Maybe It's The Guns

Back when I was following a guru and living in ashrams we did a lot of chanting of Sanskrit mantras, hymns, songs and names of deities, sometimes for days (though not often). One verse sticks in my mind, I think from the Guru Gita, that refers to the human body as "this cage of bones and rotting flesh."

Another referred to the body as full of foul-smelling urine and feces. One dirge we did was Bhaja Govidam, and admonition to recite the name Govinda in order to resist the temptations of the flesh. The refrain, I remember, was "Bhaja Govindam, Bhaja Govindam, Govindam Bhaja Mudha Mate." (Translation: Praise Govinda! Praise Govinda ! Govinda be Praised, O You mindless fool!) My favorite line translated as "Strength has left the old man's body; his head has become bald, his gums toothless and leaning on crutches. Even then the attachment is strong and he clings firmly to fruitless hope."

What these chants are intended to do is remind the supplicant that the body is temporary, that it is full of filth, and there is no reason to be attached to it. What matters is to focus on the Divine, higher consciousness. Chanting the Divine Name, such as Govinda (Incarnation of Vishnu, the sustainer in Vedantic lore), helps to bring one to union with one's higher self.

There is no need for non-believers to believe in a higher level of consciousness or being to appreciate the unexalted and transitory nature of human existence. Just live. We breathe, cough, sneeze, spit, vomit, urinate, defecate, sweat, bleed and emit other bodily fluids on a regular basis as part of ordinary living. The human body is sixty percent water; fifty-seven percent of our cells are microbes - bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea. When a person dies the body starts decomposing, and soon begins to emit foul odors.

At about twelve hours after death the skin begins to shrink. This happens regardless of "race," ethnicity, pigmentation, religion, wealth, fame or infamy. For example, the skin of a "white" supremacist shrinks 12 hours after death. We are all going to have shrinking skin, but this certainty is most pertinent for those who believe their skin hue makes them superior to others. For Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the presumed killer in the New Zealand mosque shooting, his skin color authorized him to kill 50 people (so far), imagining great glory and inspiration to others.

As I have written many times before, no one has white skin. Mr. Tarrant, for instance. His skin can accurately be described as peach, or a pinkish off-white, but not white. In the hexadecimal system, his skin is #ffcccc, very pale red. And, of course, it's just skin, which shrinks when you die. It is not who you are. To identify with the way one's skin reflects light is to be deluded, pretending something demonstrably false to be true.

There also is no such thing as race. To believe there is such a thing is an indication of intellectual laziness, self-deception, and in most cases, mental illness. There seems to be a lot of disagreement about this, but we can safely say Brenton Tarrant was angry. Also, he exhibits extreme bigotry. He believes he has justification to shoot and kill people whom he doesn't know and who have done nothing to harm him. He lacks impulse control. I wouldn't call these traits signs of mental wellness.

One of the silliest aspects of "white supremacy" is that its adherents list the achievements of other presumed "white" people as proof of their "racial" superiority, but have no attainments of their own to display. They hope to ride on the coattails of people who have actually done something. Most comically, they pretend that Albert Einstein, a "Jew," and therefore not "white" (though he looks "white"), didn't actually discover anything meaningful, or stole his ideas from, uh, "white" people.

"Pundits," all over our mass media these days, insist "white supremacists" are ideologically driven. I don't trust the word of any of them, because the essence of their punditry is the ego and money rewards of being on TV, radio, print and Internet media sources.  They say what rewards them.

Ideology, shmideology. A crackpot theory is not intellectually valid. The main purpose of insisting that "racists" are ideologues is for the promotion of opposite "ideologies" that people can rally around - and most importantly, rally around the righteous counter-ideologues. If there is no "right wing" there can be no "left wing." There has to be a "spectrum" of beliefs along a Cartesian-like line because, well, we say it is so, sayeth the ideologues.

No gradations are given other than the amorphous labels of "left," "right," "center," and sub-labels of "far left," "extreme left," "far right" and "extreme right." There is no "far center." There is no exact qualifier of placement anywhere on this imaginary line because there can be no agreement on what would be a qualifier. To name the qualifiers and gradations would take work, and it would also require some intellectual rigor. Who wants to do that? We are the pundits, the pundits presume, and we say what is what. Our visibility and income prove that we are right (but not "right").

Meanwhile, the crackpot nation is growing. It is worldwide now, spreading to the heretofore mellow land of Australia. We might start asking what is causing the world to tend towards crackpotism. Maybe it's an inevitable result of the mass system. Maybe it's our tendency towards violent entertainment. Maybe it's overpopulation. Economic anxiety. Maybe it's Trump. Or, maybe it's the guns.
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Here's a good rendition of Bhaja Govindam. The Beatles. Another from The Beatles. John Lennon.  John Prine. The Grateful Dead. Johnny Cash. Talking Heads. The Fugs. Another from the Fugs. Cheryl Wheeler. This is becoming our national anthem. Here's a song for the people of New Zealand and Australia.

Here's a song for all the crackpots out there. There is a way home. Try this. A crackpot would have a hard time experiencing a Sea of Joy, or any joy at all. Pursuing crackpot theories is wasting the best of your lives, dreaming your lives away. It might tend to get a little boring in a room like this, though it would be a good place to answer this question. When one evolves beyond crackpotism it can feel like this. Or this. Giving up ontological error might lead one into the mystic. One result could be living for your love. All your love. Crackpotism is no hideaway from one's life. Steppin' out from being a crackpot can be a key to love. Or, you can choose the many stormy Mondays that go with being a crackpot. It's a mean old world. No need to make it meaner. Maybe what crackpots need is to have someone give them some lovin'. It is better to have your guitar gently weep than your gun. Crackpotism is a long, lonesome road, full of men like this. Another name for a crackpot is Mr. Fantasy.

If you are less-than-thrilled with the standard-fare presidential candidates, click here.

Update, March 20: This interview gives a good analysis of the "white" power movement.

Update, March 23: Mother Jones has a story about the difficulties faced by those who leave "white" supremacy (crackpot) groups.

Update, April 19: Scientists have found a link between religious fundamentalism and brain damage. Read about it here. I wonder if anyone is studying whether brain damage is more common in some areas than others.

Sometimes what I write gets published elsewhere, such as this. The problems we face go far beyond the "partisanship" of our two main political parties.