Frivolous Tasks

There is a thin line between being lazy and being contented.  We are to admire the lilies of the feed, but we believe Darwin discovered that the lilies of the field are engaged in constant life and death struggle.  You can sit and admire the flowers in your garden,  but sometimes you must weed.  On the other hand, if all you do is weed and never admire, what is the point of it all?

Some things are necessary and some are not.  Ideally, perhaps, half of the time would be spent in enjoying and experiencing what one has, half in striving to improve it or obtain more.  Few in this culture seem to achieve that balance.  A few rich people, of course, manage.  The poor, driven completely by necessity, never have any choice.  But for many, it often seems, envy has overcome good sense.

The mantra for our age is progress, change for the sake of change.  And the mantra for an individual is that time or energy expended should be an “investment”, something worth something in the future.  A better kitchen!  A newer bathroom!  A shinier spirit!  Rush about doing objective things, and you will be rewarded.  But, as the saying goes, what will it profit if you lose your soul in the process?

Most of us die without cashing out on all the so-called “investment”.  A new kitchen becomes old.  The updated spirit encounters new challenges and becomes dispirited.  Investment or expense require time, and time is limited, both in each day and over a lifetime.  It can be wasted as much as dollars, and that waste is not only in sitting around “doing nothing.”

Thinking, meditating, reading, working on a hobby like a musical instrument, these are all profitable enterprises that should never be measured by return on investment.  Oh, perhaps it is useful to pick up a hobby that is profitable in some ways _ tiling floors.  But that is just mechanics.  The main problem given external pressures is that all hobbies tend to be warped into proto-investments, turned into chores, and the joy taken out of them.  It is lovely to take walks in the morning, but grim if the only purpose of that walk is to “do what you have to do and get it over with” to preserve your health.

Advertising pressure makes it far too easy to waste all our time and energy in frivolous tasks.  These not only cause constant anguish from envy and lack of enough resources, but also cause us to lose sight of the real magnificence of the world as it is.  Many things do not need changing, or do not need changing this minute.  Letting them be for a while will give us time to enjoy the universe, and might just lower our destructive footprint on a fragile environment.  A new bathroom is hardly worth missing a spectacular sunset, and the sunset uses a lot less fossil fuel.  The experience of that sunset will always be a unique treasure to you, and may not be coin in the world, but is truly a store in heaven.

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I’m afraid I tend to the side of laziness.  I’m usually quite happy with what exists.  In the long run, everything is transient, so “improving”, unless absolutely necessary, is just makework and an excuse to ignore the pleasures of the day.

There are always a few things that are necessary, of course.  If the roof leaks, it must be fixed.  If one lives in the suburbs, the lawn must be mowed.  If there is no money, I have to work.  The problem is what to do after the minimum, or at least the minimum with a reasonable surplus, is reached.

Some people are always looking for little things to do.  Some of my neighbors and other acquaintances think that a weekend without tiling the bathroom anew or redoing the deck or having a contractor review how to expand the house, is time wasted.  Because of our mania for progress, it seems patriotic.  What made this country great, the myth goes, is that everyone is always striving for something better. 

I’m never really sure anything is all that much better.  I’d rather enjoy as much as I can, get full joy from what is available now, and contemplate the happy mysteries of existence.  Most would call that a decadent European attitude.  I watch them scurry around mostly in wonder, only once in a while with a twinge of envy for their ambition.

Age matters, too.  As an elder, I no longer feel the need, internal or cultural, to constantly improve.  I and my surroundings have improved quite enough, thank you.  It is more a question of maintenance, which I, like most, hated when I was younger.   It has always seemed the core of wisdom that whatever I desire should, first of all, be age appropriate; second of all, possible. 

Anyway, there may be much to do.  My wife certainly thinks so.  I watch the birds and listen to the cicadas and put off as much as I reasonably can until tomorrow.

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Load 16 tons, and whaddaya get

Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.

Some say a man is made out of mud

A poor man’s made out of muscle and blood
The rich get richer and they don’t have to try
Everyone else just tries to get by

Most folks are told that if they work hard

They’ll have a big house and a beautiful yard
Borrow the money and don’t really think
Slave every day, rush and worry and drink.
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You should carefully budget your moments, for time is just as limited as money.  Always trying to make things better instead of simply accepting (and experiencing) them as they are is a fool’s paradise.  You can be so busy trying to improve that you never actually get a chance to notice, and that is a tragedy.

Selecting what are good tasks and what are not is very difficult.  Perhaps improvement is required, perhaps you are driven by necessity, this conversation is not about such issues.  Yet presumably you live in the midst of affluence, and when do you really have to get the latest, greatest; when do you really have to reach perfection to appreciate?  Trust your unconscious in this, if it feels like it’s not worth the effort, it probably isn’t.

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We live in a time of progress and desire.  It is almost a fever, really, a disease of more.  Nothing is ever enough, and we spend so much time dreaming of how good things will be in the future that we miss time going by.  Or we are so bored by being unable to marinate fully in each moment that we drive ourselves to rush on to find something better, to make ourselves earn or discover something that is worthwhile.  And, like riding on an express train, that very rush makes us miss most of the beauty of the landscape.

Some people, of course, handle our times well, and there are disciplines available for all.  Most of them concentrate on contentment, which is good, and seek to root out envy.  Yet too often, the lessons seem disconnected from “real life” when we always must do something, and always should be somehow active to retain our own sense of meaning.

We are, after all, alive, and bound by the conditions of being so.  To pretend we do not need to eat is insane.  To pretend we should not, to some point, seek to eat better, or to more enjoy what we are eating is equally stupid.  The question is not one of finding the lowest possible limit and enjoying it, but rather of understanding the problem of diminishing returns.  At some point, all improvement becomes an awful lot of effort for a really minor gain.  And at that point, and beyond, whatever is being done has become truly trivial.  Finding that point in everything we experience and do is what we must discover in everything to be really happy.

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King Midas had learned to control his gift, so that he only turned what he wanted to into gold.  This let him make as much gold as he wanted while still enjoying his meals, other people, and all the rest of the original issues in the old tragic fable.  So naturally, he became fantastically wealthy, and could buy anything he wanted.  His family romped happily in the fortune.  He was a basically good king, so everyone in his country was taken care of and properly careful.

He had it all.  And for a year or so, that was quite enough.  Whatever he wanted to get done could get done, and most of it was well received.  His kingdom prospered, and he was proud of all that he and his people had accomplished.  Others came from far and wide to admire the land and culture.

But, well, there were some things that didn’t quite work with money.  People still died, he still got a little older, there was still an occasional crime, sometimes the weather was terrible.  The problem, he decided, was that he needed a more perfect world, and he spent infinite time in his secret laboratory, trying to replicate his success in calling up the genie of the gold wish.  Except this time, of course, it was for a genie of power.

And so the years went by, and he got older and more discontented and more driven to find the answer.  The kingdom was doing fine, birds sang and flowers bloomed and love was everywhere, but he could not see it.  The lab was dark and bitter, and he grew to be very like it.

King Midas never found the power genie.  If he had found such a fellow, he would have soon realized that even power was not enough.  What he really needed was a medical genie, who could cure him of his fatal disease of “more.”

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Before doing anything, one should consider not how important it may be, but how trivial it might turn out.   Are any possible returns in the future worth the investment of this exact time?  We are rarely trained to think that way, but perhaps that is a necessary condition of full maturity.

Steak

The problem is simple.  Red meat cut from butchered cows is a food that many people have traditionally enjoyed, even though most people can go without it without harm for their entire lives.  Yet butchering animals brings up painful moral issues, and raising animals en masse causes innumerable ecological problems as well. 

A cut of sirloin at the supermarket or served at a restaurant is simple animal biology, an anticipated taste, a delicious barbecued dinner.  Humans are constructed to enjoy just about everything, and this food not only provides variety, but also satisfaction partly because it is so nutritious.  Other meats are also available, of course, also requiring slaughter after generally terrible growth conditions.  But the higher up the “great chain of being” one goes, the more squeamish thinking about the source of food can become.  It is somehow less difficult to think about eating grains of wheat than dead people, although cultural adaptation can pretty much force use to use (and even enjoy) anything when we must.

A lot of it comes down to definitions.  In large parts of the current Western culture, cows, pigs, chickens, fish, and plants and pretty standard fare.  There is more resistance to rats, dogs, cats, horses, and pigeons.  And great ambiguity about things like deer.  The more complete the nervous system, the more the consciousness approaches are, the more like cannibalism it seems.  And that perception, of course, depends more on our background than on any scientific measurement.

Raising huge quantities of  such animals, outside of everything else, is affecting  local ecologies severely, and may be impacting the planet as well.  The obvious solution would be to learn to manufacture acceptable substitutes from soy or algae, even though purists would complain.  But one grey lump, manufactured or not, is pretty much like another under gravy.  And cheese puffs or cola certainly prove that there is an easy slope to accepting totally artificial constructions as sustenance.

An argument can be made that one must live within the culture one is born into.  If everyone else is eating steak, there is little one person not wanting to eat steak can do to affect the balance, even though we desperately want to believe in the power of one.  But it is also possible to believe one can rise above the culture, be better than it, and at least be an example of what could be.
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I need to admit right out that I truly like steak once in a while.  I tend to eat red meat in some form once or twice a week for dinner, and have chicken or fish most other nights.  It’s delicious, makes me feel good, and is relatively inexpensive.  Yet, I am aware of the moral issues involved.  Unfortunately, they are not easy to logically resolve.

For one thing, there is the question of whether there is an absolute issue involved.  To say I only eat red meat once a week is not far different from saying I only commit murder once a week.  It’s either wrong or not, no matter how often done.  To say I mostly eat chicken or fish is to somehow judge just how precious a given kind of consciousness is.  And it remains true that I could certainly live happily on cheese, eggs, and shellfish, for example.

The conditions in which food is raised are another concern, but again the moral distinction is hazy.  Perhaps feed lots and claustrophobic cages are horrid, but eating once contented cows or free range chickens strikes me as a little like that Aztec tradition of granting a captive a year of splendor before ripping out his heart.

Environmental concerns about ruminant methane _ well, ok _ but at our current population density intensive agriculture is no friend of the Earth’s ecology.  You can eat soybeans all your life and still be destroying large areas.  The fact is, until human population is controlled, all food sources _ including manufactured _ will lead only to a decreasing quality of life for everything.  So this particular issue is not much affected by what I eat.  I would also point out that non-intensive agriculture as serenaded by locavores is far less romantic that usually pictures, and a family farm life is a hard, nasty, and dangerous life.

The final consideration is that all things are mortal, death is part of life, and “natural” conditions for both people and animals are far more savage and brutal than nature shows generally allow on camera. So I eat my steak, and think my thoughts, and do nothing else.  I am not sure yet of the true moral path and in the meantime, I indulge in my animal appetites.
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Mary had a little lamb

Its fleece was white as snow And everywhere that Mary went The little lamb would go. Mary also had a cow A pig, a duck and more Mary’s family had to eat She don’t have them no more. Suppose that Mary had a dog An elephant of cat If she chose to butcher them What would you think of that? Steak -

You will have certain philosophies about eating, even if you think you don’t.  If you eat unconsciously, or just eat to live, you are making a declaration of your importance compared to everything else.  If you make careful decisions about what you consume and why you will find yourself in conflict with others who have strong but different views on the same subject.  There are those who enjoy their food as naked as possible, and others who rework it into something unrecognizable with processes, sauces, and spice.  Nobody, right now, is sure of the right way.  Almost everything seems unsustainable, given current population levels and consumption trends.

How much steak or other meat you consume, if any, is one of the more fraught decisions in dining.  It involves health, of course, in both directions _ sometimes the concentrated energy of red meat is the only thing that can keep you healthy, while too much will lead to many health problems and presumed early death.  But outside of that _ well nothing is as clean as you probably think.

That nicely wrapped meat has an origin in pain and filth.  Those locally produced chops still required a lot of energy to supply the feed, house the animals, support the farmers lives, butcher, transport, store, and package.   If you do not eat any, it will go to waste and add to the refuse problem.  The claims of organically raised livestock, or happy contented animals roaming the fields, may be colorful lies invented by the typical flaks of corporations. 

Perhaps you hunt, find your own game, cull the weak, smoke it yourself, and remain wholly self-sufficient.  If you do that exclusively, living only by your own wits, you cannot have much time for anything else, you are marginalized in society, and to be honest you have no impact on the food chain problem, one way or the other.  If you do it as a hobby, it is irrelevant. 

There is no good answer, and that is the problem.  You are to some extent bound by the human condition of what you must do, and what you enjoy.  You are to some extent haunted by the human capacity for empathy and compassion.  You are complex, and there is no reason at all why your food should be any less so.

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Steak can be used as an interesting metaphor for attitudes on life.  After all, animal ecology is based on everything eating something else.  All ecology is based on the premise that every organism dies.  Once those basic facts are accepted, morality becomes constrained into the same problems life itself faces.  Is it better to have more, short lived mechanisms, or fewer longer lived ones?  Is general happiness a function of how many are enjoying life, or of the average happiness in all those alive, or only the highest peaks of happiness in an unexceptional existence?

Not to mention how to measure or give happiness.  What is a good life for a chicken?  Is a short, safe, crowded existence followed by quick unexpected death (much like people in Manhattan) what a chicken would rather have, or running around hungry searching for grain, worried about foxes?  And if we could, should we insert a gene that makes a chicken want to be killed and eaten by people?

Some people get squeamish and argue we should kill nothing.  Yet everything does die, and everything does go back into the food, one way or another.  Soylent Green where people are made into protein is not a whole lot different from the Marseillaise, where enemy soldiers are to be bled into the fields for fertilizer (of course, everything sounds more civilized in French.)

The core problems, like all the important ones humans face, cannot really be solved logically.  The world contains too many contradictions, too many subtleties.  Where there are many people involved, especially folks allowed to think freely, that means there will be thousands of different conclusions from the same chaotic premises, all based on logic, all faultless given what the proponent has selected as the most important starting points from an infinity of possibilities. 

We must each decide for ourselves.  That part is easy.  But should we also decide for others, claim this is permissible and that is not because I say so?  Is force acceptable in attaining such ends?  Yes, plain old steak can provide an awful lot of meditation if time is available.

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Wilbur had been saved, thanks to the spider web overhead.  People brought their cell phones to the fair and took pictures.  One of them caught Wilbur walking around trying to read the message, and posted it on you tube where it went viral.  Wilbur was famous.

He got booked at other county fairs, on the late night talk shows, and had a few newspaper features.  But, of course, without Charlotte, he was just another pig, and interest gradually died out and the public became interested in something else equally important.  Eventually he was back at the farm, a little older, just a regular old pig.

Before he was made into bacon, an entrepreneur who was trying to start the “Porker Hall of Fame” in Mason City bought him  as one of the attractions.  Naturally, that enterprise went bust after a few years, but out of a kind of nostalgia, the owner had him slaughtered and mounted as a remembrance in his living room, where he gathered dust for decades.

Eventually, it was just another piece of old furniture bric-a-brac when the couple died, their children had no desire for such a weird conversation piece in their house, and it ended up, and most things eventually do, discarded and buried.

Which moral is it here?  That fame is fleeting and illusory?  That nobody can really escape their destiny?  That no matter what a bright shining moment is worth having?  Or something else?  It’s entirely up to you, gentle reader.

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Steak, yes or no.  I guess that would be a fun debate topic, but the main point I want to make is that this is not an easily debatable subject.  There is a certain amount of logic involved, but there are also a lot of necessary contradictory assumptions.  And always exceptions to any truly rational and moral person.

Not all questions have easy answers.  Especially not ones doing with what is right, what is better, what should be done.  The scientific quest for easy reduction of everything to easy reproducible answers is one of the most dangerous illusions we believe.