Truth And Reality

                                                                                                               written 23 Jan 2022

                                                                                                           published 30 Jan 2022

         

            Aldous Huxley surveyed all the religions and spiritual traditions of the world, looking for common elements.  The core of the Golden Rule was common to all, as was the description of the human journey as an evolution from the separation of the individual ego to the experience of Divine unity.  

            Everyone has an ego. We need enough ego to keep out of the way of a speeding bus, but too much ego becomes a problem.  If you examine experience deeply, all we can know for sure is: "I am", and "something seems to be happening".  All the rest is a story we create to give meaning to what we experience.  That story is mostly our ego.

            Our every reaction is filtered through the perspective of our ego, and 90 percent of our reactions take place beneath our conscious awareness, directed by patterns laid down by our family and culture long before we were aware of our sense of self.  For example, if you have been told all through childhood that you are a stupid, ugly loser, chances are you may have self-esteem issues.  Affirmations have the power to rewrite some of those old stories.  Since most of the story is hidden, conscious affirmations may have to be applied for an extended period before any change is apparent.  Because we believe our stories, they become our truth, but they are not reality.  

            There is a bumper sticker that says: "reality is what you stub your toe against".  That suggests there is something larger than our own truth, our own story, that is real enough to have effect, even when we aren't paying attention.  This is consensual reality, the larger story within which we all live.  As an individual's story, or truth, diverges from consensual reality, their life gets more difficult.  At the extreme, such people are viewed as insane.  When a large group of people are at odds with reality, the entire society is at risk.

            Being at odds with reality can be as simple as shifting from one culture to another.  For instance, in the US, the consensus reality involves driving on the right-hand side of the road.  However, taking this pattern to England, where everyone drives on the left-hand side, can quickly get someone killed.

            Every society has a mix of individuals with personal truth at odds with others in the group.  Society creates structures for resolving conflicts in ways that preserve the society as well as the individuals within it.  America is in the middle of a crisis within our forms of conflict resolution.

            In my opinion, former president Trump is insane: a malignant narcissist.  His ego is so large, and fragile, that accepting the idea of losing would fracture him to the core.  Because he doesn't take any personal responsibility for his situation, he has to blame someone else, and is violent in defense of his position.  That is his personal truth, but is not reality.  If he were just an ordinary individual, this would simply be a sad story.  But his position in the society means he has the ability to seduce, or coerce, others into making his insane truth their truth as well, even if it risks destroying the reality of our culture.

            The whole world is in the middle of serious and rapid changes.  Resource depletion, the expanding climate crisis, overpopulation, Covid, and extreme economic inequity have caused wide spread disruption in people's lives, challenging the ego stories that have given us meaning.  Rather than investigating the complicated roots of these challenges, which requires deep internal examination and changes in our own stories, people search for simple external answers, some place outside to focus their anxiety and anger. 

            Covid and climate change are hoaxes; all immigrants are diseased terrorists; only rich white Christian heterosexual men should be in charge; Democrats are termites who drink the blood of babies; the election was stolen.  These become people's truth, even though they are not reality, and don't really serve their true needs.

            I don't know how our nation transcends this, but recognizing the issue is a start.  Investigating how my truths may need to be modified to more align with reality is a start.  Stating my truth is also necessary.  I have confidence that reality prevails eventually.  If enough of us choose sanity, we might all survive.

 

 

What Will It Take?

                                                                                                               written 16 Jan 2022

                                                                                                           published 23 Jan 2022

 

            In 2017, Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported "business as usual" risks a 1 in 4 chance of human extinction by 2067, due to extreme climate change.  Half of all the fossil fuels humanity ever consumed were burned within the last 30 years, with consumption increasing every year.  Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is currently 416 ppm, last this high 3 million years ago.  

            The last seven years have been the hottest on record.  This week it was reported that 2021 was the 6th hottest year, with the 20 largest US weather disasters costing over $145B.  By 2030, we will experience 50 more record breaking hot days each summer. 

            The oceans, now the hottest on record, trap 93 percent of the extra heat, with measurable heat increase a mile deep.  The annual heating is the equivalent of 7 Hiroshima atom bombs going off every second, all year long.

            The climate crisis is real.  It is already here.  It will only get worse.  It won't go away by magic.  Last summer, the IPCC warned that humanity must reduce carbon emissions 50 percent by 2030, to have a chance of keeping a habitable planet.  

            The movie "Don't Look Up", which has been streaming on Netflix for the last few weeks, is one their most popular ever.  This satirical comedy describes efforts to get the planet to deal with an incoming comet, which is expected to hit the planet, an extinction level event.  Written as a parody on the climate crisis, but unfolding over a matter of months rather than decades, it points out the suicidal lunacy of our current culture, which is obsessed with money and fame, to the point of ignoring or denying reality.

            In a recent interview, co-director Adam McKay stated that the climate crisis is so significant it should be considered somewhere between "the tension during the Cuban missile crisis and the beginning of the bombing of London early in WW2".  It is that potentially destructive and that imminent.  But in America, we can't even get modest funding through the Senate.  The climate deniers are thriving, spreading doubt and misinformation in order to preserve a few more years of profit.

            Some years ago, there was a letter to the editor of the UDJ from a local climate denier.  There was a long list of arguments about how it can't be real, it was just a hoax by greedy scientist, it wasn't manmade.  The final conclusion was nothing could be done about it anyway, moving directly from denial to despair, without ever once actually consider the issue.  

            How bad does it have to get before we begin to respond with the requisite social and economic magnitude?  Do climate disaster costs have to increase to $500B a year, or a trillion dollars?  Six in ten Americans are already concerned about the climate crisis, but the people who control the economy and politics haven't been affected yet, so little happens, and even modest efforts are fought at every step.  Look at the current PUC efforts by investor-owned utilities to kill roof top solar.  

            It reminds me of the movie Jaws.  The mayor of Amity denies the existence of the shark out of short-term economic concerns.  He only changes his tune when he personally sees the shark and realizes his own son could have been killed.  

            Directly looking at the situation takes courage.  A first step is a declaration of climate emergency.  Over 1,900 governments around the world have already passed such a declaration, including 53 in California.  Mendocino County and the City of Ukiah are not yet on that list.  

            A more substantial step would be embracing the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50 percent in the next 96 months.  We would have to reduce consumption, triple our electrical production, and make massive hardware investments in transportation and heating.  This will be expensive and disruptive, but talk with someone who has raced out of their house with only the clothes they were wearing, to escape a firestorm.  That is expensive and disruptive as well.  The whole planet is facing such a firestorm.

            This will take a level of coordinated action that is hard to imagine these days.  But despite our apparent differences, we really are all in this together, and this lovely planet is worth the effort.  What are we waiting for?

 

Holding Hope In The Darkness

                                                                                                                 written 9 Jan 2022

                                                                                                           published 16 Jan 2022

   

            I watched the US Congress January 6th memorial, with only one Republican member attending.  Most Republican voters believe the big lie, and think violence is the answer.  How did we get here?  Where can we look for hope?

            Native Americans described the mind sickness of the conquering European invaders as wetiko.  In his book "Dispelling Wetiko", Paul Levy offers this definition.  "A narcissist is someone who has become hypnotized by their own inflated self-image.  Being so self-absorbed, that they are not in genuine relationship with others, but relate to others (including the environment) as objects to satisfy their own need for self-aggrandizement.  A full blown wetiko is a "malignant" narcissist, reacting sadistically to those who don't support their narcissism, wanting to annihilate anyone who threatens their illusory self-image or agenda."

            The Republican party is now the full blown wetiko cult of Trump.  To balance this insanity, I take comfort in information from the channeled site Onenessofall.com. 

            "Because everyone is an individual expression of Divine Consciousness, the journey necessary for this to become an actual attained state of consciousness never ceases." 

​            "Ascension is nothing more than the expansion of consciousness through the integration of truth.  Because there is only ONE Consciousness, every individualization of this ONE Consciousness is already full and complete.  But when a person does not understand this, they continue to create and live in a world of illusion, experiencing the various forms of duality and separation they have ignorantly created.  The spiritual journey is the process of peeling away the impersonal and false debris that every person has accumulated." 

​            "Your consciousness of ONEness, and recognition of the already present Light within every person, serves to automatically bring love into every situation.  This is Lightwork, which is what you came to do." 

            "There will be occasions where some action is required, but in general you need simply holding firm to truth, bearing witness to the Divine Reality that is ever present even when it doesn't look that way." 
​            "Those who are stuck in old energy, holding fast to obsolete ideas of separation, duality, war, greed, and self-serving, will gradually find their positions increasingly difficult to maintain as the world changes around them.  There are many struggling to hold on to the belief that personal power keeps them safe.  Anything formed from beliefs of duality and separation have no law to hold them in place, only a belief in them.  As these beliefs diminish, so do their outer forms." 
​            "Meditate often, resting in the true nature of your being, even as you go about your day.  Never go into meditation with the idea of attaining something you believe you do not have, for this will simply strengthen the belief of separation.  Rather, let your mediation be simply allowing yourself to rest in the realization of oneness with God.  It may seem to you that nothing happens, but know that whenever anyone goes within with the intention of resting in "I AM" something always happens on the deeper levels."

            "The whole purpose of choosing to be on earth in these intense times is to assist a sleeping world awakening to their true nature.  Every person is a creator, a God Being creating his or her world from the substance of their consciousness, a consciousness that in reality is Divine/God/Consciousness.  But over time, they have become conditioned and clouded over by beliefs of good and evil, separation, and two powers." 
​            "Present times are difficult for everyone, the spiritually awake as well as those who are not.  Everyone is feeling the intensity of earth's energy at this time.  High frequency Light energies from the higher dimensions are stirring up and exposing pockets of dark energy that have lain hidden, often disguised as ordinary people, places, or things.  All will eventually be exposed and dissolve into the nothingness that they are formed of." 
​            "Your job is to hold the Light of truth while trusting that all is proceeding according to plan personally and globally which means accepting that in spite of appearances the reality is that everything is already perfect and whole.  The past is complete, having served to bring the world to where it is now ready for the new and higher.  You are in the midst of a massive consciousness shift."

            We have the power to choose love over fear.

 

PUC And Solar

                                                                                                                 written 2 Jan 2022

                                                                                                             published 9 Jan 2022

            Two weeks ago, the Ukiah Daily Journal editorial supported new proposed PUC regulations on roof top solar installations.  The claim is that because excess solar production is paid at retail rates, roof top solar is not paying the full costs of the interconnection to the grid, pushing those costs onto regular customers, thus "rich" people who install solar on their homes are ripping off the poor of California.  The new regulations would reduce the value of solar overproduction to $0.05/kwhr, add a fixed monthly connection fee of $50 per month, and start a fund to aid low-income customers.  The proposal was promoted and funded by the investor-owned utility industry, which views widespread distributed solar as a threat to corporate control.  The reality is more nuanced.

            When net metering of roof top solar was first introduced, it was advertised as "spinning your meter backwards".  That means that when your home array produces more electricity that you are currently using, the power is shipped onto the grid through the same meter that measures your power consumption.  The bill you pay is the "net meter" value, the power you consumed minus the power produced, crediting the customer overproduction at retail power rates.

            This was a technologically simple arrangement.  Roof top solar was expensive, and represented a small percentage of the overall power market.  But public awareness of climate change has increased, and the price of solar has declined rapidly, so solar is now a significant portion of the power market, although roof top systems are still a small percentage.  As we shift from producing power when we want it, to collecting power when it is available and storing it for later use, the overall grid structure has to change.   

            But the price of solar power doesn't reflect all the real values.  Normal grid power is electronically noisy, with rapid, high voltage spikes and dips as heavy machinery starts and stops.  When intense, this variability can damage sensitive electronics, but the power company can't really do much about the spikes, so the customer has to pay.  When solar arrays are installed, the inverters on the systems tend to smooth out the power on the local grid, reducing the destructive spikes, benefiting everyone.

            Locally produced power is more valuable than imported power.  The grid is close to saturation, and occasionally fails as power demand exceeds what the system can handle, just like freeway gridlock.  Increasing the capacity of the grid is very expensive and time consuming.  Locally produced power allows for local growth without having to expand the entire grid, thus saving massive infrastructure costs.

            Continued use of nonrenewable power, "business as usual", will kill the entire economy.  Scripps Institution of Oceanography estimated that within 50 years, there is a 1 in 4 chance of human extinction.  The current value of American infrastructure is at least $250 trillion, and a modest value for our people is another $150 trillion.  The annualized risk assessment of losing all that is about $2 trillion.  America pays about $1 trillion per year for our fossil fuels, meaning that carbon-based fuels actually cost at least three times as much as we currently pay.  There is no such added cost with renewable power.

            Sonoma Clean Power production base is 92 percent non-carbon, and SCP will provide 100 percent non-carbon power for an extra $13 per month.  For an average home, that extra 8 percent costs $0.36/kwhr, giving a real-world estimate of the value of renewable power.

            One true fact in the PUC argument is that California is being ripped off, but it is not by roof top solar.  Recent reports show that over the last few decades, PG&E diverted $60 billion from infrastructure maintenance to increase executive salaries and shareholder dividends.  Devastating fires have resulted in the last five years, killing over 100 people, but nobody at PG&E has gone to jail, and the fines levied become corporate tax deductions or increased customer fees.

            The PUC proposal is a punitive effort to preserve a dysfunctional corporate structure of dominance and exclusive gain.  To address the climate crisis, we need to double or triple our solar installations, rather than discouraging them.  In addition, we need to fund distributed storage, to level the production peaks, maximizing the utility of our existing grid, while building local power resiliency.  Ignoring climate reality is suicide.

 

Capitalism Requires Socialism

                                                                                                              written 26 Dec 2021

                                                                                                             published 2 Jan 2022

                                                                                                                                        

             We are now less than a year away from the mid-term elections, and are beginning to see more rabid conservative commentary on the "evils of socialism".  What these folks don't realize is that a healthy capitalist economy requires a solid socialist foundation in order to operate.

            Capitalism is a way of organizing economic profits for the benefit of a few.  At a small business scale, this allows versatility and ingenuity to explore different paths, with results that can be beneficial to the overall society.  But there are many necessary parts of society that don't clearly generate profits: emergency responses and collective material and financial infrastructures.  When these systems are underfunded or absent, the society suffers, risking complete failure.

            The benefits of wide spread socialist structures are so ubiquitous that we take them for granted.  In Ukiah, where I live, the electric power system, city roads, local police and courts, fire services, water and sewage systems are all owned by the City.  The County of Mendocino owns most of the smaller roads, the Sheriff's department and county courts.  The state of California owns wild fire control organizations, most of the larger roads, and the state legal system.  The federal government owns the freeways, the national postal system, and the national legal system.  I collect Social Security, and qualify for Medi-Care, important socialized systems.  All of these systems have issues, without a doubt, but imagine a world where none of them existed, and corporations were expected to fill the needs.  

            How would a totally privatized road system work?  Could you even leave your property if you had no cash on hand?  How would goods deliveries be handled?  How would emergency repairs be funded?  Imagine what an adverse impact there would be on the general flow of the economy.  There are real economic benefits to collective systems. 

            We in Ukiah pay about 2/3 the price for electricity that PG&E customers in the rest of the county pay, which is typical for publicly owned power systems.  The reason is a difference in organizational intent.  PG&E wants to maximize executive salaries and shareholder returns, while Ukiah wants to provide a reliable power system while minimizing customer costs.  Same power, but very different pricing structures.

            The United States is dominated by capitalist economics, resulting is massive economic inequity, and degradation of our quality of life, compared to other developed countries that aren't as frightened by socialism.  For example, our health care system is primarily privately owned, resulting in a health care infrastructure that is kept at a minimal level, with a smaller bed per capita, to not "waste" investment.  This may make short term fiscal sense, but the recent pandemic shows the high cost of lack of resilience, as our facilities are being saturated by each wave of Covid, and the medical staff is reaching burnout.  

            When these capitalist systems fail, it is the socialism of the federal government that comes to the rescue to serve the real needs of our society.  Public health is a collective recognition that we are all better off if we care for our citizens who are ill, including people who have limited resources.  This socialist investment profits from the costs avoided by not allowing disease to flourish and spread.  

            The recent increase in destructive wildfires has disrupted the economics of the fire insurance industry in California, causing many companies to no longer renew policies, because they plan to leave the state, another example of the limits of capitalism.  But the banking and real estate industries will collapse without insurance coverage, threatening the entire state economy.  One solution is the socialist expansion of the State fire insurance program, much like the federal flood insurance program, which resulted from private insurance bailing on areas of increased flooding. 

            Countries with a longer history than the US have all included socialist structures into their society.  They have learned that the world is connected, and evolved their economy to align with that fact, rather than pretending that life is nothing more than lethal competition.

            We are facing serious challenges to the simplistic assumptions underlying capitalism, which ignores and degrades the commons, and requires continued expansion of extracted resources and energy, on an over populated, finite planet.  Like it or not, we really are all in this together.  We must evolve or die.