[village-discuss] Vaccine Debate & Burning Man Culture

[Bruce Gould]

Actually, I want to get away from the whole vaccine thing a bit and talk about New Agey-Burning Man culture, if I haven’t already offended everyone. Humor me:

 

The big idea these days is “everything is connected” – the garbage bag you throw away ends up in Japan, the injustice suffered by the jungle dwellers affects us all, something like that. In some deep, cosmic way everything touches everything else.

 

But I’ve noticed that if you suggest to people exactly how they’re connected, they get a little hot under the collar. I (and lots of other people) have pointed out that you  can be a link in the spread of disease if you get the flu, and maybe that’s how we’re connected, but that gets met with outrage. There are some other economic issues that touch on connectedness and mutual responsibility, but folks don’t want  to hear that, either.

 

So what gives?

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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[Bill Doze]

I miss you Bruce. When are we going to hang out?

"Outrage"? Really?
I find that exaggeration creeps in when I over-modify my prose. So I strip out the "very's" and "really's" and adjectives to find out what I'm trying to say.
What are you saying under your consternation, Bruce?

The idea is "everything is"--the bag ends, the injustice affects. Everything touches.
But if you suggest they get hot... 
I have pointed. But that touch, folks don't want that.

Of course we want your touch Bruce. <3 <3 <3

(P.S. Do you like when people say "my life got so much better when I stopped listening to the media" ? 5 billion tragedies off the radar.)

[jeff derbyshire]

Does New Agey always carry the same definition? What is the current
definition? In my world view the New Agey of the 90s is what I am
living by today. Please help me put my finger on this
Contemporary New Agey mentality.

Thanks be to dog.

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:36 PM, Bruce Gould <bcg...@rcn.com> wrote:

[Ora Uzel]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 12:36 AM, Bruce Gould <bcg...@rcn.com> wrote:

The big idea these days is “everything is connected” – the garbage bag you throw away ends up in Japan, the injustice suffered by the jungle dwellers affects us all, something like that. In some deep, cosmic way everything touches everything else.

But I’ve noticed that if you suggest to people exactly how they’re connected, they get a little hot under the collar. I (and lots of other people) have pointed out that you  can be a link in the spread of disease if you get the flu, and maybe that’s how we’re connected, but that gets met with outrage. There are some other economic issues that touch on connectedness and mutual responsibility, but folks don’t want  to hear that, either.

So what gives?

This last weekend, I was at a retreat where a South American shaman spoke about a variety of topics.  Some topics were out there with the 2012 stuff, and this idea that there is a global consciousness that we are awakening to, and we need to listen to Mother Earth.  And other topics were much closer to home like taking care of our bodies, eating well, getting proper rest, and exercising.

After talking about all this stuff for a few hours, each time we would adjourn to have our meal on the other side of the room.  There the almost completely white middle-upper class people (roughly around Bill or Bruce's ages) would convene and eat food that was not altogether good for them and talk about the global consciousness stuff.  Rarely did the topic of diet come up at the table, though it came up by the shaman, who ate very little himself.

The fascinating thing is that people tend to gravitate toward discussion that is easy for them and distant from their direct life.  It's easier to say, "those guys in Washington D.C. are screwing up the nation" when you live in Utah (or in most of the nation for that matter).  But it's harder to say, "those guys in Springfield are screwing up the state" and even still harder to bring that to the city or ward level.

The closer and smaller the sampling the issue effects, the closer to home it gets, unless you're completely out of your element entirely, like folks who talk about sending food and money to Africa all the time, without realizing just how hard it is to get past the warlords to get the food to those who need it most.  And that's disregarding the need for education altogether, which is a major tool for preventing starvation in the first place.

So when it comes to global consciousness, or "we're all connected," it's easy to just say, "everything just IS all connected," rather than explain why minimizing your waste in your morning trash can lessen the rate at which the landfill fills, thereby possibly reducing overall -- *IF* everyone else pitches in too -- the number of landfills needed, thereby reducing aquifer damage and other pollution that often results from landfills, not to mention the general overall taxpayer expense for landfills, since most of the companies involved get government funds to help them establish a landfill and definitely to cover it up when they're finished.

But that's just one example of a "we're all connected" debate, and to have that debate it requires mindful thinking and research on multiple levels.  While all those levels are generally local (at least in this scenario), it still requires more energy than your average person is willing to put into things.  But then again, not everyone can do this level of research.  If you do the research and find out that something is a certain way, you then have to convince everyone else it is that way.  If everyone had the same level of inquiry as you, it would take forever to everyone else to follow suit on your good practices, because they would all have to put in the research time necessary.

Thus we get belief.  Belief powers behavior in people without the necessity of knowledge.  This  is often pictured as a bad thing that trips up science and generally keeps people acting stupidly.  Indeed that is the modern image of the belief meme.  However, belief allows people to summarize something, stating it is 'good' without knowledge and research backing that up. It allows a person with a busy job and a family to practice 'green' practices that have been proven, by other people they trust who have done the actual research, to be viable and sound.

This is the same concept as labels in our society, like: science, religion, spirituality, new age, hippie, goth, emo, politician, lobbyist, transsexual, CEO, gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, polyamorous, republican, conservative, libertarian, green, kink, and so forth...  Labels are never the actual description of what is really going on with the person or their activities.  They are approximations, hyperbolic memes that represent something which rarely ever exists in full manifestations of reality.  Some are more defined than others, but many can be played with.  For instance straight could define a man who only has relationships with women, despite the fact that he may frequent one-night encounters with gay men.  Such a man may define himself, boldly and clearly, as straight, but that does not tell the whole picture.

Likewise, belief is a shorthand way of saying, "what I am doing is right." Research and knowledge of facts is always better than belief, except belief takes less time, something which a lot of people in our society today "believe" we do not have enough of.  And that perhaps is the illusory Catch 22 people put themselves in. *shrugs*

Everything above is more of a suggestion that I pose, not a belief or conviction.

"What do you think, sirs?" (as they say on MST3K)