Common Sense and Common Virtue

Your Own Political Jesus

The Democrats opened what the press has described as their “faith-filled” convention with politicized prayers to win over the so-called “values voters,” and make a dent in the traditionally conservative evangelical voting bloc.  From a political standpoint, this is bad strategy.  The Democrats’ voting base has eschewed the Karl Rove philosophy of politicizing religion and may be offended that their own party is now attempting to follow-suit.  Alienating the stridently liberal base with all of this God-talk may turn out to be disastrous if they take it too far.  Second, it is quite unlikely to achieve the intended goals.  Conservative Christians will perceive the Democrat Convention as crass political posturing.

The Evangelical voting bloc cares primarily about results, not about rhetoric.  This is one of the reasons that this particular group of voters is still weary about John McCain’s candidacy.  They look at a history of “maverick” behavior and say to themselves that he can’t be trusted.  Multiply that by several orders of magnitude and you get the trepidation evangelicals must have when looking at the Democrats’ recent discovery of Jesus.  Sure, evangelicals love a converted sinner, but will they really buy it?

There has been a lot of talk lately of the “New Evangelical,” the young, eco-conscious, social justice-oriented Christian youth group kids who wear sandals and grow their hair out and who listen to Christian Rock while helping the poor.  This is half-media invention.  The other half is an evolutionary aspect of evangelical Christianity that I have witnessed over the last decade.  Like all young generations of any movement or social group, the current generation of Evangelical youngsters has adapted to its surroundings for the purpose of “helping the cause.”  If you have a thorough conversation with one of these young Evangelicals, what you will find is that their number one mission is still making converts, or, “winning souls for Christ,” as they might say.  Environmental causes and social justice concerns are merely incidental to their Christian mission, not central to it.  Abortion, opposition to gay rights, and other “moral” questions are still foremost in their thought process.

Since leaving the evangelical camp a number of years ago, I have looked upon both sides of the politicized Jesus debate with great disdain.  Like the Founding Fathers and any other iconic historical figures, Jesus is tossed around as a political football with both sides claiming that he would have favored their policies the most.  Ultimately, politicizing religion not only denigrates the religion itself, but it reduces its practice for many people down to nothing more than politics.  This sort of debasement is inherently counterproductive for everybody involved.  Whereas once religion was central, and politics tried to play to the religion, now it seems that politics is central, and people are trying to manipulate religion to fit their ideology.

As we watch both conventions, we will witness the Churching up of the Democrats and the Greening of the Republicans, with each party trying to convince the ideological supporters of the other that they too can embrace their religion.  It will be disingenuous on both sides.  For that reason (and a host of others), I will be watching only six convention speeches between both parties:  Barack Obama (I’m considering playing a drinking game with that speech), Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and whoever is McCain’s running mate.   One might ask why I’m lopsided toward Democrat speeches.  It’s quite simple: the Clintons continue to intrigue me, and I am anxious to see what kind of back-handed compliments they decide to give to Obama.

But one thing is for sure…both parties will be long on rhetoric and short on substance.  Politics as usual, and the American public will lose either way….as usual.

Joseph Biden: The Democrat Dick Cheney

Nobody can question the shrewdness of the Obama campaign’s decision to pick Joseph Biden as the #2 guy on this year’s Democratic ticket.  It harkens back to a similar choice made around this time in 2000 when the world learned that Texas Governor George W. Bush picked a Beltway veteran who had baggage of his own to help add some gray hair to the ticket (let us not forget that Bush didn’t have any gray hair before he was President).  Running against the sitting Vice President of the United States, Bush was attacked for lacking foreign policy experience (not that Al Gore really had any–unless raising campaign funds from Chinese communists counts as foreign policy experience).  Bush famously tried to argue that being Governor of Texas gave him plenty of foreign policy experience working with Mexico.  The Obama corrollary is that all of the European socialist sycophants love him, and surely that counts.  But everybody knows it doesn’t.

And that’s why we woke up this morning to the news that Senator Biden will be running alongside Senator Obama.  The similarities between Biden and Cheney do not end there.  Biden and Cheney are both known for (and were selected for) their ability to be attack dogs.  In both 2000 and 2004, the Bush campaign dispatched Cheney to do all of the negative campaigning and dirty work that would have looked bad coming from Bush himself.  Part of Biden’s appeal is that he can (and will) do just that.  Both Biden and Cheney, in addition to being close to the same age (Cheney was born in ‘41, Biden in ‘42), are also career politicians who have woven intricate webs inside the beltway.  Their distinguished careers add more than just gravitas to the ticket–they add years of invaluable experience.  They know how to work the system and get somewhere in Washington politics, even if it doesn’t always mean getting things done for the American people.

Finally, neither Biden nor Cheney hail from states of any strategic value to the electoral college map.  This shows that the Obama campaign is well aware that Vice Presidents don’t really matter that much on the map.  Vice Presidents should be selected for what they add to national appeal, and not what state they can deliver, since the reality is that at the end of the day, people vote for who they want to be in the Oval Office, not who they want in the Old Executive Office Building.  People can vote against Vice Presidents, but rarely do they vote for one.  Consequently, the Veepstakes should always be examined in the context of what they have that complements the nominee moreso than what they can deliver on their own merits.  The Obama campaign has exhibited their adeptness in this aspect by picking Biden instead of state-deliverers (Tim Kaine of Virginia, Evan Bayh of Indiana, or Kathleen Sibelius of Kansas).

I fear that the Republicans will think of Biden as a Washington insider and washed up former candidate for the Presidency who could never get past first base.  They will say he is from a stuffy mid-Atlantic state and could not possibly be more out of touch with the rest of the country.  All of that is true, but Biden mustn’t be underestimated.  After all, the reason he is a Washington insider and 35+ year veteran of the U.S. Senate is that he has learned the most important skill that one can ever learn in politics, business, or war: survival.  And I am always worried about survivors.  They’re good.

But Senator Obama should be scared–not of what Joe Biden will do to his ticket, but what Joe Biden will do to his Presidency.  Joe Biden has always envisioned himself as President (what U.S. Senator hasn’t?), and he already has thought out how he thinks the country should be run.  He also has 35 years of political favors to repay and 35 years of political friends who he is going to trust in cabinet positions.  If he is able to exert as much influence over the Obama Presidency (if we get to that) as Cheney has over the Bush Presidency, then we will see Democrat versions of Donald Rumsfeld in every post, high to low, of the Obama administration.  Biden will also have a tendency to “explain how things work” to Mr. Obama, who will abandon his “change” mentality in order to “get things done.”  Obama’s candidacy was already reminding me enough of Governor Bush’s candidacy.  But Obama-Biden seems scarily just to be Bush-Cheney riding a donkey.

Georgia: The Lasting Impacts of Iraq

We are witnessing the long-term consequences of America’s pre-emptive strike in Iraq. By embracing a foreign policy that legitimized unprovoked invasions, we are morally castrated as we witness the devastation of the Russian invasion of Georgia.

The United States can only look across the Atlantic to our ally in the Caucasus and plead with Russia to stop.  But we cannot preach to them.  We cannot admonish them with any sort of ethics, or even with our own integrity to point to.  We can only plead–and that pleading is falling on deaf ears at a Kremlin that each day looks more like the Kremlin of Joseph Stalin and Nikita Kruschev than one of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.  The resurgence of Russian-Soviet Imperialism in the Putin Era (which we will no doubt be in until Putin himself dies) was ignored by this administration for most of its tenure.  President Bush looked the other way as Russia quietly aligned itself with our foes, committed massive human rights violations in its own efforts against “terrorism,” and we are now reaping the fruits of our failed Russia policy.

After the fall of communism, many in this country fell into the naive trap of thinking that America and Russia were allies, or even that it was possible for America and Russia to be allies.  But 60 years of indoctrination does not die easily.  Moreover, today’s Russian despots are no longer bound by the constraints of communist ideology.  No, today’s Russian despots are motivated by profit and power, and the mafia that controls most of the country is nothing but former KGB officers who have realized that there is money to be made in the business of oppression.

Yet we must make no mistake about the justifications for Russia’s invasion of Georgia.  This is Russia’s war on terror.  The United States is looking in the mirror when it looks at the Georgia invasion, and as a matter of national policy, as a matter of national security, the people of this country must demand that we not meet terrorism “head-on,” because that is precisely how terrorism wants to be met.  We did not meet the Soviets head-on, and we were victorious because through innovation and economic success, we out-maneuvered them, out-spent them, and as a result, out-lasted them.

The invasion of Iraq has destabilized traditional foreign policy around the world, and neither Barack Obama nor John McCain offer legitimate alternatives to the 16 years of Bush-Clinton interventionism that has put us in this situation of moral hazard.  We must be sorrowful for the Georgian people, but because of the last two decades of our foreign policy, there is little else we can do in the face of this Russian atrocity.

The Problem with “Windfall” Taxes

Barack Obama announced his answer to rising energy costs: transfer payments.  It is a rather simple calculation: steal money from selected corporations and write a check to “families.”  (One must be at least slightly amused by Sen. Obama’s frequent usage of the word family, as if that is going to win him support amongst traditionalist conservative “values voters”).  He and his campaign call this a “windfall tax.”  The argument, as it goes, is that the big oil companies are making massive profits and everybody else is paying higher energy costs.  These massive profits are “windfalls,” that is, an infrequent or one-time, higher-than-usual profit.

The idea of windfall taxes clearly was contrived by somebody who a) knows nothing about economics and b) has never run a business.  Many business operate with extraordinarily low profit margins for much of their life, and then during certain cycles they make significant profits.  Many people engage in certain business for those feast years.  If they didn’t have the feasts, then the famine years wouldn’t be worth enduring.  Thus the problem with windfall taxes is that they selectively steal all of the profits of cyclical companies who frequently rely on windfalls to make new capital investments.  With rising global demand for energy, a good microeconomist would advise any energy company to make heavy investments to meet rising demand.  Sure, the windfalls are nice, but if the industry could supply as much energy as the market demanded, their profits would soar even higher.

What will happen instead is that these windfall taxes will be transferred from the oil companies, who would likely have used much of the profit to invest in additional infrastructure, delivery capacity, and refining capacity, and give it to consumers, whose expenditure of these funds will simply put further upward pressure on prices and spur more, and more detrimental inflation, especially in the area where we are already hurting the most: energy.

As Senator Obama continues to display his blatantly socialist economic credentials, his poll numbers will continue to suffer.  When the “messiah” has only 45% of the vote in the latest Gallup poll, that can’t bode well for his White House aspirations, no matter what kind of an orgy the media continues to have over him.

Economic Scapegoating and Institutional Interests

When things go wrong, and people are looking for a place to put the blame, scapegoats always emerge.  Perusing the latest news articles will provide one with more than enough possibilities, here are a few:

President Bush
Republicans
The Banks & Mortgage Lenders
China and India
Free Trade
Free Markets
Corporate Greed
The Wealthiest 1% of Americans

Yet most people don’t look at the place where the most blame can be placed: the mirror.  Recessions, economic downturns, are not a novelty.  Economic downturns in fact have been around for as long as man has been on the earth.  Early in our species’ history, a recession was nothing more than an extended drought or a flood.  As our economic behavior has become more sophisticated, so have the causes for recessions.  But the same principles apply today as they did in the caveman age: make hay while the sun shines and save for a rainy day.  And when it comes to saving, it’s always a good idea to save more than one thing, you know, in case one of them goes bad.  If you have wheat and corn, and the wheat gets moldy, then you’ll at least have the corn.

These principles are not difficult.  Yet people choose to consume the vast majority, if not more than, their income, and then when it runs out and things turn South, they blame the President, other countries, policies that have brought about unprecedented prosperity, and other ridiculous things.  There is no question that the Federal Reserve, Congress, the President, the Banks, etc. have contributed in large part to today’s malaise, but each individual has only himself or herself to blame for being in a bad situation.

I can hear whining in the background…”What about people in manufacturing whose jobs went overseas?”  The reality is that the decline of the American comparative advantage in manufacturing began in the 1970s–when it peaked after the post-War boom.  Yet those who continued to pursue jobs in an industry that was obviously changing, reallocating resources towards automation, moving overseas those operations that did not have to be performed here, as well as the growth of competition, have themselves to blame.  Rather than acquiring additional skills or otherwise working to make themselves indispensable to their employers, they clung to their unions to protect them.

But when the well runs dry, it’s not possible to coerce water out of it.

Economic envy is just like any other form of scapegoating, whether it is based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or whatever.  Hating somebody simply because they have something is just as ignorant and biggoted as homophobia and racism.  Moreover, stealing, whether individually or collectively (through taxation), is not a justifiable response to scapegoating behavior.  Imagine the outrage if the country implemented a tax on African-Americans or required women to pay more when boarding public transportation.  Yet the possession of property is considered to be a bona fide qualification for discriminatory policies, and the masses cheer it on.  But who will stand up for the economic minorities?

This of course is where the problem is.  The economic minorities possess untold power.  The wealthiest 1% has a tremendous influence on national policy, and upon the outcome of elections.  And it is generally the goal of the wealthiest 1% to keep their club exclusive, and to keep others from crowding their space.  They aren’t threatened by the poorest 1% or even the poorest 50%.  They are threatened by the up-and-comers, the entrepreneurs who are the wealthiest 2-10%, and who are the people who have truly been hardest hit by the current crisis.  They are the people who invested wisely, who bought homes on mortgages they could afford, who have worked hard to make a better life for themselves and their family.  They are the ones who will suffer most from the policies that the masses demand, because they can’t afford the extra tax hit.  But they are still considered “too rich” by America’s socialists like Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy.

I have no misgivings about the people who occupy the wealthiest 1%, but they should not use their position to rig the system in their favor.  The Federal Reserve exists for the sole purpose of bringing about this outcome.  The New York Financial Institutions will be protected.  The small businessman whose house is worth 30% less through no fault of his own and whose customer base has deteriorated will not get a bailout.  Instead, he’ll get a tax increase.

We need a truly market-based system, one that doesn’t favor corporate interests, one that doesn’t attempt to redistribute wealth.  Socialism and Corporatism are two sides of the same coin, and they are the two strongest ideological forces in American society today.  Our next revolution, our next declaration of independence is when we tell the powers that control the institutions behind these ideologies that we no longer need them.  I don’t see this day coming anytime soon–it would require too much work, too much self-examination, and too much responsibility.  That spirit seems to have disappeared from our once great nation.

A Lack of Leadership

House Minority Leader John Boehner told an audience in Washington this week that there would be no new “Contract for America” from congressional Republicans in the 2008 election.  Specifically he said there would be “no attempt to nationalize the elections…at the end of the day, people will have to run their own elections.”  Spoken like a man who loves being Minority Leader.  It seems that congressional Republicans in both the House and Senate have settled comfortably back into their status as the minority party.  After all, it is much easier to be the critic of those in power than to actually govern.  It’s not surprising, really, since the Republicans did a pathetic job of governing after they ran Newt Gingrich off from the Speakership.

Congressional Republicans have, for the last 8 years, abdicated their role of policymaking to the White House.  The result has been catastrophic.  Rather than standing by the principles of limited government, low government spending, and international non-interventionism that has characterized the Republican mantra since Reagan, they gave carte blanche to a President lacking a guiding ideology of economic and fiscal policy.  The Republican reputation on fiscal responsibility has been utterly ruined, and it is unlikely to be resurrected anytime soon, especially if Congressional Republicans do not play a role in moderating the spending plans of the Presidential candidate.  John McCain, though traditionally a budget hawk, must now face a big-spending Barack Obama.  If he follows in his predecessor’s footsteps, Congressional Republicans will have no choice but to stand up to him.  But, after years of being threatened by the White House, they are probably fearful of the same behavior from the next White House.  What they should fear more is being in the minority and having the opposing party in the White House.  If they do fear this, they are certainly not doing much to try to fix it.

After years of supporting the Republican Party, this will be the first time that I do not.  In fact, not only am I not supporting the Republicans in Congress, I am not supporting Sen. McCain either.  I think he is, on the whole, probably better than Barack Obama, but I have grown tired of picking the lesser of two evils.  I plan to vote for Bob Barr for President, even though I don’t particularly like Bob Bar.  I plan to cast a vote for a 3rd Party candidate in every race where that is an option.  The Republican Party needs to hear from its faithful supporters that they will no longer tolerate the complete lack of leadership displayed by John Boehner and the other hacks who now monopolize GOP power politics in Washington.  Boehner was “K” Street’s choice to replacy Tom DeLay, and it is politics as usual ever since.

Washington needs principled, pragmatic leadership, but pragmatism does not mean people who go along to get their pork projects funded.  America is facing a mammoth crisis: a present financial crisis, and impending economic crisis, and a fiscal crisis within the next 20 years that will break the United States permanently.  Responsible, principled policymaking is the only thing that can possibly save us from this disaster.  Things do not look promising, and principled voters who care about the future of the country should be willing to cast a protest vote this year, rejecting the two party system.  Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama will rescue America from its malaise.  Nor will the Republicans or Democrats in Congress.

Until real leadership steps forward, America should shout a resounding “NO” to the status quo.

Recognizing Fellow Travelers

My friend Andy and I frequently discuss what it means to be on The Road Less Traveled (see the book by M. Scott Peck for the meaning of this), pursuing our Personal Legends (see The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo).  We frequently discuss how it seems that we are all alone out there, daring and doing, challening and being challenged, and being looked upon as strangers or freaks by the people on the well-beaten path.  Something we haven’t discussed much of, however, and a subject that is only now coming to the forefront of my mind, is the notion of how to recognize, and indeed, the importance of recognizing fellow travelers on The Road.  Because The Road is a metaphor, it is not as easy as merely looking next to us.  We will encounter many people who are working around us who are not fellow travelers.  They may be doing the same sorts of things that we are doing, but they are, for some reason or another, heading in no particular direction or else in a fixed direction toward an unknown end.

It is for this reason that we so frequently will re-encounter some of these people many times on our own, less traveled path.  This less traveled path sometimes makes loops, which so often seem like setbacks, but really are just important “reviews.”  Like the student who has done very well in history throughout high school but has not had mathematics since junior high and upon entry into college needs to be refreshed before taking advanced statistics or calculus, we must sometimes go back and revisit certain life lessons immediately prior to being challenged in such a way that those lessons must be quite fresh on our minds.  The people we re-encounter, though, must not be mistaken for fellow travelers.  These are people who have barely moved from the last time we saw them, or who have simply been on a purely circular path.  They are the people who never challenge themselves, who never risk complete failure, and therefore, who have never failed.  Yet their lack of trying is a failure of immense proportion, and one whose pain will not be felt for much time to come.

But in our travels, and in our travails, the Spirit of the World (to borrow Coehlo’s language) will lead us into the lives of fellow travelers, people who are pursuing their Personal Legend, who are actively and daringly going after a dream; people who may be driven by some unknown force or those who have learned the timeless truth that “no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity” (The Alchemist).  These encounters are not by chance, they are by Divine Providence, the conspiracy of all of the forces of the world with God to bring that bold soul into the presence of another, and always at just the moment required by each.  I have come to learn that God does not interact with us in the way that I was taught as a child.  I have had the mountaintop spiritual experience, but I have never heard God speak to me “louder than words.”  The Old Testament account of Elijah hearing God not in the wind nor the storm nor the earthquake, but in the still small voice, has been truer for me than I can describe.  So often, and even the vast majority of the time, this still small voice is the voice of another person, another fellow traveler on The Road.

I was reminded of this just today, when I happened to encounter not one, but two such fellow travelers.  In their own subtleties, and across the language and cultural barrier of a Chilean speaking English to an American, I heard the voice of two people in pursuit of their own respective Personal Legends.  It was a reminder to me not to forget my own pursuit, even when it seems unclear what it is.  In one of Coehlo’s other books, The Pilgrimmage, Coehlo writes of his own travel down the historic pilgrimmage to Santiago (Spain).  It is not mere irony that I read that book a year ago, on a flight back from Buenos Aires, Argentina, not knowing that I was about to embark on my own pilgrimmage to Santiago, though it is a different Santiago.

In the three years since I left Arkansas, I have met many, many new people.  I have seen some who are like the young man in The Alchemist who had read all of the books ever published about Alchemy, who wanted nothing more than to be able to turn metal into gold.  He was chasing the end of a rainbow, not pursuing a personal legend.  There are so many people in the business world who are chasing rainbows.  Their only goal in life is wealth, power, and success.  I meet them everyday.  I don’t remember very many of them.

I have met other people who are stuck running their own little crystal shop, who are doing “just fine” in life, and who are afraid to risk what they have accumulated up to this point to make their own pilgrimmage, whether to Mecca (in the case of the Morroccan character in Coehlo’s novel) or to Santiago or to Jerusalem.  This is probably the most common type of person I have met.  They have decided that most things are out of their reach, and that they should just stick to their knitting and do a good job with what they have.  They are usually more pleasant to be around than the rainbow-chasers, but they are usually unhappy, or at least numb.  They rarely scoff at those who want to pursue their Personal Legends, though they rarely understand them either.  These crystal shop owners will wish the best for people on The Road, but they themselves well never step foot onto it.

Then there are the thieves.  These are the people who don’t have any dreams or desires of their own, except to tear down those around them, to rob them of the joy of their pursuits.  Fortunately, these people aren’t terribly common, but it doesn’t take many of them to cause great grief and distress for the travelers of The Road.  Sometimes the thieves will succeed in stealing from us, but we mustn’t ever let them deter us.  And we must never occupy ourselves with revenge against them, because revenge distracts us from our Personal Legend.

Finally, there are the fellow travelers who have come into my life.  They are few.  Some of them were tending sheep in the hills when I met them.  I like to think I had something to do with calling one or two of them away from their flock and onto The Road.  It is vain, I know, since it is the Spirit of the World, God himself, who calls people away from their flocks and onto The Road, and I was but the instrument of the calling.  Others I have encountered after they’ve been robbed or in the middle of shining crystal in the crystal shop, biding their time until they can afford to move to the next step of their journey.  Still others have been on the caravan, headed from a place they never expected to have been toward the majesty of the pyramids, still reeling from the thrill of leaving the crystal shop and yet apprehensive about what is ahead.  It is getting easier to recognize these fellow travelers.  They have a spirit about them, a glow–it is something quite unexplainable.  It is probably not recognizable by the general population.  But when you are on The Road yourself, you just have this sense when you find another of your kind.

Sometimes these fellow travelers will be headed in the same direction as we are for a season.  Sometimes we will only see each other for the time it takes to stop at an intersection and wave the other one onward.  Occaisionally, we will be in need of a rest, and will find them resting under the same shade tree.  We should savor all such encounters with fellow travelers.  I am fortunate that I have a permanent companion on this road, and yet I’m nevertheless always refreshed and energized when I share a cup of cold water, or break bread with somebody who wants their life to be different.

We all bear many scars and in many cases we still have open wounds.  The Road Less Traveled is not for the faint of heart, and there are many dangers along the way.  Injury is the only certainty.  But through our wounds, we are able to understand the wounds of others.  Through our wounds, we are able to be agents of healing for others.  So many people never leave their place of comfort–herding sheep–because they fear injury.  Those of us on The Road still fear injury, but we have come to realize the value of being wounded. We find fulfillment in healing, and helping others to heal.  Even the sight of the pyramids cannot compare to the beauty of the souls who are “daring greatly…[who shall] never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat” (T. Roosevelt).

And so, fellow travelers, watch for each other.  We have much to learn from one another.  I will be looking for you.  Do not be shy–this difficult journey is what gives meaning to our otherwise tepid existence.

I shall leave everybody with some parting encouragement from Teddy Roosevelt.  I quoted him above, from his famous “Man in the Arena” quotation.  Few people realize that that quote was in a much longer speech delivered by Roosevelt entitled “Citizenship in a Republic,” which he delivered to the Sorbonne in Paris.  The text that immediately follows, which is never quoted, is powerful, and I think it will be helpful to my co-journeymen who are out there.  He says…

“Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who ‘but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.’”

Happy Barbecue & Fireworks Day

Each summer on the 4th day of July, modern Americans gather in back yards everywhere to commemorate the day that each year that Americans everywhere gather to enjoy barbecue and fireworks.  The tenacity of the giant Barbecue Conglomerates and the Big Fireworks Industry has kept even the greeting card companies and the candy companies at bay on this particular American holiday. Oh, and it’s the day we declared independence from Britain, too.

On Fourths of July past, I have written lengthy tomes about how precisely today’s American government resembles the charges leveled by the Colonists against the King in 1776.  It is becoming almost hackneyed and trite.

Yet today, in most American cities and towns, people will wave little American flags made of cheap polymers that are haphazardly stapled to short plastic rods, with a bronze-colored tip painted on one end.  In the erudite segments of the country, some opera singer will take center stage in the stadium where people gather for the impending fireworks displays.  In some country towns, a local girl in a red, white, and blue dress will sing timidly into the microphone the words of the Star Spangled Banner.  Many people will sing along, the ones who know the words at least, while others stand dumbly, ignorant of the words and their meaning. Parents will fail to chide their children who are giggling and pointing during this once solemn ritual, and half of the people will forget which hand to place over their heart. In the Red States, people will enjoy Lee Greenwood and military showcases.  The Blue States will feature some anti-war protesters.  Local politicians in every town will make a platitudinous speech about freedom, and two lucky places in this country will get the benefit of hearing from a Presidential candidate.

John McCain will predictably talk about being a Veteran and all of the people who have fought for the ideals espoused by the Declaration of Independence.  Barack Obama will spew his usual socialistic rhetoric about how freedom really means the unconstitutional expropriation of private property (in the form of taxes and inflation) from the productive of society for the purpose of transferring it to the people who have refused to get an education and work hard in life.  I will not watch either of these speeches for fear of either nausea or a popped blood vessel.

In the past, I have lamented about how the government of this country has strayed so far from the principles of our nation’s founding.  I have discussed with friends how the right political movement could galvanize all of the people in the country who want to regain our liberties lost.  But this year, I have been confronted with the sober reality that we do in fact live in a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people.  And the people are content, more or less, with the way things are.  Or if they aren’t, they certainly have not done much to try to change things.  They grumble, to be certain, and now, as things are looking down, they simply demand for somebody to come along and give them stuff. True patriotism seems to be dead.  In the conservative wing, patriotism has been replaced by xenophobic jingoism, warmongering, and support for authoritarian invasions of personal privacy.  On the left, patriotism has been reduced to having the right to burn the flag and stage protest marches.

The real tragedy of Independence Day 2008 is not that the government has lost touch with the people, but rather that the government is perfectly representative of the American people: lazy, indifferent, bumbling, lacking focus, consumerist, myopic, and unwilling to take risks and face challenges with meaningful action.

So today, I wish everybody a Happy Barbecue & Fireworks Day, because it’s the only way to avoid sheer hypocrisy and utter despair.  The world can change, but people rarely do.  And that’s why the world rarely does either.

The Hollow Lives of Our Holodecks

We are the Hollow Men,
We are the stuffed men,
Leaning together,
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass 
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion.

-T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men 

Over the last week, I have made the conscious decision and effort to limit my time on the Internet to between and hour and two hours a day, with a target of an hour.  I was becoming increasingly concerned at the fact that I was wasting my life away in front of the computer screen, endlessly chattering on instant messenger, endlessly reading the latest news, up to the nanosecond.  After all, I did spend two years of my life working in the Web 2.0 world, and shouldn’t I be involved in the latest and greatest of technologies to be released?  After all, didn’t the advent of Web 2.0 bring about the opportunity for building community on the Internet?

Perhaps one day I will write a novel about Eliot’s Hollow Men.  The premise of the novel would be a less dramatic rendition of Plato’s Cave, set in contemporary American society, but much unlike The Matrix or Vanilla Sky.  For those of you who are not familiar with the origins of the plots for movies like The Matrix or Vanilla Sky, where people are in a dream world and ultimately faced with the question of whether to continue living in their fantasy world or to live in the real world, this plot line is not a terribly modern invention.  It is a clear derivation from Plato’s Republic, the section of which is simply called Plato’s Cave.  The problem with movies like Vanilla Sky and The Matrix is that the characters are faced with a drastic choice–a world that is completely real or a world that is completely fake.

Characters in such movies inevitably choose the real world, and American audiences are so happy and relieved at this.  It helps facilitate Americans’ own fantasy–like the fantasy that they have freedom or the fantasy that America is a just nation.  People, after all, love to talk about their freedom and how much they love freedom, but they rarely exercise it, and they don’t even protect it at the ballot box.  Similarly, Americans love movies like Vanilla Sky where the character chooses to endure the hardships of the real world rather than enjoy an eternity of fantasy.  The problem is, however, that we are not faced with such a sharp contrast of choices, and we therefore delude ourselves into believing that what we are doing is “real,” even though in many cases it is far from it.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Starship Enterprise is equipped with a gigantic room called the Holodeck.  On the Holodeck, everything is real, but nothing is real.  It is like a blue screen on steroids, where one can enact any scene, any imaginary scenario they desire, and if the safety protocols are removed, even a Holodeck bullet can kill.  The crew members select their scenario, go in, act it out, and then return to the real world.  Americans, it seems, live their lives in a series of briefly punctuated Holodeck scenarios and fail to see the great interconnectedness of life.  Perhaps it is generations of rugged individualism that has inculcated in our collective psyche the inability to see The Other.  

Living in the Holodeck of our lives, we frequently neglect Martin Buber’s I-Thou distinction and our default modus operandi centers around I-It distinctions, where the former denotes a Subject-Subject relationship and the latter describes a Subject-Object relationship.  Indeed, in our spiritual and emotional immaturity, we see the people around us as mere characters on our life’s little Holodeck scenario, where they are supposed to meet our every need at the moment it first enters into our own consciousness.  And if they do not, then perhaps we replace them with characters who do.  I have had business partners who operated like this.  I have seen many romantic relationships rent asunder by this.

The reality is that when we understand the I-Thou, when we recognize that there is another, real human being with thoughts, desires, emotions, expectations, and personality distinct and different from our own, but not within our capacity to control, we are necessarily forced into at least some humility.  By recognizing I-Thou, we are able to diminish our autocratic tendencies to control others.  We are then free to let them be free.  True love can only flourish in an environment of freedom.  Love cannot be coerced.  

But most of us, instead, prefer to live on our Holodecks where we coerce people into fake love and walk around happy in our pseudocommunities.  The Internet provides us endless opportunities to feed our Holodeck addictions.  Whether it is the mundane world of people’s photos and comment walls like MySpace and Facebook or the more intensive destination of SecondLife, or the complete fantasy-land of World of Warcraft, there is a place for everybody’s fake life, for everybody’s Holodeck.  Other people prefer to use television shows as their Holodecks: living vicariously through the lives of television or movie characters, they refuse to engage the world around them, living only a pretend existence.  Historically, many an escapist buried themselves in books or work, and those more antique Holodecks are still readily available today.

This is not to say that reading, writing, movie-watching and even some television is incapable of being a positive and fulfilling adjunct to normal, real life.  Certainly, film and literature are forms of art without which we would be less human.  Humanity’s capacity to imagine and dream is essential to our existence, and without it, we would be robots or animals.  We must, however, avoid the temptation to let these things turn into our Holodecks.  The real world is difficult, and the Holodecks are seemingly easy, but they aren’t worth a whole lot either.

In Aldous Huxely’s novel Brave New World, the character described as the Savage, refused to become part of and participate in the escapist drug and empty sex culture that existed in the Brave New World society.  Ultimately driven to suicide to leave this meaningless world, this outcast was abhorred and condemned by his contemporaries for his bizarre refusal to enjoy soma and random sex.  We are faced with a similar conundrum in our own way.

Even when we do venture out into the “real” world, we are doing so, usually under the false pretense that what we are doing is actually real.  Millions of people find solace in clubs and bars, interacting with real people they think.  Visiting a club or a bar is a rather depressing experience for me anymore.  I look out at a vast sea of faces of Hollow Men, Stuffed Men; people pretending they have human interaction; people pretending they have genuine relationships; people even seeking genuine love.  But they won’t find it there.  They won’t find it there because they are being disingenuous about what it is they are even looking for.  Most people really are looking for the cheap trick, even if that isn’t always in the traditional sense of a quick sexual encounter.  Even in supposed romantic relationships, people are just playing a part.  

Scared in many circumstances to express their real desires, dreams, and expectations for life, they sit frozen and paralyzed by the fear that their authentic self will cause them to lose their beloved.  At the other end of the spectrum, scared that their desires, dreams, and expectations won’t come true if they don’t come true now, people dart from relationship to relationship, hook-up to hook-up, hoping that they will hit the jackpot and all of their dreams will come true.  Those are the lives of Holodecks, the former individual living in a nightmare thinking he’s living in a dream, the latter living in a nightmare hoping it will turn into a dream.  Both will likely go on living in their respective Holodecks, never willing to go through the work of depression, the work of giving up.  All legitimate depression is the giving up of something, some person, or some ideal that is dear to us.  People living in Holodecks refuse to part with the idea that the life they are living is real, that the life they are living is only going to improve, and that the life they are living will just get easier.

I am reminded again of Chesterton’s poem The Aristocrat, where he says 

So blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away
And lose your love, and shave your head, but do not go to stay:
At the little place at What’sitsname, where folks are rich and clever,
The Golden and the Goodly House, where things grow worse forever.

The world of the Hollow Men, the world of the Holodeck, is that place where things grow worse forever.  In life, there is no middle ground between growth and decay.  Decay occurs at all times when we are not actively pursuing growth.  When we are living on our Holodecks, we are decaying.  Since most of us spend most of our time living on Holodecks, it means that most people are decaying throughout most of their lives.  This is a harsh reality that we all must come to terms with, and that in so doing, we will turn and pursue growth instead.  

Growth, as Peck observes in The Road Less Traveled, requires a radical dedication to reality.  If we are to grow then, we must turn off our Holodecks.  We must turn off Instant Messenger.  We must turn off the Television.  We must not pick up our cellphones or get in our cars and drive to the nearest pub.  We must be willing to be silent and quiet for a few moments and realize that without the endless concocted distractions of our modern world, we are actually quite lonely people.  We are actually quite unfulfilled and empty people.

If we do this.  If we allow ourselves to see our loneliness and emptiness.  If we allow ourselves the perspective to see that we have been wasting our lives and living as Hollow Men, only then can we change it.  

Some people are fortunate enough (as I am) to be able to wake up and look next to them and see somebody lying there, sleeping peacefully, who they know will join them in this real life endeavor; who will forsake the Holodecks and pursue radical growth; who is willing to adventure and leave behind the Hollow life for something difficult, but fulfilling.  This is when being in love is truly full of love, when one has this sort of person in their life.  But even if such a person is next to you, there is little question that there is much growth that yet needs to be done, and in love, the two people in that relationship must foster the growth of each other in an environment of genuine, unconditional commitment.  It is hard work.  It is a labor of love.  It will require stepping outside of your own level of comfort.  It will mean pushing the other person, and sometimes pulling.  It will mean dealing with conflict.  But it will be worth it.

For those who do not have such a person, who may be in relationships with people who only care about the next social gathering or the next episode of whatever evening soap opera might be on, or that next drunken party, or their next raise at work, you have a tough choice to make.  Is the person you are with ready to grow?  Do you think you can pry them out of their Holodeck?  If so, then do it.  Nobody will have ever loved them more.  Everybody needs to be pried from their Holodeck.  It is perhaps the only way we will all keep from killing each other in the end.  If we are forced to live in the world of what is real, then we will recognize the I-Thou, not only in our romantic lives but in our interactions with all other human persons.  It is at that point, when we see other people in ourselves, that we are truly capable of loving humanity.  It is only then that we will solve the world’s problems.  Your beloved will thank you one day for helping them be part of this grand solution, and for giving them a fulfilling life.

For everybody else, who seem to be facing the world alone, and perhaps who have chosen to live in a Holodeck for this very reason, leave your Holodeck.  Run out into the streets.  There will be others like you.

Our radical commitment to reality means that we will all have to grow up.  There is no place in the real world for Peter Pan.  

I’m sure that readers will ask me, “But where do we start?”  Growing up starts by admitting that one is not already grown up and it is a process that will not end until we die.  It warms my heart to hear men in their 60s wonder what they will do when they grow up.  It is a beautiful admission of humility that contemplates the excitement of real life.  When we admit that we aren’t already grown up, that we don’t already have everything figured out, we will be freed to observe the things that we really don’t have figured out.  We will see things that we try to avoid doing because they are uncomfortable, and we will learn how to be comfortable in doing them.  We will be ever more aware, ever more conscious, both of ourselves and those around us.  

I am genuinely pleading with anybody who reads this blog post: dedicate yourselves to reality.  Dedicate yourselves to love.  Work hard at it.  Work hard at nothing else.  I will be right there with you, suffering alongside you.  We can commiserate.  We can cry together.  And we can help each other.  

That’s what life is really about.

More Thoughts on Discipline and Love

Over the last several days we have engaged M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled, focusing on some of his writings on love, as well as explored the topics of love and romance more generally.  Continuing in that vein, and remembering Peck’s description of love as being an extension of oneself for the benefit of another, especially another’s spiritual growth, today I would like for us to consider the two categories of ways that discipline itself can be an act of love:  

1.  Discipline as self-restraint is an act of love.
2.  Discipline as consistent regiment can be an act of love. 

Love of course can describe love for another or love for oneself.  Self-love can be distinguished from narcissism, in that genuine self-love is centered around perpetuating one’s own spiritual growth, whereas narcissism is primarily centered around the gratification of the self.  Peck discusses the distinction in this way in The Road Less Traveled and Beyond:

For example, there are times when we act in ways that are unbecoming.  If we deny that our behavior is “bad” and fail to seek ways to correct it or redeem ourselves by learning from what we have done wrong, then we are primarily concerned with self-esteem.  On the other hand, if we are operating from a sense of self-love, the healthier thing to do would be to acknowledge our mistakes and chastise ourselves if we must-as well as have the ability to discern that our failure at any given moment does not totally define our worth or who we are as a person.  We need moments when we realize that we do not have it all together and that we are not perfect.  Such moments are crucial to our growth because loving ourselves requires the capacity to recognize that there is something about us we need to work on.

So there is a difference between insisting that we always feel good about ourselves (which is narcissistic and synonymous with constantly preserving our self-esteem) and insisting that we regard ourselves as important or valuable (which is healthy self-love).  Understanding and making this distinction is a pre-requisite for mature mental health.  In order to be good, healthy people, we have to pay the price of setting aside our self-esteem once in a while and not always feeling good about ourselves.  But we should always be able to love and value ourselves, even if we shouldn’t always esteem ourselves.

Peck’s prescient analysis is an important primer for our discussion of both of the categories of disciplined love that I have outlined.  First, it serves us to understand that self-love is far from a bad thing; indeed, it is  an imperative.  If we do not love ourselves, we cannot possibly love others.  Because we are naturally selfish creatures, it is certainly our tendency to esteem ourselves highly.  It is no wonder, then, that the Golden Rule appeals to this quality when it admonishes us to do unto others as we would have them do unto ourself.  For some people, however, this doesn’t work out so well, because we treat ourselves with such cruelty with such consistency that we in turn treat others with that sort of cruelty.  So the discipline of self-restraint as an act of love must begin with a restraint against self-cruelty.  Once we cease inflicting pain upon ourselves, we can be freed to stop inflicting pain on others.  

The second important point to take away from our Peck text today is that we must restrain our narcissistic tendencies in order to love others.  The failure to do this is the root prohibition of what I would consider to be the most important killer of relationships of any kind, whether romantic, parental, collegial, etc.  The constant focus on self-aggrandizement or self-adulation has killed many relationships, not just because of its overt manifestations, but primarily because when one is inwardly focused, he or she is incapable of extending himself or herself for the purpose of helping another person grow.  Consequently, then, the restraint of narcissistic tendencies serves two goals: 1) The restraint eliminates the overt manifestations of narcissism that take the form of arrogance and conceit, and 2) The restraint frees us to extend ourselves to love others.  

As we then look to the second category, discipline as a consistent regiment, we find that there is something incredibly valuable in what might initially seem to be boring monotony.  Particularly within the context of domestic affairs, I think it is quite important to judge the level of one’s commitment to his or her spouse in the way he or she approaches the maintenance of the domestic life.  There is nothing exciting about the laundry or sweeping or mopping.  There is nothing at all interesting about washing dishes or dusting.  Yet engaging in these forms of behavior is a form of self-sacrifice, and when done joyfully rather than grudgingly, can be quite fulfilling.  Recently I have, for the first time in my life, come to understand this.  Helping ensure that the kitchen is clean and the laundry stays caught up makes the general environment of the home so much more enjoyable and pleasurable and lifts not only my own mood but my partner’s as well.  The more I clean and engage in these chores, then, the more I have found them even pleasurable to do, because I began viewing it as an act of love toward my partner rather than something I was being made to do.

There is more to this constant regiment, however, than merely domestic chores, and it requires much more thoughtfulness than the simple auto-pilot that can be engaged to ensure the laundry and dishes are done promptly each day.  Attending to the object of one’s love through listening and being present for, through sometimes the ability step back and recognize when they need to simply be alone and spend time on themselves, and ensuring there is a constant communication of one’s feelings to the partner is also essential.  These are not necessarily romantic things, though they can be at times, but they are acts of true love.  

Returning for a moment to our first category, we must recognize that in our society self-restraint is an uncommon virtue, and is unfortunately only rarely manifested in human behavior.  This is compounded by the presence of a seemingly endless set of choices in our consumerist society.  It is quite easy to be obese, alcoholic, and mediocre in America.  The American life seems to even promote these things as virtues.  Restraining from these forms of unhealthy behavior is not only an act of self-love but an act of love to those who love us.  Indeed, anytime we do something that harms ourselves, we are harming those who love and care for us.  Sometimes this sort of sentiment can be abused, however, by utilizing guilt to manipulate people’s behavior.  For example, parents who disapprove of their children’s choices will frequently use the phrase “I can’t believe you would do this to me.”  Many times what the parent wants is simply different from what the child wants, but the parent’s narcissism wins the day, rather than the parent’s love.  

However, restraining from overeating, restraining from being an alcoholic or being given to those sorts of excesses, these are acts of love.  For people in domestic relationships, these forms of restraint are even more imperative.  Giving up on exercising some freedom is a great act of love.  For example, a person in a committed relationship may want to spend three nights a week with his or her friends, staying out partying until the wee hours of morning.  This person’s partner, however, may have a different work schedule or may not particularly like the friends in question, and will stay at home, alone.  Depending on the arrangement and expectations of the relationship, this may be quite alright, but the partying partner might consider that restraining himself or herself from this sort of behavior could be an act of love.  The restraint says “I value time with you more than I value my friends.”  Certainly if one is in that sort of a relationship, one would hope they truly did value their partner more than their friends. 

Similarly, people in relationships must, as an act of discipline and love, restrain themselves from keeping their options open.  I have witnessed friends entertain the romantic overtures of another, even while in a committed relationship, because it helps their self-esteem and helps them know they “still have it,” (whatever “it” is).  It may not be an act of cheating per se, but it is harmful nonetheless, and far from being loving; it isn’t even self-love, it is narcissism.   Commitment is discipline and requires discipline to maintain.  The value to be achieved in this sort of self-restraint, however, cannot be understated.  

In an age and culture where restraint is frowned upon, and we are taught to “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” I think that we can gain a lot from rethinking our disposition toward pleasure and pain.  It is not so much that we choose pain over pleasure, but rather that we are forcing ourselves to choose between the wrong two options.  Instead of these two, I suggest that we look at our choices in the context of whether they will bring about joy or unnecessary suffering.   Quick fixes may bring us pleasure or avoid pain in the short-term, but they will bring about significant unnecessary suffering in the long-term.  Similarly making the truly hard choice to extend ourselves, to grow and help others grow, to reach beyond what is comfortable in order to achieve real joy–it is hard work–but it will transform the way we live and the way we approach life.  

Perhaps our discussion today is truly proof that “less is more.”  But there is something I don’t think we can ever have too much of, and that is joy.  And joy is always the outcome from labors of love.