Lament of the Virtues

How frequently do we contemplate what we find sacred among each other? Does the notion of "sacred" need to be reserved to a religious deity? At what point do we treat events in our lives and gatherings with one another as sacred encounters?

Considering life as an ongoing process, I imagine the life and death of an individual or community alike are sacred. One can find sublime mystery in the reality of our existence, if we look or perhaps listen carefully enough. In this photo, I played a then-incomplete tune of mine called "Lament of the Virtues" for the 2007 Virginia Tech Vigil (photo credit to the Dearborn Press and Guide). I used this photo as my profile picture on September 11th too because to me, they categorically reflect the same kind of problem: Some of the perpetrators who caused harm did so with fervor probably because they believed they had good reason to do so and a sense of greater purpose. But by acting in isolation or with people of similarly narrow interests, did they really know what they were doing?

Lament of The Virtues is a sacred piece. It's a call for sustained ethical action that starts and ends in the silence beyond the music:

Traumatic and tragic events can consume our reality, but if you're fortunate to survive, there's more to life than crisis—as far as I can tell, do your best to mindfully acknowledge their significance and keep moving.
There comes a point when one grapples with conflicting virtues. Strive to be good and righteous, but what happens when all your choices for ethical action compromise other ethical values of equal significance—which value inflicts the least harm? We’re forced to triage. These proximal problems yield no completely satisfying resolve. Complex as they are, hot-button political issues in the media like war, abortion, euthanasia, and almost anything else I can think of that leads to vehement entrenchment are proximal problems on a societal scale. Murders and massacres perpetrated by individuals reflect proximal problems on an individual level.

I believe these problems are a symptom of something bigger. Complex systems scientists might refer to them as part of a “wicked problem”—they’re integral to a system that’s challenging to define, and the system changes in ways that escape definition and perception as you interact with it.

The best solution to them emerges through prevention. At the least, reliable crisis prevention necessitates thoughtfully informed, authentically understood, creative, compassionate, and constructive vision and action. I suspect glimpses of love and joy emerge from an environment of this sort--it's a fleeting visionary ideal for living in a way that embraces the spectre of death and defies terrorism. In any event, to make that happen with some measurable impact, you must bring your best to every day and act upon the opportunities that matter. Somewhere between your individual actions and those of other people through community cognizance, making that vision a more tangible reality is possible. That's the quiet pause between each pulse: it's the silence between the music.

[Edit August 2013: I've linked to a guide I created for embracing/navigating complex systems and wicked problems based on my research on complex systems and risk governance between 2012 to early 2013.]