HINDU REINCARNATION AND LIBERTARIAN/REPUBLICAN SELF-RELIANCE

If I understand correctly, the Hindus believe in reincarnation. This isn’t as some westerners conceive of it. You can’t wish that, in your next life, you will be a star baseball pitcher. You will come back as what your karma dictates. Your karma is based on all the good and bad things you do in each life, as measured by the standards of the class into which you were born. The goal is to do well in each life so that you keep coming back in higher and higher classes. Eventually, you reach the highest class (Brahmin, I think). If you do that perfectly, you win and escape the cycle of eternal rebirths. You meld with the universe and become nothing.

If you were born into a warrior class then you are judged as a warrior. Being a great monk will not help you in that life.

A person in a lower class than you does not need pity or compassion. (S)he is where (s)he needs to be. To interfere with their life does them a disservice. They need to live the life they have, to play the hand they were dealt. Your only obligation to them is, perhaps, to throw them some coins, to give alms.

You should not be jealous or envious of those classes above you. You are where you need to be — your karma has decreed it.

Society is stable. People are where they need to be because of their own prior actions. They (and you) have no right to complain. It is all our own fault and only we can improve our lot. A single lifetime in a lower class is a short time compared to the eternity that this has been going on and compared to the eternity that it will continue.

Compare this with the Libertarian idea of Self-Reliance.

In the Libertarian ideal, it is improper for a government to take money from one person and give it to another person, especially as in welfare. It is acceptable for people to voluntarily donate to non-government organizations to help others, but it is not a function of government. If you have welfare, you will create a class of people dependent on welfare, that accept a low level of income in exchange for work. You will also create a class of criminals, the welfare cheats. If you take away their welfare benefits, you encourage them to seek meaningful work. To give them welfare, which seems compassionate, is to do them a disservice as it encourages them to stay home and collect benefits.

It is the duty of every person to be self-reliant, to be responsible for themselves. They need to work hard, put their nose to the grindstone, to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, etc., and make something of themselves. They dismiss talk of lack of a level playing field and white (or other) advantage. Here they usually say something about how they “worked hard and made my money, so they can work hard and make their own money.  They shouldn’t have my money.”

Since it is the responsibility of every person to take care of themselves and hard work always yields success, then I need not feel compassion for those less well off. In fact, for me to help them is to make them worse off. I need feel no responsibility for them.

In summary, I see an essential similarity between the Hindu reincarnation idea and the Self-Reliance ideal. Both would appeal to those with wealth, power, and status who want to protect their wealth, power, and status. Their selfishness is justified.  

The Duck Roundup. 

On Wednesday I had an interesting experience.  I volunteer at the Aquarium in the afternoon.  Skywatch was having a duck roundup at 10.  All I had to do was wave my arms. It would be quick. I figured I could wear my aquarium clothes to the roundup and go right to the aquarium. I wasn’t sure what a duck roundup was, but if it were quick and easy, I was all for it. 

Duke Energy has an easement to run their high tension (high voltage) power lines. Just north of Wilmington there was a pond on their easement with some wild muscovy ducks. They were fine with that but changed their minds.  Some bird people built a covered fenced-in area and herded the ducks into it.  They provided the ducks with water and feed until they could be moved. 

This was moving day.  The plan was remove a few vertical fence planks, back the rental truck up to the fence and lower the ramp.  The ducks would be herded up to the ramp, they would march up the ramp, and, easy as pie, the job would be done. We took off the fence planks and backed up the truck.  One of the fence cross-beams blocked the ramp.  We tried pulling the truck away a bit so the ramp would go under the beam. but that left too many openings for the ducks to escape. 

The final plan (B, or C, or D), was to back the truck up to the fence opening (no ramp) and block the part under the truck. We would catch the ducks by hand and put them in the truck. Lowering the truck door until it was open a foot or so and a person with a net on each side of the opening kept the ducks from escaping,  I was to stand at the opening with a net and gently prod the ducks to move to the front of the truck. 

Ducks, especially wild ducks, don't like to be picked up and tossed into trucks.  They can be quite the escape artists and sneaky.  Male muscovy ducks have claws on their webbed feet.  I got a few scratches but those doing the catching got more. It was exciting.  

I had to leave for the Aquarium when we were about 3/4 done. I was quite muddy so I stopped at home, took a quick shower, and went wearing an old white Aquarium t-shirt. 

(When you first start volunteering at the aquarium you are issued a white t-shirt with the Aquarium logo. After you have worked a certain number of hours (50 or 100, or something. — I forget) you are issued a blue polo with the logo. It was my only clean blue shirt that I was wearing to the roundup.  I put on one of the old t-shirts.) 

The head of the volunteers took pity on me and gave me another blue shirt. 

 The Roundup job eventually got done and the ducks were driven to their new home.  I heard later that after all the fuss getting them in the truck, they didn't want to leave the truck and had to be manually ejected!  Honestly, some creatures! 

It all worked out, but not quite by plan. 

A Bird Mini-Adventure at Carolina Beach

Yesterday in Carolina Beach, a beach resort town near here, a pelican was spotted with a broken wing.  The wing was hanging and droopy.  The pelican was on a small lake in the center of town. One of Sea Biscuit's volunteers tried to catch it, but it kept swimming to the middle of the lake. Today they were going to use a police boat to try to catch it.  The police here cooperate well with the sea turtle and bird volunteer groups (and perhaps others AFAIK.)  I joined them all so I might learn something. The city department of public works decided for reasons known only to them to drain the lake resulting in a couple of shallow ponds or big puddles surrounded by muck.  The volunteer tried to go out to the bird but sank almost up to her knees in the muck.  With almost all the water gone there was no use for a boat. 

It was rather frustrating but a nice day for a drive.  Tomorrow I will call the city to see what I can learn about the lake.  The volunteer will check the lake daily to see when the level is restored.  If the pelican can catch fish it will be fine, with the possible exception of losing part of a foot to snapping turtles or frostbite.

Tom

New Things I Did at Skywatch.

Today at Skywatch I had I did a couple of things that were new to me. For one, there is a seagull as a patient. He has wing damage and has not been eating. Today I replaced the papers on the bottom of his cage. It upset him and he jumped around quite a bit. I tried to do it slowly and non-threateningly and I think it helped a little. I gave him a bowl of water. He started to drink immediately! I put a fish in the water bowl but he snatched it a swallowed it right down! I guess he is well enough to feed himself now! Amelia (the director)doctored some fish with meds and vitamins and fed him those as well.

Another patient is a hawk named Eva. She has wing damage and a bone protruding from it. A local vet will operate at lowest possible price, but it is still expensive. (See https://www.facebook.com/pages/Skywatch-Bird-Rescue/339912439377214 .) To change the dressing, Amelia donned her falconers' gloves (leather up to the elbows) and removed the hawk from the cage holding the feet. (They have pretty massive and sharp talons.) When she took Eva out of the cage I put a pillow case over Eva's head to help keep Eva calm. Amelia put Eva on her back on the table and somehow held the feet while taking off one of the gloves. I put the gloves on and then took over holding the feet while she changed the dressing. Amelia took over, I took off the pillow case and Eva went back into her cage. I then hand fed her, with gloves on of course.

 Because of her injury Eva won't be able to be released. She will make a good education bird. She is young and Ameilia has adapted her to the glove. She likes being fed and Amelia can use that to influence her behavior. Older birds will not cooperate at all. They just fight, try to escape, and may injure themselves (or me)!

One other thing.  I unpacked 3000 crickets!  Some of the birds need them so they are ordered by the box-full.  I dumped them into a wooden box with a hinged, mesh lid.  The box is deep enough to keep the crickets from jumping out.  I fed some of the crickets to the ducks, who find them especially tasty.

It was an interesting day.

Satellite Interviews

Watching interviews on TV news has show me that there is a problem with the satellite delay. That prompted this note to MSNBC: We need a new protocol for interviewers and interviewees when a satellite link is used. The satellite delay makes confusion inevitable. Many times I have heard both parties stop, wait for the other, then start talking at the same time. A polite way of signaling interruption is needed. Perhaps just saying "excuse me" and then waiting for the words to reach the other person, for them to recognize the request and to stop talking. The interruptor can then begin talking. This may be more difficult for some than others, (No names, but the initials are Chris Matthews :-} ) Signal lights could also be used, but the interruptor still needs to wait.

Poetry & Other Arts

I am taking a course on "Introduction to Literature" and it seems that poetry and many other arts are really two distinct and separate things: the object of art as created by the artist, and that object as observed and interpreted by the viewer.

The poet / artist may not be conscious of all that is going into her/his creation. They put in what feels right to them. There is not always conscious analysis of every detail.

The viewer now looks at this object (or listens in the case of music) and tries to interpret every nuance, jot and tittle. I cannot help but think that this object acts as a mirror, and what the viewer sees reflects more about the viewer than the artist. A Rorschach test may be a better analogy, as the blots are designed to be meaningless in themselves. Everything we see is from within ourselves.

We are doing a paper analyzing a poet of our choice and I worry that I am reading too much into this. We will be graded not so much on getting the "right" ideas, but on getting "some" ideas and being able to justify those ideas with quotes from the poetry. In a sense, everything is true if you can make a case for it. If we ask what the poet meant, we don't know -- we only have the poem to work with.

Last semester I took "Critical Thinking" and my instructor would get furious at the idea that everything was true. (He had other issues as well.) I see his point but here we have a different concept of what is truth means. In my mind I capitalize Truth when I use it in certain ways.

Well, back to William Carlos Williams. Have a good day!

I am Disappointed in Generation e.

Or perhaps, I am disappointed in my young fellow students and the college I attend - Cape Fear Community College (CFCC). They seem, in some ways, computer illiterate . Perhaps they are just computer averse. In any case I am disappointed.

I have been led, mostly by media and anecdotal evidence, to believe that young folks are computer wizards. How many times have I heard stories of children programming g'pa or g'ma's DVD player, etc.? It seems like most students I pass on campus have a cellphone to their ear or are texting on some phone-like device. Surely they use computers!

A word on the student population: the local 4-year university campus considers its freshman sophomore students "pipeline". These are those that fit the standard mold - high school graduates moving on to a 4-year program. CFCC students are not pipeline students. They don't fit that mold for some reason. They may have worked after high school and are returning to school. They may be here for vocational programs such as nursing or truck driving.

Given that these are non-standard students they may be non-standard Gen-E members as well. They may not have had the opportunities to become comfortable with computers that the pipeline students have had. But still, I would expect a lot, if not a majority, to be comfortable with computers. The school provides Campus Cruiser, a tool with email, forums for class members, online announcements, etc. but I am amazed at the number of students that do not USE these. If a teacher cancels a class and announces it on Campus Cruiser, many students will still show up.

(Or perhaps they are like I was the first time in college - more interested in my social life than in school.) I am still disappointed.