All the love in the world

I’m finishing up my 5th quarter in Pacific Graduate Institute’s program leading to an M.A. in what they’re now calling “engaged humanities.” The most difficult class this quarter has been “The Psychology of Compassion and Tolerance.” My final discussion post reflects how it has expanded my understanding:

This quote from Marie-Louise von Franz (1978/1980) sums up the meaning of this course for me: “In this world created by the Self we meet all those many to whom we belong, whose hearts we touch” (p. 177). Here is the true goal of individuation: The drive toward wholeness is not a selfishly motivated desire to attain whatever heights our fate might have in store, but the longing to join at the deepest possible level with our eternal companions. I understand now so much better what Jerry Wennstrom said at our residential session, “True individuality is a one-on-one relationship with that mystery.... Marilyn [Jerry’s wife] and I were nothing, and in that nothing, we could be together.” In the ego’s surrender to the Self, we find not only our true selves but all the love in the world.

Reference:

Franz, M.-L. von. (1980). Projection and re-collection in Jungian psychology: Reflections of the soul. Peru, IL: Open Court. (Original work published 1978)

End of Quarter 4

I am now halfway done with my M.A. Humanities degree at Pacifica Graduate Institute and figure it's way past time to post synopses of some of the work I've been doing. For the quarter just finished, I did research into cultural misappropriation and drew a mandala representing my process of responding to social justice issues. I also wrote these two final papers:

Finding Grace in the Concrete: Little Marlene Redeemed

Joseph Campbell once observed, “Eternity is in love with the forms of time.” In the strange fairy tale “The Juniper Tree,” concrete objects are crucial to the transcendent experience that redeems a little girl from following in her mother’s overly materialistic footsteps.

Making Room for Domestic Ritual

Because the home is such an integral reflection of the Self and its path to individuation, transition events within a dwelling deserve as much attention as other life events, with rituals of healing, belonging, and celebration. Ritual can also honor domestic space as a collection of rooms where the soul grows, through everyday activities such as family meals. When designing a ritual for home use, begin by framing the purpose of the ritual. Then, find a suitable space and meaningful objects. Call for the participation of whatever deities, spirits, or values are most meaningful to the occasion, in recognition of the unifying story that brings the participants together. As an example, I present the house farewell conducted for my parents before they moved from their home of 51 years into a senior complex.

Breath

The secret of breath is so simple. In that natural act, what is outside comes inside, and what is inside goes outside. The transfer sustains life and creates a liminal moment in which anything can happen.

Does BookMooch need more rules?

I've been using BookMooch for about a year now and have found it invaluable in making the switch from desktop software guru to mythology & psychology grad student in preparation for whatever comes next. BookMooch works very simply: You post a list of books you want to give away and search or browse other people's inventories to find books that you want to "mooch." The transactions use a point system. The only out-of-pocket cost is the postage required to mail a book to a moocher.

BookMooch founder John Buchman asks in his blog whether the site needs more rules to define acceptable reasons for rejecting a mooch. He cites three recent incidents -- an author who rejected mooches of copies of her new book because she thought the moochers were selling it and two members who rejected mooches for political reasons related to the moocher or the moocher's country. Explaining why he and the other administrators have come up with a short list of acceptable reasons for rejections, John says:

I didn’t want BookMooch to become a free-for-all, where anyone could make up any personal reasons for accepting or rejecting a mooch. That could get nasty.

That's the point where I decided that I needed to respond, and so I've posted this response on the BookMooch discussion forum (or at least I've tried to; I don't see it yet):

John, BookMooch *is* a free-for-all, whether you want it to be or not, and that's what makes it so lovable. One of its most appealing features is that it is a simple concept that requires very few rules because of its overall transparency. The offer of a book and the acceptance of a mooch take place in an environment where both sender and moocher can see each other's transaction history. A sender who engages in a lot of unexplained rejections (or rejections for purely personal reasons) is eventually going to find that they're no longer getting mooches. I believe that the values embodied in the principle of free exchange of ideas will win out over those of repression, without the need to impose any detailed code of conduct.

That said, I would like to offer two action items for you to consider. There's no reason not to try to guide people toward the type of behavior that will further the free exchange of books. Therefore, I like the suggestion that another person made to add a drop-down list of rejection reasons, just as we have a simple drop-down list of ratings for a mooch. The rejection drop-down could include:

• I can't afford to pay to ship that book to you
• I can no longer locate that book (which should automatically remove it from inventory)
• Other

The Other choice should have a box for entering an explanation, and the explanation should be required. That would end the issue of unexplained rejections.

I would not put "bad behavior" on the drop-down list, because that's a subjective judgment by one person of another. It deserves more of an explanation than a drop-down list choice would allow.

The second action item would be for you to consider publishing synopses of any instances in which a BookMooch member's account was terminated. The Terms of Service already allow you to do this with or without cause. If you want to highlight what abuse looks like in an objective fashion, providing information on these (hopefully rare) cases, would be one way to do that.

For the record, feel free to read my BookMooch history. I've rejected three mooches -- two because I did a bad job of managing my inventory and couldn't find the books when it came time to send them and one because the moocher had a lot of pending books to send. In the latter instance, I invited the moocher to try again when he'd cleared his backlog. You can see by reading the history details that he later did so. That's what I mean by transparency.

While you're there, maybe you should check out my inventory and mooch some of those old Microsoft Exchange books from me.

Coffee for a cause

In my Leadership Skills for Social Justice class this quarter, we were asked to respond to the question, “How do my consumer practices contribute to oppression?” It would be naïve for me to answer with a simple “They don’t,” because it is impossible to know who makes each product, how it is transported, and what other factors go into getting it to my doorstep. Therefore, any honest answer to that question must reflect at least the possibility that I contribute to oppression every day, through almost everything that I eat, wear, read, and otherwise consume.

But, if my every act as a consumer contributes to oppression, then doesn’t the term oppression itself become meaningless or at least less potent? That’s the problem I have with this question—that it is too like the proverbial “When did you stop beating your wife?” in its inescapable accusation. So what if I am an oppressive consumer? How am I supposed to eat, etc. in the middle of a major metropolitan area without depending on the unseen industrial, agricultural, and transportation workers who make my lifestyle possible?

Perhaps it’s time to take a cue from the environmental movement, which has also been plagued with similar problems of scale—complex issues that seem too big for any one person to mitigate. In the face of such issues, it is all too easy to complain that there’s nothing to be done, that things simply are they way they are.

However, I am a child of the environmental movement. I participated in the first Earth Day, following in the footsteps of my mother, who is still an active conservationist at age 80. One thing I’ve learned in watching the environmental movement evolve over the past 35+ years is that it is possible for individuals to make a difference. They can do it in two ways—band together with like-minded others to effect specific changes or, at the personal level, start making conscious choices about consumption and lifestyle. We’ve seen in just the past few years how a small group of people buying organic products has led to the wider availability of such products. The same goes for products made from recycled plastic and glass. The latest trend, at least here in the Washington, DC, area, is people choosing to bring their own shopping bags to the store. A few people do it, and then suddenly many more people perceive that it’s a good idea.

My current understanding of the issues surrounding oppression and social justice is such that I’m not ready to join any movements, but I am capable of thinking more about what I buy. Given the interconnections between social justice issues and environmental issues, it makes a lot of sense to learn about what goes into the creation and transportation of the products I use, especially those I purchase frequently.

Let’s start with coffee. It fuels my day. It’s not so much the buzz as the fragrance, flavor, and warmth that help me set a good pace for my work or study. I am fortunate to live in an area where not only is shade-grown coffee readily available, but I’ve even heard fair trade coffee advertised on the radio. That doesn’t avoid the possible oppression of the people who ship the coffee and build the boats that carry the coffee, but if I worry about the entire production and transportation chain, I will quickly find myself paralyzed. What I can do is choose fair trade, shade-grown, organic coffee as often as I feel I can afford it. It is heartening to read that such a choice may have a definite positive effect.:

If coffee sells as a complexly marketed specialty beverage like wine rather than an anonymous, price-driven commodity like branded supermarket coffee, and if some of the premium paid for those complexly marketed specialty coffees actually makes it back to the pockets of subsistence growers rather than staying in the hands of marketers and dealers, then specialty coffee becomes part of a self-regulating, market-oriented solution to the rural poverty that haunts many parts of the tropics.

Right now, my biggest quandary is about decaffeinated coffee. One of the ways I manage to drink coffee all day without getting the jitters is that I mix regular and decaffeinated beans. I visited a coffee plantation in Costa Rica about six years ago and was shocked to learn that the decaf coffee they sold on site was actually shipped to Germany to be decaffeinated and then shipped back to the plantation to be sold to tourists. What extra economic “inputs” go into the making of my decaf coffee? This may be more of an environmental issue of which process is the least harmful than it is a social justice issue, but it illustrates the complexity of the consumer’s dilemmas.

What’s next? Well, it’s winter, so maybe it’s a good time to think about buying fruits and vegetables appropriate to the season, rather than eating strawberries from South America. Parsnips, anyone?

Story Field Conference

I am excited about attending the Story Field Conference later this month in Colorado. One question I will have in mind is: Do we already know our shared stories?

Pull up a chair, and let's talk about it.

Does Gilgamesh grow up?

The epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest known. Recently made more accessible in a fresh version by Stephen Mitchell, it tells the story of an arrogant king who takes advantage of his subjects, despoils nature, and offends the gods. When his best friend dies under a god's curse, Gilgamesh seeks the secret of eternal life, hears the story of a flood that almost destroyed humankind, and finally finds, then loses a plant said to have the power of restoring youth. The story in Mitchell's version ends with Gilgamesh arriving home and describing the wonders of his great city.

The ending is disappointing. It doesn't answer the key question: Does Gilgamesh grow up and change his ways?

Did facing up to his friend's death and wandering in the wilderness in search of eternal life bring about some great alteration in Gilgamesh's behavior? The verses don't say explicitly. Some subtle clues suggest that, on his return, he at least has the potential for humility (sadly lacking in his early life) and a more neighborly attitude toward both his subjects and the gods.

Clue #1 is how Gilgamesh reaches the "island of the blessed" where dwell his ancestor Utnapishtim and his wife, who survived the great flood. (I picture them being played in the film version by Billy Crystal and Carol Kane, reprising their roles as Miracle Max and his wife in The Princess Bride.) Gilgamesh glides down a river, uses dozens of poles to push a boat across a stagnant sea, then stands up and holds a robe so that the boat can sail the last distance. In other words, first he coasts -- which is what he's been doing all his life, and then he uses his own brawn -- still in keeping with how he has always lived.

However, the other shore cannot be gained by Gilgamesh's own effort; he must allow the wind to glide the boat to its landing. In the Sumerian pantheon, the wind god is Enlil, the same god who decreed that Gilgamesh's friend, Enkidu, must die. Gilgamesh stands as a mast. A mast would come from a tree, and trees were prized in Mesopotamia as spoils of war (Roberts, 2006). (Earlier in the text, after slaying a monster, Gilgamesh celebrates his victory by chopping down all the trees in the forest that the monster was guarding.) Standing in the boat, Gilgamesh offers himself to the wind, to Enlil, as a conquered state might offer trees as tribute. When he arrives at the home of Utnapishtim, he is no longer keen to do battle, but is ready to listen to his ancient ancestor reveal the secrets of the gods. A man of action, not of words, in his early life, Gilgamesh is showing signs of change.

Clue #2 is how Gilgamesh loses the magic youth-restoring plant. He lays it down while he bathes in a pool at the end of a day's traveling, and a snake smells it and carries it away, shedding its skin to show that it has been transformed (or will be, once it eats the plant). Bathing in a pool of water is also a symbol of transformation, much older than Jesus' baptism at the hands of John the Baptist. Gilgamesh is truly frustrated and sad when he dries off and realizes that his journey to the edge of the world has been in vain. But in my imagination, I can see him watching the snake's theft and deciding to do nothing about it. After all, he was having second thoughts about this "secret of youth" idea. How long would the youth last? When it wore off, would he look his actual age? Or would he still be younger, just not exactly youthful? If he ate the herb many times, would he finally turn to dust when the last dose wore off? Once the pool has revived him, he may decide that the magic plant isn't the solution after all.

Clue #3 is that, at the gates of Uruk, Gilgamesh praises the beauty of Ishtar's temple, rather than railing at her, as he did earlier in the story after she propositioned him. He is no longer angry at the gods, but I don't think he feels subservient to them either. I can imagine him sprucing up the temples, as Book I of the epic describes, not as an offering, but just as one good neighbor would help out another.

This change toward a less insular and more constructive attitude is supported by the text in Book XII, which Mitchell does not include in his translation. The additional material includes the story of the huluppa tree, which Gilgamesh cuts down for Ishtar, to make her a bed and a throne. Yes, he's still cutting down trees, but for a purpose, not in an emotional frenzy. Maybe he and Ishtar have both found that they need someone to talk to.

Whether Gilgamesh becomes a great and wise king, I can't say, but I do see him as a changed man, more ready to listen, perhaps ready to give up bluster and arrogance for a more neighborly relationship with both the gods and his own people. As Book I relates, he finally shows some concern "for the welfare of the people and the sacred land." He has at least the potential to grow further.

References:
Mitchell, S. (2004). Gilgamesh: A new English version. New York: Free Press.

Roberts, J. (2006, July). "Centering the world": Trees as tribute in the ancient Near East. Transoxiana: Journal Libre de Estudios Orientales, 11. http://www.transoxiana.org/11/roberts-near_east_trees.html