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.

SaMM: When to throw in the towel.

So: despite the advantages to motorcycles as primary vehicles outlined in a previous post, it has come to a point where I'm rather tired of sinking so much time into troubleshooting and repairs for the Noble Savage. I've also had the use of a car for the past few months while a friend is out of the country, and I've experienced the benefits of having the option of taking the motorcycle (or not).

Motorcycles-as-primary-transportation works well if your occupation doesn't require reliable transportation. When my primary occupation was that of a graduate assistant, and all I needed to do was show up on campus, but now that my primary occupation routinely includes trips to neighboring counties, cars win out for reliability and shielding from the weather.

I have begun the task of planning my next vehicle purchase, and that vehicle will not be a motorcycle. This makes me sad to say. It's as though I've traded my oil-stained jeans in for pleated khakis and my exhaust-pipe-scarred combat boots for loafers. I've put off owning a car for 27 years, and I would ideally like to never purchase a car, but my life is no longer set up to allow me to not own a car and still maintain that lifestyle (which is sweet and I am happy).

So this is Sven, who will still do motorcycle maintenance and blog about it, but for now, I'm signing off and  setting up a new blog about the trials of one young man with $4k in the bank taking on the project of purchasing the best possible used car for that money and doing so within two months. I'm basing this project off a similar one done by staff writers at the used car consumers' website Edmunds.com, called 'The Debt-Free Car Project'. Check it out --- it's exactly like what I'm trying to do.

I have money and time on my side. I'm already better off than most used-car buyers. I'm gonna replicate that experiment here in Tampa, epicenter of shadiness and lax consumer protection, where scammers descend upon unsuspecting car buyers like locusts from Hell and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. I will pass through that Hell unscathed, with the compassion and perspicacity of a bodhisattva, and in two months' time, I will join the ranks of people who have to make the following decision every morning: take the bike, or take the car? Stay tuned.

I can still wear my gear, and just say I'm pretending to be the Stig.

Sven and the Art of Spiritual Materialism.

So a while ago I asked a few friends of mine whether I should take the Three Refuges in a formal ceremony, because that's the pattern I'm familiar with when one adopts a religion. You convert. It's a discrete moment marked by recited words and it's all very sober and dramatic. You cry. But instead, I learned and recited the Three Refuges and the Five Precepts alone in a hotel room. In my sweatpants. Typical Sven move.

Taking refuge is a process, not a punctual event. You don't have a flash of insight and suddenly become overtaken by the dharma. We're all up the same creek, but we have oars. We take refuge in a lot of things: friends, lovers, jobs, drugs, experiences, solitude, exercise, food, sleep. None of these things really brings any lasting happiness, thanks to the hedonic treadmill we all run frantically to keep up with. And so we think that rowing harder will gain us happiness. Not so.

Image credit: "Americosmos" by Darrin Drda

The entire world system as it is right now is powered by that treadmill. Entire industries, trillions of dollars per year in aggregate, exist with the promise of alleviating suffering. Advertising, marketing, education and credentialing, the American Dream, the idea of a soulmate for everyone --- all promise but don't deliver, because you build up a tolerance to happiness, and need ever-greater highs to achieve the same degree of happiness as you go on. The hedonic treadmill, in a nutshell!

So --- what's been occupying my mind lately is how to negotiate this rather dramatic set of choices and changes with the consequences of my past choices. It's too easy to slip into binary thinking, and to summarize the fallacy I'm committing here, I think I can either be a 'good Buddhist' and have to forsake everything in my life, live in lonely poverty, be a victim. Or pursue more worldly things, abandon any hope of lasting happiness, be drawn back into cynical anhedonia, but manage to achieve some status and what little security is to be had through that path.

But binary thinking is a trap. Those are not my only two options, and I'm limited only by my courage and imagination. The dharma, after all, is performed to the best of your ability. I'm not likely to wake up one morning and find myself a bodhisattva. That doesn't happen. It takes work, and the kind of work it takes helps me to become a better person --- more loving, more on the same wavelength as others, more compassionate, more honest, more humble, more generous, more focused. I'm never going to soar to the heights of academia or politics or the corporate world, but I'll take my chances and try to make a comfortable living doing something useful, and give to the world that way. That is dharma. Roll with the punches. Leave power to the squabbling gods, and be defiantly human: vulnerable, fragile, bound up in both suffering and happiness but not intrinsically marked by either state.

But what I don't want to do is become someone for whom the dharma is a neat accessory. Have an Alan Watts playlist on Spotify. Wear malas and dress in all white. Find any excuse to bring up some exegesis of a Pali term. Pursue the material and wear the spiritual as yet another part of my identity: Sven, ginger, motorcycle rider, grad student, anthropologist, dharma bum. After all, I took refuge alone in my sweatpants, so any attempt to try to make this improve my perceived sex appeal is futile.

I'm very reluctant to call myself a Buddhist, because linguistically, it doesn't work for me. There is no 'I' to be. I'm a collection of molecules organized in such a way that I can move under my own power and make more of me. I have thoughts and feelings that can be explained in terms of those physical processes. There is no permanent and unchanging 'me' --- personality and habits are all conditioned by realities outside of yourself, but understanding and ultimately freedom comes from within.

But I own my actions, past, present, and future. I do both good things and evil things, but I am not those things. These actions, however, mold who I am, and that's where choice comes in. And so I choose.