An author owns a snappy title, and then the snappy title owns the author. Robert Wright, having titled his new book Why Buddhism Is True, has to offer a throat-clearing preface and later an apologetic appendix, in order to explain exactly what he means by Buddhism and exactly what he means by true, while the totality of his book is an investigation into why we think there are whys in the world, and whether or not anything really is. Wright sets out to provide an unabashedly American answer to all these questions. He thinks that Buddhism is true in the immediate sense that it is helpful and therapeutic, and, by offering insights into our habitual thoughts and cravings, shows us how to fix them. Being Buddhistthat is, simply practicing Vipassana, or insight meditationwill make you feel better about being alive, he believes, and he shows how you can and why it does.

Wrights is a Buddhism almost completely cleansed of supernaturalism. His Buddha is conceived as a wise man and self-help psychologist, not as a divine beingno miraculous birth, no thirty-two distinguishing marks of the godhead (one being a penis sheath), no reincarnation. This is a pragmatic Buddhism, and Wrights pragmatism, as in his previous books, can touch the edge of philistinism. Nearly all popular books about Buddhism are rich in poetic quotation and arresting aphorisms, those ironic koans that are part of the (Zen) Buddhist dcortales of monks deciding that it isnt the wind or the flag thats waving in the breeze but only their minds. Wrights book has no poetry or paradox anywhere in it. Since the poetic-comic side of Buddhism is one of its most appealing features, this leaves the book a little short on charm. Yet, if you never feel that Wright is telling you something profound or beautiful, you also never feel that he is telling you something untrue. Direct and unambiguous, tracing his own history in meditation practicewhich eventually led him to a series of weeklong retreats and to the intense study of Buddhist doctrinehe makes Buddhist ideas and their history clear. Perhaps he makes the ideas too clear. Buddhist thinkers tend to bridge contradictions with a smile and a paradox and a wave of the hand. Things exist but they are not real is a typical dictum from the guru Mu Soeng, in his book on the Heart Sutra. You dont have to believe it, but its true is another famous gurus smiling advice about the reincarnation doctrine. This nimble-footed doubleness may indeed hold profound existential truths; it also provides an all-purpose evasion of analysis.

Still, the Buddhist basics are all here. Sometime around 400 B.C.E.the arguments over whats historically authentic and what isnt make the corresponding arguments in Jesus studies look transparenta wealthy Indian princeling named Gotama (as the Pali version of his name is rendered) came to realize, after a long and moving spiritual struggle, that people suffer because the things we cherish inevitably change and rot, and desires are inevitably disappointed. But he also realized that, simply by sitting and breathing, people can begin to disengage from the normal run of desires and disappointments, and come to grasp that the self whom the sitter has been serving so frantically, and who is suffering from all these needs, is an illusion. Set free from the selfs anxieties and appetites and constant, petulant demands, the meditator can see and share the actualities of existence with others. The sitter becomes less selfish and more selfless.

Buddhism has had a series of strong recurrent presences in America, and, though Wright doesnt stop to trace them, they might illuminate some continuities that show why his kind of Buddhism got here, and got true. Its first notable appearance was in late-nineteenth-century New England, where, as Van Wyck Brooks showed long ago, Henry Adams was drawn especially to the lands of Buddha. Another New England Buddhist of the day was William Sturgis Bigelow, who brought back to Boston some twenty thousand works of Japanese art, and who, when dying in Boston, called for a Catholic priest and asked that he annihilate his soul. (He was disappointed when the priest declined.) These American Buddhists, drawn East in part by a rejection of Gilded Age ostentation, recognized a set of preoccupations like those they knew alreadyWhitmans vision of a self that could shift and contain multitudes, or Thoreaus secular withdrawal from the race of life. (Jon Kabat-Zinns hugely successful meditation guide, Wherever You Go, There You Are, is dotted with Thoreau epigraphs in place of Asian ones.) The quietist impulse in New England spirituality and the pantheistic impulse in American poetry both seemed met, and made picturesque, by the Buddhist tradition.

The second great explosion of American Buddhism occurred in the nineteen-fifties. Spurred, in large part, by the writings of the migr Japanese scholar D.T. Suzuki, it was, in the first instance, aesthetic: Suzukis work, though rich in tea ceremonies and haiku, makes no mention of Zazen, the hyper-disciplined, often painful, meditation practice that is at the heart of Zen practice. The Buddhist spirit, or the easier American variant of it, blossomed in Beat literature, producing some fine coinages (Kerouacs Dharma Bums). Zen, though apparently an atypically severe sect within Buddhism, came to be the standard-bearer, so much so that Zen became an all-purpose modifier in American letters meaning challengingly counterintuitiveas in Zen and the Art of Archery or the masterly Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where you learn how not to aim your arrow or how to find a spiritual practice in a Harley. It was this second movement that blossomed into a serious practice of sitting lessons and a set of institutions, the most prominent, perhaps, being the San Francisco Zen Center.

Though separated by generations, the deeper grammar of the two Buddhist awakenings was essentially the same. Buddhism in America is simultaneously exotic and familiarit has lots of Eastern trappings and ceremonies that set it off from the materialism of American life, but it also speaks to an especially American longing for a publicly productive spiritual practice. American Buddhism spins off museum collections and Noh-play translations and vegetarian restaurants and philosophical books and, in the hands of the occasional Buddhist Phil Jackson, the triangle offense in basketball.

The Buddhist promise in the American mind is that you can escape and engage. Ten minutes a day toward Enlightenment is the sort of slogan that has inspired the current generation to unimaginably large numbers of part-time meditators. (Among whom I number myself, following guided meditations recorded by Joseph Goldstein, a seventysomething Vipassana teacher who has the calming, grumpy voice of an emeritus professor at City College, though my legs are much too stiff for the lotus position and I have to fake it, making mine in every sense a half-assed practice.) Dont just sit there, do something is the American entreaty. With Buddhism, you can just sit there and do something.

Wright, like his Bay Area and Boston predecessors, is delighted to announce the ways in which Buddhism intersects with our own recent ideas. His new version of an American Buddhism is not only self-consciously secularized but aggressively scientized. He believes that Buddhist doctrine and practice anticipate and affirm the modular view of the mind favored by much contemporary cognitive science. Instead of there being a single, consistent Cartesian self that monitors the world and makes decisions, we live in a kind of nineties-era Liberia of the mind, populated by warring independent armies implanted by evolution, representing themselves as a unified nation but unable to reconcile their differences, and, as one after another wins a brief battle for the capital, providing only the temporary illusion of control and decision. By accepting that the fixed self is an illusion imprinted by experience and reinforced by appetite, meditation parachutes in a kind of peacekeeping mission that, if it cannot demobilize the armies, lets us see their nature and temporarily disarms their still juvenile soldiers.

Buddhism, alone among spiritual practices, has always recognized this post-hoc nature of our reason, asking us to realize its transience through meditation. (Not much really there, is there? Joe Goldstein murmurs about thought in one of his guided meditations.) Meditation, in Wrights view, is not a metaphysical route toward a higher plane. It is a cognitive probe for self-exploration that underlines what contemporary psychology already knows to be true about the mind. According to Buddhist philosophy, both the problems we call therapeutic and the problems we call spiritual are a product of not seeing things clearly, he writes. Whats more, in both cases this failure to see things clearly is in part a product of being misled by feelings. And the first step toward seeing through these feelings is seeing them in the first placebecoming aware of how pervasively and subtly feelings influence our thought and behavior.

Our feelings ceaselessly generate narratives, contes moraux, about the world, and we become their prisoners. We make things good and bad, desirable and not, meaningful and trivial. (We put snappy titles on our tales and then the titles own us.) Wright gives the example of a buzz-saw symphony as a small triumph of his emancipation: hearing a buzz saw whining in the background, what would usually have been a painful distraction became, robbed by meditation of any positive or negative cues (this is a pleasant sound/this is an unpleasant one), somehow musical. Meditation shows us how anything can be emptied of the story we tell about it: he tells us about an enlightened man who tastes wine without the contextual tales about vintage, varietal, region. It tastes... less emotional. All the states of equanimity come through the realization that things arent what we thought they were, Wright quotes a guru as saying. What Wright calls the perception of emptiness dampens the affect, but it also settles the mind. If it isnt there, you dont overreact to it.

Having gone the full Buddha route, Wright gives us accounts of meditation retreats, and interviews with enlightened meditators; he explores sutras and explains dharma. Given that hes more product-oriented than process-oriented, Wright tends to reflect on the advantages of meditation rather than reproduce their pleasures. Meditation, even the half-assed kind, does remind us of how little time we typically spend in the moment. Simply to sit and breathe for twenty-five minutes, if only to hear cars and buses go by on a city avenuelistening to the world rather than to the frantic non sequiturs of ones monkey mind, fragmented thoughts and querulous moods racing each other aroundcan intimate the possibility of a quiet grace in the midst of noise. The gong with which Goldsteins meditations begin on YouTube, though a bit of Orientalia, does settle the mind and calm its restlessness. (Yet many sounds of seeming serenitybirds singing, leaves rustlingare actually the sounds of ceaseless striving. The birds are shrieking for mates; even the trees are reaching insistently toward the sun that sustains them. These are the songs of wanting, the sounds of life.)

Wright has, for the purposes of his book, tied himself to a mechanical view of the constraints that operate on the human mindthe same one that he has posited in previous books, rooted in the doctrines of evolutionary psychology. This is the viewto which Wright is, as a Buddhist might say, overattachedthat our deepest desires are instincts implanted by natural selection in our primeval past. Whether or not evolutionary psychology is a real or a pseudoscienceopinions varyone can believe that human beings are afflicted with too much wanting without thinking that we are that way because once upon a time those cravings helped us have more kids than our neighbors. Even if our desires were implanted by evolution rather than inculcated by culture, theyre still always helplessly double: altruistic impulses encourage us to look after our tribe; genocidal ones encourage us to get rid of the neighboring tribe. Pair bonding is adaptive, but so is adultery: fathers want to care for their offspring and see them thrive; they also want to have sex with the woman in the next cave in order to cover all genetic bets. Desires may arise from natural selection or from cultural tradition or from random walks or from a combination of them allbut Buddhist doctrine would be unaffected by any of these whys. If every doctrine of evo-psych turns out to be falseif its somehow all culture and inculcationit wouldnt affect the Buddhist view about our need to get out of it.

Other recent books on contemporary Buddhism share Wrights object of reconciling the old metaphysics with contemporary cognitive science but have a less doctrinaire view of the mind that lies outside the illusions of self. Stephen Batchelors After Buddhism (Yale), in many ways the most intellectually stimulating book on Buddhism of the past few years, offers a philosophical take on the question. The self may not be an aloof independent ruler of body and mind, but neither is it an illusory product of impersonal physical and mental forces, he writes. As for the minds modules, Gotama is interested in what people can do, not with what they are. The task he proposes entails distinguishing between what is to be accepted as the natural condition of life itself (the unfolding of experience) and what is to be let go of (reactivity). We may have no control over the rush of fear prompted by finding a snake under our bed, but we do have the ability to respond to the situation in a way that is not determined by that fear. Where Wright insists that the Buddhist doctrine of not-self precludes the possibility of freely chosen agency, Batchelor insists of Buddhism that as soon as we consider it a task-based ethics... such objections vanish. The only thing that matters is whether or not you can perform a task. When an inclination to say something cruel occurs, for example, can you resist acting on that impulse?... Whether your decision to hold the barbed remark was the result of free will or not is beside the point. He calls the obsession with free will a peculiarly Western concern. Meditation works as much at the level of conscious intention as it does at the level of unreflective instinct.

Batchelor wants to make Buddhism pragmatic not just in the idiomatic sensepractical for daily usebut in the technical philosophical sense as well: he thinks that the original doctrines of Buddhism were in accord with the ideas of truth put forward by neopragmatists like Richard Rorty, for whom there are no firm foundations for what we know, only temporary truces among willing communities which help us cope with the world. Buddhism, in his view, was long ago betrayed into Brahmanism; the open-ended artisanal practice of meditation became a caste-bound dogma with truths and ceremonies. It is a process of fossilization hardly unknown to other spiritual movementsthere was a time when Hasidism was all about spontaneity and enthusiasm, and a break from too much repetitive traditionbut in Batchelors view it led to a needlessly ornate and authoritarian faith, while his own brand of Buddhism has been restored to its origins.

Batchelor also tackles the issue, basically shelved by Wright, of whether Buddhism without any supernatural scaffolding is still Buddhism. As a scholar, he doesnt try to deny that the supernaturalist doctrines of karma and reincarnation are as old as the ethical and philosophical ones, and entangled with them. His project is unashamedly to secularize Buddhism. But, since its Buddhism that he wants to secularize, he has to be able to show that its traditions are not hopelessly polluted with superstition.

Here Batchelors pragmatic turn, made tightly on a sharply curving road, begins to fishtail more than a little. He insists that reincarnation is just an embedded doctrine in the ancient Pali culturea metaphor like all the others we live with, a cosmological picture that works well, not unlike the metaphors of evolutionary fitness and cosmology that are embedded in our own culture. The centrality of reincarnation doctrines shouldnt be held as a mark against Buddhist truth.

Can we really tiptoe past the elaborate supernaturalism of historical Buddhism? Secular Buddhists try to, just as people who are sympathetic to the ethical basis of Christianity try to tiptoe past the doctrines of Heaven and Hell, so that Hell becomes the experience of being unable to love, or Heaven a state of being one with Godnot actual places with brimstone pits or massed harps. Batchelor, like every intelligent believer caught in an unsustainable belief, engages in a familiar set of moves. He attempts to italicize his way out of absurdity by, in effect, shifting the stresses in the simple sentence We dont believe that. First, theres We dont believe that: there may be other believers who accept a simple reward-and-punishment system of karma passing from generation to generation, but our group does not. Next comes We dont believe that: since reincarnation means eternal rebirth and coming back as a monkey and the rest of it, the enlightened Buddhist tries to de-literalize the that to make it more appealing, just as the Christian redefines Hell. In the end, we resort to We dont believe that: we just accept it as an embedded metaphor of the culture that made the religion.

Then theres the shrug-and-grin argument that everyone believes something. Is it fair to object that most of us take quantum physics on faith, too? Well, we dont take it on faith. We take it on trust, a very different thing. We have confidenceamply evidenced by the technological transformation of the world since the scientific revolution, and by the cash value of validated predictions based on esoteric mathematical abstractionthat the world picture it conveys is true, or more nearly true than anything else on offer. Batchelor tap-dances perilously close to the often repeated absurdity that a highly credulous belief about supernatural claims and an extremely skeptical belief about supernatural claims are really the same because they are both beliefs.

A deeper objection to the attempted reconciliation of contemporary science and Buddhist practice flows from the nature of scientific storytelling. The practice of telling storiesimagined tales of cause and effect that fixate on the past and the future while escaping the present, sending us back and forth without being here nowis something that both Wright and Batchelor see as one of the worst delusions the mind imprints on the world. And yet it is inseparable from the Enlightenment science that makes psychology and biology possible. The contemporary generation of American Buddhists draws again and again on scientific evidence for the power of meditationEEGs and MRIs and so onwithout ever wondering why a scientific explanation of that kind has seldom arisen in Buddhist cultures. (Science has latterly been practiced by Buddhists, of course.)

What Wright correctly sees as the heart of meditation practicethe draining away of the stories we tell compulsively about each moment in favor of simply having the momentis antithetical to the kind of evidentiary argument he admires. Science is competitive storytelling. If a Buddhist Newton had been sitting under that tree, he would have seen the apple falling and, reaching for Enlightenment, experienced each moment of its descent as a thing pure in itself. Only a restless Western Newton would say, Now, what story can tell us best what connects those apple-moments from branch to ground? Sprites? Magnets? The mysterious force of the mass of the earth beneath it? What made the damn thing fall? Thats a story we tell, not a moment we experience. The Buddhist Newton might have been happier than oursours was plenty unhappybut he would never have found the equation. Science is putting names on things and telling stories about them, the very habits that Buddhists urge us to transcend. The stories improve over time in the light of evidence, or they dont. Its just as possible to have Buddhist science as to have Christian science or Taoist science. But the meditators project of being here now will never be the same as the scientists project of connecting the past to the future, of telling how and knowing why.

Both Wright and Batchelor end with a semi-evangelical call for a secularized, modernized Buddhism that can supply all the shared serenity of the old dispensation and still adjust to the modern worldBatchelor actually ends his book with a sequence of fixed tenets for a secular Gotama practice. But does their Buddhism have a unique content, or is it simply the basics of secular liberalism with a borrowed Eastern vocabulary? What is the specifically Buddhist valence of saying, as Batchelor does, that the practitioners of a secular Buddhism will seek to understand and diminish the structural violence of societies and institutions as well as the roots of violence that are present in themselves? Do we need a twenty-five-hundred-year-old faith from the East to do thisisnt that what every liberal-arts college insists that its students do, anyway, with the help of only a cultural-studies major?

All secularized faiths tend to converge on a set of agreeable values: compassion, empathy, the renunciation of mere material riches. But the shared values seem implicit in the very project of secularizing a faith, with its assumption that the ethical and the supernatural elements can be cleanly severedan operation that would have seemed unintelligible to St. Paul, as to Gotama himself. The idea of doing without belief is perhaps a bigger idea than any belief it negates. Secular Buddhism ends up being... secularism.

Can any old faith point a new way forward? No doctrine is refuted by the bad behavior of the people who believe in itor else all doctrines would stand refutedbut the stories of actual Buddhism in large-scale practice in America do not encourage the hope that Buddhism will be any different from all the other organized faith practices. One of the best books about Buddhism in contemporary America, Michael Downings Shoes Outside the Door (2001), takes as its subject the San Francisco Zen Center and its attempted marriage of spiritual elevation with wild entrepreneurial activity. Downings novelistic and nuanced account focusses on the charismatic, Bill Clintonish master of the Zen Center, Richard Baker, who got embroiled in a Bill Clintonish sex scandal. American Buddhism seems as susceptible to the triple demon of power, predation, and prejudice as every other religious establishment.

A faith practice with an authoritarian structure sooner or later becomes a horror; a faith practice without an authoritarian structure sooner or later becomes a hobby. The dwindling down of Buddhism into another life-style choice will doubtless irritate many, and Wright will likely be sneered at for reducing Buddhism to another bourgeois amenity, like yoga or green juice. (Batchelor refers to this as a dumbing down of the dharma.) Yet what Wright is doing seems an honorable, even a sublime, achievement. Basically, he says that meditation has made him somewhat less irritable. Being somewhat less irritable is not the kind of achievement that people usually look to religion for, but it may be as good an achievement as we ought to expect. (If Donald Trump became somewhat less irritable, the world would be a less dangerous place.)

If there is something distinctive about a Buddhist secularism, it is that the Buddhist believes in the annihilation of appetite, while the pure secular humanist believes in satisfying our appetites until annihilation makes it impossible. Appetite, though, has a way of renewing itself even after its been fed; no matter what we do, some new gnawing materializes. Dissatisfaction with our circumstances, the frustration of our ambitions, something no bigger than a failure to lose enough weight or to have an extra room to make a nursery out of: even amid luxury, the ache of the unachieved seems intense enough. It is these dissatisfactions that drive so many Americanswho cannot understand why lives filled with material pleasure still feel unfulfilledto their meditation mats.

Secularized or traditional, the central Buddhist epiphany remains essential: the fact of mortality makes loss certain. For all the ways in which science and its blessed godchild scientific medicine have reduced the overt suffering that a human life entails, the vector to sadness remains in place, as much as it did in the Buddhas time. Gotamas death, from what one doctor describes as mesenteric infarction, seems needlessly painful and gruesome by modern standards; this is the kind of suffering we can substantially alleviate. But the universal mortality of all beingsthe fact that, if were lucky, we will die after seventy years or sois not reformable. The larger problem we face is not suffering but sadness, and the sadness is caused by the fact of loss. To love less in order to lose less seems like no solution at all, but to see loss squarely sounds like wisdom. We may or may not be able to Americanize our Buddhism, but we can certainly ecumenicize our analgesics. Lots of different stuff from lots of different places which we drink and think and do can help us manage. Every faith practice has a different form of comfort to offer in the face of loss, and each is useful. Sometimes it helps to dwell on the immensity of the universe. Sometimes it helps to feel the presence of ongoing family and community. Sometimes it helps to light a candle and say a prayer. Sometimes it helps to sit and breathe.

Original post:
What Meditation Can Do for Us, and What It Can't - The New Yorker

(Editor's note: This is the third article in a four-part series exploring how chaplains of different faiths serve all Soldiers. The final article explores Islamic chaplains.)

FORT BLISS, Texas -- Last year, a devout Christian Soldier deployed in Kuwait knocked on the door of Army Buddhist Chaplain Capt. Christopher Mohr and entered his office in silence, closing the door abruptly behind him.

The Soldier did not say a word. Mohr could see that he was emotionally frazzled and too distraught to speak. All of a sudden, the Soldier broke down and began crying hysterically. He explained to Mohr that his significant other had been sexually assaulted back home.

Mohr just listened calmly and let the distraught Soldier vent. The Soldier was livid and felt guilty for not being at home to protect the one he cared about.

After several sessions over the next few weeks, Mohr helped the Soldier make peace with himself.

Mohr, 36, is one of three active-duty Buddhist chaplains in the Army, but more importantly, he said, he's one of about 3,000 chaplains in the total force.

Mohr said that he felt called to the Army to serve and minister to Soldiers of all faiths. He said that first calling still drives him regardless of faith or denomination.

In July, Mohr was transferred to Fort Bliss, Texas, where he now serves as the battalion chaplain for the 93rd Military Police Battalion.

Among the challenges Mohr sees at his new post will be getting to know the military police mindset while understanding the very different mission set that the military police have, compared to the combined arms unit that he was assigned to where he served as the battalion chaplain for the 2nd Battalion, 70th Armor Regiment at Fort Riley, Kansas.

"At Fort Riley, I knew of 30 Buddhist Soldiers," Mohr said. "With a somewhat higher population at Fort Bliss, I will likely have more Buddhist Soldiers to serve."

Mohr said at Fort Riley, he held Buddhist services for his very small congregation weekly, or as frequently as possible when in the field.

"I welcomed anyone who wished to attend my services even if it was just out of curiosity. My job is to provide religious support to anyone who asks."

Mohr accepted a direct commission into the Army eight years ago to serve as a Buddhist chaplain because he saw a spiritual need that he felt he was capable of meeting.

SERVICING ALL SOLDIERS

Mohr has conducted various command ceremonial functions upon request, such as offering invocations and benedictions at changes of command and at prayer luncheons.

If he is asked to perform a task that he was unable to perform, such as conducting a Catholic Mass or a Catholic wedding, for example, he will refer such requests to a chaplain who could. Mohr said that this is a key concept in the Chaplain Corps, and one he enthusiastically supports.

Other examples of Mohr serving Soldiers without regard for differences in faith included providing a Jewish Soldier with Kosher Meals-Ready-to-Eat during his unit's recent field training. Mohr coordinated with supply personnel to ensure those meals were available during training.

He also said that during this past Memorial Day, he was honored when he was asked to offer the invocation and benediction at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

One of Mohr's greatest honors so far occurred a few years ago when the California Army National Guard asked him to conduct a military funeral for a Buddhist Soldier. The Soldier's family, who was also Buddhist, specifically requested that a Buddhist chaplain conduct the service.

UNIQUE BUDDHIST EVENTS

Mohr said that he conducts services on post for key Buddhist holidays such as:

-- Enlightenment Day, observed in February in some parts of the Buddhist tradition

-- Buddha's Birthday, observed on April 8 in some parts of the Buddhist tradition, and Vesak, a combined observance of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and passing, which is usually held in late April or May in many Buddhist countries

-- Ullambana, an observance for the departed and those who are suffering, is held in July or August.

It can be challenging to find ways to conduct unique, meaningful Buddhist events like the yearly Lantern Floating, he said. The event is similar to the much larger Lantern Floating conducted each Memorial Day in Hawaii, which includes music and a ceremonial ignition of the Light of Harmony, that leads up to the floating of lanterns onto the Pacific Ocean.

COUNSELING

Mohr figures that he has served the spiritual needs of about 150 Buddhist Soldiers since he was commissioned in 2009. He has provided spiritual support and comfort to injured Soldiers as often as necessary, and this year alone, he has helped nine suicidal Soldiers work toward resolving the issues that brought them to their darkest places.

Mohr said that when most non-Buddhist Soldiers meet him for the first time, they are often cautious and curious. "That usually shifts pretty quickly to a place of trust and openness as soon as they realize I'm a Soldier and here to help them if they need it."

Mohr said that, typical of all chaplains, most of his days are filled with a mix of staff meetings, ministry of presence, being present where Soldiers are training or working and addressing concerns or issues that they bring up, and spiritual guidance or counseling sessions wherein a Soldier's issues are given full attention in a more formally confidential setting.

"However, you never know when a request for help from a Soldier or an Army couple seeking to plan their wedding will take precedence and shift the entire plan for that day," Mohr explained.

Mohr said the highlights of any day are when he gets to work with fellow chaplains to "deliver relevant, meaningful ministry experiences." These would include a spiritual fitness run conducted with Christian chaplain peers or bringing another chaplain to visit his unit to conduct worship services in the field.

EDUCATION

After Mohr graduated from Menasha Senior High School in Menasha, Wisconsin in 1999, he attended the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh from 2001 to 2004 and earned his bachelor's degree in Religious Studies focused on Buddhism, and the Japanese language and culture. From 2002-2003, Mohr spent another year in an exchange program at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.

In 2011, Mohr received a master's of divinity in Buddhist Chaplaincy from the University of the West in Rosemead, California.

ARMY SERVICE

Mohr accepted a direct commission in 2009 as a chaplain candidate, and was assigned to Joint Force Headquarters in the Wisconsin Army National Guard.

He graduated from the Chaplain's Basic Officer Leadership Course at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in 2009, and transferred to the California Army National Guard to complete his education. There he served as a chaplain candidate with the 1st Battalion, 185th Armor at San Bernardino, California. Mohr's duties included working under the supervision of a senior chaplain to learn the Army structure and how to operate in a military unit.

In 2012, Mohr accessioned as a chaplain after meeting DOD requirements. He was then assigned to the 224th Special Troops Battalion in Pomona, California, serving there until 2013.

Mohr returned to the Wisconsin Army National Guard in 2013 and served with the 32nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion in Wausau, Wisconsin, until his entry to active duty in 2014.

Mohr is grateful to the Army, saying that his supervisors and colleagues have made the difference by providing time, space, and resources. They have helped him reserve facilities, promote Buddhist services to others, and make available many of the resources he needed.

Despite having a degree in religious studies, Mohr said he was unaware of the chaplaincy until he spoke to a recruiter at a job fair. To be directly commissioned as a chaplain candidate, Mohr obtained both his bachelor's degree, and ecclesiastical approval from his endorsing body, while completing an application process, background checks, and a physical evaluation.

Once commissioned, Mohr worked toward the DOD's requirements of all chaplains, including a 72 credit-hour master's degree, endorsement, ordination, and two years of ministry experience.

SPRITUAL ROOTS

Mohr's Catholic mother encouraged him from an early age to explore religion, beliefs, faith, and his spiritual identity.

"I came into the Buddhist faith after being invited to visit the head temple of a small religious order of the Shingon school of Buddhism," Mohr said. "This school focuses on applying Buddhism to our daily lives and focusing on providing ministry and altruistic service to build harmony within the community where we live. This model fits my particular religious inclinations. It made sense to me when I saw their embrace of the interfaith environment."

Mohr formally became Buddhist at the age of 22.

He explained that Buddhism is a religion that sprung up from roots in ancient India. It is a religion and teaching that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and spiritual practices based on teachings of Buddha.

Mohr was ordained through the International Order of Buddhist Ministers, and endorsed by the Buddhist Churches of America. He practices in the Shinnyo-en tradition, a minor order of the Daigo Temple Lineage in the Shingon school of Esoteric Buddhism.

While grounded in Buddhism, Mohr said he puts "a heavy emphasis on functioning in an interfaith environment, and my education, denomination and endorser encourages this as well."

"I feel at home working with a wide array of faiths, faith practices, and communities," he said.

In July, Mohr spent 12 days visiting Cambodia. He estimates that they visited about 10 Buddhist temples throughout the country. On his return, Mohr brought back two statues of Buddha. One will be used in Buddhist worship services at Fort Riley and the other at his new post at Fort Bliss.

"Chaplains are amazing people serving Soldiers, dependents, DoD civilians and retirees, but every once in a while you meet a chaplain who personifies, not only Army values such as respect, honor, integrity and selfless service, but also the values and characteristics of their religious faith," Roxanne Martinez, director of religious education, Fort Riley, Kansas, said. "As a Buddhist chaplain, he embodies the qualities of Buddhism: loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity, as well as generosity, love and wisdom. "His talks and teachings on Buddhism were talks that people of all faiths could reflect on in their day to day lives."

Martinez said that as an Army director of religious education, she had the pleasure of supporting Mohr in his services for the Buddhist community.

Mohr has a special affinity for "tankers and infantryman" whom he says are some of the most loyal and decent humans he has ever met.

"They are willing to go the extra mile and shoulder more than their fair share of the burden to help whenever they are able," Mohr said.

"One of Buddhism's core teachings is practice equanimity or mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation," Mohr said. "In Buddhism, this means to remain centered in the midst of whatever is happening, but it also means that one is to practice a calm compassion when working with people of all faiths."

Mohr hopes to someday serve both as a brigade chaplain and a family life chaplain.

See the article here:
Buddhist chaplain serves all spiritual needs - United States Army (press release)

Robert Wright

Hachette Book Group

On this weeks episode of my podcast, I Have to Ask, I spoke with Robert Wright, the best-selling of author of books including The Moral Animal, Nonzero, and The Evolution of God. Those books covered subjects such as the evolutionary roots of human behavior, globalization and technologys positive influence on our relationships and lives, and how religious belief has become increasingly tolerant over time. His new book is called Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. It seeks to explain why Buddhism is so valuable, both to the world and to Wrights own life, and how its core insights reflect real truths about evolution and human psychology.

Below is an edited transcript of part of the show. You can find links to every episode here, and the entire interview with Wright is also below. Please subscribe to I Have to Ask wherever you get your podcasts.

Isaac Chotiner: I should say, in the interest of full disclosure, that my first paid job in journalism was at bloggingheads.tv, which you were the founder of.

Robert Wright: You realize youve just undermined the credibility of this entire conversation?

I didnt make enough money that Im in any sort of debt to you.

Thats true. Well, then, I may have the opposite problem in this conversation.

Can you just talk a little bit about what Buddhism is, and specifically, the variety of Buddhism that youre talking about in this book?

Well, first of all, theres religious Buddhism, which this book isnt about. This book is about what you might call the naturalistic or secular part of Buddhism. Its not about reincarnation, and its not about prayers, and so on. It is about the central claim of Buddhist philosophy, which is that the reason we suffer, and the reason we make other people suffer, is because we dont see the world clearly. Buddhist practice, including meditation, can be seen as a program for seeing the world more clearly.

You write in the book that you wondered if there was a way to put the actual truth about human nature and the human condition into a form that would not just identify and explain the illusions we labor under, but would help us liberate ourselves from them. One of the things that youre doing in the book is youre talking about these illusions, and youre explaining how science gives us some reason to understand why we have these illusions and that Buddhism and science, in this sense, coexist or teach us the same thing. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. I had written in the past about evolutionary psychology, and one thing that struck me is that actually, the human mind was not designed by natural selection to see the world clearly, per se. Thats not the bottom line. The bottom line is like: What psychological tendencies got the genes of our ancestors into subsequent generations? Often, [that] involved seeing the world clearly. You want to have a pretty clear visual picture of the world, generally, but not in all respects. If having a mind that is deceived or that has a distorted view of things will get genes into the next generation, then distortion will be built into the mind.

What would be an example of that?

Buddhism makes two really radical-seeming claims, when you drill down on what Buddhists mean by, We dont see the world clearly. One thing they mean is that we dont see ourselves clearly at all. In fact, Buddhism goes so far as to say, Were confused about the very existence of a self. There is a sense in which the self doesnt exist, which is pretty radical. Then, theres also a claim about how deluded we are about the world out there, that the people and the objects we see, we tend to have a distorted view of, we attribute to them a kind of essence that isnt there. Both of these claims may sound strong, but I think theres a lot more to be said for them than you might imagine. I think evolutionary psychology explains why we do suffer from these particular distortions.

One of those distortions concerns things such as our love of chocolate.

Chocolate, which I remain a fan of, as I was before I started meditating. Here, we get to another of the kind of central claims of Buddhism, very central, that in a way, is related to the other things Ive said about what Buddhism is. The idea that at the root of suffering was like, thirst, craving, for not just food, but for material attainments, for status, for sex, for everything that we crave. The illusion there is that lasting gratification will ensue, or even that it will endure for very long. It actually tends not to, right? We tend to pursue things as if they will be more deeply and enduringly gratifying than they are. The Buddha stressed their impermanence, that they would evaporate, and I think evolutionary psychology, again, explains why they evaporate.

Well, sure. Organisms have to be motivated, from natural selections point of view, to do things, to nourish themselves, to do whatever will get genes spread, like sex, but they cant be enduringly happy with these things, or they wouldnt sit around and get busy. Its a dog-eat-dog world out there. The fleetingness of pleasure is a product of natural selection. Were learning more about the brain chemistry of it, and I talk a little about that. Thats another example. The idea, in general, with mindfulness meditation, which is the kind I focus on in the book, is to, rather than be driven by your feelings, examine them and decide which feelings you think are offering good guidance and which arent.

If I really want to eat my second ice cream sundae of the day, you, in the book, you dont think that the way to do that is to repress it, necessarily, but to think about why I have that desire for it, and why, in fact, it may not make me that happy to have a second ice cream sundae. Is that correct?

Well, not just to think about it, and in fact, I came out of my study of evolutionary psychology very aware that knowing about the problem of human nature by itself doesnt solve the problem. Mindfulness meditation is a practice for getting better at seeing whats driving you and deciding consciously whether you want to be driven in exactly that way.

Righteous indignation is a powerful motivator. We just need to be mindful that our conception of whats righteous is warped.

Thats why, I think its interesting that Buddhism, a couple thousand years before Darwin, diagnosed the human predicament in ways that make a lot of sense in terms of evolutionary psychology and also came up with a prescription, a program that is not trivially easy to follow, by any means. Then again, its a difficult problem, but a program that I think works in a kind of pragmatic, therapeutic sense. Beyond that, it can take you into really, I think, interesting philosophical, and I would say, spiritual territory. Ive been on meditation retreats, a number of them, where you really just do nothing but meditation all day, no contact with the outside world. In that context, you can really go to some interesting places.

One of the things that you write about in your book, just to move off things like chocolate, is anger. You talk about why, in a certain way, we sometimes get pleasure from anger. In some incident of road rage or something, being angry really brings us some sort of joy. Again, its not long-lasting. I was wondering, in your own life, how do you feel like Buddhism has helped you with anger?

Im as prone to rage as the next person.

I worked for you, I know this.

I was actually ... I forget, was I a very well-behaved boss?

I contend that there are worse bosses. Some of them occupy very high positions, even as we speak.

Rage is an interesting example, because it, in a certain sense, made more sense in the environment of our evolution, a hunter-gatherer environment, than it makes now. The point of rage, from natural selections point of view, is to demonstrate that people cant mess with you. If you disrespect me, if you try to steal my mate, whatever, I will fight you. Even if I lose the fight, I have sent a signal to everyone in my social environment that I am willing to pay the price to make sure that people who exploit me suffer.

In a modern environment like road rageand there actually recently was an actual death by gunshot in a road rage caseit doesnt even make that much sense, because theres nobody whos ever going to see you again whos witnessing the rage. Theres no point at all in a demonstration of your resolve.

It's not going to help you on Tinder if you put on your profile that you just shot someone on the freeway, either.

No. There could be active downside, beyond the risk of getting shot. One thing an evolutionary perspective can do is highlight the absurdity of some of our feelings and so reinforce the idea that its worth learning how to examine them carefully and cultivating the ability to not be driven by them, should you choose not to.

How has that worked for you? You talk in the book about a former colleague who would make you angry sometimes to think about.

I do not mention that persons name.

I was just meditating once, this was during a retreat, and for some reason, he came to mind. You know, I dont have a lot of just bitter enemies. I would say there are two or three people in the category I would put this person in. I was meditating, and I dont know why I started thinking of him, but just suddenly I had a very charitable view. Suddenly, I was like, imagining him as a gangly, awkward adolescent, like, not fitting in on the playground, and developing the various tendencies that, in my view, are not entirely commendable, and in any event, have rubbed me the wrong way. It was just the first time Ive ever thought of this person in a charitable way. Thats some kind of testament to the kind of distance you can get on your more reflexive reactions to things.

How do you feel about anger and rage in terms of people who, say, are reading the newspaper now and seeing whats going on in the world? What do you think the appropriate response is?

Very interesting question. Im thinking about, and I may have done this by the time the podcast airs, who knows, trying to get the phrase mindful resistance off the ground. Maybe, I dont know, a podcast called Mindful Resistance that competes with yours or something, who knows. I, personally, think that the reaction to Trump is excessive, for tactical purposes, that I dont think we realize how often our outrage actually feeds his base and serves his goal of keeping support at least high enough that he cant get impeached, for example. I just think in a lot of ways, and Im as prone to this as the next person, clicking retweet on something that actually doesnt have much nutritional valueits a real challenge. Righteous indignation is a powerful motivator, and it can be harnessed for good. We just need to be mindful that our conception of whats righteous is kind of naturally warped. You need to very carefully examine, I think, your commitments, kind of, your value commitments or whatever, to make sure that youre not being led astray by the parts of human nature that tend to lead us astray, or that youre not just overreacting in a counterproductive way. It absolutely is a challenge.

To be honest, Ive known people who went so far down the meditative path that, although they had the same views that they had about social justice or whatever, the same views theyd ever had, still, they seemed a little more complacent than I thought was optimum. I think thats an actual danger. You want to think about it. I dont think Im anywhere near there. My problem, in general, with politics and ideology, is keeping my rage below the counterproductive level. I need meditation even to do that.

Do you think youve gotten a better sense of why people like Trump?

Three of my four siblings voted for Trump. On the other hand, Ive pretty much avoided talking to them about it, so I dont claim that Ive gotten a lot of insight there. I do think, there is the natural tendency to want to demonize the people on the other side of the fight. It is natural and easy to say, They are racist, they are stupid and so on, and I just think its more complicated than that. There are some true racists, but I think youre not serving your own cause when you succumb to the tendency to demonize people in that way, because I think if youre going to undermine Trumps support, youre going to need to understand what the source of that support is.

Thats a very pragmatically political way of looking at it, though, that if you want Trump to lose in 2020 that you have to reach some people who voted for him, and so on. What about from a larger sense of, just put aside the political consequences for a minute. Do you think that what we need is more sympathy for people who vote in different directions and so on?

One term I would use is cognitive empathy. Not necessarily feeling their pain or even caring about them, just understanding what the world looks like from their point of view. Again, I think meditation can really facilitate that. It can break down your natural tendency to want to dismiss or demonize them. Once you do that and understand what their situation in life is, and what their frustrations are, you may then feel deeply that, yeah, some of these problems they face should be addressed. Cognitive empathy may lead to sympathy, but I think the first step is just to see the situation clearly. Our brains naturally discourage that.

As Slates resident interrogator, Isaac Chotiner has tangled with Newt Gingrich and gotten personal with novelist Jonathan Franzen. Now hes bringing his pointed, incisive interview style to a weekly podcast in which he talks one-on-one with newsmakers, celebrities, and cultural icons.

You started this podcast by saying, Im not talking about religious Buddhism, per se. When you close the book, you talk about this very subject, and you ask, Is the type of Buddhism Im practicing in fact a religion? I was just wondering, how do you feel about it, sitting here today? Is the type of Buddhism youre practicing a form of religion?

It kind of feels like that to me. I certainly consider it spiritual in some reasonable definitions of that term. The thing I say in that chapter about religion is, William James said, Generically, religion certainly centrally involves the idea that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme interest lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves to that order. Buddhism, set aside the religious part, but just philosophical Buddhism does posit the existence of a kind of order. A couple of kinds, but one kind is that there is a natural convergence between seeing the world more clearly, seeing the truth, becoming happier, and becoming a better person.

Thats three different things, right? Clarity of vision, happiness, and moral edification, becoming a better person. The assertion by Buddhist philosophy is that, conveniently, those are all the same thing. If you get on the path, including a meditative path, and seriously pursue it, you will be making progress on all three fronts. At least, they will tend to coincide. I think thats basically true. There are people of great meditative attainment who are bad people. Thats possible. But I think, by and large, this kind of amazing claim about the way the universe is set up, that you get kind of three for one, I think is true.

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Mindful Rage - Slate Magazine

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The rapid development of so-called NBIC technologiesnanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive scienceare giving rise to possibilities that have long been the domain of science fiction. Disease, aging and even death are all human realities that these technologies seek to end.

They may enable us to enjoy greater morphological freedomwe could take on new forms through prosthetics or genetic engineering. Or advance our cognitive capacities. We could use brain-computer interfaces to link us to advanced artificial intelligence (AI).

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Nanobots could roam our bloodstream to monitor our health and enhance our emotional propensities for joy, love or other emotions. Advances in one area often raise new possibilities in others, and this convergence may bring about radical changes to our world in the near-future.

Transhumanism is the idea that humans should transcend their current natural state and limitations through the use of technologythat we should embrace self-directed human evolution. If the history of technological progress can be seen as humankinds attempt to tame nature to better serve its needs, transhumanism is the logical continuation: the revision of humankinds nature to better serve its fantasies.

As David Pearce, a leading proponent of transhumanism and co-founder of Humanity+, says:

If we want to live in paradise, we will have to engineer it ourselves. If we want eternal life, then well need to rewrite our bug-ridden genetic code and become god-like only hi-tech solutions can ever eradicate suffering from the world. Compassion alone is not enough.

But there is a darker side to the naive faith that Pearce and other proponents have in transhumanismone that is decidedly dystopian.

There is unlikely to be a clear moment when we emerge as transhuman. Rather technologies will become more intrusive and integrate seamlessly with the human body. Technology has long been thought of as an extension of the self. Many aspects of our social world, not least our financial systems, are already largely machine-based. There is much to learn from these evolving human/machine hybrid systems.

Artificial intelligence GLAS-8/Flickr

Yet the often Utopian language and expectations that surround and shape our understanding of these developments have been under-interrogated. The profound changes that lie ahead are often talked about in abstract ways, because evolutionary advancements are deemed so radical that they ignore the reality of current social conditions.

In this way, transhumanism becomes a kind of techno-anthropocentrism,in which transhumanists often underestimate the complexity of our relationship with technology. They see it as a controllable, malleable tool that, with the correct logic and scientific rigour, can be turned to any end. In fact, just as technological developments are dependent on and reflective of the environment in which they arise, they in turn feed back into the culture and create new dynamicsoften imperceptibly.

Situating transhumanism, then, within the broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts within which it emerges is vital to understanding how ethical it is.

A customs officer in Bulgaria displays Captagon pills in Sofia, 12, 2007. Pills could give advantages to peoplebut only those who can afford them. Reuters/Nikolay Doychinov

Max More and Natasha Vita-More, in their edited volume The Transhumanist Reader, claim the need in transhumanism for inclusivity, plurality and continuous questioning of our knowledge."

Yet these three principles are incompatible with developing transformative technologies within the prevailing system from which they are currently emerging: advanced capitalism.

One problem is that a highly competitive social environment doesnt lend itself to diverse ways of being. Instead it demands increasingly efficient behaviour. Take students, for example. If some have access to pills that allow them to achieve better results, can other students afford not to follow? This is already a quandary. Increasing numbers of students reportedly pop performance-enhancing pills. And if pills become more powerful, or if the enhancements involve genetic engineering or intrusive nanotechnology that offer even stronger competitive advantages, what then? Rejecting an advanced technological orthodoxy could potentially render someone socially and economically moribund (perhaps evolutionarily so), while everyone with access is effectively forced to participate to keep up.

Going beyond everyday limits is suggestive of some kind of liberation. However, here it is an imprisoning compulsion to act a certain way. We literally have to transcend in order to conform (and survive). The more extreme the transcendence, the more profound the decision to conform and the imperative to do so.

The systemic forces cajoling the individual into being upgraded to remain competitive also play out on a geo-political level. One area where technology R&D has the greatest transhumanist potential is defence. DARPA (the US defense department responsible for developing military technologies), which is attempting to create metabolically dominant soldiers," is a clear example of how vested interests of a particular social system could determine the development of radically powerful transformative technologies that have destructive rather than Utopian applications.

U.S. army soldiers in a joint military drill together with Serbian and Bulgarian soldiers, at Koren military training ground, Bulgaria, July 15, 2017. DAPRA is currently working to create metabolically dominant soldiers. Stoyan Nenov/Reuters

The rush to develop super-intelligent AI by globally competitive and mutually distrustful nation states could also become an arms race. In Radical Evolution, novelist Verner Vinge describes a scenario in which superhuman intelligence is the ultimate weapon." Ideally, mankind would proceed with the utmost care in developing such a powerful and transformative innovation.

There is quite rightly a huge amount of trepidation around the creation of super-intelligence and the emergence of the singularitythe idea that once AI reaches a certain level it will rapidly redesign itself, leading to an explosion of intelligence that will quickly surpass that of humans (something that will happen by 2029 according to futurist Ray Kurzweil). If the world takes the shape of whatever the most powerful AI is programed (or reprograms itself) to desire, it even opens the possibility of evolution taking a turn for the entirely banalcould an AI destroy humankind from a desire to produce the most paperclips for example?

Its also difficult to conceive of any aspect of humanity that could not be improved by being made more efficient at satisfying the demands of a competitive system. It is the system, then, that determines humanitys evolutionwithout taking any view on what humans are or what they should be. One of the ways in which advanced capitalism proves extremely dynamic is in its ideology of moral and metaphysical neutrality. As philosopher Michael Sandel says: markets dont wag fingers. In advanced capitalism, maximizing ones spending power maximizes ones ability to flourishhence shopping could be said to be a primary moral imperative of the individual.

Philosopher Bob Doede rightly suggests it is this banal logic of the market that will dominate:

If biotech has rendered human nature entirely revisable, then it has no grain to direct or constrain our designs on it. And so whose designs will our successor post-human artefacts likely bear? I have little doubt that in our vastly consumerist, media-saturated capitalist economy, market forces will have their way. So the commercial imperative would be the true architect of the future human.

Whether the evolutionary process is determined by a super-intelligent AI or advanced capitalism, we may be compelled to conform to a perpetual transcendence that only makes us more efficient at activities demanded by the most powerful system. The end point is predictably an entirely nonhumanthough very efficienttechnological entity derived from humanity that doesnt necessarily serve a purpose that a modern-day human would value in any way. The ability to serve the system effectively will be the driving force. This is also true of natural evolutiontechnology is not a simple tool that allows us to engineer ourselves out of this conundrum. But transhumanism could amplify the speed and least desirable aspects of the process.

For bioethicist Julian Savulescu, the main reason humans must be enhanced is for our species to survive. He says we face a Bermuda Triangle of extinction: radical technological power, liberal democracy and our moral nature. As a transhumanist, Savulescu extols technological progress, also deeming it inevitable and unstoppable. It is liberal democracyand particularly our moral naturethat should alter.

The failings of humankind to deal with global problems are increasingly obvious. But Savulescu neglects to situate our moral failings within their wider cultural, political and economic context, instead believing that solutions lie within our biological make up.

Yet how would Savulescus morality-enhancing technologies be disseminated, prescribed and potentially enforced to address the moral failings they seek to cure? This would likely reside in the power structures that may well bear much of the responsibility for these failings in the first place. Hes also quickly drawn into revealing how relative and contestable the concept of morality is:

We will need to relax our commitment to maximum protection of privacy. Were seeing an increase in the surveillance of individuals and that will be necessary if we are to avert the threats that those with antisocial personality disorder, fanaticism, represent through their access to radically enhanced technology.

Such surveillance allows corporations and governments to access and make use of extremely valuable information. In Who Owns the Future, internet pioneer Jaron Lanier explains:

Troves of dossiers on the private lives and inner beings of ordinary people, collected over digital networks, are packaged into a new private form of elite money It is a new kind of security the rich trade in, and the value is naturally driven up. It becomes a giant-scale levee inaccessible to ordinary people.

Crucially, this levee is also invisible to most people. Its impacts extend beyond skewing the economic system towards elites to significantly altering the very conception of liberty, because the authority of power is both radically more effective and dispersed.

Foucaults notion that we live in a panoptic societyone in which the sense of being perpetually watched instills disciplineis now stretched to the point where todays incessant machinery has been called a superpanopticon." The knowledge and information that transhumanist technologies will tend to create could strengthen existing power structures that cement the inherent logic of the system in which the knowledge arises.

This is in part evident in the tendency of algorithms toward race and gender bias, which reflects our already existing social failings. Information technology tends to interpret the world in defined ways: it privileges information that is easily measurable, such as GDP, at the expense of unquantifiable information such as human happiness or well-being. As invasive technologies provide ever more granular data about us, this data may in a very real sense come to define the world and intangible information may not maintain its rightful place in human affairs.

Existing inequities will surely be magnified with the introduction of highly effective psycho-pharmaceuticals, genetic modification, super intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, nanotechnology, robotic prosthetics, and the possible development of life expansion. They are all fundamentally inegalitarian, based on a notion of limitlessness rather than a standard level of physical and mental well-being weve come to assume in healthcare. Its not easy to conceive of a way in which these potentialities can be enjoyed by all.

A man moves his finger toward a robotic hand at the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots in Madrid on November 19, 2014. AFP

Sociologist Saskia Sassen talks of the new logics of expulsion," that capture the pathologies of todays global capitalism."The expelled include the more than 60,000 migrants who have lost their lives on fatal journeys in the past 20 years, and the victims of the racially skewed profile of the increasing prison population.

In Britain, they include the 30,000 people whose deaths in 2015 were linked to health and social care cuts and the many who perished in the Grenfell Tower fire. Their deaths can be said to have resulted from systematic marginalization.

Unprecedented acute concentration of wealth happens alongside these expulsions. Advanced economic and technical achievements enable this wealth and the expulsion of surplus groups. At the same time, Sassen writes, they create a kind of nebulous centerlessness as the locus of power:

The oppressed have often risen against their masters. But today the oppressed have mostly been expelled and survive a great distance from their oppressors The oppressor is increasingly a complex system that combines persons, networks, and machines with no obvious centre.

Surplus populations removed from the productive aspects of the social world may rapidly increase in the near future as improvements in AI and robotics potentially result in significant automation unemployment. Large swaths of society may become productively and economically redundant. For historian Yuval Noah Harari the most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: what should we do with all the superfluous people?

We would be left with the scenario of a small elite that has an almost total concentration of wealth with access to the most powerfully transformative technologies in world history and a redundant mass of people, no longer suited to the evolutionary environment in which they find themselves and entirely dependent on the benevolence of that elite. The dehumanizing treatment of todays expelled groups shows that prevailing liberal values in developed countries dont always extend to those who dont share the same privilege, race, culture or religion.

In an era of radical technological power, the masses may even represent a significant security threat to the elite, which could be used to justify aggressive and authoritarian actions (perhaps enabled further by a culture of surveillance.)

In their transhumanist tract, The Proactionary Imperative, Steve Fuller and Veronika Lipinska argue that we are obliged to pursue techno-scientific progress relentlessly, until we achieve our god-like destiny or infinite powereffectively to serve God by becoming God. They unabashedly reveal the incipient violence and destruction such Promethean aims would require: replacing the natural with the artificial is so key to proactionary strategy at least as a serious possibility if not a likelihood [it will lead to] the long-term environmental degradation of the Earth.

The extent of suffering they would be willing to gamble in their cosmic casino is only fully evident when analysing what their project would mean for individual human beings:

A proactionary world would not merely tolerate risk-taking but outright encourage it, as people are provided with legal incentives to speculate with their bio-economic assets. Living riskily would amount to an entrepreneurship of the self [proactionaries] seek large long-term benefits for survivors of a revolutionary regime that would permit many harms along the way.

Progress on overdrive will require sacrifices.

The economic fragility that humans may soon be faced with as a result of automation unemployment would likely prove extremely useful to proactionary goals. In a society where vast swaths of people are reliant on handouts for survival, market forces would determine that less social security means people will risk more for a lower reward, so proactionaries would reinvent the welfare state as a vehicle for fostering securitised risk taking while the proactionary state would operate like a venture capitalist writ large.

At the heart of this is the removal of basic rights for Humanity 1.0," Fullers term for modern, non-augmented human beings, replaced with duties towards the future augmented Humanity 2.0. Hence the very code of our being can and perhaps must be monetised: personal autonomy should be seen as a politically licensed franchise whereby individuals understand their bodies as akin to plots of land in what might be called the genetic commons.'"

The neoliberal preoccupation with privatization would extend to human beings. Indeed, the lifetime of debt that is the reality for most citizens in developed advanced capitalist nations, takes a further step when you are born into debtsimply by being alive you are invested with capital on which a return is expected."

Socially moribund masses may thus be forced to serve the technoscientific super-project of Humanity 2.0, which uses the ideology of market fundamentalism in its quest for perpetual progress and maximum productivity. The only significant difference is that the stated aim of godlike capabilities in Humanity 2.0 is overt, as opposed to the undefined end determined by the infinite progress of an ever more efficient market logic that we have now.

Some transhumanists are beginning to understand that the most serious limitations to what humans can achieve are social and culturalnot technical. However, all too often their reframing of politics falls into the same trap as their techno-centric worldview. They commonly argue the new political poles are not left-right but techno-conservative or techno-progressive (and even techno-libertarian and techno-sceptic). Meanwhile Fuller and Lipinska argue that the new political poles will be up and down instead of left and right: those who want to dominate the skies and became all powerful, and those who want to preserve the Earth and its species-rich diversity. It is a false dichotomy. Preservation of the latter is likely to be necessary for any hope of achieving the former.

Transhumanism and advanced capitalism are two processes which value progress and efficiency above everything else. The former as a means to power and the latter as a means to profit. Humans become vessels to serve these values. Transhuman possibilities urgently call for a politics with more clearly delineated and explicit humane values to provide a safer environment in which to foster these profound changes. Where we stand on questions of social justice and environmental sustainability has never been more important. Technology doesnt allow us to escape these questionsit doesnt permit political neutrality. The contrary is true. It determines that our politics have never been important. Savulescu is right when he says radical technologies are coming. He is wrong in thinking they will fix our morality. They will reflect it.

Alexander Thomasis aPhD Candidate at theUniversity of East London.

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AI and Transhumanism: Could Quest for Super-intelligence and Eternal Life Lead to a Dystopian Nightmare? - Newsweek

With NFL training camps in full swing, much is made of every minuscule detail surrounding teams around the league. Yet somehow, one of the key members of the Broncos No Fly Zone, Bradley Roby, seems to be routinely overlooked.

The Broncos cornerback joined Eric Goodman and Les Shapiro on AM 1340 | FM 104.7 to talk about his role in one of the elite units in the NFL, and his ultimate markers of success for this season.

Im in the shadow but its all good. They have established names from being in the league for a long time so at the end of the day all that matters is making plays. If I make those plays then the recognition will come, Roby explained. My attitude is to just make them recognize me. Make them give me accolades. I dont really want that though. I just want to win, create turnovers, and get paid. As long as that happens, I dont care who gets the glory.

Bradley spoke extensively about the team and their goals, but tried to stay realistic and focused on the benefits of training camp especially when it comes to how his group may be disrupting the development of Denvers young quarterbacks.

You cant expect everyone to just go out and look like Tom Brady against us, because Tom Brady doesnt look like Tom Brady against us. Its hard to hold [Paxton Lynch and Trevor Siemian] to that standard against us, but our goal is to keep getting better at the end of the day, said the fourth-year defensive back. Going against us every day is going to make them better prepared for what they will see in the regular season. I feel like you should always work harder and put more pressure on yourself in practice so in the game its easy.

Listen to the full interveiw, including Robys thoughts on NFL player rankings, in the podcast below.

Catch Afternoon Drive with Goodman and Shapiro every weekday from 4p-6p on Mile High Sports AM 1340 | FM 104.7 or stream live any time for the best local coverage of Colorado sports from Denvers biggest sports talk lineup.

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Team success more important than personal accolades for Bradley Roby - Mile High Sports

Andy Hallen is the perfect choice for City Council, and here is why.

Hallen's past experiences, qualifications, drive and success are a sure indication that he is a winner. During his career, Andy worked for Procter & Gamble, a Fortune 100 company, which at that time, was the largest trader of vegetable oils in the world. Andy was entrusted with this budget, which is much larger than the budget for the City of Aiken. His achievements in that industry, along with his prudent investment strategies, enabled him to retire at a mere 55 years of age.

I had the pleasure of meeting fellow adventurer Andy and his wife Tracy, eight years ago when we resided in Panama, where they were both key members of the community. Following retirement, Andy moved to Boquete, Panama, where he divided his time between leisure activities and community service. He volunteered at a nonprofit which taught environmental awareness and soon managed the first and only recycling operation in Panama. When a lack of funding threatened to shut down the program, Andy came to the rescue. Imagine, if you will, the effort it takes to raise funds in the U.S., add the cultural and language issues associated with working in a Third World country and you will begin to realize that Andy, through his skills and talents, was able to save the program.

Among his ideas to raise funding was the development of a coupon book. Although widely known and used in the U.S. for decades, the concept was nonexistent in Panama. Andy convinced many of the local merchants that couponing would promote their businesses. Once printed into booklets, they were sold to residents, raising the much needed capital to keep the door of the recycling center open.

Andy and Tracy were invited to Aiken in 2013, and it was love at first sight. Six months later they moved here. I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason and meeting Andy in Panama lead to his move to Aiken. Now Aiken needs someone with Andys ability and passion to fill the council position in District 5.

As a conservative, Andy is the right person, in the right place and this is the right time. He has the skills, experience and personal attributes to make an outsized contribution to the City of Aiken, but he cant do it without your help. I guarantee that the 30 minutes it will take you to vote Hallen for City Council will be a wise investment in preserving and improving what we have today for Aikenites of the future. Please vote for Hallen and encourage everyone you know in District 5 to do the same.

Phil Follins

Aiken

Excerpt from:
Letter: Hallen's personal success will work on council - Aiken Standard

Embed from Getty ImagesWe read a lot about motivating factors for entrepreneurs: having self-belief, never giving up, failing fast, continuing to look forward. And its mostly good stuff. But Ive found that sometimes there is something deeper. Something that supports these traits which is more personal and more impactful than just believing in oneself. Here are four things I have found having a meaningful bearing on our mental health, and ultimately our careers.

1. Its never about business, its all about whatever you love the most. For me, my children matter more to me than anything in business. I almost lost sight of that at one point. Not that I forgot I loved my kids, but too often I overlooked being present and showing it. Dont allow your stress and pressure get in the way of the one source of strength that will always be there for you. The ones who love you unconditionally.

2. Have a loving support network around you. Things will go wrong, go south, and be difficult to handle. Having those around you who will understand and offer compassion will give you strength to move forward. Sometimes a person just listening and telling you it will be all right is enough. The hug of a loved one, the compassion of a loving listener, the arm around your shoulder. It can have a profound impact on your decision making.

3. Be a strong co-leader of your family. Learning to lead in business means nothing if you sacrifice the opportunity to be a loving and strong co-leader for your family. You and your parental counterpart, regardless of your marital situation, are who your children look to when they experience the world. Their morals, their ethics, their care for others, their respect for others: They learn it all from you. You cannot hide from this. They are your opportunity to learn how leading impacts others. The most respected business leaders know this and treat their employees this way. They learn it in the most important place, their home.

4. Control doesnt matter. Cooperation and interdependence do. Supporting others in a way they say helps them be a better person, matters. Their love for you supporting them and vice versa, your acceptance of them as an individual with thoughts, feelings, and life goals, your humility to equality and the capable contribution of others, is what will produce trust and drive you all forward.

The feeling of success in life is unique, precious, and incredibly focusing. Nothing in business will ever fully give you this, even the feeling of accomplishment from signing a huge deal or selling your business. This only matters when you have someone to share it with. Someone you love, and someone that loves you and makes you happy. Someone who can say they are proud of you. Someone to acknowledge that your hard work has paid off. And when it doesnt, someone who can tell you will be okay will help you back on your feet.

Finding this contentment, this happiness, this love, will propel your courage, your confidence, and your self-empowerment in your career and your business. Whether its your life partner, your children, your parents, or your God. Success in our lives doesnt come from success in business or our careers, success in business comes from success in our lives. Be successful in your life.Photo credit: Getty Images

Continued here:
Forget the Business talk: It's Always Personal - The Good Men Project (blog)

The first time most movie-goers heard the music of Hans Zimmer was in the 1988 movie "Rain Man." The composer went on to write the scores of more than 100 films. He has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won for "The Lion King."

Zimmer has also won four Grammys and two Golden Globe awards.

"Dunkirk" has been hailed as a visual masterpiece. But what you hear the film's sweeping musical score is the latest genius from the legendary composer, reports CBS News' Mark Strassmann.

"I wrote by going to the beach, picking up the sand, seeing the misery on that beach. You have to get a movie under your fingers. It's as simple as that," Zimmer said.

CBS News

To score "Dunkirk," the German-American Zimmer found inspiration in his own past.

"I approached it at first, of course, as somebody who wouldn't be here if my parents had not escaped the Germans," Zimmer said. His Jewish mother escaped the Germans in 1939.

The 59-year-old Zimmer has scored nearly 150 movies.

"Every job starts the same way. I either see a director or I get a phone call and somebody says, 'I want to tell you a story,'" Zimmer said.

His story began in Frankfurt, Germany. As a kid, he had two weeks of piano lessons. That's it. In his 20s, he played synthesizer in the new wave band, The Buggles, and their 1979 hit, "Video Killed the Radio Star."

It was the first music video ever played on MTV.

"For me it was really the impetus to go, 'Hey I like this idea of combining visuals and music. This is really this is really where I want to go,'" Zimmer said.

His Hollywood catalogue includes hits like "Gladiator," 14 years of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series and the "Dark Knight" Batman trilogy.

He has had 10 Oscar nominations winning in 1995 for Disney's "The Lion King." All that success, and yet every new project makes him anxious.

"The first two, three weeks are just complete agony of, 'oh my God, I don't know how to do this anymore. Maybe now I should phone the director and tell him he should hire someone else.' All the neuroses and self-doubt and the fear it's all there," Zimmer said.

On the piano, Zimmer showed us how he created the music for the movie "Interstellar."

Zimmer became a rock star again this summer. He's currently on a 46-date world tour with a full orchestra and choir. He also played at this year's Coachella festival.

"And I didn't know what to expect from the audience and the audience didn't know what to expect from us," Zimmer said. "To see so many grown men cry, I mean we touched them, we moved them. We did give them that experience. I've been hiding behind the screen. I have never looked them in the eye. It's making me a better composer. It really is."

Remember that the next time you're at a big movie and the closing credits say, "Music by Hans Zimmer."

2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The rest is here:
Legendary film composer Hans Zimmer on career and why "Dunkirk" is personal - CBS News

From Galley Head Rd to Long Strand is an oil on canvas by Anastasia ODonoghue Healy, on show at the Aisling Gallery in Ballydehob shortly.

From Galley Head Rd to Long Strand is an oil on canvas by Anastasia ODonoghue Healy, on show at the Aisling Gallery in Ballydehob shortly.

A SHARED love for landscape has culminated in a joint West Cork exhibition by two local artists.

Abundance: Light, Land,Water is the appropriate title for the exhibition which opens on August 4th at the Aisling Gallery in Ballydehob, celebrating the work of Fiona Power and Anastasia O Donoghue Healy.

The show reveals their shared love for the landscape in all its seasonal glory.

A Fine Art graduate from Sligo IT, Fiona Power was a member of the Pigeon Loft Studios in Sligo and of the Backwater Artists Group in Cork city.

She has been living and working in West Cork for over 20 years, where her studio overlooks Dunmanus Bay, surrounded by meadows and fields of cattle.

Working en plein air and in her studio, she employs a variety of techniques and materials glazing, impasto and drawing.

Im inspired by the beauty of colour and the emotion of the moments of change in the atmosphere of a particular place and time. Im interested in the land, sea and sky that present themselves in moments of drama and beauty, she said.

Fiona has exhibited widely including at the prestigious RHA Annual Open, with work held in many collections in Ireland and abroad.

In self-taught artist Anastasia ODonoghue Healys attempt to explain her logic she says her paintings capture another way of seeing.

They are informed as much by her journey to painting as by her growing interest in awareness, consciousness and the writings of Eckhart Tolle.

Anastasia aspires to capture the isness of the landscape at a given time. She paints landscapes en plein air, saying that this invites a more intimate experience of the landscape, responding to this experience intuitively and rapidly by her use of colour and mark-making.

Shortlisted in the National Open Art (UK and Ireland) in 2015 and again in 2016, Anastasia continues to refine both her craft of painting and the art of living.

Abundance: Light, Land, Water opens August 4th at 7pm at the Aisling Gallery and will run for two weeks.

Original post:
Local artists will unveil their shared love of landscape at Ballydehob gallery show - Southern Star Newspaper

Pat Simmons Jr. is not just a Maui boy, father, singer-songwriter, musician, surfer and an organic farmer. Hes also a cancer survivor, and the son of Pat Simmons, an American rock musician and original band member of The Doobie Brothers. Being from a musically inclined family, Simmons grew up listening to all types of music. He learned how to play both the guitar and ukulele at age six. He has two older siblings from his mothers previous marriage, and his family has always been extremely close.

His father introduced him to playing musical instruments, showing him how to play the twelve bar blues on the guitar at a very young age. Later, Simmons continued his guitar education with Mauis own Tom Conway at Bounty Music. Conway taught him how to play various songs from Jimi Hendrix to other various rock icons.

Pat was a great guitar student who was always eager to learn, Conway told me. He embraced several styles like reggae, blues, folk, even a pinch of Gypsy Jazz! Now, hes developed into a fine player, singer and composer with his own unique voice and strong conviction about his message as an artist. Im proud to call Pat a friend and I was recently honored to play on his debut CD. Little known fact: He also plays a mean Didgeridoo!

Simmons learned how to play the ukulele more than 20 years ago at Haiku Elementary School. The ukulele class was part of the Hawaiian studies program, focusing on basic technical skills as well as Hawaiian songs from Auntie Makua Bailey. In fact, Simmons says that Auntie Makua and her songs really inspired his passion for Hawaiian music and culture.

From his happy introduction to playing Hawaiian music and rock classics as a child, Simmons has always continued to increase his musical repertoire. Hes constantly learning how to play new instruments and continues to refine his playing skills.

Im always playing around with different things, not always diving in deep, but I do play a little hand percussion, harmonica, lap steel slide guitar, flutes, didgeridoo, etc., mostly just for fun, he said.

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Being that Simmons is the son of a famous American rock musician, I was curious about his youth on Maui.

I was exposed to all kinds of music, people and places at a very young age, he said. Its what has really sculpted me into who I am today, including my diverse musical interests from Django Reinhardt to roots reggae.

Simmons said his greatest musical influences are Bob Marley, George Helm, Gabby Pahinui and his father. My dads music with the Doobie Brothers has influenced me so much, as well as his innate musical talents, he said. A lot of the things that I listen to today, I first heard from my dad. Our musical collections are similar from traditional folk music, to the psychedelic rock of the 60s and 70s.

Simmons was touring with his father and the Doobie Brothers band until a few years ago when he decided to settle into marriage and family life. Although he loves touring the West Coast (because theres a lot of opportunity to surf and eat lots of yummy organic foods, he said), he prefers to play local and just be the Maui boy that hes always been. He deeply cares about the aina, and is currently focusing on building up his following in the Hawaiian Islands. In fact, he worked up a new set with two of his friends, Matt Del Olmo and Justin Morris. The Pat Simmons Jr. Ohana played their first show together at the last East Maui Taro Festival in Hana. As far as more music plans, Simmons wants to record another album in the next year.

On a daily basis, Pat listens to a variety of music. Lately, Ive been finding obscure Hawaiian music and singing along while I drive, he said. One of my favorite ways to learn a song. He finds a lot of inspiration from Dennis Kamakahi, Gabby Pahinui, George Helm and Keali`i Reichel. Im also of course very into Bob Marley, various reggae musicians, and some newer music from Xavier Rudd and Trevor Hall, he said.

Simmons said hes recently been enamored with a song composed in the late 1800s by Eleanor Keho`ohiwaokalani Wright Prendergast. It was originally written for members of the Royal Hawaiian Band in opposition to the illegal U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Its called Kaulana Na Pua (you can find a Hawaiian-English translationhereand you can hear the song on the Maui Museum YouTube channel). Perhaps soon, well all have a chance to hear Simmons playing it, too.

Eleanor Kekoaohiwaikalani Wright Prendergast

I asked him how his experience of growing up in a musical family will translate to his own growing family. In just the past year, Simmons became a father to a baby boy.

Since my son has existed, Ive been singing to him and playing songs to him in his born presence, inside and outside of the womb, he said. He loves it when I practice near him, and Im looking forward to sharing my love of different genres with him.

Simmons also spends much of his free time tending to his family land in Haiku. Hes an organic farmer, and is energetic about supporting Hawaiis natural environment and protecting the land from dangerous invasive species. This wasnt always the case. Learning about agriculture and permaculture was a passion that began when he attended Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

When I enrolled at Evergreen in 2008, I was headed in a completely different direction, Simmons said. I tried to get into this music class taught by a woman who is an expert in ethnomusicology, particularly Irish folk. But the class filled up, and I was forced to find something else. So at the last minute while scrambling to find a class with open enrollment, I chose a program called Into the WoodsCommunity, Conflict, Alliance.

Simmons said the class changed his life.

At 18 years old, I was exposed to what was happening in the Pacific Northwest logging, he said. I learned about the forest ecosystems and the damage being done to plant and animal habitats, including the waters. This perspective on the preciousness of the natural environment really shaped my thinking and my daily choices. After four years of studying natural systems, including agriculture and permaculture, I walked away with a bachelors degree in ecology, the study of the relationship between all biological lifeforms. Plants are my specialty. This helped me understand my own island home a lot more. I have a strong understanding of the natural environments of Hawaii, as well as how threatened they are from pollution and alien species.

Simmons 10-acre family property in Hana is known as the Opana Valley Farm. He hopes to reforest the land with endemic Hawaiian species, and continues to cultivate abundant, diverse orchards and gardens that will continue to feed his family. Hes currently expanding his potato production, as well as creating an organic nursery with rare plants that he can cultivate and propagate to be shared with the Maui community.

Lately, my wife and I have been taking care of existing plants and trees that my father planted almost 20 years ago, Simmons said. But we are also planting vegetable gardens, weaved among perennial medicines, rare fruit trees, native Hawaiian ferns, trees, plants and rare Hawaiian food plants such as Kalo, Mai`a (ancient plantain banana cultivars) and Uala (sweet potato). I really love collecting rare plants that are literally on the edge of extinction, which is the case for many of the rare Mai`aIve collected from remote valleys in East Maui. Gotta perpetuate the old crops so that future generations can enjoy them.

Simmons and his wife also grow old Hawaiian sugar cane varieties, and press the juice in an old-fashioned hand-crank press. They sell their juice and medicinal teas every other Wednesday at the farmers market that takes place at the Waipuna Chapel on Oma`opio Road in Kula.

*

So far, all this sounds like the perfect life. It hasnt been. When he was 23, Simmons was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He told me that it was a very scary and intense time for himself and his family. Naturally, a lot of emotions came up and he always did the best to stay in the present moment, full of gratitude for each moment, and trusting that it was all meant to be. He told me that his spiritual work is what helped him be more prepared for that kind of life crisis, and that it was just another opportunity for him to let go and love his body.

I had read somewhere that Pat Simmons Jr. was a fan of Buddhism. Curious about how deep he is into the Buddhas teachings, I asked him how he integrates the teachings of Buddha into his everyday life. He started out by saying that he wouldnt call himself a Buddhist, but that he discovered the teachings of Buddhism as a teenager.

Ill be quite honest, while exploring the realms of psychedelics, such as LSD and mushrooms, I found myself trying to interpret the unity and love that I was experiencing from taking those medicines, Simmons said. The teachings of the Buddha just made a lot of sense after spending time looking deep into my soul. The values of unconditional love and peace were instilled in my being because of my willingness to learn and move through my ego and all the negative things that the mind can choose to dwell on. Returning to love and the bare life essentials are what I took away from those times, and Buddhism helped me see more clearly how to just be.

The influences that were the most positive for Pats cancer healing process were teachings from the Buddha and Eckhart Tolle. Along with the love and support of his family, Simmons said that TollesThe Power of Now helped him to stay happy.

You gotta remember that its all perfect, and that life doesnt give us challenges we arent ready or capable of handling, Simmons said. Im so unbelievably fortunate to be raised on Maui and that I can raise my family here, too. I recognize that Im just a guest here, among this homeland of the original inhabitants, Na Kanaka Maoli, the Native Hawaiians. I truly cherish their culture, and will continue to do my best to help revitalize this land with healthy forests and waters. After all, Im not Hawaiian by blood, only by culture, being raised close to these values and this sacred aina. My bones and my familys bones will go back to the same soil as those who have lived here before me. And I will stand up, protect those waters, these mountain slopes and the creatures that live here. Aloha Aina is my daily way of life.

Pat Simmons, Jr. plays live shows around Maui on a monthly basis. He has frequent gigs at Charleys Restaurant and Saloon in Paia and at Fleetwoods on Front Street. He also plays weekly at Cafe Des Amis in Paia and every Thursday at Mulligans on the Blue. For more information about his showtimes and locations, visit his website.

Cover photo and farm photo courtesy Pat Simmons, Jr.

Cover design: Darris Hurst

Photo ofEleanor Kekoaohiwaikalani Wright Prendergast: Wikimedia Commons

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Maui's Aloha 'Aina Ambassador: What it's like to be Pat Simmons, Jr. - MauiTime Weekly