Murphy’s Bye-Laws

Have you ever felt like striking out on a voyage across many seas, beyond all prior skill and experience? The old romantic notion of the sea has been enchanting men to become sailors for centuries. Something about the unreachable horizon or the energy of the undulating ocean draws us to it. Just by glancing at the titles of a few books on my bookshelf, the desire to go to sea popped into my head – the same desire that had enchanted me when I purchased the books – even though I have never been on a boat larger than the Staten Island Ferry or on a body of water larger than Lake Erie (and then only 1/2 mile to a mile out in a small 12′ fishing boat).

The oceans and the seas are a great wilderness with the power to destroy the most technologically advanced tools. From the largest ships to the smallest crafts, it is the skill of the captain and/or crew that matters most. The seas are probably the greatest of wildernesses; larger than any other, impossible to tame or terraform, and still not under the false jurisdiction of some arbitrary authority. The seas as we see them today are essentially the same seas that people have seen for millennia, a testament to the untameable nature of the seas, and a far-reaching connection to our species’ history.

Edward Abbey, among others, had written about mankind’s need for wilderness. The need for someplace wild, untamed, and potentially dangerous. He is quoted to have said (or written), “We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all; but we cannot have freedom without wilderness.” as well as, “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.” Couple these statement with a fundamental need for freedom, which I believe we all have, and wilderness seems pretty important. The wilderness acts as a bridge between our ancient ancestors who survived in this environment as a matter of course and had to overcome it in order to progress and, dare I say, evolve. Connection continues as we become, in the wilderness, a part of the universe on equal footing to the rest of existence (as opposed to sitting atop of it) and integrating ourselves with it, sharing the energy that resides in this existence.  It also keeps us connected with parts of ourselves we need to nourish to survive: our vitality. The wildness inside of us that wants to go toe to toe with all the natural forces of the world. We thrive on this natural chaos. Our society hasn’t tamed the wilderness so much as tamed ourselves.

My Watered-Down Wilderness

I can’t say I’ve ever been in real wilderness. The furthest into wilderness I can claim would be merely watered-down wilderness, barely out of earshot of a highway somewhere, and never losing sight of the shore. But even these mild tonics are enough to sustain me. Such powerful medicine may take some getting used to, and is most certainly addicting.

I’ve had the unfortunate experience, more than once in the last couple of weeks, of having fairly tragic things happen to loved ones wherein I feel guilt for not having as sympathetic a reaction as the events would dictate. The feeling isn’t schadenfreude; I’m not gaining any pleasure from the events. I regret that these things happened, feel some sympathy for the afflicted, and still hope for their recovery. If that was all I felt I would have no guilt, but there are other things felt as well. Things that move straight to the forefront of my mind before sympathy sets in. In one case, even feelings of mild anger were generated for the guilt this very reaction caused.

In recent weeks and months I’ve been increasingly turning a scrutinizing lens inward. While this isn’t a new thing for me, the focus of this lens has been. I’ve been examining negative feelings toward various people such as legislators, instruments of the state, various personal acquaintances, and the particular actions some of these people have taken. My range of emotional reaction to events, mostly internal, have ranged from anger to cynicism, annoyance to conceit, and sarcasm to schadenfreude. All of these emotions are negative in tone and serve no constructive purpose for me or those evoking the feelings. In fact, the negativity does my psyche harm more than the people and events eliciting the reactions, which is usually of no consequence to me directly or doing me any real harm.

A part of trying not to react negatively to events is withholding judgment. Judging an action (or inaction) is inviting negativism, and is, indeed, the source of the negative feelings. I’m still struggling with the non-judging as opposed to the actual analysis of what is happening. I feel analysis is necessary as we process our surroundings, but separating it from value judgements is proving difficult. One thing that does precipitate out of the non-judgmental solution is judgment of past actions and events. Without the filter of judgment from these things, it becomes much easier avoid negative emotional reactions to present circumstances.

All of this introspection does trend toward a new age-y universal love kind of doctrine, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing or unrealistic. Reverence, respect, love, and goodwill toward the people around us beats fear, control, hate, and violence and is, in my opinion as well as others’, a key component to peaceful anarchy. Letting go of personal frustrations from the actions of others, stemming from judgment of those actions, is like cutting the chains enslaving a psyche and can lead to a greater freedom than simply raging to destroy institutions. That, after all, is the point of this exercise of mine.

Language Origins

Language is a funny thing. Try thinking outside the bounds of language and one can find that thought, as well as communication, is limited by language. At the boundary of precise language there comes into play a new set of words that are blurry conglomerations of the even blurrier concepts on the other side of this boundary. These blurry concepts aren’t much more than feelings or hunches; one can feel pretty sure there is an “other” side of the boundary between the materialistic and the purely conceptual, but the things on this other side cannot be put to a form – at least not very easily.

The concept of a soul or a spirit is one such word that exists on the blurry conceptual side of this language boundary. Culture is perhaps the largest producer of these ambiguous words and the greatest influence on our individual conceptions around them. Our culture – itself a pretty conglomerated word – could consist of lots of factors from our personal tastes and the personal tastes of those around us to religious and social traditions. The culture of religion and religious teaching that has been ever-present in our history colors much of our language and the concepts behind ambiguous words.

The idea of a soul, especially, has its roots in religion. To a believer in these general religious concepts, the idea of a soul is akin to having an avatar for a person in the unseen spirit world where God, angels and demons dwell. This avatar is lifted to such great importance that the actual physical life of the holder of the avatar is held in less esteem. This avatar then becomes the ante in a high-stakes game of karmic poker. Behave poorly or outside the desired doctrine of a particular religion and that ante is lost forever.

Having rejected the common religious mythology of the soul, I am left with the phrase in the language, but now without an anchor. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in January Sunni had a little virtual party wherein many people contributed content and thoughts on one topic. (The actual content posts can be found here and here.) The topic was broad and open to a wide interpretation: “A Spirit Breaking Free.” In a comment to her announcement I voiced concern for not really knowing what spirit was. That was as good a point as any to mark the genesis of this particular mental exploration.

What I’m proposing for a path through this exploration is similar to what Sunni did. I would like for people (or non-people, if you’re reading) to send in their own content to explore what the soul is to them. With any luck, the result will be a discussion of spirituality from multiple points of view.

I would like to have a kick-off party for this event, say, the evening of Saturday, April 19th. I will attempt to keep this post at or near the top (and possibly make a separate page for it) until then, at which point I will post my contribution to kick this off.

Reader content can be placed in the comments section. If there are more than three hyperlinks in the text it will get flagged as spam or marked for moderation, but I will get to it and make sure it goes through. If you anticipate this happening, an email to me ahead of time may expedite the process of getting it through the filter. Also, if for some reason you may not be available to post during the kick-off and would like it to happen then, email me the content and I can post it with attribution or anonymity. Anonymous comments are allowed at Murphy’s Bye-Laws. The email to reach me is <redacted>.

I hope to see everyone there and look forward to this interesting discussion.  Don’t forget to spread the word and invite friends and family!