HUMAN KIND

         
          Within a generation we may find
          Our species having learned to be aligned
          With the intentions of the Cosmic Mind
          And living peacefully as Human Kind.

A MORALITY TALE

  
   Who is it nowadays who seems to know 
   That isn’t shouting with a rooftop plea
   To advocate that “progress” has to slow,
   That Earth is facing an emergency:

   Too many mouths consuming more and more,
   Depleting and destroying vital goods,
   Clear enemies of what we should adore:
   The sky, the sea, the fruitful fields and woods.

   Yet commerce ever urges us to buy
   More things, more so-called “goods and services,”
   Whetting our appetites in hopes we’ll try
   What’s bad for everyone but “good for biz.”

        Now is the time for all of us to heed
        This soulful call for temperance, not greed.

*

HUMAN POTENTIAL

         The first thing is to see how much we see,
         The full scope of our possibility,
         Or recognize instead it cannot be
         Determined—for it nears infinity.

*

BEING AND BECOMING

    While other animals will manifest
    The essence of their being before long,
    What humans may become cannot be guessed;
    Presuppositions generally prove wrong.

    Though we are born with tendencies and traits,
    Proclivities and aptitudes innate,
    We are not bound toward any certain fates,
    Each one discovering his or her estate.

    Who we become, we slowly realize,
    Deciding and discovering as we go;
    Uniquely we determine and devise
    What character our personage will show.

         While other creatures are by nature bound,
         We humans are discovered, made, and found.

*

 LOTUS

    What would the Buddha say of flourishing,
    A metaphor depicting that or this
    Wherein we find the most transcendent thing?
    He’d say it is the blossoming of bliss.

*

LIBERAL EDUCATION

for Daniel R. DeNicola

   To nourish, flourish and then realize
   The fruits of education is the aim
   Of Academe—finally to grow wise—
   As sages and philosophers proclaim.

   Contentment, bliss and happiness elude
   Those who don’t resolutely seek and strive
   To find the ultimate beatitude,
   But merely sleep and feed to stay alive.

   To educate is to draw out what lies
   Within—inchoate, latent, impotent—
   Potentials we have yet to realize,
   Which myths and scriptures say are heaven sent.

        The aim of higher learning is to birth
        What’s great in us, and demonstrate its worth.

*

LAP DOG / GOD PAL

    My little dog, as well as I, has mind,
    Intentions and proclivities inclined
    In certain ways expressing her own kind,
    In other ways uniquely it’s designed,
    Though somehow hers and mine are intertwined
    In ways that only God could have divined.

*

WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW

      A liberal education sets one free
      To ponder all the wonders that may be
      Within the scope of human consciousness
      To contemplate, examine and address.

      Since what are we if not inquisitive
      And deeply prompted to be purposive—
      To seek for meaning and to understand
      How we may make our consciousness expand?

      For all we know, we are the leading edge
      Of evolution’s thrust, designed to wedge
      Our minds into the cryptic crevasses
      Of space and time, find hopeful passages,

           And ultimately gratify our need
           To comprehend it all.  We shall succeed.

*

Nemerov #4


*

BEING WISE

     There’s but one state of being that is best,
     Achieved by those who prove most truly blessed,
     To which the rest of us ought to aspire
     Because no human consciousness is higher.

     Some call it Cosmic Consciousness, a wise
     Purview from which they carefully devise
     Those values by which happy people live:
     To love, to trust, to cherish and to give.

*

THE AIM OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION, REDUX

A liberal education is one that disposes and prepares you to flourish in the future, providing you with what you need to know and do to meet the challenges you will face, both personally and publicly, while contributing to the success of the human enterprise.  That is the aim of a liberal education.

Such an education begins formally in school and college but continues ad hoc through the whole of your life, autodidactically, for college should make you a life-long learner disposed to contribute your seasoned talents to meet the world’s needs.

What the world needs most from us from Homo sapiens, is our developed sapience, the wisdom to realize what is of value to ourselves and others, making it manifest and effective in the world.

The duty, therefore, of every liberally educated person is to discover whatever is dysfunctional and deleterious in nature and culture and work to rectify it.  Our human duty is to serve, however we can, the world’s well-being.  Liberated from egotism and empowered to benefit the world, heroes of humanity serve with compassionate determination the urgent needs of others.

*

CREATING
A GLOBAL WISDOM CULTURE

for Paul H. Ray

     A Global Wisdom Culture—what is that?
     A way that humankind may realize
     The time has come to lower Earth’s thermostat,
     Conserve its resources and otherwise
     Behave as sanely and responsibly
     As guardians and caretakers must do
     Who recognize this Earthly odyssey
     Is our clear cosmic mission to pursue.
     The awe we ought to feel as science shows
     The marvels of the universe displayed,
     Revealing how the whole shebang arose
     From nothing, yet is orderly arrayed,
          Shows us the motive that is rightly ours:
          To wisely use our own creative powers.

*

HOMO ACCOMPLIS

  What is it we are striving to become
  That we have still to fully realize?
  Though we now know whom we’re descended from,
  Who is it evolution will devise?

  Or is it in our own hands now to choose
  And consciously determine human ends,
  A responsibility we can’t abuse
  On which all future history depends?

  Though human beings may never be complete,
  A project evermore to be refined,
  There’s much we can accomplish or defeat
  To make us more intelligent and kind.

       Yet first we need a mode to emulate,
       A sage or saint whom all can celebrate.

*

HOMO WHO?

        
        We humans all seem coded to aspire,        
        Propelled toward states of being ever higher,       
        Increasing knowledge and capacities,        
        Urged on by appetites we cannot ease.

        We're sapient in knowing that we know
        And yet we know how far we have to go        
        If ever we might hope to realize        
        Our highest human hope of growing wise.

*

“THE VALUES OF THE WISE” 

for Jason A. Merchey

       So, what then are the “Values of the Wise”
       That all well-meaning souls should realize?
       Most certainly the first one is that love,
       Compassion, fellow-feeling rise above
       All other motives harbored in one’s heart,
       And giving love is always where to start.

       But yet you must be canny to detect
       The waywardness of others who elect
       To take advantage of your charity,
       Abusing it and you maliciously—

       So master then a cunning kind of love
       That shelters both the serpent and the dove,
       That knows the vagaries of the human heart
       And grows a mind not only kind but smart.

*

COSMOGENESIS

       Amazingly, we’ve come to comprehend
       A history of the Universe which shows
       Implicit cosmic motives that intend
       To make our race, to whom it can disclose
       The secrets of its fertile cosmic mind,
       Appreciative of our amazing being,
       Aware that we’re thus specially designed
       For the delight of visionary seeing.
       Though still too few have wholly realized
       This visionary revelation’s aim,
       Increasingly, enlightenment is prized—
       Our apprehension of the cosmic flame.
            In time we’ll learn more thoroughly to see
            How all of everything has come to be.

*

MISSION

    Since I won’t be much longer on the Earth,
    I should think now about my legacy,
    What I’ll have done that proves of any worth
    To serve the uses of posterity.

    What may I say or do to wise us up,
    Accomplishing our species’ sapience,
    As far from maturation as a pup,
    Who have through painful ages proved so dense?

    Though sciences will help to set us straight
    Where blinded faith has led us into error,
    There’s something in the spiritual estate
    To guide the lost and wandering wayfarer.

        I think my task is to discern that news
        And in my verse disseminate such views.

*

THE SEERS

   The who, the what, the where, the when, the how—
   These questions curious human minds allow;
   One other, though, our minds always deny
   As most unfathomable: the question why.

   Why are we here?  What purpose do we serve?
   What rules and principles should we observe?
   Why, after eons, should our kind appear
   If not intended and designed for here?

   It cannot be we are an accident.
   We have to think that somehow we are meant,
   That meaning is inherent in the scheme
   That we now know once made the cosmos teem
   From nothing into boundless energy
   Evolving into us—who strive to see.

*

SPIRIT MATTERS

   
    The universe, I’m learning, is informed
    By energy, intelligent and wise,
    Its frigid, vast and ghastly reaches warmed
    By something I’ve been slow to recognize.

    Though some poetically personify
    This source of order as a loving God
    They worship like an ancient king on high,
    Beneath whom each is but a lowly clod,

    I rather find that this intelligence
    Implicitly invests the universe
    With orderly direction we can sense
    Or else ignore—in which case things go worse.

         It’s like this poem, whose pattern underlies
         What seems spontaneous—form in disguise.

*

WAKE-UP CALL

for Chris Bache

      Awakening—what better metaphor
      to illustrate how human consciousness
      can open wide perception’s shuttered door
      then to new thoughts and visions gain access?
    
      For it implies we’re walking in our sleep,
      the lives we lead no more than idle dreams,
      too often nightmares bound to make us weep
      until the promise of new morning gleams.

      Dark night gives way to early dawn so we
      may see our battered world in a new light,
      envisioning a saner way to be
      beyond our culture’s chaos and the blight
      our willful waywardness has led us to—

      Wake now!  Arise!  For we have much to do.

*

To discover and develop what gifts you have to fill the world’s deficiencies, by providing good goods and serviceable services—is the answer to that question.

While many people serve themselves first and foremost, aiming to gratify chiefly their own lusts, they may find pleasure but not fulfillment in such selfishness and will never know the profound gratifications of sharing and giving—providing for others.

This is a truth of human nature, however it may have emerged in us through the course of our species’ evolution.  We are “wired” to find our greatest fulfillment in providing for others’ well-being as well as our own, and to neglect or deny that innate summons will leave us essentially unsatisfied and unfulfilled.  Only by giving to others can we get what we most deeply need.

More specifically, now: Why should you pursue a liberal education?

There are both personal and public reasons for why you might pursue a college education in the liberal arts and sciences.  The personal reason is self-fulfillment, and the public reason is service to the world.

What drives the first motive is your curiosity to learn about various aspects of our cultural and natural world—the subject matters of the numerous fields of knowledge departmentalized in college under such categories as languages and literature, arts, sciences, and social sciences. 

You come to college to explore these fields, finding out what they entail, and focusing on those ones most congenial to your own genius or aptitudes.  Lacking such essential curiosity or internal urgency to learn, you will waste time and money in college and hinder fellow students from their own pursuits of higher learning, which is a communal enterprise, not an ordeal.

The public reason for your dedicated pursuit of a liberal education (whether in college or elsewhere) is to prepare yourself to recognize and wisely address challenges to the flourishing of life on Earth, from its lowest to its highest reaches, realizing how precious and precarious is life in the cosmos—and treasuring its well-being.

*

THE SEEKER

   Though I dabble and nibble and haven’t gone right

   To the heart of the matter or seen the Bright Light
   That shines in a consciousness cosmically tuned,
   Confined to this outpost, lost and marooned,
   I’ll keep to my questing and hope soon to see
   Down to the bottom of reality.

*

POTENTIAL

                What more is there that we can be
                    Than we have been before?            
               What visions may we see when we
                    Fling wide perception’s door?
               Our great potentiality
                    Lies sleeping in our core,             
               Yet when we’ve learned to set it free
                   We’ll see the world galore.

*