My current thoughts on various matters often appear on my personal blog covering all sorts of subjects from mathematics and religion to education and history. You can find it here: https://notesfromkevinrvixie.org/. What follows are older essays and short opinion pieces written before the fall of 2012.

By the Light of the Moon in Broad Daylight (2012)

Sometimes a piece of music resonates so deeply it seems to be singing from inside you. The music is your own -- you are confident it is music you would have written, had you been in the habit of writing music.

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The movie starts with music -- Benjamin Britten's A Young person's Guide to the Orchestra being played on a child's portable record player. Delicate, yet robust -- reanimating things past, painting pictures with innocence (and a little bit of sad, jaded reality), Moonrise Kingdom is a tone poem that will stay with you long after the movie is over. The story of two 12 year olds, running away together into the wilder parts of a small island on which the entire story unfolds, is captured with a simplicity and joy that defies words. But listening to The Heroic Weather-Conditions of the Universe again, I am drawn back into the story. Clearly inspired by Britten's piece and the story unfolded in the movie, the simplicity of Desplat's song almost without words, captures the tale completely, vividly.

It was at the end of a day with disappointments that I went to see the movie "Moonrise Kingdom". Letting go, I found the almost-pure innocence of a bygone era singing to me a vivid, soul-felt song, healing me with a curious kind of hope.

—

In the Moonrise Kingdom there reigns disarming honesty, simplicity, sweetness, and a vision of reality that clings to hope.

Lockhart's Lament (2012)

Yesterday, a friend and former student of mine, Patrick Campbell, introduced me to the short piece written by Paul Lockhart, which was given exposure in the columns of Keith Devlin (links here and here).

I was very encouraged to find something that agreed in very important ways with my perspective. The spirit of the piece, immediately apparent in the choice of parables he starts with, is precisely right and urgently important.

The main principles promoted here are that (1) the primary use or application of mathematics is to give joy, to enrich, to beautify our lives -- mathematics is first and foremost an art, a deeply creative endeavor, (2) mathematics is living, alive, something that one must learn by moving into, being immersed in, playing with, waiting quietly until you hear the music that sings to you, and 3) the large majority of what is taught detracts from (1) and (2).

This critique is valid when aimed more broadly at many academic approaches to "truth". Schooling often leads to a very narrow technical know-how, but an inability to feel, to really innovate - to feel and explore the living world we see from a distance. The life has been removed. As proposed in this video (I love the rant), technical abilities are no indication of insight or a life worth living. Because truly vibrant, living connections to our studies are mostly missing, we become technical masters, not masters of our own destinies. We chose slavery, not freedom.

But at least on our own scale, we (educators) can choose to reverse this by aiming at vibrant classes, living interactions, and dynamic, creative environments. Do books and practice and formality have places in this environment? Heck yes, but in consciously subservient roles to a living path of creative exploration and a habit of constant innovation.

I do think that Lockhart's apparent lack of experience with applications and physics/engineering leads to a few minor mistakes in his viewpoint, but I doubt he would not grant those to me if we were communicating on the matter, judged from what seems to be reasonable responses in the second column.

I highly recommend that you take the time to read Lockhart's Lament.

Occupy Wall Street Comment (2011)

I was prompted by reading Eugene Robinson's column from October 10 to share the column on Truthdig and make these comments.

The need for a course correction to the established economic injustice we are drowning in, cannot be denied by anybody with a modicum of honesty and information. And only those who cannot separate ideas from their context will be unable to see that being against economic injustice does not mean you area against economic freedom.

Of course this tendency -- to identify some trend with its traditional (or reputed) friends -- is not new. In fact it is traditional. We identify communism with atheism, we identify capitalism and freedom, we identify anarchy with violence, and so on and so forth.

But these identifications are a problem. They are also a function of tribal thinking, of the loss of thoughtful individuality. Why? Because fear is constantly looking for labels, in order to identify dangers and thereby preserve the self and tribe from harm. But in a more patient analysis, excepting situations in which the danger is immediate, shows that the fear always robs the fearful. While they might escape some pain, they have lost their humanity, their ability to explore and invent.

And so to friends of mine who see the occupy wall street as socialism or communism or stupid or pathetic, I say, look again, this time without giving into the urge to label. Then you can see, you can hear. Yes, it is hard - we have been trained by virtually all of our context to label without listening. But it is possible.

And I think that listening and seeing are in dangerously short supply, that efforts aimed at increasing their supply is a pretty high priority right now.

Why I Am Against the Use of Drones (2011)

Mirza Shahzad Akbar's open letter to the US and the world, is a simple, straightforward argument that I wish everyone would read.

Noam Chomsky's Lecture UCL 2011

Listen to this youtube video of Noam Chomsky. The video speaks for itself, with a quiet understatement typical of Chomsky.

Who Are The Terrorists? (2011)

I was prompted to write this note by a recent article in Foreign Policy in which Alice Walker was interviewed. Alice is joining the upcoming Gaza Flotilla aimed at forcing the world to recognize and act to end the outrages perpetrated by the Israeli government in Gaza, with the full support of the US government.

Though there is not a great deal I can add to what she said -- read her article, I will observe that to not recognize the intense, mind-boggling inequality of power in this conflict, is to see it from a fatally flawed point of view.

The deep sadness that breaks upon those of us who view this from a little distance cannot but bring those who have any connection to the Christian or Jewish religions to marvel at the extent to which we have surrendered our likeness to God, the nobility implied in the story of redemption -- a story implicitly contained in the Jewish Scriptures and explicitly written into the Christian New Testament.

As Jesus said, "when the son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?", suggesting his return at a very dark hour. And in this darkness, a darkness that calls itself light, there will be true light, light that cannot be extinguished, light that cannot be mistaken for darkness. And when that time comes, when that light comes, it will have been anticipated by simple actions, shining a light in darkness, like the courageous actions of Alice Walker.

Secrets and Freedom (2010)

I have, with growing dismay, watched the evolution of the WikiLeaks story. It is disturbing to realize how well the chorus of calls for the demise of WikiLeaks and even the assassination of Assange is in complete harmony with the descent of our country into fascism. And though obscured by illusions many confuse with reality, this is precisely where we are headed.

From 1998 to 2008 I worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The overall effect of my exposure to and immersion in that culture of secrecy at Los Alamos was a permanent understanding of the corrosive nature of secrecy. The effect of the culture of the lab and town were definite and negative, though somewhat subtle and hard to pin down.

Contrary to fantasies of those who have never been to Los Alamos or at least have never entered into that culture, the town was not filled with nasty things driven by conspiracies and black projects. (And contrary to rumors after the Wen Ho Lee case, he was indeed a singularity. Lab scientists of all political viewpoints and personalities were able to agree on one thing, that nuclear secrets should remain secret.) To be certain, there were some hawks, some who dreamed of returning to nuclear testing, even a very few who probably would have welcomed a chance to see a weapon used on some "enemy", in some "limited" fashion. What was in plentiful supply were people like myself, who didn't do enough to question the ultimate aims and use of what we were doing.

It is true that the (admittedly complex) work was often of a remote nature, removed from the realities of war and mayhem. This was especially true in the divisions inhabited by PhD scientists (as opposed to those inhabited by PhD engineers). And of course Los Alamos supported (and still supports) work on AIDS and calcium dynamics in cells and power grid dynamics and cold neutrons and a host of other things that have little to do with weapons or threat reduction. Yet the core missions remained weapons and threat reduction, an emerging mission that increasingly became the support of a superpower drunk on its own power. But this was rarely thought about or questioned by the scientists, many of whom would have classified themselves as progressives or liberals.

This came home to me as a result of particular event at Los Alamos. To be precise, it was the complete nonchalance of Lab scientists to the implications of a visit to the Lab by an important scientist in the intelligence community. He was there to fill the huge gap between current capability to invade privacy, snoop, and control, and what was now opened to them by the "Patriot Act" which removed all sorts of protections of freedom and privacy. While I was disturbed by these intentions, I was more disturbed by the response of other (liberal/progressive) scientists that I knew -- they were completely unmoved by these dreams of undue power, and our part in helping make it a reality.

That was a pivotal experience for me, a significant factor in my migration to academia. (There were other factors, including the slow descent into environments less and less capable of supporting and promoting cutting edge science. But that is another, longer story.)

—

The point of this story is that for me, experience with secrecy brought the realization that, in almost all cases, secrecy is a promoter of disease and dysfunction.

Of course, there is a need for confidentiality and, every once in awhile, a defensible need for secrecy. By confidentiality, I mean privacy. By secrecy, I mean a proactive decision to carefully guard some information whose disclosure would do more than embarrass. But secrecy is the perfect breeding ground for evils of all varieties, from very mundane to the truly terrifying. This is actually well known. For example, anyone acquainted with the dynamics of dysfunctional groups of people (like families) knows that secrecy is an important ingredient in the preservation and growth of that dysfunction.

Coming back to Assange and WikiLeaks, I believe that WikiLeaks is an irrepressible, emergent phenomena playing an important role in urging us back towards openness. And openness is the only way back to a balance of power promoting freedom and sustainable happiness.

A critical point to notice: Assange is not the leaker. While he is not a journalist, he is an important part of the journalistic apparatus that has traditionally held those in power accountable. The use of the espionage act against him reveals the real aim of the act -- to suppress freedom of speech. And that is precisely the way it was in 1917. (If you are not acquainted with the history of the act and its use to squelch free speech, get familiar. It is a chilling tale to anyone concerned with freedom.)

Will WikiLeaks have a lasting impact? In a society addicted to electronic hallucinations, it is possible that only complete collapse and the resulting descent into total misery is enough to wake people up. Certainly, the information pointing to our demise has been readily available to anyone with an aptitude for exploration. Intellectuals, authors, and journalists like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Chris Hedges, Amy Goodman, John Perkins and many others have been there telling it like it is for a long time now. Even within the Christian tradition, there is a long history warning of the effects of the violation of "Love thy neighbor as thyself". (Admittedly, this message has been twisted beyond recognition and betrayed by the institutional church so that supporting war and torture now seems reasonable to a large fraction of professed Christians!)

WikiLeaks has reminded anyone that thinks, that openness is in the interest of everybody except (possibly) the elite. In fact, I would argue that it is even in the interest of the elite to radically change course. This conclusion holds, even if, in their release of the cables, WikiLeaks makes mistakes -- corrections are never flawless.

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My education on the other side of things began quite a few years ago when a patient friend (and daughter of one of the founders of the CIA) kindly opened my eyes to the fact that there was another, Palestinian side to the story in the middle east. Since then, I have come to realize that governments habitually lie, that power of any kind corrupts, and that we are not, in any way, evolving towards a higher state.

In fact, human beings cannot handle very much of anything. Once humans have too much, they do everything they can to hang on to it. In that quest, secrecy is a frequent tool, held in check only by our freedoms such as the freedom of the press.

That is why I am against secrecy and for the concept of WikiLeaks. That is why Assange and WikiLeaks are a vital part of an attempt to slow or halt a slide towards fascism. And that is why everyone everywhere, supporting freedom, human rights and sustainable happiness should support WikiLeaks and the right to know, and oppose, with every ounce of their being, the use of the Espionage Act to suppress our freedom of speech.

Freedom (2010)

The preservation of elite power and the constriction of economic freedom are motives now firmly connected to the mechanisms and exercise of education. Educational systems are designed to generate human widgets, human cogs for big machines, cogs that do not think or judge or create beyond some tiny groove. Development of the human, spiritual side of your being is, astonishingly, becoming an extracurricular activity.

Stand up and say that this is not the way it is going to be with you.

It is your privilege to choose freedom, to develop who you are, and to encourage everybody you influence to do the same. You will be a vibrantly whole, living student that seeks to connect and enliven and develop in deep ways that rejects the control of a corporate driven society, that rejects the electronic hallucinations that are offered as anesthetic to the cultural death this corporate society promotes. You will be a student that takes the road less traveled.

You will be free.

Because you are free, you will discover an abundance that begs, even demands to be shared. And so you will be a free student leading others on journeys into the universe that keeps opening more deeply to your gaze.

Because you are free and so many are not, you will seek out those who are not, those who are poor and downtrodden, so that they too can begin to see what you see. For if you are truly awake, if you are indeed a deep student, then you are because you love. And love, in the face of need, acts.

Cultures of Disrespect (2010)

Reading a mathematical reference today, I came across a not so unusual phrase “It is easy to convince oneself …”. In this particular case, I had to have a quick look at the example they gave to see the “easy” fact for I was thinking along a nonproductive direction and had nothing to reposition my point of view. So, at that point in time, it was not “easy to convince” myself of the fact. And yet, the example was one I could easily have gotten if I had been in a slightly different frame of mind.

It got me to thinking about the numerous phrases that can be found in usage that hide alternating sentiments of superiority and inferiority. We use these patterns often and they encode into our creative environment the limitations implicit in those ideas of comparison and measurement.

When we accept this language as our own, we limit ourselves, often quite severely. There are no fundamental limits or bounds on our creativity if we take into consideration the fact that we are here and not there. That is, if we accept where we are at, we are then free to move anywhere from there. The art with which we move, the creativity that we exhibit, the innovation and originality are never intrinsically limited. Yet so many believe that they are limited, so many have no ideas of where they are, that their behavior shouts of limitations, of impediments.

And the language we use either reinforces this or helps bring us to the freedom that the creative will needs to really soar.

Our culture is often a culture of disrespect. Because we do not dwell in the atmosphere of respect that characterizes quietness and stillness, our response to this culture is to begin desperately trading in a currency of disrespect.

Quietness sets us free.

Reading Kurlansky (Fall 2010)

I was introduced to Mark Kurlansky when my wife, Beata, bought me Salt: A World History. In this book Mark follows the powerful thread of the influence of salt on world history, with many interesting connections to the evolution of food and political geography. Later, I read pieces of Mark's book on non-violence, Non-Violence: Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea, again learning things of which I was previously unaware.

Recently, I have been reading his 2004 book 1968: the year that rocked the world. I believe that it is a book that everyone should read, for Mark's illumination of that singular year is very useful to anyone thinking about freedom and change, about renaissance. And that is something everyone should think about, and act upon.

I was too young and sheltered to really have grappled with events at the time. In September, 1968 I turned 7 years old and entered first grade. I remember my father coming home deeply disturbed by the fact that the Chicago police were brutally attacking blacks. I also remember the day he was not able to get to work downtown because of the riots. On the other side of things, there was the reverence with which the Weekly Reader, given to us to read at school, treated president elect Nixon. (This may have been in second grade in 1969, when he was president.) But for the greatest part, my life was sheltered. The only visceral connection I had with the times was the fact that, as vegetarians in the midwest -- an oddity, the hippie vegetarians somehow seemed like comrades, even if at a distance. In hindsight, the fact that my parents were more enlightened in how they accepted the different, the odd, the out of step individuals also had a resonance with those times.

But the fact that in many ways I missed those times is irrelevant, for I am deeply concerned with creativity, with freedom upon which creativity depends. And the spirit of freedom emerged in a singularly undeniable way in 1960's. That spirit was interpreted, made visible by those who were receptive to it, in a rich diversity of ways, many of which are still playing out; for events like 1968 can only be fully understood through their propagation, their ripple forward in time.

Freedom is today an even bigger issue. The current War on Terror, supposedly defending our freedoms, is in fact at war with our freedoms. In an article on why we must resist the current paranoia, Mark gives voice to an imperative we must all own, put into action, if we are not to fall into a darkness that always follows when freedoms are released in response to fear.

And finally, when you do buy 1968, buy it from an independent, local bookstore -- sustain and promote the diversity and freedom in your own community.

Finding Virtue: A response to an article in the WSU Daily Evergreen (September 15, 2010)

I was prompted to write this by William Stetson's recent piece "Virtue guides our nation" (September 13, 2010). Suppressing my urge to simply blast his reasoning into oblivion -- something along the lines of the "shock and awe" that he might otherwise admire -- I will offer some alternatives to his thoughts that I believe hold up better under close examination.

Mr. Stetson believes in the good will of America, that we have noble goals. While there are many who have gone abroad to do good -- my own mother started a nursing school in Kenya from 1945-1950 -- I believe he should read more broadly, including books like "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins and a least a sampling of books by authors like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Chris Hedges. I believe that he would then have little doubt that many from this country have, for example, gone abroad to enrich themselves at the cost of others, often with horrifying long term consequences. Motivated by greed, we have done a great amount of evil, though usually accompanied by a thin veneer of righteousness.

Another point worth making is that because terrorism always arises out of a history of injustice -- injustices that American actions have often heavily supported, or even instigated -- we are complicit in these crimes against ourselves. It is therefore in our own interest to end our contribution to those injustices. This argues eloquently against the use of overwhelming force, against war with its certain generation of more injustice. The simplistic "terrorist's are bad, American's are good" as an informed viewpoint is also eliminated.

But most importantly, Stetson is making a serious mistake in ignoring the means we are using to accomplish those ends, some of which are undoubtedly good.

Perhaps the darkest, most evil principle by which humans frequently operate is the principle that the end justifies the means. The chamber of horrors that this principle unleashes, the grinding injustice that is thus generated seems sometimes to have no bounds.

But even the good ends are not really our motivation. We can hide from our true motivations through an obsession with the good that might come from our actions. But we cannot hide from the hideous nature of the means we are using. And if we admit the depraved nature of the principle of the ends justifying the means, we are then forced to confront the debasement of our supposed nobility.

We then see the ugly truth of our fear, of our degenerate moral nature. We see that fear is our underlying motivation, not virtue.

And in this honesty, we begin to find virtue.

Why I am against our wars (2010)

I was raised in a family (and religion) that generally believed that killing was a very bad idea. In fact, traditionally, members of the religion refused to bear or use weapons in wartime and instead became medics, sometimes even becoming decorated for their efforts to save rather than take lives.

But my real commitment to a generally antiwar stance came with the Iraq war of aggression, that we excused as a hunt for weapons of mass destruction. For me that was the turning point. Even though it had started years earlier when I learned the other side of the story in Palestine, the real sense of our position as an immoral imperialist aggressor was solidified by the Iraq war.

Here are some excellent articles that have strengthened my resolve:

And just to be very clear, none of my resolve is mollified by the knowledge that there are very bad people on the other side; Sadam and his family were indeed demons and the hatred underlying Palestinian violence is unadulterated evil. Their evil does not change our responsibility to act morally, to reject "the end justifies the means" -- that anything is OK to do if our opponent is evil enough. But in fact, we have gone beyond this evil principle in recent years to naked aggression, to violent radicalization of our enemies through our unapologetic arrogance and our willingness to openly flaunt the moral high ground that we claimed was our vantage point.

Our evil no longer seeks darkness for cover. To me, that was a most disturbing and revealing development. That is why we must not let our leaders think, by our silence, by any kind of participation, that it is OK with us, that we support this evil.

Anarchy as Optimal Versatility (2010)

In the very teachings that Christians claim to base their religion on we find clear revelations of the non-institutional structure of the flow of life and innovation:

"Ye are the salt of the earth"

with the accompanying admonition to distribute and mix throughout the world.

Shallow readings of this can be viewed as admonitions to send out missionaries and to evangelize boldly. But a deeper reading will connect with the anti-institutional, anti-organizational and even anarchist nature of the most innovative streams of inspiration and life. Freedom is ever at odds with the propagation of organizations and the rise of institutions.

Mass movements very quickly gain an organizational, institutional structure that begins immediately to destroy the pure creative fiber that is at the foundation of whatever is good in the initial inspiration. There rarely is anyone bold enough, wise enough, to remind the inspired, who are in the process of being carried away with the euphoria of revelation, that “Ye are the salt of the earth”. Freedom is quickly challenged and slowly (sometimes quickly) falls prey. Group dynamics begin to dictate individual behavior and constrain what is and what is not acceptable. At this point the inspiration has been hijacked and the demonic nature of the institution begins to hold sway.

This is not to say that all forms of individual behavior are harmonious with life and innovation. Indeed there are sociopaths and psychopaths that would, if permitted, exploit any situation or collective or group. But it is often the tyranny of the majority, expressed in the form of an organization, that exerts its destructive will on the individual, limiting the free action of the individual and the unfettered creation of living diversity.

It is one of the apparent mysteries that inspiration and degradation share such close quarters, that the euphoria of inspiration can so quickly turn into evil. Part of the unraveling of this mystery surely lies in the fact that inspiration gives power and power very easily corrupts — and in groups, humans do things that they would hesitate to do individually. For in quietness we see most clearly.

But there are organizations that emerge spontaneously and are purely cooperative, transitory phenomena, not violating or leading to the loss of freedom. This kind of grass roots behavior is highly fluid. In its purest form it leads to the accomplishment of some immediate goal at which time the collective dissipates into its creative, living pieces, gathering new energy and diversity, becoming better prepared for the next emergent goal.

This, though seen faintly, through a glass darkly, keeps our hope alive.

Why I break my silence and What I am doing about it (2009)

Motivation and Background

For years now I have found it difficult to read or listen to news since doing this often disturbed me so deeply that I became unproductive and negative in ways that did not help anybody or anything.

Nevertheless, I maintained a connection, but tried to do so in a way that supported something positive. For me "something positive" means mathematics, students, my family and friends or various writings or even design/invention and fabrication.

I have largely maintained a silence on the issues that disturb me most -- typically having to do with Palestine or other deep disturbances to our illusions of peace and progress.

But this morning, after writing my thoughts in a private blog, I looked at truthdig.com and read an article by one of my favorite writers, Chris Hedges. I don't agree with everything Chris writes, but what good would such a writer be who only believed uniformly like me?

That article by Chris Hedges moved me to break my silence.

I have long been a fan of people like Avnery and Hedges who were for peace and spoke the truth as they saw it. Of course it wasn't always so. When I was young, I naively counted myself as an extreme Zionist and indulged in ugly, ignorant bigotry towards all "enemies of Israel". I should make it clear that I have never been to Israel, though I do have many friends who are from Israel, and many other friends and relatives have visited Israel. And the orthodox would not consider me to have any Jewish relevance. My genes that are Jewish are from my mother's father's side, so I don't have the right mitochondria, according to the truly orthodox.

My attention to the middle east is not unrelated to my parents' innovating and peacemaking instincts. My mother, as a young unmarried nurse went to Africa in 1945 and started a nursing school. After many adventures and nearly fatal experiences with disease, she came back to get more schooling and met and married my dad. At that point, she decided to continue her teaching career in the US. My father was the kind of peacemaking, forward thinking, professor of music that made him very popular with students and very unpopular with some school administrators in the private schools he in which he worked. Together, my parents provided a foundation of independence and freedom and the encouragement to pursue creative excellence. Because of them, I have an instinctive understanding that freedom forms the foundation for innovation and creativity.

And it is the lack of freedom in Gaza that moved me to action.

What I am doing about it

I have decided that I will work to help nucleate a cooperative of active academics and entrepreneurs helping students from desperate circumstances to get training and education. For those from places as hopeless (for the Palestinian) as Palestine, we will support efforts of the students to stay in our countries after school. Currently, this is made very difficult by Israel's refusal to allow many students exit visas. But there are organizations such as Gisha in Israel that are fighting for these and other rights. The tangible ways I will start are simple. First, I will begin by finding students in places like the West Bank and Gaza, who are interested in studying mathematics with me. Second, I will set up a private blog (members only, to eliminate spam) where interested mentors and sponsors of students can get and share information. Finally, I will do what I can to support and advertise efforts like Gisha and Truthdig.

What we can each do by ourselves is rather limited. But as we band together, leverage an economy of growing scale and use the visibility that quietly emerges from positive, collective action, we will be able to have a super-linear impact.

What you can do

Email me and ask to be put on the blog/email list, explaining why you want to be on the list and who you are (if I don't already know you). Let me know how you want to help with the effort when you ask to be added. We will need sponsors and mentors as well as help moderating and maintaining the blog. The blog will be hosted at wordpress, but you can get there by going here http://helpthestudents.org.

Cheers, Kevin

PS: Since this effort is for people who want to do something to help, rather than just talk about it, I really don't expect spam and flaming posts to be a problem. The care with how members are added, together with rapid response to blog abuse should eliminate problems quite efficiently. As this grows, those who take an administrative role will grow; this will be a cooperative of research and innovation active individuals, not a top down affair.

Position on publication and journals (2009)

I have recently decided to go completely "open access" with publications. As a result, factors like the prestige of the journal are minor factors in my decision of where to publish. I believe that this is the only sustainable path forward. The vast majority of published work is generated through support from tax dollars of one kind or another and as such, not releasing the results free of charge is unconscionable, especially when publication costs so little. (I also do not surrender my copyright, though this is a separate, albeit related issue.)

There is more.

I believe that the level of ignorance and arrogance that we in developed nations implicitly fold into everything we do, from publishing, to relief work, to education, to willingness to wage war on those we don't have to face, begins with many rather small acts. And those acts are founded upon human shortcomings that we love to excuse as small, rather inconsequential.

I am as deeply susceptible to this ignorance and arrogance, to those shortcomings, as anybody else.

I believe the only way past these obstacles to sustainability is through conscious acceptance of our moral tendencies, and diligent, purposed steps to counter those tendencies which so naturally lead to injustice.

It might seem a rather dark picture, not very conducive to creative productivity and an environment of innovation. But awareness does not imply focus on or obsession with the negative. Rather, creative work and connection to others, in a state of full awareness, moves counter to those tendencies, becoming neither ensnared in the tendencies nor the obsessed with overcoming the tendencies. Returning to the issue at hand, free communication is an essential part of this positive path. And so I believe the open access choice is a step towards the purer state of diverse, generous creativity that we knew and then forgot as we grew from childhood to adulthood.

Hope (2009)

I find Chris Hedges' latest column compelling. I believe the clarity it contains is a necessary piece of the path forward. Yet I also believe there are deep reasons for hope, for a positive, even joyful approach to living.

Quite a number of years ago now, I first encountered the idea that paradox and apparent contradictions are teachers of the deepest truths and are the richest sources of prolific insight. The now classic example of quantum mechanics flowing from the apparent contradiction of “light is a particle” and “light is a wave” instructs us constantly to not let go of either horn presented by a dilemma. And it is in this spirit that the column by Hedges and the perspective of hope and optimism can be brought into a deep harmony.

In fact, Proverbs 3 exhorts us to grasp both horns of that dilemma: “Let not mercy and truth forsake thee; bind them about thy neck, write them upon the table of thine heart”. This is the point at which many fail, for they choose either mercy or truth or some random mixture of both. But the living path is a compelling resolution, a deep enlightenment characterized by both of these usually contradicting threads. Here we find that the hope flowing from mercy can survive and even thrive without having to hide from the light of truth.

What Chris says is true. Our pride and arrogance has brought to us a time of peril and danger. It is also true that the goodness of God exhibited constantly in the diverse riches of the universe is still open to us. Beauty and inspiration, whether in the form of a human, or quiet meadow, or cloud drifting above, or poetic utterance, or musical composition, or mathematical insight are as beautiful and inspiring as ever.

“Peace, be still” is a promise of beauty, wherever, whenever. In this moment, trust opens to us the beauty of heaven. For heaven is here, in the certainty that mercy and truth carry in them the inevitable and complete demise of all cruelty and fear. Heaven is here in the rich abundance of a universe filled with unending discovery. Heaven is here in the creative flow that fills us with delight and inspires us to fight for freedom, no matter the cost.

And trust enables us to dwell there. In the midst of battle, the concrete reality of a present heaven carries us forward triumphantly.

This is hope.