It seems as though I have recieved clothing for presents all my life that were too big. My intellect tells me that I should me grateful for the gifts. However, emotionally I react in different ways. When I was a child it was okay because I realized that I would "grow into" the clothes. However, now as an adult I continue to recieve such items.
I am starting to wonder if there is something else going on. Is my personality or persona I present to the world much bigger than I am? Do I seem bigger than I really am? Lately, I have been wondering what I am I pushing myself forward for? Do I need to improve this and that about myself? People say that self-development lasts your entire life. But, at what point do you stop making it a priority? When do you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor?
All the young people I know are preparing furiously for a tommorow; a tommorrow - where they have money, the right job, the right house or the right wife/husband.
What is wrong with dropping out? Of course dependance is not good. One has to support ones self. However, why not just make a little money and then have a good life. If there is anything that I want, it is this. I want to have people that I love around me, good food, music and nature. That is about it.
Why bother with spirtuality? If I had this....
IF IF IF IF IF IF
Could I already have this? No matter where I go. Fuck if I know. Maybe other peoples expectations of me have some how affected how I view myself. All this consideration...
There is something in this that I do not get. Why is my shirt too big? Who am I too be other than myself?
This is a real dream that I had a couple of weeks ago:
I was seeking something and had some time off, so for some reason I was in the desert and I ended up at George Bush's official church. There I was let out of a car and I walked up towards the door. On the pavement was some sort of checklist that I could not see clearly. Then I walked up to the door and saw a plump middle aged woman. I asked her if I could go in the church and she said "no, it is under maintenance," so I turned around to leave. Then, I saw a man approaching and a skinny young man with blond hair. I continued to leave.
I heard the woman's voice behind me - she was talking to the man. Then, I heard her tell me to come back. She then informed me that the church does not allow only single visitors, but rather if you do not bring someone then you cannot enter. Apparently, she was bringing the man in and they needed someone to bring in the teenager that came with the man. Suddenly, I realized that this woman was Laura Bush and the man was someone in the bush family. I was very nervous as we entered. The church looked like your standard cheesy california style psuedo-elegent protestant church complete with plants and a fake stream. It was almost like a high-bred between an office building and a church. I was informed about the amazing technological marvel of the church having a camera installed in nearly every room. Then, we all went into a conference room together. From here on I did not see the young man anymore. In the conference room, I heard Laura Bush and some Mr. Bush talk about having to deal with their mother - probably Barbara Bush. The said that when the economy was good it was easy to find someone to help them out and give her a job where she could be incompetent and make a lot of money because the boards of the companies would not notice the loss in the overall profits gained. But, since it was now a recession, it was apparently much more difficult to find a company willing to do this for them because of her gross incompetence. The suggestion was made that we watch a video. At first the screen was showing weather reports from all over the world and the Bushes seemed very interested. Then after a bit they excused themselves and went into an adjoining room. Then the news report changed to a helicopter view of cherry blossom trees that were as big as maples. They were in full bloom. As the camera panned, I noticed that a few were on fire. Then the figure of a small man can be seen by the bottom of the trees and I notice that he is on fire. Then the voice from the screen says "I wonder what he did..." Then the video changes to a scene in a village in the amazon. Underneath a vast forest canopy, there are many large tents. Inside there are many people crowded around boxes. Then the scene cuts and we see many people packed tightly into one main tent and they are screaming. Another cut - then, we see three fourths of the people chasing one fourth of the tribe's members up a hill and screaming. The voice-over explains "suspecting voting fraud in the elections after their candidate was not elected the tribesmen take justice into their own hands." The voice was cool and reasoned like the ones in the historical documentaries on television. The we see a large group of men holding one fourth of the other men down on the ground and striking them. Another cut - the screen fills with tribesmen dancing with the heads of the people that we just on the ground. "And so as you can see, the democratic process naturally solves its own problems." I sat their unable to think of anything other than what it would be like to be the ones killed. Then the screen cut again and I was watching a game of tug-of-war in the amazon. Realizing that this was going to be another snuff flick, I headed for the bathroom. I started to cry. Ever one of my tears that fell turned into a soft almond. Pretty soon I had a nice collection of almonds in the sink. I understood. This was some sort of test. I thought of many things to do with the almonds. I knew that any choice I made had to be done with a degree of acting because my sincere actions would give me away. Eventually I decided to leave the almonds in the trash. I went into the room where Mr. Bush was in and I did not see Laura Bush anywhere. He was sitting on a couch watching football. He took one look at me and asked me if I liked the movie and I said nothing, but rather pretended to be interested in football so I said something like "what?" and he said never-mind. I could feel him eye me up and down at first and then slowly relax. Eventually a woman came in and asked about the Elvis memorial in the building. For some reason speaking Japanese was necessary and so I left. After explaining the difference between a memorial tablet and a grave to the woman, I woke up.
For some time I have been reflecting on what it means to be an American (North American that is). This question has been pounded by nearly every expert and amateur imaginable.
My approach to this answering this questions is by asking two more questions that help clarify things.
Before I pursue these questions, I feel that a little background information about how I stumbled on this question is necessary. As you may well know, I am/have lived in Japan for some time now and I live my life in Japanese (the language) and in a more-or-less Japanese way. Outside of the USA, I am often confronted with questions about "what do Americans do?" Normally, these questions are put aside easily by explaining that all Americans are different. However, after some thought I realized that that answer is not really doing the question justice because after all no matter where you go everyone is different. There is nothing remarkable about that.
Furthermore, when you start to talk about anything real the distinction between individual wholes (be them people or things) becomes apparent. Nonetheless, we can make generalizations or models that help us predict things or explain the whole we live in. Thus, for this reason I feel that the relativistic viewpoint of America is rather limited. This viewpoint is often characterized by saying that American is distinguished by its differences. That differences are the essence of American culture. Which is true at the external level - at the level of culture, language and ethnic background. However, when we start to talk about the messy area of what characterizes the psychology of large groups of people, we start to encounter problems because we are discussing things with no physical existence we can never come close to the reality in "factual" form. Rather, all we can do is articulate and refine the defining images that govern the psyche of a large number of people.
Whew! That was a mouthful. Sometimes, I wish I could put things in a different way so that they did not sound so intellectual. So, please read this and use your good sense to determine if my words make sense. Do not trust any bullshit about sources. Who reads them all anyways? And most importantly do not trust ME. Trust your own good sense about being able to determine the truthfulness of what is written. If you read this essay until the end, it is my hope that you will see what I mean.
In Japan, I often tell people about the America that I know - not the television American, but the America of my family and friends. When I go home or when I meet American's in Japan, I am often very surprised at how different their way of thinking is from mine or that of my family's. Sometimes, it is so acute that I feel like we are from different countries.
Thanks to some much needed inspiration from John Taylor Gatto it hit me that in terms of philosophical tradition America is divided in two. The first half is the European/Mesopotamian/Asian/EveryWhereElse paradigm of dependence. And the other prevalent image is that which the transcendentalists hooked into which was articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay "Self Reliance".
The first image of dependance is as old as agriculture and is a big big subject that I cannot cover today - nonetheless, very important. In short, nearly all non-hunter gather societies governing trait is that the individual is subjected to the benefit of the group. People must cooperate and do certain jobs and tasks together such as growing food. More often than not, this puts the good of the group before the individual. Theoretically, this action poses no problem. It even seems good from the outside. However, since each individual has unlimited egotistic desires and they desire to be better than other members of the group, the actual implementation of societies becomes much more haphazard. Naturally, all living things have a desire to distinguish themselves from others. Furthermore, this desire to be unique leads to an innate instinct towards self-preservation and reproduction, which in humans in further expanded into a instinct toward domination. Which creates social orders that are characterized by master-slave relationships - with someone with power, who makes an other person do their bidding.
As people are born with different gifts, some people and/or groups have developed the ability to influence other humans' decisions (think advertising, torture, blackmail, education, pavlovian conditioning and manipulation of images). Thus, we have pyramids for social structures, with a few people on top who govern the masses on the bottom.
So what does this have to do with America? Everything. This is the common situation of most cultures in the world and hence most of the cultures that people fled from to come to America. Riding on the waves of transcendentalism, protestantism and masonry, Europeans came to America seeking something different than the poverty (both physical and psychological) that they experienced in their home countries. These people's psychology was quite possible heavily shaped by the conditioning of the Old World. They were programmed to be dependent. However, once they had children in the New World, the children were suddenly free from the shackles of the Old World. In order to survive outside of the urban centers, people had to be able to educate themselves and be independent.
These unique circumstances, helped create such self-realized individuals like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Edison and lastly Emerson. Even-though, the time periods of their lives are quite different - what they have in common is a type of individualism that now seems remarkable or exceptional.
This image of self-reliance or individualism is perpetuated by the individual actions of people - by the choices that they make in their lives. Through these choices the values of individualism becomes a part of their being. Then, as they manifest these values in their lives the people around them - their children, family and friends can experience and taste the values through contact with these individuals. This is nothing remarkable. Just people being good wise simple people. This image of independence is what I am trying to articulate in this essay. I feel that this independence is the essential Americanism.
Furthermore, this is not a cultural characteristic (however, it does have a cultural manifestation). This independence is actually a universally available value. However, it just so happened that groups of people tried to actualize a social form of it in America. This has always been the balancing force against the social binding of dependence in American society.
Now, you do not have to look very far in America to see how the proliferation of "systems" have limited peoples freedom. Everywhere you look there is some system of dependence trying to capture a few more souls in its web. It is too much for me to go into depth about what systems exist, but to name a few: banking, debt, education, pscho-pharmaceutical industry, mega-corporations, agribusiness, the military industrial complex and many other.
In the end, what does it mean to be an American. It means that you value independence (spiritual, psychological, economic, social, etc.) over dependency. You are willing to sacrifice safety for freedom. In the words of Patrick Henry "Give me liberty or give me death!"
Today I just completed the data files for the entire Joyo kanji list. Specifically, the data file contains only the approved readings for the kanji kentei and simplified readings. In total, 1945 characters are covered. The files are in KingKanji format and available for download here. This project of creating simplified English definitions and readings for all of the characters has taken me over two years. So, if you find these files useful, please download them and enjoy.