The Nature of the Observer

What makes one observer a penetrating judge of people’s character when the assessment of the same person by another observer renders a characterization that completely misses the mark? Why is one investor instantly leery of the sales pitch of a con man while another investor is quite impressed by his sales pitch?

The answers to both questions lay in the nature of the observers. The first observer is an individualist: he knows himself well: he sees himself pretty much as he is, so he has nothing to prove, run from or deny in seeing others as they are.

The second, gullible observer is a joiner, only superficially in touch with his inner self. Because he knows himself not, his perceptual fog and self-deceptive, perceptual preconceiving carries over in how he misconceives people that he encounters.

In the group setting, the second, gullible observer will be far quicker to sense the mood, the mores, the clothes worn by, the fashions advertised and watchwords passed among the insiders. The first, isolated, outsider/beholder will miss most of these communicative flags, thus highlighting his apartness and tone deafness to social subtleties. In the world of illusions held and shared, there are subtle signals sent to tell the attentive, responding, second observer when to twist and turn, like two hundred starlings flying as one black cloud, without error or misstep.

Laurence A. Ramsey 1920 - 2011

 Dad died on January 30, 2011. He was over 90 years of age and died in his sleep in his own bed. He lived life on his own terms. He died on his own terms. He was fiercely independent and made us promise not to put him in a nursing home.

He was an intellectual and a farmer. He was what I referred to as a conservative hippie. He admired the capitalist system and spoke glowingly about other farmers that were efficient, competent and prosperous businessmen. Yet, he was an idealist and conservationist long before being green was the prevalent ideology of the ruling class. He had many delightful experiments and projects that likely had few practical implications, or profitable prospects. He was a most interesting man to visit with.

He admired the entrepreneurial sorts, but money was not his ultimate motivator. He occasionally talked about eking out a living.

He was the unheralded Pembina County version of the Renaissance Man. He was a brilliant horticulturist. He was a Class A rancher. He was an accomplished carpenter. He could do some foundry work. He was a fair plumber and electrician. He was very handy.

He enjoyed philosophy, birdwatching, some hunting, geology, local history and Indian artifacts. He was very intelligent and interested in everything.

He was hot-tempered. He was smart, very skilled, and knew it. He could be arrogant. He could be sarcastic. He had his favorites among the children. He could be sexist, but he made my adopted Korean children love him, because he really welcomed them as he did the other 8 Irish grandchildren.

He was a World War II vet. He was married to Helen O’Sullivan for over 63 years. He was a skilled, fastidious technician, a well respected civil engineer.

The village priest at Dad’s funeral said that Laurence struggled with faith. I disagree. Three years ago I asked him if he believed in God. Dad thought for a minute, and then replied, “There is so much order and regular process in the way the universe operates. That cannot be an accident. Someone set that up and guides it.” I believe that Dad was a Deist like I am.

Dad is resting is some level of heaven right now. He was very kind. He was proud of his family and protected them. He loved animals and they loved him. He cared for the sick and disabled as best he knew how.

 He had a kind heart, and I believe that moral goodness flows out of spiritual goodness, even were the kind person to proclaim himself to be an atheist.

Two anecdotes: in about 1985 (maybe earlier), it was winter and he was gone somewhere. He left careful, detailed instructions for feeding his cows. They were fed hay on the south side of the grove in the snow. They were not to be rushed. When done eating, they would lie down and chew their cuds for an hour, out of the prevailing winter winds, soaking up the sun. A little after noon, they would start drifting through the grove towards the heated water fountain to get their drink. I was to open the gate to allow them to get their drink. About four o’clock they would be fed hay again in the yard where they could then lie down and rest for the night out of the wind.

I fed them on the south side of the grove. I gave them one hour to eat. I then herded them into the yard. They got their drink and their afternoon feeding by two o’clock and then I was off to do something else off the farm. Most ranchers feed the way I did. Dad did not believe in pushing animals to meet one’s needs, goals or deadlines. He worked with them as they were and coaxed them along at their pace, the way that they wanted to muddle along.

Dad did not like to go against natural patterns and behaviors. I am much more human-centered, activistic, goal-driven. I am not process-centered like Dad was.

Another time I visited him in those years and spent a Saturday with him in the winter. He did not seem to have a dog at his farm site but he had a half-wild, huge tabby farm cat that had wandered in from the neighbors to be adopted and fed.  I watched in wonder for 3 or 4 hours as Dad worked around the yard. The bond between him and that tomcat was so strong that where ever he went, the cat would like down near by, moving and removing several times to stay near him. Dad was not even aware of the cat. No cat has ever followed me like that.

He was ambitious in his funny, artistic way. He ended up with about 700 acres of land, modest middle class farm machinery, and a large family.

His journey here is over now. The next phase for him has now begun. He is headed the right way. One day we will meet again.

The Way God Works

God works in mysterious ways;

We must not fight against this in action or say.

We must build upon the gifts sent us today.

Tomorrow may enable us somewhat to alter the route,

Upon which all are careering down, hoping to make out.

Alienation

Sixty or more years ago there was much egghead lamenting about being alienated from humanity about one. I believe that that whole angle was off-target and irrelevant. Alienation existed and was a real problem, but its properties were ill-defined and misidentified, making it impossible to write about the subject in any helpful way.

Each person, leading a collectivist life, is alienated from those around her. She is lonely in the crowd.

But far more significantly, as a collectivist exister, she is alienated from herself. That is the only important issue regarding alienation as a state of being. Only as an individuator existent, can she cause alienation from herself to dissolve and disappear. Right-living makes it a non-issue.

Paradoxically, as she becomes attuned to the rhythms of her own existence, she is self-harmonized. Only the self-harmonized individual becomes less alienated towards other s around her.

If she is quite free and developed, but another is group-enslaved and modestly developed, that other is a dishonest person, alienated from others and himself. The developed woman in question will remain somewhat alienated from him for his inauthentic existence robs them both of an honest, rewarding connection.

She is no longer alienated from herself and her communal alienation from another increasingly withers away as the other in question leads a more free and developed life, much reducing his alienation from God, himself and her, the authentic exister and non-alienated winner.

Take the First Step

You are incurious to discovering why you were put here on earth, and to what is the proper response to uncovering why you are here. You are incurious because you have not yet come alive. Turn on that psychic switch and let in an infusion of light. Clear away the cobwebs and commence pondering.

God put you here on earth to do your duty to De. Your first obligation is to select the duty to be performed. Your second obligation, imposed upon you by the Higher Power, is to spend the remainder of your life fulfilling that duty.

Your duty to God is to live and act in God’s image and light. God is the Great Creator. You are to make your mark as one of billions of mini-creators following your personalized path to self-realization. All are called but only a few ever bother to try, let alone work at it much beyond a feeble, youthful attempt that soon withers away to mediocre surviving. By actualizing your potentiality, you magnify the gifts that God has given you, and you send them right back to a smiling Deity receiving your gift as you help extend the reach of De’s domain. By actualizing your potentiality, you will have made the world a little better and a little more beautiful. At life’s end, that would not be a poor epitaph for inscribing upon your tombstone: “She made the world a little better and a little more beautiful.”

Throw off your excuses. Shed your body of the garments of alibis. Detach yourself from the ready, shabby justification that group identity is destiny. You are a separate, unique person. If you have just been released from Folsum Prison after serving a 17-year term for molesting children, it does not matter. If you are a 38-year-old accountant and mother, decent but otherwise unremarkable, it does not matter.

Your personal story, your personal ethnic identification, your inherited value system, none of these crutches ultimately matter. Throw them off, rise and walk. The journey of a thousand miles begins with this first step. Your background is your foundation to build upon. Your story informs your actualization process. Grounded in its peculiar orientation to the world, it will inform your personal narration, and that will be your gift back to God and to the world.

If you are an elderly bachelor that drifted through life, never hurting anybody but never helping anyone either, it does not matter. From today on, for the rest of your life, for the few years that you have left, you will self-realize as well and as completely as you can. God will forgive any sincere sinner. There is always hope. Redemption is available right away should you ask to receive it, and work steadily and calmly to live and die as the mini-creator that God anticipated that you could become should you endeavor to try.

Move on. Move forward. Develop. Grow in love, skill, knowledge and wisdom. The past is your base, not an insurmountable barricade. No longer allow your obsessing, about this base from whence you sprang, defeat you. Deny not your base history or repudiate it. Celebrate it as it is. Embrace it but move on. Build on it. Reflect. Gain insight from your experience. Move forward and upward.

The Heart of Darkness

Dennis Praeger states that lying is the source of great evil. I know that Eric H. and others lament that committing a crime is one thing, but far more vitiating is the attempt to cover it up. The cover up is a pattern of lies that makes evil done become systemic. The rot spreads wide and deep.

Only as an awake individual does one exist in the truth, breathe the truth, feel the truth and cogitate along the lines of veracity. Where that acute individual loves and enjoys a close relationship with the Higher Power, the interlocking connections to truthful being is powerfully reinforced. 

Group living, with all its demands for conformity of thought and behavior, is living the lie. Therein, reside dark powers. There resides the heart of darkness.

Looking Beyond Pessimism

11/17/2010

                                                      

To be thirty years old or older: one had gained weight and gone soft. One’s hair is thinning and premature gray hair is showing. Youthful idealism has long deserted one. One’s career and relationships have not panned out as one once planned.  One feels that time has passed one by. One no longer feels relevant. One’s life feels like a wasteland. One’s hope is shattered. The future looks like an infinite horizon, where each day is just a bleak copy of the boring, dreary, and previous day. 

For too many people, this is how they perceive their spot in the world. There is always hope. No matter how true the pessimistic viewpoint represented above was yesterday, tomorrow is a new day, a fine opportunity to make things better.

I am an optimist and an idealist.  No matter where one is at, from that jumping off point, one can work tirelessly and shrewdly to better one’s lot and improve the world. We must envision that it can happen, before we will act and work to make it happen. Things will improve. Our life, even our suffering, will not be without purpose. We can make a difference. Things soon will be looking up.