True North

Everyone has an independent view on morality it seems. Often, we break it down with such detail that we break it down to nothing. We think of morality as subjective or based on the culture— the values of the men and women who subscribe to Sharia Law will be different than the values of a gay atheist living in Portland, OR. We think of morality as scriptural— we get our values based on religious doctrines and we let them be the compass for how we perceive a “good” life to be in ourselves, and where we draw boundaries within our own culture or personal relationships. And many of us, including myself at one time in my life, believe morality to be essentially an illusion— a complete fabrication constructed by early humans to maintain order in a normally barbaric and inhumane early society.

In life you may find yourself directionless from time to time. You will without any uncertainty find yourself in circumstances that present themselves to you unexpectedly that you have not had adequate time to evaluate. Therefore, you may find yourself going through with unexpected and highly impactful decisions based on erraticism or instinct. In each of these situations our personal set of morals and values collide with our innate reactionary instincts, and we make our decisions either within our personal definitions of right and wrong, or we make decisions with our animal instincts— our ‘fight or flight’ reflex.

It’s important for us to know that when we view morals or personal values, they are not dependent on circumstance. If we allow circumstance to be a deciding factor in how we define morality than the boundaries of morality are in a constant state of fluctuation and redefinition. If, for example, we use the well-regarded value of commitment— we can agree commitment is either existent or it is not. You are not half-committed to something. You may make the claim that you are, but on a moment-to-moment basis you are either committed or you aren’t. If an alcoholic is committed to no longer drinking, he wouldn’t then only drink on Friday nights. He doesn’t leave himself a place for his commitment to sobriety to be on hold until the next day. That would be an example of being committed Saturday through Thursday, failing in your commitment on Friday, and recommitting on Saturday once again. If you are committed to getting in shape and you decide you are going to take a week off training and eating healthy, you are foregoing your commitment that week.

Commitment to yourself is an easy step to take. I can discipline myself for eating a piece of cake when I’m on a no-sugar diet and move on easily. The problem presents itself when we add extreme circumstance to the scenario—'I made a commitment to my wife when we were married that we would be together, as one body, through sickness and through health, until death do us part. I then found out she was cheating on me with a close friend of mine, so we were divorced.’ It’s easy to say that a man or woman who was wronged in a marital situation with something such as infidelity or abuse should feel no guilt to leave the relationship, and in many cases that is the best option or them at the time. But does that mean the value of commitment suddenly isn’t important? The circumstance doesn’t devalue commitment, the vow of commitment is broken due to the circumstance. In other words, the choice to cheat or the choice to divorce doesn’t make the value of commitment cease to exist because of the circumstances, it is simply disregarded. In this case, it may be best for the spouse who was wronged to get themselves out of the situation and recommit to themselves, maybe giving an opportunity to someone else who values commitment as much as they do. But it doesn’t excuse a situation in which two people disregarded their supposed valuing of commitment.

This particular value (commitment), even with its circumstantial contradictions, is an easy target to exemplify because most people and most cultures can agree upon its importance. And even when it comes to the example of divorce, some people may disagree with me, but most would be able to easily see how I or someone else could cling to that principle. You see, however, as you dig into more controversial examples that hit closer to home in modern day Western culture (homosexuality, wartime murder, abortion… etc.), how the topic can provide a very hard and slow-moving conversation with little give on either side. The reason, once again, is that we cloud our definitions of right and wrong with circumstance and emotion.

It especially becomes challenging when we enter ‘love’ and ‘compassion’ into the equation, because we often think to love or feel compassion for someone is to condone their actions. But does a parent who loves their child condone their child disobeying them? To punish your child, or even to allow your child to receive the natural punishments issued as a result of their actions, does not mean you don’t have love or have compassion for your child. It means quite the opposite. Your understanding of the consequence of their actions is superior to theirs, so it becomes your responsibility to present (or allow it to be presented) that which they do not know or understand.

 At first glance when you see the word ‘condone’ you might think just because you allow something, it doesn’t mean you condone it. “I don’t condone a woman’s choice to abort their child, I just believe it’s her body and her right.” The fact of the matter is, by definition, to condone is not only to allow but to also approve of. If you think that a child in the womb that is in its earliest stages of development, it does not have a pulse, and likely has yet to develop an affinity for ‘love’ and ‘compassion’, is not by your meaning ‘living’ enough for you to condone its preservation, then by all means, condone abortion. But if anything in you believes that even at the earliest stages of its development it is ‘alive’, then you are condoning the taking of a life due to circumstance. And we should all agree, taking a human life is not worth condoning.

You can go on endlessly with different circumstances and excuses for right and wrong, and an intelligent person will be able to refute the idea of its existence fairly easily. But I would be remised if I did not acknowledge a great possibility and likelihood that our conscience is not merely shaped situationally, but something much deeper than physical circumstance. It would be shortsighted in my belief to assume that something as serious as the taking of a life, or even something as basic as not being true to your word, would be a value that could vary if I were to travel to a part of the world where it was not common. If that were the case, then any set of even the most unimaginable wrongs (rape or molestation, mass murder… etc.) could be circumstantial and left up to interpretation. If that were the case than we are no different than our barbarian ancestors who more resembled beasts than the inventive, creative, compassionate, and unselfish homo sapiens we imagine ourselves to be now.

The idea that morality is not a victim of circumstance is not a new idea. All of the world’s major religions subscribe in some way to a belief that morality is endowed spiritually rather than physically developed. However, we often couple our disregard of their respective doctrines with a disregard of their moral teachings because they are outdated. “To implement the Old Testaments book of Deuteronomy into modern society would move morality backwards.”  To the naked eye, I can completely understand that. And I could write another two-thousand words in defense of Old Testament teachings as they relate to New Testament in the Christian Bible. I could write another about the immoral implications of religion coinciding with government and limiting freedom of choice.  To elaborate on either would distract from the overall point:

Morality is concrete. Just as a compass will direct us to the gravitational North of the earth, the magnetic pole of the earth will always change, but the northernmost axis will always occupy the same spot in relation to the sun, despite what a compass tells us. Our relationship with our moral guidelines do not deviate from their truth because of circumstance and it is our job as citizens to reinforce our inner morality. In a perfect world we could point to others and say “that is wrong!” and in some cases that is necessary, but it must first take place on an individual level. We must first recognize we as individuals are not bigger than the morals that guide us. We change, the world around us changes, the circumstances we come up against evolve as our species evolves—but that does not mean the value of community, love, charity, discipline, forgiveness, honor, truth, and the scariest of all, accountability, are to evolve as well. It is our moral ‘true north’ that elevates our being to a level not shared by any other living organism discovered up to this point. If morals are to evolve, than we have lost what got us to this point in the first place.

Pack Weight

If we were to itemize the things of greatest value in our lives we would nearly all answer our family and friends. Maybe we would be more specific and answer something along the lines of ‘my relationship with my kids’ or ‘time spent with loved ones.’  

                While it may be true that these are in fact the things that mean the most to us, the answer would most certainly be different if we were to rephrase the question: “if your house was burning down, what items would you grab on your way out?” Then your answer may change to something of sentimental value; a photo album, a letter from your wife in high school, maybe your record collection… You could also ask what are the most monetarily valuable things in your home? You may answer your TV, your furniture, your jewelry.

                Where it becomes interesting is if you were to be asked the question in third person: “What does your brother value most?” When you look at what another person may value most you find yourself categorizing it in a different way. Instead of viewing items or relationships with attachment to a specific world view or emotion, you begin to measure value by the things said person seems to have a particular interest in or the ways an interest can consume their life.

                “Take what you need and leave what you don’t” I’d say to myself if I knew I would be hiking twenty miles a day through mountainous terrain. If I knew I had to carry every item of ‘value’ on my back with every step I took, the light in which I view what is valuable would be quite different. I might instead value the basic necessities like food, clean water, warmth, and shelter.

 Its often stated when someone ventures off on a hike or even a vacation that they just want to ‘escape it all.’ The, for lack of a better word, value in hiking or camping is that you detach yourself from the burdens and weight of every day life that we seem to habitually carry. How can you receive work emails or phone calls if you have no phone or internet connection? How can you get a bill in the mail if you don’t reside at an address? How can you be stuck in traffic if you’ve pulled the key out of the ignition and walked ten miles from the nearest road?

It all seems so great and simple. Shut off, escape it all, clear your mind. But is it really effective? If you’re addicted to alcohol, sex, social media, or reality TV, hiking or other means of detachment don’t alleviate your addiction, they simply provide you with a forced restraint. You can just as easily carry a flask full of whiskey with you into the mountains. But even if you choose to deprive yourself of it for four days in the wilderness, you will still inevitably return to a world where whiskey exists.

Just simply detaching yourself from your burdens or added weight does not ensure that you will not be once again faced with the potential of reattaching to the burdens, it only briefly robs you of your access. There is only one way to truly face your burdens, whether they be physical addiction, emotional dependency, feelings of sorrow or hatred, or even the every day stresses of work or relationships. But it is not in fact to detach yourself from them, but to instead detach them from you.

If I want to shed the weight in my pack so as to alleviate the pain that is an effect of the weight, I have to quite simply shed the weight. I can only do this effectively if I empty out the contents of my pack and limit it to the things which I see as most valuable to achieve life. If ‘to live’ is the only requirement I deem necessary to spend a week in the wilderness, I will carry only the weight necessary to achieve that goal. If ‘to live’ is the only requirement I have for my day to day life in a society, which has and will always provide me with whatever addiction or burden I choose to carry, then I might not go back to the whiskey, the toxic relationship, or the endless social media dribble. If I view myself in the third person, “What does he value most?” I may find an ugly truth. What I value is not my family, it is not the sentimental item from a loved one, and it is certainly not the things I only require to live effectively. Instead what I value is the burden that I choose to carry. It is what I choose to consume myself with; hate, fear, anger, sadness, pride. All things unnecessary for life. All causes for addiction, helpless dependency, and pain. All values I nor anyone else can afford to carry.

Lucky

You see an NFL receiver sprint past the cornerback and snag a 22-yard touchdown reception out of the air on a perfectly placed throw. You watch an MMA fighter tag an opponent on the chin with a counter punch, knocking him out cold within two minutes of the first round. A CEO for a large international startup company pulls in ten million dollars annually. Your best friend somehow scores a few dates with a girl way out of his league…

You wake up every day and hit snooze on your alarm clock. Ten minutes goes by and once again you hit snooze. By the third snooze you’re nearly leaping out of bed, throwing your clothes on, grabbing a piece of toast for breakfast, and sprinting out the door five minutes later than your conscience will allow. You get to work four minutes late, slip into the office, and begin your daily tasks seemingly unnoticed. The first few hours of the day are filled with the anxiety that at some point your boss will inevitably bring up the fact that you were four minutes late to work and give you a similar lecture to the one your mom used to give you when you didn’t wake up for school on time. But low and behold, that moment never comes. In fact, you go the entire day without ever being disciplined for having been late to work. And even though you tell yourself tomorrow you will not hit snooze, you do once again, and once again you find yourself sprinting to your car, praying to the sky that you’ll get lucky and there won’t be any major accidents on the freeway.

Where does luck end and action begin?

                It often seems as though we live in a culture invested in teaching our youth that a particular word or phrase exists, but there is no interest in teaching them of the context where said word or phrase should actually be used. Often when people see other people who’s success they envy, rather than attribute that to action, they write it off by uttering a phrase such as “lucky you.”

                It is not incorrect to assume that every person you meet has received their fair share of luck in this life. Just simply being born in the United States is in itself a great representation of good fortune or “luck.” In the United States, the average citizen makes roughly $35,000 annually, nearly twice the average of the rest of the world. Barring incredibly unlucky circumstances, quite simply being born into this country gives you a fair amount of luck right from the get go.

                Though I may not feel so lucky when I’m cold and thirsty, tossing around my tent trying to avoid vicious leg cramps while reaching down to scratch my bug bitten legs, through my wilderness ventures, I hear quite often from my peers how “lucky” I am. In many ways they are right. I was born in a country that values its unique geographical features enough to preserve them for every generation, including my own and those who will follow. But the fact that I and many others like myself take advantage of this great opportunity to immerse ourselves in the natural splendors of our landscape does not infer that there is no sacrifice required to enjoy such treasures. In fact, every few months members of congress do their best to sell off these public lands without our democratic consent.

                So where does luck end and action begin? For the NFL player, it’s when he lugs heavy pads around, running full speed ahead into another person of equal talent, risking great bodily injury for the likelihood of only playing for a few years. He sets himself apart by his will to conquer. For the MMA fighter it’s being the first one in the gym and the last one out. The bravery to stand in a cage with the most talented and skilled fighters on the planet with only the time on the mat, the days of blood and sweat, and the drive to pull their aching body out of bed in the morning to do it all again, often while working a full time job. For the CEO, it’s the time spent evaluating themselves and others. Speaking with confidence and self belief. It’s doing what needs to be done every day to set themselves apart while everyone else is four minutes late to work, hoping no one noticed. For your friend, maybe he was the only one brave enough to ask her out… or maybe he’s just lucky…

                Webster’s dictionary says luck is ‘the force that brings good fortune or adversity’. Nowhere in the definition does work ethic, sacrifice, discipline, drive, persistence, attitude, or will to succeed come into play. And if luck truly is the greatest asset an individual has on their resume of success, then it should be known and taught that it is not a reliable component to expect or be sought after. The only reliable source of “luck” is the luck the can be created every day, in every moment, with every decision you make- or don’t.

Helplessness Blues

The president of the United States hits ‘send’ and lengthens the twitter feed. One of the most powerful men in the world, or at least seemingly so. He addresses the country and world one iPhone screen at a time. He echoes conservative clichés which go from his fingertips, to the excited eyes of each consumer, and to the lips of the talking heads. Eventually a conversation starts, between two, ten, one hundred, one million people, and eventually the entire world.

                A white supremacist drives a vehicle through a crowd of left wing activists, and days later hurricanes ravage their way through the southern United States. A statue that had been all but unnoticed to most of the world is destroyed for what it is believed to represent, while the remains of another scrapes against the asphalt in the ever swelling currents of what were only days earlier city streets. The climate is changing, the birds are chirping, the heads are talking, and even 200 miles and 15 days into the heart of the Scottish hills, the birds relay the chirps of these talking heads. You cannot be far enough to escape it all…

                I speak to well rounded, well grounded, intellectuals as well as people I would view as erratic and divisive. I speak to people of all faiths and all angles of the political spectrum, and through all the angles and all the compelling (or not so compelling) perspectives, I find only one commonality amongst them all; hopelessness.

                When I think of hope I think of a noun: a feeling of expectation for something to happen. That is to assume that hope is a thing. Hope is concrete, it either exists or does not. So in modern western society, where we have the conveniences of endless and readily available information, readily available food and water for our desired consumption, and even things as simple as laundry facilities and showers, how can hope not exist abundantly? Everything we could ever want or need is only a few minutes away should we make any sort of basic effort to attain it. How could we see point blank, on a daily basis, the potential of humanities creativity, ingenuity, and innovation, and still hope rarely makes itself visible?

Whether it be on a technological, political, or even moral scale, the advancements of mankind within the last 3000 years have been exponential! On a timeline of 4.5 billion years, 3000 is only a blink of an eye. Even in my short lifetime, society has evolved at and unprecedented rate. In fact, there are few places better to exemplify the advancements of our species than right here in the United States of America. Even still, if you were to only view human interaction through the vacuum of social media, you may just think we had and are still only going backwards…

A wise man told me faith cannot exist without hope. That is to say, a complete trust or belief in something cannot exist without first having the expectation that it can be true. Which brings me to the important distinction between how we view hope.

In one sense it is indeed a noun. I know that the sun will rise each morning, or the earth will continue its course and the sun will come into my view, therefore hope exists of its timely arrival and a new day beginning. But in another sense it is also a verb. Hope is also an action. It is not a feeling as much as it is an invoked desire. ‘I lift weights in hopes that I will become strong.’ Though I may be week, I hope that I will become strong by setting a goal for myself physically and setting out to achieve it. And that is not baseless, because it is an action which I put into motion. It is not faith because I am the creator of it and my action is how it comes into existence.

If I were to spend all my time hoping for natural disasters to prove climate change to be real, or hoping for Donald Trump to make a fool out of himself while giving a United Nations speech, or hoping a terrorist attack happens so that my theory about radical Islamic refugees can be true, then I most obviously am hoping maliciously for my own gain, that is the desire to be proven right. But this hope, while its creators would not willingly admit to it, exists within plain view to a far greater extent than what I would call a righteous hope. This hope, if brought into action, creates the opposite effect; hopelessness.

As much as I’d like to point my fingers at those I disagree with, and as much as my ego requires that I be proven right in my views of the world, I feel it is counterproductive to consistently dwell on differences of opinion as it creates a sterile environment where only hopelessness can grow. And as a living, breathing, voting,  privileged first world citizen, I view it as my responsibility (should I have an interest in a better world for my friends, family, neighbors, and species) to do my part to instill hope within our airstreams, once again. If hope were to take precedence over being proven right or having your opinion be heard, than it would create an environment for progress, and maybe even faith.

Constructs

All common senses were thoroughly in tact. Sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste. But a sixth and most obvious trait, that of cognitive awareness and conscious conception of reality is hijacked entirely. Rather than seeing the ceiling in front of you or hearing the human voices near you speaking, you're consciousness is enveloped mentally by endless geometric patterns composed of infinite colors and shapes, but most notably teel green and yellow. All infinite geometric patterns shift and contort constantly to form many living entities that exist as one, with the overall presence of femininity. Voices speak to me in an unknown but understood tongue from all directions, again, divulging as one indistinguishable feminine voice who's volume and command heightens and intensifies the further into the rabbit hole I go. They laugh at me. They ridicule me and they possess me. She reaches into the core of my soul and pulls me toward her as if to prove that she is the bearer of all control and that I have none, however I do not concede. I communicate to her the request that she allow me to, in my physical state, continue to breathe so that I will not die. I breath steadily once again, although not naturally, only purposefully.

Her face shifts demonically, taking form of anger, hatred, lust and insecurity. It is an attempt to disengage me. It is a challenge. It is a test of my willingness to hold my virtues and maintain the power of recognition in spite of lack of control over my mental state. 

They challenge my skepticism and hiss viciously. A common description of God strikes me as opposite of these beings, but instead she is an evil and sinister being, encompassing an entire dimension of existence or non-existence and pulling me into her realm of illusion and deception. I let her take me where she pleases, but I never concede that I am powerless, and either out of spite or out of time, she sends me back.

With a gasp of air and a clumsiness of speech and rationality, I come-to. Laying still on my back, motionless and awake, staring at a morphing and and well defined ceiling, eventually coming entirely back to ground. Four minutes and thirty-eight seconds of inner dimensional dialect, psychosis and lucidity, and I am fondly back to the reality I have and will exist in from my physical birth until my physical death.

A Tangible God

There is a falsity in religion seen by neither the religious nor the secular. A belief that one should either believe your God on your terms or believe that the laws of science alone accurately assess the ins and outs of being. A belief that there is either a God of scripture with rules and governing morality, or a purposeless existence that moves sporadically and without structure. 

Somehow, the middle ground glares at the fangs of society. The meaning to your life and existence is not nearly as abstract and interpretative as ancient religious doctrines proclaim, but not nearly as simple and decipherable as the anti theist maintains.

Somewhere in between the extremities lies the center of it all, wherein earth meets man and God meets earth. Somewhere deep in the flame of a campfire, deep in the rubble of a mountains rocky ridge. Somewhere deep within the silhouette of a ranges panorama. Somewhere within the rising and setting sun. Somewhere within the glistening stars and the mysteries of black holes. Within the infinite confines of time and space. Somewhere god, or at least a variation of God, exists, without judgement, fear, or the tainted words of men to misconstrue its graceful intent.

But maybe gods existence is not of this earth only, but of its inhabitants. Maybe God can be found in silence and solitude, when nothing speaks but your own conscience. When the influence of this loud world has dissolved. Maybe God can be found in a single blade of grass or a single leaf drifting through the autumn sky. Maybe God can be found in all forms of life, as well as all forms of death and even inanimacy.

And while you sell yourself for money, sex, and acceptance, your soul beckons your attention. And what arrests your soul are the definitions and boundaries of the society you have been led to believe is the core of humanity. But the truth is, God is not only within a scripture, nor a chapel, but within your own consciousness. The very consciousness you so desire to subdue and alter.

The answer lies not solely within ancient philosophy or age old superstition, nor entirely within the words of the evolutionary cultures that monopolize popular belief, but instead within you. And when you are contemplating what it may mean to be created in gods image, it is most obviously portrayed in the human beings capacity for loving and learning, but most of all its ability to create. An inherent ability exhibited on earth (to the highest scale) by humans and humans alone. 

And no where can gods tangibility be made apparent more vividly than the places where human influence exists at a minimum. When the loud world dominated by fear and unrest is muffled within the sounds of the trees creaking in the wind and the streams clashing against the river rocks.

The Illusion of Control

He's in his early forties. The sun creeps through the trees and begins to vanish in a light cloud cover. Beside him stands a small boy, likely his son, sharing his gaze (albeit with an entirely different frame of reference), which bares down on a specific gravestone, by which a bouquet of varied flowers decorates.

He takes one last glance, turns, then walks away, his head down, his hands in his pockets, and his pace steady. The boy follows with a skip and a hop, appearing relatively unphased by the concrete slab sticking out of the ground...

~

She sits beside you. An attractive girl, seemingly intelligent, and in a place where the booze flows liberally and the depth of conversation flows conservatively, you have found the ideal balance of both. A slight spin begins to overtake your vision, and a slight slur begins to overtake your speech.

You ask if she'd like a drink. "I don't drink," she answers.

"Why's that?" You pry, flirtatiously.

" I don't like to lose control." Her answer....

Wait... Stop the music. Set the drinks down... What??

For some reason, at this moment in time, you remember the face of the man as he walked slowly away from the gravestone. At that moment you hadn't really thought of the significance of his facial expression, but in this moment, intoxicated at a party, you do. Because as the word "control" slips out if her mouth, your first thought is of what it actually means to possess it. What does it mean to have control?

Two human beings (that you don't get to choose) conceive a child. The child then inherits genetic traits (that you don't get to choose) while in the womb of the mother. It is born into living circumstances that it does not get to choose. It develops a personality and a consciousness that it doesn't get to choose. Its parents or guardian (depending on its circumstance) choose its food, source of education, and housing. They (or someone relevant) teach it their understanding of words like 'love' and 'God' and 'exist' and 'reality'. They even teach it the word 'control'.

Granted, at some point this child is allowed to make decisions. It can choose when to sleep, what to eat, what kind of car it wants to drive, what college it will attend, what color hair it wants to have, etc.  All these decisions give the child the idea that it is an individual and that it is independent. But to what extent are these decisions a direct effect of its genetics, its upbringing, the nutrients in the food that it eats causing unforeseen chemical reactions, the traffic on the road, or the weather causing said traffic? 

Infinite factors play into each decision that it makes, the majority of which it has absolutely no control over.

So here it is, in the form of an attractive, seemingly intelligent girl, sitting beside you at a party telling you 'I don't like to lose control.'

~

This man walks away from his deceased loved one with the expression of defeat on his face. Body language screaming out 'what happened?'. One second someone is there, the next they are gone. They're driving home from work and their car hydroplanes on the rain washed freeway, sending them into a head on collision. They develop cancer at the age of forty three and the chemo doesn't cut it. A gunman shoots up a strip mall when they're shopping for the perfect anniversary gift. Or best yet, time has finally taken its toll on them, and they slip away peacefully.

Anything you can imagine that's going through the mind of the man as he strolls slowly away from the gravestone is most assuredly a speculation, but the brevity of life and permanence of death are certainly conspicuous enough to cause the question to arise; at what point did you have control?

There is a thought that rather than an existence as an individual being, you are only a color on a canvas, or an expression of personality coming to a realization as to the limitations of the human body you have inherited. That you are an extension of a collective and all encompassing consciousness glowing with the power of love, fear, and creation. That you are not you, nor I, but we. That the control you have over your own existence is as premature and undeveloped as the understanding of your own capabilities. That there is a strange comfort in naivety, and that your perception of the reality you contrive throughout your existence on earth is only an illusion in comparison to the reality of existence itself.