Illusions—Here, There, and Everywhere
I live in a world of rambling around, most often not very far, pondering what I see, using past experiences and learnings to sort out complex issues, situations, and happenings, as part of a terminational stage of life hobby. The goal, I guess, is to finish a personal life jig-saw-puzzle before the obligate leap into the great unknown.
Mostly what we learn in any such attempt is just how much over our head we are in such a task. In one sense we can step back far enough to see the forest instead of the trees, and this expansive view of this evolutionary life process here on earth gives reason to relax—since given time, the process will continue—eventually—to even greater complexity and marvel-ment. None of us were around for most all of the process and there is no reason really to believe we will be around in any form or fashion for the rest of it. We really have no idea whether evolution will ever end, the same as we can never understand how it all began. Some matters are above our pay-grade.
It is hard to completely understand most things in life. Some of the things most precious to us in life are clearly not exactly precious to the evolutionary process itself—like our pets, our friends, or our families. Eventually, if we can bear a degree of honesty with ourselves, we realize our own family, friends, and all sorts of others, are not exactly major players in this phenomenon called life either. That is a hard concept to accept, but any illusions otherwise just make contentment in life elusive. It is estimated by those who calculate such things that there are 8.75 million species on earth. We are one of them. But our species is now responsible for a 6th great extinction event, because of human activity. Within a century, 75 percent of these species will be extinct. Most of us, of course will not believe this any more than most take serious climate change, the Golden Rule, or own death. Maybe we need feel embarrassed about what we are doing, but then again most species which have lived on our planet have vanished and most of these vanished species had nothing to do with any activity by humans. Thus, mass extinctions, for varied reasons, have been occurring periodically for millions of years.
In some sense, the big picture is more understandable than any tunnel vision focused on many matters to which we give a lot of attention. Sometimes it seems our understanding of an issue is simply temporary until, with more input, we alter our understanding. When these alterations of our understanding cease we may as well be dead. To some extent we kind of give up—whatever will be will be. I kind of view my own demise in that fashion. All these years of trying to be more important, powerful, wealthier, titled, and so on—only to realize, at some point, that none of this matters much in the long run. Like many older people I don’t really seek a lot of adventure anymore—at least not the kind that drives up blood pressure, or is too daring, or any adventure being chased after with any kind of intensity. Been there, done that, is kind of a creeping aspect of longevity.
Recently I have been thinking about why the United States is 26th on the happiness poll of countries around the world. We used to lead the way, albeit that is a supposition on my part. I guess endless smart bombs, missiles, drones, tanks, invasions, troops, and most of our great wealth concentrated in the hands of a small single digit percentage of the citizenry, does not generate widespread contentment. According to the poll, communism and dictatorship fail to produce widespread contentment either. And we are way ahead of them.
I began to admire Bhutan where the government announced it would pursue gross national happiness as the goal of government. The leaders stated that “economic growth needs to be balanced against the need to protect the mountains, the forests, the culture and good governance.” Then later I became aware that in the recent decade hundreds of thousands of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese have been driven from the country. Why? Not surprisingly religion, as so oft the case, is the cause. These expelled are Hindu and the majority of Bhutanese are not. Thus, the real question becomes, just whose happiness are we talking about? About 70,000 of these people have found refuge in the United States. All’s well that ends well I guess. Except all is not exactly well. The expelled refugees, in Bhutan, all had land, houses, they grew things themselves, they were independent. After two years in refugee camps in Nepal, they were sent elsewhere, including the U.S. When they arrived in the United States most them did not even know how to hold a pencil, to read, and they never went to school. The culture shock was genuine shock.
Many of them relocated to places like Manchester, New Hampshire. Well, there is always something good about a success story. Except maybe success is not the right word. When an article about them appeared in the local paper the letters to the Editor were overwhelmingly letters of outrage. One responder stated: “If YOU are a taxpaying citizen of this nation then YOU are the ones getting fucked by these bleeding heart leeches.’ Another one said, “Diversity=Division=the breakdown of America.” Well, there’s a point to consider. Except, that after three years almost all of the Bhutanese ‘freeloaders’ had jobs, were less likely to be on welfare than the Manchester population as a whole, and their children were graduating from high school a a far higher rate than the native-born population. Something doesn’t seem right here.
So why do so many of the less fortunate in our own country not manage the same sort of success statistics? They speak the language, they are living in a familiar culture, and they attend schools. Perhaps there is a difference being poor and independent, owning your own house and land, and living off the land than being poor, dependent, living behind barred windows and doors, in an essentially dog eat dog environment.
In the last analysis, these urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes in our own country have been created by our own culture and politics. As is often the rule, “we have met the enemy and it is us”. It is not coincidence that the woes of any country are often blamed on minorities. We tend to see minorities, these ‘different-from us’ walled-off misfits as the reason for whatever problems exist in our society. And if they fuss, sometimes louder than us even, well—if they don’t like it here they can leave.
I taught for many years in a university which derived many of it’s students from an urban ghetto. Granted that the worst kids of any ghetto will not be found in a university setting---nevertheless, many of these students were among the most honest, hard-working, dependable, conscientious, pleasant natured young people, to be found at the university. Generalizations always have limitations, but the least appealing students to have in class were those most spoiled by their parents. These were often the students who were aloof, resentful, least likely to share or help other students, never assume blame for any of their failures, and are disdainful of diversity. They simply felt uncomfortable outside their long standing protective family cocoon.
The happiness index is hard to figure, whether for individuals or for a country as a whole. Most of what we tend to figure is needed for personal happiness is not found in the end product. If we make a list of the most contented and happiest people we have known, rarely is their happiness related to huge material wealth, impressive titles, personal attractiveness, athletic prowess, vocation, family values, intense religious sectarian beliefs, political bent, climate, and so on. Health does seem to be involved although not in any precise way. Clearly a lot of what we chase in life is illusionary. Perhaps we expect too much, are too self serving in our pursuits, fail too often to appreciate the role of diversity in God’s evolutionary laws, go too fast through life and fail to smell the roses, and fail to understand our own nature well enough to meet our own particular needs.
Just recently I read about this student who got accepted at all 10 Ivy league colleges. He has almost a perfect score on the SAT. What stood out to me was that he was a first generation black American from Ghana. Then I remembered about these first generation Americans from Bhutan who arrived here just a few years ago not even knowing how to hold a pencil, illiterate, no command of the English language, and yet a greater percentage of them were graduating from high school and off welfare than the home-grown population. Clearly, much of life we are all mired in illusions of endless sorts. It’s annoying. Like someone is toying with us all our life, and we have been sent after disappointing goose chases all our life. The world goes round and round, but there are times when we feel, “Stop the world, I want to get off”. Of course, having been born is a fatal hap-pence and we will have to depart the world some day.
Mario Como may have said it best: “We have built rockets and spaceships and shuttles; we have harnessed the atom, we have dazzled a generation with a display of our technological skills. But we still spend millions of dollars on aspirin and psychiatrists and tissues to wipe away the tears of anguish and uncertainty that result from our confusion and our emptiness…The closed circle of pure materialism is clear to us now—-aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit. All around us we have seen success in this world’s terms become ultimate and desperate failures. Teenager and college students, raised in affluent surroundings and given all the material comforts our society can offer, commit suicide. Entertainer and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace of stimulation via drugs. Men and women rise to the top of their professions after years of struggling. But despite their apparent success, they are driven nearly mad by a frantic search for diversions, new mates, games, new experiences—-anything to fill the diminishing interval between their existence and eternity—the way to serve yourself is to serve others; and that Aristotle was right, before them, when he said the only way to assure yourself happiness is to learn to give happiness."
