eWaste and a trail of compassion

Gradually people in the Western world are waking up to the fact that there’s a stream of toxic electronic waste making its way to various countries in Asia and Africa and impacting on the lives of the people that live there, we may not see the long term effects of this at present but no doubt in the years ahead we’ll hear about it.  Within the last twelve months I’ve noticed there has been a shift in the awareness about this issue. Some environmental groups are starting to be proactive in preventing old computer parts being sent to other countries and some council’s have developed programs within their local communities to avoid problems closer to home.

Like most people, ‘stuff happens’ and a few years back I went through a personal crisis involving another person.   I’ll spare you the details but at that time I was very disturbed by a particular person’s behaviour and had a lot of difficulty making sense of it.  Smack bang in the middle of the crisis, a friend of mine said something that ultimately was a turning point for me in dealing with and making some sort of peace with the situation.  What he said was something like “if you want to see what someone is really like, look at their wake”.  I was unfamiliar with the term ‘wake’ at that time but what he was referring to was the trail that a boat leaves behind when it passes through the water.  How this became useful was it gave me the opportunity to look and see whether what I was experiencing was a ‘one of’ situation or whether there were other examples of it.  Once I followed through I found there were numerous similar examples of the person’s behaviour and although the crisis was troubling, once I was clear that it was normal for that particular person to behave a certain way, although still painful, I didn’t take it as personal and it was easier for me to deal with.

So how does this relate to ewaste?  We all leave a trail behind us wherever we go, whether it’s basic consumer rubbish, electronic junk, or the kindness or disharmony when dealing with others, we all have a small role to play in order to help make the world a better place for us and the generations to come.  Whether it’s tossing out old worn out computer hardware or the way we communicate with others, it will ultimately impact on humanity as a whole.  Can we change our habits? Definitely, many people do.  Is change challenging? Of course it is.  Is it worthwhile? Yes, there’s plenty of evidence that removal of unnecessary useless habits can impact on our lives and those around us. 

So next time you’re about to toss out an old computer, you might consider how you dispose of it and where it might wind up.  Or even when you go to purchase a new one, check out to see whether the manufacturer has a commitment to help resolving the ewaste problem and is making products that are a little more environmentally friendly.  And maybe we also need to think about the wake we leave behind us in our daily lives with the people we encounter.  Many people are grieving in their own way and it’s very easy to misinterpret the way they relate to us at times and the way we deal with them could easily impact in a much more powerful way than we could ever realize.  A number of people I work with are feeling the impact of the death of a friend and colleague last week, so at the moment my awareness of this is much heightened.  It’s these moments when we feel our most compassionate and it’s incredible how a few kind words in our daily life to others can make their journey a little easier.

    

When an avatar is not an Avatar and Zen makes a musical noise

Anyone that is familiar with Eastern philosophy or religion and has just entered into the world of digital phenomena (read as: the arena of ever changing technology that some people pretend they can keep up with) will have noticed a few borrowed age old words.  The one that I had a bit of difficulty coming to grips with was ‘AVATAR’, I’d heard the word a number of times over the years in conversation and while scanning books about supposedly enightened beings and Godmen/Godwomen.  A simple summary of it without getting too complex would be when ‘the all inclusive formless absolute Being’ sees the world is in trouble and He/She/It takes on the form of some either human look-alike (think Krishna) or animal creature (a turtle in one case)….the closest equivalent in the West would be a bit like Jesus’s Father arriving, taking on some physical form and the mere Presence would pull the world out of strife (and please note: there is absolutely no disrespect intended in any way to anyone’s faith on my part).  So when I saw that in WordPress I could upload my own avatar, I was a little humoured by the option.  And without getting over-techie I guess we could say that an avatar in computerland speak is a graphical representation of ourselves.  So what’s happened here is we have something that is revered by some people across the globe turned into virtual bling.

I guess I’m having one of those you know what I don’t like moments, ….I wish that the use of famous songs in TV commercials would be banned.  There are so many beautiful songs that many of us hold close to our hearts being used to promote products, it ruins the song for ever.  And as a new generation comes through, they end up associating somebody’s favourite song with toilet paper, dog food or insurance.   So how do we keep things precious and safe from marketers?

I’ll return to the topic.  There are lots of versions of Zen, in the same way as there are lots of streams of Christianity. But the latest one, a line of products by Creative called Zen is what caught my eye, it is an unfamiliar stream of Zen .  The Zen I had become familiar with was relating to Zen Koans.  Unfortunately, many people have turned Koans into a bit of a circus, in fact nonsense; but really, Koans are a type of parable to contemplate.  Often a student of Zen would be given a Koan  by a teacher and would have to come up with an answer, but really the real answer to any Koan is outside the framework of thought , it’s like a bit, a 1 or a 0, true or false, and the only real answer is a transformation of the person and has little to do with a verbal, well thought out intellectual response.   But the Creative type of Zen is the 21st centuries version of an ongoing  dynamic tradition that changes face regulary, and an attempt by a manufacturer to flood the market with compressed but very transportable audio, and yes of course you can run certain applications from  them like Outlook but we’re no wiser after using them, only more trinkets to amuse ourself with.

Which leads me to RAM, another notable computer glossary term, as you’d probably know, stands for Random Access Memory.  Anyone that hung around market places in the 70’s would be familiar with RAM (often was preceeded by the word HARE) the hero of the Ramayana story .  So which one of the Religions / Spiritual terms or names is next to make it into the wonderful digital Leela that we are experiencing?

logging on to life and the magic carpet

I booted up my body this morning, ready to logon to life, it took longer than usual to enter into the human network.  My Random Access short-term Memory seemed to be running a little slow and was passing information very sluggishly to my BPU (Brain Processing unit).  It’s normal for people to feel a little slow starting up, I know that but today was unusual because I felt incredibly foggy, very unlike me and it was extremely difficult to remember anything.  

It wasn’t until I was asked what would seem to be a ridiculous question that I moved out of the fog-zone.  Well how’s this for a question at 8.00 AM…”Is it any harder to levitate than be financially successful?”  Generally the response that most of people would give to a question like that would probably include the words ‘idiot’,  ‘are you feeling ok?’,  ‘did you take your medication?’, or a few other smart comments here and there.  But when the question comes from someone that you consider has their feet firmly on the ground and you regard them very highly, the reply to the question needs to have a little extra thought and be treated with incredible respect.

The person that asked me the question knows that I am not the proud owner of an authentic magic carpet, and also knows that I have never hung out in the caves in Tibet or studied any of the yogic flying techniques with a slightly famous organization that makes claims of developing levitation abilities; so why on earth ask me?  So I thought ok, let’s look at it from a very sensible angle and put the question and person  into perspective.   The person that asked the question has recently been spending a lot of time looking at what it is that has been preventing her from being financially successful and of recent times she has discovered that it’s possible that it’s her hidden attitudes and childhood programming that has been standing in the way of her having glorious weekends in art galleries in Paris, design courses in Japan and other delicacies. 

So the real question that she was asking is not so much about levitation or changing light bulbs without a ladder, it’s about the way we limit our thoughts by failing to undo what we have learnt about money from our parents, those around us in the community and our educators in colleges and schools .  And it doesn’t really matter that much whether there is any evidence about St Teresa blissing out and floating around the abbey in the West or siddha yogis in the East flying around mouldy caves with an over emphasis on self-denial, what matters is whether we can break through the mental filter that prevents us from being abundant.  And if we can have a breakthrough with our finance, then maybe we can move on a little and use other areas of the human brain that are lying dormant.  Years back I wanted to stop smoking, I found it very difficult to give it up, but for some odd reason I developed a strategy. This is what I did: First I gave up salt, then I gave up sugar, when I had mastered those two things I’d already trained my brain in the fine art of giving up, so to stop smoking was easy.

 So my answer to the original question is ‘no, probably not’.

the new digital promised land

There is a new breed of person emerging in the world of technology.  If we look back twenty or thirty years there was a giant gap between the world of the (supposed) Spiritual and the physical. The vegos on one side of the river and the carnivores on the other, those that thought they ‘knew’ and those that didn’t (as viewed from the point of view of those that were sure they ‘knew’).  While all the ‘not knowers’ were building their empires and focusing on the physical, the knowers were burning inscense, being here now, discussing the environment and subconsciously programming their brains from having a life of possessions.  And I guess if you have the mantra “All I want is nothing”…ummm well guess what you get.  So now as the hairlines recede, life coaches emerge from them there hills by the dozen, various yoga styles become deIndianised and are morphing into something that suspiciously reminds us of aerobics, a whole new wave of people are seeking to become ‘abundant’ and are dreaming of packaging their products into webable items ( read as: marketable on the www).

As a teacher of information technology and a man that is comfortably guilty of living in the hills playing 6 to 10 hours a day of guitar, I now find myself surrounded by people that wish to add some of their wisdom and treasures to the electronic world.  So the question is, do we set up  some sort of digital Nirvana separate to the rest of the Internet that runs at a higher vibration and use an unspoken mantra as a login that is forwarded telepathically or do we let those that saw a quick buck 30 years ago run amuck now and and raid the cookie jar while the financial newbies are contemplating on how to do it?

The heart of technology

After my encounter with death last Monday I guess what I’d like to do now is find the meeting point between technology and the heart, and no, I don’t mean a pacemaker or some other medical contraption. And also no, I haven’t had some new age awakening or minor satori. The challenge that I see is to find that place where technology can be turned into something that opens the heart a little wider, leads us to greater compassion for not only others but for ourselves, and helps us develop self-confidence and adds to our self-worth, and in saying self-worth I don’t mean an inflated ego. I mean, something that leads us out of the numbness, repetition and routine of life and into a lifestyle that is fresh, continuously creative and untaps our potential (this sounds scarily new age but no there are no crystals on my bookshelf).

But really, if we’re going to spend many precious moments of our lives around these computer things, we need to be sure that we get something back from them that has some sort of worth and is a tad more useful than watching sitcoms about dysfunctional people or those incredibly ugly violent television shows about people dying and trying to sort out which person with an over abundance of anger did it; or worse still, reality tv, if that’s reality and is in some way stimulating, we are all in serious strife. And maybe there’s a good market for training people to return to life.

digital life or death

My welcome to WordPress.com. post is not what I had planned, nor ever dreamed of.  I had set up  a blog account yesterday and my intention was to use it for Information Technology purposes. 

This morning at work I ran into an old friend that I hadn’t seen for sometime.  It was nice to see her, we hugged briefly, we spoke about her family and I headed off to my classroom to teach Flash Animation.   After about 15 minutes I heard a loud noise and went out to investigate, only to find my friend had collapsed in the corridor and later this morning passed on to wherever is the appropriate place for her to go to.  Before the ambulance arrived I managed to hold her hand briefly to try and comfort her, to tell her who it was that was there and she whispered something to me, I’ll never know what it was.  She wasn’t a close friend but somehow my heart has been touched and I’m hoping that the brief moment I had with her was somehow comforting for her as she headed off on her new journey.  And maybe it’s a blessing for me that she had given me a special moment to carry through my life.  And hopefully as my days go by I will remember the importance of the gift that I was given, the beauty of the world around me and the precious days with my loved ones which I so often take for granted. 

In teaching information technology I often find that people are moving further and further into the digital world with computer games and other digital obsessions and have less time for the real people around them, for nature and for things that are 3d off the screen.  And maybe the greatest tragedy being that a young person may spend his or her entire teenage years lost in a virtual world.  

A good friend of mine that works as a psychologist has always pointed out that when there is a shadow, it’s important to look to where the light is coming from.  And in the sadness and loss, I’m reminded of the precious things around me shining brighter than ever.