Dan Pallotta

10.25.2003

October 26, 2003

These are two of Robert Kennedy's favorite quotations and two of mine as well. The second is by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, and the first is by Edith Hamilton, the great classicist, who described Aeschylus as "the most truly tragic of all the tragedians:"

"Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of ife is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory." - Edith Hamilton

"God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God." - Aeschylus

10.24.2003

October 25, 2003

Last night they were talking about weapons in space on CNN. The U.S. is frightened that our communications satellites may be vulnerable to attack. Secretary Rumsfeld wants to develop laser weapons that will intercept missiles aimed at our satellites, and that could take out enemy satellites as well. War games experts say that every time the scenario is run it ends in global nuclear war because the destruction of the satellites leave military commanders unable to tell whether they are under nuclear attack or not, so they launch their own nuclear missiles for fear they will otherwise be destroyed.

This is what is going on while the nation is watching the Kobe Bryant preliminary hearing and the law suit between Liza Minelli and her ex-husband.

What do we do about this? It seems that there is absolutely nothing we can do. The momentum of military ideology is so overwhelming. Yes, ordinary people, organized together, turned the tide on segregation in the sixties, but who among us could possibly turn the tide on this? There are no answers and there are no answers emerging.

This is where prayer has a role. Somewhere inside the humility of the admission that the human mind has created problems so massive that mere mortals are incapable of solving them - somewhere inside that utter surrender - lies an intelligence far deeper, more creative, and more loving than anything our thinking minds can produce. The more we apply our thinking minds to these problems the larger they get.

Einstein said that, "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Humanity has to be smart enough to realize that it is too smart for its own good. Somewhere in that humility there lies an answer. We must remember that they were largely people of deep faith that created the civil rights movement. Faith is at least in part an abandonment of the insistence on an entirely intellectual solution.

10.23.2003

October 24, 2003

Yesterday CNN reported that the war on terror is going to cost at least $179 billion. This is half of what it cost to put a man on the moon. This is $30 for every man, woman, and child on earth. When you consider that Bangladeshi women work for 18 cents an hour sewing designer jeans for western consumers, a check for $30 is close to a month's wages. What effect do you suppose it would have on terror if the U.S. sent a check for $60 to each of the world's poorest 3 billion people? When are we going to start talking about the power of love and giving and understanding and sharing and putting smiles on peoples' faces and spontaneity and wonderfully childlike crazy ideas instead of fear and protection and armor and weaponry and secrecy and intelligence and manhunts? Because the time has come. The time is overdue. How many times are we going to put money in the toilet and watch it swirl down the drain and then do it over again and again expecting something different to happen? There is that saying in Alcoholics Anonymous that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We are certifiably insane.

I'm not kidding. Can you imagine what would happen if we sent 3 billion people a check for sixty bucks? I bet I know which would be the most popular nation on earth, and the most loved and admired, instead of the most feared. I know we wouldn't have to be worrying about terror if we did that every year. We spend too much time bemoaning how generous we are to the world and not enough time actually being generous. We're the richest freeking nation on earth. Bangladeshi's earn forty times less than our minimum wage. You know how we feel when we hear the head of the company earns 40 times more than we do? And he thinks he's being generous because he gives us health insurance? That's how the rest of the world feels about us. If we were as generous as we think we are that gap wouldn't exist. If we're going to throw money around, let's start throwing it around in a way that will lighten people up, not send them deeper into fear of us. And we might want to include Appalachia and Harlem and South Central L.A. That's part of the developing world too. And terror's as likely to come from there as anywhere else.

October 23, 2003

Thomas Merton is unrelentingly tough, on himself and on the reader, but when you really get to know him you know he loves you:

"The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another'ss imagined greatness. If I do not know who I am, it is because I am the sort of person everyone around me wants me to be. Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think, and acting in a way that betrays God's truth and the integrity of my soul."

Thomas Merton

10.22.2003

October 22, 2003

There is such an overabundance of irony in American culture these days that it almost feels like cheating to write about it. It's too easy.

All of this focus on this poor woman in Florida and about whether or not removing her feeding tube is the equivalent of murder, or starving her to death. Why are we not as up in arms about the millions of children who will starve to death in the developing countries of the world this year? Who never got a feeding tube in the first place? Who will never see the likes of a state-of-the-art hospital room? Who will never have a Governor stand up on their behalf? Who will never have a legislature enact a law to stop their death? All of this grand-standing about rights to life, when the rights to life of millions of children around the world are being denied every year. We could end hunger and starvation on earth in a matter of years if we put half as much effort into it as people are putting into their righteousness on this issue, on both sides.

There are some days when I theorize that humanity is on an evolutionary path - that despite our problems we've come a long way - and that we cannot react to these ironies with anger, but must instead have compassion for the whole human race and an understanding that we are doing the best we can given where we've been and where we are. And then there are other days when it seems to me that we aren't doing anywhere near the best we can - that in fact we're doing about the worst anyone could expect of us, and that we may have come a long way but we haven't come anywhere near as far as we could have if we put some of the same effort into the evolution of our compassion as we have into the evolution of our cars and our comforts and our greed. Today I'm feeling like humanity needs a good kick in the ass - that it needs to confront its hypocrisies, that it needs to take some responsibility for the abject despair of the poor starving children, and that it needs to live up to its true potential, not its lowest expectations, and inspire itself.

I'd like to see these people who are crusading for this woman's life get on a crusade that actually required something more of them than their big mouths. Then I could believe that they really cared about peoples' right to life.

Click Here to Visit the Website of The Hunger Project

10.21.2003

October 21, 2003

As a kid I remember not understanding the commandment about not having false gods before God. I never knew what it meant. I thought it meant you couldn't have little idol statues that you worshipped or something. Little did I know that I didn't need to worry about little statues - there would be much bigger things asking for my idolization. Status. Money. Power. Titles. These are the things our culture worships. It is very difficult not to worship along with it. We are made to feel like losers if we don't have these things. The magazine covers feature the ten richest men in America, America's sexiest couples, the 100 most powerful people in Boston, in New York, in L.A., and even in Des Moines, for God's sake. "What do you do?" "What college did you go to?" "What part of town do you live in?" are the questions we use to get to know one another.

And then there are the consumer products that are elevated above earthly status. The Nike billboards that cover the sides of buildings are bigger than some cathedrals. The gigantic logos of Trump and Citibank and Wells Fargo rest above the clouds on the top floors of America's skyscrapers, visible for miles around. They loom. Watch over us. Then there are the slogans that offer us one-dimensional world views and life philosophies. "Just do it." "Live richly." "Get an MLife." By the way, what on earth is an MLife? I still don't know. "Think different." "Respect the 501." Then the achievements. "AIG. We manage 400 billion dollars in assets," set to choir music definitely more fitting for a fact like that there are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

I don't mean to demonize advertising. I love big huge ads and tiny little ones and all the artists that create them. And ambition can be a good thing. But they are not replacements for love, for God. We have to work toward developing a consciousness and facing the truth, which is, we worship false gods, that offer us nothing. Some people say they don't believe in God, when really they have just been brainwashed to believe in a different god. Others struggle to be present to God but are pulled over and over again into the cyclone of materialism and worldly things, and find ourselves almost unable to stop. Almost..

I keep thinking of a world where service and compassion and love are our Gods. Where the giant billboards say, "End World Hunger," and the skyscrapers have "The Peace Network" on top of them, and the radio is full of public service announcements, and the first question we ask someone is "how are you?" as if we really want to know the answer.

That commandment was really a smart one. It still is. It just points us toward love, and tells us if we're smart we'll keep our focus, because the false gods will always leave us empty, but love will always keep us full.

10.20.2003

October 21, 2003

Every once in a while I remember that 5,000 people died of AIDS today. It doesn't matter which day I remember it. The statistic is the same no matter what day it is. The news is full of speculation about Diana's death and the drama of the Kobe Bryant matter and whether or not Martha Stewart will go to jail. But there's not a mention of a one of the 5,000 people that died of AIDS today. Not a mention of the millions of little AIDS orphans. Not a mention of the 16,000 new people who were infected with HIV today, most of them the poorest of all the poor people in the world. But there's plenty of analysis on the Yankee game and on the stock market.

Imagine if the newspaper kept track of the important things. Imagine if there was a section tracking the AIDS epidemic the way we track stocks. Imagine if there were graphs and charts on the progress the developing nations are making in the fight against hunger. Imagine if each morning we could see estimates on how many people were without a roof over their heads in America the night before - the same way we can see what happened in the baseball game the night before. Imagine if we tracked data and progress on domestic adoptions, on suicide rates, and on breast cancer. Imagine if we were charting progress toward curing multiple sclerosis.

One day our childrens children will live in a society that values the important things and that keeps track of them. It will be a sign of humanity’s love that it wants to know how the rest of humanity is doing. It doesn’t matter so much if we have ended hunger or found a cure for AIDS. The golden rule does not say that we must find a cure for AIDS. It simply says that we should love those with AIDS as we love ourselves. What matters to the people with AIDS and the people who are hungry is the simple knowledge that the society around them cares - that they have not been abandoned - that they have not been forgotten - that they are loved as if it were us in their condition.

Our culture is so addicted to fear and entertainment, and this is exclusively what the media feeds us. The 5,000 people who died of AIDS today offer neither of those things. They only offer us an opportunity for sadness. We don't want any of that right now. Sadness is such a downer, and we're such an upbeat society.

But one day we will realize the value of sadness. One day we will be enlightened enough to know that sadness is our access to love, and that love is all we ever really wanted in the first place.

This is am unforgettable story that Time did on AIDS in Africa two years ago. One day we will live in a society where they run it every week.

Time Story on AIDS in Africa

10.19.2003

October 20, 2003

I love Carl Sagan's masterpiece, "Cosmos." This was one of the facts in it that affected me the most: "There are some hundred billion galaxies, each with, on the average, a hundred billion stars. In all the galaxies, there are perhaps as many planets as stars - about ten billion trillion." And this is only the number in the known universe at the time he wrote it.

The numbers are unfathomable - abstract in the extreme. I don't know how to think about ten billion trillion planets. But that, it has occurred to me, is what is valuable about it. I used to try to think about it - try to imagine how big that number is and what that many planets means. Now there is a freedom in knowing that I am incapable of thinking about it. I have begun to accept that it is simply awesome, that is, that it inspires awe in me. And awe is a very valuable thing. It is so much better than resignation or predictability, or knowledge, even. I have also stopped asking the question, "what does it al mean?" and instead have begun to revel in the fact that I will never know what it all means - that I am a part of an unimaginable mystery. I have always loved mystery and the unknown. Anything can happen in the unknown. Yes, that means bad things can happen, but I have always tended more to be struck by the fact that in mystery the most inconceivable good things can happen.

In awe and mystery lie the great hope of the world. But awe and mystery only come to be in human experience. They otherwise do not exist. Which means that the great hope of the world is human beings, willing to be in awe and mystery, instead of in arrogance and certainty. This is a state similar to that which one enters when they are in the humility of prayer.