Milt Greek's Blog: The River of Life - Posts Tagged "sensitivity"
Flourishing as Sensitive People
Franz Schubert, Frederic Chopin, Vincent Van Gogh – three sensitive people whose art is profound, beautiful, inspiring; three sensitive people whose lives were marked by suffering and early deaths.
Is the place of sensitive people in the human world to be martyrs, as the story of Jesus in the Western culture seems to say? Is the plight of sensitive people to suffer and die, as Don McLean’s tribute to Vincent Van Gogh suggests:
“And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.”
There are many kinds of people. The violent men, the money-chasers and the puritans that hold sway over the larger human world can be overwhelming for sensitive people. Sensitive people seek to live in ways of beauty, of peace and of deeply held ideals that yearn for a better human world—a world, we are told, that is not for mortals to attain.
Yet, in my life, my sensitivity has been a blessing, because I have protected it from the harsh world of the violent men, money-chasers and puritans. The natural world and the loving practices of community activists seeking to improve the life of those around me show me what humanity can be.
Given my good fortune as a sensitive person flourishing in a world of suffering, I was able to study the human world around me and found ways to separate off from the suffering. With the guidance of older women and some older men in my life, I have led a happy, healthy and fulfilling life.
There are sensitive people in the world, far more capable than me; their lives are too precious to be lost as the lives of Schubert, Chopin and Van Gogh were lost. I wish to be able to provide some aid to these special people. While my life and my own character are far from perfect, more than two decades into my journey as a self-aware sensitive man I have some suggestions for sensitive people like me.
Source for Sensitive People, an essay written in the late 1990s scheduled for publication in the fall, has the beginning of what I can offer sensitive people. It will contain a glimpse of life that nurtures sensitive people’s needs for peace, beauty and harmony. Central to the content of this book is that as sensitive people we must lead our lives in ways that protect and nurture us, rather than make us victims of a human world controlled by violent men, money-chasers and puritans. In our own life-affirming personal world of beauty and love, we can flourish and celebrate life fully.
Is the place of sensitive people in the human world to be martyrs, as the story of Jesus in the Western culture seems to say? Is the plight of sensitive people to suffer and die, as Don McLean’s tribute to Vincent Van Gogh suggests:
“And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.”
There are many kinds of people. The violent men, the money-chasers and the puritans that hold sway over the larger human world can be overwhelming for sensitive people. Sensitive people seek to live in ways of beauty, of peace and of deeply held ideals that yearn for a better human world—a world, we are told, that is not for mortals to attain.
Yet, in my life, my sensitivity has been a blessing, because I have protected it from the harsh world of the violent men, money-chasers and puritans. The natural world and the loving practices of community activists seeking to improve the life of those around me show me what humanity can be.
Given my good fortune as a sensitive person flourishing in a world of suffering, I was able to study the human world around me and found ways to separate off from the suffering. With the guidance of older women and some older men in my life, I have led a happy, healthy and fulfilling life.
There are sensitive people in the world, far more capable than me; their lives are too precious to be lost as the lives of Schubert, Chopin and Van Gogh were lost. I wish to be able to provide some aid to these special people. While my life and my own character are far from perfect, more than two decades into my journey as a self-aware sensitive man I have some suggestions for sensitive people like me.
Source for Sensitive People, an essay written in the late 1990s scheduled for publication in the fall, has the beginning of what I can offer sensitive people. It will contain a glimpse of life that nurtures sensitive people’s needs for peace, beauty and harmony. Central to the content of this book is that as sensitive people we must lead our lives in ways that protect and nurture us, rather than make us victims of a human world controlled by violent men, money-chasers and puritans. In our own life-affirming personal world of beauty and love, we can flourish and celebrate life fully.
Young Children and the Eggs of Eastertime
During this time, the warming Earth is re-awakening. Early spring flowers—yellow daffodils and forsythia, purple, red and white hyacinths and pale blue periwinkle—are arising from the cool Earth while eggs are being laid and hatched. On occasion, I lift up a stone or a large piece of thick bark and find tiny snakes, still wet with their embryonic fluid, sleeping in the dark, safe cover.
Local eggs, long scarce when the hens stop laying in the cold of winter, return to the market, bought by Easter egg shoppers with little knowledge of the cycles of life around us. Ramps, a green leaf with a tangy garlic flavor, spring up from the Earth as the first harvest from the ground. Adding milk from a local dairy and onions from our garden stored over the winter in our unheated basement, each spring we make an omelet to celebrate the new life emerging from the Earth.
My wife babysits a young child, the twenty-month old son of a friend of my wife’s daughter. My stepdaughter and the mom have known each other since before they can remember; from their view, they have always been part of each other’s life. My wife has likewise always been a presence in the young Mom’s life. When she was pregnant with her and her partner’s baby, the young Mom knew she wanted my wife to care for her young child.
Caring for the baby is a delight to my wife, who relishes time with young children and babies and has babysat for children of friends and neighbors for many years. I have also had the good fortune of sometimes caring for the young lives. The connections deepen our relationship with the families and the parents and my wife are mutually grateful for the opportunity.
Recently, the parents of the baby my wife currently cares for had us over for dinner and we found out that a neighbor of theirs, a blind older woman, sells eggs from hens she raises as a means to get a little more money. We asked our friends to get eggs for us from the woman, allowing us to both support local food and to aid a brave woman in need.
It is said that we reap what we sow; in modern terms, what we give energy to we bring into our lives. By caring for a close friend’s baby, my wife takes part in the sacred re-creation of life. By buying eggs locally, we get inexpensive, high quality eggs while providing a little aid to a woman with a disability. By living in a conscientious way, life can be full and meaningful even in our smallest of acts.
The sacred re-creation of life is part the flow of life through generations. By taking part in it, we receive strength and joy. My wife’s life is much more fulfilling because of her caring for young lives. Our family and community is strengthened by her caring for a child of a lifelong friend of her daughter, making the connections between the families thick and deep with generations of shared love.
Sensitive people’s love of beauty and life pulls us into the human and natural world and into life-affirming works; the compassion we feel for others strengthens our relationships once we learn the wisdom to guide it. Learning from experience, my wife and I have received insight through lessons of failure and foolishness, making our sensitivity a doorway into a fulfilling life. Even as we age, we continue to deepen our relationships with the natural and human worlds around us, moving us closer to the center of the river of life that flows for unimaginable eons of time on this hard and wonderful Earth.
Local eggs, long scarce when the hens stop laying in the cold of winter, return to the market, bought by Easter egg shoppers with little knowledge of the cycles of life around us. Ramps, a green leaf with a tangy garlic flavor, spring up from the Earth as the first harvest from the ground. Adding milk from a local dairy and onions from our garden stored over the winter in our unheated basement, each spring we make an omelet to celebrate the new life emerging from the Earth.
My wife babysits a young child, the twenty-month old son of a friend of my wife’s daughter. My stepdaughter and the mom have known each other since before they can remember; from their view, they have always been part of each other’s life. My wife has likewise always been a presence in the young Mom’s life. When she was pregnant with her and her partner’s baby, the young Mom knew she wanted my wife to care for her young child.
Caring for the baby is a delight to my wife, who relishes time with young children and babies and has babysat for children of friends and neighbors for many years. I have also had the good fortune of sometimes caring for the young lives. The connections deepen our relationship with the families and the parents and my wife are mutually grateful for the opportunity.
Recently, the parents of the baby my wife currently cares for had us over for dinner and we found out that a neighbor of theirs, a blind older woman, sells eggs from hens she raises as a means to get a little more money. We asked our friends to get eggs for us from the woman, allowing us to both support local food and to aid a brave woman in need.
It is said that we reap what we sow; in modern terms, what we give energy to we bring into our lives. By caring for a close friend’s baby, my wife takes part in the sacred re-creation of life. By buying eggs locally, we get inexpensive, high quality eggs while providing a little aid to a woman with a disability. By living in a conscientious way, life can be full and meaningful even in our smallest of acts.
The sacred re-creation of life is part the flow of life through generations. By taking part in it, we receive strength and joy. My wife’s life is much more fulfilling because of her caring for young lives. Our family and community is strengthened by her caring for a child of a lifelong friend of her daughter, making the connections between the families thick and deep with generations of shared love.
Sensitive people’s love of beauty and life pulls us into the human and natural world and into life-affirming works; the compassion we feel for others strengthens our relationships once we learn the wisdom to guide it. Learning from experience, my wife and I have received insight through lessons of failure and foolishness, making our sensitivity a doorway into a fulfilling life. Even as we age, we continue to deepen our relationships with the natural and human worlds around us, moving us closer to the center of the river of life that flows for unimaginable eons of time on this hard and wonderful Earth.
Avoiding Harm - the crucial practice
As the midsummer abundance of local food continues to flow into our lives, we are sharing the bounty with friends. A few nights ago, our friend from Saint Patrick’s Day hosted us with a meal including tomatoes from her garden with Feta cheese with a berry Balsamic vinegar dressing and a dessert of local peaches in cream. We brought our IPA, which we all enjoyed. After that, we hosted friends for a meal of pasta with our Pesto Genovese, canned tomatoes and other ingredients with a homemade garlic-rosemary spelt bread, a local salad with greens from our Farmer’s Market, heirloom tomatoes from our garden and other local foods, with a tart of local peaches for dessert.
At both meals, our friends discussed their childhood communities in cities a few hours from us. One talked, as she frequently does, of the urban parks that allowed her to spend her childhood playing in nature and later how she led a life close to the Earth surrounded by forests. Another friend spoke of her old community as seemingly empty to her emotionally and culturally; a place where it was difficult for her to feel truly connected to others. As sensitive people, our friends and we share a love of natural beauty, peace, close relationships and an emotional intimacy that often does not fit into the communities created by traditional Western culture.
Communities are essential to our lives and community building is common by proselytizing puritans, philanthropic money-chasers and violent men who “hate who they hate and love who they love.” While these qualities have virtues, they also perpetuate conflict by creating societies of victors and vanquished, rich and poor, exalted and hated. In these communities, sensitive people are often targets of ridicule because our love for peace, harmony, compassion and beauty often interferes with the goals of people dominated by the violent man-money-chaser-puritan aspects.
The failure of these conglomerates of traditional society—the puritans, the money-chasers and the violent men communities—to build peace with other communities and nations is one of the ongoing crises of human history. Communities of common people have held together in hamlets and villages while their larger societies have fought wars and oppressed people different from them for millennia. In perpetuating the traditional hatreds and imbalances of this tragic history, violent men, money-chasers and puritans fall victim of sending out negativity and, consequentially, receiving negativity back.
My childhood saw my sensitivity overlaid by trauma and a patriarchal, small Midwestern community viewing true manhood as aggressive and domineering. When I was twelve, I told a teacher that I planned to become a soldier and would need to be able to kill people to do that. By the time I turned fifteen, my sensitive nature had begun to emerge; I had read “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau and All Men are Brothers by Mohandas Gandhi. I announced I was a non-violent pacifist and became a vegetarian, not knowing anyone who was either one.
In the ten years that followed, I struggled with anger stemming from trauma, a patriarchal view that solving the world’s problems through “righteous” violence was an obligation of manhood and a sensitive inner self that could not endure living an angry and aggressive life. Through my good fortune and with the help of truly kind, compassionate people, my sensitive nature emerged and took over my life. A mysterious spiritual journey has since unfolded, as I’ve tried to live as a sensitive, compassionate man who is flawed and challenged by living in a human world where men are often encouraged and materially rewarded for being aggressive, domineering and violent.
As I learned, sensitive people’s depth of feelings and expansive sense of self does not fit well with the rules and lifestyles advocated by puritans, money-chasers and violent men. A violent man can reconcile risking his life and killing when his leaders tell him to; a money-chaser can live happily with personal wealth while others suffer from poverty and starvation; a puritan can proclaim his father’s books to be holy and believe that his deity condemns people of different traditions, even though he has no personal knowledge of them. These imbalances perpetuate conflicts between groups, which many puritans, money-chasers and violent men casually accept as inevitable and necessary.
Sensitive people experience profound suffering when considering these aspects of the human world and long for a world of peace, compassion and harmony. We experience empathy for people different from us and feel their suffering as our own. Violence sickens us, poverty of others moves us to charity, and judging others simply because they do not follow the traditions of our fathers feels false and hypocritical. Because sensitive people’s feelings and sense of self do not fit into the rules created by the traditional violent man-puritan-money-chaser culture, our sensitivity is often condemned as weakness. Yet, if sensitive people can live our ideals of compassion, peace, love, beauty and harmony, we can live a spiritual life that benefits others, even the violent men, puritans and money-chasers.
Source for Sensitive People sees not doing harm as a way of life. Unless controlled by trauma, sensitive people desire is to live peaceful lives in harmony with others and the Earth around us. Sensitive people often volunteer to help those in need, may become vegetarians or vegans, seek to preserve nature rather than destroy the Earth, tend to avoid people rather than have conflict with them, and are drawn toward lives of art, beauty, sensuality, love and reflection. Not doing harm is a desire of sensitive people and one of our greater virtues. It also has the potential to help us personally, because pairing good works with not doing harm allows our positive actions to return to us without generating conflict that interferes with the Covenant of Good Works.
Recognizing this key part of our nature, honoring it and seeking to reduce the harm we do is a key spiritual path for us, even as out-of-balance societies dominated by men lusting for power-over-others and wealth without regard for the consequences claim that violence and greed is human nature. As sensitive people, we can only excel if we attempt to make peace and live in harmony with the lives around us; it is self-destructive to us spiritually and physically to do otherwise. Seeing all life as sacred and recognizing that all harm sent out is likely to return, if not to us to our children and grandchildren, is central to freeing our lives from the perpetuation of suffering called history.
Most people have little real power in the larger human world, so it is important as sensitive people we seek to reduce the harm we do with the means we have. It is useful for us to consider how we as individuals can reach out and make peace with those who we are supposed to fear and hate; to liberate those who we have power over; to lessen our harmful impact on the natural world; and to care for ourselves, our families and our communities.
This especially means living with the understanding that as sensitive people we need to care for ourselves emotionally in ways that others may not. The face-to-face community that we live in must be supportive of our sensitivity, as the community I currently live in is. Not only must sensitive people serve our communities; in a human world dominated by violent men, money-chasers and puritans, we must find and strengthen communities that respect and honor our sensitive, life-loving natures. By doing this we strengthen our lives and the lives of those around us, as well as the future we all share.
At both meals, our friends discussed their childhood communities in cities a few hours from us. One talked, as she frequently does, of the urban parks that allowed her to spend her childhood playing in nature and later how she led a life close to the Earth surrounded by forests. Another friend spoke of her old community as seemingly empty to her emotionally and culturally; a place where it was difficult for her to feel truly connected to others. As sensitive people, our friends and we share a love of natural beauty, peace, close relationships and an emotional intimacy that often does not fit into the communities created by traditional Western culture.
Communities are essential to our lives and community building is common by proselytizing puritans, philanthropic money-chasers and violent men who “hate who they hate and love who they love.” While these qualities have virtues, they also perpetuate conflict by creating societies of victors and vanquished, rich and poor, exalted and hated. In these communities, sensitive people are often targets of ridicule because our love for peace, harmony, compassion and beauty often interferes with the goals of people dominated by the violent man-money-chaser-puritan aspects.
The failure of these conglomerates of traditional society—the puritans, the money-chasers and the violent men communities—to build peace with other communities and nations is one of the ongoing crises of human history. Communities of common people have held together in hamlets and villages while their larger societies have fought wars and oppressed people different from them for millennia. In perpetuating the traditional hatreds and imbalances of this tragic history, violent men, money-chasers and puritans fall victim of sending out negativity and, consequentially, receiving negativity back.
My childhood saw my sensitivity overlaid by trauma and a patriarchal, small Midwestern community viewing true manhood as aggressive and domineering. When I was twelve, I told a teacher that I planned to become a soldier and would need to be able to kill people to do that. By the time I turned fifteen, my sensitive nature had begun to emerge; I had read “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau and All Men are Brothers by Mohandas Gandhi. I announced I was a non-violent pacifist and became a vegetarian, not knowing anyone who was either one.
In the ten years that followed, I struggled with anger stemming from trauma, a patriarchal view that solving the world’s problems through “righteous” violence was an obligation of manhood and a sensitive inner self that could not endure living an angry and aggressive life. Through my good fortune and with the help of truly kind, compassionate people, my sensitive nature emerged and took over my life. A mysterious spiritual journey has since unfolded, as I’ve tried to live as a sensitive, compassionate man who is flawed and challenged by living in a human world where men are often encouraged and materially rewarded for being aggressive, domineering and violent.
As I learned, sensitive people’s depth of feelings and expansive sense of self does not fit well with the rules and lifestyles advocated by puritans, money-chasers and violent men. A violent man can reconcile risking his life and killing when his leaders tell him to; a money-chaser can live happily with personal wealth while others suffer from poverty and starvation; a puritan can proclaim his father’s books to be holy and believe that his deity condemns people of different traditions, even though he has no personal knowledge of them. These imbalances perpetuate conflicts between groups, which many puritans, money-chasers and violent men casually accept as inevitable and necessary.
Sensitive people experience profound suffering when considering these aspects of the human world and long for a world of peace, compassion and harmony. We experience empathy for people different from us and feel their suffering as our own. Violence sickens us, poverty of others moves us to charity, and judging others simply because they do not follow the traditions of our fathers feels false and hypocritical. Because sensitive people’s feelings and sense of self do not fit into the rules created by the traditional violent man-puritan-money-chaser culture, our sensitivity is often condemned as weakness. Yet, if sensitive people can live our ideals of compassion, peace, love, beauty and harmony, we can live a spiritual life that benefits others, even the violent men, puritans and money-chasers.
Source for Sensitive People sees not doing harm as a way of life. Unless controlled by trauma, sensitive people desire is to live peaceful lives in harmony with others and the Earth around us. Sensitive people often volunteer to help those in need, may become vegetarians or vegans, seek to preserve nature rather than destroy the Earth, tend to avoid people rather than have conflict with them, and are drawn toward lives of art, beauty, sensuality, love and reflection. Not doing harm is a desire of sensitive people and one of our greater virtues. It also has the potential to help us personally, because pairing good works with not doing harm allows our positive actions to return to us without generating conflict that interferes with the Covenant of Good Works.
Recognizing this key part of our nature, honoring it and seeking to reduce the harm we do is a key spiritual path for us, even as out-of-balance societies dominated by men lusting for power-over-others and wealth without regard for the consequences claim that violence and greed is human nature. As sensitive people, we can only excel if we attempt to make peace and live in harmony with the lives around us; it is self-destructive to us spiritually and physically to do otherwise. Seeing all life as sacred and recognizing that all harm sent out is likely to return, if not to us to our children and grandchildren, is central to freeing our lives from the perpetuation of suffering called history.
Most people have little real power in the larger human world, so it is important as sensitive people we seek to reduce the harm we do with the means we have. It is useful for us to consider how we as individuals can reach out and make peace with those who we are supposed to fear and hate; to liberate those who we have power over; to lessen our harmful impact on the natural world; and to care for ourselves, our families and our communities.
This especially means living with the understanding that as sensitive people we need to care for ourselves emotionally in ways that others may not. The face-to-face community that we live in must be supportive of our sensitivity, as the community I currently live in is. Not only must sensitive people serve our communities; in a human world dominated by violent men, money-chasers and puritans, we must find and strengthen communities that respect and honor our sensitive, life-loving natures. By doing this we strengthen our lives and the lives of those around us, as well as the future we all share.
Empowering Yourself: Publication of Source for Sensitive People
In these hard times, it is essential that sensitive people empower ourselves. Written in the mid to late 1990s after meeting my wife, Source for Sensitive People details a personal spiritual revolution for me. I envisioned living in a more life-affirming way during my psychosis and my wife was a catalyst for a powerful leap forward, giving me more than I could imagine. The book itself is more or less notes on what I learned from that journey and my wife’s wisdom applied to my life.
I want to help people like my wife and I, who have an emotional depth and ideals of peace, love, harmony, beauty and intimacy that make it difficult for us to navigate the harsh and unfeeling constraints of warfare society. I wrote it knowing that whoever reads it will have their own personal world, their own interpretation and their own dreams that I cannot know.
To empower ourselves, we must change our personal world, build on the positive and reduce the negative. Through changing our personal web-of-life, we can overcome traumas, abuse, bad relationships, addictions, loneliness and other challenges that we commonly face. Source for Sensitive People was written concisely as possible, encouraging the reader to focus on her or his face-to-face web of life, learn from those around him or her and gain emotional strength through a happy, healthy face to face community.
After writing it, I set it aside, not particularly interested in bringing attention to myself through publishing. Instead, I continued to apply the ideas to my own life. Part of these ideas were to practice good works and acts of charity in my personal and the larger world. Eventually some of the mental health work I did on that path brought me to the attention of some people outside my community. While on a sabbatical beginning in 2014 from mental health work, I decided to publish writings to help sensitive people like my wife and our family. Using material that mainly developed decades ago, I am now beginning to publish the Small Gifts for Sensitive People series that this book is a part of.
In the two decades since Source for Sensitive People was written our lives have flourished, despite many crises in the world around us. Every few years I reviewed it to see what I would change, which has been very little. Two decades after I wrote it, I would say that my mistakes were mainly times when I failed to apply it. In the meanwhile, I’ve had many happy times and personal successes in my face-to-face community, ranging from gaining many friends to having a positive effect on my community to attaining a deep spiritual understanding of my personal path. When I’ve carried out the practices, I’ve also experienced many times of deep contentment, happiness and bliss.
I’ve gained a deep gratitude for all the gifts I’ve received, which includes everything that Westerners might call “my” accomplishments. I reflect on tremendous good fortune that I can only ascribe to luck, my dear wife and the crucial kindness of strangers.
I do not know if the path I have taken will help you in your personal web of life and with your journey. Ultimately, if someone chooses to read it, it is up to each person to measure it by his or her own life and apply or reject it however seems appropriate. All I can say is that the principles in it have helped me tremendously. I hope it and the other essays and short books in the Small Gifts for Sensitive People series will do the same for you.
Amazon Kindle version: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J5MKNXQ/...
Smashwords E-book version: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
I want to help people like my wife and I, who have an emotional depth and ideals of peace, love, harmony, beauty and intimacy that make it difficult for us to navigate the harsh and unfeeling constraints of warfare society. I wrote it knowing that whoever reads it will have their own personal world, their own interpretation and their own dreams that I cannot know.
To empower ourselves, we must change our personal world, build on the positive and reduce the negative. Through changing our personal web-of-life, we can overcome traumas, abuse, bad relationships, addictions, loneliness and other challenges that we commonly face. Source for Sensitive People was written concisely as possible, encouraging the reader to focus on her or his face-to-face web of life, learn from those around him or her and gain emotional strength through a happy, healthy face to face community.
After writing it, I set it aside, not particularly interested in bringing attention to myself through publishing. Instead, I continued to apply the ideas to my own life. Part of these ideas were to practice good works and acts of charity in my personal and the larger world. Eventually some of the mental health work I did on that path brought me to the attention of some people outside my community. While on a sabbatical beginning in 2014 from mental health work, I decided to publish writings to help sensitive people like my wife and our family. Using material that mainly developed decades ago, I am now beginning to publish the Small Gifts for Sensitive People series that this book is a part of.
In the two decades since Source for Sensitive People was written our lives have flourished, despite many crises in the world around us. Every few years I reviewed it to see what I would change, which has been very little. Two decades after I wrote it, I would say that my mistakes were mainly times when I failed to apply it. In the meanwhile, I’ve had many happy times and personal successes in my face-to-face community, ranging from gaining many friends to having a positive effect on my community to attaining a deep spiritual understanding of my personal path. When I’ve carried out the practices, I’ve also experienced many times of deep contentment, happiness and bliss.
I’ve gained a deep gratitude for all the gifts I’ve received, which includes everything that Westerners might call “my” accomplishments. I reflect on tremendous good fortune that I can only ascribe to luck, my dear wife and the crucial kindness of strangers.
I do not know if the path I have taken will help you in your personal web of life and with your journey. Ultimately, if someone chooses to read it, it is up to each person to measure it by his or her own life and apply or reject it however seems appropriate. All I can say is that the principles in it have helped me tremendously. I hope it and the other essays and short books in the Small Gifts for Sensitive People series will do the same for you.
Amazon Kindle version: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J5MKNXQ/...
Smashwords E-book version: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Why Support Sensitivity in a Crisis-filled world?
I studied different sorts of people for over a decade, coming to believe that describing the myriad of human beings was difficult. We automatically tend to think that basically most people are like us. I realized, however, that the differences between sensitive people, thinkers, partiers, puritans, mechanic-craftsmen, violent men, money-chasers and activists is at a deeply elemental level—it is as if we are virtually different species with different subcultures, goals in life, experiences, romantic partners and different worlds that we wish to live in. Political views are largely the product of a person’s aspects, ethnicity and gender. We think differently, we feel differently, and if disharmonious aspects like puritan-partier or violent man-sensitive person exist within the same person, our lives are often stories of conflicting inner selves fighting for control.
Violent men, money-chasers and puritans often have characteristics that conflict with sensitive people, thinkers and activists, among others. The trio of traditional aspects have virtues and the less traditional others have flaws and vis versa. All have their own ways of living, their own life paths and their own stories of suffering and transcendence. Why should I take sides by speaking from the point of view of a sensitive person when I share some qualities with the traditional aspects?
Ultimately, I decided to write to support sensitive people because I realized that sensitive people are an important and often-maligned group who do not fit well into the human world created by violence, money-chasing and sensual control. After years of attempting to write about the human panorama of experience, I felt seeking to support sensitive people was a vital way to make the human world better.
This commitment was supported recently during a trip to visit friends in the Bay Area of California. Our friends include an artistic dancer who a couple of decades ago had invented with a computer programmer a synthesizer that could be played by a person dancing. They attached devices to wrists and other parts of the body and the dancer’s movements would send messages to the synthesizer to make music.
With another friend and her two year old daughter watching, we enjoyed a brief show where the dancer produced music through his dance. The two year old was delighted and began to dance with him, much to everyone’s enjoyment. It was a nice moment, made more meaningful because as sensitive people we all share a love of art, music and children.
When I asked the dancer about his invention, he explained that he has envisioned the machine to be a toy for children and young people, encouraging them to dance and make music. It obviously was fun for the two year old and something that sensitive people could enjoy throughout life.
The rights to the device were sold an electronics company to refine and market it. However, the money-chasers at the company made plans to radically change the invention. They changed the device to aim it at violent-minded young boys—instead of music, the boys’ movements would make the sounds of violence and war, akin to comic book heroes and villains. Deciding that this would not make enough profit, the company then shelved the invention.
A little later in the day, I came into the TV room where the two year old girl had been left watching the beginning of a movie adaptation of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit story. The Mom assumed the movie would follow the delight and innocence of the original Peter Rabbit tales. Again, however, the creation of a sensitive person for children was perverted. Within the first few minutes of the movie, the plot twisted into the killing of Peter’s father by a farmer, followed by the death of the farmer.
To help the innocent child, who seemed frightened and transfixed by the story, I explained that this was a made up story that was scary to get people’s attention. As I said this a couple of times, the child relaxed and then seemed bored by the movie and began to pay attention to other things. I explained the situation to the Mom and the older women with us and they changed the TV, perplexed by how a movie about a rabbit had turned so violent, especially when aimed for young people who, like the girl, had not been introduced to the terrifying concepts of death and murder.
Both the dancer and Beatrix Potter created their art to support and enrich the lives of sensitive people and to encourage children to develop their own sensitivity, their love of beauty, art and innocence. Taken by mainly male money-chasers, their creativity was turned into products that sought to make money through imaginary violence and death, serving children who are prone to violence and supporting the violent man culture that has held sway in the so-called civilized world since the beginning of large-scale warfare a few millennia ago. In doing so, the money-chasers twisted sensitive people’s art and accomplishments into something that perpetuates the violent man money-chaser culture, including its suppression of sensitivity and sensitive people.
After wrestling for years with the complexity of trying to write something from all the perspectives of people, I choose to write for sensitive people because we often fall into the trap of believing we shouldn’t be sensitive. Rather, we throw ourselves onto the rocks of the violent man-money-chaser-puritan ways of life, much to our own detriment. By recognizing our virtues and protecting our sensitivity, we empower ourselves. We can enrich the troubled and crisis-filled violent man-money-chaser-puritan world by encouraging others to be sensitive, have compassion and live in ways of peace and beauty. In this way, living a full, rewarding like is a way sensitive people can help the human world be a happier, better place.
Violent men, money-chasers and puritans often have characteristics that conflict with sensitive people, thinkers and activists, among others. The trio of traditional aspects have virtues and the less traditional others have flaws and vis versa. All have their own ways of living, their own life paths and their own stories of suffering and transcendence. Why should I take sides by speaking from the point of view of a sensitive person when I share some qualities with the traditional aspects?
Ultimately, I decided to write to support sensitive people because I realized that sensitive people are an important and often-maligned group who do not fit well into the human world created by violence, money-chasing and sensual control. After years of attempting to write about the human panorama of experience, I felt seeking to support sensitive people was a vital way to make the human world better.
This commitment was supported recently during a trip to visit friends in the Bay Area of California. Our friends include an artistic dancer who a couple of decades ago had invented with a computer programmer a synthesizer that could be played by a person dancing. They attached devices to wrists and other parts of the body and the dancer’s movements would send messages to the synthesizer to make music.
With another friend and her two year old daughter watching, we enjoyed a brief show where the dancer produced music through his dance. The two year old was delighted and began to dance with him, much to everyone’s enjoyment. It was a nice moment, made more meaningful because as sensitive people we all share a love of art, music and children.
When I asked the dancer about his invention, he explained that he has envisioned the machine to be a toy for children and young people, encouraging them to dance and make music. It obviously was fun for the two year old and something that sensitive people could enjoy throughout life.
The rights to the device were sold an electronics company to refine and market it. However, the money-chasers at the company made plans to radically change the invention. They changed the device to aim it at violent-minded young boys—instead of music, the boys’ movements would make the sounds of violence and war, akin to comic book heroes and villains. Deciding that this would not make enough profit, the company then shelved the invention.
A little later in the day, I came into the TV room where the two year old girl had been left watching the beginning of a movie adaptation of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit story. The Mom assumed the movie would follow the delight and innocence of the original Peter Rabbit tales. Again, however, the creation of a sensitive person for children was perverted. Within the first few minutes of the movie, the plot twisted into the killing of Peter’s father by a farmer, followed by the death of the farmer.
To help the innocent child, who seemed frightened and transfixed by the story, I explained that this was a made up story that was scary to get people’s attention. As I said this a couple of times, the child relaxed and then seemed bored by the movie and began to pay attention to other things. I explained the situation to the Mom and the older women with us and they changed the TV, perplexed by how a movie about a rabbit had turned so violent, especially when aimed for young people who, like the girl, had not been introduced to the terrifying concepts of death and murder.
Both the dancer and Beatrix Potter created their art to support and enrich the lives of sensitive people and to encourage children to develop their own sensitivity, their love of beauty, art and innocence. Taken by mainly male money-chasers, their creativity was turned into products that sought to make money through imaginary violence and death, serving children who are prone to violence and supporting the violent man culture that has held sway in the so-called civilized world since the beginning of large-scale warfare a few millennia ago. In doing so, the money-chasers twisted sensitive people’s art and accomplishments into something that perpetuates the violent man money-chaser culture, including its suppression of sensitivity and sensitive people.
After wrestling for years with the complexity of trying to write something from all the perspectives of people, I choose to write for sensitive people because we often fall into the trap of believing we shouldn’t be sensitive. Rather, we throw ourselves onto the rocks of the violent man-money-chaser-puritan ways of life, much to our own detriment. By recognizing our virtues and protecting our sensitivity, we empower ourselves. We can enrich the troubled and crisis-filled violent man-money-chaser-puritan world by encouraging others to be sensitive, have compassion and live in ways of peace and beauty. In this way, living a full, rewarding like is a way sensitive people can help the human world be a happier, better place.
Considering Native Americans and others on Thanksgiving
I have heard that Thanksgiving is a day of mourning for Native People. This seems likely, since any honest recognition of the lasting injustice and institutional racism in the inheritance of land and wealth in the United States speaks volume of the extent of suffering over 500 years of European invasions have caused. For years, my wife and I gave money to support Native Americans and their traditional culture through an organization created by sensitive-seeker activists. Likewise, we have bought sculptures from a Cherokee artist and have learned the heart-wrenching stories of their survival through centuries of European invasions and ethnic cleansing.
Sensitive people and activists often reach out and make sacrifices to promote peace and justice. Recently my wife saw a concert pianist who is an international human rights activist; a couple of months earlier we attended an art reception for a ceramic and glass artist who was donating 30% of income from her art to Doctors Without Borders and other international aid charities. In another instance, I worked with a former violent man who reacted into becoming a Christian Pacifist who fasted for 42 days in 1992 during the period that Columbus’s ships sailed to begin the invasion of this land as a commemoration of 500 years of struggle and resistance by Native People.
In our personal circles, sensitive people and artists who have had romantic relationships, marriages, children or adopted children from other ethnic groups, including Native Americans, Africans, Arabs, African-Americans, Latin Americans and others. These choices change our lives, giving us a life history and personal knowledge that is more empathetic and concerned about peace, harmony and justice with other ethnic and religious groups. Our communities and families cross the lines of traditional hatreds and we see our own ethnic origins and privilege through that much more complex lens.
This contrasts with some white money-chasers I’ve known who were slumlords and/or racists and white violent men who encounter people of color mainly through their work as policemen. I’ve known white puritans who travel to other countries to proselytize people of color whose history has been marked by invasion and exploitation by Europeans and puritan white women who used the Bible to justify not dating men of color. Through these actions, white people who have these traditional aspects perpetuate traditional hatreds with a triple punch of violence, economic power-over-others and religious proselytizing, benefiting from injustices that prior generations of Europeans brought about.
I recently attended an art discussion by an international Arab woman artist who said that as politicians in the United States had grown more hostile to others that she was receiving more requests for shows and discussions in the United States by artists here. As the traditional and politically conservative alliance of white money-chasers, violent men and puritans perpetuate traditional hatreds and gain power-over-others, wealth and followers from the current situation, sensitive people, artists, activists, thinkers, and others reach across ethnic, religious, national and other traditional boundaries to work for peace and justice. Likewise, the gender gap showing women—who tend to be more sensitive—voting much more than men for policies and politicians who are seeking to improve relationships between traditionally conflicting groups.
Supporting sensitive people and the more liberal allies of thinkers, activists and others is a way to support the movement towards peace and justice. As sensitive people support ourselves and seek, by our own natures, to reach out, get to know and help those who have been or are being oppressed by white money-chasers, violent men and puritans, we seek to make the world better and counteract the harm people with more exploitive aspects do.
I am deeply thankful this year for the bounty my family and community receives, but this gratitude combines with a consideration the importance of compassion and good works toward those who suffer. This is especially important towards those who my ancestors took land and wealth from, directly and indirectly, using the traditional triple assault of violence, economic power-over-others and proselytizing. I am also thankful that I can work and have enough time and abundance that I can do good works and receive the blessings of the Covenant of Good Works through my acts. I remain a deeply fortunate person; my good fortune is a responsibility as well as profound luck in this tragically hard and wonderful world.
Sensitive people and activists often reach out and make sacrifices to promote peace and justice. Recently my wife saw a concert pianist who is an international human rights activist; a couple of months earlier we attended an art reception for a ceramic and glass artist who was donating 30% of income from her art to Doctors Without Borders and other international aid charities. In another instance, I worked with a former violent man who reacted into becoming a Christian Pacifist who fasted for 42 days in 1992 during the period that Columbus’s ships sailed to begin the invasion of this land as a commemoration of 500 years of struggle and resistance by Native People.
In our personal circles, sensitive people and artists who have had romantic relationships, marriages, children or adopted children from other ethnic groups, including Native Americans, Africans, Arabs, African-Americans, Latin Americans and others. These choices change our lives, giving us a life history and personal knowledge that is more empathetic and concerned about peace, harmony and justice with other ethnic and religious groups. Our communities and families cross the lines of traditional hatreds and we see our own ethnic origins and privilege through that much more complex lens.
This contrasts with some white money-chasers I’ve known who were slumlords and/or racists and white violent men who encounter people of color mainly through their work as policemen. I’ve known white puritans who travel to other countries to proselytize people of color whose history has been marked by invasion and exploitation by Europeans and puritan white women who used the Bible to justify not dating men of color. Through these actions, white people who have these traditional aspects perpetuate traditional hatreds with a triple punch of violence, economic power-over-others and religious proselytizing, benefiting from injustices that prior generations of Europeans brought about.
I recently attended an art discussion by an international Arab woman artist who said that as politicians in the United States had grown more hostile to others that she was receiving more requests for shows and discussions in the United States by artists here. As the traditional and politically conservative alliance of white money-chasers, violent men and puritans perpetuate traditional hatreds and gain power-over-others, wealth and followers from the current situation, sensitive people, artists, activists, thinkers, and others reach across ethnic, religious, national and other traditional boundaries to work for peace and justice. Likewise, the gender gap showing women—who tend to be more sensitive—voting much more than men for policies and politicians who are seeking to improve relationships between traditionally conflicting groups.
Supporting sensitive people and the more liberal allies of thinkers, activists and others is a way to support the movement towards peace and justice. As sensitive people support ourselves and seek, by our own natures, to reach out, get to know and help those who have been or are being oppressed by white money-chasers, violent men and puritans, we seek to make the world better and counteract the harm people with more exploitive aspects do.
I am deeply thankful this year for the bounty my family and community receives, but this gratitude combines with a consideration the importance of compassion and good works toward those who suffer. This is especially important towards those who my ancestors took land and wealth from, directly and indirectly, using the traditional triple assault of violence, economic power-over-others and proselytizing. I am also thankful that I can work and have enough time and abundance that I can do good works and receive the blessings of the Covenant of Good Works through my acts. I remain a deeply fortunate person; my good fortune is a responsibility as well as profound luck in this tragically hard and wonderful world.
The River of Life
We are all born into a river of life that has created us from unfathomable generations of life before us and is likely to continue in some form for eons past our own time. Taking part in this Earthly
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