Notes From The Field

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Hi, Don Thompson here.
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Doing this podcast as sort of a random exercise, uh, as I will tend to do once in a while.
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I haven't been podcasting regularly for a few months now, and once in a while I will pop in with a podcast.
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Um, and I thought it seemed like an opportune time to do such a thing, so I'm gonna step through some thoughts that I have, and I'm calling this podcast Notes from the Field.
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And um just to give some context, I I basically am in a break mode, you know, summer break, you might say, from teaching.
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And um Diana and I just got back from a trip where we went to Hawaii, um, which was really, really great in many ways, and very eye-opening in many ways.
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It was in in uh in a lot of ways a retreat, uh, meaning that you go on such an adventure to contemplate, to um you know, recapitulate, to go over um things in your mind and to um assess where you're at.
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And so part of the trip was about that.
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Part of the trip was about, you know, you might say having fun or um, you know, enjoying yourself and so on and so forth.
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So I I'll talk a little bit about both the aspects, uh, both uh those aspects of the trip.
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Uh one thing that I noticed on this particular um journey was in particular when we went, we went to a few uh resorts, we would stop in and have lunch and and uh check things out.
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And and there was a lot of activity happening with families.
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So um I got to a chance to you know observe what what that was like for those families.
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And I and I have to say that it sort of put me into uh a mental state or a a um gave me a perspective.
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Um Diana and I don't have any children.
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We have uh nieces and nephews and family, of course, but we don't have any children, so we don't we don't really have that particular perspective of what it's like having kids.
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So when when at the resorts and and you know, sitting by the pool, let's say having lunch and sipping a smoothie and observing people, you notice that children are very active in in the pool area with with in their moms and dads are you know watching.
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Uh hopefully the kids don't get into any kind of trouble.
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But, you know, kids are are pretty much innocent, you know.
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That that's basically what I notice.
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They're innocent.
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They don't really take into consideration anything but the present moment, what's in front of them.
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So in a way, they're they're they're sort of naturally organically mindful, you might say, in that they're just observing what's happening in front of them without much consideration for the past or the future.
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They're just trying to have a good time.
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So um that is a good thing.
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I mean, it there's there's an innocence about it.
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Um, and obviously as we get older and we become responsible adults, we we move away from that uh sense of innocence into um a sense of responsibility.
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Now, some might say I'm over-idealizing children, and they can be, you know, pretty nasty little little things too, and and and cre wreak a lot of havoc.
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And I and I don't pretend to be Pollyannish about it.
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I understand that kids can you know have attitudes and create problems.
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But I think for the most part, what I observed is laughing and splashing and having a good time and and and innocence that I thought was rather uh refreshing.
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But I also thought about you know, at what cost was this particular reality, meaning the reality of the resort.
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The resort, which is sort of a you know, an imposition on nature.
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Uh we have these uh, you know, buildings and pools and activities and people and and uh various things that they can do to have a good time uh while at the uh uh resort in uh ostensibly in in in nature.
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So uh nature is the context through which these things occur.
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You have a vast ocean in in front of you, typically uh at the resort, so you can um you know observe the ocean, look out into the ocean and admire the vast quality of the um of the ocean, of the water.
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And oftentimes I would do that on this trip.
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I would just look out into the ocean and and into the vastness of it.
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It's sort of like looking into the vastness of mind, you might say.
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I mean, that's sort of a I guess one way to look at it.
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You can look at it as if you know the the space, uh, the the water is an expansive uh sense of self, of consciousness.
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And that's that's one way to look at uh meditating on a body of water.
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You can look at it, you can look at it that way.
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And um, you know, there's different aspects of meditation, different types of meditation, as we know.
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We've gone over that in this podcast.
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There's there's uh, you know, basically you might say calm-abiding meditation, uh, and then there's insight meditation.
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Those would be two major buckets.
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Calm abiding, meaning that you're basically settling the mind down, you're relaxing, you're perhaps focusing on a candle or whatever, your breath, and you're and you're settling the body down, the mind down to a state of relaxation.
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And the insight is is more of an analysis process where you're looking at yourself and your situation to try to ascertain, well, what's going on with with life, what's going on with me, why why am I at where I am at?
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So I use the opportunity of going to Hawaii as um a method, uh, a platform, uh, to do some of both.
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Uh both uh the calm-abiding meditation and also inside meditation.
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I really thought a lot about uh my my life.
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And I think that it was useful to do that.
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One thing that I did notice uh again at the resort was the sort of I'll call it the ubiquity of consumer culture.
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And for whatever reason culture, world culture has sort of s wrapped itself around this idea of consumerism.
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And consumerism meaning that you are buying things uh and you have a certain consumer lifestyle, most of which has been developed in the West and specifically the United States.
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So this consumer culture, which was developed, let's say, you know, rising out out of World War II in the 50s and 60s, uh, with some, you know, brief pauses, but let's say more or less out of that time and um and then reinforced in the Reagan years this consumer culture.
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In other in other words, what becomes paramount is to uh buy things in order to be able to fulfill your desires.
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And it is thought that this consumer culture uh will both satisfy your desires and also create economic activity, which is good for the overall uh situation within society.
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I mean, people can make money.
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So the money system, our capitalist money system, uh you know, typically demands that that you have to have some way to generate an income.
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So um because of that, it becomes sort of a given that uh income is necessary for survival.
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You need to have money in order to survive in the world.
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And if you look at the the root cause of a lot of suffering in the modern world, in the modern world, uh it has to do with a lack of money, uh, or a perceived lack of money.
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So so money uh is really you know um tied into this this idea that you need to have income in order to participate in the consumer culture, to buy things to make yourself happy, to satisfy your desires.
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That's sort of the way it's set up.
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And um, if you look at you know, most endeavors in life, if you peel them back, the the heart of them is is that they tend to be or or desire to be or um you know seek to be money-making ventures.
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Uh you have a profession, let's say, you and you seek to make money off the profession.
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You create a product, you seek to make money off the product.
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You're a consultant, you seek to make a consulting fee off of your consulting.
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So the the money aspect is often a given.
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It's a given.
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It isn't really a question in terms of, well, do we really need to do it this way?
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And I've talked about this a little a little bit uh, you know, in other podcasts.
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And you know, as a society, we are a long way from reconsidering this whole consumer culture capitalist framework that we have set up.
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It has become such a given that people think of it almost like breathing.
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You know, there's no other alternative but this system that we've created.
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And as I as I notice people out there blogging and commenting and uh you know, complaining or philosophizing, whatever, I find at the heart of it is a dissatisfaction.
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There's a dissatisfaction with something.
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Something isn't going well in the world.
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So um if we do some kind of a root cause analysis on what isn't going well in the world, I think uh a lot of it has to do with the fact, in my estimation, that we all don't feel good about what we're doing to the world, meaning the environment.
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So we might not understand this consciously.
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We might, this might be a subconscious uh you know, feeling, a sense, or whatever.
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But I think that we all feel like we're participating in something, this culture, this global consumer culture, uh, that isn't necessarily the best model for humanity.
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A lot of people don't think about it.
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Uh, a lot of people don't even consider it, they just continue on.
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And uh they may be forced to consider it at some point because of uh environmental issues that will continue to rise up, and we're seeing more of it more and more of it all the time, uh, heat waves and and whatnot in Europe and elsewhere, where things are just sort of imploding in a way.
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And when this starts to affect things, uh, you know, in terms of our consumer culture, then, you know, obviously it's gonna be it's gonna be a little bit of an issue.
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It's gonna be a a game changer when this sort of realization comes about.
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Uh, and then people will probably desire to have some kind of a change.
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I do believe this tendency towards uh democratic socialism that we're seeing in our modern politics in the United States is an indication that people are dissatisfied with the status quo, and they want to see some kind of a different system put in place.
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And the democratic socialists have some ideas in terms of recalibrating the emphasis of our politics and of our social uh life, uh, to be you know more socially conscious of what we're doing and to try to do things in a more collective way.
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Um in a more collective way, meaning that we are concerned for the whole as much as for the individual part.
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Uh, American culture has typically been very individualistic and all about the individual um profit and success.
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And, you know, our current um president reflects that.
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He's almost like a cartoon, really, uh, in reflecting this sort of cartoonish, almost like he's almost like a satire of this whole selfish attitude.
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I mean, it's almost funny.
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If it wasn't so tragic, you could, you know, spin it up as a as a as a as a comedy, really, in a way.
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Um the amount of money that uh uh the president has made in the last uh you know, since taking office is is astounding.
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Uh and it's not even questioned that this might, you know, be a little corrupt, or you know, you should at least raise some eyebrows.
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Uh and people are questioning it, and and and and rightfully so.
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But I think that the result of this uh current era uh that we live in, the Trump, Trumpian era, uh, it'll go a couple different ways.
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It could go towards the way of the democratic socialists, that's one way it could go, or it could go towards a you know more authoritarian capitalism, which is another way that it could go.
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You know, it could go that way.
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Uh, it isn't really uh a done deal.
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Uh it depends on what happens and what people get convinced is the right way to go.
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I mean, people are so um convinced in the United States that anything to do with socialism is a bad thing, that uh, you know, I don't know.
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But we do have uh democratic socialists that are spinning themselves up in New York, as we know, uh Mayor Madame and other places in the country that uh these democratic socialists are running for office and and getting uh, you know, certainly they're gonna be put on the ballot in in November and we'll see what happens.
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So um I'm gonna wind it down.
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I I think that there, you know, I I did have a note here to myself about historical parallels.
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And I think if we look back in history, we can see some historical parallels to what's happening now.
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And these are these are, you know, this is a fairly rough sketch.
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I don't pretend to be a historian of of any note, aside from the fact that I might notice some patterns in uh society reflected in uh these historical parallels.
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And I do look back towards the Greeks and the Romans.
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I mean, you have to take a look back at the at the Greeks and the Romans to see some historical parallels.
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And in in Greek society, you had this this uh period of time, and I think I I've talked about this in a couple of other podcasts, where you had this flourishing of uh democracy, and you had the Athenian democratic period, and that uh period came to an end.
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Um and then the Roman era rose out of that.
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So you can see this sort of tendency to within the the Trumpian world to try to morph uh our uh democratic system into more of an authoritarian system, uh a quasi-imperial system.
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You can see that uh happening, you know.
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They're there I don't even know if it's it's conscious, it might be subconscious, I don't know.
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But uh Mr.
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Trump and company, um, you know, and the billionaire class, I think they want to see a resurgence of this uh sort of imperial uh attitude towards uh um government.
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And in other words, what's really supported is the imperial uh army and um you know the rise of this uh empire that is maintained and managed by the imperial administrative state.
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I think that's what what they would like to see, yeah, as long as the billionaire class is is maintained and sustained and not taxed.
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That's the main thing.
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They don't want to be taxed.
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So um, okay, I'm gonna leave it at that.
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Um thanks for listening, as always.
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These these are random notes from the field.
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I I hope you find them or found them uh interesting and perhaps useful.
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And I will pop in again um to talk about these and other topics a little bit more uh a little bit later.
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Thanks a lot.