The Portable Jon

Coming of Age

2005-04-20T12:49:00.001-07:00

I remember the air, the intoxicating exhiliration of wild,
delirious youth. Our hearts throbed to the beat of these
romantic times as our minds soared into deep space.
Something was in the air, and in our ears, a delightful, wistful call.

It came into our beautiful innocence, at a tender time of life.
I hear ard it on the front porch in a sleeping bag, as the rich textures of a summer night blended with chorus the of our burgeoning awarenes.

To come of age at the end of an age!

To come of age at the beginning of an age!

The communal culture called. The echoes of history rang.
The waves of history washed upon our shores. The sounds of distant eruptions reached our ears, and blew our minds.

Something was indeed blowing in the wind, but it wasn't
an answer, only questions.

I remember when it started. I remember well returning home
from school one sunny afternoon, after another blissfull day of childhood

There it was on the mantle, a black background with big red letters
announced the end of the age. "God is Dead ", said Time magazine,
and I didn't even know he was sick.

I didn't read the article, but looking back I see that this iswhere our world changed. Time reported Nietchzse's famous
pronouncement but didn't mention his after thought,
"If God is dead, then who will wipe the blood from our hands".

We were changing, we were rolling. How prophetic.
How does it feel, to be own your own, with no direction home, just
like a rolling stone, how would you like to be scrounging for your next meal.

More than Nietzse and Picasso, Dylan sang of our psychic
homelessness, the empty his words foretold and as the music danced
amid the ruins of our shattered psyches, our gutted civilization.
Our cultural edifice was gone and we were without a home.
Small wonder we danced nude in the streets.

It was blown apart after the first world war, along with all our icons, values, and ideals.

David Halberstam'ss describes the 50's well in the openining words of his book (The 50's) "The pictures tell the story, black and white. Like the polarized political climate of the time which reflects the underlying philosophy of the age. But we were in a technicolor, kaleidiscope landscape now-shifting, evolving, exploding. We wern't in Kansas anymore.

This is a generation that has never known stasis, stability,
never knew order-you know , before it befriended chaos.

Pre war times had been more stable, the pace of change
much slower, slow enouhg to be noticed. But those born after or
during the 60's are so engulfed in change that they don't notice it.
They don't really know what change is since it's all they've ever known, much like a fish in water. Having been born into moving water, they don't know what dry land is.

http://understandingamericanpie.com/

In The Begining

2005-04-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

We are in the midst of a revolution-one of the most important in world history. We are currently living through a deep, broad and profound transformation of Western culture. What is being transformed are our most basic ideas about reality-and that is why it's so profound, so revolutionary. For a revolution in thought is a revolution in ev erything: everything that can be thought about, everything that can be understood, everything that can be wondered about, guessed at, imagined, or dreamt of.

All disciplines, areas of knowledge, institutions, compartments of culture are experiencing this dramatic change.

A revolution implies a turning-a turning away from something and a turning to something. What is being turned away from, and turned to, is a basic set of assumptions about the world-a belief sytem.

All societies, in every age, have a belief system that explains and defines the world for them. It gives them the rules for interpreting and interacting with the world, and colors their experience of it.It tells them how to think and speak, and what to think and speak about.It tells them how to be and what to do.

Huston Smith has likened such a belief system, or world view, to a pair of glasses worn on the end of the nose. After a while we forg et they are there, yet they constantly adjust and focus our view-they condition and refract everthing we see.

We are now in the process of changing our spectacles, of acquiring a new way of looking and a new way of seeing. And what we see is a new world with a new set of rules.

Everything we see is different: our logic and values, our science and religion, our art, math, literature, music,philosophy, businesses, governments, schools, communities, families and perhaps most importantly of all- ourselves.

We will examine two world views and describe their far reaching effects on our culture and our personal lives. First we'll consider the paradigm we inherited from the founders of modern science, which has dominated western civilization for over three centuries. Then we'll consider the new view which in this century has begun to supplant it.

We will look at the problems solved by each view and the problems each can cause, the questions answered, and the new questions raised. For world views are born for this very reason- to solve a new set of problems, and provide a new set of answers: problems created by the worldview that is dying, and answers that were beyond its grasp, its time, and its purpose.

This is not to say that in its time the passing view didn't serve us well, for it had a brilliant career. But it was never meant to last forever, and as the poet says,"time moves forward not backward, and doesn't tarry with yesterday".

Each passing brings a new birth, and worldviews are born to renew a dying world-to replace a senescent civilization. With new birth comes new possibilities and new hope, a renewed purpose and a deeper meaning.

For paradigm change is ultimately about the search for meaning. It allows a culture to grow and adapt to its own growth. To recast old meaning in new forms to connect the present with the past, and open the door to the future. This is the way we root ourselves, and catch up with history, catch up with a world that has turned under our feet. For things change! And a paradigm shift is a way of understanding and processesing that change.

It is, after all, the search for meaning that gives rise belief ystems.
This innate drive for belonging, to be rooted in, or linked to
this world is the most basic human need. This drive is the foundation of civilization. Religion comes from re ligio, to link back, and it's in the religious quest the search for our origins and our originator, the search to answer the most basic questions of human existence that belief systems are born.

Belief systems have an origin. They are grounded in the most fundamental ideas of a culture. It should not be surprising then to find that they are based on the most fundamental idea of all-that of a Creator. Ideas about God-or Ultimate Reality-become the archetypes on which we model the rest of our thought.

Our thoughts about the Creator, and His relation to the creation, determine how we think of everything else.

These fundamental ideas are dramatically expressed in the creation stories of any culture. For this is where we see the Creator in action and learn of his nature. Later these same ideas will turn up 'everywhere'-in formal systems of thought, as the guiding principles of our most "sacred" institutions, and in our common language and commom sense. They permeate our lives. But there origin goes back to the creation stories, back to the origin of all things, back to the beginning.

Where The Mountain Meets the Sky

2005-04-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

On a quiet October evening
With Autumn gentle in the air
Saturday night and Spirits High
An uncommon pleasure caught my eye
I gazed in sacred admiration
Where the mountains meet the sky

It seemed most clearly I was not alone
So certain of this was I
Heavens Sweet celestial music
Sung by mighty throngs on high
Filled that cool October Evening
Where the Mountains met the sky

One Impression left me clear
Clear as the glowing light so high
A warm and welcomed, Hallowed Presence
Filled Me and the October Sky

Into Heaven's Chamber I did pry
On that crisp autumnal evening
Where the mountains meet the sky

The Blue, the green, the violet haze
All met my eyes in silent praise
The Shining Moon so pure and clear
The Pulse of God so far, so near

A breeze of fresh and pure delight
Swept through that silent, sacred night

A blessing sent to us is nigh
When stop we will when passing by
And fix our ears to voices high
And lift our eyes unto the sky

For short we're here and soon we pass
Of this be sure, some splendors last
And if when Life has sung my song
For my memory you should long
You'll find me when you turn your Eye
To the place where mountains meet the sky

The Darling Buds of May

2005-04-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

As we search for ourselves amid the ruins of
our senesant civilization we are confronted anew with
timeless questions. But the answers with which we
built our cultural edifice don't seem to fit the
at hand. Can the newborn tell the aged how to die?
Can the secrets of youth rest in the bosom of the
old? The world looks different at twilight. What then
do we do? Do we cling in desperation to the dead,or
do we release them and ourselves to the possibilities
of new life and new growth. We must affirm the season!

The processes of death seem contrary to those of
life,and in a limited, narrow, and specific sense they
are. But a broader and a longer view shows that the
two are one. Onc we let go of self, of ego, of
structure,of form-once we lose ourselves we do indeed
find ourselves.

And then we can see in the leaves of October,
    the Darling buds of May.

New World Order

2005-04-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

Something extraordinary is happening. The ground is shifting
beneath our feet. We all know these are fateful times-it would
be impossible not to notice. A chorus is sounding throughout
the land. The first chords were struck long ago, but many are
just now learning to step to the new rythym.

For years we have heard the death knell of Western
civilization. More and more in recent years we hear talk of
a New World order. But just what is this new world order?
How is it characterized. What are it's dominant traits?
To answer these questions we must first define the Old order.
And to do this we must return to the beginning of Western civilization,
or more specifically to it's roots in ancient Greece.

None can disagree that the Greeks initiated a new epoch in
human history, or that this is where we find the seeds of our
modern Western identity. Moreover, in the past three centuries
Western society has dominated the world scene. During this
period world history has been predominantely the history of
the west-as the achievements of the Western world. It's virtue
and its' vice, have been spread throughout the globe.

What then characterizes this modern Western world view?
What was the Greek view based on and why was it new?
And furthermore, how are these two views related?

As we will see they are actually the same view, with the
modern Western world view being merely an elaboration or
an outgrowth of the earlier Greek seed.

The new world view that is emerging is however, a dramatic
departure from the Western tradition. That's what all the
excitement is about. We have entered into an entirely new epoch in world history, with entirely different rules, laws and lodgic. Everything becomes new from this new vantage point.

All of the old ideas, institutions, and values are being re-evaluated and reinvented in this new light. Our perceptions of ourselves and our reality have changed drastically and irrevocabiy. We are on the crest of a gigantic, breaking wave. We have crossed the threshold into a new age and we are now, for better or worse, establishing and
being, established by a new world order.

What was so special about the Greeks? What distinguished them from every other civilizantion that came before? To answer this question we have to back further. For the seeds of the Western identity sprung not only from the Greek mind but from the Hebrew soul.* To answer thequestion of our origins we have to return to the cradle of all civilizations in the Mesopotamian vally, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

The idea of a new world order has recently been popularized by the adventof a great struggle in this very region. As if to puctuate and end of any age the heirs of the West now lead a great army, in the name of the New Order, to make war at the birthplace of the old order. The cradle of the west, of the old order, has now become its grave. And this is being done by the same Western civilization-and its new found allies- which was spawned by the Old order.

The old has become new. In order this to happend the old must be destroyed. The old is destroyed by the new which it sired. This is a theme we will encounter many times. The old is destroyed by the new, but the new grew from the old, the new grewin the old as seeds of its own destruction. And in order for this next generation of seeds to blossom into the new life of a new order, the fruit of the old must decay. In this way seeds of its decay allow it to live forever in a different form.

This is the story we here attempt to tell. How did the old bcome the new? How does one form change into another? How does life sustain itself? Whatis the stuff, the substance of life? How does the mystery perpetuate itself and what is mans' and womans' role in the drama? Who made us and whither dowe tend? It is important that we ask these questions now as we re-invent a New Order.

But these questions were asked long ago and to them we owe our cultural heritage, our intellectual awareness, and our psychic identity. And in order to form these anew, to create the new from the old, we have toreach far back in time and deep into our psyche. To find the core of ournature, the center of our being we must gonall the way back: all the wayback to the beginning.

Every civilization of creation are the concepts of heaven and earth. Although interpretations differ all creation myths are based on the interaction of these two primal forces. Heaven can be said to represent an invisible and changeless realm while earth represents the visible andthe constantly changing.

Others had noticed the distinction between these two primal forces and often personified them or deified them-, representing them as a cosmic couple from whom the rest of creation springs. Although interpretations differ, all cultures seem two acknowledge the existence of these two principles-be it yin and yang, yap and yum, or Adam and Eve.

In the Biblical acctount of creation we see this process of division all the way down the line. There were two trees in the garden. In fact, one was a tree of knowledge of opposites-or the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit of this tree, as you will remember, gave man a godlike ability-the ability to make distinctions. But this knowledge came at a high price, it brought death into the world. The tree of the knowledge of the opposites was therefore a tree of death.To balance this there was "opposite" tree-the tree of life.

Well you know the rest of the story, this primordial couple was unceremoniously booted out of the garden least they eat of the tree of life and once again attain wholeness-and be as God. And since Adamand Eve could not be made whole (by eating of the tree opposite of the tree of (opposites) the rest of their life, as the rest of histoy, was based upon division, opposotion, and conflict. We see it in the fruit of their union. They gave birth to, well, opposites. And since Cain and Abel. The rest as they say , is history.

The Greeks handled this division in an entirely new way. they too realized that there was one kind of reality that we new through our senses and which was in a continual process of change. In addition to this visible, audible, touchable world of change they believed in an invisible, silent,
and untouchable realm whichwas perfect and beyond all change.

But others had known that they perceived the world of change through the senses this was not a new idea. The revo;utionary idea introduced by the Greeks was that the non-sensible world of the changeless could be known with the mind. Futheruremore there existed a harmony between these separate realms. All of reality could be understood as a mixture of these two distinct realms. And this mixture or ratio could be perceived by both the senses and mentally through the use of reason.

A good example of this is found in music whose harmomies could both be heard with the ear and understood by the mind as a numerical ratio. This (ratio) nalism was the Greeks most imporant contribution to the world. Others had known of the realm of the changeless only through mysticism or faith. The Greeks invented a way to know it through the mind. And through number they found a way to correlate mental perception with those of the senses-which
revealed the realm of change.

These realms were in a harmonious balance. Number was believed to respresent the exact mixture of the realms. the pythagoreans thought of number as a kind of vessel which could contain a certain amount of the limiteless(or changeless) realm. Number specified how much of the unlimited or infinite from the changeless realm could the finite, limited objects of our sense experiece (in the realm of change) hold. Number specified the amount in which these realms were mixed in a harmonious blend. Before the Greeks man could hear the music of the lyre, the flute and harp-now in the silent province of his mind, he could hear the music of the spheres.

And since reality was belived to result from a harmonious mixture of these reparate realms. this ment that the world of constant change- formly knowable only thrugh the senses could now also be known by the mind.(Because mind couldnow identily and speify with numerical ratie. that part of the realm of contuied change which we see chaning all around us that never changes. the two worlds coexisted simultauly and harmeniously. That harmony could be percived both by the senses either seen in art or heard as music and by the mind.

Since reality was belived to be the result of a harmonious blending of these separate realms, this ment that the realm of constant change-formerly known only by the senses- could now be known by the mind. The mind could now, through reason, identify the permanent aspects of nature by specifying it with a numerical ratio. Not only could the inderstructible realm be know by the mind, but because of the correspondence between the two realm of reality the realm of change could also be known by this correspondence or ratio. The belief in this ratio between two separate and diistinct realms, which nevertheless blended to form the world, was the beinning of Greek (ratio)nalism-one of the two great pillars of western civilization.

Think of it this way. The sun and the earth are two separate entities. But it is the sun which gives to the earth its light, energy, and warmth. Without the sun the earth would not only be invisible it would be
lifeless. In the same way the Greeks envisioned two separate realms of reality-the realm of change and the realm of the changeless. And one of these realms was thought to be superior to the other. The realm of the changeless and indestructible was thought to be superior to the realm of continuous and infinite change. (unlike us the Greeks thought that thefinite was superior to the infinite, precisely because it could be limited (and defined.)

But this static and finite realm was to the realm of continous change as the Sun was to earth. As the sun animated the earth by sharing with its light, energy and warmth, so the static, finite realm of pure being was very essence of the realm of continual change. It existed by its energy or essence. And it could only be known to us by the light that came from above. the light of everything on earth is borrowed from the light of the sun. The essence *of sight and of everthing seen on earth is dependent on the light of the sun.And so it was with the category of being, which impled the indestructible laws governing numbers-the numerical ratios which quantified the amount of light the earth received.

*Also the solar light allows us to perceive the separateven, of things (or the divrsion of one thing from another thing) things are diveded by the solar light and seen to exist as separate, self-control, and independent entitles reparatent independentce, and divrsion are solar archetypes.