The Wolf, the Shepherd, and the Sheep

To truly be a master of what you do, who you are, you have to ask the whys of everything you do and don't do, learn and understand the reasons, not accept things as granted. Then if the answer is unsatisfactory, discard the thing and start again with what you have learned. Make mistakes, adapt, improve. Having done something rote, regardless of how long, does not make it right. It is the way of the sheep, because reasoning does not come easily and can be unsettling. Have the courage to be unsettled, ask and reason, to be unfraid of not understanding, and accepting of change.

Sheep follow the given path without questions, for the authority gives them the way and they need not reason beyond acceptance. This is simple, uncomplicated, settling.

 

Wolves eat the sheep because understanding eats sychophancy.

The shepherd wants to be the wolf but is fearful of the power of the wolf. They are annoyed when the wolf eats their sheep. They teach the sheep that the wolves are evil and to be feared, not because the sheep would be eaten, but because the shepherd needs sheep to be a shepherd. Thinking and reasoning sheep become wolves and are no longer herd-able. The shepherd fears the wolf because it cannot be predicted nor controlled. The sheep fear the wolf because it raises the risk of uncertainty and unknowing, and challenges it's unquestionable faith. The sheep prefers the authoritarianism of the shepherd because it fears the uncertainty and unknowing of reason. The sheep lives in constant fear of reason and the herd reminds the sheep to be always afraid, lest the wolf eat them.

Wolves are loners, sometimes in small packs but always of discreet individuals. Sheep are all the same and see anyone not a sheep as a wolf. Sheep find solace in the consistency and commonness of the herd, while wolves find it constricting and suffocating. The herd remains the same and remains ignorant of being a herd, the pack is ever evolving and progressing for the betterment of the pack and every wolf knows itself. The shepherd is always singular, for to allow another shepherd would make it a sheep.

Companies want to be the kind of company that hires wolves, but become upset when the wolves eat their sheep. They protect the sheep because without them they cannot be the shepherd. They need sheep to maintain the herd, and promote sheep as they can be herded. They shoot the wolves.

Be a sheep or a wolf, but if you are a sheep, expect to get eaten by a wolf if you wander too far from the shepherd and challenge the wolf. Do not then lament your fate. If the wolf bites you, you may run back to the shepherd, and the shepherd will punish the wolf, but one day, the wolf will get you. It is the way.

Question everything. Reason to an insightful understanding, if you cannot understand continue to question. Ponder uncertainty and be not afraid of it. Be the master and not the slave. Be the wolf and not the sheep. It is the way.

Be ungovernable

A system whose people only follow the rules uncritically cannot adapt, will not evolve, and will die from within.

Be silent?

Those who teach you to be silent 
never understood why you have a voice.

Or maybe they do.

Existential

 I once heard that there is a Greek philosophical idea that we have come suddenly into existence with a fully realized past. It segues with my interest in the ideas around free will, intrigued by Sam Harris' idea why it doesn't exist. These fall in line with one another.

I often think about this in the sense that I have wondered why I feel like the path of my life, all of the trillions of decisions made, were not made by me, they just happened to me. Part of the illusion, assuming it is an illusion, is because the person I am now would not have made so many of the choices I made, and that our faulty memories are incomplete. Life is full of regrets because we grow and change, and looking back we feel shame at our younger selves behavior. Its unfair to make this judgement, of course, but our present judges our past relentlessly.

Looking back I also remember all of the times I should have, or could have been maimed or died. And how many times I could have killed others. Luck yes, no one maimed or died. Or was it fate, whatever that is? There was no luck, things happened the way they did because given the circumstances and the nature of brains of the people involved, what happened was going to happen. Fate. As Dr Harris illustrates, if you disassembled the lives and brains of the people involved, then reconstructed them exactly the same way, there is no reason to expect anything other than that the outcomes would be exactly the same. We would be the same people, same situations, making the same choices. No free will, things happened the way they were going to happen, and in remembering, a fully realized past.

It explains why we keep making the same decisions despite ourselves. As we experience new things and they affect us, they change how our brains make decisions, but what direction that is isn't up to us. The new us is built by the old us. We don't make decisions, our brains do and they make those decisions before we are even conscious that a decision was made.

Which brings us back to the idea that my life happened to me, but it wasn't actually mine in a conscious responsible way. I was swept along, and it just happened while I was there. Or maybe I just think it did. Time passed, I was there, but I wasn't really making the decisions, my brain was, is. And so... I feel like my life happened, I think, but I wasn't really there. I remember it as a filmstrip, but never experienced it. Think about it... why do we make the decisions we make, why do we get a visceral response we have to experience, and work to filter our response, if we can? Where is all of this coming from? Consciousness? What even is that? Is it the brain that makes the decisions without "us" or the part that thinks it made it? The modern bicameral brain, more MacGilchrist than Jaynes .

These days I work hard to overcome my nature when it annoys me, and I have the sense that I am being my better nature. That being said, maybe I just like the decisions my brain is making more today, and my today brain looks back on my past brain's decisions annoyed with it?

Here's to me today, making many of the same brain choices, but responding different enough that sometimes I appreciate progress. I am a better person today than I was yesterday. At least I think I am. I need to ask my brain.

Tomorrow

I don't see tomorrow as a new opportunity for joy and happiness, but rather as another day for something to unravel.

I live with this fear as a reliable friend, unliked but not unexpected. 

Its almost disappointing when nothing happens, because that means tomorrow is coming again,  tomorrow. I go to bed already weighed down and suffering tomorrow's pain.

Our Greatest Shame Is Our Most Desired Dream

 The natural state of humanness is lonely despair. We are sad and anxious beings who are constantly seeking glimmers of happiness and calm. We don’t have to work to be sad, we describe “finding happiness”, but not “finding sadness”, because that’s where we live every one of our days.

I see two kinds of people in relation to their sadness. Those who see it in others and want them to not be sad and lonely, and those so lost in their sadness that they hate that others might find a moment of happiness. The latter rampage their sadness and spill it out over others. The first lends a hand the other throws a fist.

We see it every day. Most are in between, limiting their kindness to those of their perceived tribe (no one really belongs anywhere, another source of happiness we constantly seek), or offering it only when it’s convenient. Many pretend to be kind, but their soul remains dark and it’s done for illusion. Then there are the narcissists who charm but destroy, increasing their own happiness by taking it from others purposefully to protect themselves.

We have the ability to change this. The haters tend to be believers in capitalism, the manifestation of the practice of divide and conquer, unable to see that they are not capitalists, but rather workers bringing riches to the real capitalists, who spray them with the cat piss of corporate cheerleading and marketing to make them believe the other guy is going to steal their cookie. The capitalists are all narcissists by definition, gaslighting us into hating one another and giving us the means to do so . We teach that “you have yours through character and hard work, make them get their own!”, throwing that fist, instead of teaching, “you have yours, that one does not, be kind and share, asking not if they are worthy, for they are worthy simply for being.”  All we must do is believe that everyone is worthy of love and happiness, and then share that everyone should be happy and safe.

That, by the way, is wokeness, the core of social democracy, the belief that we are all one community and each owes one another the necessities of living, and that we are not lead by kings, but by commoners like ourselves. Wokeness is an effort to understand that all of us are equal and worthy of love, dignity, happiness. We all have a right to shelter, clothing, food, education, medical care, our culture, our histories, our loved ones… giving these makes all of us richer, no one lives in the poverty of any of these rights.

Capitalism is the antithesis of what it means to be human. It is a throwback to the days of fighting to survive as individuals. The moment we came together as families, then communities, we had the opportunity to progress to humanity: one caring for another, all caring for all. But we chose tribalism, hoarding and denying compassion, love and respect. We sought division to identify worthiness in every element of being alive, so we could hoard for security and power, and in doing so, we accepted that some would suffer and die simply because we identified them as deserving to suffer and die for being less than. Those not of our perceived tribe deserved their lot, and in fact we guarantee it with our behaviors, our laws, our words to our children and one another. All this has done is brought hate, unhappiness, fear, famine, war, disease, poverty and all their shames. Happiness and safety empower you. They want you afraid that you will lose your home, the ability to feed and clothe your family, to educate if you don't accept thei inadequate wages and working conditions (this is exactly what Eisner of Disney said about SAG-AFTRRA stikers in 2023: go ahead, strike until you lose everything and grovel for less). Literature is rife with this tale of these inequities for millenia. Think of what a universal income, healthcare and education would change for you overnight; you would never live in fear of their loss again. You could work only for those conditions that were fair and competetive for YOU not employers. They need you to be hungry and afraid. If this is to define humanity, what was the point of developing sentience and empathy?

And we know this. We describe this inhumanity in our writings, our plays, our poetry, we share moments of kindness between animals, between humans and we gush. We lament that there are too few who care about others as much as themselves, who see the beauty and joy in kindness. But there is hope, because many of the haters, those who frame this as morality, see and feel the joy of a glimmer of kindness. That there are so many who do not is where the darkness lives. Yes, this too is a division, but it’s not one that seeks to empower itself at the expense of others, rather it is to see those who most need kindness, compassion, and love. That those very ones see this as weakness does not define us woke people, it defines them as needing those very things they despise.

They will continue to divide and hate, claim the high moral ground as their own, and see those who do not as weak. We could react with anger and disdain, and we should, but what we do with that should be love, compassion and kindness. The irony of this, that most of those haters are religious who would describe this as a tenet of their faith while they in practice offer nothing of the sort (even to one another if they were being honest), is not lost to me. That they are frightened and have indoctrinated themselves into being incapable of thinking and feeling their way out of it may be insurmountable. But still, that defines them, not us, and we should respond with kindness and compassion. Torches and rocks often need to be met with torches and rocks, as reason has failed and has no power there, but as a last resort. We are not here to be abused. Tolerance has its limits; those should not be selfish ones. Never do with a stick that which can be done with kindness.

We are sad and lonely because we make each other that way. When we stop, and instead seek to make each other happy, safe and loved, then we have found that nirvana of humanness. Until then, we remain sad, lonely and in despair, pretending to be happy, and holding close those rare moments of true happiness. This is our greatest shame, and our most desired dream.

The Old Tree

There near the southern end of the county

through the back of the fen in the middle of her world,

near the Old Poste Road between the wood rail fence

and the ancient twin paths a skip apart,

there sits the Old Tree,

massive in her breadth and beauty,

green and speckled with light.

The Old Tree had seen some hundred-and-forty springs,

so many nights beneath the stars, 

days under the sun and the rain,

dressed in mist of fog and bathed in crusting snow,

soaked in rays and caressed by winds.

In those years she heard many a song, many a story,

only in part as the wanderers went by,

but never silence as there was always 

something with something to say.

This being a part of the woods

where such passings were rare and unnoticed,

not what moved her most in her fray,

she needed not such passings

in the passing of her days.

For a tree is not a lonely thing,

never alone in nature's worldly way.

She is where she has always been in truth and spirit,

never wanting, never yearning, never astray.

Always alive and and joyous for its yet another day,

and never you mind come what may.

She knows the friends of hill and dale,

the fawn, the mother, the sheep and the lamb,

the buzzing and the furred,

the small and the large things that shadow beneath her wings,

that take comfort in her nooks and bends,

between her roots and soil that ground her 

to the fey and wonderous way.

She is silent and yet sings a song not for you,

but for the faint rustling of her branches and leaves.

She is not here for you, in so many ways,

she gives you life all the same.

You honor her with leaving her be.

She will be here long after your journey is done,

be sure to be kind and gay.

Her memories will always stay within her rings,

not thoughts nor visions of your life,

untold through all those eons of springs,

as she is bound to nature's strife,

you but a passing thing.

The Old Tree is young though she ages,

an immortal in spirit in these woods.

To live forever is not why she lives beyond the days.

She only knows dying if brought to her,

or fate overcomes her in nature's time,

until then she stands radiant and divine,

near the southern end of the county,

by the road at the edge of the fen,

living beyond your days.