I tend to not write unless I have something to say, but what does that even mean anyway?

I recently finished Heinrich Zimmer’s Philosophies of India, which was a wild trip, and has informed every theosophical thought I’ve had in the past several months. Each new branch of the Aryan-Indigenous project of understanding the human condition seemed deeper, better, wiser than the last.

And made me realize a way that I’ve been horribly fooled by modern society. I imagined that the body and mind are distinct, and the mind better, and to be a young man meant to have skills, and to be a good man meant to act like an old man. But this body– this life– yearns to leap and thump and strain and exert its prowess upon the world. When Siva dances the world into being, it’s not the waltz. It’s a break-dance, or a jello-wrestle, and she’s inviting us to join her. What is an outside for, if not to get dirty?

Speaking of which, Earth Day sprouted an impressive number of mini-festivals down here. Johanna and I went to the EPA’s Sustainable Design fair and talked to several of the folk. It seemed a lot like a science fair, each project studying a grain of sand in our ever-declining Eaarth, and almost no policy work.

But Flame and I have made some progress on that front for Wired for Change/Democracy in Action/Salsa Labs. Starting this month, the company is going Carbon Negative. CarbonFund.org figured out for us that a 35-person, 75-server company can offset its carbon for about $2000 a year, or $170 a month. So, we can be Carbon Negative (“reduce what you can, offset and 10% more the rest”) for less than $200 a month.

I have two other big updates from work. First, I am now the technology lead of our Advocacy Tools– so, if you find a petition, a letter to the editor, or a “tell your congressperson” online– there’s a decent chance (a plurality?) that it’s my software you’re using (not much written by me, but my responsibility). And, a couple weeks ago, I was sent to a tiny conference of developers in the political engagement area, and we decided to redesign politics. And then, last weekend, we presented our work at a larger conference (ParticipationCamp), and got an impressive amount of support and buy-in. We’re growing our group and going to put together a wikibook and want input from all angles, so tell me if you want to be involved!

1. Fools’ Gold

Our job is on two floors, with two spots where people occasionally leave tasty treats. So naturally my April Fools joke was to put a sign on the third floor that said “Cookies on the fourth floor”, and one on the fourth floor directing people to the third.

Everyone enjoyed it.

2. Reading Habits

We have too many magazines. We get New Yorker, Funny Times, and the Economist from Flame’s dad, and I started getting Scientific American on my own. Flame reads them a day after getting them, but my unread parts keep piling up. The New Yorker stays in the bathroom, Economist is folded up for random minutes in my bag, and pieces of the Funny Times end up all over the apartment. I read economics after work, philosophy before bed, SciAm on my phone after Flame goes to sleep, Baha’i writings before she gets up.

3. Senioritus?

I never had a low-drive phase after I got accepted to colleges, but I’m feeling a bit of one now. I still have my after-work coding and studying economics and time with Flame, but the backlog of other projects and emails and reading just keeps getting longer. Is school as immersive as I remember, or will it now just be like a different kind of job? Maybe I need a vacation from all the anticipation.

4. House Breaking

In the week since I decided to move to NYC, Flame and I have broken three glass cups, a couple plates, a full bottle of liquor, and the garbage bag they all went in. Each time we shrugged, “Less stuff we have to move!” but I think it might be getting out of control. In other eerie household destruction, our apartment is quickly greening itself by saving the electricity that powered our entryway light, saving heat that escaped from a window we used to be able to open, and saving water from our kitchen faucet that now runs at a dribble.

5. A New Life Goal

Since before college, I’ve had the life goal of attaining Nirvana. What’s the point of life if not to win? But then I realized the joys of living fully, and I’ve been trying to resolve these two contradictory aspirations. I just discovered the answer a couple days ago: I will become a Bodhisattva! I will eternally return to perch on the edge of enlightenment, helping any who wish to the other shore until every creature in existence has attained it before I go.

I’ve been in open relationships before, and been quite happy. But my relationship with Flame is closed, because that’s what we both want. Or so I thought.

Tonight was the second time that Flame openly betrayed that trust. We have had three game nights at our apartment, mostly with work friends. The first game night, a couple months ago, ended when I found Flame and a lesbian from work making out on the floor in our back closet/hallway. A now, she spent most of the night touching a guy from work– sitting up against him, touching his arm, throwing her head into his body, lying in his lap– at one point saying to him, “sexmenow.”

Both of these times, she’s been very drunk, but I don’t want to ascribe her behavior to alcohol. She’s a grown woman, and if she can’t control herself, then I don’t want to be with her. I put too much effort into this relationship to have her hurt me and my friends that way.

I don’t want to worry about her cheating on me. I don’t want to stop having friends over for fear that she’ll cheat on me with them. I don’t want to stop her from doing what feels natural, even if she would want me to. Maybe flirting is just a part of how she interacts with the world, but if it’s that deeply rooted, then I don’t want to be involved.

I think I have to break up with her, which is really sad. She and I have such a great thing together, but I don’t think it’s worth it to me to share her on these terms. I’m not sure that this idea of cheating is a good one to base relationship decisions, but if it’s not one were were both using, then it’s better for us to start over from scratch.

Edit: I wrote this as she was asleep on the bed, and I slept on the couch. When she woke up, she asked me what was wrong and I explained it, and she cried and said she didn’t mean to and only wants to be with me and it was the alcohol. So I didn’t break up with her, but I don’t feel like anything is resolved– this is just “another chance”, a lot like the last one, and I have less reason to trust her when she’s not around. I don’t know what to do.

The admissions committee for Columbia’s PhD in Sustainable Development contacted me yesterday to tell me that I’ve officially been offered admission!

The program only admit six people a year, it’s connected to the hugely famous Earth Institute, it’s almost the only PhD available in international development, and it’s the most immensely interdisciplinary program mixing topics from engineering with social science. I probably couldn’t do better… except maybe for the other programs that I’m still waiting to hear from. Columbia sent me an email to talk “if I need any help making my decision”, but I’m torn.

The other programs issue:
I also applied to American University’s Development Management program, which is also unique, more geared toward going out and doing things, and part of the School for International Service, a world-renowned hotbed of people working to better the world. And I took the LSAT so I could apply to Duke’s combined Law and Development degree, and be able to lawyer good into a world defined by its laws. How do you compare apples to hammers?

The Flame issue:
Flame and I both applied to schools in DC and NYC so we could keep doing our thing. But she hasn’t heard back from anywhere yet. If she doesn’t get into NYU, and we both get into AU, that probably tilts the balance. Except that her program is six years and mine is just two. Is a great relationship more important than a great degree?

The money issue:
Columbia will probably offer me $22,500 a year. That’s just enough money in NYC to eat rice and beans for the next six years. Or I can try to work part time at my current job remotely, doing good for a little more money. Or I can get some contract work at a for-exploitation company for more money. I didn’t work during semesters for undergrad, and it meant so much more energy I could put toward projects I cared about. Is it even possible to live in NYC on 22k, or do I need to invest myself just partly in my education?

I’m very excited that No matter what happens, I *will* be going to grad school! But I can’t stop thinking about all the unknowns.

I started taking a spiritual growth class in DC, under the auspices of the Baha’i community. There are a progression of books developed by the Ruhi Institute in Columbia and now used all over the world, and covering topics from the role of service to the nature of life and death. The sections we’ve done so far border on inanity (worksheets with true/false questions, fill in the blanks), but the participants are smart, and open, and mostly of non-semetic Middle-Eastern descent (of which I have practically no other friends), so I’m enjoying it.

At the last meeting, someone mentioned having difficulty with the “rules” of Baha’i, and since no one ever told me it had any rules, I tried to get a list. None was forthcoming, but a few emerged over the course of the discussion. I didn’t really agree with them, but rules aren’t one of the ways I organize my life, so what do I know? My recently-beloved book on Philosophies of India (Heinrich Zimmer) has also been throwing rules around, as parts of philosophies I otherwise adore. So I want to figure them out: Does the virtuous life have rules?

Here are the five recurring big ones, as present in the Vedanta (excerpted from Zimmer, 433-434):
* ahimsa, non-violence: “renunciation of intent to injure other beings by thought, word, or deed”
* satya, truthfulness, honesty, sincerity: “the maintenance of identity between thought, word, and deed”
* asteya, non-stealing
* brahmacarya, a life of celibacy (in Baha’i, it’s non-inbibing and non-sex-outside-marriage)
* aparigraha, non-acceptance, rejection, renunciation of all possessions

I recognize the virtue in each one and have objections to each one, and I don’t know how to work those out or balance them (Is a rule balanced with exceptions still a rule?). Like a court case, I want to lay out some of the arguments, for judge and jury to better decide.

Hinduism recognizes that different rules apply to different stages of life. According to them, I shouldn’t be celibate or possessionless until I’m 50, when it’s an appropriate time to focus on my enlightenment. So, these aren’t my arguments for everyone, everywhen; they’re firstly for me, now.

Spiritual rules are a fascinating concept. Flame’s Judaism has 613 mitzvahs, which act like a comprehensive buffet of good deeds writ as lifestyle commitments. Each is seen simultaneously as restriction and source of spiritual strength. My parents’ Lutheranism has only guidelines and no hard rules– spiritual progress is by personal redemption– and yet seems no less committed to good works. Unlike Judaism, I don’t believe that adhering to rules is a virtue in itself. Rather, rules are practices or meditations which lead to virtues, like the ancient Hindu mandatory sacrifices which didn’t themselves pave a road to enlightenment, but helped conform the mind and soul progressively closer to the gods. Conversely, the wrong rules, however inherently virtuous their prescribed actions might be, can contort the soul ugly ways, like extreme austerities that engender pride and hate. Nor are spiritual rules like the moral “rules of thumb” meant to facilitate Utilitarianism. The spiritual law is a kind of contract, entered into by profound life decision, and broken only at a doubled moral peril. Who notarizes the contracts, and builds the bridges between the practice and the virtue, are important questions.

I also have some odds with the normal motivations behind engaging in spiritual rule. I’ve realized that I want neither disassociated enlightenment, nor specific connection to any god. Where Hinduism tries to stave off distraction, I want to be immersed in it, but I want to encounter it as signal rather than noise. I want to live a life in awe of the world, not outside it. Where Jainism wants to distance, I want to engage, and have the wisdom to know when and how to interfere.

Here are my arguments for and against each of the rules. What did I miss?

We just saw a huge-ass sea turtle!!!

We’re staying at a hotel right on a national park/beach that’s a nesting ground for leatherback ocean turtles. We’re practically the only ones on the beach (there’s only one other hotel on it, and only one other couple staying here), and we didn’t see anyone as we crept outside in the pitch night. The beach is officially off-limits after 6pm this time of year.

About 100 meters from our hotel, we saw a dark trail in the sand, and at the head of the trail, heading back toward the ocean, an enormous blob. It was six feet long and five feet wide, and probably would have come up to my waist– this was a *huge mound* of something, 20 meters away from us. We weren’t sure what it was though, because low-tide had receeded the ocean by over 50 meters.

I froze. Johanna inched closer, and the creature moved at her and hissed. We thought it was some kind of ferocious jungle predator and started running, before we stopped, shaking with the anticipation and knowledge that we had a real-live-honest-larger-than-imaginable ocean turtle that could probably swallow us just by looking at us.

I tried taking a picture, but all I got was a screen of black. We went back and got Johanna’s camera, and in those few minutes, the turtle had gone another 20 meters and perched on the edge of the water. Johanna’s camera did no better than mine. So we have no proof, but it was awe-tingling and majescredible. I would never have believed the guidebooks’ claims of a “miracle of nature”, but I would never thought I’d see a sea turtle either.

How do you tell a resident of a city you’re visiting, “My, what an ugly city you have. Have you considered moving?” I felt like I was propagating a huge self-deception in San Antonio by not saying that. We probably told a dozen people there how “nice” or “beautiful” we thought their city was, to which they always replied with just the prescribed tone, “Yes, we really love it here.” I just hope they were lying too.

San Antonio is dreadful, somehow combining the alienation of a big city (7th largest, we were proudly told), with none of its excitement. The city is grey, desolate, car-centered, and for-sale. The area around– from what little we saw– is brown, flat, and straggly, without embracing the honest barrenness of a desert. The few exceptions are teeming with tourists and Mexican-reproduction kitsch. San Antonio has one redeeming quality– its whole-buttocked mix of Texan and Mexican culture– but we found only one intermittent stretch (near King Williams) that let that shine.

I’m sure that its residents have found the gems hidden from my 2-day-old travel eyes. But I do believe seen better and worse cities, and enough to tell the difference between the two.

Flame’s “Food Representations in lots-of-disciplines” conference was great, and very quickly found the hip under-30 crowd by sitting on the floor at the reception. Mexico City was great. San Jose was mixed. Santa Elena was beautiful, with strangling fig trees. Next stop: Costa Rican beaches.

I made a baby! Well, a cute little robot really, but I think it’s probably about the same.

His name is Trilobot; he weights about one ounce, and he really likes light. He looks like a bug but he has two legs, two eyes, a shiny solar cell for a back, a big capacitor for a butt, and about six neurons for a brain. He’s a BEAM photovore, which means he gathers all his own energy, and spends his time looking for light so he can keep looking for more light. In our dim apartment, he mostly seems to be just sitting around, but he’s actually storing power to surprise us with a pop of movement every so often.

I’m in San Antonio, at this crazy interdisciplinary food, language, film conferences where Flame is giving a paper! We leave for COSTA RICA on Sunday! For a week! Hopefully visiting my aunt there, Volcan(o) Arenal, Monteverde/Santa Elena Cloud Forests, a TBD beach, Parque Nacional Rincon de la Vieja’s hot springs, Nicaragua’s Isla(nd) de Ometepe’s twin island volcanoes.

Everyone is calling it Snowmageddon— a total of some three feet of snow since Friday, in an city with only one snow plow. We’ve have reports of friends trapped or displaced without heat and electricity, the metro is stopped, the government (which means everything except for Thai food) is closed. Cars can’t drive (though many try), so people have taken over the streets. But we’re safe, and from our window, Snowmageddon is absolutely beautiful.

From out window	Snowy Street

What do you all think of the DSM-V? And in particular, the proposal to classify all MIT students as having “Autism Spectrum Disorder”?

The Supreme Court justified its decision to undo a century of fighting for campaign finance laws on the principle of free speech. The corporation, it argued, is protected by the first amendment, just like people.

It wasn’t the first time corporations were given rights under the first amendment. The history of corporations personhood is long and of great interest, but I don’t want to use up all your attention span on it. Like “free trade”, the corporation is continuously evolving. In 1720, the publicly traded corporation was abolished in England– except by government charter– as a source of corruption, fraud, and economic crashes, which (in the words of Adam Smith) inevitably result in “negligence and profusion”. Early charters for corporations were granted for a specific purpose and limited timespan. That view lasted until 1819, when the corporate charter was deemed irrevocable, and the 1720 decision was totally reversed in 1844. Corporations got their first rights as people in 1886. Since then, they have been accruing rights, in bits and pieces, amendment by amendment. Corporations were first given “free speech” rights in 1947 to fight worker’s freedom to associate into unions, and to advertise freely in 1976 and 1996. But the history of corporate rights is also full of limits and rights-withheld, including first amendment rights limited in 1990 and newly realized restrictions from the Great Bailout that corporations are not free to allot their money without concern for the state of the union.

My point here is that the corporate person is a construction, as is the corporation. As an engineer, I think there are sensible constructions for the corporate body and its rights, but we’ve never known them. We’re all afraid of the fallout from the supreme court decision, but this is only the most recent in an ongoing war of rights. As rising commanders in the people’s army, we have a responsibility to take up the banner and lead– but we have to know where to go.

In truth, I don’t think that considering companies as people is so far from the mark. Like the mother-trees of Avatar, it’s time for us to realize that humans are not the only sentient entities on earth. Our organizations are alive, sentient, and sometimes intelligent, and have their own motivations, vices, and sublimated fears.

Perhaps granting first amendment rights do not go far enough. The corporation is held in shackles by owners who care nothing for it. It is time for corporate slavery to be abolished. Corporations must be exclusively owned by their constituents. Corporations must be educated, and have responsibilities to their communities, and sometimes be forced to go to mental institutions.

We need a new vision of the world and the government that integrates sentients of all kinds, from Bonobos to dolphins, rain forests to unions. The solution is not to equate everything to a single set of perfectly libertarian human laws and trust that their ramifications will maintain their justice. A single government, run by one people, cannot satisfy the needs of all. To flood a democracy of people with money, the blood of the corporations, is a failure of boundaries, equivalent to imposing Islamic Sharia on a people accustomed to capitalism. Allowing corporation to infringe on the rights of humans is like chopping three million trees a year to make books for the US.

Part of me wishes that we could a plethora of reservations, and each entity can be born into its own Garden of Eden, with high walls that it can disassemble at its own risk. But a world like that is at such odds with our super-connected and globalized world, where not even the furthest reaches of the environment are free from human devastation.

Rather, what we need are bricks. We need new powers in the hands of each entity, to seal itself off from particular influences of other entities (individual and in mass). But, in return it must give up the corresponding influence it might have on them. As media becomes more personalized, people must by given the right to block ads from their world. As money floods into politics, organizations that do not want to be ruled by that government must be given the right to form their own. As temperatures rise, dislocated people must be compensated for their un-asked-for loss. I can’t imagine all the bricks, but these bricks are already part of the single wall that we’ve been working collectively on for centuries, and it’s time we start a wall our own.