And then there were three...

The big day is almost here!

As a result, I'm posting some random stuff and thoughts in this holiday-week post. Partly because I wanted to post, partly because I wanted to avoid work. Who has the energy or focus for actual work - there are 1.5 days of work left before I have more than a week off!

A great Slate.com story on Swedish Christmas tradition: Watching a Donald Duck special from the 1950s on Christmas Eve. Every single year the entire nation shuts down to watch it. Crazy Swedes.

And here is a cute little ... we'll call it a blog... in which the author imagines the fictional marriage situation that led to the pictures in a home-decorating catalog. While it sounds kinda boring, its actually quite clever.

Sometimes, you complain about something, and it goes right out and surprises you.

(I consider myself an almost entirely rationale person. At least I try to be. I don't keep many totems, or believe in much of the mystical, or do any routines. I don't have a lucky shirt, nor do I do certain things to help the Eagles win or whatever. But for several reasons I won't get in to, I consider the number 3, if not lucky or magical, at least special in the universe.)

Religion Thursday

This week I'm addressing the Buddhist concept of dependent origination.

I gotta say, I'm really liking what I'm getting from Buddhism right now. The law of dependent origination "analyses life and the working sof human beings and society as they actually are," according to the book. The author likely takes to task deity, deterministic and accidental teachings as violating this law.

Originally, Asian philosophies would sometime advance such practices such as acting like animals or purifying in river waters. But the Buddha apparently considered these doctrines as defying reason, since the actions could not be shown to actually lead to enlightenment.

The author really emphasis that all actions lead to certain results and all results arise from certain actions. In other words, WWII was caused by human choices and actions, and could have been avoided. Poverty is caused at least somewhat by human choices (perhaps not entirely individual, but society wide).

Interesting.

Better Bryan X Final Review

Some house cleaning before all focus turns toward Christmas, the year ends and Better Bryan '11 begins:

1: Donate or volunteer more often than in 2009

- Managed this one pretty well. Between all the weight R. lost, leading to lots of donated clothes, and the money I donated that I got work to match, I think this was a success. And its a Buddhist principle to boot!

2. Be less petty/condescending

I'm not always sure why anyone would ever choose to live with me, honestly. This wasn't a resounding success early in the year, but I think I've come a long way in the last 2-4 months. This has been a tough year, and one of my patience-depleting triggers has been right at the core, but we'll be generous and say its a modest success.

3. Cut out the sighing at R

This was - at least a little - tied to the one above. I'm told I do other things now, so its an ongoing thing. But that is part of what this is all about: growth.

4. Keep the house more clean, more often

Success. And considering I'm home 100% of the time over the last month, and thus 100x more likely to make a mess, I'd say its a pretty damn good success.

5. More focus at work

Much more work going on (even though its now from home).

6. Spend 15 minutes/week in meditation/silent

15 minutes? Not close. A couple minutes before bed. Yes. I was doing this at red lights and in traffic, but, well, I don't drive anywhere anymore.

7. Talk less/listen more

At best, with myself as the judge and jury as well as administrator of the appeal process, the verdict wan't so good.

8. Stop singing so many bastardized songs, especially to the dog

Sigh. What can I say: I like the sound of my own voice, have no one to talk too, and am creative.

9. Don't get so annoyed by C.

Mostly a success. Entirely avoiding an irritant counts as not being irritated; correct? Does this seem mean? Too f'in bad. It's my life and I don't want irratation. Speaking of which, this entire convo is starting to irratate me. And abbreviating conversation as convo normally does, so we are done.

10. Get R. the earrings she wanted.

In hindsight this was, well, not a mistake. Not really premature either. Just shortsighted with the benefit of hindsight. I'm glad I/we did it. She's wanted them for ever. But life is what happens while you are living out your plan. I wouldn't undo this, but certainly I would have like to have that money back at various points during this somewhat trying year.

Final review: Outright success on 4, passing grade on another 3. Only missed outright on 3. Ten things is a lot to address in a year. It's a lot of self improvement, and its hard to change one thing, let alone 10.

Looking ahead: Can we please? I didn't exactly hate 2010, but like a house guest who overstays their welcome, I won't be overly sad to see it go, either. It's been a long bruising year of health problems, surprise expenses, illness, job worry, job change and house problems.

Sure, I fixed some of the house stuff, and bought a new truck that I love, and R. lost most of her 75 pounds during the year, and quit smoking, and the person we know who contracted cancer seems to be doing well, but every 365-day period is going to have some good things. And I hate to complain: I know my life, through a combination of hard work and luck, is amazing and amazingly good. Still, 2010 would have to qualify as one of the tough years. At the very least, it is one of the landings in the continually upward spiraling staircase that has been my life. I mean, I have my core health and a job, so I can't complain too much, right?

So here's to 2011 being an end to 2010.

Religion Thursday*

I'm starting what I hope will be an every week kind of posting thing. If not a series, at least a miniseries while I'm reading Basic Buddhist Concepts.

The first here is the First Seal of Law: Impermanence.

It's an interesting concept and one with which I'm willing to get on board, even though I struggle to obtain it. Nothing in permanent. Not wealth, not health, not status, not stones.

It kind of goes to the "either you are growing or you are dying" quote. And to this blog post about not wasting the time deposit that is your life.

It is a combination of these - the blog post especially - that prompted me to set up a schedule for editing my book and reading. It's only half an hour a day, but its something. 30 minutes per day four days a week. 1,800 seconds per day. 2 hours per week. 8 hours per month. It adds up. It's time when I won't be appreciating the false promise of permanance in my life and will instead be doing something about the impermanance.

And I'm also loving the first parts of these books about how Buddhism should never be in conflict with science. Not sure how that meshes with the "wrongful sex" Law, but we'll see.

My one criticism so far is that at one point the author objects to Buddhism being considered a philosophy rather than a religion due to the lack of deity. He points to faith in the Laws as evidence of its religious nature. But I think this feels a bit forced. And a bit too determined to make it a religion. My firm faith that rocks are rocks doesn't make that belief a religion.

The book is a bit vague on how, if nothing is permanent, the Laws are. Especially since it explains how impermanance requires that no god exist. For somone who swings between agnostic & Diest like myself, that really isn't a problem. But the problem with impermanance is nihilism, in my mind. If impermanance reigns, is it permanant?

* I wanted it to be matchy, like Two-for Tuesdays, or Wacky Wednesdays. I went with Thursday because in college Thursday was represented by an R, to distinguish it from Tuesday.

Preamble

Tomorrow I'll be posting something religion/Buddhism related. For now, I wanted to share the following quote from an Inquirer columnist talking about religion and God's role in sports and how he probably isn't interested in whether the Bills win or lose or cover and all the sky pointing and other nonesense:

"Only the flimsiest of faiths attributes success to the Lord but chalks failure up to . . . something else."

So true. And so often overlooked, I feel.

The column is written by a religious conservative, but one for which I have profound respect. For those who don't gobble down religious doctrines in heavy, heaping spoonfuls, the column is well worth a read.

For selfish reasons - the discussion continued

"We don't call the man living in a cave selfish for not providing anything to
society, but we call the individual on welfare selfish, because we pay for it."

You could argue, as the author herself did, that this is a bit roughly hewn. Perhaps it is. But I post it because I think it also makes a great ancillary point. And that is that in a world ruled by a selfish ruler, whether you were a janitor, Mother Teresa, an astronaut, Bill Gates, or Madame Curie wouldn't matter.

For the sake of ease, let us concede that all added to, or at the very least didn't detract from, society. They lived their lives as they saw fit. Selfishness virtually requires at least a minimally productive life becuase there is little in the world more selfish than being extremely good at what you do. In 99% of cases, that takes a lot of time and investment spent on yourself.

Perhaps the one exception to the list would be Mother Teresa. It's best we don't go too far down that path, but suffice to say that for every single giving act Mother Teresa committed, there was a receiving act on the other end. Potential for a balanced ledger. Perhaps the giving multiplied and outweighed the taking. Perhaps.

I've now completely lost where I was going with this. I warned you not to go too far down the Mother Teresa path. Now you've gone and gotten us entirely lost in this deserted wood. And its dark. Oddly dark. Creepily dark.

And are those the red eyes of a selfish person I see...

Selfishness run Wilde

One of the blogs I follow has the following quote:

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."

- Oscar Wilde

If you know me, then you know that, unlike most other people, I'm not skeeved by the concept of selfishness in the correct formulation. I think in general it gets an undeservedly bad reputation.

This Wilde quote caught my eye because I'm kind of on his side on this one. What could be more "bad" selfish than to want other people to live like you do? The entire idea is anathema to my libertarian principles.

But that got me thinking: what exactly would you call "living as one wishes to live?" If forcing others to live that way is selfish, what would Wilde's alternative be called? If living as you wish isn't selfish, what is it? And what would be the boundries?

We run into two problems: due to its bad reputation, the entire concept of selfishness is vaguely and poorly defined, studied and investigated. People spend large portions of their time thinking, studying and writing into advice columnists on how to help others or what to do for others. Upon coming across the mere mention of selfishness, however, most people balk and repell. End of conversation.

Suggest to someone that they are selfish and you've almost certainly earned a rebuke, or admonishment, if not an enemy. The conversation, if it doesn't stop entirely, tends to break down to the point of senselessness. No one, or very few, would concede to selfishness.

Suggest someone is selfless, and you've generally been considered to have heaped great praise on them, despite the fact that you've essentially said they place little value on themselves.

This dichotomy is most readily present in parents/child rearing. Parents will tell you that having a child is the most selfless thing you can do. Many times, you'll hear it told to childless couples that they are "selfish" or its too bad they wouldn't give up their selfish ways to have a child. And yet, the reasons given for having children are entirely selfish: they "wanted" children; they "wanted" someone to love; "they" felt it was the right time; they "wanted" to save their marriage.

In fact, bringing a child into the world is one of the most selfish things you can do. I'm not a huge environmentalist, but I don't think it can be refuted that more and more children aren't great for the earth. If you believe overpopulation exists or can exist, more children probably isn't the answer. If you buy that people = pollution, then people + more people = more pollution.

Having a child is at heart a continuation of your genes/lineage, which is just about the most selfish thing you can do. But even divorced from that basic natural explanation, I'm hard pressed to come up with a selfless reason to have children. Adoption, where you are "rescuing" a an existing child, is selfless, perhaps. But nothing "requires" that child you birth into the world to be brought into the world. There isn't a conveyor belt conveying children into the world - if you don't have one it won't be placed into some forgotten warehouse of ignored children. Birthing a child isn't caring for a neglected child already existing.

I'm actually hard pressed to think of any reasons having a child would be selfless. I guess rearing a child simply for a spouse, though your selfish desire to keep the spouse would have to be considered. Perhaps if you birthed a child for a third party - as in a surrogate. Hey, look here at what we've done: we've managed to come to the conclusion that people who give their kids up for adoption are the most selfless, pious people on earth!

And yet - the very suggestion that having a child is selfish would probably garner you crazy looks.

Under Wilde's formulation, choosing to have a child might or might not be selfish, but forcing others to only have so many would definitely be "bad" selfish.

Unfortunately, the first part of the equation, the part Wilde hasn't addressed, probably doesn't get answered, and probably won't, because no one wants to address the topic.