The Curse of Enlightenment

 

Something I'm grateful to the pandemic for is the development and greater use of Zoom as a method for attending meetings and lectures. This week I've been at several webinars sponsored by the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, an event they're calling The Buddhism and Ecology Summit: Transforming Anxiety into Awakened Action.  Today's seminar was titled From Mindfulness to Movements and featured activists Michelle King, Dekila Chungyalpa, and Bill McKibben

I've been attending because, like I think.many people are, I am anxious about what is happening to the environment. I'm a child of the 60s and recall too clearly the information, new to the public, that the ecosystem (brand new term) was in trouble and certain things needed to be done or be stopped in order for people to live comfortably in the then-far future of the 21st century. Like many, I calmed myself saying, "By then, practices.will be put into place to counteract all that. There's nothing to worry about, the adults will have it taken care of."

Of course, the adults have not, and in terms of our likelihood of avoiding environmental crises, we're at a further remove than we were then, as solutions like solar, wind, geothermal are more controversial among leaders of industry than to their forebears. President Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof. They become a source of ridicule to the opposition and Reagan had them removed.

So yes, I worry about the end of human life and civilization, although I was also startled by my agreement a few days ago with author Michael Hinton's statement that the so-called 6th Extinction which we are doing our best to bring about by doing nothing at all is as natural as previous extinction events brought about by volcanoes, meteors, and ice ages, and may in fact herald "another set of miracles" like all those others. 

Like Hinton observed I am jealous of anything like that because I'm "in love with the environment as it is now" and don't want to see it changed in a huge way. But a remark by Michelle King about "being the practice" rather than just doing it reminded me too of something I was told at Dhammapada monastery so many years ago.

First, we have to recognize we aren't going to solve the crises. It will take many generations to turn them around just as it took many generations to fuck them up. And secondly, we can't abdicate our--those of us who see clearly and dismsyingly what is happening--responsibility for opening the eyes of others to it. After a period of time at Dhammapada I approached the Abbott during my weekly interview and told him, "Well, I've become enlightened." He looked at me blankly for a few moments and then it terrible sadness crossed his face. "I am so very sorry," he said, clinching my diagnosis. Because it's axiomatic in practice that, once you become enlightened you will see all the problems of the world. Once you can no longer ignore them or rationalize them away, you are responsible for doing what you can to rectify them.

The Fred Durst of Presidents

I'll own to more than a frisson of schadenfreude at trump's indictment and arrest. And while it's a shame not to see him frog-marched ahead of members of his administration, or the sight of trump Force One disappearing over the horizon carrying him, his family, and the clothes on their backs and bound for Argentina or Moscow, there is some pleasure to be had by his being taken down a peg by the petty act of not having a door held for him. But that is petty on my part too, and the truth is he's not worthy of my disappointment or disdain.

Those I save for the United States and the rethuglicans in Congress, the Senate, state and local offices, and individuals in the streets and on TV who support him and would, given the opportunity, vote for him. Again. 

It says something repugnant about our nation that trump won the 2016 election and avoided removal from office for four  very long years in which the policies his sycophants enacted under his--well, you can't call it "supervision" or "governance," so call it "willingness"--caused the deaths and misfortunes of countless citizens and would-be citizens. They were allowed not only to occur but encouraged those results. Donald trump, in retrospect, should have been allowed no closer to the Oval Office than Fred Durst should be allowed on a stage without the involvement of a broom. 

So while I delight somewhat in his troubles, I mourn our own acquiescence in the the fact he was allowed to make them. It should not have happened, and once it did, should have been repaired as quickly as possible. We have the legal means granted by the Constitution and laws to have done so but that we did not is a black mark against us, adult US citizens, a millstone that will hang on our necks. It should. We are finally, finally seeing the results of careful investigation and prosecution, and even if he never spends an hour in an orange jumpsuit, his loss of prestige will inevitably lead to the loss of his apologists. Or it should. I don't think we're headed in any way toward an active war, civil or otherwise, but that trumpanistas and rethuglicans are entrenched in their spider holes and mom's basements, as well as in the seats of power, tells us all we need to know about what they believe. 

We should not have to think about him any more, and that we do is our own fault. 

Audrey and Aiden and Chambers

 I remember my first time driving into Nashville. It was 1988 and I was coming from the west. I  crested a big hill and suddenly, there it was, a beautiful shining city in a valley ringed by a haze visible in the early light. It must have been about 5 or 6 in the morning, and the haze was the residue of tobacco smoke I could clearly smell through my open window. I saw the Cumberland River snake through the city, and I heard faint hints of music on the wind, although that was really the radio station I had on. 

I haven't spent appreciable time in Nashville since then, a quick drive=through skirting the city on my way somewhere else, so I don't know what it's like there. But my reading has given me some indication that, like most big cities, it has citizens who love and cherish it and would protect its people from their fears. For some, that's the easy accessibility of guns, and for others, it's the life-altering identities their children can access. 

I fear the proliferation of guns, myself, and I try to understand the fears of the opposite side. Usually that's a moot debate but a week ago the two fears collided in the person of Audrey Elizabeth Hale, born a woman and often seen dressed and acting like a younger kid, but also identifying as Aiden and using male pronouns. Audrey had attended the Covenant School as a child, leaving for middle school in 2006, but why Aiden went there with guns and shot three adults and three 9 year-olds, we don't know.

I'll admit to being conflicted, because I want to honor Aiden's choice and use male pronouns. But I don't want to honor what Aiden did. I'm uninterested in the rationales school shooters tell themselves and I don't want to start now. But I don't want to lend ammunition to haters telling us it was Audrey's opting to be Aiden that somehow caused the "quiet, shy girl", as Audrey is described by nearly everyone who knew her, to purchase seven (!) guns, all legally despite being treated by a doctor for an "undisclosed emotional disorder.
They try to lay Audrey/Aiden's possible use of medication containing testosterone as having been responsible for the shooting. Per experts, there's anecdotal evidence that high testosterone levels can lead to more aggressive behavior than usual. I don't know if Audrey or Aiden took testosterone in any form but I know any doctor trusted with a patient's well-being monitors both dosage and behavior. closely I also know the desire to kill strangers is not a side effect of taking too much. Testosterone is no more responsible for this horror than it is for other male public shooters. 

So how do I deal with this conflict? Do I mourn Audrey and condemn Aiden? That may be one solution. As possible as it is to hold two conflicting thoughts in your head, it's possible to celebrate one person's life and disdain a part of the same person. If there's a model for this, it's my former friend Chambers. 

Chambers was a good man who was a road dog of mine. We traveled many places together, visited Rainbow Gatherings together, sometimes worked together. I went across country to start a new life and eventually heard from another good friend he had murdered a woman. There were probably signs most of us ignored or were blind to, but Chambers had become a dealer, and while there is much more to this story, the upshot is that one early evening he broke into another dealer's home, was surprised by her, and beat both her and her dog to death. It was neither drugs nor testosterone that gave him the impetus to kill someone, it was simple greed.

None of us knows what caused Aiden to dress in camo, take two long guns and a handgun -and shoot his way into the school, and then shoot six random people including three 9 year-olds but he left a "manifesto". Once it's read and its contents reported, we may have an idea what prompted his action. 

Meanwhile, we have a situation different from and yet too-similar to other mass shootings. A person undergoing treatment legally purchased a number of guns and then shot several vulnerable people. Despite other information we also know, it comes to that.