Costa Rica Guy

The small us

September 2, 2013 by costaricaguy 2 Comments

Sometimes I have to catch myself trying to be clever. I was attempting that this morning. I felt the burning need to say something about the situation in Syria. Something profound. You know what, I got nothing. The situation in the Middle East is fucked…pure and simple. I certainly have no solutions. I don’t believe Obama has them either. Maybe the truth is, there aren’t any.

But as I was taking a long meditation walk this morning it did dawn on me that all this shit is nothing more than the product of the “small us” mindset. The same one that shows up frequently…

– in religious jihad
– and corporate boardrooms
– and school yards
– and local churches
– in the United Nations
– in local town council meetings
– in PTA conferences
– at sporting events
– in books
– movies
– ideologies
– anywhere people gather…

this arch-enemy of the absolute good tends to rear its ugly head.

Here’s a video clip of a very smart small us proponent being surprisingly honest and frank about what motivates the “small us”…

I couldn’t agree more…greed and selfish interest are at the heart of the small us. And greed and selfish interest are what allow a dictator like…

to cause this…

I believe the solution is not going to be with government, but with people. That is, getting people to think “big US” rather than the small one. Sure there was a time, not too long ago, when that kind of talk would be overly idealistic and impractical. But that was before connectivity. Now we live in a hyper-connected world. A world in which the “small us” mindset is losing its popularity. We can see its effects on a world-wide scale like never before. It gets harder for small us proponents to hide them. They show up in videos on YouTube recorded by kids with Iphones.

Impact Mindfulness is all about adopting the mindset of the big US. It is recognizing that no one has the right to bully, disrespect, nor denigrate a fellow human, nor harm our planet, just because doing so somehow perpetuates their greed and selfish interest. That should be simple enough to understand, but for some reason, there are those who just don’t get it.

We need to help them.

Where do we find “these angels” that will “organize society”?

Well, there’s really only one practical place to begin that search…inside yourself.

Creative Protest

August 29, 2013 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech
March on Washington, August 28, 1963

August 28, 2013 marked the 50th anniversary of MLK’s great speech. I lifted the above quote from it because in it he speaks of the concept of “creative protest.”

King is and always has been one of my favorite revolutionary misfits. And that’s what misfits do, in large part…engage in creative protest.

Why does the world need creative protest?

Because it’s the way those getting the short end can creatively persuade those hoarding the long end to even things up a bit. That’s no easy task, but King and others have proven that it can be done.

It usually means taking unpopular stances.

What all too often appears to be the case is that “might makes right.” But in reality it isn’t so.

Just because the majority wills it, doesn’t make it right, nor true, nor good. So we have to engage in creative protest in order to change their minds. To turn that phrase around and demonstrate that right makes might.

I fixated on that one small phrase of King’s historic speech because it resonated with me. In many ways it captures the idea of impact mindfulness and the concept behind revolutionary misfit.

This blog really is about creative protest.

There are problems in our world right now. And there’s a great degree of “might” behind them. The more fortunate will cling with all the considerable degree of power at their disposal to keep things just as they are…rigged in their favor.

And as King recognized so brilliantly, it is not coercion that will change this scenario, but creativity.

We need to provide help for the more fortunate. Help in understanding that there’s much more at stake than their lifestyles. That we should cherish the fact that we are all in this boat together. We don’t, but we should.

Why?

Because it is true…it is right. It might not be practical. It might not be supportive of an assumed right to consume at a rate that the planet cannot sustain, but it is true…it is right.

And in the end it is really not might that makes right…but the other way around.

Creative protest of the kind that King, Ghandi and others of their ilk invented and used so effectively…those revolutionary misfit pioneers…is what the world needs a lot more of these days.

Because our destinies are indeed tied, our freedoms are inextricably bound, and we cannot walk alone.

image credit: Biketripper via Compfight cc

Aspiring to be Inspirational

August 6, 2013 by costaricaguy 2 Comments

I had some crazy wild dreams last night. I can hardly ever fully recount what my dreams are about, but last night they were a bit upsetting. And they have me thinking this morning about my life. What it is that my life is supposed to be about. Pretty sad that at age 52 I am still trying to figure that one out. Anyone else out there in the same boat? I bet there is.

Life is generally supposed to be about aspiration, right? Aspiring to be a doctor, a lawyer, a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker…and a successful one at that. After all, aspiration enables us to do what’s most important in life…live. Or is it?

One of the strongest and most satisfying emotions one can experience is not aspiration, but inspiration. I love to be inspired…to be moved deeply by a great speech, song, work of art, or book. Just a simple deed done out of a sense of sacrificial service to others can be deeply inspirational. I love that feeling. I love the feeling of being inspired. What’s even more, I love the thought of possibly being inspirational myself. I believe it is something truly worth aspiring to. Aspiring to be inspirational…now that gets my juices flowing.

Aspiring to be inspirational…now that gets my juices flowing.

But how? How can a ultra-ordinary and average guy like me be inspirational? Don’t I need talent to do so? Or at least good looks? Don’t I need a perfect career, wealth, intelligence or some ingredient that seems beyond my grasp? I guess the question becomes, can an average bloke like me possibly be inspirational?

I believe the answer lies in something I have ranted about excessively in this blog. I call it impact mindfulness. Now, what do I really mean by that? Well, I have explained that in other posts, but today I want to talk about what I believe is a requisite of what I will refer to from now on as Inspirational IM.

Truly inspirational IM, I believe, first and foremost requires freedom of thought. One cannot practice inspirational IM while limited in one’s capacity to think things through. I did a post a while back, quite a few years back actually, about some preacher in some small town in the southern U.S. who cajoled his congregation into having a Koran burning event. This certainly had an impact, albeit hardly an inspirational one. I would venture to surmise that this preacher had not really thought that action through very well. And he hadn’t thought it through because his mind was so closed that he didn’t even have the slightest capacity to do so. So, he proposed to engage in an act that is the antitheses of inspirational IM. This is an extreme example, but it serves to illustrate the point well.

So do events throughout history, like the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, the Jim Crow laws of the reconstructed south, or, more recently, the decision that torture of prisoners of “war” was all of a sudden an okay way to obtain intelligence. None of those decisions were thought through very well, in my opinion. And unless one’s mind is freed from the shackles of preconceived notions of truth based on dubious sources, then one cannot hope to adequately think things through nor successfully practice inspirational IM.

unless one’s mind is freed from the shackles of preconceived notions of truth based on dubious sources, then one cannot hope to adequately think things through nor successfully practice inspirational IM.

I don’t want to get political here, but I have to provide one more example. And that is the right-wing political forces in the U.S. that seem to have their collective heads buried in the sand on the whole global warming issue? Why is that? Despite overwhelming science and actual real world evidence to the contrary, they choose to continue with this notion that global warming is some grand political hoax. And the impact is actually threatening the existence of the planet we live on (and of course us along with it). Not at all what I would consider inspirational IM.

Back on point, I will conclude in answering the dilemma posed about my own life at the outset of this post. What do I want my life to be about, at least from this point forward? In short, inspirational IM. That is what I would like to aspire to. Because I believe that when you yourself practice IM, you inspire others to do so and they in turn are inspirational and the multiplier effect of that can be, well, inspirational on a world-changing level.

Now, that’s something for an ordinary joe like me to aspire to.

Questionable Authority

July 11, 2013 by costaricaguy 2 Comments

The great Louis C.K. does this outrageous and thought-provoking routine where he presents authoritative (or settled) propositions and then he contrasts them with “but maybe” scenarios that question their validity. The ones he uses are mostly absurd (and borderline offensive), but the overall point is a good one.

We should question authority….

Following along the lines of Louis, I will submit some other seemingly settled propositions that could be questioned…

1. Of course citizens should pledge allegiance to a flag…BUT MAYBE doing so means saying it’s OK for one nation on earth to be responsible for the most mayhem (in terms of death and destruction) of any nation that ever existed (be it Russia, Germany or even the U.S.A.)?

2. Of course we should “support the military” (as every aspiring politician will quickly remind us)…BUT MAYBE doing so means giving approval to an institution whose primary goal is to teach young mean and women how to kill and blow things up?

3. Of course capitalism is the best economic and social system, BUT MAYBE it is also the one that is most responsible for the growing income gap between the richest and poorest that threatens social order throughout the globe?

4. Of course the “American Dream” is something every young adult should aspire to, BUT MAYBE it means that doing so equates to spending the majority of your time on earth in pursuit of a higher level of consumption…one that the planet simply can no longer sustain?

There are some posts that are easy for me to hit the “publish” key.

This ain’t one of them.

I have watched with rapt amazement as the Arab Spring begins to unravel and unfold into the Arab Winter of Discontent in Egypt. But one thing that all the upheavals in the Middle East have taught us is that authority can and will be questioned. Because every human has the right to do so. It might mean torture or even death to do so, but you still can. And sometimes, should.

Here’s a tweetable for ya…

All authority elevated by man above men is questionable and should be questioned, and to the extent it deems itself not, then all the more.

My Three Dots

July 10, 2013 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

A recurring characteristic in my writing that I have noticed is my penchant for the ellipsis, or dangling period…see, there it is. I will refer to it as “my three dots.” Why do I do that? And does anyone really care?

Probably not, but I will try to cook up an explanation anyway. Could be a couple of things. First, it might be a substitute for the exclamation point. That is, that one period is simply insufficient to complete the point…I need three (oops, did it again). Or, it might be that I want the point made in the sentence to lead the reader down the path to enlightenment. I don’t want the thought to end too abruptly…so I let it linger on into infinitude (or at least for the length of those three ubiquitous dots).

Okay, actually I don’t really mean it to be any of those things. I like to think of myself as a deep thinker, but not that deep. It more represents poor grammatical habits and the inability I have to actually complete the sentence (or anything else I tend to try to start and finish in life).

So, this morning I thought I would once and for all put some emphasis and meaning, a personal trademark, behind those three annoying dots. Doing so also has the benefit of helping me think of how to add some consistency and cohesion into these rambling posts that for the last 5 years have been about everything and nothing (much like a Seinfeld episode).

So Dot 1 will henceforth represent people. After all, this blog has a lot to say about them. Sometimes not too flattering. Nevertheless, I do believe that people are important, especially since I happen to be one of them. Much more so than the stuff we tend to elevate above them.

People are important, especially since I happen to be one of them. Much more so than the stuff we tend to elevate above them.

Dot 2, planet. This Costa Rica Guy is really into sustainability, which I have arrogantly defined for myself as managing our impacts so as to facilitate ecological endurance. It is my belief that centuries of non-sustainable thinking and acting has put the first dot in jeopardy of being erased.

Centuries of non-sustainable thinking and acting has put the first dot in jeopardy of being erased.

And finally Dot 3 represents the universe (or universal glue). On some level that I could never hope to completely fathom, we are all bound together by this thing we refer to as the Universe. I can best symbolize it by a blue dot, which is what you would see if you looked down upon us from space and it also the color I see when I look up on a clear day from my humble home here in Perez Zeledon, Costa Rica.

On some level that I could never hope to completely fathom, we are all bound together by this thing we refer to as the Universe.

So, there, I have finally imbued some logical meaning for both me and my readers behind my three dots. Maybe now they will be less annoying and more thought-provoking…

The Ultimate Life Hack

April 30, 2013 by costaricaguy 4 Comments

I am a Seth Godin fan. I never miss a blog post and have read most of his books. Currently I am reading The Icarus Deception. Seth doesn’t write for normal people. His stuff is for the outliers, the weird ones…..like me!

I also peruse the blog, Life Hacker, on a regular basis. Sometimes you can pick up some useful advice there, such as how to avoid crushing your thumb with a hammer by using, of all things, bobby pins (who would’ve thought?). However, most of what Life Hacker teaches us is about how to be more efficient, save time, be more productive and profitable…..very industrial age kind of thinking using very modern tools. Godin’s advice flies in the face of all of that. I believe it may contain the seeds to the most ultimate life hack of all.

When was the last time you felt like an artist? I remember my mom used to actually frame and hang my first and second grade art in the house. I was an artist. But as the years flew by something happened. The artist in me suffocated via the need to conform to what the world expected of me. To be a cog in the machinery (admittedly, a somewhat rebellious cog).

The artist in me suffocated via the need to conform to what the world expected of me.

But deep inside that longing toward artistry has lingered. And it still does to this day. That’s where Godin comes in loud and clear. Godin says that the industrialized age is dying. I believe he is right. It served us well in times of war and the aftermath, when the nation needed to be driven by a common goal. But now, not so much. So, where does that leave us?

Godin says, and I do believe, it leaves us, or leads us, with/to art. Godin is not necessarily talking art in the Picasso sense, but in the sense of doing those things that make us more human and connect and appeal to us as humans. Because the truth is (and always was) we are not cogs. We are unique. We are different. We are art that is given the capacity to replicate what it is that we are. Godin’s inspiring premise is that we all have the capacity to do something that connects (art) and now the ability to actually connect (to ship) has never been easier (and it keeps getting better).

We are art that has been given the capacity to replicate what it is that we are.

It’s hard to wipe away all those years of conformity and become an artist again. It feels confusing, scary and makes one feel vulnerable. But in doing so we might find the true secret to lasting contentment and fulfillment.

That would seem to be a life hack worth implementing.

image credit: Ben Heine via Compfight cc

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