I want it awe
\nYet what do you no
\nWhat measures
\nMust we take
\nFrom emanate ripples
\nHe helled the earth in his hand
\nOf what intimated
\nOf know consequence
\nA dinky mount
\nTo sky ward heavin’
\nHoping only to rock the whirled
\nImpelled to sea
\nIn escapable gravity
\nNever in visioning
\nThat there is
\nNone boulder
\nIn his pond-erous
\nAnd Sisyphean weigh
\nCasting all he once held dear
\nAs flippin’ grovel
\nInto an unbroken mirror
\nAs just
\nHanging in
\nCon centric circles
\nLearning too a bridge lessen
\nAs a bait
\nWaving less and less
\nTo say good buy
\nAs their reach is their largesse
\nOnly to leave us
\nWith an eerie qualm
\nAnd little
\nIf any thing
\nTo take
\nTo the bank
\nShoring up any pausible hope
\nUn-availed by the human I
\nWither or not
\nAs poetry
\nReduced to pros
\nAs awe things reckon
\nAs precisely quota’d
\nA praising every angle
\nBent on wane
\nEvery thing
\nThat is
\nHaving fits
\nThe scale
\nLeaving us
\nThe lit-less
\nAnd immeasurable whoppers
\nThe won with abacuses and slyed rule
\nCounting upon the inevitable apple
\nFallen from trees on shore
\nGiven too fruity beaches
\nWith nothing
\nBetter to do
\nA Newtonian uni-verse
\nAs if
\nDispatching
\nA lagoon squad
\nIn sum kind of egression analysis
\nIn a bounty us pool of data
\nFree from water
\nFishing
\nIn err
\nWith out-land-ish loch
\nOn learning
\nOf fall-ibility
\nGrounded in certitude
\nAgitated a bout
\nTsunamis of certainty
\nAnd faintest freedom
\nFueled agin
\nToo buy too
\nAn arc
\nReliant up on
\nBeing largely stoned
\nAnd heading south
\nAll the faster
\nTo murky depths
\nStill
\nIn this abyssal life
\nWear there is
\nEvery thing but
\nLife re-sides
\nIn a soul place
\nFor awe
\nAs be-wilder-ed
\nKnot mirrorly a void
\nA stones throw aweigh
\nAs be guiled
\nCursory-ing like a sailor
\nSkimming the mirror surface
\nA mist watery solutions
\nCrying out
\nOver an abyss
\nAll armed a bout
\nDrowning in what
\nWe are trying
\nToo divine
\nWhat you can count on
\nRipple\u2122
\nIn hitting one’s bottom
\nThrone down a well
\nAs per cent
\n100 proof
\nMaking a wish
\nOf scientific rigor
\nSow rarefied
\nAs iron out
\nOf awe that is mist
\nWorshipping statutes
\nThat no copper can enforce
\nNailing the truth to dead wood
\nCaskets and buckets
\nLowered
\nHung out too dry
\nBailing out
\nAwe that is well
\nA tempting
\nSow perverse
\nAmiss under stood
\nPlunk rock band
\nBillowing out
\nIn con sequential
\nTo sum
\nSo poor tending
\nThe easily fluttered
\nAnd shirking
\nThat beneath us
\nOr sow a peer
\nDo be us
\nAs it may seam
\nTake me littoral
\nAnd fathom deeply
\nThe coast of freedom
\nFore who knows
\nMore of that which swells
\nThose who lead
\nUnfetid lives
\nLearning their keep
\nIn this
\nLife unearth
\nOr those who undertake
\nProperly measured lives
\nIn a dogma eat dogma whirled
\nVainly exacting an incalculable prize
\nOn each and every won
\nFor in
\nThe sweet by and by
\nIt is
\nBetter to be
\nTaken in
\nThan taking out
\nRulers
\nAnd measuring cups
\nIn the see of life<\/p>\n
This poem goes out to my friend, Toby, who in a conversation a couple of evenings ago inspired and quasi-commissioned a poem (and blog entry) around the metaphor of fathoming the ripples from a stone being thrown in a body of water.\u00a0 In our conversation this was about measuring the effects of our actions, specifically social justice actions, as to the effect they have on the world and its inhabitants.\u00a0 The hope was to better harness this knowledge in order to parlay it into more effective actions.<\/p>\n
This poem tackles a familiar theme of mine: how a fixation on scientific-reductionistic methods weigh too often rob us of access to deeper meanings.\u00a0 So, here goes:<\/p>\n
Most of my life, my working assumption has been that if other folks just knew what I knew that they would act congruently with me.\u00a0 I don’t put much stock in this assumption anymore.\u00a0 Hell, much of the time, I<\/em> don’t even act congruently with the knowledge with which I have been blessed.\u00a0 I have spent many moments and years projecting my sense of rationality onto others.\u00a0 I have spent many moments and years projecting my favored modes of rationalization onto others.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong, I believe that reality is deeply ordered and that this order is accessible, even more so than we usually think.\u00a0 I am still cursed with the double-edged sword of an abundance of right opinion.\u00a0 Still, I have come to more deeply appreciate that we act more out of our emotional sensibilities, which are profoundly molded by our self-interest, whether that interest is privileged or disenfranchised.\u00a0 I view our emotional sensibilities and the sum total in our life of our various privileges and disenfranchisements as the primary drivers of our actions, over and above our routine thinkings.\u00a0 In fact, motivational and behavioral research shows that the primary causal direction of changed attitudes is from behavior, not knowledge.\u00a0 In other words, our attitudes change more from changing behaviors than changing knowledge.\u00a0 This is caught up in a matrix of cognitive dissonance, where we have a powerful need to make sense of our lives as it is at any given moment, and rationalizations supporting any given status quo are favored.\u00a0 Changing what we do, voluntarily or involuntarily, shifts our attitudes much more robustly than even large changes in knowledge.\u00a0 This undergirds the suggestion of “fake it til you make it,” recognizing the power of cognitive dissonance to drive our attitudes and thinking to match our behavior.\u00a0 While this may seem inauthentic to some degree, simply compare it to the endemic hypocrisies represented by vastly incongruous knowledge and beliefs with our behavior.\u00a0 This also gives a tip of the hat to the classical liberal paradigm of the importance of environmental conditions.\u00a0 Our own personal collections of privileges and disenfranchisements, either personally or socially, are weigh more important to making sense of our behavior than cataloging, or even changing, our knowledge and beliefs. In sum, knowledge is routinely over-weighed in behavior change and social change.<\/p>\n My view is that plumbing the nature of our own privilege and disenfranchisement is a much firmer foundation upon which to build a life-affirming world.\u00a0 This self-knowledge can generate powerful insights into others and is a prerequisite to empathy.\u00a0 Reflecting on both grace (unmerited privilege) and unjust relationships (disenfranchisement) can leverage the attitudinal changes necessary for a better world for all.\u00a0 Mustering the courage to let go of unmerited privilege when it perpetuates unjust relationships, and change our behavior accordingly, even if it feels uncomfortable and scary, will align our lives at a deeper level of comfort and peace.\u00a0 Knowledge will follow.\u00a0 Knowledge will catch up to our passions.\u00a0 Life-affirming knowledge is wisdom.\u00a0 All other knowledge is unnecessary clutter, actually confounding the manifestation of wisdom.\u00a0 Where a whole heart rules, all is well.\u00a0 Living in won’s head can foster a perversely dangerous idealism, disconnected from the world of the living.\u00a0 If this strikes you as in any weigh anti-intellectual, you may want to delve into my blog — I speak from experience.<\/p>\n May you find a weigh in life that lifts up both yourself and others.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I want it awe Yet what do you no What measures Must we take From emanate ripples He helled the earth in his hand Of what intimated Of know consequence A dinky mount To sky ward heavin’ Hoping only to … Continue reading