Here is what caught my eye:
Many Filipinos are not wealthy enough to eat meat regularly outside of these special events. Add that to the fact that most people living in the rural areas do not have refrigeration, and therefore consume meat in larger quantities during these holiday and festive gatherings (such as “lechon” – a roasted whole pig), atchara became a strong tradition at the meals of these events, as their digestive systems were not naturally used to digesting large amounts of meats on a regular basis.
And it occurred to me that EVERY day is feast day for most Americans. There is nothing special in it. I love Christmas cookies as much as the next person, but there is no reason I could not eat them every day of the year. I can and do eat meat every day. I take on faith that the Buddha was no idiot, and did not suggest vegetarianism idly, but for myself I was a vegetarian in my youth for two years, and found I did not function well, physically or emotionally. There is something grounding for me in meat that keeps me from drifting away.
Be that as it may, what it occurs to me is that the poverty which is very real with us is spiritual poverty. We can eat anything we want, any time we want (most of us: there is real hunger, too), but how often do we have access to the feeling of belonging, of participating in a vital and real community?
It seems obvious to me that all this experimentation with sexual identity, with racial identity, with using opposition to everything which is, to fashion an identity BUILT on tearing down, is short sighted, and characterized mainly by emotional emptiness and following desperation. We burn what we hate, and we hate what does not grant us the love we need. And our society certainly does not create and distribute love well. We do not do it well in the homes, and what we fail to find there, we can scarcely be expected to build well elsewhere. We look to others suffering from the same illness to relieve our own. This must lead to madness, unless it can be palliated by distractions, illusions, useless activity and emotional superficiality.
Our wealth is not our problem. “Capitalism” is not to blame. It has always been lunacy to suggest that tearing down can create. Only creation can create. And creation is gradual, and always operative within smooth, peaceful times. It has no place in disaster, which can only breed fear of the new, rigidity, and the violence which follows.
Culture is that which connects us. It is what allows us as individuals to face collectively our shared fate of decay and death. Countless brilliant people have created countless useful solaces. They do not do so through the use of reason. Such was the conceit of the French Revolutionaries and their progeny, who now inhabit so many high places in so many public places.
No, cultural creation is intuitive; it is spiritually driven.
Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvcZf7NHMUQ
Is it not quite possible that they are weeping on the way back from the grave? Is it not equally possible that this music gives them the emotional courage to continue their lives with emotional openness and the joy which this makes possible, in spite of “everything”?
I feel this darkness in the air, and I wonder how we clear it, how we take the next step. So many people seem to think that by impoverishing the world, we can return to a different, better time. This is ludicrous. The task is understanding, on a wisdom level, what it is to be human.
To take as but one example the current cultural offensive on the sexual front, which seeks to destroy all the evolved wisdom of the human species, what lasting joy can come from the “freedom” to change ones gender like one changes clothes? What underlies identity? What is deeper? Sex, as used today, is nothing a dissimulation, a drug, a lie told to keep the wolves of confusion and despair at bay.
I have nothing against such people. There have always been people who felt they were born in the wrong body. But this is something different. This is an attack on the very few givens remaining in our world, and can only operate to alienate all of us from one another yet further. There is no end game, other than the childish demand to be allowed to do and say whatever one wants, whenever one wants, and to demand others acquiesce in whatever the delusion of the day is.
We fail at our great peril to value what the past has to teach. Yes, not all of it is beautiful. Some of it is ugly. But without understanding, you see, we REPEAT what has been so many times before. There is nothing new in tyranny, nothing new in radical intolerance, nothing new in shouting, yelling, hurting, killing, and falling, again, into the pit.
We exist, as I continue to say, in a time when global peace and harmony is possible. But not through destruction, which has become the dominant mania of most of those entrusted with our “progress”.
We are resurrecting Moloch in the name of progress. I do not need to read the stories. I can feel it.
I am one man, living in a small world. I do have and have shared many ideas, but I think the most important thing right now is for more and more people to stop and ask “what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Where is it all leading? What baseless assumptions, and emotionally driven manias are pushing us?”
How, to put it simply, do we reconcile political freedom with the need all of us have for belonging? Surely it is obvious an ubiquitous and omnipotent government cannot grant us anything but death in all its forms?