Simply Nirvana

History `last refuge of the failed president’
By Leonard Pitts, Jr.

lpitts@miamiherald.com

History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” - George W. Bush

Dear President Bush:

I am glad you are, at 62, still a relatively young man. I am glad you are in robust health. This means there is a good likelihood of your being with us for decades yet to come, and I dearly want that. You see, history’s verdict is on the way, and I want you to see it for yourself.

We’ve been hearing the “h” word a lot from your surrogates, your supporters and you as you make your final rounds before handing over the keys to the new team. History, we are told, will render the truest verdict on your time in office. History, it is implied, will say you were a far better president than we ever gave you credit for.

You said it again Monday in your farewell press conference. History will have the final say.

It is a curious position for someone who has been, as the quote above suggests, rather dismissive of history’s judgment. It occurs to me that, as patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, so history is the last refuge of the failed president.

But you and yours keep returning to it, reminding us how Harry Truman left office not much more beloved than you are now, but history took another look and decided he was a better president than anyone thought at the time. Frankly, the very fact that you and your team repeatedly invoke the 33rd president in defending your legacy is rather telling.

That’s not a defense, it’s a Hail Mary pass. It’s hoping against hope. Truman enjoyed an extreme makeover, yes. Most presidents do not.

Yes, history does refine our initial assessments of a given president. But those refinements usually move in increments.

You would need more than increments of movement, sir. You would need a football field. I don’t see it happening.

Credit where it’s due: you were the best U.S. president Africa ever had. Your work to reduce AIDS rates on the mother continent never got as much attention – and praise – as it deserved.

But there the list ends: I find it impossible to think of another praiseworthy achievement. The failures, though, rush readily to mind: Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Justice Department scandal, torture, Iraq War, Social Security, immigration . . . You leave a legacy of regression and division, and a nation worse off by multiple measures than before you took office.

But you know what, sir? That’s not even the worst of it. No, the worst is the way you turned our government into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, the way you disdained objective truth in favor of ideological fiction, the way you treated dissent as disloyalty, the way you repeatedly poured sewage on our heads and swore it was water from a mountain spring.

So yes, I’m happy you’ll likely be around 20 years from now. Because, contrary to what you seem to think, it doesn’t take centuries to get some initial sense of history’s verdict. That takes about a generation. Meaning that when history weighs in on your presidency, you’ll probably be here to see it. And I don’t think you’re going to like it.

Yes, I’m stepping out on a limb here. The future is, by definition, unknowable. But it is simply inconceivable to me that history will judge you anything but harshly. Frankly, I think it will judge us all that way, will marvel at the things we let you get away with, the principles Americans can betray, when they are scared.

As with the internment of the Japanese during World War II, and the McCarthy excesses of the 1950s, I think fear will be the defining statement of this era. Fear, and the terrible things we did, condoned and became as a result.

Godspeed, then, Mr. Bush. Good health and long life. I hope you live to hear history itself tell you what an awful president you were [and what terrible citizens we were].

*****

I’ve had two great teachers, each highly controversial. One was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the Indian teacher known for Rolls Royces and the mischief of his followers on their ranch commune in Oregon.

The story that has never been told relates to Rajneesh’s brinkmanship with his followers. He operated from his own definition of compassion: such a depth of love that one is willing to do whatever it takes to bring awareness to a situation.

I watched from afar [I was kicked out of the prior commune in India] as Rajneesh brought awareness to the principles his followers would betray in the face of threats of ostracism. Fascism indeed took root and the commune collapsed from the weight of it. Many got the lesson. Most have not.

Because I did get the lesson, I am now leading a national change management process by addressing the fear that allows Kenyans to betray what they know and results in behavior that holds poverty in place.

I was fleeced by Madoff

The financial guru’s Ponzi scheme cost me 30 years of retirement savings. How could he do this to me — and why did I let him?
By Geneen Roth

Jan. 07, 2009 |

I was standing in my kitchen wondering what to have for lunch when my friend Taj called.

“Sit down,” she said.

I thought she was going to tell me she had just gotten the haircut from hell. I laughed and said, “It can’t be that bad.”

But it was. Before the phone call I had 30 years of retirement savings in a “safe” fund with a brilliant financial guru. When I put down the phone, my savings were gone and my genius financial guru, Bernie Madoff, was in handcuffs. I felt as if I had died and, for some unknown reason, was still breathing.

Since Madoff’s arrest in December on charges of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, I’ve read many articles about how we Madoff investors should have known what was going on, how believing in Madoff was no different than believing there were WMD in Iraq. And I wish I could say I had reservations about Madoff before “the Call.” I wish I could say I knew better about getting such consistently good returns, but I did not. Besides, everything I “knew better” about — stocks, smart financial advisors, real estate — had also proved disastrous: Our financial advisor embezzled a quarter of our money 10 years ago, I lost another third in the stock market during the boom times, and we bought our house at the top of the market and sold at the bottom. Considering that, Madoff seemed like a respite — his fund showed occasional losses, along with small, steady gains. (I’m keeping a list of people who want to be notified of our next investment so they can sprint in the other direction. Feel free to add your name.)

It was always more important for me to find work that I loved than to be rich. I know this is a ridiculously privileged attitude since so much of the world must concern itself with getting food. But I was (and still am) one of the privileged: I’ve always had clean water, clothes to spare, enough to eat. And so I spent years washing dishes and being a maid so that I could write poetry. Then I spent more years as a sales clerk and an avocado-and-cheese-sandwich maker in a health food store so that I could write nonfiction. I lived out of the back of a station wagon, brushing my teeth and washing my face in public bathrooms so that I could keep writing. I started my first groups for emotional eaters, a topic about which I’ve written six books, in someone else’s living room. I chose to do what I had to do for money so that I could do what I wanted to do for love. And when the money started coming in, when my book was on the New York Times Bestseller List, it was like getting a paper bag filled with Monopoly money. I had no idea what to do with it, no way of relating to the fact that I now had hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or, as James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, says, “Insofar as there is a lesson in history, it’s that human beings are not good with large sums of money, anything over $136.”

Did I hear that diversification was smart? Absolutely. Did I choose to ignore that advice because I also got conflicting advice about Madoff being, as someone said, “the Jewish equivalent of T-bills”? Yes. I chose to find very smart people who (I thought) were as smart in their fields as I was in mine, and I chose to listen to them.

Since the Call, I have chanted the mantra of “How could you, why did you, what’s the matter with you?” Another, even meaner version of this is, “It serves you right. You thought you were above it all, different than everyone else. Well, guess what, honey? You’re not.” I have also been eager to blame someone else — anyone else — for the mess I am in: my friend Richard, who offered to let my husband and me into his Madoff fund; my accountant, who encouraged me to put all my money in one place; my friends, who all did the same thing. Where does the blame end? My father taught me to take risks, to accumulate wealth. He said it didn’t matter how I did it. But this was after 40 members of his family were killed in Auschwitz and his motto became, “God abandoned us. There is no such thing as morality, and it’s every man for himself.” Do I blame my father, who has been dead for eight years? Or is it Hitler’s fault that I put my money into a Ponzi scheme?

Unlike many people who lost everything in Madoff, and unlike so much of the world, I still have money to live day-to-day. I am still teaching, and I am still writing, and there is still nothing else I would rather do. But still. I go to sleep at night oscillating between ranting about Madoff and being terrified that we won’t be able to keep our house. Then I realize that, for me, the real suffering is not living without money; it’s living with this rage. The devastation is horrible, but if I don’t allow myself to feel this, then I can’t learn what there is to learn. I will not see, for instance, that I participated in the fraud by being willing to close my eyes about what Madoff was doing.

I often asked Richard, the head of our feeder fund, how Madoff made such consistently good returns. Although Richard tried to explain it to me, it was clear he didn’t know, either, because I’d leave our meetings still unable to explain to anyone else how it worked. But that didn’t deter me. And so, rather than put my money where my values were — into real things, real people, real companies — I allowed myself to be part of this insane leveraging of money upon money. I allowed myself to be sucked into the belief that as long as I was giving away large chunks of money, as long as I was doing good work in the world, it was OK to participate in a venture that was not contributing to anything in which I believed. I engaged in the money split to which we as a culture subscribe: We say we believe in wind energy, but we put our money into oil. We say we believe in education and healthcare, but we put our money into advanced weaponry. We say we want to stop violence, but we allow genocide in Darfur. I can’t change the culture’s behavior, but I can change my own.

Over and over again, I’ve asked myself: Why didn’t I secure the most basic of all things — shelter itself? Why didn’t I pay off my mortgage? And if I don’t engage in blame, I see the answer clearly: because I believed in something else more — I believed in accumulating. And when you believe in accumulating, you see what you don’t have, not what you have. My relationship to money was no different from my relationship to food, to love, to fabulous sweaters: I never felt as if I had enough. I was always focused on the bite that was yet to come, not the one in my mouth. I was focused on the way my husband wasn’t perfect, not the way he was. And on the sweater I saw in the window, not the one in my closet that I hadn’t worn for a year.

Although I never would have chosen this path, and although it still feels terrifying at moments, I know I can never see the whole picture in the chaos of the moment. And sometimes, sometimes I am aware that there’s an unimaginable, uncharted world on the other side of this loss, like stepping through the Narnia wardrobe.

On this side of the loss, there is the necessity — the urgency– of staying in the moment. This breath. This step. This splash of sun. The money I lost will never come back. But if I wander into fear — what if my husband or I get sick and we can’t pay the medical bills, what if there is an accident and we can’t work, what will we do when we get old — I’m lost, too.

– By Geneen Roth

*****

I’ve read much of Geneen’s writing as it addresses the issues behind my New Year’s Resolution. I sense Geneen will use her writing gifts to further bless us with her takeaways from this lesson.

“We all seek pleasure,” says Bob Greene. “How do you get that pleasure or happiness or joy? And when it’s not readily available in the real areas that you want—relationships, family, fulfilling career—food is a hundred times more attractive and it’s readily available. It’s there, and it is the drug of choice for most people.”

Yup, it’s mine. This year, I’m committed to scratching the real itch. This is where my poverty mentality shows up! :~p

The Choice Is Ours Now

by Melissa Etheridge
Oscar and Grammy Award-Winning Singer/Songwriter

Posted December 22, 2008

This is a message for my brothers and sisters who have fought so long and so hard for gay rights and liberty. We have spent a long time climbing up this mountain, looking at the impossible, changing a thousand year-old paradigm. We have asked for the right to love the human of our choice, and to be protected equally under the laws of this great country. The road at times has been so bloody, and so horrible, and so disheartening. From being blamed for 9/11 and Katrina, to hateful crimes committed against us, we are battle weary. We watched as our nation took a step in the right direction, against all odds and elected Barack Obama as our next leader. Then we were jerked back into the last century as we watched our rights taken away by prop 8 in California. Still sore and angry we felt another slap in the face as the man we helped get elected seemingly invited a gay-hater to address the world at his inauguration.

I hadn’t heard of Pastor Rick Warren before all of this. When I heard the news, in its neat little sound bite form that we are so accustomed to, it painted the picture for me. This Pastor Rick must surely be one hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others. He probably has his own gay little secret bathroom stall somewhere, you know. One more hater working up his congregation to hate the gays, comparing us to pedophiles and those who commit incest, blah blah blah. Same ‘ole thing. Would I be boycotting the inauguration? Would we be marching again?

Well, I have to tell you my friends, the universe has a sense of humor and indeed works in mysterious ways. As I was winding down the promotion for my Christmas album I had one more stop last night. I’d agreed to play a song I’d written with my friend Salman Ahmed, a Sufi Muslim from Pakistan. The song is called “Ring The Bells,” and it’s a call for peace and unity in our world. We were going to perform our song for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group of Muslim Americans that tries to raise awareness in this country, and the world, about the majority of good, loving, Muslims. I was honored, considering some in the Muslim religion consider singing to be against God, while other Muslim countries have harsh penalties, even death for homosexuals. I felt it was a very brave gesture for them to make. I received a call the day before to inform me of the keynote speaker that night… Pastor Rick Warren. I was stunned. My fight or flight instinct took over, should I cancel? Then a calm voice inside me said, “Are you really about peace or not?”

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say “In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him.” They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn’t sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn’t want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife’s struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.

Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world’s attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don’t hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.

I know, call me a dreamer, but I feel a new era is upon us.

I will be attending the inauguration with my family, and with hope in my heart. I know we are headed in the direction of marriage equality and equal protection for all families.

Happy Holidays my friends and a Happy New Year to you.

*****

“Every stuck tribe is a movement waiting to happen.” - Seth Godin

Go, Melissa!

January 03, 2009

Nature Or Nurture In Social Networking

by Stowe Boyd

We suffer from a collective delusion, in Western society, and it comes to the fore this time of year, like clockwork, as we make New Year’s resolutions. That delusion is that what we choose to do, how we live our lives, act, eat, and dream — who we are, essentially — is in our own control. That through will power and hard striving we can change our ways, largely independently of others.

However, more research is coming to light all the time that suggests that this simplistic notion of the individuality of our core being is just not true.

Recent research by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler has demonstrated that emotions — specifically happiness — moves through social networks without conscious action (see Happiness Is An Emergent Property Of Social Networks), and other research has focused on how positive activities like giving up smoking are better accomplished in social groups, and that negative behaviors — like suicidal thoughts — are also transmitted like a virus through social connections: so-called “social contagion”.

One of the most interesting avenues of research is genetics: how much of our way of social networking is inherited, and how much is learned? New research is soon to be published that suggests it’s more innate than we might believe:

[from How your friends’ friends can affect your mood by Michael Bond]

[…] what shapes the architecture of our social networks and our position in them? Clearly, many factors contribute: where we live, where we work, family size, education, religion, income, our interests, and our tendency to gravitate towards people similar to us. New research by Christakis’s team, due to be published in the next few weeks, suggests there is also a strong genetic component. The study compared the social networks of identical and fraternal twins, and found that identical twins had significantly more similar social networks than fraternal twins, suggesting the structure of your social network is influenced by your genes. That may not sound remarkable, since personality traits such as gregariousness and shyness clearly play a role in determining how connected we are. But there is much more to it, says Christakis. “It’s not just about having a genetic predilection to be friends with a lot of people, it’s about having a genetic predilection to be friends with a lot of popular people. That’s mysterious: how could our genes determine our actual location in this socio-topological space?”

Answering that should help us understand more about the “collective intelligence” of social networks, which some researchers liken to the flocking of birds - the decision to quit smoking, for example, is no more an isolated move than the decision by a bird in a flock to fly to the left.

So, in the spirit of New Year’s resolutions, it seems that this indicates a necessary meta-level of resolution, one that sounds a lot like a nagging mother:

1. Resolve to surround yourself with people who are actively involved with activities and behaviors you want to do more of.

2. Avoid people who are involved with activities and behaviors you want to do less of.

3. When around people that you are consciously trying not to emulate, avoid ‘mirroring’ their talk, facial expressions, or interaction patterns: to not imprint on these people.

4. When around people you want to emulate, ‘mirror’ the small graces of social interaction — turns of phrase, facial expressions, hand gestures, etc. — so that you are helping along the integration of norms you admire. Try to think ‘like them’, by adopting their rhetoric and logical analysis. (Think of a teacher you admired in school, and how you might have adopted her thinking in discussing the class with others.)

5. When in contact with people who want to emulate you, be aware that you have this sort of impact on them. Do not be surprised to find them feeding back your thoughts, turns of phrase, terms, even facial expressions. Imitation is more that flattery: it’s social contagion, which is normal, inevitable, and generally positive.

Looks like we are who we hang with, for better or worse, and to the degree that we can control where we wind up networked we should try to move toward those that are doing the fun stuff.

For me, in 2009, that means more time with foodies, musicians, thinkers, and doers. I am going to hang with people trying to make the world a better place– at every scale — and shy away from those consumed with money, power, and fame for their own sake.

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” I want to spend more time with the great minds of our time. Maybe something will rub off.

[via @panklam, @davidgurteen]

*******

So, I’ve gone through my Twitter followees and kept the authors whose Tweets I’m happy to read.

Monday, December 22, 2008 11:45 AM
From: “aristarchus munish”
To: “nirvana cable”

—–Inline Attachment Follows—–

Hallo,
There are moments and there are unforgettable moments! My life has been characterized by good and bad moments. And I thank God for all - all these are great moments! But my life in GCA is gradually turning into a series of unforgettable moments. Over the weekend I had reflections of my life but the most inviting reflection is, of course, the journey I started since the first GCA training at Methodist. This training led me straight into my greatest discovery of all times - the Power of our Minds! That discovery stands out and remains the most significant mark between the “old me” and the “new me”. And despite going through challenging times, just as I went through in my earlier days, the training led me from the all time “I CAN’T DO” mentality to “I CAN DO” attitude. I’m having a mind focusing on abudance instead. More refreshing is the sweet realization that by harnessing the power of your mind, you’ll create, a life filled with more passion, excitement, confidence and joy. For this, Nirvana, I appreciate your training and continued coaching with all the humility I command.

Every single encounter with you leaves a permanent mark in my life. All my interactions with you ignite a new spirit in me and leave me more hopeful. Of particular interest, though, is your capability to “see” beyond our cosmetic behaviors deep into the real thing. More than once I’ve witnessed you lead people (myself included) into looking to areas of their lives they would never like looking into, and the result?, profound discoveries and refreshing revelations leading to healing. Your expertise in “digging” into the “no-go-zones” of people’s lives for healing has always been an admiration to me. Yes, the art of paying attention to the under-the-table communication is one great key to transformation. And you are a guru for this. Our society, and the world over, must need this experience, for until we master it, the world will continue suffering. Ah, God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. He couldn’t let the world contiunue suffering!

I’ve realized that everyone has an area in their life they never want to visit. But I’m disturbed that little do they know that it’s through visiting and viewing this area of their lives that they will get unstuck. It is always uncomfortable to look into this area, thus a muscle, a new muscle has to be developed. My experience in looking into one of the areas of my life when we were at Karachuonyo remains a great victorious moment in my life. The process was very painful and at some time I felt embarassed. I felt like I could run away and hide myself. I felt tortured. I felt like I was stripped naked infront of people. Oh, I felt the world was crushing on me. But all in all I’m glad it helped me detach myself from a heavy burden that I’ve dragged around with me. It gave me access to a sweet freedom - to speak freely. That I no longer need to watch my boundaries for just I need to be who I am. This is a completely new life for me. It not only requires courage but unreserved willingness to go through this. That unforgettable moment that presented itself in ugly fashion has to translate into the redemption of the Kenyan communities from the suffocating grip of the culture of silence and mistrust.

As the year comes to an end, I must express my gratitudes to all the drivers of our course. From our generous partners to our commtted team, I say God bless you. Without this team, this day may never have been. I thank each and every one of them.

Regards.

Reading, Tribes, We Need You to Lead Us, has stopped my shallow breathing! Finally realized through reading Tribes that no one leads a project, they lead people. Or not.

Apparently Seth wanted to name his book, A Unicorn in a Balloon Factory.

Thanks to Seth’s book, I’m finally fully embracing that I am, in fact, such a creature.

Astonishing what happens when self-proclaimed “poor” people examine their thinking! Complete tear jerker when people realize their “I am poor” belief has kept them in bondage for decades.

My friend and colleague, Lynne Twist, in her book, The Soul of Money [p 237], shares about a time Buckminster Fuller came to dinner:

During this pivotal time Bucky was central to my life and work, and one night we were honored to have him come to dinner at our house. Our children were six, eight, and ten years old, and Bill and I, Bucky and our kids sat at our kitchen table. Bucky was often referred to as the ‘Grandfather of the Future’ and it was so exciting–such a gift–seeing him there with our children sharing a simple, home-cooked meal. At one point, my eight-year-old daughter, Summer, said something that was profound in the way children do, speaking a deep truth with their innocent insight. Her remark was a kind of showstopper for the three adults at the table–Bill, Bucky, and me–and we looked at each other, touched by the wisdom of this child.

Then Bucky said something that changed my life and my relationship with my children forever. He said to Bill and me, ‘Remember, your children are your elders in universe time. They have come into a more complex, more evolved universe than you or I can know. We can only see that universe through their eyes.”

**********
The following Youtube video captures Severn Suzuki in a “showstopping speech” to the UN at the Earth Summit in 1992. From the intro to this video on Karmatube.org, “Born and raised in Vancouver, Severn Suzuki has been working on environmental and social justice issues since kindergarten. At age 9, she and some friends started the Environmental Children’s Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They traveled to 1992’s UN Earth Summit, where 12 year-old Severn gave this powerful speech that deeply affected (and silenced) some of the most prominent world leaders. The speech had such an impact that she has become a frequent invitee to many UN conferences.”

**********

My daughter sent me the link to Servern’s speech.