by Ray Jason
 |
| Ray on his birthday 2016 |
A few hours into every long voyage
there comes a precious moment. Most
sailors pay it no heed - but I never miss it.
Suddenly, the gradually thinning margin of land and sea disappears. The land has drowned. The sea surrounds. The domain of Humanity has vanished. The realm of Nature is resurrected.
Now my only companions reside in the
sea and the sky. The only laws are
timeless and elemental – the mighty ocean currents and the churning atmospheric
systems. Most perceive this vastness as
emptiness, but I see it as human-less.
Such solitude - such exile - does not trouble me, it pleases me. And it allows me to glimpse the Human Project
with a clarity unknown to land-dwellers.
This wet, surging enormity inspires
a perspective on our species that reveals it to be both magnificent and malevolent. It harkens up both Mozart and the Mushroom
Cloud. It whispers of a planet filled
with riches - and the human psyche cursed with a lust for riches. It provides a long lens that helps me focus
on the multi-generational march of the human caravan.
The first night out is solace for the soul. The land lights are gone and the heavenly
bodies abound. Lying on deck, I am
humbled by this majestic tapestry of darkness and light as AVENTURA slides
across the sea. So many stars and
planets circling overhead and yet so few – if any – that have the right
combination of water and atmosphere and temperature to support life.
How do we humans forget this sublime miracle that has
placed us on this one lush planet amidst a million lifeless stars that are
either ice or lava or dust? How do we lose
sight of this foundational blessing? I
believe that the answer is that our philosophical focus is too narrow. So in this, my annual birthday essay, I hope
to widen that perspective and share some messages from my time alone with
Mother Ocean.
*******
Now is a particularly appropriate time to examine the
bigger picture, since the U.S. Presidential Election Reality Show focuses much
of our attention on trivial and inconsequential issues. This is extremely tragic because the
selection of the most powerful “leader” on the planet (at least in FRONT of the curtain) should be a catalyst for
discussing the momentous problems that confront us. Here are some topics that almost never get
discussed by The Powers That Be - who I prefer to call The Malignant Overlords.
The two great meta-systems that dominate 21st
Century human society are utter failures.
Our political systems
continue to consolidate greater and greater power into fewer and fewer
hands. And our economic models direct more and more wealth into fewer and fewer
pockets. Even though these massive
institutions impact our lives enormously, we rarely scrutinize them. Please allow me to do so with a mid-ocean
perspective.
POLITICS – a
vile stew of Pathology, Secrecy and Chaos.
The vast majority of humans do not wish to CONTROL
other humans. And yet some do. Unfortunately, those with a lust for power
can easily fulfill it through politics.
They do this deceitfully. They
claim that their motivations are service and the greater good, when in the
majority of cases, it is personal enrichment.
With very few exceptions those who seek public office are not aspiring
philosopher kings, instead, they are power junkies, who realize that politics
is a convenient way to fulfill their pathological desire to control others. And those with genuine noble intentions, who
do manage to get themselves elected, are swiftly co-opted or marginalized or … assassinated.
Secrecy is as prevalent in politics as salt is in
seawater. I laugh when people claim that
“the whole Machiavelli thing” is just chapters in a book - and that there are
no conspiracies in politics. Their common
rationale for this is that people can’t keep secrets. When a person is threatened with the loss of
a high-paying job or with … death, keeping a secret requires very little
effort.
The Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the
atomic bomb program, is a great example of a successful clandestine
undertaking. From that same era there
was Operation Paper Clip in which Nazi scientists were surreptitiously
positioned in universities and research centers throughout the U.S. after World
War II. This one is still unknown to the
great majority of Americans.
More recently, we have the revelations of Edward
Snowden, describing the incredible web of surveillance that ensnares most of
the planet. How many thousands of people
had to perform their jobs secretly in order to install that Orwellian spy
grid? And yet most us were not aware of
it until Snowden’s disclosures.
And even more
recently we have the Wikileaks emails showing how deceitful and despicable the
operations of so many politicians truly are.
I believe that a careful, unbiased scrutiny of the political landscape
indicates that there is far more secrecy than there is transparency.
There is a bully on the global schoolyard! That menace is the U.S. foreign policy
establishment. They are religious
zealots who worship the god of American Exceptionalism. It is even written into their policy
statements. They proclaim that no other
nation should be allowed to become a viable threat to U.S. world domination or
hegemony.
These are genuinely sick individuals who smear blood
and chaos across large swaths of the planet.
And they do this without any risk to their own well-being from the
security of their limos and their gated communities.
So, essentially Politics allows people who are
pathologically addicted to controlling people to come together in secret with
other similarly psychotic individuals and spew chaos upon innocent people
around the world. Correct me if I am
mistaken, but I do not recall hearing this subject addressed in the recent
presidential debates.
ECONOMICS –
Greed is Gross!
Perhaps our economic meta-system needs to be replaced since
on one side of the planet you can choose between 46 flavors of yogurt and on
the other side of the same planet people are starving by the millions. Inmates running an asylum could do better
than this.
When GREED, rather than maximizing human happiness, is
the foundational principle of an economic structure, it is no surprise that the
human vultures will capitalize and the meek will not inherit the Earth. Almost every aspect of the modern economic
matrix is designed to enrich the already obscenely rich and impoverish the
already desperately poor. Tell me who
benefits from these standard economic operating principles:
·
Sending good-paying
factoring jobs overseas
·
The financial
dictatorship of Central Banks
·
Having to buy new
computer operating systems every few years
·
Industry
lobbyists placed in oversight agencies
·
Compound interest
·
Tax laws that
even lawyers can’t understand
·
Fractional
reserve banking
·
Bail-outs for
Wall Street and bail-ins for Main Street
·
Walmarts
devouring Wally’s Hardware Store
·
TPP style trade
agreements hidden from the public
I cannot think of a single facet of modern economics
where an impartial observer might say, “Now that is a good set-up that benefits
almost everyone.” Instead, it is an
enormous con game that enriches the few at the expense of the many.
*******
So what then is the answer? I
certainly cannot speak for you, but I can share with you the secret that Mother
Ocean whispered to me – soft resistance. Disconnect as much as possible from
anything that the System is urging you to embrace. Reject the ultra-materialism, refuse to support
the war machines, scorn the religions that drive wedges between people,
ridicule the fools who claim that Humanity’s destiny is to dominate Nature.
Turn instead to those aspects of Life that are eternal
and elemental. Find your joy and solace
in friendship, in the beauty of the non-human world, in laughter, in helpfulness,
in the first steps of a young child or the contentment on the face of an old
man settling onto a park bench.
…or in my case, with a steady breeze and a following
sea.