My Brother, the Complete Fucking Idiot

My brother Jim’s a complete fucking idiot. He was the last time I heard from him, anyway, and for all the years I knew him before that, and that was quite a few years. I don’t know where he is now, and I don’t think he’s a U.S. citizen, but I have no doubt he would’ve voted for Trump, given the chance.

Do you see? That’s all I had to say. “He would’ve voted for Trump, given the chance.” Complete fucking idiot.

Jim was a Scientologist – still is, so far as I know – and they seemed to fill his head with a lot of ridiculous garbage. But he’d been a Scientologist as long as I knew him, so I don’t know how much of it was L. Ron Hubbard and how much of it was just him being a dickhead. He was always kind of a mouthy jackass: he enjoyed needling people to get a reaction. He was either quite intelligent or very stupid, it was hard to tell. He could crack me up. He had a good sense of humor.

We were either very close or sworn enemies. That’s how it was between us.

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For some weird reason my brother Jim decided he was going to persecute my brother Mike, who was gay. It was odd, it kind of came out of the blue. They were brothers, they’d had their moments, but I never thought Jim hated Mike. Then one day when they were both at my parents’ house Jim went into Mike’s room and, while they were alone, unleashed a torrent of hateful cruelty.

I wasn’t in there with them. Mike told me about it immediately afterwards and I knew by his ashen demeanor, his palpable shock, that he was telling the truth. That he had been wounded and made to feel afraid.

I decided that day I was going to break with Jim, and never speak to him again, and I told him so. I took my stand.

It was awkward, though. Jim lived with my parents, and he was always around. My moral posturing seemed to have little positive effect, and Mike himself forgave Jim, more or less. And hatred fades away, if you let it. You come to tolerate and then feel fond of what you see every day.

Still, as I mentioned, Jim was a fucking idiot, so much so that he sometimes seemed kind of crazy. In time Mike died, and then my parents died, and then Jim seemed to lose it all over again, and I haven’t spoken to him in a decade. No big loss.

I’m not losing any sleep over it, as the old chestnut goes.

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I wasn’t born a Buddhist, I was born a little baby. And then shortly after that I was declared a Catholic when the priest poured some water and oil on me. And I don’t mind that: I have my problems with the Catholic church and they profess some pretty nutty shit, but it doesn’t bother me at all that in some sense I’m still part of a church that has existed since the time of Christ.

I’m big on Christ. I’m big on the idea that we should love other people above all. Christ said “Turn the other cheek.” That’s so hard! It’s so hard. Because we’re afraid. We’re born afraid and then people are threatening. Some people actually want to hurt us, sometimes. Not so often people like me: white men who live in North America, Europe, Australia. We’re probably the safest people who ever lived in the history of the world.

Stuff still happens to us, though. And we still die. We lose everything we love, everything we care about is taken from us, one way or another, and then we die, just like you, just like everyone.

This is why I’ve taken the precept of the Buddha: “Cause no harm.” The first precept. It’s also phrased as “Don’t kill,” which is easier to remember. “Don’t kill” is great if that’s all you can handle, if “Cause no harm” is too intimidating. Because “Cause no harm” is a big deal. I’ve no doubt that I’m somehow causing harm just by sitting here, typing this. I’m listening to music on my iPhone (“The Great Curve” by Talking Heads – what a song!) and although I don’t know all the details last week I skimmed an article about Congolese men who dig holes in the ground with hand hammers to obtain cobalt, which is necessary to the functioning of my iPhone. I just skimmed it, though, because I have children of my own, and interests, and I need to make money so my family can eat and have a place to live, and I need to meditate and write these blog posts. And there are a lot of articles, and I don’t have a whole lot of extra time.

I’m also aware that they’ve installed nets at the Foxconn factory in China where my iPhone was manufactured, so that the workers who build iPhones can’t commit suicide by jumping out the windows.

And apparently people line up to work at Foxconn, because despite the fact that working there is so unpleasant it leads some people to jump out the windows, it is nonetheless preferable to the lives most of them are trying to flee.

So there’s that. 

I’m not sure how culpable owning my iPhone makes me. I’m pretty happy to have it right at this moment, though, because “Alex Chilton” by the Replacements just came on, and I‘m in love with that song.

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The experience of being a human is so personal. I’m not trying to be obtuse. What I mean is: we are these human animals, and we normally perceive the world from the vantage point of a separate, isolated individual. Through one pair of eyes. Through the thoughts that seem to float in the darkness of one locked and lonely room. We feel what we feel, not what other people feel. Right now I can see the computer in front of me, not the side of the hole in the ground where someone is digging out the cobalt that allows iPhones to play “The Only Living Boy in New York.” As far as I know, no one else in the world is aware of my self-doubt, my fear for the future, my love for my wife and my children, the sorrow and the simple still joy of being alive.

I’m no meditation master. I spend almost all of almost every day mesmerized by a perpetual motion thought machine. I get angry, I get happy, I do something nice, I do something mean, I do fifty push-ups, I finish that chocolate bar I wasn’t going to open. But when I allow my mind to become very still, when I simply observe my experience, I see that the sense of myself, the sense that I am a separate being, divorced somehow from the rest of the universe, I see this sense arise and pass away just like everything else. The sense of my self is just like the colors, the sounds, the thoughts: the sense of my self rises up, and stays for a while, shimmering, and then it goes away.

My self is contingent, impermanent, insubstantial, just like a thought, just like a feeling, just like a memory.

This might not mean anything to you right now. It might sound stupid, or boring, or muddle-headed. Fuck does this have to do with my fucking idiot of a homophobic brother?

It’s this: it’s because we think we can clean everything up. That we just have to get rid of the racists and the sexists and the homophobes and the rednecks and the oligarchs. The people with iPhones and the white people. The niggers and the faggots and the uptight bitches. The liberals and the fascists and the anarchists and the Social Democrats. It’s us and them and it’ll be tough. Some eggs will be broken and the desire to destroy is also a creative urge. And One Day a Real Rain will come and One Day the Rapture will come and One Day the Robots will come and when all the bad people are gone we will finally on That Day be able to Live.

But here’s the thing. Because I know my self is this mutable, transitory thing, I know that I am not separate from the rest of the Universe. I am part of it, part of everything. And here’s the thing: my stupid fucking idiot homophobic brother who broke my heart is part of it, too.

And if I hate him it is just exactly the same as hating myself. It’s not like hating myself. It is hating myself.

The objection is always the same: so I have to let him punch me in the face? I have to let them round us up? I have to turn the other cheek? He’s just going to hit me again!

No. We have to stop people from hurting people. But we need to stop hating them, too. Because hate is not like being gay or straight or black or white. Hate is something we choose. Sometimes we’re not even aware there is a choice, but there is. And when we are presented with that choice, to hate or to love, we have to choose love, or the hate will never end.

We need to stop hating people. This is the thing. Not later, after we’ve gotten rid of the bad people. We need to love the bad people now. This is the only way forward. This is the way we will survive.

This is the way we will win.