Stillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle

When the spirit of the ruler moves against ye, yield not. One might be forgiven for seeking an alternative to the urgings of Ecclesiastes, after beating one's head against the very unyielding obstacle of status quo politics for awhile. It seems only a tiny portion of the electorate recognizes the threat of Fascism, of environmental collapse by nuclear war, climate change or just steady and persistent pollution of the life system, and with overpopulation exacerbating the whole damned thing.

Solace is offered, often part of the problem – consumption, what capitalism recommends, or endgame superstition of your favored religion, or a nice hobby. More “spiritual” paths are also available, often leading to thickets of thoughts in the head, in the form of lists of dogma to embrace, heads to shave, foods to avoid, checks to write. Somewhere in there one of these might actually have something. Stillness Speaks is a collection of aphorisms distributed over ten chapters under headings like, Beyond the Thinking Mind, The Egoic Self, Death and the Eternal... all set forth as pointers, sign-posts, designed to bring one into presence, the here/now. In that state, it is said, one is connected to the intelligence permeating reality as opposed to the confines of egoic mind, and from there (here) one knows what to do. In presence one experiences interconnection, the greater self which is ONE. The feeling is joie de vivre. In that state of joy, sooner or later, arrives an impulse to creativity and that action, aligned with basic intelligence, will be congruent with what is needed. Possessed by ego one behaves egoically, the great dysfunction of our civilization and its greatest threat. Possessed of presence one behaves in ways respectful of the life system and the ONE life. This is the most powerful form of activism, not advocating or arguing for an ideology but being it. Since the whole physical array can be seen as vibrating frequencies, the specific frequency of presence affects other frequencies more powerfully than clever argument.

This appealing notion tempts - why not try it out since it has become abundantly clear where ego brings us, has brought us. One doesn't go, in this scenario, to presence to enhance and strengthen one's point of view. It may be that presence will bring one to conventional activism but the answer to what-to-do will come from connection not from thinking. We might approach the same old opponents with the same old arguments but with a presence that transforms. We also might do something completely different, a possibility if we set aside all preconceptions and get our “instructions” from the connected state.

Ok, so how does one get present? On the first page of the book Tolle states, “The only function of a (spiritual) teacher is to help you remove that which separates you from the truth of who you already are and what you already know in the depth of your being.” A bit later, “... words (the aphorisms) are no more than signposts. That to which they point is not to be found within the realm of thought, but a dimension within yourself that is deeper and infinitely vaster than thought.” Tolle advises putting the book down often, to pause, to reflect, become still. Because the words in this book, “come out of stillness they have the power to take you back into stillness, out of which you arose.” Instead of identifying with the passing personality, we shift to that state.

Focusing on the main task the book puts forth, namely freeing oneself from the prison of obsessive mind chatter and ego, assuming that possible, what is the obstacle? If it is true that mind-chatter dominates almost everyone then, whatever age you are, you have that many years of conditioning to overcome. Changing a lifetime habit is no easy task but if the result is a state of joy, and a chance to significantly contribute to saving the world, well hell, wouldn't we go for it? Haven't many religions offered something similar, pie in the sky etc;? I suppose Tolle would say that when these kind of promises were made they were either misunderstood or mere con-artist manipulation, or as in Elmer Gantry, a confused combination of the two. The basic intelligence might be just another wording for God, the joie de vivre another for heaven, pie in the sky – just words, signposts. But in the desperation of our dilemma, where an essentially fascist movement seems to be arising all over the planet and where conventional resistance has shown itself ineffective, well, we might try something else or at least adopt an adjunct strategy. Tolle expresses this polarity saying, “... the dysfunction of the old consciousness and the arising of the new are both accelerating. Paradoxically, things are getting worse and better at the same time, although the worse is more apparent because it makes so much noise.” That's cute. And a shot of hope.

Painting by Tom Ferguson, Warbucks (detail)

Fear, Bob Woodward

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Bob Woodward is known, aside from his Watergate fame, for a series of books on sitting presidents. His strategy of conducting numerous interviews with policy-making participants, many anonymous, to build a credible picture of an administration, probably works pretty well. That said, I'm suspicious of well known establishment journalists. They are the ones who rise to the top of a system that filters out “radicals”, advancing those who feel it in their bones, or at least pretend to, that the current system is the highest possible economic arrangement. The author tends to write snappy, slightly heroic descriptions of his subjects, especially military figures and politicians like Lindsey Graham, a sleazeball of the highest order - his behavior protecting Kavanaugh's supreme court appointment alone is enough to establish that. Woodward doesn't entirely let him off the hook though. He quotes a conversation between tRump and Graham where they are exploring options dealing with North Korea's nuclear threat. The idea of attacking North Korea before they can develop the capacity to reach the U.S. with nukes is one option. Another is to “take out” Kim Jong Un (works for the Mafia), or do nothing, depending on the guaranteed total disappearance of North Korea the U.S. can guarantee to keep them at bay. Lindsey wants to hit'em, which can only mean nukes, and when told of the risk to millions in South Korea and Japan he responded, “If millions are going to die it should be over there not here.” Even tRump, a guy not known for his empathy, says, “That's kind of cold.”

The North Korea topic comes up more than once, along with the Iran agreements that tRump ends up abrogating. It is disturbing that in these discussions it doesn't occur to the brainstormers that there are options beside war, threat of war or assassination... non-violent conflict resolution practitioners exist whose expertise could be called upon. The military hammer seems to be too readily reached for. Outrageous arms shipments to Venezuela in support of tRump's preferred faction there is another example, though unmentioned in Woodward's book. It was true for Obama, in his drone assassination program, who really should have known better, given his awareness of King and Gandhi and the civil rights movement. This arrogance is also evident in the stance where the U.S. sees no contradiction in demanding nuclear disarmament of Iran or North Korea but stands ready to pour trillions into expanding their own nuclear war capacities. They want to dominate, they want to “win”, they want, as Chomsky says, hegemony. They do not get it, the choice clearly stated in Chomsky's book title, Hegemony or Survival. We can't have both. Going for the former is a path divergent from the possibility of the latter. Utilizing the skills of non-violent conflict resolution is highly challenging but no less necessary for that. We've got to get really good at it as soon as possible if this civilization experiment is to continue.

The internecine struggle among tRump advisors, what one observer called predators, is very much parallel to the way mainstream media operates. It gives the impression of vigorous and serious debate but masks the narrowness of the parameters. Leading up to tRump's pulling out of the Paris Accords on Climate Change, factions in the administration ranged from, “get out now, climate change is a hoax”, to “yeah but we should stay in the accords for public relations reasons, just not honor them”. The exception to this being, tRump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who surprisingly pushed for staying in for the right reasons (maybe). Trump allowed these family “advisors” free rein around the White House, responding to staff complaints with “Ah, they're liberal democrats.” Cute kids, but naïve.

On immigration I was puzzled at the vehemence with which Bannon, Kelly and the rest of the anti-immigrant faction pursued their mean-spirited agenda, to end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and deport Dreamers who had essentially lived in the U.S. their whole life, had probably never been in the country they would be deported to except as infants, possibly didn't even speak the language of that country. Why Such nasty intensity? Given Bannon's reputation it doesn't seem unfair to conclude something along the line of the nazi desire to maintain racial purity. That and the hysterical desire to un-do anything Obama.

Bannon, in a talk with Attorney General Sessions, is quoted as anxious to get agreement from Sessions, which he got, that the election showed the hand of god intervening for tRump. Many of the people swirling around the president, who come and go with abandon, seem intent on playing him, currying for favor but bumping up against an impetuous, insulting, dismissive, inconsistent guy who won't prepare or plan, who thinks his “instincts” are infallible and just goes with them. The factions work to push him their way on issues like immigration, the wall, Iran, Syria, Russia, China. Secretary of State Tillerson, after a frustrating tRumpt meeting with Pentagon brass, burst out the opinion, “The man is a moron!” Said moron spends 6-8 hours a day watching television, the news shows, and has frequent volatile twitter-reactions based on what he sees there. Of course his preference is for Fox facts.

The title Fear comes from a statement tRump made, “Real power is fear.” Not clear to me what that means. Is fear what power produces? Is fear a synonym for power? Are powerful people afraid? Is this a significant statement? Maybe tRump wisdom is so thin that Woodward had to settle for this ambiguous bit. Dysfunction might have been a better title.

Reading in The Nation (2/25/19) an article about drone attacks in Somalia I realize that the book doesn't go into that issue at all. Under Obama there were plenty of wedding parties etc; murderously disrupted but the restrictions to protect innocents (however ineffective) have been pretty much completely lifted under tRump. Curious that the war-game aspect of the presidency didn't come up. Nor the illegal meddling in Venezuela. The tariff and free-trade issue gets attention, staff arguing but the president rejecting their “facts.' I put facts in quotes because the pro-free trade and anti-tariff “facts” come from the 1% point of view, not environmental nor labor issues. And the tag-team tRump/Mueller gets coverage, a lot of inconclusive back and forth. If you depended on this book for your take on that issue you'd probably come away thinking there's not much there (as opposed to reading Collusion or House of Trump, books I hope Mueller has read). Trump's lawyer, John Dowd, resigned when tRump decided, against Dowd's advice, to cooperate with an FBI interview. Dowd felt that a compulsive liar going into an FBI interview was jeopardy he couldn't condone. Ultimately it was agreed that written questions would be submitted. Dowd's strategy, surprisingly, was complete cooperation, no stonewalling, all document requests honored. The lawyer apparently accepted from someone he deemed a compulsive liar, assurances that he was innocent as charged. We shall see (maybe).