Wrightstown Article #02

DID YOU EVER SEE AN INFANT SMILE OR HEAR AN INFANT SCREAM?

Did you ever see an infant smile? Or hear an infant scream? That’s a soul speaking — whatever anyone of any religion or denomination or of no religion says about “souls.”

A psychopath like Putin, Hitler, Custer, Cortez, or Genghis Khan is the most extreme case of the psychopaths we are all, usually vaguely, aware of — whether far away or nearby, usually biding their time, but occasionally violent.

Schoolyard thugs, sometimes elected officials, bullying bureaucrats, aggressive salespeople — we have to be on the look-out, not to become their victims. We have to hide our souls, so vulnerable, from them. Or, become life-time warriors, maybe in the uniform of this or that nation, or secretly — Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent — in khaki and body armor — or jacket and tie, or lipstick.

Hiding our souls from one another, we often forget that we have souls, are souls. We come to think that “soul” is just something the least holy clergymen talk about, competing for status and donations — or their followers, trying to appear acceptable, however little they contribute to anyone’s well-being.

We concentrate on competing for meat, houses, boats, advantageous terms, status. We punish our souls for daring to be delighted, to suffer, to refuse to adapt to less than justice and harmony.

We steer careful courses, avoid catastrophic illness, and retire from what becomes more and more painful, as we relinquish anticipation of advantageous change of fortune, and accept memories of what has actually and irrevokably occurred. Or we obsessively compete to emerge with the most wealth and control.

Wrightstown, Wisconsin, USA — kind and cruel, bare fields, fields of corn, soybeans, alfalfa, planting and harvesting, seeds, sprouts, pesticides, herbicides, dogs, cats, horses, mice, weeds, clever and stupid, clover, grass, hay, efficient and inefficient, young and old, births, weddings, funerals, receptions, ball games, illness and convalescence, infatuations, arguments, cars, trucks, and school buses on roads, geese, ducks, seagulls, sparrows, jays, doves, cardinals, cows and cheese, manure, coffee and beer and propane and gasoline, cables, poles, lawns, trees, houses, frozen, muddy, dry, white or brown or green, blue or overcast, Sun, Moon, stars, clouds, resident from birth and more recent arrivals, departures of retirees, Dick’s Family Foods, the D&G in Greenleaf across from the feed mill and gas station, the Brown County library branch, paychecks, mortgages, taxes, Medicare, Social Security, the palaces of the medical profession in Green Bay, De Pere, Kaukauna, and Appleton, the bridge over the Fox River, industrial buildings along I-41, eggs and hamburgers, ketchup, mustard, sugar, salt, golf courses and Packer logos, the feud between the Village and the township — is a single bud on one branch of a tree in a forest, on a continent of biomes and mechanized and electrified hives, a single continent on a single planet in a single solar system in a single galaxy.

People say, “Nobody knows.” But who knows? — someone may know something that others don’t. I know a lot, because I’ve lived a long time and studied a lot, that many others don’t know. I’m well aware that what I know is a sliver of what there is to know — and that some know what I don’t — and that knowing and ability to do something about it aren’t the same thing.

A lot that I previously believed I knew, I’m not so sure of. A lot that I have become certain about, nearly no one agrees with me about. Gradually, I have become capable of doing more and better — but it has cost me the time of my life — and I have also become aware of a lot more that I am incapable of — so far — and that the ignorance and lack of ability could be fatal.

Everyone is for the development of their community. But a community can be advantageously or disadvantageously developed. So much “development” is merely imitation of others, who are imitating others, who may have been ignorant, but full of themselves. So much “development” degrades, as much or more than it contributes to the well-being of the people of the community. So much development benefits some few, at the expense of everyone else.

Some begin with more benefits, some with less — and some begin with more burdens, some with less. Except those who begin with the greatest advantages — and the psychopaths — everyone must struggle to get enough to pay for what they need, and attempt to improve their situation with any remaining time, energy, understanding, opportunity. Cars, once greatly liberating luxuries, become necessities, costing more and more and more. Likewise, phones, etc. In the artificial world, we are like animals are in nature — every day, we must struggle to survive, to eat and not be eaten, punctuated by brief healthy or unhealthy amusements — and our own and others’ misfortunes or breakdowns.

Those who maintain what we need continuously — clean water and waste water systems, electricity, fuels, communications lines, drainage, food supplies, etc. — are valuable public servants, deserving praise and pay. Each of us has to invest some attention to all that, too.

Those suppressing unusual behavior that hurts no one and opens useful possibilities are not being valuable public servants.

Souls know that we have arrived at a way-station: though we have the internet and Netflix and packages delivered to doorsteps, benefits and burdens are not equitably allocated. Souls know that we must move into a world that has never yet been, that we must yet create. Souls that can’t emerge suffer. Each one’s soul is each one’s leader.

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Virtue & Prowess