Philosophy From the Past

For those of you have been reading the "chapters" from my based-on-a-true story future novel, you may have surmised that my youth, while not atypical of those of us born in the late 50's, was also not traditional. 

Like most of my cohorts, I spent a number of years "seeking myself". While I graduated from a private high school, sent there by my well- intentioned parents to learn with the best, to be exposed to one of the best high school educations, to be challenged where I may not have been in the local public or parochial high schools.

And, I was, to a degree although I will always maintain that attending a high school without young women, at least for me, only made them seem more out of reach. As if my choices were to put them on a pedestal or seek to sexually conquer them. It took until I made women friends in various work environments, and among the group of young people with whom I spent my early 20's, to begin to see, and interact, with women as if they were individuals. While the good news is that I am still learning this, the bad news is that I have missed countless opportunities to relate to women in ways outside of the stereotypes that were ingrained in me from my birth. 

During those years, late teens to early twenties, I traveled across America by bus, pedaled around Pennsylvania to visit my friends in college, and hitchhiked across this great country. I did a lot of drugs, met a myriad of people in my travels, and even followed a guru for a few years, making two trips to Miami for a convention of his followers as well as going to various programs in the area.

And I was open, very open, to some of the teachings of Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, especially those associated with the philosophy best described as Be Here Now.

Imagine then my (happy) surprise to be reminded of that way of thinking, way of living, not once, but twice this past week.

The first was brought to me by an article in the October edition of The Atlantic, a short essay by Ian Bogost called "The Missing Ingredient Of Modern Life."

The main point of the article is that people have lost their ability to experience wonder. In fact, the secondary title of the article is "Why we need wonder." 

He bemoans the notion of maxxing, not necessarily because he believes that people shouldn't strive to be their best, to attain your very focused goals. No, his concern is that in fixating on the goal, we forget to enjoy the process. 

For instance, by maximizing our time by using Instacart to shop, or DoorDash to receive our dinners, we miss out on the actual experience of shopping or going out to dinner. We miss out, not only on the simple pleasure of making a list, then choosing the groceries and sundries that we need to make our meals to sustain our health, but we also remove the possibility of meeting someone at the store we haven't seen in a while, or just meeting someone new. 

I very often think about this when I hear very rich people, and/or most politicians tell us how things are, gas prices, food prices, the balancing of child care and work, etc, when I know that many of them haven't pumped their own gas in years, send their assistants to the stores for their needs, have nannies to watch their kids. Perhaps if they actually mingled with their constituents where they live, and not just at a rally, they might have a better feel for what is really going on, what really matters to the most of us who do the actual living and dying in America.

Bogost does not go into that aspect in his article, that is all me, but he does touch on the Be Here Now philosophy by reminding us of the simple pleasures we all experience every day but frequently fail to appreciate. 

The warmth of a mug of coffee in one's hand, sliding your feet into the plush softness of slippers in the morning, hearing the crunch of the gravel under your feet are a few he names.

For me, breakfast on the back porch on a clear fall day, the smell of a newly mowed lawn (not withstanding the sneezing that will follow), picking tomatoes and peppers from our backyard garden, even sitting at the computer and paying the bills. 

I often laugh when I see the outrageous celebrations that occur multiple times during any sporting event, bat flips after a home run, crawling on the ground after a QB sack, man piles on the mound after winning a league championship. A few times I have attempted to high five someone at work after we emptied the skids of groceries onto the appropriate U-boats, then pushed them out to their respective aisles, but I am generally met with amusement, as if our work was any less amazing that our sports heroes' on field accomplishments. After all, no one gets fed after a home run, but our every day work provides our customers with food to sustain them.

The other reminder came just last night as I was reading "An Unexpected Life" by Gloria Steinem, and came from the quote she uses to introduce her chapter called "Hope Is a Form of Planning: Then and Now". 

The quote is from Howard Zinn.  

"The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

To be honest, I knew very little about Ms Steinem, other than the basic facts that she was a feminist, that she helped establish MS Magazine, that she has been an outspoken advocate for, not only equality for women, but for all minorities. 

Her book, so far, has fleshed out these basic facts, in addition to providing me information about her childhood, her early life before she became a writer, and of course, the influences which helped her define who she wanted to be, and who she ultimately became. Even more so, I learned of her affinity for Indigenous peoples, especially their belief in living in harmony with mother nature as opposed to dominion over her.

And, of course, her very detailed understanding of the, dare I say it, lie, that we are taught from day one, about how a patriarchal society is part of god's plan, or just the way it is supposed to be, or "natural", all the while being used to suppress half of the population. 

Sadly, and perhaps not unexpectedly, after multiple decades of progress for the female half of our population, we are in the middle of a backslide as men try, again, to exert control over women's bodies as a way to control their lives, their opportunities. As I have written more than once, Steinem mourns for the loss of innovation, energy, and progress towards a more fair and equitable existence for all of humanity that just did not happen due to the mistaken belief that women are only good for making babies.

One of the most glaring examples of gender bias, which I did not know, involved the Mercury 13. Most people (of my age or close to it) most likely recall the Mercury 7, the men chosen to be our first astronauts but just as likely have never heard of the women who were also trained to be astronauts, the Mercury 13. (Feel free to Google it if you are curious).

Needless to say, we don't know about them simply because our study of the past is called history, as it is filled with anecdotes and tales of men's accomplishments. Just as it was determined that sending women into space did not make for good optics, despite, in more than a few ways, that they were better suited for space travel, we are neck deep in the stories of men's achievements but must delve deeply to learn about those of women.

So, to return to the premise of this post, whether you want to call it being mindful, or being in the present, or taking time to "smell the roses", it all reminds me of Be Here Now, which itself, most likely mirrored a philosophy which one could argue traces its source back to the beginning. 

Just new words for the same idea, that of being present in your life, and living to appreciate the simple fact that we have all been blessed with the opportunity to experience everything, and to do so with other voyagers.