The Highest Purpose of All

Chapter 20 of the Tao de Ching (as translated by Stephen Mitchell) says:

Stop thinking and end your problems…
Must you value what others value
avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!

…Other people have a purpose;
I alone don’t know,
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.

I am different from ordinary people.
I drink from the Great Mother’s breasts.

It’s the American way to be on purpose 24/7. We’ve all been installed with that monkey on our back that constantly chatters “Never stop applying yourself and you could get a hot car, a hot wife, a righteous buzz, a big house. Global empire, even.” Put another 200 billion dollars into this war and you’ll have all the cheap oil you’ll need so you can get that Hummer and be another Arnold. Think how powerful you’ll feel rumblin’ down the road blowing all that black Persian gold out of your car’s exhaust pipe. How lucky to live in the land of “I got mine.” Just put those blinders on and stay on purpose.

Okay, if you suck up the world’s resources there may be a lot of guys without jobs who sit around in a Jihadist funk all day dreaming up ways to waste a few of us (They’ve got to have a purpose too.) but that’s why we spend 106,000 dollars per year per American on our military— so we can pretend we’re immune to the consequences of our actions.
But even if we keep a few terrorists at bay we’ve still shot ourselves in the collective foot. Our massive federal debt drives the interest rates up so we can’t buy that hot car or that big house (or any house) after all. The myriad multi-purposes of “our great purpose” in America have become cross-purposes.

Desire leads us down the primrose path of fleeting satisfaction, perpetual frustration, denial, exhaustion, disappointment and confusion. We holler over and over again “Support our troops!” as we send thousands to their deaths and fifty thousand (and counting) to be maimed. But, hey, get tough, Sparky. Americans know that that’s the price of freedom. That’s why we’re the greatest country in the world.

True, our administration lied to get us in this war and our Congress and our corporate media backed the lie and then claimed ignorance of the facts while filtering out all contradictory info but tolerance of misinformation (disseminated for a higher purpose, of course) is also the price of freedom (or at least the price of politics and business as they know it). And the 150,000+ Iraqi’s that have died? How many times do I have to say it? Price of freedom.

Dr. Robert Hare on his “Psychopathy Checklist” includes the inability to feel remorse, a grossly inflated view of oneself, a pronounced indifference to the suffering of others and a pattern of deceitful behavior as bullet points for “the compleat psychopath”. It also sound like the basic requirements for today’s government-approved patriot. Or perhaps just the resume of your typical All-American go-getter. For those that believe the end justifies the means, suppression of empathy is just a sign of moral strength not an indicator of ethical compromise. Maybe we need a higher purpose than “the higher purpose.” Maybe the highest purpose of all is purposelessness. An American company urges you to “Obey your thirst.” and drink their soda. But maybe it’s time to question the authority of our conditioned thirsts and “drink from the Great Mother’s breasts.”