Changing Places

The Myth of rational thinking

Greg Berns doesn’t want you to make a decision by yourself. He doesn’t trust you.

People don’t make rational decisions, he contends, and you are likely to muck it up. Don’t be offended by his reasoning, though. He says that there are biological reasons why we all get it wrong….

Economists had long assumed that with proper information or instruction, people would make good financial decisions, systematically and without emotion.

“We know from studies that people don’t make rational decisions,” Berns says. “The problem with economic models is that they assume a certain level of rationality by people, that people will maximize their benefits.”

Add into the mix that most of us don’t know that we are irrational, says Emory economist Monica Capra, who is a member of the center. People believe they themselves are rational, even if everyone else isn’t she says.

“The purely rational economic man is indeed close to being a social moron” — Amartya Sen, “Rational Fools”

“Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.” — Oscar Wilde

“Insanity — a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” — R. D. Laing

“The human race is in such a dreadful state that no rational person can talk about it without resorting to seditious and obscene language” — Henry Louis Mencken

“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” — Bertrand Russell

“Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.”
– Anatole France

The intellect is inherently dualistic. It makes distinctions and creates new connections between concepts and calls that “meaning.” This type of analytical thinking is extremely limited in the face of Tao, which is not fully rational, nor fully quantitative, not fully describable. Though most followers of Tao are learned, they also realize that the intellect is but one aspect in what must be a multifaceted approach to Tao.

It is said one must give up education, not because we should be dumb, but because we mut seek a level on consciousness beyond the intellect. We must study, but not to the point that emphasis on experience and meditation is lost. If we can combine the intellect and direct experience with out meditative mid, then there will be no barrier to the wordless perception of reality.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

The sage never tries to store things up.
The more he does for others, the more he has.
The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.

– Tao Te Ching, Eighty-one

Moksa becomes relevant when one realizes that behind one’s struggle for security, artha, and pleasures, kama, is the basic human desire to be adequate, free from all incompleteness, and that no amount of security or pleasure achieves that goal. So when a mature person analyzes his experiences, he discovers that behind his pursuit of security and pleasure is a basic desire to be free from all insufficiency, to be free from incompleteness itself, a basic desire which no amount of artha and kamam fulfills. This realization brings a certain dispassion, nirveda, towards security and pleasures. The mature person gains dispassion towards his former pursuits and is ready to seek liberation, moksa, directly.

– Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Life is
Beauty,
Terror,
Knowledge.

A crucial part of following Tao is seeking knowledge. All the efforts of self-cultivation are meant to make us a fit vehicle for that search. Sometimes what we learn is not pleasant. With learning, we glimpse life as it really is, and that is difficult to bear. That is why spiritual progress is slow : not because no one will tell us the secrets, but because we ourselves must overcome sentiment and fear before we can grasp it.

There is an underbelly of terror to all life. It is suffering, it is hurt. Deep within all of us are intense fears that have left few of us whole. Life’s terrors haunt us, attack us, leave ugly cuts. To buffer ourselves, we dwell on beauty, we collect things, we fall in love, we desperately try to make something lasting in our lives. We take beauty as the only worthwhile thing in this existence, but it cannot veil cursing, violence, randomness, and injustice.

Only knowledge removes this fear. If we were shown the whole truth, we could not stand it. Both lovely and horrible details make us human, and when knowledge threatens to show us our follies, we may realize that we are not yet ready to leave them behind. Then the veil closes again, and we sit meditating before it, trying to prepare ourselves for the moment when we dare to part the curtain completely.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

The follower of knowledge learns as much as he can every day;
The follower of the Way forgets as much as he can every day.

By attrition he reaches a state of inaction
Wherein he does nothing, but nothing remains undone.

To conquer the world, accomplish nothing;
If you must accomplish something,
The world remains beyond conquest.

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Ah, Tao is sometimes full of lovely contradictions. Do we really need to forget something every day, or learn something every day? I think the reality is both are true. We learn new things, new facts, gain new knowledge, and we forget a hurt, an injury, whatever pain someone has caused us. In learning about the world, we learn things that are terible and hard to face. In learning about Tao, we learn that by working with Tao, those things become easier to face, until at last, they seem trivial, like nothing.

I don’t think Lao Tzu really meant to encourage us not to learn or act on on our knowledge. He meant for us to understand the world well enough and completely enough that there is no need for us to act, because we don’t do anything requiring us to take action. It’s paradoxical, but sometimes the less we do, the less problems we create for ourselves. By not eating harmful food, smoking, taking care of our bodies through exercise, we don’t need to take action to repair our health. By living in harmony with others, we don’t create conflict.

Are actions forced upon us at times? Certainly. But the ultimate goal is to not create situations that cause harm and that we need to respond to. But it is an ultimate goal, not something that is easily applied to everyday life with all the problems we must face.

So forget something every day. Forget that someone insulted you. Forget that someone cut you off in traffic. Forget that your kids or your spouse annoyed you. Give away anything that needs dry cleaning. Stop ironing - buy clothes that don’t wrinkle or look good wrinkled. Blue jeans are great. Forget that the kids’ rooms are messy - let them live that way if they like. And give away the collections - you don’t really need them. Simplify your life, however you can. And look out the window, at the sky and birds and plants and just - ah. Isn’t that better?

Off to hike Blue Sky Reserve this morning….

Headline of the Day…

Half of Americans Use Vibrators, Study Claims

via Half of Americans Use Vibrators, Study Claims | LiveScience.

Oh, really?

A good walker leaves no tracks;
A good speaker makes no slips;
A good reckoner needs no tally.
A good door need no lock,
Yet no one can open it.
Good binding requires no knots, Yet no one can loosen it.

Therefore the sage takes care of all men
And abandons no one.
He takes care of all things
And abandons nothing.

This is called “following the light.”

What is a good man?
A teacher of a bad man.
What is a bad man?
A good man’s charge.
If the teacher is not respected,
And the pupil not cared for,
Confusion will arise, however clever one is.
This is the crux of mystery.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 27

One may move so well that a foot-print never shows,
Speak so well that the tongue never slips,
Reckon so well that no counter is needed,
Seal an entrance so tight, though using no lock,
That it cannot be opened,
Bind a hold so firm, though using no cord,
That it cannot be untied.
And these are traits not only of a sound man
But of many a man thought to be unsound.
A sound man is good at salvage,
At seeing that nothing is lost.
Having what is called insight,
A good man, before he can help a bad man,
Finds in himself the matter with the bad man.
And whichever teacher
Discounts the lesson
Is as far off the road as the other,
Whatever else he may know.
That is the heart of it.

Tao Te Ching 27, Witter Bynner translation

You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination…

‘Cause this is thriller, thriller night
There ain’t no second chance against the thing with forty eyes, girl
Thriller, thriller night
You’re fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight

Night creatures calling, the dead start to walk in their masquerade
There’s no escaping the jaws of the alien this time
(They’re open wide)
This is the end of your life…

Being the same age as Michael Jackson, I grew up watching him. Never bought any of his music because it was ubiquitous, everywhere. I don’t think I ever really admired him, except in the sense of realizing how much work it was to do what he did, how much he put into it all. He was an amazing performer, his entire life basically one long performance. I wonder if even Michael ever knew who he really was, underneath it all. A part of the boomer childhood vanished yesterday, with Farrah and Michael. Some are calling it the end of pop culture, but of course it isn’t. But I certainly felt the pull of age and time, and the loss of another piece of my teen years and their history.

Thanks, Michael. We’ll miss you.

“He thought intelligence a function of the individual and that groups of persons were intelligent in inverse proportion to their size. Nations had the brains of an amoeba whereas a committee approached the condition of a trainable moron.”

–  John Updike, in his story “Bech Swings”

“It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.” — Arthur C. Clarke

“I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun”
– Pablo Picasso

“Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done”
– Linus Torvalds

“Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.”
– Bertolt Brecht

“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”
– Socrates

“The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.”
– Oscar Wilde

“Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.” — George Scialabra

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.”
– Tao Te Ching

DNA, Robert Finkbeiner

Three subtle energy currents:
Twin helixes around a jade pillar.
This glowing presence
Is the force of life itself.

Deep in meditation, it is possible to become aware of the life-force itself. You can see it if you learn how to look within. To describe it as electricity, or power, or light, or consciousness is all somewhat correct. But such descriptions are inadequate. You have to see it for yourself. You have to feel it for yourself. You have to know it for yourself.

To be in its presence is like being in front of something primeval, basic, mysterious, shamanistic, and profound. To be in its presence makes all references mute and all senses slack, leaving only deep awe. One is drawn to it in utter fascination. It is the mighty flame to our moth-like consciousness.

This column of energy that coils around itself holds all the stages of our growth. It is our soul; it is the force that animates us and gives us awareness. If you want to engage your life completely, it is essential for you to come to terms with this inner power. Once you harmonize with it you can blend with the dynamics of being human.

Deng Ming Tao, 365 Tao

“Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?
You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.”

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

A helix, sometimes also called a coil, is a curve for which the tangent makes a constant angle with a fixed line. The shortest path between two points on a cylinder (one not directly above the other) is a fractional turn of a helix, as can be seen by cutting the cylinder along one of its sides, flattening it out, and noting that a straight line connecting the points becomes helical upon re-wrapping (Steinhaus 1999, p. 229). It is for this reason that squirrels chasing one another up and around tree trunks follow helical paths. — Eric Weisstein, Mathworld

I think the extraordinary success of the double helix sprang largely from the fact that it’s such a simple geometric shape. The helix struck a responsive chord in so many people because it suggested that the secret of life is something you can look at. Looking at it, you see properties which otherwise would have been totally incoherent if you didn’t have a geometric shape to hang it on. –Benoit Mandlebrot

“What is art,
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art’s life, — and where we live, we suffer and toil.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

People often talk about their spiritual growth as a spiral. Karen Armstrong’s recent autobiography is called “The Spiral Staircase“. Very few people find their spirituality is a straightforward process, if they are determined to really find something more than what western society gives us as religion, or what Eastern mysticism gives us as chants and mantras.

For me, the spiritual growth has come in strange ways and from strange places, and I think that is how authentic spiritual growth progresses, from within, as we turn through the limits of our own being and try to become more. We find ourselves turning again and again within the limited space of ourselves, and finally realize that there is an enormous amount of space outside of ourselves. We then create mobius strips and Klein bottles, trying to bring this outside space within ourselves, an impossible task at first. We see the beautiful poetry of Rumi as he struggles with spirituality, the magnificent stories and tales of mythology, religion, and literature, all trying to move in these same paths.

And then one day, a small hummingbird sits in front of your nose, flapping its wings, and looks at you curiously, or you gaze into a flower and finally really see it, or someone says something that catches your ear and your mind at just the right moment, or a quiet meditation brings you to the place within yourself that just knows, simply knows, and you smile. You get it. You get that Mona Lisa smile on your face and just — become yourself.

And it happens over and over. We find ourselves, we lose ourselves, we find ourselves again, at another place on the spiral. The helixes divide, and come back together. And life goes on.

There is a bunny in my garden! It is small enough to fit through the 2 by 2 inch grid fence. I’ve chased it out a couple times now but I’m sure it will be back again.

Sigh. Never had bunnies in the yard before. Usually they are afraid of the dogs and the cat, but I guess this one is very brave or very stupid. Well, not stupid enough for me to catch yet…

Sad… I make fun of Twitter, but this is just… sad.

Two things here in what seems to be the world’s first Twittercide: don’t use your computer while taking a bath. And if for whatever reason you do, don’t be like this 17-year-old Romanian girl and risk your well-being to Tweet.

The Austrian times says that Maria Barbu was, in fact, in the tub while using Twitter when she likely reached to plug in her charger with a wet hand, electrocuting herself in the process. You smell that? Yeah, that’s a Darwin Award in the making. [Austrian Times]

via Gizmodo - Girl Dies by Electrocution While Twitting in Bathtub, Apocalypse Draws Nearer - Girl Dies Twitter Bathtub.

Remember

Long ago, far away
Life was clear
Close your eyes…

Remember — is a place from long ago
Remember — filled with everything you know
Remember — when you’re sad and feeling down
Remember — turn around

Remember — life is just a memory
Remember — close your eyes and you can see
Remember — think of all that life can be
Remember…

Dream — love is only in a dream
Remember …
Remember — life is never as it seems
Dream…

Long ago, far away
Life was clear
Close your eyes…

– Harry Nilsson

(posted today for Neil Bulger, who passed away June 15th…)

Summer Solstice at the ancient observatory of Stonehenge.

Chinese astronomers determine the summer solstice

Solstice comes from the Latin (sol, sun; sistit, stands). For several days before and after each solstice, the sun appears to stand still in the sky—that is, its noontime elevation does not seem to change.

When the true light appears,
The entire planet turns to face it.

The summer solstice is the time of greatest light. It is a day of enormous power. The whole planet is turned fully to the brilliance of the sun.

This great culmination is not static or permanent. Indeed, solstice as a time of culmination is only a barely perceptible point. The sun appears to stand still. Its diurnal motion seems to nearly cease. Yesterday, it was still reaching this point; tomorrow, it will begin a new phase of its cycle.

Those who follow Tao celebrate this day to remind themselves of the cycles of existence. They remember that all cycles have a left and a right, an up side and a down side, a zenith and a nadir. Today, day far surpasses night, and yet night will gradually begin to reassert itself. All of life is cycles. All of life is balance.

So celebrate, but be not proud. For whenever you celebrate high achievement, the antithesis is also approaching. Likewise, in misfortune, be not sad. For whenever you mourn in grief, the antithesis is also approaching. Those who know how to reach the peak of any cycle and remain glorious are the wisest of all.

Deng Ming Tao, 365 Tao

And a Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads. My husband’s present is getting away from us all for the day. Not for good reasons, unfortunately, he’s off to a friend’s brother’s funeral in Phoenix.

I’ve always celebrated the Winter Solstice more than the Summer Solstice — I’m happier for the end of darkness than for the day the light begins to decline again. We haven’t seen that much of the sun here this year, though — even yesterday it was cloudy and barely hit 70. Today the sun is out shining and we’ll maybe see 80. These cool days are getting to me — I need some heat. I’m sure as soon as it does get warm I’ll be complaining about it, though.

But my poor tomatoes are half-shriveled things and the peppers look stunted. They need some light and heat to take off and do well. I’ve planted a few more tomatoes just to replace the ones that have just given up this year. My yellow pear is the only one that is really doing well. So we’ll be buried in yellow pears, at least. I have a couple brandywines that have popped up on their own, and as soon as they get big enough we’ll have a good haul from them.

President Obama took a jab at Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner last night:

“In Egypt, we had the opportunity to tour the pyramids,” Mr. Obama said, referring to his trip earlier this month. “And by now, I’m sure you’ve all seen the pictures of Rahm on that camel. I admit, I was a little nervous about the whole situation. I said at the time, ‘This is a wild animal known to bite, kick and spit. And who knows what the camel could do.’ ”

Via Kos.

Be careful what you tweet — people might make fun of you…

To Hoekstra is to whine using grandiose exaggerations and comparisons.

It all started with a simple, foolish tweet. On June 17th, GOP Congressman Pete Hoekstra compared the life and death struggle of Iranians trying to get their message out via Twitter to the Republican Party’s tussle with Democrats. (See quote above.) The Twitterati began satirizing Hoekstra’s tweet (see lulz below).

And that’s how the Hoekstra meme was born.

via Pete Hoekstra is a Meme.

Apparently I need to make a road trip to Germany. I must have this!!

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The world is dazzling,
I alone am dull.
Others strive for achievement,
I follow a lonely path.

Followers of Tao are nonconformists. The conventional label our behavior erratic, antisocial, irresponsible, inexplicable, outrageous, and sometimes scandalous. We hear other voices, respond to inner urgings. We have no interest in the social norm; we only care about following Tao. It does not matter if no one can understand us, for we are nurtured by something most people do not sense. Awakening to this inner urge, and distinguishing spiritual impulses from the merely instinctual, is one of the crucial goals of self-cultivation.

We all have many voices, personalities, ambitions, and tendencies within ourselves. The ability to distinguish between them, and the ability to silence all the voices save for Tao’s, is imperative if one is to reach this state of being. Once one is in touch with the true Tao, there are no doubts, and the murmuring of others cannot have any effect. One is as comforted as a child at its mother’s breast.

The more one walks in Tao, the more one is interested in self-perfection. All that matters is constant cultivation to be with Tao. This is a lonely path. There are others who follow Tao, but it is not always possible to meet them. That is why is takes someone both sensitive enough to hear the call and strong enough to walk the solitary path.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the sufferage of the world.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after one’s own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.

– Alan Keightley

I guess I’m pretty much a nonconformist. I don’t always do this because I’m listening to the Tao, though. I have done a lot of things due to following those other voices in my head. Tao helps me to silence a lot of them, though. I’ve never really paid much attention to what others think about me, but when it’s someone whose opinion matters to me and they pull away their support for me, that has hurt, a lot. I’ve learned to let go of those hurts, but the scars are still there and tend to keep me from getting close to people and trusting other people sometimes.

I’m not nonconformist to be different. I just grew up in an age of questioning authority and the norms, and it stuck. It’s not a case of “I want to be different, just like all my friends!” I’ve just learned to enjoy people who are different, who think for themselves and can make their own decisions about what works in their lives. I find them more interesting, and more honest than those who try to hide what actually happens in their marriage or in their lives for fear of being out of the norm.

So the Tao works for me. Not because I hear a call, or am strong, but because it makes sense to me. It gives me ideas to think about that help me organize my life a little more clearly, and doesn’t have a God I must believe in or a strict set of rules I need to follow. Tao just is, and is in everything. And I just am, and am into everything.

One of the best things about Paris is the abundance of fine chocolate makers. The creativity of many of the chocolatiers is amazing. This is at Patrick Roger. (Be sure to check out their site — some of the other stores are even more amazing.) Oh, and they deliver…

Yes, they’re chocolate! These are at Jean-Charles Rochoux, who was amazing. We got some chocolat liqeuers there that were just wonderful. (Their web site is cute but utterly useless). There’s a nice review of his shop here.

John-Charles Rochoux
16, rue d’Assas (6th)
Tél: 01 42 84 29 45
Métro: St. Sulpice or Rennes
Closed on Sundays and Monday morning

So this was our dinner in Paris that evening, in our hotel room, with our 25th anniversary bottle of wine from the hotel staff. Chocolat, bread from Poullaine, charcuteries and local cheeses, and Laduree and Pierre Hermes macarons for dessert!. Would you believe that with all the walking,  we even lost a couple pounds in Paris?!

More chocolat photos here.

Oh, and check this out — chocolat stamps!

I learned these lessons when I lost my dad 15 years ago June 20th, again when I lost my mom 5 years ago. I actually found this on the Internet a couple years ago around this time of year, but never cross posted it then, since the blogger’s feelings then still seemed too raw to invade their private space, or as private as anything on the Internet ever is. They are no longer blogging, and that blog was deleted, but the words still speak to me.

I always get sad around this time of year, I always forget why and can’t figure it out, and then after a few days, it hits me. It’s that time of year again, when I faced the first major real loss of my life. And then, I always cry.

Galvanized

It’s an ignorant bliss if you’ve never yet lost someone close before. It’s not until a few weeks after that the reality soaks in. You think that you’re fine while the people visit and at the funeral, and then *cold slap* it’s not his booming voice saying, “hey!,” anxious energy, or pat on the back when they arrive through their front door or not that face that rounds the corner as expected. And all of the words that you ever read before about death and loss seem somehow not so cliche, less like rhetoric than before.

If you have experienced it before, you are forever after able to stand apart and feel almost removed from the situation, however compassionately, as you witness others being initiated as though it is a cruel hazing to make them hug and grieve their way up the line into this morose membership of “We Who Now ‘Get What Life is Really About’ Club.” Death reminds us that we are each a soul that comes in alone and departs the same. So there is a purpose to death, and that is to more fully love life.

Death of someone close opens one’s eyes. And it divides your life into two parts — that carefree and somewhat self-absorbed existence you knew before loss, and the now-imperfect one you are left with to more fully appreciate and parse through for little gems afterward, as though it is an endless beach from which you will forever be collecting special shells — you realize both mortality and immortality at the same time — what you lovingly place in your pocket while here (your earthly life), and what you can take in your heart when you transition to eternity. This is what my kids have learned from losing their Grandpa, my husband from losing his father.

I hurt for them and hate that they must now join the “club.” But I know Grandpa will leave them with this one last — and his best — lesson: to never take a day of your life for granted because you never know which will be your last day.

In some ways the Musee Rodin was my favorite — the former Hotel Biron where Rodin actually worked, the beautiful gardens full of Rodin’s sculptures, watching people interact with the sculptures — it was all beautiful and fascinating. There’s also an excellent little garden cafe here which was very pleasant. It’s very fortunate that Rodin’s plan to save this place as a museum for his work succeeded — I think he would have been pleased at the result, watching people interact with his sculptures in such a great setting.

The gardens are really stunning, and very enjoyable to wander through and visit with the sculptures.

Even the Gates of Hell become beautiful in the right setting…

More Musee Rodin photos here.

Not only is the Musee d’Orsay full of wonderful art, it is wonderful art itself. The building is absolutely gorgeous.

Something here seems to inspire the visitors to become art themselves. This girl was posed just like the statue, but I missed the shot that her friend was taking and caught her as she was getting back up. I love how the boy in the background is posed, too. The sculptures here are all so elegant, and I loved watching the crowd interact with them.

It’s difficult to not feel beautiful when surrounded by so much beauty, though.

Especially when so many of the lovely ladies are curvy like me!

Lots more Musee d’Orsay photos here. And here.

Too cute! More here.

Via Dependable Renegade.