But this is not about what I found in that reflection, but what happens afterward. I at first thought I would simply learn to refrain from judging in those circumstances, and if I keep it up, I will become less judgmental. And I caught myself there, because this is delusional. There is no action there, no transformation, no undoing. My ego loves this “not judging” idea because with it, I can perpetuate the conceit that I am non-judgmental. See? I’m not judging. Brownie points. I am a good person, I tell myself.

“I am a good person.” Why would I need to tell myself that? Under what existential circumstances would a statement like that be needed? In my understanding, the requirement for such an assertion is guilt, that complex of self-judgments I carry around like a knot in my stomach. That guilt has me believing that having judgments is one of the myriad things that is wrong with me. Argh! I’m judging myself for having judgments!

What is needed is the transformation of judgment. The mere stopping of it is not possible. In fact the whole idea that not-judging is a viable strategy is really just a secret strategy to keep doing it. That is comparable to being what is known as a “dry drunk,” the underlying motivations remain unaddressed, free to find other means of expression.

The sense I am introducing to the word recognition is re-thinking or re-perceiving. It is to seek out and re-cognize an understanding or perspective on something; not that I think my perceptions here are novel in any absolute sense.

What makes the things I will write about here interesting to me is the process of seeing and understanding things in a way that fosters redemption. In a way that illuminates our wholeness. Often, and much less ambitiously, they are just attempts to find better ways to express my own understanding of the subjects that interest me.

—Roland Barker, December 2010

Forbidden Planet Energy Monster

Those who have seen the film know that what happened is that out of the subconscious mind arose a monster of pure energy that could tap into the full power of the planetary generator, becoming an unstoppable destructive force. I’m guessing the monster evaporated once it had managed to kill all the Krell.

The idea comes from the Freudian id, the primal subconscious, but given specific form by some good ol’ Judeo-Christian guilt. The particular notion is that living within each of us is the seed of evil that must be constantly guarded against; presumably with Bible-reading and church-going or something.

Of course, I don’t see it that way. There is no evil lurking inside of us. No malign sentience plotting to corrupt us. That specious but advantageous notion forms the foundation for an authoritarian society–but that is not the point of my little essay here. My point is we can get so fixated on getting what we want that we are totally unprepared for the consequences of getting it.

It all comes down to impatience, I think. Impatience is grounded in an assumption of lack or incompleteness, and as such is destructive to our well-being. We only want something we think we don’t have, right?  And we’re only impatient for it if we think we might not or won’t get it. So impatience is also a lack of faith.

The Krell in Forbidden Planet were impatient. Like someone buying something they can’t afford because they want it and have a credit card, they figured out how to get something they wanted and hadn’t earned. And were utterly unready for. Granted, it was instructive: they probably knew their mistake for a little while before it killed them, but too late to correct it.

I think the Krell could have averted their fate by giving everyone the power to control that generator. That is not the moral lesson of the film, of course: the moral lesson is more along the lines of “we must somehow evolve beyond or rise above the Evil that lurks within.” That kind of thinking is poisonous and should be rejected out of hand; it’s a trap. It’s a line of thought engineered to exploit our feelings of guilt (we all have them…) so we will give our power, liberty and money to an authority that might be able to protect us. If we’re good.

The Krell felt, as we apparently do, that absolute power is best given to only a few of us. Had they, as a civilization, the courage to embrace an egalitarian model, they might have survived because there would have been so many signals controlling the power in so many ways, that the formation of a single, destructive force would have been impossible.

Back to impatience; with patience comes the fulfillment of our wants, not because it will somehow manifest them, but because we will find them transformed and fulfilled in each moment. With the added bonus that we won’t be getting anything we aren’t ready for. Fulfillment does not run up a credit card bill or vote for a demagogue, however, so I don’t expect patience to get much play in our civilization.

I took an interest in which species these actually were, maybe to find out a little about their habits, these fascinating, helpful and sometimes annoying creatures.

The Common House Gecko

The most common is the gecko and the species we have here is Hemidactylus frenatus, known as the Common House Gecko. It is found all over and it’s chirping sound is a familiar one. People sometimes say, if one chirps after making some statement, that the universe or Nature is in agreement. It’s just a funny thing to say, but could possibly be true!

The ones we see are more-or-less like the one in the photo here. They seem to vary some in coloration, and it could be that we’re seeing more than one species: the mourning gecko (Lepidodactylus lugubris), for instance, which was once the more numerous. These nocturnal reptiles are avid consumers of flying insects and are a valuable form of pest control, although cleaning up after them is a chore.

The Green Anole

The award for most intelligent and aggressive goes to the Green Anole, or Anolis carolinensis. They are commonly called chameleon or mo’o but aren’t chameleons at all, although they can change color from dark brown to bright, bright green. When I say “mo’o” (meaning lizard, reptile, dragon or serpent in Hawaiian) this is the one I’m talking about. It just seems to earn the name best.

It has lidded eyes (geckos don’t have eyelids) that watch you closely–probably sizing you up for a possible territorial challenge! They will fight aggressively amongst themselves and are commonly believed to eat geckos. In fact all of these species will eat young geckos if they are small enough to catch. These mo’o are diurnal, not seen at night, and so they don’t seem to cross paths with the nocturnal house geckos much.

The Gold Dust Day Gecko

The most spectacular is the Gold Dust Day Gecko, commonly known also as the green gecko, or Madagascar chameleon. Phelsuma laticauda is the official name, and although they are not a chameleon either, this type of gecko is from Madagascar.

Ours are quite shy, diurnal and probably very territorial, as I have only seen them singly– well, I did once see two of them doing some kind of dominance stare-down before they noticed me and fled.

These reptiles are stunningly beautiful if you can get a close look.

The Delicate Skink

We also have a skink here, the not so commonly seen, very shy Delicate skink, Lampropholis delicata, also just called “mo’o” but not for long! These guys are very quick and are gone as soon as you see them. I don’t ever see them in the house, they like to hang out under rotting wood, staying well clear of the centipedes (no doubt), which are about the same size.

The Hawaiian Blind Snake

A very unusual reptile we have here is the Hawaiian blind snake, Ramphotyphlops braminus. These guys look superficially like earthworms, but they move quick and have a beautiful metallic sheen, like hematite. They pretty much just live where earthworms are found, wiggling around underground, foraging for ant larvae and such.

There are a number of other reptile species, four different geckoes and skinks, a couple more day geckoes that can be found in various places around the islands. Some of them were once common, but have been displaced by more aggressive and versatile latecomers; the two geckoes on this page, for instance, are very successful later introductions.

Of course, this is anything but acceptable to many, and that is to be expected. No doubt the core of their objection is their desire to keep homosexuality a sin and a crime. (I won’t bother to examine why) Heaven forbid people should be able to accept and embrace their homosexuality with all the normalcy that heterosexuals enjoy. I’m glad it’s finally becoming publicly and legally possible.

Desperate homophobic strains in our society are resisting these changes through various means, but what I am calling “pernicious moral deconstruction” is a deeply hateful narrative that is starting to crop up: that if homosexuality is acceptable, then shouldn’t all forms of sexuality be therefore acceptable? The idea being that social liberals are amoral and forcing society to uncritically accept all forms of human sexual interaction.

Perhaps this is a fundamental misunderstanding; however the point of this shift in policy for most social liberals is not that “anything goes,” but that from a human rights perspective, the tests for acceptability are things like freedom of expression and harm to individual or society. In that view, whether a particular relationship should be socially acceptable or not is based on the quality of the relationship itself and not necessarily who’s in it.

Should incest be legalized and become socially acceptable? I say, let’s see millions of healthy incestuous relationships first. Let’s see our respected coworkers, family members and public servants come out as “incestual” and proud of it. This is what homosexuals have done–and it’s led to their increasing societal acceptance and normalization because, quite clearly, it is every bit as viable and healthy a lifestyle as heterosexuality.

Our moral compass should not be mindlessly based upon mechanical definitions of relationship, but in seeing the actually morally relevant difference between an exploitative, abusive relationship and a loving one. On that score, heterosexuality around the world has a lot to answer for. Ask a few Afghani women how well heterosexuality is working out for them. Now there is cause for some moral outrage.

Mmmm, that herring is good…

This last point is important because this fact improves the quality of our lives on many levels. The obvious ones being things like: it saves us money, food you grow yourself is more satisfying to eat, and if there should be some problem with the house-of-cards we call our food distribution system, we’ve got a backup.

Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that with this now a part of our lives, there is very little we can truly call ‘waste’ anymore. Compost and mulch are essential to the growth of plants around here, and so these things are just as valid and important a use of resources as eating it or building something out of it.

The great thing about this is that this means that we can eat and use only the best of what we grow. It’s not wasteful to choose the best and discard everything else. It’s a kind of luxury we enjoy without a trace of guilt. Nobody had to expose themselves to toxic chemicals so I can enjoy a perfect avocado. Nobody is going to go hungry because I put a serving or two of unwanted leftovers in the bin.

The only waste around here is practically unavoidable human-made detritus; stuff that was designed to be used only once, then somehow gotten rid of—whatever that means.