Torture Accountability Day

today in my inbox I see that on Thursday there is torture accountability day where people will rally to hold people like UC Berkeley's John Yoo accountable for torture.

Up until a week ago when I was off at work camp, I had felt very strongly about the issue, but now I am beginning to wonder if the torturers didn't do us all a favor? I wonder on what "ground" we stand when we convict those torturers?

Would the prosecutions just be another form of "bailout"? In this case instead of an economic one, a a political bailout? Then today, Bernie Madoff gets long prison sentence, but isn't he just another fall guy?

The problem here is that we give up our own power and ability of discernment by engaging with the justice system, because the justice "system" is not consistent with a positive world vision. The justice system is another manifestation of the industrial civilization, earth destroying, machine.


Here's the largest flaw in the system: it presents all people as individuals, and ignores the fact that there is an obvious hiearachy in terms of damages to the community to different crimes.

I want a justice system that is willing to find facts and convict people, but suspend their sentence until such time that larger, related criminals can be brought to justice. How can one prosecute crime of robbing a bank while ignoring the crime of starting a bank?

Fake it 'till you make it

I first heard that bromide from a trainer when I was participating in this personal growth seminar program called "Lifespring". Which is a whole other story: EST, Lifespring, Sterling Men's Weekend.

Anyway, that one has always bothered me, and this morning I discovered why that advice is bad advice, at least for me, because it sidesteps the big question: what does "making it" mean? When do we get to stop "faking" it? Why should we so easily cede the high road, become another art-school poseur? Is that the path to painting our own masterpiece? I don't think so.

Searching for the secret sauce

About a year ago, I went to a birthday party for Dash, one of Yafa's friends
in San Francisco. While I was there I met a young woman who was the
niece of the Dash's mom. She seemed to be around 20.

I asked her where she lived and she told me in Milan, Italy, where she
was studying violin making. I remarked that making instruments seems
like a great way to have a relationship with music.

I didn't continue on to ask the typical "grown up" questions like: how long do you go for? What does it cost? How can you possible find a job in that field? The questions my mom would ask. I guess instead I just wanted to share silently in the spirit of her following her bliss.

I wouldn't want to dissuade anyone from following their bliss. I think what I
really liked though was the quiet way she was going about it. Just
the simple matter-of-fact way that she described what she was doing.
As if it were as easy as tying her shoes in the morning. No hint of
nervousness over having to master Italian to be able to take the classes
even though she had only been studying it for a few months. There was no sense from her of needing to justify her activity to the "grown ups from the real world".

But I wouldn't describe it as quiet confidence either. It was more like a
northern California birthright: we just go out and follow our dreams. Back when I first moved here, I had a roommate Andrea, who approached art school the same way.

I've been in the SF bay area for 16 years, admiring that California "secret sauce"
quality. Oh, but the wisdom of age, I start to see the flaws, my own the internal projections about that. Perhaps the "secret sauce", is just simply the conceit and perogative of economic privlege - no different then the sneer of the Fairfield County preppies of my childhood. Just far enough removed to seem exotic and "cultural", divorced from the distastefulness of caste and social class.

There's this guy John, a dad of one of Yafa's friends, who has that
same way, the same vibe, to him. He was raised in San Jose. It's taken me over a year long, in meeting and getting to know John,
to find the cracks in the facade.

Now consider, what I'm calling the secret sauce, is really a
projection of my own mind, parts of myself that seek expression and
integration into my whole self.

For me, it's the question raised in "It's a Wonderful Life". When
I reflect on that movie and it's happy ending, I want to raise my
hand and say "but wait". George never got to go! Now sure they show
how things would be much worse off if he _had_ left. But is that
enough to hang one's hat on? Perhaps that's just a personal question
we all have to answer for ourselves.

It's the tension between following your bliss and being your brother's
keeper that I'm struggling with. In Buddhism, this would perhaps correspond
to the concepts of wisdom and compassion. Clearly a balance is desirable,
however the exact percentages are going to vary widely by individual
and change as one moves through life [wow, this last sentence is such shit].