someone has some time on their hands

This blog is not meant to be a list of quotes, no matter how illuminating. Every so often, though, I come across quotes that I find speak directly to what I'm thinking about or working on at the moment. Putting them on the blog is a way of sharing them with others, to see what they think about it, and also a way of filing the quote safely in the Great Collective Memory, the Internet.

About six years ago I found a book called Loving What Is by a woman named Byron Katie. Normally I'm allergic to the self-help section of bookstores, so I can't really explain how I found it. I just kept walking by it and the title kept calling to me, so finally, with a sigh, I caved and picked it up and read it. Then I had a brief argument with myself about buying it, then I bought it, then I ignored it for a few years. Basically, of all the books out there about Zen, meditation, and Buddhism, this was the one (and it's not Zen or Buddhist) that actually helped me to release myself from obsessive, stressful thoughts. Katie's thing--for lack of a better word--is called The Work and I encourage you to check it out. So, as usually happens, I keep coming across things that support the ideas I'm working on and with. Here, for example, is a quote from Michel Foucault--not my favorite philosopher, and not one necessarily associated with Zen, shall we say:

"We must free ourselves from the sacralization of the social as the only reality and stop regarding as superfluous something so essential in human life and in human relations as thought. Thought exists independently of systems and structures of discourse. It is something that is often hidden, but which always animates everyday behavior. There is always a little thought even in the most stupid institutions; there is always thought even in silent habits.

Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, and to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult...

To say to oneself at the outset: what reform will I be able to carry out? That is not, I believe, an aim for the intellectual to pursue. His role, since he works specifically in the realm of thought, is to see how far the liberation of thought can make those transformations urgent enough for people to want to carry them out and difficult enough for them to be profoundly rooted in reality."

accept whatever comes to you woven in the fabric of your destiny, for what could better suit your needs?

"Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility. For thou losest the opportunity of doing something else when thou hast such thoughts as these, What is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving, and whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from the observation of our own ruling power. We ought then to check in the series of our thoughts everything that is without a purpose and useless, but most of all the overcurious feeling and the malignant...so that from thy words it should be plain that everything in thee is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, one that cares not for thoughts about pleasure or sensual enjoyments at all, nor has any rivalry or envy and suspicion, or anything else for which thou wouldst blush if thou should say that that thou had it in they mind. For the man who is such and no longer delays being among the number of the best, is like a priest and minister of the gods, using too the deity which is planted within him, which makes the man uncontaminated by pleasure, unharmed by any pain, untouched by any insult, feeling no wrong, a fighter in the noblest fight, one who cannot be overpowered by any passion, dyed deep with justice, accepting with his soul everything which happens and is assigned to him as his portion."

--Marcus Aurelius

The White, Male, Anti-Establishment Candidate

I'll admit it: I have not watched a single debate thus far in the race for the Presidency. There are so many of them, and they are all so boring. But, like a good liberal, I follow along and get the reports afterwards from the Times, or Daily Kos, or wherever. And I think that John Edwards is my favorite candidate, the only one pushing a populist rhetoric that can compete with Huckabee's. I think that Huckabee will, improbably, and much to the chagrin of the Republican establishment, win the nomination. Huckabee, too, stands out as an actual populist among the field. While I find his evangelical Christianity un-nerving, at least he makes a point of noting that Christianity does, in fact, call for us to care for the least among us. Watching the deep unease Republican stalwarts like Grover Norquist have with this message makes me cackle like a witch. They've treated Jesus like they've treated the Constitution--used when handy, for rhetorical purposes only, and open to interpretation and negotiation. Now they're faced with someone who might believe that Jesus would have spent more time with homeless veterans and less time with Halliburton, more time in the waters in New Orleans than at the country club, and they're shaking in their loafers.

Don't get me wrong, the thought of President Huckabee makes me wish for the immediate reincarnation of Mark Twain, who would have made me laugh in ways I haven't yet thought of about the Huckster. So to return to my original point: John Edwards is running a passionate, thoughtful and compelling anti-establishment campaign. His health care plan is well developed, his positions on foreign policy are much more detailed than Obama's, and I believe him when he says he cares about those at the bottom of the American dogpile. I also, sincerely, love his wife. I saw her at the Regulator Bookstore a couple of months ago, and she's funny, and smart, and fierce, and she loves him like there's no tomorrow. It says something about a man when he has earned the respect of a woman like her.

So, in a sure sign that the Great Irony Machine keeps churning, our most anti-establishment, anti-status-quo candidate is a young, wealthy, white male. Fascinating.