Evolving To Simplicity; Our Lack Of Human Evolution MY THEORY: I don’t pester people at the airport or knock on early Sunday morning doors with an offering from a particular religion, but in a strange parallel, I too have stumbled upon some enlightenment and found some inner bliss. For most of my childhood I was quietly sane and buried in unvoiced, obvious anger. Now I’m mad in the insane sense, though pretty damn happy in the adjusted sense. What follows is just a sliver of a black journey to a peak of light from which I found goodness. In my humble opinion it will be many millennia, if we survive that long, before human beings, as the most gifted species on the planet, will be able to coexist in true peace with all other humans. Why is this so? Can it not be possible now, here in the initial years of the 21st century? I say no, and do so with a saddened heart and great disappointment in our species as a whole. To achieve peace it requires a refined and open mind to promote and accomplish peace. On the contrary, it takes a hardened stand of ignorance to create evil and oppress the capabilities of humanity. A human must be starved of any knowledge that may help him become a true child of God; a God of good, a God who creates life, not destroys it, a God who sent His only Son to the earth so that He may be scorned and tortured and killed by the hands of His own creation. One must be bombarded with ideals of evil and misguided hatred with such force that he will be unable to hold any innate concern for the basics of right and wrong. This retrogressive teaching will only slow down our ability to evolve into the beings that we are capable of becoming. As a species we are simply not yet smart enough to understand the simplicity of peace, the value of truth, the joy of love and the extraordinary opportunity of life. Our gray matter is just that, dismal, gray matter. It has yet to be pushed to the point where the muddy gray becomes rich with life and allows us to understand how simple it can truly be to be a species of peace, individuals at peace with themselves and other individuals. Children are a perfect example. They are happy. They live for the moment. They love everything good and can’t understand why some things and some people are bad. Unfortunately they grow older and become us, fucked-up adults with prejudices, hatred, and ideals of what life should be like instead of just what life should be. What will ever allow us to move forward and search the endless capabilities of our species? What will allow those blessed with genius to be able to teach our children the way to make today’s genius tomorrow’s average minded? The answer is simple – Freedom. And let there be no better way to exemplify our lack of evolution as humans by looking upon the bloodstains of the earth that spilled forth from the lives of our American ancestors, so that we may have the freedom to begin the process of pursuing the limits of our potential and become proud, responsible children of God. This concept of Evolving to Simplicity is exemplified daily. As we all know we come into and go out of this world the same way – bare-ass naked. Birth, life and death; these are our three steps. We come, we live, and we go. Simple. Our birth is never our own choice. We will never be responsible for being born. This responsibility falls upon those who decided that they wanted more life in their lives, or those who were careless and irresponsible and after their moment of pleasure a new life was on the way. The latter has been so overly exploited as a legitimate excuse for wrong or cruel or unusual behavior in life that the true reason for that one’s existence is buried under files of psychological excuses created by those alleged geniuses of today, and if we pursue our Evolution to Simplicity, will be the average-minded of tomorrow. Whether or not we were brought into this world under circumstances of love and responsibility or lust and selfishness, the theory of Evolving to Simplicity still applies. I don’t care what any expert says, as human beings, we know right from wrong. Whether we choose one or the other to lead our lives is a choice we all make, yet, most importantly, that choice is not permanent and can change any time we will it. A MAN AND A BOY: Allow me to exemplify, I was raised by a good ole down-home country boy, who also happened to be as sharp as whip, mean as a cornered rattlesnake and a former U.S. Air Force Special Forces soldier who served with the stealthy and deadly British S.A.S. (Special Air Services) as a cryptographer. These men were experts in desert operations, nick-named The Desert Rats. As a cryptographer, a radio operator, an expert Morse code operator and a trained assassin I assume he qualified for his position without question. In high school, which was his last stint at formal education, he graduated Valedictorian of his class. He also grew-up in a one-room shack in a then small town called Kemah, Texas on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. In his upbringing, the fight made the man. Respect came from not backing down, and as far as I know, he never has. Built like a brick shithouse, blessed with a photographic memory attached to an I.Q. of over 180 and absolutely fearless, he was the ideal candidate for the position he served in our military. His missions? They took place in the freezing midst of the Cold War. ‘Black Ops’ they were called. All are still classified, or considered never to have existed at all, but from what I can gather, as he rarely speaks of them, his missions took place in the Middle East and the former Soviet Union, even on the soil of Russia herself. Their emblem: a flaming dagger. Their motto: ‘Who Dares, Wins’. “I spent two nights in a janitor’s closet in a Russian barrack, pissing in a bottle, not able to shit. I just sat there, waiting,” he recalled. His mission was to infiltrate a Communist chemical facility, capture the lead chemist and immediately evacuate. The time finally came. Through the stairwell walked a large, heavily bearded man engaged in his paperwork. “I sprung out of that closet and jumped on his ass like lion on zebra and we, along with our target, were instantly gone.” My stepfather laughed at this point of the story and then continued. “Back at our base camp we all sat around as our Sergeant paced back and forth, looking at our capture, then looking at his file, then looking at us.” Finally the Sergeant spoke, “Who in the hell is this ugly motherfucker?” He laughed as though he were telling me of times he spent talking with the boys at the country club, but these weren’t silver-spooners he was chatting with, they were trained killers, the best of the best. “What do you mean? That’s the chemist we were sent for.” It turns out that the man they had captured was a world scale metallurgist and polyglot. “We got the wrong fucking guy!” He told me as he laughed and glared through the rise of his cigarette smoke as though watching the whole scene unfold again. “Then what?” I asked. “They shipped him to the U.N. Compound in Rome and our team went to Algeria where we destroyed one of the first P.L.O. camps in existence. In twenty minutes we blew the entire place to hell. One hundred seventy eight dead sandniggers.” He laughs again as he remembers seeing a sign that read P.L.O.; he found humor in it now because at the time he thought it was an overseas division of an American oil company. He laughs it off then fades back into another smoky glare of memory. Why did I tell that story? Because that’s about the extent of our conversations over the last eighteen years and to give you, my dearest reader, some idea of the man who held my reins. As a child I remember liking him, that is, until he became the second husband of my mother and therefore my stepfather. I didn’t realize it at the time but at the age of six my life was about to change forever. My evolution from a carefree happy child to a quiet angry young man was just beginning. As time went on it seemed that the days would not fade into nights fast enough; the minutes were hours, the hours days, and the days decades. All I had to do was make it through high school graduation and I was gone. At what seemed an eternity, finally I did and finally I was – graduated and gone, for good. I’ll never forget that day, the day I was finally set free. Eighteen, ready to blow like a falling bomb, and headed out of Houston swearing to myself that last night was the last night I would ever spend in that house. Eighteen years later I have yet to break that promise to myself. Even now, the thought of spending more than three hours in that house makes me ill. Over the years alcohol, drugs and stress have eaten away most of my memory. But even before my self-induced psychological disintegration, memories of my childhood were little to none at best. Though there are a few exceptions; the time he punched me in the mouth for taking, what he thought, was too big a bit from a peach, the many times he forced my brother and I to look up at ceiling while he punched us in our respective throats, the crowbars, the quick punch to the chest, the running rage as he brought us to the ground and swung as if we were the enemy, and the threats that if I didn’t shape-up he’d “…break my fucking legs…” or “I’ll fucking kill you. You understand me motherfucker?” Yeah, those were the good old days. Days spent either away from the house working under age, playing basketball or shut in my room boiling in anger and shrouded in fear, often wishing death upon him and imagining how wonderful it would be to know he would never attack me again. Times weren’t all bad though, I was too young at the time to see through the disguise of his three year federal prison stint as having to go to Africa to run his logging business. Those three years blew by me like racing horses and though we were flat broke, as he had already fucked-off a rather handsome inheritance that my mother received from my grandfather; a sixth-grade educated self-made man of principal, it was the best time of my childhood. It didn’t matter that we weren’t rich anymore. It didn’t matter that he had conned my mother into signing away both my brother’s trust, also bequeathed by my grandfather, and mine too. It didn’t matter that my mother and my brother and I spent three sweltering Texas summers sleeping in one room with screen doors on both front and back because the air conditioner had given out and there was no money to repair it. All that mattered was that I wasn’t afraid anymore and for a while I could smile and just simply be a kid. If there was ever a time that I wished for the world to stand still, that was it, but nothing lasts forever and when he ‘returned from Africa’ (wink, wink) it wasn’t long before I was either bleeding from my nose or quietly crying in my room from the discomfort of skull bruises or just aching from a broken spirit. “It’s the way he was raised, honey,” my mother would say. “That’s the way his daddy treated him when he was a boy. He just doesn’t know any different.” So by that rationale I too would be a jobless, self-serving, child abusing snake oil salesman. I wondered about that all my life. It plagued me like a dead leg that I had to drag around with me throughout my life. The thought of me becoming like him made me want to stop living, not kill myself, but just stop living, stop getting older, stop getting closer to the opportunity of being another him. I wanted to curl-up in the corner of my room, close my eyes and wither away into nowhere. And in a way, that’s what I did. THE BOY AFTER THE MAN: I am, for lack of a better word, a recluse. At thirty-six I am the furthest away from an affable socialite that I could possibly be. If you’re looking for the life of the party or even for someone to simply strike-up a conversation, don’t even think of glancing in my direction. Up until about two years ago I rarely spoke, unless spoken to first. I am currently in my third year of resurgence from a failed five-year marriage. I rarely leave my home, unless to fish or hunt, as places of vast, silent space and solitude seem to be the only ports in which I find comfort. I never seek out more people, only less or none at all. I have no job and don’t want one (this sort of makes me wander if what I’ve been so desperately trying to avoid becoming is inevitable), but I have worked since I was twelve years old. I’ve built my own business and sold it for a handsome profit, which I immediately pissed away having all sorts of fun. I receive offers for employment on a regular basis because of that experience, but it’s not me anymore. It never was. I have chosen to write and starve until I find that door that will open-up the life of which I dream, getting paid to do what I love - write. I have one wolf, three German Shepherds and three awesome cats that all amaze me with their brilliance, distinct personalities and unyielding trust. I’m flat-ass fucking broke and uglier than the other side of a mud fence. Oh, and I am the happiest man on the planet. Those are my bad points, the things that are wrong with me in comparison to the ‘normal, well adjusted’ person. I see the following as my good points: I don’t beat-up children. I don’t hit or disrespect women. I strictly adhere to southern manners. I have come to terms with the fact that I blew it with my soul mate and that in doing so I will always be alone and that’s okay. I love animals because they are much smarter than me and any other human I know as they have already Evolved to Simplicity. I’d rather have the balls to kill my own food than drive through McDonalds and somehow pretend I’m rather divided on the whole animal rights issue. I believe that at this point in human evolution, unconditional love (and I’m speaking here of love that one falls into, not of that which one can be born into like mother/son or Creator/creation) between a man and a woman, or two human beings for that matter is virtually non-existent. I love my Mother. I love God. These loves are both unconditional, but I was born into them, I did not fall. About two years ago, when all things in life fell away from me, I finally blew a head gasket. In deep depression, I went crazy, I mean I was whacked-out, and believe it or not it was the most interesting experience of my life. It felt as though I had just been reborn and so I started living that way because when you’re nuts you’re fearless, something I had never before been. Nothing intimidated me anymore. Nothing could get in my way. I no longer felt everyone’s eyes scrolling up and down me in judgment. I quit judging others; whatever they did, whoever they were, it didn’t matter to me anymore. Everything different about people became beautiful instead of annoying. It was great and I was, for the first time ever, a happy man. Then, for whatever reason, came the rushing waves of suicide, sudden urges blasting into my head demanding that I kill myself. Strangely, I had always considered suicide a cop-out. When I read of people committing suicide I could think of nothing in life so horrible that would make one want to give away his one and only chance at life. I even held a silent grudge against Ernest Hemingway for many years for his suicide. It made me think he was weak when I had always thought of him as a man of strength and character. I was also pissed that he screwed the world out the opportunity to absorb more beautiful literature. I still have similar feelings for J.D. Salinger for clamming-up and running away. It angers me greatly, but I guess he has his reasons, so as one fruitcake to another, I regretfully accept his decision. It just seems so unfair to the rest of us. But back to Ernest, just knowing that he would call it quits for eternity in Purgatory made me angry with him. But my feelings about suicide have since changed. Maybe he was just fucked-up, too. Maybe, like me, he never contemplated suicide for it was a cowardly evasion and never a viable option. Now I feel he may have caught a rather overwhelming wave of hysteria rushing from the back of his mind screaming, “DIE!” and so he did. If that was the case, I believe I can somewhat understand. When my first wave came crashing in I acted on it. I had no choice. Once the wave came roaring into my mind there was nothing but bubbles and fizz splashing inside me as I tumbled in the undercurrent, but before I could crash into that concrete piling the wave subsided, my feet sunk into the wet sand and I swerved back into my life. 85 mph in a 40 in broad daylight, this just wasn’t me. This was the point that I had finally begun to grow afraid of myself. I now feared nothing but that which might suddenly creep into my mind. My only fear was myself and it was strong enough to force me to do what I thought was right and get some help. Pushing my ego aside, I did seek help and though I know I’ll never be the same, I feel as though I’m reasonably in control of the waves. Heavily medicated for over two years now I feel good. I’m still fucking crazy, not suicidal, rather just myself without the burden of being a player in the game of societal hierarchy, but it feels good to be who I am. Everything seems to be a miracle now. Things that once caused me anxiety or anger now either fascinate or amuse me. Children and animals have become my favorite creatures. They lack corruption yet they’re filled with wonder. My niece and nephew have stolen my heart and inspired me with their youth and imagination. Instead of being so self consumed with how I was portrayed to others, I now laugh at myself and admit my misgivings for I am only human. I haven’t lied in years. Not that I was ever a thief, but I’ll never steal from anyone. Some days are better than others, but there is always someone out there who is much worse-off than myself and though I am not thankful for another person’s misfortune not being mine, I am more aware of the many blessings in my life. Amongst my friends I’ve been nominated ‘Most Worthless’ and labeled a ‘Freak’, but I don’t mind, it’s all in good fun and I consider it an honor to even have the friends that I do. They’ve put up with a lot of my shit over the years, they’ve picked me up when I was down and I love them for it. LIFE, LOVE, TRUTH: So did I just come into my own or have I deteriorated so much psychologically that I’m just a ‘freak’ in comparison to the norm? The answer, I believe, is both. I had finally reached my boiling point and when the lid blew off with great erumpent what was in came out and what came out was me as I found myself comfortable being, which happened to stray from the norm, but, and this is the best part, I didn’t and still don’t care. I’m not saying I’m a rebel without a cause, I'm just saying that things that once altered my behavior don’t anymore. If I were troubled that I was no longer considered ‘normal’ then I would change. I would then become something that I’m not and that goes against what I now believe to be genuine, true and real. Life, Love and Truth; these three words are what I now focus my undivided attention on. They guide my life daily. No longer do I worry what others are thinking about me. Instead, I care about what I can do to help others. I don’t push my newly beloved values on others, just as I don’t expect them to push theirs on me. My life is my business, but our life, our collective humanity is all of our business. From the twisting storm of failures and triumphs, the ruined relationships, the lessons learned, and most importantly the solitude, which so tightly gripped me after my business, my marriage and eventually my mind went red; I have gratefully begun my own personal Evolution to Simplicity. I began to wonder what it would be like if every human on the planet lived by the Golden Rule. I imagined where we would be if everyone treated everyone else as they themselves wish to be treated. The vision that comes to mind is miraculous. How much better would the world be if we made no more excuses? I define the word ‘excuse’ as an extension of unchanged behavior. Whether we were put here on purpose or by accident, whether we were loved or hated, whether we are rich or poor, there is no excuse great enough to allow one human to assume that he is above another human, or above the law of man, or above his Creator and that which his Creator asks of him in return for the gift of life. Ignorance holds no weight either for it is a choice. Either one can question or one can remain ignorant for to question is to live and to pursue question one must seek. If one chooses not to seek then he inevitably defaults his existence to a life of excuses and the confines of ignorance will limit his life and therefore his potential. Who am I? Why am I here? We ask these questions to our Creator, our close friends, our therapists, but they are not the ones to whom these great questions should be addressed. Only we can answer these questions. In consideration of behavior, our Creator tells us exactly how to behave. He asks us to love one another as He loves us and to treat one another, as we want to be treated. His request is simple, a concept much more simple to implement than any dictatorship or organized repression of other human beings. It’s much easier to live and let live than to invade and oppress and murder. Freedom is the tool for us to begin the process of evolving to simplicity. Oppression is just the opposite, for how can one who is forced to think, believe in and behave by the rules of a suppressed society be able to explore the true possibilities within him? Those of us who have lived in freedom since birth should make a concerted effort to realize just how constraining the limits are that are placed upon the people led by radical regimes and dictatorships. Their potential is restricted by other human beings, not themselves. They are not allowed to inquire and experiment with their inner strengths, their dreams, their talents, their human possibilities. After all we must remember that all human beings are only human beings and nothing more. There is not one of us the face of this planet that can turn water into wine, heal the crippled with just a touch or give vision to the blind with a comforting hand. But we are certainly capable of other things; prejudice, hatred, rape, incest, necrophilia, child molestation, suicide, murder, the list seems endless. It appears the more complex our society becomes the more heinous our acts against one another develop. Jesus Christ was human. He had the choices that we all have, even the heinous ones listed above. But instead He chose the path of righteousness and in doing so He gave all the world hope. We hung a man on a cross and let him die. He forgave us for we knew not what we were doing. We were ignorant and in being so, we killed the only Son of God. SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 – HOW DARE US HUMANS: Where does it all end? Ignorance? Tolerance? Excuses? Armageddon? I’m just a freak, a man of few spoken words, but with a mind full of wonder about my own species. I have no degrees hanging on my walls. I have no expertise in the fields of psychology, physiology, or human history. I have no documents to back my theory, but I do have the experience of a life lived and forever changed through insanity. Even with a Roman Catholic upbringing I haven’t been to an organized church service, except the occasional wedding and funeral, in some sixteen years. I am now just a practicing human being without the boundaries of a religion. In my view, religion divides much more than faith unites. You’re a Jew. I’m a Catholic. He’s a Muslim. She’s a Buddhist. Really, beneath all the dutiful labels, we’re all just humans. As I write these very words, Muslims and Hindus are burning one another to death, Christians are being persecuted for spreading the word of God, Jews and Muslim extremist are killing one another and still, after six months, the decaying corpses of my fellow countrymen rot beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center where every religion lost a disciple. More importantly than a blow to religion, this was a disgustingly shameful loss for humanity, the human species, and the human being. Who are we to say who lives and who dies? As an American, I pity the foolish fanatics who attacked our nation and killed so many innocent people. I am ripe with anger and anxious for their destruction, no matter how bloody or devastating it may be. I shed no tear for the killer of innocents. I say, “Death to them all!” They bring nothing to the benefit of our species – nothing. And as a proud American, I pray for our troops who are now far away from their homeland and their families, drudging through the shit, climbing the glaciers with uncommon valor and unequalled determination, decisively bringing these swine to justice or death; in this case I consider either consequence equal. As strange as it may seem, our quest for peace has begun with the annihilation of people like those who attacked America on September 11, 2001. These people are beyond the reach of evolving to simplicity. Their hatred is too deep and too hard. So the day will come when we have rid the earth of them and peace will come to us through the simple realization that ALL OF US are only human beings and nothing more. No one is more human than the other. No one is less human than the other. Even in this great capitalist society in which we Americans live, where those with fortunes seem to be somewhat more human than those without, a man is a man, a woman a woman and nothing more. IN CLOSING WE BEGIN: So we begin here at the Truth. Put me, a wrung-out, strung-out writer, next to Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton, strip us of our clothes and encase us in silence, away from the world and what you will have is four unattractive, unfit men, male human beings (and I’ll go ahead and take the blue ribbon for the big dick contest since I’m in charge here), with four different views on the future of our species, but nothing more. And this is the point, though we are the same, we do not understand the same, therefore we do not do the same. Our current points of evolution are not equal. At some point in time, at the center at which we gathered, free will was thrust upon us. It was this moment that we choose to be more than just repellent naked men. We choose to become tyrants, dictators, liars and freaks, something more than human but less than God. We chose complexity, hierarchy, greed and carefree abuse. We put our twisted minds in gear and boldly took the reins of our chosen destiny and stormed through the world shepherding those sheep that would follow. There were slaughters, both of humans and their homes. There are still dusty stone cages were humans are kept to survive but not live. There was bold-faced lies and adulteration. And there was innocence beaten into quiet anger and waves of insanity. Now Adolf burns in Hell, a self-imposed bullet through the head and though some say suicide sends one’s soul to eternal purgatory, I feel that God, being the righteous Being that He is, would see to it that unconscionable genocide willingly committed prior to his suicide allowed Adolf to bypass the silent emptiness of Purgatory and forever melt soberly in the flames of Hell. Another struggles to herd his sheep, but they smell freedom beyond his dusty borders, and the rest of us can see the snipers crosshairs sitting steadily on Saddam’s forehead. Bill is still speaking his tired verse through his phony smile to groups of eyes that can’t help but looking back to blowjobs in the Oval Office and wandering what the definition of “is” is. And me, I am nothing. I’m simply a man who has come to understand that we are far from peace on earth, that we must first wipe out evil in our species and that we must learn to love. It is simple to love, for Hope is always at your side, loving you. As faith has begun to steer my life, it can also help others. I’m not a Bible-banging member of the God Squad, but when I sat alone in a church one day and gazed up at the most beautiful effigy of a thirty-three year old man named Jesus Christ dying on the cross, I knew I had finally found unconditional love with another human being. And so I gave Him my life and asked for nothing in return. I realized that you don’t make deals with God; you just do as He asks. You don’t ask him to do something good for you, then say you’ll do something in return like quit smoking or cussing or being such an asshole to your wife. Those are deals you make with the Devil. And they never work to your advantage, believe me, I should know, he failed me for thirty years. In synopsizing this quandary of memories, hopes, reasons and wonder; I believe we must realize that it’s never too late to stop our current Rube Goldberg path to peace and just simply become human again. One’s childhood, upbringing or some unfortunate event in one’s life is no reason for not understanding how simple peace can be. It starts from within. It spreads outward from action. It remains because it always gives back. In today’s world it seems that I could raise my sword and slice the throat of any man I wished. And as he died I would phone my lawyer, then my psychiatrist and in court they would argue that it wasn’t my fault. “His throat was so severely beaten as a child, his anger never allowed to be heard, his feelings never allowed to be understood… Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is NOT his fault. He was raised this way. He just didn’t know any different.” And away I would go, a free man. But this will never happen, at least not to me. The angel of death will find us all. He doesn’t need our help. In the meantime we need to live our lives, we need to love each other as we ourselves wished to be loved, and we need to humbly face the truth that we are simply humans with greatly unrealized potential. Imagine where we would be if we weren’t continuously mopping-up the blood of our own species. John Lennon said it best, “Imagine all the people living life in peace”, a man with such a simple vision, taken not by the angel of death but by another human. It’s amazing how difficult it is for us to understand the most simple of things.
Copyright © 2002 Branson Storm |