Beyond the Bumper Sticker

In my last post, I proposed that the "Mean People Suck" bumper sticker misses the point: all of us are "mean" insofar as we bear meaning. We don't exist merely unto ourselves; we don't create our own meaning any more than we create ourselves out of nothing. We are messages spoken into the universe.

Which raises a hard question: what happens when the message that someone else gives us is pain, suffering, and hatred?

Do we justify ourselves by, like the bumper sticker, pointing out that they "suck"? Do we justify the situation by sending an equally painful, insufferable, and hateful message back?

Or do we dare remember that we do NOT create our meaning--and that the message that we send back is ultimately not our own?

We must admit, most of us don't remember that. When others hurt us, we immediately think about hurting them back or obsess about what we've done to cause the attack. In either case, we act as if we control the situation. But if what I've already said holds true, then we're not in control.

Yet, not being in control is not the same as not mattering. Remember: I said that we all bear a meaning--even if we don't actually create ourselves or that meaning. So the answer then is for us to, as the cliche goes, "bear with it."

We bear a meaning by bearing the meanness--literally by picking it up and carrying it. We live out our meaning, our purpose in life, by bearing the meanness. Our meaning is more than a mere bumper sticker; we are that meaning. And we allow ourselves to be more memorable, more life-bearing, more life-changing, when we dare to suffer the insufferable, undergo the pain, and thereby love the hateful.

We too often confuse love for the mere feeling of affection. But here I don't mean a feeling of affection for those who bear us ill; I mean literal self-giving, self-sacrificing love. By believing that we do not enforce our own meaning, we free ourselves to be what we are meant to be.

What I propose is not easy or comfortable. But it seems that the only way to avoid the illusion of control is to not run from the meanness. When we give up the attempt to control ourselves, we give ourselves to others--on behalf of others--even if those others make a vain attempt at control by hurting us.

Wow. I don't do this well. I am still learning it. I find it so much easier to wear a bumper sticker rather than to bear those mean people who hurt me. But if the scars of that meanness are going to become more than just a fading sign of my failed battle with the uncontrollable, I've got to carry them--the hurts and the ones who do the hurting--with me, for that is what I'm meant for. It must be the message that I am.

Mean? People? Suck?

You have probably seen the common bumper sticker, "Mean People Suck." We can vaguely grasp the sentiment, even if we can't quite nail down what inspires it. Simply put, we don't appreciate people who hurt us.

But how exactly do they hurt us? By "mean," I suppose we mean those who are needlessly cruel or malicious to us. But the needlessness of their cruelty may be entirely in our perception; they may have found it completely central to their goals to be cruel to us.

Further, we have to consider the possibility that the "meanness" we complain about has less to do with needless (or needful) cruelty and more to do with a secondary definition of the word, "mean": namely, "common," "vulgar," "of the people." Bill Veeck, the maverick baseball owner of the 1940s and 1950s, was proud to be called "vulgar" for his peg-legged, smoking, beer-drinking way of operating a major-league baseball team: "'Vulgar' comes from the Latin and means one of the common people," he quipped. "I'm proud to be one of the unbathed masses."

Might we then object to common people? Or to how their commonality rides herd over us? Are we saying that we are certainly not common, that we are not rabble enough to be sucked into their association?

So, does the bumper sticker mean that we want enough individuality to choose whose group to be sucked into? Put that way, the bumper sticker has a devil's reasoning to it: either we agree that mean people do indeed suck or we're one of those mean people. Either way, we're being sucked into one herd or another.

Ultimately, though, a third meaning of the word, "mean," helps me nail down why I disagree with the bumper sticker. To "mean" means to bear meaning, like words bear meanings--words have a purpose beyond their mere existence. So do we. Like a sign or an arrow, we do not exist unto ourselves. We exist to point out a way to others. As such, all of us are "mean" people. That is, we all mean something.

I suppose, then, that the bearers of these bumper stickers mean that they have run into some meaning-bearers (i.e., other people) who have borne a meaning that is at odds with theirs.

Stands to reason. If everyone we meet is going to bear a meaning of some sort, then chances are that we are going to run into some who actively seek to destroy our meaning and impose their own--which presents a problem: How do we keep on "meaning" in the presence of those who seek to snuff out our meaning?

The answer requires more than a bumper sticker. I plan to think about it all week and offer a sequel in my next post.

Making Something Good

We aren't content with knowing things. Nor are we happy with making things. Our modern world wants only to know enough about a thing in order to have power over it. We are interested in making only those things that enhance our power.

Virtually all contemporary advertising is based on this notion. Buy this car; it will win you women/men, speed/time-savings, or the feeling that you made a smarter purchase than your neighbor did. Buy this cell phone; it will gain you a network that enables you to get your job done and keep track of your music collection.

Our ancient-Greek and Medieval-Christian cultural ancestors were interested in a thing insofar as knowing a thing was valuable in itself. Know these trees and the lay of the land as creations beautiful and true, as bearers of meaning; from such an approach, the ancient Greeks created the greatest philosophies, myths, plays, and governments the world has ever known. The Medievals studied the world as a book of saving truths--everything could reveal a bit of the wondrous mystery of the universe. Each thing was a saving word that speaks to us. Without the benefit of diesel, reinforced concrete, and laser-assisted levels, they built cathedrals like Chartres that hurled solid stone to the sky, making granite look as light as wisps of incense rising before the altar.

But, you may say, today those philosophies are dead, and those cathedrals are mere tourist stops. But WE have made them that way. Our ancestors' way of looking at things as valuable in themselves (and not as mere means to more money and power) results in making things that are valuable in themselves, that are glimpses of what we deny ourselves--to our own impotence.

We have not tried their way and found it wanting; no, we have decided their way is trying (without trying it) and now find ourselves wanting.

Oh, so then we should go back to togas and bad teeth, black plague and tonsured scalps, eh?

No, I am as modern as you. I will not nor cannot deny that I, like you, am a child of my era. And I'm supposed to be. But perhaps we might learn from those who once valued things as icons of truth and beauty, as emblems of a reality that is so much deeper than our pursuit of life, which seeks more power, or at least a 401K that is not vulnerable to the latest Federal-Reserve buyout or Enron scandal.

You and I are WORDS--spoken against the darkness that would otherwise engulf the world. No amount of horsepower or automatic seat-heaters or networks-accompanying-our-cell-phones can prevail against the darkness that you and I, by our very being, dispel.

My life and yours are not mere pursuits of things in order to have power over other things. After all, we may not wear togas, but why do we watch shows like What Not to Wear? And our teeth may be orthodontically straightened, but why do we shell out millions for teeth whiteners? And if we are not inadvertently tonsured (and accidentally castrated) why do Rogaine and Viagra buoy our pharmaceutical companies' bottom lines?

And where are our philosophies and cathedrals to show for our efforts?

Perhaps, our philosophies and cathedrals can be you and me. Perhaps we can raise up edifices against the dark in the persons of our selves. Perhaps we are the things we ought to know as valuable in ourselves. Perhaps then we will make something good.

The White Stag

"A Journal in the Time of Plague"--depressing title, huh? But it's not intended to be. Nonetheless, we are plagued--and if we don't necessarily agree that something is wrong with this pursuit we call our lives in the 21st Century, then we can at least acknowledge that the mortality rate is still 100%.

Don't get me wrong--I love my family, my job, an espresso, and a good book. Not everything is rushing under the shadow of a dragon.

But these moments of hearth and home are what we live for, aren't they? Are they not the reason why we pursue security and safety through money, powers, arms, and the like? Yet, the world seems to be making the quiet moments with family--and without fear--fewer and fewer. Despite their promises, the allurements of the world don't make death any more an option than it ever was. Indeed, they seem to hasten it. And we step up for seconds.

The White Stag may offer an option. He is not a myth--look at the picture on my blog title--this creature was recently photographed in Scotland. Not an albino, the White Stag is a genetic rarity in that he doesn't have the normal pigmentation that enables him to blend into his environment. He stands out.

Mythically, that's what he is purported to do: stand out--between the herd and the dragon. Throughout history, the myths have sung and proclaimed the White Hart who gives his life to leaps into the dwindling space between us and the on-rushing dragon.

Myths are time-tested ways of telling the truth about the way things work in the universe. So we should not be surprised that the appearance of a White Stag in our time marks a turning point in the battle with what plagues us.

We are not going to reduce the mortality rate. Yet the White Stag embodies an alternative to the money, power, and arms that do not save us from death.

The White Stag offers us a way to die to our need for them, and to thereby live, vigorously live, for what matters--hearth and home.

The dragon is here, breathing on us his fire of money, power, arms, and anything else he can use to devour us. The White Hart steps into the mouth of the dragon, where we dare not.

What would it take to be like to be a White Stag? This journal will each week attempt to offer an answer to that question. Call it a White Stag vaccine for the plague.