uniformed sound-bite as much as anybody, have yet to present such an officer.

At times like this, I'm always taken aback by my own disappointment. I like to think I'm over the human race. I've witnessed so much empty posturing, so much crass and conspicuous hypocrisy, that I cannot, in good faith, pretend to have any in my species.

And yet.

The fact is, these things go deep. The beliefs you were taught as a small child, the history your elders spun into your bones, are pernicious. You can outlearn them, but you can't unlearn them. Not at the endocrinal level.

In such moments, I meditate on the words of Lily Tomlin:

"No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up."

The call to activism is one I don't feel qualified to discuss; I'm torn between two valid positions on that. However, on another point I rest solid.

When we sin, human beings tell each other "such is the way of the world".

That's a lie. The world is faultless. Such is the way of people only, who remain in full possession of their moral autonomy and the necessity of applying it.

We're not like other animals. We're not mindless slaves to nature or instinct, and therefore each of us is empowered to "be another way" at any time.

Which is the flywheel of karma.

As we enter this era of radical – if ironic – unmasking, I would ask the Sangha to consider the following suggestions:

Live in the light of things as they are, as they really are, now and for the rest of your life, and refuse all stories.

Look deeply – and courageously - with every breath.

Remember what you see, permanently, after everyone else has moved on.

This is what you owe yourself.


(Photo courtesy of Vasil Šelechaŭ and Wikimedia Commons.)