A View Made More Clear; A Love Made More Strong:

Of Patriotism:

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
~William Shenstone

Borrowed from: http://www.quotegarden.com/patriotism.html

A Golden Path (Part 3)

Note: this blog entry was started in mid October and recently re-edited for posted.

Part One - The Stimulus

I've been in Bulgaria for more than two months now and I take nothing for granted. The language is not only spoken differently, but so are the letters of the alphabet. I haven't learned to read them yet, though I can recognize a few words and say a few, mostly useless things in Bulgarian.

The culture and customs are different. Especially with driving and shopping, I have to keep in my mindful my movements, what I say, how I say it and how quickly I say it. I do not want to activate the evereager automobile horns from near by cars in traffic when I get to drive nor do I want to stutter though an explanation in broken Bulgarian or broken English of how I don't know how to speak Bulgarian nor do I want what someone is selling.

Since I don't own a car here, I need to walk (except this week) which, while that isn't a new experience for me, the frequency and scenery is. While driving a car is faster in most cases, walking allows enough time for me to actually see what I am passing by.

Shortly after arriving, I broke a bone in my foot, causing pain most of the time when I'm mobile.

I arrive at the office place a few hours before the rest of the company because I have to take the car ride at the time its available (I don't mind actually.) In the office for two hours of silence (near silence: there is a door and window factory across the lane), I get to work on things mostly related to my work and build up experiences with new technologies.

After the rest of the company arrives, I watch (or look for) the Bulgarian team dynamic in my company and try to remember to speak slowly when speaking to colleagues I don't often interact with.

At lunch at "The Communist" diner (which is actually an unnamed dinner but our group has named it this,) I make educated guesses as what some items are (and double check with my lunch buddies if in serious doubt) and stay well clear of food colors that I am "trained" not to eat.

Television is a slow search of something familiar through yet-another-vast-wasteland of foreign languages, cultures and traditions. What I do see as familiar is oddly different with the lack of commercial interruptions in both movies on TV and TV shows. (The unbroken continuity is an incredible delight!)

The Bulgarian political and business corruption present is a source of unending frustration and novelty. From the flat window I watch car drivers, stopped by traffic police, for "spot checks" and the occasional "donations" before being sent on their way. The novelty is considerably less (but the frustration more) as I find out exactly what graft occurred and seems to want repayment what hot water from flowing in the flat all together.

And I fail to understand why, after two months, I don't have a work visa in hand so I can work as a Bulgarian employee. Don't lawyers work faster than this?

I am thankful but also concerned about the recent border crossing to Serbia for coffee (and to get my passport stamped as having left Bulgaria for a period of time.) The Bulgarian border guard rightfully pointed out that I am over my allowable stay in Bulgaria for this six month period. "But it's just a formality." I was allowed back in because it's a US passport and the Bulgarian government is unofficially extending lenience for US passport holders.

My personal relationships is good but the subtitles of language and the often stubbornness of my personality, coupled with just about everything else I've mentioned above, has posed its challenges.

Last week I had surgery to re-break and re-set my broken bone from my first week in Bulgarian. This visit included a stay in the hospital, two screws in my toe, with lots of needles including a nerve block for the surgery, more swelling and more needles for post-operation health, a lack of safe and pain-free bipedal locomotion and follow up visits to the hospital in coming weeks.

I have been uncomfortable to say the least.


Part Two - The Realizations

When I came here from the states, I brought two books with me: "Destination: Void" by Frank Herbert and "The Zombie Survival Guide: complete protection from the living dead" by Max Brooks.

Which at long last brings to my point(s) of this blog entry. Shortly after breaking my toe in August (the first time,) I decided to wait out some of the swelling on my foot, a bright blue 4 inch by 6 inch bruise on the top of my foot from top of the arch to the base of some very angry toes. I popped over Frank's very old and, frankly, difficult to read "Destination: Void" and passed the time.

After a couple of chapters I was hooked, despite the difficult language usage. Near the middle of the book, a discussion starts between the characters about being really awake, not just "not sleeping" but fully, actively conscious and not just a reflex organism. It takes me a week to finish the book and in this time I'm walking to work into the office, painfully at times and slowly, and making the best of the time and getting to know the people and work environment.

I finish the book in the midst of all this activity (and laugh my ass off on the last line of the book) and start the "Zombie" book, a term also used in Frank's book. It starts to occur to me that with all this stimulation, I have awakened from my long sleep over the past years; that I had been a hypnotized zombie.

"Sleeping people" are like zombies, unresponsive (or irresponsible) to self determination and just using stimulation reflexes to just get through daily life. These stimulation reflexes are learned in a pack or herd mentality from the dominate culture themes expressed in each individual's respective societies.

While the kid in "Six Sense" saw "dead people", "I see sleepers": human zombies everywhere (minus the need to literally eat human flesh.) Group mentality, group movement but no group decision making, just blind obedience to the pack or herd.

In past years, I've been doing a lot of the same thing. So wearisome was some of it that even after a full night's sleep and after a shower, I was completely exhausted. I was easier to control and remain in the herd if I was over worked, over stressed with no time to stop and think.

Work lacked intellectual challenge or interest (a growing problem in the software technology industry in the US where the trend is towards very short term, contract only episodes of work with no long term thinking required or allowed.) In fact, at times I found it hard to stay awake at work and had to start taking walks around the building to clear the mental fog (or the bile from my mouth) so I could get some focus back. Absorbing new technical information in this state was near impossible for me as there are almost no long term rewards for it. "Know what you know and bill for it." I was unhappy because of the tension between the herd mentality and my need, my struggle to be awake and fully aware.

In the last months because of a) new mental stimulation b) new relationship c) [and perhaps most interesting of all] some level of constant and considerable pain and discomfort, I seem to be more fully awake, alert and thinking again. I have been able to new information. I have gained back some practical experience of abstract thought ( expressed though software) and enjoyed it! I've had some great conversations with a college from work and enjoyed this too.

Pain and discomfort as a tool for full awakening might have been themes which Mr. Herbert touched on one of his books in the Dune series but I forget which. The implications for parenting are interesting but subject for a different discussion.

In the last few weeks, I've felt a backslide into the sleeping abyss. I believe it's caused by tasks I can't accomplish because they aren't mine to accomplish and by the daily presence of sugar and caffeine, a left over from my herd training. (I started drinking espresso here in Bulgaria to be socialable and found a Snickers bar does stop hunger pains. I'm moderating this some. )


Part Three - The Herd Mentality

As I explore these themes and struggle to finish Max's book (if you take the word "zombie" out of his book, it gets pretty dry quickly), I can see trends in current news, cycles of human behavior that repeat as well as ebb and flow according to each cultural environment.

I read Isaac Asimov "Foundation Series" years ago and thought then that the ideas of Psychohistory, "...combined history, sociology, and mathematical statistics, in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe, to create a (nearly) exact science of the actions of very large groups of people", was complete ... fiction.

With the blind polarization of cultural groups still strongly present in first decade of the 2000, the reinforcing stupidities sprawled out on the evening news as a banquet of hatred and traditional righteousness, I am having my doubts about Psychohistory's pure implausibility, fictional status now. With increasing few true individuals in action, pack or herd dynamics become more finite and thus predictable. The difference between pack and herd is the degree of cultural aggressiveness built in to the society: herds are passive followers where packs are volatile followers.

What I see is frightening. The herd or pack follow the "bright leaders" who often start merely as awake and aware human beings. These self aware and awake people often become bright leaders and then slide into self deception and Altruistic Goal Decay (I'm not comfortable using term "moral decay" but you might use it here if you wish.) I've experienced some of that within myself and found it very hard to break that pattern of behavior. Even being aware of it wasn't enough to defeat my herd training which reinforced myself deceptions.

Things most concerning is the institutionalization of herd mentality. Here are a few examples from US media that (sorta) highlite my thinking of creating a herd mentality. In the hard braces are what I interpret from the preceding slogans and mantras:

Note: I have obscured some of the product names as to not give out free advertising. There is a bit of tongue-in-cheek here too.

1. "Chew D**ble M*nt Gum [and you have sex with sexy, blonde twins!]"
2. "I'm a P*pper [be like me]! She's a P*pper [and she'll like you a lot if you are too]! Would you like to be a P*pper too?! [don't be different, conform, conform, conform...]"
3. "P*psi: the new generation [of mindless, brand consumers for life]"
4. "C*ke-a-C*la: catch the [same, sugary] wave [with our company forever]"
5. "almost any commercial animation [As this cartoon presentation clearly shows, this is reality]"
6. "If you aren't with us, you're against us [and we will kill you and feel good about doing it]"
7. "Love it [with blind obedience and without question] or leave it [in a body bag]"
8. "The (poor or rich or foreigners) are to blame."
9. "You're [for the US] Patriot [Act], ain't ya BOY!?"
10. "[country of choice] started as a [militant religion of choice] nation and we will reclaim it [by holy, deadly force bestowed up the righteous by GOD himself] as a [militant religion of choice] [only] nation once again [by killing all god-hating, non-conformist.]"
11. "God loves [hates] you."
12. "Satan hates [loves] you."
13. "[Muslins, Jews, or Christians] are out to get you [again.]"
14. "I'll give up [very real] freedom for [the illusion of] security."
15. "Missile defense systems make the world a[n un]safer place to live [die]."
    

More to my point: American TV and mass media outlets has been hiding behind sexual titillation (while informing us quietly that it's bad) and national sensationalism to keep its citizens off guard and under informed about what a small group of so-called "world leaders" have been up to. It's hard to propose a "conspiracy to de-educated and sedate American citizens" that sounds even half plausible. Even without a coherent plan, basic herd mentality can still create this movement though its own unthinking inertia.

If you doubt, ask yourself this: where are the non-sensationalized, non-yellow journalist who aren't owned by a political group? I fear the last investigates of real news reporting is hiding in the former sanctuary of US Public Television. Where are the science and education shows on US TV during prime child-viewing hours? I suspect that child are being trained to believe cartoons and animations more than real people.

In the US, these shows about real situations are hiding behind the expense of buying a media service (i.e. cable or satellite services) and then made difficult to watch because of the competing, "bright and shiny" and "sexual" shows available.

News flash: porn and cartoons aren't a long term viable human culture (as much as it pains me to admit.)


Part Four - The War Machines

While wars is often started for perceived resource or security gains, genocide lurks in aforementioned, albeit abbreviated, list. Those concepts have been employed during war as justification for murderous conflict and to hide the resource gains which are often the initial reason for war. But "a lie told long enough and loud enough becomes the truth" for the herd and for those who made up the lies. Genocide is fueled by the completely unthinking herd or pack and leaders with"feet of clay" and delusions of godhood taking the herd into darker sides of humanity's past nature for temporary and ultimately useless ends.

Interestingly enough, Wikipedia's entry on genocide lists the distinct stages this monstrous delusion.


Part Five - "So you want to be fully sapience? Or Do you?"

And so, I'm wake but do I really want to be? "Ignorance is bliss" as the saying goes for those sheep that haven't been led off the cliff side yet. Its hard to hear the last words of a falling sheep because of the Doppler Effect but I wager its similar to "What the f**k was I [not] thinking?!" just before a small and distant, bone-cracking sound echoes softly up the cliff wall.

This is the problem with humanity: our life spans are not long enough to learn from our mistakes, over them and teach our young to avoid the pitfalls; and not short enough to die before we get deadly ambitions about truly worthless, short term and short sighted gains or no ultimate importance.

If we added or subtracted 30 to 40 years (of quality life) from the human life span, maybe we could make it past the self destructive "hump" our species is caught on in our evolution. To get to a place where skin color didn't impact skills qualification for employment or for poverty; where cultural or sexual identification isn't used an excuse to exclude or include anyone; where the name you call (or don't call) your god or goddess or gods wasn't grounds or an excuse for murder and genocide; where ignorance and infirmity wasn't something you took advantage of or ignored but an opportunity to be of assistance if it was desired.

I hear the herd screaming from the bleachers: "Stupid!" "Pipe dream!" "Idiot!" "Dreamer!" If we are all alike in the herd, there are no more dreams to dream. And the last sheep would follow the first off the cliff side and no one would be left to witness or care.

I guess I need to decide if the fear of being awake (and speaking to be heard) is greater or less than the rewards of being awake (and maybe awake few others.)

A purpose in life forms: do I (do we?) have the courage to accept this primary task of true sapience while avoiding the pitfalls of herd training and it's counterpart of delusions?