Always darkest before dawn.

Whoever said "it's always darkest before dawn" had a very poor understanding of optical physics. Anyone who's ever gotten up at four in the morning and stared at the eastern horizon knows what I'm talking about. In fact, anyone who's stayed up all night knows that it's darkest at the exact point when the sun is at its nadir; that is, the point at which the earth most completely occludes the sun.

Here's a picture:

Nature is not human-hearted. The sun is a huge ball of hydrogen and helium, fusing into lithium and carbon and eventually iron, on its very gradual way towards becoming too hot and dense to contain itself. Around five billion years from now, it'll consume itself and take everything in the inner solar system with it. The elements flung off from the death throes of the daystar will in turn birth new solar systems, and so it goes.

And the heart is not much more than an engine forged from the remnants of past dead stars; it too is subject to the laws of entropy, and will give out at some not-quite-certain point in the future. And the fortunes of most people are governed by similar laws: rise and fall, peak and trough, but the general trend is towards decline and extinguishment.

Point is: don't let some threadbare cliché fool you into thinking that hard times always come to happy endings at some predictable point in the narrative. This is real life, and not the stories we tell ourselves about real life. Anyone who's stayed up all night waiting for the sunrise knows what I mean: by the time the sun's rays begin to illuminate the upper atmosphere, you regret staying up all night and want nothing more than to go back to bed.

Practical lessons to take from this: (1) try to see a sunrise on a regular basis, because they're glorious and worth waking up early for, (2) get some sleep while you're at it, and (3) try not to sink into a pit of bibbering despair when things go south. Because sure, the universe is trending towards entropy, but it's no excuse to not try and make something of it in your brief tenure as participant and witness to the universe's unfolding.

2014: Let's do this.

It's been a wild year. I started the year off in the worst mental health of my adult life, a period I decided to call later on my 'psychosomatic rebellion' --- mind and body refused to cooperate. There were mornings I couldn't get out of bed, despite trying to leverage the last remaining shreds of willpower I had. It's easier when you're younger to just 'suck it up' and do it, but as we grow older, it becomes increasingly difficult, and that's partly because you begin to see that just sucking it up is not an end in itself: it's a means to an end. And I had lost that end.

How I lost the plot

The end was to do research and teach, but after spending two years in the belly of the academic beast, I realized that it would not lead to anything that I would call a meaningful or fulfilling life.

There's this myth that academia is a meritocracy: if you're smart and hard-working (and even a little creative), you'll get far, but the truth is that the vast majority of academic superstars came from advantaged backgrounds, and even though I'm a white male, coming from a poor family means that if I pursued a PhD, I'd be nearly guaranteed to be more than $100,000 in the hole after finishing, instead of the relatively tamer $40,000 that is my current and final debt load.

Let me restate: I've seen smarter and harder-working people than I am get sunk by academia, because they believe (despite abundant evidence to the contrary) that academia is a meritocracy, when in fact, it's anything but. Let this be a warning to anyone who thinks about pursuing grad school.

The grass isn't any greener on the other side

The corporate world isn't much better: I worked for a major educational corporation throughout my entire grad career, but the difference was that I could make a living from it. I watched as it went from a network of more-or-less independent franchises to centralized corporate control, in a business where the majority of clients and referrals come through personal networks that can't be managed from a corner office in New York. I watched as it was mismanaged into the ground by the investment firm that bankrolled the centralization and consolidation: as a contracted employee, I wasn't all too affected (i.e. I still made a living), but before anyone reading this starts thinking that academia is somehow uniquely shitty, I want to head you off at the pass and reassure you that there're many worse places to be than academia.

The audacity of hope

So here I am: only a thesis away from graduation, my future already mortgaged, and having spent the last two years of my life training for a career that I'm no longer willing to pursue. I'm increasingly self-employed, because I think having multiple hustles is far more practical than pinning your hopes on one career or another. I've traded my one big hope for a dozen smaller hopes: hopes that people will pay me to write and teach, hopes that I can learn from everything I experience (no matter how painful).

Hope is a funny thing. It's the backbone of my ability to suck it up and move forward. I lived on $9,000 a year for many years with the one big hope that my sacrifice and struggle would pay off, but after ten years of struggling, I've come to see it as the dead end that it has been the entire time. I don't hope that people will pay for my writing: people already have, and all I have to do is step it up big-time.

Regrouping and retraining

So I'm taking my degree and using it. By May, barring any unforeseen circumstances, I will be awarded a master's degree in anthropology. Many anthropologists have done fairly well for themselves outside of academia, but everyone I know who has done so has made it through a combination of luck, creativity, and perseverance. I am no different. I don't see my schooling as my education. The countless hours spent studying Marxian political economy, social statistics, global development, and human-environment interactions are hard to spin into a paying career, but that's not the point: unless the Internet collapses tomorrow, people who can think and write will always find some means of making a living.

So in conclusion: 2014 is going to be one hell of a ride. Let's do this.

What we have now will never be that way again

After I finished my bachelor's, I moved into and helped create an intentional community called the Birdhouse (so named because we were on Bird St.). We had weekly (and often more frequent) house meetings during which we created a sort of living mission statement, informed by our knowledge of and experiences with the negative side effects of consumer culture --- the American Dream having turned into a nightmare right before our very eyes in the aftermath of the Great Adjustment of 2008.

In practice, we modeled ourselves on an existing collective in Tampa called the Lakehouse, who were organized around the principles of engaged Christianity. Since we couldn't necessarily organize around religious lines, we instead organized on principles of minimizing our environmental impact and working for justice for socio-economically marginalized peoples. This was easy because we all were just out of college, under-employed, and living in a marginalized neighborhood. I jumped at this because it gave me a chance to practice the sort of engaged anthropology I had envisioned myself doing, and doing this put me in constant contact with other anthropologists working in Sulphur Springs.

So I went to grad school, and suddenly the time and emotional pressures of grad school proved to be too much to juggle in addition to my responsibilities to the collective. So I moved out, and I'm moving again, and pretty soon I'll be moved out of Tampa (if all goes according to plan).

And each move puts me at increasingly further distance from the primary relationships I formed during those years living at the Birdhouse. Because living in a community like that does wonders for propinquity --- the relationships you form when you sleep three to a room, share everything, and where front-porch discussions made for a much richer evening than the alternatives of isolation and numbing entertainment.

I'm kind of sad right now.

This time last year I was in the middle of one of the worst breakdowns of my adult life, radically re-organizing my life around the path that took me to where I am today, but in order to follow that path I had to give up something that I only really began to appreciate in hindsight: the propinquity. And I'm glad for the shitstorm that has been this year of life, because a lot of really good things have happened, too. For the first time in a long long while, I can say the laughter has outweighed the tears, even by a little bit.

Control fires and the art of letting it burn.

I've been bothered recently by how my Zen practice has changed. I haven't sat in meditation for maybe two weeks, haven't attended sangha in quite a bit more than that (part of that was because I was seeing someone who was only available on weekends), and have felt kind of 'caught up' in my off-the-cushion life: thesis research, paperwork, teaching, catching up with everyone I've fallen off the map from, and in general figuring out where to go from here.

And I think this is good for me, too. If I could label what's going on here, I could call it 'control burning'. You see, in forestry and managing forest fires, the prevailing wisdom for the first half of the 20th century was to prevent forest fires as they sprang up. This led to forests being choked with thick undergrowth and lots of flammable organic matter waiting for a spark.

But foresters realized that forest fires played an important ecological role in not only clearing undergrowth, but also setting the stage for another round of ecological succession. Ashes released potassium into the soil. Some species of conifer only release their seeds when their cones are burned by fire. First- and second-generation colonizing plants (like clover and other 'weeds') regenerated soils depleted by old-growth trees.

Source: texasagriculture.gov

Similarly, I realized that sometimes, you need to let go and let things burn for a while. This most recent round of psycho-ecological succession was not altogether unpleasant: I could hardly call it a 'burn', but the same idea applies. One of the things I burned was my attempts to make Zen into a replacement for the religion I was raised into (fundamentalist Baptist and evangelical Christianity), one that sees your existence as fundamentally problematic and offers the One True Way to make it right again. I remember writing in my journal a few months ago: "If I don't become a Zen master by the time I'm 50, I'll fucking shoot myself." That came out of an idea that everything that led to my becoming 'sane' was somehow external to myself.

Zen is fertile ground for all sorts of 'curative fantasies' to spring up. One of those curative fantasies was the idea that somehow, if I meditated long enough, if I followed the Five Precepts to the letter (refraining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and taking intoxicants), if I stopped at the sound of a bell and followed my breaths x number of times every day, then I could finally achieve that state of imperturbable calm and stillness that I was longing for.

But I quickly found that even on the cushion, it wasn't always possible to wedge my mind into that fantasy. When you're sitting, you're not retreating from reality: you're becoming a container for everything you're experiencing in that reality in that exact moment. And it's a lot: the clicking of the ceiling fan, the stuffiness of the room, the movements of your internal organs, the beating of your heart, the slight ache in your knees and shoulders, your racing thoughts.

It gets overwhelming, and you wonder whether you're doing it wrong. Enough of that and you realize that Zen is useless. Because it is --- if the goal you set for Zen practice is to become a marble statue, then you'll quickly find Zen useless to that goal. People by their very nature aren't made of stone; they're human beings, and human beings will never wake up (individually or collectively) if they keep loading spiritual practice with all these curative fantasies, when the purpose of spiritual and religious practice is to become more present and connected with life as it is. Or at least as it seems.

If it gets overwhelming, you're doing it right. Lean into it, or let it burn.

Follow your bliss and cultivate the opposite impulse.

It just occurred to me that I never improved in any measure of my life by focusing on the problems. I didn't become a functional human being after years of social anxiety and depression by fixating on the particulars of my anxiety and depression; instead, I constructed an image of self that wasn't in a constant state of existential panic over his dysfunction --- and followed my bliss.

By the way, concerning the phrase 'follow your bliss' --- this is credited to the late Joseph Campbell, one of the foremost scholars in the public discourse over religion and values. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that one of my supervisors at my tutoring job had read Joseph Campbell; Cracked.com had a video some time ago where one of the characters referenced the "Hero's Journey". He's got a deep public impact (but mostly the older and college-educated), and I think he's got a point: follow your bliss.

Following your bliss entails risk. It requires sacrifices in other areas of your lives, and sometimes it's a real dilemma to decide which parts get the cut, and which parts you work for. This sounds a lot like work, though, when it's qualitatively different: we in this society are often defined by our work, and before I drag Marx and the commodification of labor into this already-tottering thought, I'll just talk about following your bliss. Do it. I only decided to finish grad school because I was so close to finishing anyways, and negotiated an image of self that included having a master's degree, student debt, an increasing number of funerals to attend in upcoming years, and financial insecurity. And am following my bliss through that (not despite that).

'Bliss' may not be the best word for it, then. I'd just say 'growth', and remind the reader that you are responsible for your growth, and have more power to choose which direction you grow in than you think you have. Oak trees grow enormous tapering taproots which, through the particulars of biology and ecology, follow sources of water and soil nutrients over time, plotting the least energy-intensive paths to obtain what they need. So do the same. Often what we tell ourselves is more important than what is possible.

Fourteen Challenges to the Fourteenth Generation, Part I

In most ways, my story is much the same as those of my generational cohort: born into a world humming and crackling its way through the greatest economic boom ever experienced in living memory, and coming of age against the backdrop of unceasing violent asymmetrical conflicts over resources and geopolitical influence, burgeoning socio-economic inequality, and increasingly hard-to-ignore environmental and climatic instabilities. I was born into the War on Drugs and graduated into the War on Terror, and now it seems we're getting locked into a War on Each Other (but isn't that always how it's been?).

When I entered college, the state and federal governments threw money at me. I was the smart poor kid, the one who would have been a conservative's wet dream of pulling himself up by his bootstraps and making his way in the world entirely through his own gumption and fortitude. Counselors encouraged me to 'pursue my passion', because smart people like me tend to do well when they do that (that is not universally true).

But being the oldest son of a family hit hard by the bitch-slap that globalization inflicted on once easily-available entry-level jobs requiring no college degree, I initially set out to pursue nursing, because I never wanted to be poor again. Instead, I got my ass kicked in general chemistry and chose to pursue anthropology instead (which was what I read when I was procrastinating my way through my undergrad years). I decided being poor wasn't so bad, because I had managed to be both happy and poor at the same time.

The most radical act a young person can take is to be happy --- we live in a world that constantly pokes young people to do more, to aim higher, to work harder, underpinning it with the assumption that if we don't, we'll die poor and lonely. Being happy means not listening to those voices, and instead, doing whatever it takes to maintain and increase your happiness. For me, it had little to do with money and a lot to do with impact and life satisfaction. That's a big deal for me, since financial security and prosperity are increasingly out of reach for most people of my generation.

So I graduated in 2009, looked around, saw forty-somethings with years of experience in supposedly recession-proof STEM fields begging for entry-level jobs, said 'hell no', and did a lot of volunteering and protesting for two years before deciding that wasn't something I could do for the rest of my life (e.g. couldn't pay the bills and wasn't getting any satisfaction out of it), and so here I am, in grad school, and while the economy's 'picking back up', it's only really benefiting those who were already set-up before the Great Crash of 2008. I sometimes wonder what the fuck I'm doing in grad school, and remember that as a grad student, I am much better off than I was as a graduate struggling to make ends meet while sharing an old house with five other people. But part of that is thanks to my student loan debt, which while below the national average, is still keeping me up at night.

We, the teeming millions of young people trying to find our place in the world, are in a difficult place relative to those born even a decade before us: those older than us offer us thought-stopping chunks of advice like "stop feeling sorry for yourselves" and "manage your expectations", forgetting that we grew up under "chase your dreams" and "work hard and you'll succeed". It wasn't our peers who started that silliness; it was our elders, who conveniently forgot all that once the Great Recession of 2008 rolled in.

Let me get this straight: I worked my ass off, full-time while taking full-time course loads. I did not waste my early adult years partying. That was for kids who could afford to not work on Friday nights. Not me, and not many others. The only young people who have it easy are those whose lives are supported and subsidized by the inherited hard work and sacrifice of older generations. It's a mark of the privilege enjoyed by many among the older generations that they don't have to think about the struggles of the young, while we the young cannot afford the luxury of not thinking critically about our situation and placing it into context.

Context: we've been in this situation before.

The older generations need to stop painting the younger generations with a broad brush, because frankly, that kind of thinking is nothing more than masturbation: satisfying in the short term but accomplishing nothing over the long term.

But the same is true for the younger generations: I mistrust Baby Boomers because they were the grandparents who hurt my mother, the bosses who screwed my family over, the oblivious old farts in carbon-vomiting land yachts trying to run me over on my bicycle, the elected officials giving tax breaks to their peers while turning a blind eye to anyone who isn't part of their tribe.

In short, Baby Boomers are power, and I mistrust and resent power because I have more often than not been on the receiving end of abuses of power. I have particular contempt for the class of Baby Boomers who live their lives in comfort while offering shitty advice with a straight face, as though the economic climate of the US was in any way recognizably similar to the one we, the 80 million young, must contend with today.

So what do we do about it? I have a couple of ideas (a topic for a later post), but I welcome input from anyone else, both old and young.

I am grateful for white privilege.

So I've been obsessed with race lately. This is something I've been thinking about for a while, especially since I'm also obsessed with dysfunctional power and economic structures (particularly the ones we in the US live under) and socio-economic disparities. But this recent race kick I've been on was sparked by recent incidents of violence that crosses racial boundaries (like the Trayvon Martin case and the recent Charlie Bates spree in the USF area) and how the media covered them.

Let me just say this: I am grateful for the privilege I enjoy as a heterosexual educated American-born white male with no physical or mental disabilities. It's fucking great. I can walk into most stores with a backpack and no one bats an eye. I get good service in restaurants. The few times I've interacted with the police have never involved my arrest or physical harm to my person. I can marry the person I love. I can be myself and not be threatened, beaten, or killed for being who I am. The world is built for people like me, and I'm grateful for that, but I know damn well that most people don't live lives nearly as safe, secure, and supported as mine. And it eats me alive.

Source: Eastern Connecticut State University

So I almost got robbed tonight by two young black males. No harm came to me --- I waited until I was sure of hostile intent (I was damn sure), cut across traffic to block them, called 911, and clearly stated my exact location and a physical description of the two kids before they could come close. I then called the first person I could think of and waited at a 7-11 for a ride home. The adrenaline wore off when I got home. I started shaking, and when I got home I talked it out with my roommate.

This isn't the first time this has almost happened (it's the second), but this is the first time this happened, and I caught myself feeling compassion for these kids. I hope they were caught. I hope the officers gave them a stern talking-to, held them overnight to scare them a little, and then sent them home. But let's not bullshit ourselves --- this is exactly the way a cop would have treated me, a young white male, and if they were caught, they are fucked.

And this is a normative experience for non-whites. Society already puts several strikes against them: poor, black, male, young, speaking non-standard English, acting in non-mainstream ways. A criminal record (if they don't have one already) would almost certainly doom them to the same tragic and miserable life I assume  know most of their peers are mired in: frequent incarceration, economic instability, violence and physical danger that we the privileged do not have to deal with to the same degree. Yes, I was almost robbed. But I come from a place where if I were robbed, I would not be left swinging in the breeze. This is not likely to be the case with these kids.

Like I said: I'm grateful for my privilege. But it's a bitter gratitude, since I know these kids and millions more like them are never going to feel as safe, existentially secure, and supported as I do. May all beings be happy, safe, healthy, free from fear, and love easily.