Cold

My digital thermometer read 6 degrees Fahrenheit this morning at 7:45 AM. By any human measure, that is cold. The radio claimed a balmy 17 degrees at the station which lies in a snug corner of a university campus a bit more inland.

The experience of cold reminds me that my body is a working machine which produces a constant internal temperature as long as I am properly sheltered, nourished and hydrated. This is a relatively fragile homeostasis, as anyone who has been poor or homeless will testify. People die of exposure in American cities every winter. Boston's Emergency Medical Service surveys parks and alleys on early winter mornings for dead bodies, according to the wife of one of its paramedics, with whom I worked some years ago. 

I consider all this while listening to reports of bloated politicians gloating over having made a deal whereby they can cut more human services to the population in exchange for allowing minimal tax increases for the wealthy. An obsession with debt ceilings and bond values has led the leadership of the U.S. into a different kind of cold, calculating wilderness. Our President has colluded in this straying away from humanist priorities. Rather than allowing the money men to suffer the consequences of going over the Fiscal Cliff for the benefit of the many, President Obama deferred to the Right...again.

There are many doomsday predictions floating about. I recently learned about the Georgia Guidestones, for example. These are an alleged monument to a Rosicrucian plot. However, the extreme speculations of human self-destruction are less frightening than the cold of the money-driven heart which is driving the U.S. government and worldwide governmental policy.

Yes, it takes great biological effort to resist cold by the human body. It takes great humanist effort to resist the cold of materialism and hedonism in society. My humanist practice involves both forms of resisting coldness.