Eclectic Muddlehood

An iPod was a dangerous purchase for me.  In one short week, I have transformed into an avid podcast junkie, hungrily devouring a gluttonous feast of free knowledge.  Independent news media brodcasts, quirky history lectures, public domain classic literature, Zen master teachings, and much, much more are making their way onto my new toy and being rapidly downloaded by my brain.  My internal dialog is gleefully turning over bits and pieces of different information and making new and crazy interdisciplinary connections. 

 In a children’s book we own by Jon Muth, entitled Zen Shorts, a panda bear shares a unique flavor of Zen Buddhist wisdom with three young children by telling each one of them a short story.  Although Athena and I have read this book over and over again together, I never quite understood the first story told.  I just could not quite reach the meaning behind it and it remained slightly blurry, like a picture just a hair or two out of focus.  Listening to a podcast the other day, something inside me turned and the picture finally focused sharply.  Now, I get it. 

Thinking about Buddhism led my mind to review some of the independent media coverage of the recent earthquake in China and mix a bit of that with a behavioral psychology lecture to leave me wondering exactly what will the future impact on the world stage be when China becomes a country run almost entirely by only children.  Nothing personal against only children or adults who were raised as only children, but I know how much my childhood as a eldest child has flavored my adult self and how I sometimes approach life.  In most societies there is a fairly balanced mix of people who expereinced a variety of childhoods as only children or one of many, as the oldest, the youngest or the middle child, as a child with solely sisters or solely brothers or with a mix.  And all of those factors contribute to who those children become as adults.  So what will happen when the adults in a society are no longer a mix of those experiences but a fairly homogenous group of childhoods?  How will that affect that particular society’s dealings with other more heterogenous ones?  Just curious.

Speaking of eldest children, did you know that Alexander the Great’s erratic behavior later in his life could possible be corrolated with the typical clinical pattern of late stage alcoholism?  “Raging drunk” would not be an inappropriate term.  Another recent podcast had me alternately laughing and gasping in disbelief as the speaker took on the idea of major turing points in world history being decided by individual players who may or may not have been seriously impared by a wide variety of alcohol or drugs.  He reviewed plausible data that could lead one to conclude that not only Alexander the Great, but also Napoleon, Churchill, Hilter, Stalin, JFK and who knows who else spent most of their days fairly messed up.  Even days that they were required to make extremely tense and delicate decisions affecting many nations and their citizens.  The things they leave out of the textbooks continue to amaze me! 

 Well, as I typed this little bit of bloggery, my iPod has been hard at work downloading and synching and all that jazz.  So, for now, this podcast devotee is off to feed the need once again.  At this rate, I’ll never get any better at housekeeping!