Love, Liza

May 10, 2020 As I said last time I wrote — I’m learning to meditate. This is a great time to be doing this, since what I’m learning is to put my attention on something (my breath, while I’m meditating, but it could be anything throughout the day, which I’ve now learned is called “being mindful”) and keep my attention on that thing, without being distracted. It’s not easy. I’m learning the hard way. Today was an especially go o d day for learning not to be distracted. It’s a sparkling spring day today, the air is filled with birdsong and the rustling of our neighbor’s Confederate flag. I decided to meditate on our back deck, to get some sun on my face, so I sat myself down, blue-toothed my phone to Headspace, closed my eyes, and… Our back yard runs along the sidewalk of a narrow street, so we sit on our deck and watch the people walking dogs, and jogging by without masks. When we moved here in the 80s this was a quiet little suburban street, across from a forest. It’s now apartments, to...

      IDEALISM AND REALISM How do you create a tolerant community if the other guy believes in intolerance? How do you achieve a cooperative relationship if the other guy doesn’t want to cooperate? These questions will always arise, as long as human nature is what it is. There will always be someone with a thirst to build an empire and rule the world. Is it naïve to wish for world peace, like those earnest Miss America contestants do every year? What would indeed be naïve would be to ignore human nature, or to pretend that it’s something it’s not. Any plan for a peaceful future must be - and can be – both idealistic in its vision and realistic in its portrayal of human nature. Theories of universal cooperation, “peace and love,” have been sneered at for their block-headed insistence that given the “right” environment people will not want to compete to rise to the top of the pack. Communism is despised both for its theory and its practice, and for good reason:...