The Constitution is definitely an important consideration, though I must address your assertion of its clarity. The founding fathers’ Constitution was clear enough to warrant amendments (via Section V), repeals of amendments (like Amendment 18), and a historically broad variety of interpretation. In other words, the Constitution, in its original and present forms, has never been a comprehensive or static definition of our government. The original document had a lot of loose ends.

For example, the Preamble states that the Constitution was established to “insure Domestic Tranquility” and to “promote the general Welfare,” among other purposes. Article 1 Section 8 further clarifies the power of the government to “lay and collect Taxes [...] to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Assuming that “general welfare” is not a superfluous clause, the Constitution does beg the question of what specific actions of congress these clauses permit. Does it include public education, which is otherwise absent from the Constitution? If a centralized effort to moderate desperation, particularly that suffered by innocents on account of an accidental circumstances, could be shown to promote our society’s general welfare and tranquility, then might the Constitution allow for such actions to be taken by our government? In this way, the Constitution invites interpretation.

I think that the founding fathers did an excellent job of creating a dynamic document, having the foresight to acknowledge its imperfections and the necessity of change. Were change and interpretation barred from the Constitution, we’d likely have slaves and gun control, and we’d lack universal suffrage, those being later additions. The enduring value of the Constitution lies not in legalistic restrictions, but in its affirmation of the general spirit of our government.

I apologize for the unsolicited email, but as we were all kindly included in the discussion by Mr. G___, I thought that you may be interested, and perhaps some of you may be able to contribute your valuable insight. I would like to respond with some thoughts I’ve been mulling over since I returned from my trip to India last fall.

I think the value of government health care, and many other political issues for that matter, boils down to essential beliefs about human nature.

Defining “justice” as the protection of rights, I think we would agree that the essential aim of government is systematized justice, the alternative being chaotic revenge. In her essay, The Nature of Government, Ayn Rand wrote, “A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control.” If the individual mind were a reliable measure of just compensation, we’d all agree on the appropriate methods to defend our lives and property, and we could enforce justice naturally and orderly, without government. Unfortunately, real people have frequent and wide disagreements on matters of justice, which indicates a faulty measure at the individual level.

With a proper government, we arrive at a reliable measure by taking the average of many individual minds via democratic process, and for the sake of peace and order, we give the government what Rand called “a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.” So, a government preserves its society, individuals who regularly interact voluntarily for their mutual benefit, against the chaotic elements ingrained in human nature, physical compulsion (robbery, murder, etc.) and overcompensation (revenge, vendettas, etc.), which are inevitably a part of any society. The citizen who sidesteps such a government to enforce their own idea of justice, with no trial or jury or democratic law, is attempting to have his or her own cake and eat it too. By electing a government, we fork over our right to enforce justice individually, and then neither we nor our neighbors can be dictators.

A government can’t eliminate theft or murder any more than it can change the nature of its subjects. In a society, someone is bound to violate another’s rights, and others are bound to overcompensate. For a society to remain beneficial to its individual members, its government must take responsibility for rechanneling that factor of human nature to its least destructive conclusion.

But there are other factors of human nature that we have yet to consider. Looking behind violations of rights, we find their natural and ineliminable, but undesirable, causes: Honest people can make big mistakes. People arrive at grim situations by accident, through no fault of their own, such as by disease and natural disasters and stock market crashes and oil spills. We fall victim to harsh crimes, whether or not our government is efficient. We are born ignorant and defenseless, and not everyone to functional parents, so some potentially stay that way, damaged from childhood. To put it simply, desperation is a part of our nature.

That desperation leads to violation. These cases are common. (I believe sheer malice is not.) For better or for worse, we aren’t all robots who can cast aside our own survival on principle. For many, the lack of basic necessities far overwhelms the generosity and empathy in human nature. So a starving innocent will steal. Morality that goes only as far as to assert property rights is of little use in grave circumstances. In such cases, desperation overrides rights. It’s not a matter of “should.” It just does, without asking.

Unlike theft and murder and revenge, morality-overriding desperation remains unchanneled with a laissez faire government; but like with theft and murder and revenge, rights will be violated. It’s inevitable. The question is: By whom? And in what manner? The choice is between either the whims of the desperate, or a system of legal and democratic redistribution.

The outcome of either choice is clear. Unregulated, desperation creates victims, breeds suffering, multiplies. The victims’ potential losses are enormous. Regulated desperation dwindles to a minimum, and rather than erupting as a harsh burden on a few, the remaining burden is spread thinly and fairly among the comfortable majority of individuals in society who can bear it.

Particularly to highly self-reliant people like Mr. G___, who wants to be left alone and to fend for himself, it may appear paradoxical that a systematized redistribution of wealth could result in more control over our own lives. He understandably compares the health care legislation to “gilded slavery”. Consideration of human nature, which though noble is deeply troubled, reveals that the compulsion he opposes actually originates in the human condition, in our incomplete mastery of our own lives. The health care legislation is indeed upsetting, but not because it creates more control: It reminds us of our pre-existing lack thereof.

Bryan

I recently had the opportunity to enter the base accompanied by an acquaintance in the navy. We met up at Yokohama Station, a five-minute subway hop from the Pacifico Hotel, where I was attending a conference for JETs who are ending their tenure on the programme. From there we caught a local line to Yokosuka with the intention of attending a birthday party at the Chili’s on the base. It would be a surreal evening.

My acquaintance is a reluctant sailor who would rather be in Spain, where he would be sliding down rainbows. His words, not mine. He was trained as a kind of data analyst with the intention of working safe underground U.S. soil, but a minor disciplinary slip-up flung him far across the water. Military folks generally love being stationed in Japan, he confessed, but he is serving here as a penalty. His crime: Underage drinking. At the age of 20, he got caught with a beer, and the military doesn’t take such an offense lightly. The irony of his situation is that in Japan, he can legally drink at 20, even on the base.

On the way to Yokosuka, he spoke without reservation about his disdain for Japan. I held my tongue and wished he could wait to vent in a place other than a crowded train. Our car sped gracefully down the tracks, perfectly on time, between skyscrapers and streets of well-ordered traffic. The passengers were mostly silent, not wishing to disturb others in close quarters. “It’s just so uncivilized here,” loudly lamented my companion.

Yokosuka was an urban burrough like any other in Japan. Its main street featured covered sidewalks and vertical signs climbing to the roofs of narrow buildings. Warm light flooded out of cozy restaurants with menus in their doorways, and the daytime shops were safely closed behind unadorned, rusty metal shutters. In such close proximity to the American base, it was a wonder that the atmosphere was still so utterly Japanese. Except for the occasional young, well-postured American pedestrian, the town deemed “Little America” was still very much Japan.

The entrance to the base had a broad iron gate that opened to a traffic light, and a flood of cars queued just behind it. As we crossed the pedestrian bridge to the gate, I developed a slight paranoia. The only form of identity I carry is my Japanese “alien registration card,” and my passport was expired. What if they wouldn’t let me in, apprehended me, and confiscated my card? What if I unknowingly brought some kind of contraband in my bag? Still above the street, I nervously chuckled about the guards finding my nuclear umbrella, to which my companion scolded, “I wouldn’t joke like that in such close proximity.” They were listening. And at the gate, they wore camoflage and carried some intimidating guns. “Okay, act natural,” I reminded myself, and made sure to look the humorless guards in the eye when we spoke. I was invited into the guard shack, where a stocky, uniformed man took my card, entered something into his computer terminal, and sat perusing what I can only imagine was my life history, nonexistent criminal record, and phone call transcriptions. After listening to some military lingo, I was handed my visitor pass.

Just inside the base, the streets grew dark. Like the city outside, it felt less American than I expected. Cars still drove on the right side of the road, old stone lanterns still occupied the gardened corners, the modern residential structures were still bland and uniform, and quite a few Japanese civilians passed us on the street. Yet the atmosphere was calm, the streets were broad and silent, and the buildings were set back from the road across grassy lawns. We walked down Nimitz Avenue, past Texas Street, and along the waterfront, passing several broad and deep cavities. At the far end of each pit was a dam, and there were wide ridges along the bottom. My acquaintance explained that when ships need repairs, they sail into these pits, close the dam, and pump out the water.

After another mile or so, he pointed to a black mass in the distance, saying, “There’s my ship.” I couldn’t make it out. A few years ago, when visited Japan for the first time, my teacher pointed from the train window, saying, “There’s Mount Fuji,” and though I was staring straight at it, I couldn’t make that out, either. That is, until I zoomed out my mind’s eye. So, staring at an expanse of ships and water, I didn’t realize that the ship I was looking for was actually one of those mountains on the horizon. Sometimes I get locked into Lilliputian scale.

The ship was actually the U.S.S. George Washington, one of ten nuclear aircraft carriers in the world, which I have since learned are the most distinguishing feature of U.S. military power. Political convictions aside, this thing was impressive. Powered by two nuclear reactors and about a billion dollars a day, a nuclear aircraft carrier is an independently mobile military base. Whenever there’s a conflict, the U.S. parks these things at a safe distance, from which they can launch missiles, planes, and God knows what else. And I went inside.

I had to relinquish my ID at another guard post, and I pinned a supplemental visitor pass to my jacket. We walked along the dock parallel to the ship, and walked, and walked further, past a 20-story crane, until we reached the middle of the ship. The ship was parked for renovations, so we boarded by the cargo lift. Just inside, we encountered more ID checks, but the atmosphere was surprisingly relaxed. Beyond the cargo bay, the passage narrowed into a claustrophobic maze of corridors, pipes, cables, random steps up, lockers, ladders, security keypads, random steps down, and equipment I couldn’t begin to identify.

We made our way for the flight deck, climbing several ladders, and once on top we walked down a windy runway to the end of the ship. If I’d payed more attention when reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I’d remember what that part of a ship is called. The view from where I stood must be incredible when they’re out to sea. Looking back, I could see the captain’s bridge in the distance, and I couldn’t help imagining the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner that was probably on an entirely different aircraft carrier. Then we cut across several runways to the another ladder, down to a stretch of missile silos and mounted guns called the “cat walk”, and finally back into the guts of ship. It was at this point that we got lost in the living quarters.

After a bit of meandering, we re-emerged in the cargo bay, passed though the ID check, took the stairs down the side of the lift, exchanged my second pass for my ID, and then we were on our way to Chili’s. It turned out to be an hour’s walk from the docks. The base, I discovered, was a self-contained community, complete with schools, a Walmart-equivalent, Taco Bell, a movie theatre, a recreation center, high-rise apartments, potential UFO hangars, and camoflaged troops with automatic weapons on late-night practice missions. Just like home.

Finally, we arrived at the Chili’s. The facade was anticlimactic, bare white walls more appropriate for a dentist’s office, but the inside was more like it, down to the colorfully tiled tables. In the entryway, a large plaque declared, “Credit cards and American dollars accepted.” The hostess further clarified that yen would not be accepted.

The birthday party was already well underway. I sat at the midpoint of a long table, that is, a series of tables shoved together. Around me was the most racially diverse crowd I have seen in years, all American military, near my age, and exceedingly friendly. Introductions were brief, because the conversation was going in full force. I relaxed and ordered some boneless buffalo-wings, quesadillas, and a margarita.

After a day of lectures about “reverse culture shock,” I was eager to participate in their light-hearted banter without standing out too much. (I should mention that all along the way, I kept accidentally bowing to the guards I passed at the various checkpoints, and aboard the George Washington). Armed with a second margarita and a tequila shot, it wasn’t hard to chat meaninglessly and laugh with the crowd. No culture shock for me!

Or so I thought.

Nearly an hour passed, and I suddenly found myself at the center of the conversation. The waitress was Japanese, and in the midst of boisterous Americans expecting her to behave like an American waitress, she had some trouble with the orders. I had hesitated to speak Japanese, because I didn’t want to show off, but I finally felt obligated to help her. This piqued the curiosity of the ten-or-so people at my table, who started asking me questions about my life in Japan. As the radical differences between our lives in Japan grew apparent, I commented on feeling a bit awkward being surrounded by military people.

To this, a charming girl from Georgia responded, “It’s okay. British people come on base all the time.” The rest of the table concurred.

I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her correctly. “British people?” I repeated.

A different girl, this one from Maine, attempted to reassured me, “Yeah. It’s not like you’re not the first British person we’ve seen on base.”

“We run into you guys all the time,” agreed a South Carolinian.

I smiled as the full import of their mistake dawned on me. A couple seconds passed before I could correct them.

“I’m not British.”

Everyone at the table contorted their faces as if to say, “Oh, really?” and finally a guy from Houston attempted a recovery: “So where are you from?”

“I’m from Texas.”

The table exploded with a mix of confused gestures, gasps, no-ways, and are-you-kiddings. As it turned out, after speaking to me for an hour, everyone had unanimously concluded that I was British. Even my companion confessed that he had originally thought I was British, the first time we met.

“But why? How could you think I’m British?” I protested. Their reasons varied from my appearance to my manners to the absence of slang from my speech.

My interest in this peculiar mistake was much greater than theirs, though, so the conversation quickly turned away from me. As I absorbed the shock and began to revel in solitary amusement, the table chatter moved on to American movies that weren’t out in Japan yet, American TV shows I’d never seen, and American musicians I’d never heard.

(Hopefully. We’ll see how long this ends up being.)

I finished my run, and was feeling really positive, and an idea hit me that seemed brilliant at the time, and now I can’t find the words for it. Have you ever had the experience of a dream in which you realized something really important, something that made so much sense in the dream, but upon waking the conceptual glue has melted and your mental grasp has failed? I was walking from my apartment to the bakery to get a sandwich, and crossing the bridge it hit me: [Insert lost idea here.] I knew, at the time, that my day’s plans were shot. I had planned to ride over to a park and study Japanese in the sun, but this idea couldn’t wait. It needed to be written down.

When I got back, I scarfed down my sandwich and started a new post. “Cognitive Dissonance,” I titled it. The idea had something to do with a couple weeks ago, when I realized a troubling contradiction in my thinking. On the one hand, I want to find an ultimate value or aim for living, upon which to fix my morality. On the other, I know that once I find an ultimate value to serve, I will soon desire to rebel against it, to liberate myself from owing anything to any greater purpose.

For example, if you set “life” as your ultimate source of value, you may soon find it an arbitrary choice. After all, why is life a good thing? Life becomes your obligation, and anything serving life becomes logically, robotically, coldly obligatory. Your only concept of right and wrong is grounded in the service of a biological condition, homeostatis. Since life is the ultimate value, there can be no distinction between a good life and a bad life, right living or wrong living, as long as living is served. Furthermore, a life-based morality serves an impossible end: Life ends. Everyone dies. It’s an arbitrary morality aiming for the impossible. Finally, you may find that it doesn’t account for certain situations where you feel value in self-sacrifice, or where you sense goodness despite a life having ended, the times you honestly feel someone has lived or is living a Good life. At those times, you are rebelling, as I do.

Similar or worse problems exist for other value systems with specifics at their core, such as God or society. Each system implodes on itself, but the stronger it stands, the greater my need to be free of it. I need something as the keystone of my value system, and so I want it, but I simultaneously loathe whatever becomes it. I become a slave to it. Discerning right action becomes a process of logical deduction, and life, itself, becomes rigid servitude to the chosen principle.

Today’s idea on the bridge was a step towards putting a solution into words. I just can’t remember what it was. How could I forget something so important? Let’s grasp for it: It utilized Robert Pirsig’s distinction between dynamic and static quality to flesh out Seung Sahn‘s “don’t know mind.” I distinctively remember thinking, “You have to have balance between using ideas and freedom from them.” It seemed really clear to me at the time what that meant. Now I’m not so sure. Whenever philosophy utilizes the concept of “balance,” or “everything in moderation,” I start to get uneasy.

The “using ideas” part is easy enough to understand. We need ideas to live. We depend on concepts to direct our actions. What would it mean, then, to abandon them? It sounds like suicide, to me. It certainly would be if you permanently refuse to think at all. This can’t be what Seung Sahn means by “don’t know.”

This seems to be about where I was in my thinking before the bridge. Let’s see if I can retrace it further:

The seeming contradiction: I need ideas; I want freedom from them. Ideas are all I know of reality; ideas are not reality. Ideas have beauty and correspond to truth; ideas are limited and grow artificial, stale. Human life relies on the mind’s knowing, but the heart is served by a don’t-know mind.

What does it mean to know an idea? The verb “know” seems to entail a double-meaning, here. I should stop using this word so loosely. One “know” is simply to be consciously aware of something, to recognize it, to be familiar with it, to have it “in your head,” as in, “Oh yeah, I know that coffee shop you’re talking about,” “I know how to read,” or “I know about computers.” There seems to be no harm in being familiar with an idea. In this sense, to know something is to recognize a pattern in reality. It is this familiarity that allows us to use the idea. It’s non-binding.

The second “know” is more dubious. This “know” implies absolute certainty and is a tool that must be wielded responsibly. Some things we can be certain of, for example, the existence of a pattern, idea, or notion. If I say, “There is a coffee shop down the street,” I am expressing my recognition of a pattern, the existence of which is the only thing I am absolutely certain. Although the pattern exists in my mind, I don’t mean that the coffee shop will 100% absolutely be down the street next time I check, as though it were an unchangeable fact of existence. After all, there’s an slim chance that the coffee shop will be closed, or even that I misinterpreted sensory data and imagined a coffee shop that never existed.

To be absolutely certain of something, to Know it, implies that it is True and that contradictory ideas are False. This is where the danger lies. A known principle does not allow for disagreement. It becomes a lens through which other ideas are judged. A distorted lens makes curves of the straight edges of truth; look through blue-tinted glasses, and you can no longer distinguish true blues. It takes over the system. It becomes a ruler among ideas, both in the sense of a powerful authority and of a measuring stick. If an undeserving idea becomes king, he will strike down the innocent unjustly. Worthy ideas are disregarded and suffocated. The Crown of Knowing isn’t so dangerous when given to the existence of a coffee shop, because a mistake here would have little impact on other ideas. However, the crowning of spiritual and philosophical principles, the meta-ideas which apply broadly to your life, nurtures a tyrant in the soul.

Somehow, this isn’t getting me to where I was on the bridge. Does this mean that you should never employ certainty in matters of philosophy? I suspect that if you must be certain of anything at all, it would be your measure of good. You can be familiar with different standards of value, but ultimately you must choose one. The heart can’t abide by a lack of certainty at your moral core. Yet, I just wrote about how dangerous certainty can be for moral concerns.

The elusive solution lies, I suspect, in Pirsig’s distinction between Dynamic Quality and static forms. Unfortunately, this is a lengthy exposition for another day. Please excuse me, but practicality dictates that I shelve this course of thought and cling to my habitual ideas for the time being.

Tomorrow, I am off to Tokyo to meet Mimi when she arrives. I can’t believe she’s coming – it’s like a dream, to show something you love to someone you know will love it, too. I’ve been daydreaming about it endlessly.

Ichi-no-Ni started in April of last year (as Japan’s school year begins in April). At that time, they were a peculiar bunch. The right side of the class was particularly vocal and energetic, while the left side of the class was quiet and seemingly disconnected. When I asked questions, answers came so quickly from the right side that the left side had no opportunity to respond. I made special effort to pay attention to the left side, then. In particular, one girl in the front row always seemed on the verge of passing out. I learned her name (and everyone else’s), and made sure to say it to her every chance I got. I gave out a questionnaire to learn about everyone’s hobbies, tastes, dreams, and opinions. No, I didn’t memorize everyone’s answers, but somehow, little-by-little, I came to connect with most every student in the class. Slowly but surely, the left side woke up.

Smiles started appearing. Suddenly, everyone cared about each other. A certain warmth grew, not only between the students and I, but between the students, themselves. This was surely not my doing, though I wish I knew how it happened, so that I could facilitate such growth in my future classes. One day, when I was physically and emotionally tired, the students took notice and asked how I was doing and cheered me on. It was a rare group, indeed.

In my last lesson, today, I gave them a brief speech to express my gratitude. They listened so attentively. I told them that they are all my friends, but they are also my teachers, and that I have learned much from them. I think they understood me.

It really has been a good year.

By the way, today is White Day, the day guys give chocolate to girls to repay them for Valentine’s Day (when girls give chocolate to guys). Working at a girls’ high school, my male colleagues and I received much chocolate on Valentine’s Day, so today was my chance to return the favor. For lunch, a teacher drove me to the nearby grocery store, where I also bought six bags of assorted Meiji chocolates. The students eat lunch in their classrooms, so I visited each room with a bag of chocolates.

Their reactions were adorable: cheering, screaming, rushing to the front of the room where I dumped the bags, thanking me in English and Japanese. After I visited all the rooms, I had some extra chocolate, so I pretended to sneak down the hall, looking around as if I was being pursued. The girls took the hint, and many leapt out of their seats to chase me down the hall, laughing and cheering, as I tossed occasional chocolates over my shoulder.

I should never have kids – I’ll spoil them to death.

I’m currently at Tsuda Elementary, where I teach every Wednesday. Today I am teaching the 5th grade. There are four classes, so I am repeating the same lesson four times. Last time we did months, so I made a lesson on seasons and American holidays and printed some images to show for Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Independence Day. Since the kids already know about Christmas and Halloween, I spent more time talking about the other days, and I found that it’s harder to explain than I thought. I wish I had some video clips to show them; it would be fun for the kids to watch videos of myself hunting easter eggs as a child. Nevertheless, they are listening and relating surprisingly well, and I follow the explanation with a kind of pictionary game, which they seem to enjoy, so I feel the glass is at least two-thirds full.

I’m getting really excited about Mimi visiting here. I can’t believe it’s getting so close! I’ll probably head off to Tokyo a day early and hang out with my friend, Masa, who I met last time I was there. I wonder where Mimi and I will stay. I wish I had a friend with room for us, but everyone’s apartments are so small, and I don’t want to impose on anyone. I suppose a hotel in Shinjuku wouldn’t be so bad, because we could stay out late, and it won’t be so expensive if we split the cost.

*Groan*

Writing about “non-serious” matters, or maybe I should say, “non-heavy” matters, is proving difficult for me. I don’t feel like I’ve written much interesting above this paragraph. It was all true, but I somewhat censored myself just now. Evidently, the writing process brings the heavy out of me, and that’s probably a good thing. I need to let the heavy out, to get it down, to unburden my heart.

The “heart” has been a common theme in my life for the past few months. It seems like a vague and quaint principle at first, but I think it’s actually one of the most essential parts of a human being. It depends on how you define it, of course, but I don’t mean the beating, biological heart. Nor do I mean simply one’s emotions. I mean something closer to this: one’s core value-sense, the pre-thinking mind. It’s our drive, our motivator. It’s an active and dynamic force. It’s the best measure of the quality of our lives. If there is such a thing as True Good, the heart is our best compass.

It’s all that matters.

A contented heart is the most practical standard of Good. Not achievement or greatness, not homeostasis or “life,” not society or “others,” not imaginary beings and their imaginary laws… none of these ends can be final. One must only ask “Why is that end the right one? Why stop there?” And the rug is pulled.

The heart, once contented, needs nothing more. Artificial constructions of Good require a voluntary, rational block, often following spiraling and futile and literally endless braces of “logic”. The contented heart is truly an end in itself; it needs not consider the question of further ends.

Some may contend that the heart is subjective, that the mind’s perspective is limited, and that contentment is an illusion of chemicals and electric signals in the brain. Why trust these flawed and material processes? To them, I say that your mind and heart is all you can trust. You have no choice. Before you trust anything else, be it others or God or supposed “reason,” you must know those things with your mind, and love them with your heart.

It doesn’t matter that contentment is part of, or experienced through, a physical mechanism. That the heart communicates through a medium of chemicals, electrons, and illusions is irrelevant to the value of its message.

What the heart responds to, by physical means or otherwise, is its unique connection to the core, the marrow of reality, before it is filtered and interpreted and categorized by our mind. We are aware of this pre-rational marrow by virtue of our heart’s sensitivity, and our willingness to listen. Whatever the heart senses, and why, are not as important as how well it senses and how well we listen.

An unlistened heart grows static. It goes unheard when the mind becomes passive and inflexible. We cling to forms we’ve already considered, to categories we’ve always constructed. We assign “primary reality” to our noticed, reasoned world. The world as we know it grows stale, repetitive, full of truth but empty of Truth. Why do we do this to ourselves?

The heart is not rational, but by our nature, human beings must operate off reason and conceptual understanding. We recognize our own reason and its great usefulness, but reason can’t see behind itself, and it thinks it is in command. Westerners are particularly afflicted by this dangerous assumption. We must realize, empirically, that this is not so. Reason is not self-aiming. Our thoughts don’t operate in perfect, logical succession, bound robotically to its own command. Inspirations, hypotheses, what bubbles up to consciousness, comes from somewhere pre-reasoned but very real. For our survival, reason must recognize and grasp at these things, but we should be cautious not to take what it’s grasped as ultimate and comprehensive. The heart owns reason. A mind commanding the heart suffers greatly from value-rigidity, disconnected from the substance of things. A mind subservient to the heart is peaceful.

This is a very bare-bones summary of some recent ideas. It’s a temporarily satisfying answer. It allows for its own reasonedness, if the heart directs reason. It need not be final, as long as it serves for contentment. If and when it stops serving, I will listen as best I can for a larger picture.

I better halt this meditation for today; but in closing, I’d like to give credit to authors Jack Kornfield, who helped me recognize the value of “heart,” and Robert Pirsig, whose Metaphysics of Quality provides a useful foundation for recognizing that value. This entry would certainly be plagiarism without having said so.

As this is an inherently evolving system of ethics, I welcome your comments, especially the cynical and questioning ones.

I recently murdered a fish. I was at a restaurant in Fukuoka where you fish in a man-made pond, and then you give your fish, still flapping, to the waiter, who delivers it to Death, who delivers it to your table in whatever form you chose. I chose sashimi. Technically, the meat was still alive as it was sliding down my throat. I must admit, I was a little sad – we’re pretty barbaric to do this to a living thing – but I confess I thoroughly enjoyed eating it. I’m no vegetarian.

I finally sorted through all my photos since October, and I have posted them in sets on Flickr. Please have a look at my Flickr photosets. The new uploads are in the “Fall,” “Winter,” and “Recent Photos” sets.

… But to where?

That question has really got me worrying. It pulls on a string that threatens to unravel me to the core. What do I mean by this, exactly? Let’s explore by example: For a while after I came to Japan, I thought I’d return to school. The idea was to study “something about Japan or Asia or anthropology or something,” the extra something emphasizing the ambition’s deadly vagueness. The longer I’ve been in Matsue, the less passion I’ve found for these subjects. Maybe it’s still there – this deserves further exploration – but I haven’t thought about it much lately.

I miss the passion I felt at school, learning for the first time about Chinese history, dipping into the Japanese language, reading books by Peter Berger and Diana Eck… feeling like the world was an exciting , open pool of knowledge. Not that it’s not such a world, but I feel less engaged. I thrived in a unique way in academia, but I found it suffocating in others, and I never found a niche. Perhaps I hoped the JET Programme experience would direct me toward a niche, and maybe it is, but I’m not there yet and can’t appreciate the recent course of events in a larger picture, aside from having faith that there is one.

Lacking a particular interest for study, I have considered other options. Several of my previous jobs involved computer repair, and “messing around” with computers has been a lifelong hobby. Before I moved to Japan, I found myself in high demand to fix friends’ computers, and I loved the feeling of competence, helping people, making their lives easier – most of all, the joy inherent in a machine made “perfect.” Computer technology is so rapidly expanding that there are always new and exciting avenues to explore. When I worked for TCU’s Intensive English Program, it was a joy to study ASP.NET and HTML, as well as to help the students in the lab. I felt much more “in my element” than I do as an ALT. In fact, just today, here at school, our audio/visual room’s control center’s touch screen broke, as it often does; so when the school treasurer said we don’t have enough money for repairs, I borrowed a screw driver and managed to replace the monitor. It was incredibly simple – just unplug, plug – but when the system lit up and worked, it was a much more concrete feeling of success than I’ve ever gotten from teaching English.

The problem with fixing computers is this: It feels shallow. After a while, I would grow weary of it, as I did towards the end of my job at the IEP. It would become work – repetitive, mechanical, and limited in scope. It felt shallow in 2003 as I sat in the first lesson of “Database Objects,” so I promptly dropped out of the computer science department. With my heart-expanding experience in the religion department and in Japan, it could only feel more shallow. I’m not aiming for greatness, but I feel I’m meant for something bigger, broader.

Sometimes, the life of a wanderer has a romantic appeal. Or the life of an outdoor guide, like a park ranger or a rafting-trip leader. The life of a librarian, too, with a world of books and time to read them. “I could live in a library,” I think, “I could live in the mountains.” It’s not sensible – both lives would be understimulating – and both are naive and unrealistic images in the first place.

I feel I should “throw myself into the world,” as if I’m not really in it. What is this feeling, of not being in the world? What does it mean? My heart is trying to tell me something.

After one more year, I doubt that I’ll be ready to leave Japan. I love it here. It’s a great life with my tiny apartment, my kotatsu, my ofuro, the ecologically-friendly lifestyle, getting around by bicycle and train, the food, service, safety, mutual trust, kindness, convenience, hospitality, peaceful temples and shrines, onsen, the religious pluralism, the absence of homophobia and the Western worship of “manliness” … the list could go on. Most of all, the Japanese people, diverse as they are in appearance and intelligence and personality, have a certain charm that is unique to this culture, and this is no less captivating than it was in my college days, dreaming of Japan. No, I can’t leave Japan, not after just one more year. It’s unimaginable.

Yet, I must move on. Not from Japan, but from my current position, here. I need to find work closer to my passion, whatever that is, and there’s the problem. I am really without passion, at least for any particular thing. My passion is to find passion. My purpose is to find a purpose. That is my only goal, my only defense against an unraveling self. I am searching for my niche, or something that feels, in my core, to be closer to niche-ness. This hunt is presently a significant source of stress.

This hunt has recently led me back to philosophy. The guiding questions are, “What should I do? Should I do anything at all? Why? How do I know?” These are treacherous questions that in the past became catalysts for three months of severe anxiety and depression. The experience was both necessary and good, although I couldn’t see it at the time, but beyond the temporary solution I constructed, I have been wary of pursuing the matter further. Philosophy is a field that I explored to a very limited extent in late high school and early college, mostly by reading works of Ayn Rand and other Objectivists. My studies in religion touched upon philosophy at times, but were more concerned with the how certain systems of ideas, as describable phenomena, functioned within human societies.

Around last October, the absence of philosophical and moral consideration had led me slowly back to a dreadful emptiness. I was running dangerously “low on fuel.” Grasping for some new or fresh take, or perhaps to escape, I started reading a book that I had purchased a long time ago, but at the time found idealogically frustrating and failed to give the benefit of the doubt: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance. It quite exceeded my expectations. At the beginning of the book, the author warns against regarding it as a work on Zen or Buddhism, and it indeed barely mentions the Buddha. That being said, its ideas do resonate with Eastern philosophy, as they resonated with my own spiritual uneasiness.

I need to write about it, but not now. I need to consolidate all the notes and ideas that are floating around, if there’s time. I owe it to myself and to my friends to shed some light on the ideas that have recently moved me. At present, however, these ideas are not consolidated or well-integrated, and that may be how they best remain. I recently finished Lila, the sequel to ZAMM, and as I mentioned in a previous post, I have moved on to the works of William James. I find a whole territory of curiosity is opening up, and I have a new ability to read and relate, which I never had before. I find myself overwhelmed at times, though, by the thoughts that bubble up to consciousness, so I started a kind of “Thoughts Repository” – basically, a word processor file where I type thoughts as they come, without worrying about the overhead of organization and eloquence. For such a long time, I hadn’t been able to write, but I suddenly find myself writing all the time.

So, should I pursue philosophy? It’s a door that’s just opened; it’s all so new and fresh. I’m not sure.

If all else fails, I could retreat back to the States, and apply for some job in a bookstore or a coffee shop, and bide my time until a next step appeared. It just seems like such a waste of all the effort I’ve put in so far.

(My co-teacher for the next class just appeared and asked me to prepare the audio/visual room. Good thing I fixed it this morning! I guess I’ll call it quits for today’s writing.)

In truth, I should be preparing for the next school year, which begins in the second week of April. I’ve got an extensive and evolving to-do list, and I’m excited to implement some new ideas that have accumulated over the past year. For example, I recently realized a way to give my students more practice opportunities:

I often make handouts, such as vocabulary lists and example dialogs, for my students; but unfortunately for them, the little time we spend in class is their only real opportunity to experience the oral-aural dimension. I thought I’d make recordings for pronunciation and listening practice, but distribution poses a problem. Maybe I could offer to burn these recordings to CDs provided by the students, by request, but I get the feeling that my students would be highly unlikely to bring me blank CDs, if they were to come at all. Not to mention that burning CDs would get tedious and time-consuming. What a hassle!

Just yesterday, it hit me: I should post the audio on YouTube. I’ve seen occasional “videos” consisting of a logo and audio – it can’t be too hard to convert MP3 to a compatible video format. I can set up a channel for my students to access, and give them the link on the first day of class. Time permitting, I could make playlists for each course, and eventually produce real video content. Maybe other ALTs would find it useful and collaborate.

Another idea I’m excited about is particularly nerdy – but I’m proud of it:

Since I have no formal ESL teacher training, but I’ve been thrown into a position of 100% responsibility (hardly an “assistant” language teacher), I made several mistakes this year regarding the order in which I taught certain topics. For example, early on, I did a series of lessons on “Giving Directions.” I constructed a vocabulary list, flashcards, a simple map, and a series of short dialogs. The lessons started by going over the flashcards, then reviewing the vocabulary list, then listening to the dialogs and following on the map, and finally students wrote and exchanged their own directions. The students did remarkably well, considering the volume of new material, but the length of the vocabulary list should have clued me in to the fact that this topic was overwhelming.

When a topic seems too large, I’ve learned that it means I’m bundling separate topics together, and these separate topics are often actually prerequisites to the main theme. For example, my “Giving Directions” lessons took for-granted the inclusion of prerequisite topics, such as imperative grammar (giving commands), names of places and landmarks in town (block, bridge, traffic light, train tracks), and prepositions of location (“next to,” “to the right of,” “before,” “at”). Paradoxically, I taught those prepositions much later in the school year, in a lesson that was simpler and better-received.

The source of the trouble was that I didn’t have a sense of locational prepositions as its own topic at the time. In preparing for the lesson, I brainstormed every bit of language one might use when giving directions. Having only a vague recognition of their relatedness, I bundled the locational prepositions together on the vocabulary sheet. In retrospect, the “Giving Directions” lessons would have gone much better if locational prepositions had been covered first.

This wasn’t the only instance in which I taught prerequisite topics after their dependents. How could I avoid falling into this trap again? I thought I should make a chart to illustrate ESL topics’ dependencies, a kind of hierarchy. I already had a list of topics that I had brainstormed – so it would be just a matter of inserting these topics into a chart and drawing some lines. Ah, if only it were so simple.

I started to make a flowchart in OpenOffice‘s “Draw” application, but due to the volume of topics and the complexity of their interrelatedness, it quickly grew into an unmanageable mess. I needed organization and sorting features that, as nice as OpenOffice is, weren’t included in Draw.

So, I went hunting for a better application. I tried several, including an excellent mind map application called “FreeMind” but found it to be more appropriate for topics spawning from a central category, like a brainstorm. Not wanting to be tied to a central concept, I finally settled on a concept mapping application called CmapTools. It’s flexibility and robustness was a pleasant surprise.

For the last two days, I have been experimenting with my “ESL Topics” concept map. Kevin, a fellow ALT at the next desk, deemed my project a “spider web” and then a “monster.” It’s indeed proven unwieldy. Although I’ve made progress, mainly by color coding and grouping by education level, there are still lines flying about, and the program’s auto-sorting features no longer render anything comprehensible. This may appear counterproductive in the short run, but it’s a good mental exercise. Have a look:

I think I’ve figured out a reasonable system of organization, so now the problem is to discern which topics depend on which topics. Some relations are intuitive, such as the need to understand English numbers before you practice shopping, but other connections don’t just leap out at me. The best and thorough way to add and connect topics would be to brainstorm language lists for each topic, and see where “grouping” occurs, and then teach those groups earlier as simpler, prerequisite topics. This approach would be ideal if I had more time – it looks like this project is turning into a longer-term ordeal than I expected.

“Throw aside your perfectionism,” says a voice that bubbled up to my consciousness, “If you get too bogged down in this, you’ll get frustrated and lose sight of the bigger picture.” I know, I know. “It’s a worthy cause, but this past year went just fine.” It sure did, didn’t it? “Don’t worry so much, and broaden your preparation. Otherwise you risk getting so bogged down that you won’t prepare anything.” Yes, I know, thanks. Just a bit more, only a little more, and then I’ll move on.

It’s great to have little heart-to-other-heart talks from time to time.

But today was different. I opened the box, and there it was, a beautiful grilled, glazed hunk of eel. The rice was separated into a lower compartment, still shiny, so I put the eel on the rice, and poured the remaining juice over it. “Wow,” is all I have to say. It was soft and fresh, with a sweet, smoked flavor, somewhat reminiscent of the steaks Dad grills in the backyard. Normally eel has a kind of fishy taste, which I don’t mind, but this one had none. In addition, a cup of seaweed soup and some pickles came on the side, the perfect complement, and they had a very wholesome flavor. Such quality!

I’m definitely saving the wrapper from my chop sticks, because it’s got the restaurant’s name and address on it. “Izumo-Ya,” it’s called, in Uo Town. Where’s that? The teacher sitting across from me says it’s near City Hall. Evidently it’s a sushi shop; a real one, not the conveyor-belt kind. I know one place I’m taking Mimi to when she gets here. I wonder what the place looks like. The restaurant’s phone number, if you pronounce only the first syllables of each number, reads “grill well,” as another teacher pointed out. All the sudden, I am remembering the large, outdoor grills at Cooper’s in Llano, smoke billowing down the street. Nah, it won’t look like that at all.

So, a bit of a subject change: I’ve settled on Blogger.com as the center of my “web presence,” and I am really excited to explore it more. When and if I have time, I would like to customize the layout, but for now I will stick with a pre-made one that’s functional and doesn’t cause eye strain. I’ve also set up a YouTube channel and a Flickr site. Maybe on the train tomorrow (more about this in a second) I will sort out my recent photos and videos to post.

A second later…

Tomorrow evening, I am off to Fukuoka for hanging-out purposes. I have a friend that lives conveniently close to Hakata Station, so we’re probably going to bum around that part of town, and if weather permits, go to a theme park that’s relatively close by. I want to eat “motsu-nabe,” the regional specialty, but my friend doesn’t like intestine. Damn.

The train ride will take approximately 4.5 hours. There are few things I enjoy more than long train rides. Ordinarily I listen to music, but recently I have been in “drift-mode,” meaning that my tastes are a little up-in-the-air, and I’ve over-listened my library. I’ve been listening to various jazz and classical radio stations through iTunes and writing down the names of pieces I like, but I haven’t made any purchases just yet. I’ve also started subscribing to podcasts, particularly from NPR and PRI. A little voice in the back of my head says, “You should be studying Japanese, not listening to English radio broadcasts.” Not to worry: I always manage a rebellious response to the wiser voices in my head. I’ll be sorting through photos for sure.

Since that surely won’t take 4.5 hours, I’ll bring along a book I ordered that recently arrived, William James’ Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth. A lot of the philosophical avenues I’ve taken lately have pointed me in that direction. Suddenly, his name is popping up everywhere. I’m really looking forward to getting into it.

Back to work.