Tax Freedom Day

Tax freedom day

We work until April 16th to pay taxes. I believe that N, A, and I discussed at various times whether it is our collective duty to distribute our income so that all in the United States have such necessities as food, housing, medical care, education, no student debt, secure retirement and more. Bernie Sanders calls this “…justice for all.” (https://berniesanders.com/issues/)

I don’t understand Bernie telling us that it is our “duty” to provide all that he’d like us to have. I wonder, too, how willing employed people will be to work most of the year to provide these goods and services for everyone. I seem to remember N saying that he’d be fine paying more taxes and that others should be willing as well. I wasn’t as willing to lay this obligation on others if they did not choose to be so generous.

I have no problem with our society deciding that we want to provide a comfortable life for everyone if we can figure out a way to do it. When it comes down to the details, it seems it would get more complicated.

I would, however, not see this as a duty but rather as a choice we would make as a society.

The Other Side

I didn’t realize that the other side usually refers to where you go when you die. I’m not going to go there. I realize that I always try to see the other side. In college, we were supposed to write a paper on a humanist artist. I picked the least humanist artist I could think of. I didn’t convince the teacher, but still got an ok grade for the paper.

E told me today she didn’t know how she could guide a meditation on the Earth since global warming is so disastrous. I suggested that she consider all those people who will benefit from global warming, like the people in Siberia. J was distressed about our president. It was suggested to her that he was a Bodhisattva in that he was engaging so many people in politics.

My twisted mind always looks for the other side, especially if the first side is sad. I’m not particularly interested in thinking sad thoughts. So someone is crying because their bowl of ice cream is half empty. I like to point out that it is half-full.

Another J came to the temple today using Ride Austin. The driver asked her what she thought of Trump. She told the driver she wasn’t going to give him (not Trump) a good rating. As she left the vehicle he said to her, “have a blessed day.” I was telling Another J and her husband that the trade issue with China is very complicated and Trump is brave to confront it. He said with much confidence that tariffs would sink the economy.

One thing that helps me embrace the other side is that we are not great predictors of the effect of an action. The man who said that tariffs would sink the economy was a scientist. He should know better than to make such a prediction as if it was a fact. We don’t know the effect of any action. It could be that tariffs might be just what is needed for the economy.

I’ve known people who considered divorcing their spouses because they differed in their political perspective. All these topics are not normally in our area of expertise. Do we really know, as amateurs, the solution to the world problems? We are just guessing. We have limited information. And when we guess differently than our neighbor we think that they are wrong, mean, deluded, stupid, and so on. We actually know as little about the situation as they do, and neither of us has a crystal ball.

Often as a dean, I would hear a story from a student, and then a story from a faculty member. Each seemed to be from a different perspective. In the end, it was usually the case that neither had completely upheld their end of the bargain. We tried to make some agreement so they could work together in the future rather than against each other.

The other side is not wrong. Nor is it right. Each side has defined a problem and is seeking solutions. Our lives don’t have to be an exercise in assigning right and wrong labels to every point of view. The person who remembers how Hitler and Mussolini took guns away from certain populations might have good reasons to think a little differently from you or me about the gun issue. Rather than saying, “you’re wrong,” we can work with them to better understand the issue at hand.

In any case...

A nurse, a philosopher and a Zen priest were aghast at my comments about Walmart. (Sorry, but this is sounding like a joke.) Yes, it is sad that the employees are treated as they are, and crazy that the CEOs earn so much. The challenge is what to do about these situations. Whose responsibility is it when someone doesn’t have basic necessities? Is it the responsibility of the government when someone is paid what seems to be an outrageous sum?

The bigger question for me is “being aghast” an appropriate response to an opinion that differs from their own?

In any case…

Walmart and many other companies likely contribute to the destruction of the planet. They sell a lot of plastics. They also buy from companies that have terrible labor policies and conditions. And they also provide a needed service and employ a lot of people. 

I probably own part of Walmart as part of an Index fund that I have. I proposed to a friend that we should boycott Walmart because they sell guns. He replied that those aren’t the guns the shooters are using. They are getting their guns from gun shows and over the Internet.

As a dean, I was torn with the dilemma of using part-time faculty who might make 25% of what a full-time faculty made. We had limited discretionary funds. If we paid the part-time faculty more we’d have to raise the tuition (which could decrease our enrollment in Ferguson, MO). We could pay full-time faculty less, which could cause our faculty to look elsewhere for work. In the end, any change would have its costs and benefits.

Some say that companies are owned by their stockholders and have a legal responsibility to make a profit. At the least, if companies aren’t doing this, they should let investors know what their goals are.

It is a kind of “shooting from the peanut gallery” to demonize certain businesses without considering the good that they do, and the problems they would have if they made profound changes (like not selling plastics). It is easy to say, it is unfair for two people to teach the same course, and one gets 1/4 of what the other gets. It is especially difficult when the part-time faculty member may do a better job than the full-time faculty member. But what is a school to do to fix these apparent inequities?

Antioch and similar schools, built on the highest principles, are having great financial difficulties. It isn’t easy to keep afloat. Luckily, as consumers, we can vote with our pocketbook in various ways. Eventually, companies will listen as we affect their bottom line.

Shame, Ancient Twisted Karma, Hsin Hsin Ming, PaRaDiSe Manifesto, Walmart

As part of another activity, we were asked to do a Hakomi exercise of telling another person twice, “you should be ashamed of yourself.” Once we were supposed to look down, and the second time we were to look each other in the eye. I wouldn’t do the exercise, explaining it was against my principles. When I got home, I asked my wife to do it. She instantly refused as well. This isn’t the first time I refused to do a Hakomi exercise. Once I was asked in another context (by a Hakomi teacher) to stand up if someone had hurt me, and to remain seated if they had not. This was more difficult to refuse, since staying seated could be read as not being hurt, or as not playing the game. At still another venue, I noticed people doing activities without totaling owning the activity. It is as if they either read about the activity or had experienced the activity in another context and decided to throw it at us in a somewhat random way.

I did start thinking about whether I could say to anyone that they should be ashamed of themselves. I wondered about whether I could say it to the recent shooters. Surprising myself, I decided I could not even say that to them. I asked my wife, “could you tell a recent shooter that he should be ashamed of himself.” She said she could do that. But thinking more about it, she said, “I would tell them they should be ashamed of what they did.”

I think that’s an important distinction. Christianity has the Jesus prayer from the Russian Pilgrim book, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me a worthless sinner.” Judaism doesn’t pinpoint guilt to the individual, but rather to the action. There is a difference in telling someone that they are a mistake and that they made a mistake. In the former, there is no chance for redemption. In the second, there is. Implicit in “you should be ashamed of what you did” is the suggestion that the action was not the person. Sartre made this distinction that one is not this or that, but rather they do this or that.

We have a repentance chant in Zen:

All my ancient twisted karma,
born through body, speech, and mind…

J thought it was borne, which I like much better than born, the word that is used. We are born (maybe 1st time we are born) without twisted karma, and then we acquire twisted karma through our (intentional) actions. The karma shouldn’t be personified. It comes from our actions but it is borne and not born. Here’s a great explanation of the two words.

As the walking meditation continued, my mind drifted to a man I know, Ricardo Turullois-Bonilla, who, in the PaRaDiSe Manifesto, believes he should get the Nobel prize because he has figured out that the reason we’ve shooters is that they were taught dualism in school and that the schools are to blame. I decided at first that he was completely right and that he should get the Nobel prize, and then I realized that choosing non-dualism over dualism is yet another dualism and rather, we should hold each lightly in each of our hands. As it is written in the Hsin Hsin Ming / Trust in Mind:

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
Everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
And heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. 

Even having preferences about having no preferences is a trap.

P.S. S wrote that I liked Walmart. I might well have written that, though I’m not thinking today too much about my love for Walmart. She said it wasn’t right that their executives make a million a minute (she slightly exaggerated) and their employees make so little. It is easy for us to associate these two activities but I think they need to be looked at separately. If an executive can convince a board that she is worth such and such, I think the CEO would be stupid to say, “but just give me half of that.” If they wanted to give their money away, they are free to do so. But they aren’t “bad” people if they decide to give the money to their family and friends.

The second issue is that of non-living wages. Let’s assume you double the workers’ wages. Now you are paying enough to peak the interest of the recent liberal arts college graduates. So what happens to the people who are working at Walmart? They will be out of a job. Increasing their wages not only does not help the poor workers, but Walmart might need to shut down some stores because they aren’t operating at a profit. It is a problem that some don’t make a “living wage.” But this is society’s problem, not Walmart’s. And with more welfare or a negative income tax, society can supplement the employees’ wages.

Gittie Up, the Dog Says, Gittie Up

Walking as meditation
1 step at a time.
Another step, another time
‘round & ‘round we go.

Is anyone getting tired?
R we 1 or many?
How long have we walked?
How far have we walked?
Miles to go ‘fore we sleep.

Who walked?
Who’s paying attention?
Who’s being attended 2?

Is walking in a circle like life?
Sometimes you don’t get anywhere.
We don’t get anywhere,
walking in circles,
but we are still tired
at the end of the day.

Who walks? Animal,
vegetable or mineral.
Or a
spirit? Whose spirit?

Are we alive or dead
walking like this?
Is the old oak floor
alive and dead, singing
creaks at every step?

Take a dog on a walk,
or pretend to do so, and the
dog pulls you along.
Gittie up, the dog says, gittie up.

Jelly Moses

I was going to write about writing. Or I was going to write about credit cards. I asked mensa wife which one I should write about. She knew the right answer, but she was unable to speak because she didn’t know whether I’d follow her advice or do the opposite. So there are mensas and there are menses, just like there are Apple Geniuses and there are Apple Geniuses. To be an Apple Genius I heard you only need to score a 70.

It is like Buddha-to-be in the Jataka tales. He read the mind of a pirate and saw that he was going to kill everyone so he killed the pirate to save the pirate from acquiring bad karma. I told my teacher about this and she, also a mensa, said that the real Buddha would have figured out a better solution.

So I don’t know what to write about. I had a nice conversation with S this morning about writing and how we not only clarify thoughts but actually evoke new thoughts as well when we write. Once I had a particular position about something and as I wrote about it I realized that the opposing position made more sense. Which is why I’ve come to be known as, “Jelly Moses.”

This is all based on the premise that the solid state of Jelly is Jello. Some don't know that.

Something mensa doesn’t like about me is that I have a lot of credit cards. I’m a sucker for most deals that they give, like $200 if you spend $1000 in the next month. For awhile the deals stopped. I figured they had me pegged. But now they have started coming again. One temptation after another.

So I went to a bank today and they told me that I qualified for a super credit card that beats all the other cards. I wonder what it would be like to have one credit card. It would sure make mensa happy.

So how far do you go to make a mensa happy? Is it dependent on the extent of your love? Is it dependent on how postal she might become if she isn’t happy? Should I ask her? Would she just freeze up again, trying to figure out what answer would give her the best life? I don’t know.

What is the job at hand?

Today was my weekly Rabbi talk. I told him that I’ve been thinking of God as an emotion. He didn’t say, no, that is wrong. Nor did he say, yes, that is right. Our conversation quickly moved to the continuum from defining God (a.k.a. Jesus) to not defining God (“I am who I am” Torah Exodus 3:14). In any case, we quickly came to the idea that our task in this world is to make it better, not to define God.

Then in Torah study, we read about how you are impure if you touch a corpse and how you must purify yourself starting 3 days after touching the said corpse and extending until 7 days after the touching. Again, he said that at a certain point grieving should end and one should get back to the job at hand, making the world better.

The ancient Pagans spent much of their time with the dead. They would dissect dead cows as a means to prophesy the future.

My mom used to say that life is for the living. This is not to say that some deaths are particularly difficult, such as the death of a child. On the radio today was a woman who accidentally left her child in a hot car. She said she will never get over that.

Let’s not worry about whether God is out there or in here, whether he’s as real as apple pie or as impermanent and imagined as a dream. What is the job at hand?