Life Is Complicated – A Rant

Life Is Complicated – A Rant January 25, 2015

The Single Best Way to Lose Weight

Five Foods You Should Never Eat Again

The One Thing You Must Do To Succeed

Three Secrets to an Early Retirement

What do all these claims and thousands like them have in common?  Two things. First, they’re complete and utter bullshit.  Second, they’re trying to sell you something.

We’re 2½ months past the last election – you should have no trouble remembering the ridiculous campaign ads.  I’m sure you’ve tried to forget them – sorry to bring them up again, but it’s necessary.  They’re filled with, in the words of Mark Twain, “lies, damned lies, and statistics” – all twisted to send one simple message:  vote for me and everything will be fine.  Vote for my opponent and the world is going to hell.

Do you have a chronic illness?  Just eat a gluten-free diet, or a paleo diet, or maybe it was a vegan diet.  Or meditate more.  Maybe you just need to remove negativity from your life.

And since this is a religious blog, let’s not forget how Christianity is a religion of oppression, unless it’s a religion of love.  Islam is a religion of terrorism, unless it’s a religion of peace.  Or perhaps Christopher Hitchens was right and “religion poisons everything.”

Simple.  Black and white.  Good and evil.  Just one thing.

Complete and utter bullshit.

The science of life is complicated and the living of life is even more so.

Why do people make these ridiculous claims?  If you’re paying attention, you realize there are many reasons.  But what I want to focus on right now is the fact that people do this because it works.

We believe it.  We click on the link.  We buy the “superfoods.”  We sign up for the diet program.  We vote for the idiot candidate and his manipulative consultants.

It works because we want things to be simple and we like it when other people tell us what we want to hear.  We like it so much we’ll give them our time and money and votes, and sometimes, our souls.

Thoreau Cabin Replica
inside the replica of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond

There’s a reason why monks of many religions live in such sparse conditions – removing complexity allows them to focus almost all their attention on their religious practice and devotion.  And yet we’re told that more choices are always better.  Not coincidentally, those same people are also trying to get us to give them our money.

Taking a vow of poverty is a noble act (choosing to renounce materialism and luxury is noble – there is nothing noble about poverty itself).  Choosing to live simply is a noble act.

Pretending the world is simple when it’s not just makes you vulnerable to those who would exploit you for their own purposes.

See, if there’s only one or two variables in an equation, even the algebraically-challenged can solve it.  Just do this one thing and everything will be OK.  But if there are seventeen variables, you’ll need computer modeling to solve it… and if your model doesn’t describe the circumstances exactly, your solution isn’t likely to be very useful.

One of Isaac Bonewits’ laws of magic says “control every variable and you control every change – lotsa luck!”

Life is complicated.

Your body has trillions of cells and many of them are bacteria.  We breathe about 11,000 liters of air a day and most of the time we aren’t even aware of it.  We live by eating other recently-living things that are just as complex as we are.  Now, we have a good understanding of what’s generally helpful and what’s generally harmful, but control?  Are you kidding me?

And that’s just you – one little creature on one little planet orbiting one little star in one little galaxy.

We can’t control seventeen variables, much less all the variables involved with life.  So how about we stop listening to people who insist there are only one or two and if we’ll just buy what they’re selling everything will be OK.

What if, instead of trying to control things we can’t control, we concentrated on doing the right things, here and now.  Not the most profitable things, but the most virtuous things.  Can we do that?

What if instead of telling other people the “one thing” that would “fix” them (work harder, work smarter, mainly just be more like me) we treated everyone with dignity and respect?

What if we took care of ourselves, and then our families, and then everyone else?

What if we accepted that while we can’t control anything, we can influence everything?  And then instead of trying to make our own lives more perfect, we concentrated on making the world more just, more compassionate, and more sustainable?

Life is complicated.  Let’s not make it even more complicated and more difficult by pretending it’s not.


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