Fall Cactus in California

A friend came by today and wanted to see a worm in my new planted Growing Power Box in the sunroom. So I dug a hole in the dirt and pulled up a worm. He jokily asked me if the worm had a name and I responded that worms are not much for individualism and were more community conscious. I wish I could say the same for those who participating in the election yesterday.

Although I am a conscious non-voter I still got caught up in the drama of the elections. As expected the “all you need is cash” crowd won big. In this election, more than any other one I remembered in my lifetime, money mattered the most, but issues and facts did not.

In trying to convince others on my ‘opinions of the truth’ I have written many papers, like The Militarization of Catholic Jesuit University Education with facts and footnotes. The facts did not seem to really matter. Those who agree with me like the papers and those that did not either did not read them or did not agree with me. I spoke the truth as I saw it. However the facts did not really matter and I thought I should not do it again. But I am. Now I am writing a letter to the Provost of Marquette University about why Marquette University should close the School of the Army on campus. I cannot help myself. I believe that if people are open minded and seek the truth they will either show me how my opinion of the truth is wrong, see it my way, or else, via conflict of ideas, we can all reach a new position. But that is not how it is in today’s world of politics and struggling for the truth. As the election proved, perceptions of the facts, as seen in the negative advertising, matters more than facts or the reality.

Working a little in the garden today, doing some cleanup work, I realized that in nature “perception of reality” was not as important as reality. Like worms, nature knows no reality except what is. There are conflicts in nature but they are not made by decisions of nature. Conflicts just happen; there is some kind of reconciliation and nature moves on. Why can’t we be more like nature?

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