Trapped By Trumpery

 Though they are few, there are some who truly know me and I would expect that they are aware of what I am about to try to explain. But like the beginning of the Tao Tae Ching explains, or doesn't explain, if it is the true Tao, it cannot be explained. This may sound like the perfect way to keep your mysticism mystical, and by golly it IS, but I think it might also be what makes this world so durned interesting. At least one of the things...

As last post is witness, I am a bit of a pantheist in nature. Ar ar, get it? In nature? Wild roses are currently in bloom stinking up the trails around here in quite a lovely way that puts one, (or at least me - this particular blog-blathering one) in mind of a collection of poetry and wisdom called Golistan/Gulistan. I've seen both spellings used. It means the rose place and the book was written in Persia (modern day Iran) by a dude named Saadi who had just returned from travel (the most intense educational experience) around Turkey, India, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and other areas due to the Mongolian invasions of Iran (Persia) in the early and mid 1200's. 

One of the stories is particularly relevant to me at this time and you will probably understand why, as I convey its message or at least its details. A wise man was asked which tree was the best in nature or the most high of God. The answer was that none are called "azad," which means free, but the cypruss tree which bears no fruit. Most trees have periods in which they are blooming and then bear fruit and seasons in which they are dry and withered while the cupruss is always flourishing. "How is this wise?" you may inquire. "Is it better to not bear fruit?" you might also ask. You may even be a wise guy and say, "Hey man, the bald cypruss tree has fruit!" The wise man, perhaps having visited lands in which they know that nothing that can be revealed is the true Tao, said, "Set your mind not on that which is transitory for the Dijlah (Tigris River) will flow through Baghdad long after the caliphs are extinct."

Okay... so what does THAT mean? Well caliphs were political and spiritual leaders during the Arab, Turkish, and Persian empires... which were transitional. Here is a cypruss tree in Iran:

You might even recognize it. It's the Cypruss of Abarkuh. It's believed to be around 4000 years old. 

I believe Sting, a former teacher of literature, might have been familiar with Saadi's Rose Garden. He wrote, 

Teachers told us the Romans built this place
They built a wall and a temple
And an edge of the empire garrison town
They lived and they died
They prayed to their gods
But the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbled till all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found

All this time
The river flowed

Such a great song! You may also remember a Bible verse from that same song. 

Blessed are the poor
For they shall inherit the earth
Better to be poor
Than be a fat man in the eye of a needle
As these words were spoken, I swear
I hear the old man laughing
What good is a used up world
And how could it be worth having?

All this time
The river flowed
Endlessly like a silent tear

Great song! Great song! But let's swing around to Henry David Thoreau here so I can better approach my point. I remember long ago reading HDT and loving his take on the blessed are the poor thing being something like wisdom and impartial observation of human life requires voluntary poverty, but I was confused when he wrote about philanthropy being a greatly overrated virtue and when he stated that it is human selfishness that makes it so. There is a part in Walden where Thoreau echoes the wit of some of the stories of Saadi and talks about a man approaching his house with the conscious design of doing him good. He writes that under those circumstances he would run for his life as if from the African simoom, a dry, parching wind that fills the mouth, nose, ears, and eyes with dust until you have suffocated.

Indeed, in the very story of the wise man and the cypruss tree the wise man DOES say that if you are a date tree you should give generously of your fruit. The Sting lyric about the fat man and the eye of a needle is also in reference to the Bible when it is said that it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Now there are those who will say that the Eye of the Needle referred to is a hole in the Wailing Wall through which possibly a small camel might squeeze, but that seems doubtful to me. And, oh yeah, btw Sting, a guy doesn't have to be rich to be fat. 

So let's put this into modern-day super- hyperbolic perspective: Elon Musk is now a trillionaire. I have no perspective on what even a billionaire means, but he's a trillionaire. That's a stack of 100-dollar bills 700 miles high for fuck's sake! Even 700 miles is difficult for me to wrap my head around, but wafer-thin $100 bills piled THAT high? Inconceivable! Let's try again. Its weight would be over 22 million pounds. That's like 5000 of the largest blue whales on one scale. Nope. Still can't imagine that. Okay, if you were to count continuously for 31,546 years with no sleeping or eating, once a second, then I still can't understand it. Spend a million bucks a day, which wouldn't be nearly as easy as it sounds, and it would STILL take you 2,740 years! So you would have had to start before Christ, before dollars even existed, at a pre-inflation period in which a million bucks might actually be impossible to spend in a day because literally NOTHING cost that much. Okay maybe not, but, next! One million seconds ago was two weeks ago. One billion seconds ago was 1994. One trillion seconds ago was 32,000 years ago. Sigh, next! Elon Musk has more wealth than the bottom 46% of people on the planet. More dough than 3.8 billion people. 

Okay. That I understand. And I understand that it is a fucked up world in which one person could ever have that much of the world's wealth. On this we can agree, right? I'm not saying he doesn't need it, I'm saying he shouldn't have that much money and that there shouldn't be any way for any one person to have acquired that much. Can we agree on that? No. That is the best illustration of my point. Not just Musk, who has easily perceivable brain damage, but there are other people who would say that it's okay for one person to have half the world's wealth. No, he doesn't have half the world's wealth yet but he will by - what? - next Wednesday? Some people think this is okay and that's what Sting, Saadi, HDT, and I believe to be a fundamental mental infirmity that remains largely undiagnosed and untreated on the planet. I think it's approaching epidemic proportions and that Musk wouldn't have attained his trillion if it weren't. 

I believe that there is a simple mental health test of basic humanity and if you can say that there is nothing wrong with 

why, you have failed the basic test for signs of humanity. 

Free and free. They mean different things. Or do they? Free in the sense of costing no money or worth no money, and free in the sense of having the ability to do what you want. Are they more indelibly linked than we think? I have heard gambling addicts say that there was a feeling of freedom attached to losing everything. Norm Macdonald called it "cleansing" when he lost all of his money. Twice.

And if you think there's nothing to that, then why does it seem so hard for the super rich like Elon Musk to part with riches that are increasingly of no use to them? At what point do words like "earn" or "need" no longer apply? I'm going to tell you, although I may not be able to fully convey to you, that nobody but the voluntarily poor can objectively answer that question and this is why the world must conduct its various societies in accordance with their teachings. Think of all the people you consider wise. Many would say that prophets are the best sources of wisdom. Would you sooner heed the word of Elijah, a prophet who ate locusts and wild honey, or one of those Christian ministers who don't know the difference between prophet and profit? WHY?

Wealth simply has a way of skewing objectivity and honesty and by extension it affects just about every moral or ethical decision one needs to make in life. So now comes the easily-written-off-as-sour-grapes part. For most of us, even Elon Musk who lost hundreds of billions of dollars when he bought Twitter, and his Tesla stock plummeted shortly before he became a senior advisor to president Donald Trump, good times and bad times are transitional like the fruit-bearing and withering of most trees. Our so-called civilized society shows a distinct pattern during those times and it is succinctly described by Eric Clapton. 

Because nobody knows you
When you're down and out
In your pocket, not one penny
And as for friends, you don't have any

When you get back on your feet again
Everybody wants to be your long-lost friend
I said it's mighty strange, without any doubt
Nobody knows you when you're down and out

Tell me you can't relate. Thoreau describes what Norm Macdonald earlier called a "clarity" as a "dead set." He wrote that man is at a dead set when he has squirmed through a gateway or knot hole (like The Eye of The Needle?) through which his sledge load of trumpery cannot follow him. He believed that we are butterflies entangled in spiders' webs by our cumbersome belongings. The more trumpery you have, the further detached from reality and honesty you become, and your treatment by other people becomes. Which very obviously begs the question, "Why are all of our leaders rich?"

Maybe the Way (Tao/Dao) of life is to become like the cypruss tree and just abide. Don't be entrapped by the ups and downs of acquisitive society. While I can't claim to have followed this philosophy from birth, nobody could accuse me of having an ambitious bone in my body except possibly my coccyx (tailbone) which is agreed by medical professionals to be the least used of all 206. Thoreau, a man who shares my Woo Wei (effortless action) mentality, reckoned (and provided exhaustive calculations) we need only work 6 weeks of every year to acquire all of what we need. I am ALL ABOUT that! Maybe I'd put in an extra week or two for some of the creature comforts. Working two months out of twelve seems a helluva lot more civilized to me than the ass-busting that has become accepted as a natural way of life in both of our countries. And you know what? I can almost guarantee an exponentially less stressful existence as part of that package. I hate to seem shallow but just think of the pale, plastic surgery-resistant Nosferatu look you might have if you were consumed with not only making more money with your trillion, but ensuring and protecting it from your competitors for it - i.e.: everybody. Now take a look at Elon Musk.

Now as far as avoiding charity or philanthropy, I think it's the same as avoiding the cyclical, fruit-bearing/withering life cycle that benefactors participate and will try to pull you into as payment for their acts of "kindness." Thoreau's theory was if you want to be kind to me, don't try to change me. He expressed it brilliantly thus: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he tries in vain to relieve." I certainly don't need to draw your attention to the root of evil and what he might mean it is. 

I want you to watch this video of modern-day philanthropy. Pay close attention to the benefactor Just Knate trying to avoid (unsuccessfully) the appearance of superiority or even suggestions of change as repayment for his "free" gift. Also note the reluctance of the homeless dude (or I guess the modern term is "unhoused") and his difficulty in trying to express his freedom (cyprussy azad) without seeming ungrateful. 

Please don't get me wrong. I don't want to be homeless and I'm not knocking Just Knate. I think he's doing some great work. And by all means, if you want to give me money, clothes, food, or take me out to Dave and Buster's for the day, I'm not too proud. But I really DO relate to the feeling those who have experienced true poverty have of being trapped by trumpery. I sometimes wish I had more stuff, but, as I have stated before time and time again here in this blog, it is my life's goal to learn to be content with what I have and even derive joy from my suffering. I find in the Taoist thinking, the Persian poetry and stories, the wisdom of HDT, and the lessons of Nature the ability to try a little harder to accomplish my mission.