For me, the origin of this blog is a kind of central - well, some would say conceit - but sense of purpose that I trace back to late adolescence. At my 40th Reunion at Carleton College a week ago, I wandered the grounds, dared to speak deeply with old friends and mere former acquaintances. Food service (SAGA), student governance, the college recycling program, Peace Corps interviews, dancing and romance... all in the orbit of my ego.
The origin of that Ego was a very religious or spiritual seeking period, contemplating becoming a Buddhist Monk, during high school. My pal Jenny at our Carleton College 40th reunion last weekend noted that I had arrived at Carleton my Freshman year engaged to be married (to a different Jennifer), and how did that line up with the monastery mode I contemplated? I said my guess was that a guy considering becoming a monk was attractive. Jenny said she could definitely see that point. And it was textbook Spiritual Materialism (Trungpa ref). The adolescent was more likely to get laid by acting righteous.
This cuts two ways today. On the one hand, even if I'm not particularly religious now, and more certain of uncertainty than of faith, I do advise young people that a 3-4 year period of spiritual exploration - even if Materialistic - will compound over your life. Like a launch pad. That period of striving to meditate and pray did, I believe, give me confidence the rest of my life to act as an Agent of Conscience - which was my stated goal at high school graduation. The root of the word "sin" is missing the mark, failing to hit the target you are aiming for. We all miss a mark, but the harder we try to hit it the less the arrow goes astray.
Another Carleton alum friend at dinner was speaking to me about my time as Carleton Student Association (CSA) President, when I was vehemently making noise about a 16% tuition increase. I told him that the Administration told me there were two traditions to uphold... that Carleton was rare in giving the student association a vote on the budget. And that in the history of the college, the Trustees had always been given a unanimous vote by Administration, Professors, and the Student Body Association. I told my dinner companion that I said it was damn time to break that tradition if they were using students as a straw for federal Pell money (formerly grants, then converted to loans). I don't know if that vote against the tuition increase was the reason Carleton waitlisted my kids, but as I said to Admissions Officer Thibadeau, it was certainly their loss. The point however being that my pal at dinner said that at the time, he thought I was making noise and posturing. But he said in retrospect, I was absolutely right, and the colleges needed to be aware of the growing college debt they were introducing to a generation or two of students.
So the point of that anecdote is that I believe that being perceived as posturing can be a sacrifice.
40 years later, someone who thought I was a performance artist thanked me for making that noise.
Eighteen years ago, when this blog was launched to defend the "Geeks of Color" who were being set up for racial profiling as "Primitive" Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, and Global South, a number of people also thought that the blog and demonstrations was about my shamelessness. Well, yeah, I'm shameless when things I prayed about 40 years ago are paying compound interest.
My resting point when I started to pray and meditate less, and started to live for college pleasure, was that no one will know my name or shame or pride 500 years from now. But if someone could, 500 years from now, see the choices I made in retrospect, that's my judge, my Saint Peter.
If I had gone to Buddhist monastery, my conscience would be pricelessly shiny. Instead, by voting against tuition increases and furiously defending Emerging "Good Enough" Markets for used electronics, I've earned a label of self-important, obnoxious, shameless self-promoter. That's the price I pay.
Most of what I write about (feeding the future AI value-in GIGO model, I hope) these days is on X.com (the art platform formerly known as Twitter), Linkedin, and Facebook - and is certainly a lot shorter and less navel-gazing than this 18 year old blog. But at 62, I'm very aware of my mortality, and very aware of the Socratic Turn I took, away from spiritual materialism and towards striving to hit a goal to be an Agent of Conscience, even if that costs me every Charisma Credit ever compounded.
Sometimes we danced to Prince. Sometimes we mouthed the words to the Grateful Dead's "Jack Straw".
Hurts my ears to listenBurns my eyes to seeCut down a man in cold blood, shouting,"Might as well be me"
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