We don't just tinker in the workshop, we think too. No guarantees on the quality of those thoughts, but because I have not achieved zen master status yet the monkey mind fires away on all cylinders "as if driven by a motor" to quote the psych eval I recently completed (more on that sometime I'm sure).
I want to keep these posts to a minimum of crankiness, so I will try my best to keep them concise and modest. The Buddha breathes in, he is breathing in, The Buddha breathes out, he is content.
It has been a snowy winter and I have been thrilled. I have had many glorious weeks of snow cover to ruminate on the state of our sidewalks and bike lanes, the arrogance of the motor car, selfishness, suffering, respect, community, and civic responsibility. Those are all loaded concepts filled to the brim with projection and judgement so I have tried to distill my feelings into feelings and feelings alone. Anger, inconvenience, annoyance, fear, disappointment, and finally sadness. What began, and to be honest still manifests frequently, as anger has settled into a profound sadness. I thumb my mala and recite my mantras as I walk in the street, dodging traffic, not in anger at the people and businesses who have cleared their driveways and parking lots of every molecule of snow but left the sidewalk buried or worse, but near weeping with sadness. Many situations lead to this result, many decisions are made and many actions are taken. I do not and cannot know them all. Does the owner of the parking lot next to the high school know that by plowing his lot onto the sidewalk he forces hundreds of kids to walk in traffic on a busy street? Does the mayor know that his grounds team does the same to the sidewalk next to the school? Why does my neighbor, who shovels his driveway and walk by hand, sometimes three times over out of suburban meticulousness in pursuit of crisp corners and perfect uniformity, refuse to touch his sidewalk? He knows children walk it to school, he knows I walk it to work, he knows the letter carrier walks it to deliver his mail. I have mulled this question over obsessively as I shovel his sidewalk, something I do out of routine now. I shovel a lot of sidewalks, its the least I could do. I still sound pretty mad, so am I just pretending its not anger, to project a level of enlightenment I do not have? Perhaps. I will freely admit these feelings started, and remained, anger for a long time. But they have become sadness because no matter what reasoning or series of events precipitated this outcome it is a sad thing do you not agree? Suffering, and causing suffering, is sad. I weep to know such suffering has been caused. If it is selfishness, how sad it is that someone lives their life in that way. How sad and lonely that must be. If it is a lack of time or a burden of responsibility, how sad it is that someone is encumbered so. How sad that no one is there to help. If it is a physical restriction, how sad that they must push their exertion to clear a path for their automobile. Unintentionally causing suffering because the requirements of their employment necessitate they use all their ability just to clear that automobile space. Should they have options, flexibility in schedule or travel, a real alternative to the car commute, maybe they could have spent that precious energy clearing a path for their neighbors. Maybe they cannot even clear their automobile and that was done by another. Maybe that person is trying to do the least work possible for the pay: one pass with a plow is much less work than getting out and clearing the sidewalk. This is also sad! Possibilities of exploitation, or again back to the sadness of selfishness. Maybe the person plowing is volunteering, and they have taken on more than they can handle out of kindness, they are faced with a trade off of how many people they can clear out in a limited amount of time. Our car "culture", as one of many heads of capitalism's hydra, necessitates prioritization. It demands it. Above all, I find myself settling on sadness about self respect. It seems the forces of our culture, of capital and power, are laser focused on the destruction of self respect. We are too busy, too tired, too stressed to afford the luxury of self respect. It is being taken from us, with great purpose, not all at once but slowly and constantly, like rust takes a ship. Self respect is a radical act, community and communality are radical acts, shoveling your sidewalk is a radical act. Maybe once your sidewalk is done you'll find you have a little more energy to keep going. Maybe one day you'll walk clear across town without a drift in your way.
Thanks for reading and I'm very happy you're here.
P.S. Peer(less) review
At some point in my academic and scientific career, big questions about scientific publication and the dissemination of information started to congeal in the back of my head. They weighed heavy at first, but I became accustomed to the weight as all my peers do. Then, as time progressed, like many of my peers again, I think the weight of that question fluctuated. Sometimes its balance fails and it feels very heavy again, sometimes it settles into the background. Lately it is heavy. I am reminded of a quote by Carl Sagan in an interview with Charlie Rose. Perhaps a bit cliche, a bit overused, and often with a strong overtone of elitism or pompousness, but extremely relevant nonetheless.
“We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces,”
Its hard, for me, not to think we're seeing things blow up in our faces. The philosophy behind scientific publication, peer review... behind our entire scientific culture is one reliant on good faith. Its a beautiful idea, one I am exceedingly privileged to participate in, but a fragile one. To the public, to decision makers and journalists and public figures, a paper is a paper. They do not, and could not ever be expected to, have the capacity to evaluate the merits or robustness of a publication. To do that with any level of confidence or aptitude requires immense specialization. Its absurd to expect that outside of the narrow fields of study these publications are produced within. Dissemination outside those spheres requires translation and digestion by science journalists and media, who themselves have special skills, and above all else musty be working in good faith. The threat here is twofold: folks operating in bad faith or with an agenda they are simply seeking to support may disseminate whatever they find, and there are innumerable opportunities to mislead by omission. Secondarily, if sycophants and junk science is innumerable, then charlatans with boundless ego and the unbridled confidence of ignorance must be infinite. These folks speak on the merits and robustness of research with the same confidence as the experts and none of the hangups on "accuracy" or "support".
This thought is half-cooked. So it will live in a P.S. until one day it gets a post of its own.
Gassho
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