Sunday Musings - August 27, 2023
Fact vs truth


We humans often seem to confuse facts and truth. The fact is I am typing on my iPad.  My truth is that I am exploring whether the muse has anything to say on this topic; a topic which often visits as most of us in the United States attempt to sort through all the conflicting information coming from our elected representatives, those hoping to become an elected representative and other sources claiming to report factual news.  I would like to believe that most of those presenting opinions as facts believe what they are presenting as their truths are facts.  Yet, there is amble evidence this is frequently not the case.  Apparently, the truths of many of us can be bought with money, an opportunity to be parts of what appears to be a winning team or the illusion of prestige. 


Even in the school systems in the United States there is an organized and often successful attempt to limit facts in exchange for truths which ensures that the privileged are not likely to have to own their privilege and thus become uncomfortable; ensures the comfort of some is not disturbed by the facts of what we now know about chromosomes and sometimes dual gender genitalia, sexual orientation and other subjects - facts which conflict with pre-scientific beliefs of religious institutions whose main goal seems to be the survival of institutional theology and institutions.   


The truth is whatever most religious institution need to promulgate to survive as institutions. The truth of the so-called justice system is whatever seems to satisfy the goals of the prison industrial system and the political careers of prosecutors and others involved with the judicial system - prison officials, judges, parole, and probation officers and to a much lesser extent other employees. The fact is that the system does not reduce recidivism, does not create a more just society, and does not ensure a judicial defense system which operates irrespective of income.


The fact is that we have career politicians who are indebted to economic and party supporters and/or the perks of official and unofficial lobbyists such as those who shower Supreme Court justices, congress people and others with “gifts” which are often not counted as bribes.  The truth is whatever the public relations professional can spin.


The fact is that we have an economic system which is largely dependent on consumers such as you and I deciding to purchase more of what we do not need and which has a limited life either because of design of the product or because millions of dollars are invested to convince we consumers to keep up to date in terms of style, to match or exceed what our neighbors are purchasing or what gives others the illusion we belong or are members of the privileged or accepted class. The fact is if we grew up poor without access to what our children may now be convinced are necessities, we were not unhappy.  We may have been tired and unhappy because the system limited our access to sufficient medical care and other resources. We were not unhappy because we did hot have stuff or because we visited with each other on stoops until it was cool enough to go inside to sleep. We were not unhappy because we had a strong sense of community who shared limited resources. 


The fact is we have designed a system which requires most adults to live in nuclear families; to work full time outside the home; to be full time, often single, parents; to be active community members and perhaps appear to live as if they can afford the newer cars, furniture, lawn tractors, clothes, and many other extras which ensures credit card companies make a profit. The fact is when one pays interest one is sending others on luxury vacations!  The fact is one may or may not be better off than parents or grandparents who did not have credit unless it was for a carl loan or a mortgage, who made do with used furniture and who may have sewn clothes from feed sacks.


The fact is that we have created a society and culture which incarcerates people largely based on mental illness, poverty, and racism; a society which has a significant and increasing homelessness, mental illness, and an epidemic of loneliness and suicide. 


The fact is that those who do not drink the lemonade, who create intentional community - formally or informally - who create a support system which is based on shared core values which may appear socialist in nature are generally more joyful, more creative and sleep well at night.


The fact is that the artists among us - painters, dancers, musicians, poets, other writers - are ready to feed our souls; will support us in creating a dance which is life affirming and in synch with Mother Nature and which encourages us to wear costumes designed by the Billy Porters of our tribe or Mother Nature herself.


The fact is that we are capable of joy, creativity and deep love and respect. Unless the truths we elect to tell ourselves and live by match the facts we are destined to be another nation which only exists in the history books.


Written August 27, 2023
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org

​Sunday Musings - August 20, 2023
Getting out of the way
 
 
Many of us have explored how to open to growing emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.  We may have heard the advice to get out of our own way.  How is it that we get in our own way preventing growth; of positioning ourselves to take a step towards realizing our potential; of opening to what is possible?  
 
Most of us have been accumulating a list of limitations; a list of restricting lies since we were very young.  Items on this list may include:
 

• Stories we created when we thought we knew what others were saying or thinking.
• Stories we made up to explain what we did not understand or know,          
• Stories we heard from others, sometimes including parents, about us; stories which may or may not accurately reflect what was intended to communicate.       
• Religious stories reflecting age old and current theories about who we are, where we have come from and what the God we posit requires.
• Religious or mythical stories about what is moral or immoral based often on a limited or outdated scientific information.
• Stories defining or limiting gender, roles, sexual attraction, music, painting, dance, architecture, and a host of other aspects of our being.
• Stories of what is possible regarding our relationship with the earth and the universes. 
• Stories about our own strengths and limitations.
• Stories about power, love, economics, and a host of other subjects.

 
All progress - all creativity - requires that one ignore or let go of many if not most of these stories, of opening to hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, imagining beyond them.  Some describe this as a meditation technique of quieting our minds.  Others may describe the process as emptying one’s mind.  Still other may phrase it as getting out of one’s way.
 
Most of us as infants and very young children -barring neurological or other birth limitations - are open to all possibilities.  We have unlimited faith in all possibilities.  We freely ask why and how.  We did not arrive with rules or limits. We also did not arrive with fear unless we learned it in the womb.  A few of us might have arrived with the inability to experience a mirror image of what is considered outside of ourselves which might limit our experience of others.  Some might have arrived with other issues including an addiction to certain drugs.  A few of us brought in our DNA a talent such as the ability to compose a symphony at a very young age.
 
Most of us arrive with with the ability to be open to experiencing the world as one of possibilities.  We arrive excited and mystified by our experience of ourselves and the world.   Strangers can visit via the screen we call the television.  Voices can sprout legs and travel whatever distance it takes to reach grandma and grandpa.
 
For many of us our goal as adults is to let go of any fear or anxiety about what we might see, hear, touch, or otherwise experience; to reclaim our childlike openness while holding on to adult knowledge of what we know to be facts; facts such as fire burns, driving can be dangerous, there are unhealthy people who deserve our compassion, we need to respect the earth so it respects and cares for us.  Father Greg Boyle would say we need to hea; returning ourselves to ourselves. 
 
Nearly every creative venture begins with emptying one’s mind.  If one fails to do that one might reproduce the creation of another, but one will not create something new. Creation is perhaps a misnomer.   Creativity calls forth what has always been there and possible to experience  The creator of the phone did not invent or create sound waves or the ability of sound to travel.  The move from sound over wires to traveling through air from tower to tower required another level of letting go of what had previously been considered limiting facts. The ability to see a video camera small enough to explore the interior of humans and allow for the performance of complicated diagnosis and repairs required a letting go of learned sight/imagination.  The ability to allow a musical instrument to unleash the notes to visit each other in a new arrangement or order requires a letting go of what one has been taught. Juxtaposing a photo of Marilyn Monroe alongside of a soup can and insistent both are art required a courageous and perhaps seemingly ridiculous leap which many would critique or discount as the act of creating art.
 
Advances in medicine, new ways of envisioning the responsibility of the village to raise a child, new forms of communication, expanding how we view sexuality and gender, teaching machines such as computers new skills, envisioning  environmentally friendly and affordable ways of moving from one place to another, or how to more fairly share resources requires getting out of the way; emptying/opening our minds to the possible which has previously seemed impossible.
 
Perhaps our mantra might be: “I know nothing. I see nothing. I feel nothing.  I hear nothing. I open myself to the freshness of knowing, seeing, feeling, hearing.”
 
Written August 20, 2023
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org

​Sunday Musings - August 13, 2023
Wolfs in sheep’s clothing.
 
An oft repeated warning by religious and secular prophets, including those in the Christian New Testament and in some often-disputed accounts of Aesop fables, is “Be aware of wolfs in sheep’s clothing.”  The Latin proverb version is Pelle sub agnina latitat mens saepe lupina. (Under a sheep’s skin often hides a wolffish mind.)
 
Increasingly, many in the United States House of Representatives and many state legislators have introduced and or passed bills under the general name of parent’s rights bills.  Currently the bill in Congress is H. R. 5.   In West Virginia U. S. Army Veteran and Uranium One Whistleblower who is running for a West Virginia Congressional seat is urging the West Virginia Legislature to introduce and pass a bill ensuring the right of parents to dictate teaching curriculum, library resources, discussion with students regarding sexual concerns and other issues which can and does include gender, the history of slavery and a host of other issues which may conflict with some conservative religious beliefs.   Such bills encourage and/or demand provisions for parental and school board members examination of detailed curriculum plans, library books, and technology use.  In many states, including Florida, schools are having to use educational dollars to satisfy requirements of these bills.  Teachers are being so restricted that many are leaving the profession or, at the very least, seeking jobs in other states.
 
The primary assumptions underlying these bills seem to be:
 

• Teachers are uneducated people programmed by effete liberals who are godless, communists, who want to brainwash students to be gender neutral, sex crazed robots, and who will destroy all that conservative Christians hold dear.

 

• Parents are educated, loving, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually healthy individuals who know what is best for their children, the community, and the country.  They and only they also know what the God of their understanding expects and wants from us humans.

 

• Children are empty vessels incapable of knowing what they feel, of having rational thoughts, and devoid of any possible moral/ethical opinions of their own.

 
The truth is:
 

• Teachers are highly trained, intelligent, educated individuals who have a minimum of 4 years of college, often graduate courses (many have graduate degrees), have served internships. been evaluated by experienced licensed teachers, passed licensing exams, been vetted by state agencies, and are required to take continuing education courses yearly.   Are there still some who go through all this and become burnt out, have other emotional or mental health issues or are just poor teachers? Of course.  School administrators or other staff need to be very diligent in identifying those few teachers who are not currently able to do what they were trained and vetted to do.

 

• Biological parents.  The only requirement to be a biological parent is to able to successfully fertilize a female egg with a male sperm.  This may be accomplished by intercourse or medically assisted fertilization techniques.  To lose one status as legal parents one must be identified and convicted of gross mistreatment (mainly physical) of one’s children.   To be clear, some biological parents do an amazing job of raising children and keeping the best interest of children in the forefront.  Sadly, many are unable to parent well.

 

• 3.Adoptive parent:  Generally adopted parents undergo close examinations before being allowed to adopt unless one is a close relative of a deceased or otherwise unavailable biological parents.  Often these are grandparents. In an age of an opioid crisis grandparents may or may not be carefully vetted depending on case load of often poorly paid, extremely overworked social workers and child advocates.

  

• 4.Foster parents:  Vetting again varies depending on caseloads, emergency needs, and many other factors.   Research reveals some amazing, healthy foster parents and some extremely abusive ones who have their own agendas for the children having nothing to do with the needs of the children.

 

• 5.  Children.  Although children need guidance from educated people whose primary concern is what is best for children, it is extremely important to listen to and trust what children are telling one.  Children know what they are feeling.  If a child feels unsafe, are attracted to same or opposite sex (or both), more comfortable in the role of the gender which is different from the one they were assigned at birth or have questions about sex or other subjects they will self-monitor what they are ready to hear/learn.  Children at an early age are aware of real or socially constructed differences such as race. They can and do process historical facts which are positive and negative.  Of course, as children become teenagers they may also, at times, not be above baiting or testing out the sincerity or the naiveness of we adults.   There are some traumatized children or children with mental illness. Children, if they know it is safe, will communicate something is wrong or strange with how they are experiencing the world.  Children are very curious about other people and the world at large.   They will ask about what they are ready to learn.

 

• 6.  Community parents.  The truth is it takes all of us sharing our expertise to listen carefully to children and using the most accurate science available to make the best possible decisions children.  This may include children, parents, other family members, teachers, school counselors, other therapists, medical personnel, and possibly other experts.  Fear, superstitions, political position, and mental health issues of parents or other care givers should have no role in deciding what is best for children.

 
In short beware of bills which purport to protect children and parents’ rights.  Beware of wolfs in sheep clothing; those whose agenda have everything to do with promoting their self-serving and fear driven agendas and nothing to do with the actual needs of children.  The phrase “parents’ rights” may offer good sound bites but is empty of the morals and ethics which will keep us moving forward as a democratic, loving, and just community. 
 
Written August 13, 2023
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org
 
 
 
 
 
 

​Sunday Musings - August 6, 2023 
 
I am fascinated by our human resistance to the revelations of science. I understand most of us live within carefully constructed systems.  The fear may often be if we disturb or let go of one part or piece the entire structure will fall apart.  
 
Religious leaders often play a role in attempting to ensure that our belief systems are not disturbed. They count on fear of God’s punishment or being ostracized by God’s community.   It is easy for all institutions, including religious ones, to fall into the trap of making the primary goal to ensure the continuation of the institution at any cost.
 
Two of the delusions which are embraced by most Christian leaders as well as by other religious leaders is that we have free will and punishment is an appropriate response to our alleged “misbehavior”; for breaking the rules/laws. 
 
We hold tightly to the illusion of free will. Just this week I read several articles by various secular and religious “scholars” stating that if a person was able to plan and execute a crime that they must have had free will and, thus, deserve to be tried, convicted, and punished for their “crime”.  Yet science and even common sense tells us this is not the case. We know, for example: 
 

• One can plan and execute a behavior without the ability to realize or accept that harming another will, in the long run, harm all.  At age 4, I, consciously and without empathy, decided to use what I knew to be my mother’s racism to blame a playmate of color for my behavior.   I knew what I was doing. I did not, however, have the capacity to fully comprehend why racism hurt all of us; why racism is stupid and immoral.

 

• We humans daily use our creative and often unscientific brains to excuse some of our decisions or behavior.  We smoke cigarettes, eat unhealthy food, use alcohol, sugar, and caffeine excessively and make many other unhealthy decisions.  We daily create “reasons” for putting off exercise; for stretching tax loopholes and for other behavior we know is unhealthy, unethical, and possibly illegal.

 

• Science tells us that a significant number of facts affect the firing of neurons in our brain; how we perceive reality, and how we retrieve information to form a thought, experience, or emotional reaction.  Yet, we continue to keep the legal definition of insanity very narrow and insist even when someone has a diagnosed mental illness, they are responsible for their decisions and behavior.

 

• We say that the normal human brain does not physically mature until one is in their early to mid-twenties and, yet we continue to try underage children as adults.  To be fair our incarceration of “children” has decreased significantly for many years.  Yet, in the current sentencing debate of a teenager in Michigan there are those who maintain he “knew was he was doing” and, thus, for the killing of 4 individuals and the insuring of others at age 15 he should face life without possibility of parole in prison.

 
The second of these beliefs is if punishment if severe enough it will have positive results. In the United States we continue to incarcerate more people than any other country and have one of the highest recidivism rates in the world.  Yet we pretend that our judicial system is designed to rehabilitate those we incarcerate.  While it is true that some people do find their better selves when incarcerated this is despite the system and not because of it.  There is ample evidence that the more humane, scientific approach of counties such as Norway is more effective.  There is ample evidence that Portugal’s decriminalizing or all recreational drugs has been very effective.  
 
It is not true that we know we can cure mental illness or even consistently effectively treat it.  It is not true that we can heal all those who are unable to have a shared, empathetic reality: who are unable to consider the needs of others. No one orders a psychotic or sociopathic brain from Amazon.   Some people may need to be in a protective environment, even for life, but there is no reason to punish someone for not having a brain which is able to make socially conscious decisions.  
 
As a society we need to decide to be honest about the role science will or should play in how be live with each other and Mother Earth.  I am not suggesting that science provides all the answers. I am suggesting that many of our believes and actions are not rooted in the answers with which science does gift us. 
 
I am not arguing against religion or a belief in something we call God to describe the oneness – the interconnectedness and interdependence – of all that is.  I am not arguing against the magic which is not explained by science.  I am suggesting that we need beliefs and behavior which embrace and honor the truths science does reveal.
 
Written August 6, 202
Jimmy F. Pickett
coachpickett.org