Baruch's Blog

It's a rainy cool day in Vermont. It's also four years since hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans changing countless lives, including this one that I am living.

My awareness is overflowing these days. It has been for some time now, and it seems to always be increasing. I sense the sticky web of human manufacture which is how we have organized ourselves thus far. We have filled our lives with meaningless tasks, busy-work, complicated tortuous bureaucratic pathways which one must navigate to live in this context. Work, money, bills, debts, politics; large entities we call governments and corporations are standing like giants with their feet right on the throats of the populace. We've poisoned the earth and set in motion, or added to the natural momentum, changes in the biosphere which result in the daily loss of species, changes in the atmosphere,in the water cycles, toxins daily being put into the food supply...the list goes on and on. You know. The lack of humanity amongst humans is more than ever, as there are more humans than there ever have been. [Tangent: I propose that the reason for this many humans is that the universe needs to experience as many perspectives as it can, AND that in order for humans to deliberately evolve we need a lot of momentum; the momentum of many many people.]

I've been very in touch with my anger about all this. I feel a lot of anger about the fact that I was/we were born into a system of enslavement to that sticky web, which is manipulated by the least evolved among us, the power hungry. The disease of greed infects each of us in our own way. I overeat. That's my gluttony. We all have our places of excess, especially in, but limited to, the privileged US of A.

I have come to disagree with those who say that anger can only be destructive. There is such a thing as constructive anger. It's different from acting out angrily. Constructive anger provides heat, fuel, for heartfelt intuitively guided intelligently conceived action. Acting out angrily is a kind of tantrum. The two are very different, and each has their place. I prefer to have my tantrums by myself or with friends for whom listening to me rant is not distressing. Luckily I have such friends. But action, to be effective, requires energy. Altruism provides a certain amount, sometimes a lot, of energy. Altruism has faith and hope as two of it's main ingredients, as well as idealism. These days I find altruism to be inadequate for the tasks at hand. I find myself accessing my rage, and wanting it to inform me in heartfelt intuitively guided intelligently conceived actions. My radio show is one manifestation. Anger based in love is different than anger based in fear or hate.

Friends die, new ones are born, and are quickly assimilated into the constructs we've accepted; by trauma, family problems, circumcision, environment, school...we see how the beautiful kids are enrolled into "the system" and how it gradually changes them, just as it changed us.

I think to myself, there must be better ways to live.