Are you here now?

You can think and speculate til the cows come home, but everything you actually do can be the source of wisdom. Sometimes the wisdom is hard earned and downright painful, and sometimes you can go through the painful lessons without actually learning anything. It all boils down to attention. "Are you here now?" And to what do you pay attention?

I just came in from mowing the grass and was using the exercise to explore a few connected concepts. There is a squeeze bar on my mower that is intended to let the machine know the operator is no longer in control. This device was mandated by the Consumer Products Safety Administration, and some would regard it angrily as a government mandated inconvenience. But there are real idiots out there, like the MD who disabled the squeeze bar so he could lift his mower in both hands and use it as a hedge trimmer. He picked it up and immediately cut the tips from his fingers. I suspect he learned a few things from his experience... lessons that the CPSA hoped he might avoid.

So, I am grateful for a bit of government regulation. As we know less and less from our own personal experience, there become more and more things from which we will need to be protected.

Do you know how much money BP spent in lobbying efforts to avoid government regulation of oil drilling in the gulf? I consider it the teenage-boy-thing, trying to get away with things when the grownups aren't watching. You think you know lots better about things, even though your cerebral cortex is not fully developed. BP, showing obvious signs of corporate immaturity, tried to skirt the regulation, took risks equivalent to the redneck teen jumping head first in shallow water crying as his last words on earth, "Hey watch this!"

Regulation is a good thing. I draw a comparison with my writing. A good editor makes me a better writer. Good regulators would have saved BP over a billion dollars, and saved the Gulf environment, and millions of people tremendous heart-ache.

Yesterday we had a shooting incident in Arkansas where two men, stoked toward violence by anti-government rhetoric on Fox News and the internet, killed police officers. Do you see the pattern? I hope so.

I can tell you a few interesting things about work. Work in the real world, doing hand work or hard work or both work can be one of two things depending on your attitude. You work with joy toward personal fulfillment and expression of care, or you do not. One path leads to wisdom, the other does not. As we work, dependent on that choice, we either stew in things and grow angry or we become expansive in our thinking of things we might contribute toward the greater good.

Moral implications of craftsmanship

We tend to think of organized religions as the source of human morality, and yet, the crafting of an object is an expression of moral structure that likely predates any commandment or moral precept. Objects are made with care or they are not. Objects are made with an eye toward useful beauty, or they are not. Objects are made to last, or they are not. If we were truly concerned about building a society in which people care for each other, there is no better way than to engage our children in craftsmanship.

I have been reading Fred Taylor's book How to be a Furniture Detective, and find it to be a useful tool for anyone wishing to begin an in depth examination of the objects in their own home. You may find that some things were made with real integrity, and by examining them, you may discover the moral implications of craftsmanship. Some people really do care about themselves, and others, that care being expressed through their own hands.

In the photo above, you see the box I've been working on for burial of my mother's ashes. In the photo below, the box is assembled and ready for finish. A plywood bottom will be screwed in place, sealing it after the box of ashes is installed within.

What if we're not as smart as we think we are?

Human intelligence, how to measure it, how to reward it, and how to advance it, is not an easy thing to understand. What if, instead of being as has always presumed, it actually lies in the situation, distributed in the relationship between the person, the tools, and his understanding of their use, and amongst one's peers? Actually, none of this is a new notion except amongst those who have been completely out of touch, trudging the halls of academia. The paper I referred to yesterday is available as a .pdf download: Partners in Cognition: Extending Human Intelligence with Intelligent Technologies, Salomon, Perkins and Globerson. You might enjoy the article's discussion of mindfulness in tool use. As the article points out:

Given sufficient mindful engagement in the partnership, strong effects of working with an intelligent partnership can be expected. However, such partnerships challenge our traditional notions about ability. Usually we view ability, regardless of definition, as the potential of a person's mind, the property of that individual. But, once we couple intelligent technologies with a person's ability, the emphasis might shift to examining the joint system. After all, the system, not the individual alone, carries out the intellectual task.

Such a reconceptualization of human ability appears at first to be quite novel. But closer examination reveals that we have implicitly accepted it all along. As Olsen* points out, "Almost any form of human cognition requires one to deal productively and imaginatively with some technology. To attempt to characterize intelligence independently of those technologies seems to be a fundamental error." For example, we would not think of testing people's artistic abilities without the use of some medium such as brush and paint. As Pea has recently pointed out, once appropriate intellectual tools are employed, ability becomes distributed by "off-loading" some of the mental operations required unto the artefactual environment.

I would add to this discussion the notion that all tools are intended toward the same effect... that of "off-loading" necessary skill, required intellect and attention, distributing these things onto the artefactual environment.

*Olsen, D.R. (1986)Intelligence and Literacy: The relationships between intelligence and the technologies of representation and communication.

Domesticated Theology

I'm finding Jeremy Kidwell's Domesticated Theology discussion of Christian carpentry and Paul's tent making to be very interesting. I think that certain core human values become lacking when we fail to be engaged in creative manual labor. To make something is an essentially moral act. It is done with care and attention to beauty and utility, or it is not. It is done with care for its ultimate user or it is not. There was a long history of Christian monks offering up their work to God... another fruitful area for theological review in that from a more selfless perspective, many believed that all being God deserved nothing less than one's best work, most prudent and honorable use of the materials at hand and that work and worship were a single expression of enlightened humanity.

Finnish brain researcher, Matti Bergström, working from a non-theological perspective describes a condition he calls finger blindness. In essence, while the physically blind cannot see the outlines of the object, the finger blind, those who have not learned in childhood to create with their own hands, cannot perceive the object's intrinsic values. He says they are "values damaged". Instead of perceiving the broad range of values that a reasonable and soulful society projects, their range of perceived values becomes severely retarded. Instead of seeing an object of art and marveling at the miracle expressed by its maker, they see it only in terms of market value and price

Matti's concept goes a long way in describing the true sources of our current economic crisis. But a review of early Christian practices, and giving credence to our children's capacities and inherent needs to create, would go a long ways to restoring greater meaning to many lives.

Karma

I have been off the subject of sawzen too long, but was reminded by a visit to Mindculture's blog and reading a post on Karma, a sad story of a bird burned in a fire.

I explain Karma to myself in the following way. We can be viewed as distinct and separate if we are examining the boundaries between us. We can be seen and understood as whole and one if we are looking at the connections, like these letters and words forming on this small screen of mine which will soon be seen on yours.

When we live in the second version, seeing the connections between us, we see that what is done to one is done simultaneously to the other. We shut the doors to the pain and shame from errors of what we have done by denial of our larger, more comprehensive self. Thence live narrowly, in pain, isolation and loneliness of self-imposed exile from greater being. It doesn't have to wait a lifetime. Unfortunately, for some, so isolated from their own sense of greater being, perhaps it will.

maya, illusion, reality and craftsmanship

A friend of mine, in response to a conversation about our worsening economic times, said,"It's not real. It's maya." So I gently explained that the concept of maya doesn't mean that the world is not real, that real people are not being thrown out of real homes and losing real jobs in this recession, but that our perceived distinctions between things is illusory. The concept of narrowly defined self that drives our economy is illusion. There are no real boundaries between us as you can see from where ever you are sitting and reading this text.

There was an old Jackson Browne song that explained it, "From the time we've known that we each are a part of one another, we've lost as much as we have won." Our economy and culture have been built on the concepts of winning and losing and we are at the time of reconciliation, understanding of reality.

The misunderstanding of the meaning of Maya is hazardous. It allows individuals to disregard, diminish and disparage the reality of each other, marginalizing the significance of of what each of us is going through.

In life, we are given a choice of dwelling either in our separation from each other through close examination of boundaries, or by uniting with each other through examining the extended relationships that form the framework of greater self. It is the narrow definition of self that is the lie, the gross mis-perception.

There are things about craftsmanship that lead one beyond him or herself. The immersion in creative process, taking raw materials, reshaping them toward the objective of creating greater utility and beauty for the lives of others is a process through which we transcend the boundaries of self. The other side of the process is the difficult one, that tends to challenge me. It is where I must take personal gain from the process. I have to make money. It is required by existence on the physical plane in very real physical reality. It is no illusion when the bills arrive in the mail and must be paid. The challenge is in perception of balance.

No, life is not an illusion. Life IS profound and very real. We are deeply interconnected with each other in ways that defy understanding. And it's not just the hardwires and software of the internet that make it so for it has always been. We are inextricably a part of one another.

These times are interesting. The irrational greed of those from AIG and Wall St. juxtaposed to the incredible generosity of the common people. The difference between Maya and reality is brilliantly illuminated. When we connect with each other either in craftsmanship, or in service, we enter the real world. And it is no illusion.

mindfulness and the crafted object

We have become cogs in a machine whirring beyond our consciousness and control, but, what if we wanted to live our lives more fully conscious and awakened to mystery and wonder at the interconnections we have with each other? What would be the nature of the objects that framed that experience? When we picked up a cup to drink, would it be one made through caring investment of human attention, or thoughtlessly and mindlessly cranked out by a machine in a foreign land and delivered through a complex and environmentally destructive mechanism to the local Target Store?

Is consciousness something that just happens to us haphazard and regardless, or are there choices we make that affect the depth and quality of our experience?

In the US, this rule seems to apply to crafts: the less useful the object, the greater its value... as though crafts, like art are to be placed on shelves and on walls and seen but not felt. And yet it is through the touch and use of an object that its full depth becomes known. The deep feelings and sensitivities of the craft maker are kept safely at arms length.

My readers in the US might be interested in visiting the Wharton Esherick Museum where you can find what life was like when all the objects in one's life were made by someone known and those objects were selected for the care and love they express.

If we were interested in a more mindful and qualitative existence that engaged our neighbors and friends in greater creativity and the growth of their human potentials, our choices would be very different from what we've made now.