Kind, Calm, Safe

The problem with thinking of consciousness as machine-like, or the brain as a computer, is that this is precisely a metaphor, and a metaphor with a set of particularly complicated associations. A machine exists in order to solve problems; problems that are extraneous to itself. We design mechanical processes in order to produce specified functions. A machine fails if it does not deliver the function we have specified for it, so that an internal combustion engine which fails to drive a car but very satisfactorily boils eggs is not a good machine. But in what sense can we say that consciousness in general, or the brain in particular, is a ‘machine’ in that sense? Is it something that exists in order to solve problems extraneous to itself? Prima facie the answer has to be no. At the very least, at the most reductive, the brain is an organism; and an organism is not exactly a machine. Organisms solve their own problems: in an evolutionary history, organisms develop in order to deal with their own crises of adjusting to the environment.

“Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons” by Rowan Williams

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Dear Alex,

Much of our consciousness have nothing to do with problems. We are unaware of the depth and spread of our troubles. Even the shallowness in our fumbling for answers exposes our poverty in understanding the struggles and stranglehold in our interior and shared worlds.

Still we intimate and explicate fast-tracked scripts for success in its glossiest veneer of interpretation. In “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” Robert Kiyosaki says: “You’re only poor if you give up. The most important thing is that you did something. Most people only talk and dream of getting rich.”

Action is key and wonder sounds cheap, affirming statements that confirm your intuition to thrive in hostile climate. Want it, do it, own it, personalizing it as generic or genetic in context as you would envision in your victory march. You are born to be somebody, not just your pitiful self. Rich Dad is yours and you.

I imagine Rich Dad in all his doing has not prepared for the undoing of his assets from the pandemic and protests. What was schemed and gleaned in portfolio has now dispersed on road and reality. Our time in timeless scarcity and scare does not call us to do but to be.

“This is our time to be kind, to be calm and to be safe.” The voice rose from Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer of British Columbia at a press conference on March 17th in her delivery of a public health emergency: 83 COVID-positive cases and 3 deaths had claimed the western Canadian shores. In her recent speech, she was “tearing up” over the viral impact on long-term care residence.

Doing is not being. Be kind. Abandon chase and routine. Resist being your pithy self. Forget about feeding your story with the glamor absent in millions more. Undo in us the mechanized script that holds no power over problem or person.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

“This is our time to be kind, to be calm and to be safe.”  Well said.

But what if the time is not kind, people around you not calm, and the street not safe?

Kindness has to do with justice restored and sustained, calmness peace pursued and nurtured, safety authority trusted and order upheld.  And all these has to do with love.

"Love is not a victory march," such is the epigraph Rupert Shortt chose for his biography of Rowan Williams.  Of course, it's a line from Cohen's "Hallelujah," an apophatic theological statement to approach the Divine by speaking in negation, affirming only what cannot be affirmed about God, the perfect goodness.

Well, the time is not kind, people around us not calm, and the street not safe.  Any statement anyone makes can be used against the person to prove the person is on the wrong side of history and should be cleansed off from its pages--especially cataphatic, positive affirmation about what is right and what is wrong, how things should be.

"The only wrong thing to say is to say nothing," yet we are convinced.  "Everybody must get stoned," and also do one's proper share of stoning, in the name of...who and what?

Vox populi vox Dei (Latin, 'the voice of the people is the voice of God') is the battle cry.  But now that we have done away with Deus, the ultimate authority figure that we thought has been the biggest bully giving us all our human troubles, we are left only with the voice of the people.  And how does the cacophony sound like, from the top of Babel?

Since it is a dangerous time to state things positively, let me join Cohen the clown and coward to dodge stone: if love is not a victory march, can it be a protest march?  And if we think love has nothing to do with it, then...where are we marching to?  Democracy can generate new forms of tyranny, together we can out-bully the God that we have bullied out of our System.  This is as positive a statement as I am going to make today.

Yours, Alex