Here is a super interesting post from Overcoming Bias on whether or not morality is just a result of personal preference. Best quote:

“Your strange beliefs about the nature of morality have destroyed your soul.  I don’t even believe in souls, and I’m saying that.”

Ha!

So is there truth or isn’t there? Something or nothing? All questions seem to be boiling down to this for me lately.

Today’s thought of the day comes from Integral Options Cafe. I find it particularly useful to remember this as I’ve gone from a slower pace life in San Francisco, to the busy student life of my intensive Russian course. Just because I’m “doing” more things in a day, doesn’t mean there’s any less time for reflection and awareness practice.

Stream of Thoughts

We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without having to run around doing things all the time. Our actions are all too frequently driven rather than undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for.

Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us. This process doesn’t magically happen by itself. It takes energy. We call the effort to cultivate our ability to be in the present moment “practice” or “meditation practice.”

– Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are; From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith

As you probably know, Emily and I lived in Georgia. We like to keep up with the latest geo-political chess games played by all the former soviet block countries, but we’re especially interested in Georgia and Russia. My friend recommended this lecture given by Edward Lucas at Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book, “The New Cold War.” Lucas discusses changes in Russia’s policies under the Putin regime and the effect that has on countries like Georgia as well as western Europe and the U.S. The lecture was thought provoking.

From Lucas’ biography:

Edward Lucas has covered Eastern Europe for The Economist for over twenty years. He witnessed the end of the last Cold War, the parting of the Iron Curtain, and, as the Moscow bureau chief, covered Boris Yeltsin’s reign and Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. He lives in London, England.

The title of this post comes from a Slate article criticizing programs like One Laptop Per Child. The article looks at the effectiveness of a computer distribution program in Romania. The Romanian children who received computers on average did worse in school, showed less interest in higher education and those who did show interest in college were no more likely to go into computer science. Surprise, surprise.

In my village in Georgia, kids would ditch school to go play Counter Strike at the NGO run computer center. I’m sure that similar situations exist all around the globe as well-meaning Westerners attempt to close the “digital divide“. A computer without internet access, without a printer, is essentially a PlayStation. I think it would be great to give the poor children of the world PlayStations.

Who doesn’t love a little GTA?

I spend a considerable amount of time chained to a computer during the week. Of course I use that time to expand my consciousness and educate myself on global affairs of the highest order. For example, I thoroughly enjoy using Google Trends to find out which countries are perviest. (Yeah, I made that word up. Feel free to adopt it as your own.)

Let’s see Google Trends in action: Take a relatively benign term like “sexy feet” and you learn that Syrians are foot fetishists. Who’d have guessed?

Pakistanis seem to be into “college girls“, the Dutch are “kinky“, and Italians love their “escorts“.

See kids, learning about other cultures can be fun!

However, I hereby warn you that you might get creepy insights into yourself if you play with Google Trends too much. When checking out “vegan” I was surprised to see my hometown of Pleasanton, California as the #2 location for that search term, while “raw food” has Pleasanton at #3. It got even more bizarre when I checked “Ken Wilber“, Pleasanton was #2 again! I thought it couldn’t get any stranger, until I tried “One Taste“, and Pleasanton came up at #1. Clearly, I am a product of my environment. Ha!

Wired has a great article debunking various tenets of today’s environmentalism. I’m especially excited about the first charge: Live In Cities. I’m a big advocate of high density living and I look forward to San Francisco growing upward, skyline be damned.

There is an ongoing debate in SF about the skyline and new high-rises like One Rincon pushing poor residents out of the city. This puts “progressives” in a rather hilarious predicament, social justice or environmental pragmatism? Gotta love the Green meme.

An Integral approach to this problem would take into account the perspectives of all parties: Green social activists, Orange developers, Green environmentalists, Red/Blue residents of the neighborhoods being redeveloped. By taking each group’s concerns and knowledge into account, a workable and sustainable solution could reached. How nice!

More fun with eco-quandaries:

Slate’s The Green Lantern

Wallet Mouth

This is classic:

“How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere? Just as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ’sister,’ why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? It would still be part of creation.” - Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory

The Vatican has released a statement regarding the possibility of life on other planets. The official stance is that aliens would also be God’s creations. I know almost nothing about the Bible, but isn’t Genesis explicitly human-centric? I guess this is what happens when you take a 2000 year old faith and try to maintain its relevancy.

I’d like to conclude with a shout-out to all my Martian/Klingon/Gallifreyan/Ewok brothers and sisters across the cosmos. If you’d like to carpool to mass on Sunday, I’m down.

I just returned from a seven day meditation retreat. It was an experience that I whole heartedly encourage everyone to undertake. During my time, sitting in meditation and walking in meditation (and eating in meditation) I considered my Grandparents. I went to visit them in early April in Alabama. They are both in their eighties and doing fairly well, but the signs of some troubles were clear. They were a little to isolated, had a little too much pain and need just a little bit more help then they had. With some attention on a semi regular basis their quality of life would be greatly improved. However, they live in Alabama, their children live in Minnesota and Oklahoma (and I live in California). The questions about what to do in this situation are hard. It’s not clear what path to take, how to best help and what to do. It’s especially difficult on the children, who may have old wounds or painful patterns they find themselves repeating when they are around their parents. This kind of pain often clouds the children’s judgment when deciding what path to take. I don’t have any answers or sage advice, but I do want to acknowledge this issue and am writing this post as a way to invite a dialouge from the readers and as a reminder to myself to really consider what I can do. As well, I offer this comment from the Dali Lama on the subject (thanks to Integral options Cafe)

…This samsaric body keeps us running all of our lives. We have to run to fulfill its endless needs, to keep it away from things that may harm it, and to protect it from anything unpleasant. We have to give it pleasure and comfort. We become ordained, and at first this is very satisfactory; but soon our body makes it so difficult for us that we think our practice would be less disturbed if we were to live as a layperson. So we give up and return to ordinary life; but then we end up with a family to support, leaving us with no time or energy for meditation. We have the pressing tasks of feeding, clothing, and sheltering our children, and of arranging their education and so forth. Our lives are spent alternating between work and worry, with occasional short periods of pleasure, and then we have to die; but even this we cannot do in peace, for, when we lie down to die, our last thoughts are worried ones concerning the family we are leaving behind. Such is the nature of worldly existence

….To care for our old people–these ones who have given us our body, our life, and our culture–is a sacred duty of humanity. But most humans act more like animals than people, and often we see old people who have been abandoned by their families. Family units were very strong in Tibet, and old people were usually cared for directly by relatives. The national care for the old that we see in the West is something very good, a healthy sign, although perhaps here the spiritual and psychological basis is somewhat lacking.

…The suffering of old age is something we all must face, unless we die prematurely. There is nothing we can do about it. Gone will be that false sense of personal ability and strength that made us so proud when we were young. Instead, helpers or friends will bathe us, dress us, spoonfeed us, and have to take us to the toilet. Rather than live under the delusion of permanence, we should engage in spiritual training so that we can enter old age at least with the grace of wisdom.

~ From The Path to Enlightenment by H.H. the Dalai Lama, edited and translated by Glenn H. Mullin, published by Snow Lion Publications

Laura and I talk about the virtues and vices of vegetarians a lot. It’s surprising that vegetarians face so many cultural roadblocks these days, even in California. Slate has a great article on the tribulations of going meatless:

Every vegetarian remembers his first time. Not the unremarkable event of his first meal without meat, mind you. No, I mean the first time he casually lets slip that he’s turned herbivore, prompting everyone in earshot to stare at him as if he just revealed plans to sail his carrot-powered plasma yacht to Neptune. For me, this first time came at an Elks scholarship luncheon in rural Oregon when I was 18. All day, I’d succeeded at seeming a promising and responsible young man, until that fateful moment when someone asked why I hadn’t taken any meat from the buffet. After I offered my reluctant explanation—and the guy announced it to the entire room—30 people went eerily quiet, undoubtedly expecting me to launch into a speech on the virtues of hemp. In the corner, an elderly, suited man glared at me as he slowly raised a slice of bologna and executed the most menacing bite of cold cut in recorded history. I didn’t get the scholarship.

The Elks don’t strike me as the most accepting group to unveil your hippie-diet to, but even less stereotypically old-fashioned audiences can react oddly to vegetarianism. We’ve noticed that people take a defensive posture as soon as we mention we don’t eat meat. Why is this? Flashbacks to a frightening encounter with militant vegans? Unconscious guilt for eating our furry friends? Enlighten me, meat-eaters.

And if you’re really brave, watch Earthlings. Guaranteed to turn you vegan, at least for a day.

Dude, you know you love it.

Take a break from the stress of race relations and laugh at white people for a bit. We’re pretty funny, you know. Stuff White People Like is a hilarious blog. Add it to Google Reader (’cause you know white people love Google).

Here are some of the things I like:

Being the only white person around: In most situations, white people are very comforted by seeing their own kind. However, when they are eating at a new ethnic restaurant or traveling to a foreign nation, nothing spoils their fun more than seeing another white person.

Recycling: This is important because all white feel guilty about producing waste. It doesn’t stop them from doing it, but they feel guilty about it. Deep down, they believe they should be like the Native Americans and use every part of the product or beast they have consumed. Though for many white people, this simply means putting plastic bags into a special drawer where they will accumulate until they are eventually used to carry some gym clothes or bathing suit. Ultimately this drawer will get full and only be emptied when the person moves to a new house. Advanced white recyclers will uses these grocery bags as garbage bags.

Knowing what’s best for poor people: White people spend a lot of time of worrying about poor people. It takes up a pretty significant portion of their day. They feel guilty and sad that poor people shop at Wal*Mart instead of Whole Foods…

Living by the water: White people love to be near a body of water so they can read a book, while sitting nearby. The process of reading is somehow heightened through the process of doing it near some water. Extreme reading! (Story of my life. I am dying of laughter.)

Vegetarianism: As with many white people activities, being vegan/vegetarian enables them to feel as though they are helping the environment AND it gives them a sweet way to feel superior to others.

Not having a TV: The number one reason why white people like not having a TV is so that they can tell you that they don’t have a TV.