The great challenge in America or, even, the modern world is to have a fully developed secular self and a fully developed spiritual self. One to solve practical problems and have intelligent advancement in human society, the other to have solace, creativity, sensibility even in the face of the cold rapture of modernism.

People have to choose a path at some point. They either want to go into the secular world and solve its dire problems or partake of its abundant treasure hoard. Or they want to dive into the spiritual, even artistic world and find some tangibility in the form-making aspect of mind that addresses the central mysteries of death and the universe. What needs to happen is for the one to awake to the path he denied and fill it with what it denied. And do it without destroying the efficacy of the other path. That is the art of living in the modern world.

I don't see much to change my opinion that the era I grew up in effectively destroyed society- at least those who were going to transform everything. Not the society perhaps but the self that has to live in society. Without constructive criticisms, constructive principles the weight of it collapses and takes a portion of the culture away. I saw it at that time in Berkeley and Oakland. I see it again. The creative mind needs to move between utter fear and utter nihilism which begins to show up during times like these. Caught on the rocks of these attributes spells certain doom for the poor person so caught.

I get hives now when I hear the word "creativity". The creative mind gets to know itself. That is its first task. It is not a natural act. There are formidable barriers, one being the imprints of everything not creativity on the poor brain which is passively thrown into the melee without a clue. The process of knowing itself is a powerful thing and that's where the first danger appears. Nothing stunts creativity more than a belief in its own powers. Christ alerts you to this, as do other spiritual masters. Don't believe the charlatans who give you a pill or magic incantation to "make you super creative." Isn't a "writer" one who defines his life through "what he does?" And he finds all means to do so. If he forces it the juices stop and there is frustration.

Beauty and nature, the beauty in nature and beauty as itself, as spiritual always lifts me beyond the trivial and mundane. But as the jets streak above me in the dark of night, they say,"I am always here and I count."

The spiritual always confronts a knawing fact. Barabbas is real to the people of the modern world. He is the one who gets the publicity. He's the one that people want to read about. Jesus is fully unreal to people of the modern world. No more real than Jupitar or Demeter. Or, a figure in a religion that people have come to despise.

Physical place is crucial in the sense of self. I am most familiar with the west coast if that's a fair geographical description. West of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada's at any rate. Ports and interesting interiors with a great diversity of nature and sparse populations. If you live and explore these areas long enough you get a solid identity and have equal measures of freedom and respect.

In the West, as with other regions, the confrontation between the european peoples and the native peoples is an epic one. I had a stark reminder of this when I was in Alaska years ago I couldn't help but notice the dilapidated state of the native Eskimos who were in Anchorage. Or driving through the sad territory of the Painted Desert and their souvenir stands. The natives have modernized without question and are their own nations. Perhaps they are not at the ripeness of the old days but perhaps the same can be said about the European peoples. We were all devoured by science, technology, and capital. I felt that as a young man, not so much now. I've made my peace.

It is difficult to idealize the past when you realize it was filled with murderers, slavers, treacherous deeds, mistreatments. And that is still all around us. The central problem occurs when an asymmetrical force pervades and totally disrupts the ways of life of people. Trouble occurs whenever that appears either in history or the present time.

People continue and survive for centuries for a reason. They have learned. They have adapted. They have transmitted. Take that away and you have chaos and death. Even today those who have successfully adapted to science, technology, and capital do far better in the world than those who fight it or are alienated by it. The outsider is a romantic fantasy of our former selves without a doubt. Wasn't Bin Laden the last Indian? And there was nothing superior to Bin Laden's beliefs or way of life in particular, if his belief and way of life didn't allow the wide options available to modern people.

To recover the ways of the lost in one's soul is enriching.

So much depends on whether the present day is a "wall" or an "opening". It is so much mind.

The more comprehensive view of society I have, the more tolerant I am. It contains multitudes. Let them all play out and be their righteous best. It is not paradise. And nature equips us with so many ways to deal with the non-paradise that is life on Earth. Perhaps that was another problem I had with novels, that can be so good as critiques of society. I had lived out a critique of society, the mere abstractions were meaningless. The obsession with it puts one squarely in the hands of the power mad because it denies humanity. Power denies humanity. Every step offers up power and critique so the humanity tends to disappear. And when humanity disappears, all hell breaks loose.

Truly, the internet did give me renewed morale that felt real and important. It gave me the confidence to "write long", against the grain of habit in the modern world.

When I whizz over the swale of our time, a flit if ever there was one, I see the action being all on the use of computer/internet and the pathways that will emerge out of that collective effort. Perhaps it will be two or three generations stretching over the 21st century but that is where the smart money will be in figuring out where the best energy was deployed. I don't think the process stops here, with the first generation. You can't outthink the internet. You have to let it reveal itself and let it come to you in a manner of speaking. Let it have its say. Let it have its pride. It's hard to know how the internet helps shape the self these days. I know it made me a more democratic citizen. It introduced me to people I would never had met, talking about things I rarely had the oppoturntiy to discuss. Since I had a little business I had to accept every person who connected with me. I also confronted things I had tried to avoid early in life. The learning curves were astounding. It was as if the internet threw me back to a former self and allowed me to develop a new direction. It felt that way at any rate.

Experience is not against intellection, it is a kind of test of intellection. We've lost so much of what the past had in terms of healthy, dangerous, and meaningful experience.

The scariest prospect is discovering what you actually do.

It's rarely what you want to do or dream of doing

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