politics

January 11, 2026

Unconfusing Our Confusion

I am confused some of the time. If I hear an idea that belongs to someone else, I am slow to say whether I agree or disagree. At least more hesitant than I used to be.

Why? I consider the thought or opinion from multiple angles. Perhaps from the point of religion, or my lived experience, or all the other thoughtful people I know. I ask the other to tell me how he arrived at his point of view. Have other intelligent public intellectuals taken the same position?

Where is the evidence?

When I offer my slant on a problem, if it is well organized and reasonable, my counterpart might react with, “That makes sense.”

Such acknowledgements are affirming. Still, I prefer it if my interlocutor asked a question rather than accepting my position without taking a moment to think through the concept or dig deeper. Challenges are desirable because they help me learn.

Information rains down on us at a level unknown to everyone who lived here before us. Even during the first years of television, most of us had access to three major stations; the networks signed off at midnight and returned to broadcasting the next morning.

Today, depending on the source, the news may be mere idiocy or deceit. We can be fooled without extraordinary effort. Moreover, many people find the ideas, reports, and news painful to listen to. They turn away because the full blast fire hose of disaster, unhappiness, and unfairness is too much to bear. The deluge feels like punishment, a form of battery and inundation.

It is easier to reach a quick conclusion about what is right and what is wrong than to gather information and inform ourselves. Instead, we choose to believe we have learned enough. Since we cannot tolerate more, we decide our knowledge is adequate.

In my way of living, I tend to take in more reportage and analysis than most, including different frames of reference.

Nor am I easily driven by emotions such as anger and hate. I have found that by gathering information, reading, and listening to multiple sources, I can reach a sober conclusion.

So I think.

Of course, I am not God, the Pope, or the Dalai Lama.

Yes, I have many concerns about the future of the world and the lives of my loved ones on this planet.

But.

Somehow, I sleep at night, believing I understand what I think is happening.

I have long been asking myself questions. Soon after I reached the age of double digits, I watched newsreel films about World War II on TV or in school. There he was, Chancellor of the Third Reich, wearing a toothbrush mustache—also called the Führer und Reichskanzler—ranting.

The typical response was “It can’t happen here!” Yet I found myself unsettled. What if the dark presence spoke English?

I’d reached 11 or so. Over time, I came to understand that under pressure, much of humanity is not at its best.

Part of our dilemma comes from our appreciation, enjoyment, and vulnerability to stories. Our ancient predecessors needed to be persuaded by a leader who hoped to protect their group of 20 or 30 from dangers, whether from natural disasters or enemies. Similarly, access to healthful food and avoidance of sickening or poisonous substances were essential.

Somebody would tell a story, and if the group survived, the information would spread.

We have long encountered secular, religious, and political tales, sometimes forthright, sometimes not. Their self-interested spin and opportunistic motives might influence others through storytelling.

Each country has its own history and mythology. Widely accepted origins, part legends, bind millions of people who will never meet into a community of trust, shared ideals, and cooperation.

The American history I learned in the middle of the last century made little mention of discrimination against religious minorities among early American settlers. Those books didn’t touch on how white male property owners alone possessed voting rights, or a woman’s lack of standing on numerous issues.

Neither were the brutality, unfairness, and intolerance experienced by the Native Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Japanese citizens of the West Coast a part of the story presented.

Ours was the land of the free and the home of the brave. Not of the Ku Klux Klan and the lynchings of black men.

The confusion of so many of us is exacerbated by algorithms designed to stir us up and drive us to return to the sources we visit.

We are no longer the children of devoted parents who make up stories at bedtime, as I did for my kids—a new one every night to amuse my daughters.

Now, as adults, we are left to ferret out which accounts are accurate and which play us for fools. Beware those who make us think that the other, who lives in another part of the nation, has darker skin, speaks with an accent or a twang, is our enemy.

How shall we reduce our confusion and not be overwhelmed? Take a break from the avalanche of supposed information every so often. Find joy in friendship and love. Eat well and exercise.

Talk about the turmoil, too, and find a connection so that you are not alone.

Learn new non-political things, new games that will keep your brain in shape, and remember what you can be grateful for. Then get back to a part of the news cycle you can manage, be careful of your chosen sources, and do your part to repair the world.

Yes, we are all confused, at least a bit, but there is goodness to be found in our land if we seek it and work to sustain it.

It is the work for all time and for our time.

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All the images above are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. At the top is a Confused Man by Notas de prense. Next comes Confused Young Woman by CollegeDegree360 on Flickr. Finally, Confused User Icon Red by OERDESIGN.

December 15, 2024

“All the Music That Fits Between the Cracks”

Mike Seeger, half-brother of the better-known Pete Seeger, used the above words to describe American folk music. During my youth, the folk songs I heard touched on the everyday lives of unremarkable men and women and their efforts to take on life’s challenges, survive, and overcome them.

Lead Belly sang of his unfaithful woman. Tennessee Ernie Ford made his audience aware of the hardship of working in a coal mine with “Sixteen Tons.”

Peter, Paul and Mary, and Pete Seeger addressed the need for social justice. Woodie Guthrie described the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. In the 1960s, some voices rose on behalf of organized labor and Civil Rights, and later, they opposed the Vietnam War.

Below, you will find all these voices, the Weavers (one of whom was Pete Seeger), and one more: Judy Collins singing Seeger’s song “Turn, Turn, Turn,” along with the composer, whose lyrics were taken from Ecclesiastes in the Bible.

I imagine we will be reminded of more and more of these old tunes by new performers. The moment calls for it. Don’t miss the final offering below: Seeger again, singing the gospel song, “We Shall Overcome:”

 

 

 

 

January 18, 2024

Handmaids on the Horizon

Apparently, for 84-year-old Margaret Atwood, enough isn’t yet enough. Eighteen poetry books, eleven non-fiction, eighteen novels, eight children’s books, and more aren’t enough.

Numerous awards aren’t enough.

Fame isn’t enough.

She wants us to read, listen, and hear her voice.

And think.

And act.

She offers another story, six minutes long, and serves as her own narrator.

Her newest effort might be called an animated monologue.

Consider it a prequel of The Handmaid’s Tale, a prelude or run-up to it. Of course, maybe it is something else altogether.

Maybe, for her, enough is now enough.

Use the link to her video here.

Or

July 23, 2023

Ambition and the Seduction of Crowds

Crowds are like alcoholic beverages. They can make you a little tipsy. Or, one might say, they go to your head.

A story is told about Hale Boggs, the 17th Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives. It seems that the congressman had just given a speech — a smashing triumph, at least in his mind.

He and his wife were leaving the auditorium, driven away in a limo. Feeling pretty puffed-up, he referred to himself as he uttered:

You know Lindy, there just aren’t that many great men anymore.

At that moment, Lindy Boggs, herself no wallflower, couldn’t bear her husband’s overblown ego. Her response punctured his balloon:

You are certainly right, dear. And what’s more, there is one less than you think!

Our audiences matter to most of us. Do the listeners and watchers “cheer, boo, or raise a hullabaloo,” as an old song suggests?

Perhaps because the majority find the stage intimidating, we admire those who command it. Moreover, more than a few of us search for a godlike or fatherly figure to “make it all better” and lead the way.

We remember gifted teachers, public speakers, and musicians who touched our hearts while walking the concert hall’s high wire.

Unless one turns away from political rancor, our hopes are invested in those who dominate the political version of the podium. They sometimes appear young, energetic, witty, and handsome, like John Fitzgerald Kennedy, or patriarchal, wise, and comforting, like Ronald Reagan.

Most who take the stage begin their training for a reason other than future admiration. However, once the cheering starts, the seduction of their soul becomes challenging to prevent.

Perhaps one should say a mutual seduction occurs. The spellbinding oratory of the speaker sweeps the audience away, while the former is lured by the crowd’s roar and the body of people who surround him.

He is wanted. Think Elvis or the Beatles.

Ambition is complicated. At its best, ambitious scientists, builders, writers, and leaders have, like Moses, helped us find the way to the promised land of enlightenment, health, beauty, and victory.

At its worst, they use whatever advantage celebrity provides to further their desires.

Some towering figures fall into both categories. The enthusiasm of an adoring public produces rule-breaking opportunities that are hard to resist.

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People have been killed because of their ambition by those who wished to defeat it. Think of political assassinations.

After he and his Senate cohorts murdered Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s Brutus spoke these words to justify his actions, claiming affection for Caesar but fear of his ambition:

Had you rather Caesar were living and

die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live

all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him;

as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was

valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I

slew him.

Too often, athletes, performers, and politicians stay on the stage well past their use-by date. If they are prominent and admired enough, not even their diminishing talents cause them to suffer involuntary removal from a position of glorified status or power.

Some do know when to leave, however. I asked a retired Chicago Symphony woodwind player how he decided to resign from his decades-long tenure with the CSO.

Well, I thought it better to hear people tell me I still played well and should have stayed than for them to say, ‘Yeah, I guess it was time to go.’

Famous baseball players like Joe DiMaggio and Sandy Koufax displayed the same wisdom, departing the field of play on their own terms.

And yet it is easy to simplify the question of ambition by suggesting that continuing one’s work is fueled only by its intoxicating benefits. There is the love of the job, joy in performance, desire to repair the world, and all the factors that motivate people to create and better the condition of humanity.

On the subject of creativity, I heard Herbert von Karajan perform two concerts at Carnegie Hall with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the last year of his life. The conductor’s chronic back issues prevented him from walking to the podium without assistance.

Once on the platform, he mounted a modified bicycle seat that gave the illusion of him standing, but he must have been in excruciating pain.

Karajan offered a lesson in willpower. For the aged maestro, making beautiful music was worth everything. During each performance, time’s passage, and Karajan’s infirmity disappeared. He and his life became the music, and the fusion sustained him.

I will close this essay with evidence that ambition can be set aside even in politics.

Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois once said, “The hardest thing in any political campaign is how to win without proving you are unworthy of winning.”

Stevenson was the Democratic Party nominee for President in 1952 and 1956. He also was beaten twice at the ballot box, both times by Dwight Eisenhower.

Early in his first run for the nation’s highest office, the candidate met with Texas Governor Shivers to discuss ownership of the offshore oil adjacent to states like Texas, Louisiana, and California.

The states hoped that Stevenson would, at least, stay noncommital on the contentious question of rights the Federal Government also wanted.

As the conference proceeded, however, Stevenson made clear his stance in favor of the Federal Government: he would not remain neutral on the issue but publically indicate his opposition to the states’ position.

One person in attendance pointed out the political disadvantage to the office seeker if he did so:

“But Governor Stevenson, if you insist on doing that, you can’t win.”

“I don’t have to win.”

Ambition needn’t be everything.

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The first of three photos is Henry Grossman’s album cover photo for The Beatles — All You Need is Love and Baby, You’re a Rich Man, 1967.

Next comes the cover of Modern Screen Magazine featuring Elvis Presley when he was leaving to join the army in June 1958.

Finally, a shot that came to be called Adlai Bares His Sole or Adlai’s Worn Sole from a Stevenson campaign appearance in 1952 in Flint, Michigan. It won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Photography and was captured by William M. Gallagher.

All of these were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

October 24, 2022

The Occasional Value of Looking Away From Reality

You might have noticed that many of us don’t accept the truth, no matter how much “proof” is offered. I’m not talking just about politics but our daily lives.

In fact, “looking away” has its uses.

Years ago, I believed one could convince someone else with a persuasive, logical, well-organized argument. There would be an “aha” moment, and the speaker would have shown the light to the other. Not simply displayed it but caused the illumination of another mind, without which the brilliance of the day or cloudlessness of the sky made no difference.

Few of us always want the truth, and some don’t want uncomfortable truths for multiple causes of which they possess little awareness. We are often metaphorically blind at those times. Our emotions play with the possibility of clear-eyed consideration of ideas without our knowledge of having done so.

Why might that be? Many reasons.

  • When you are a child, you need your parents. Best to recognize them as the ones who guarantee the well-being of your tender life rather than as people who haven’t mastered the job, especially if they are unkind. Even adults can carry their childhood desire for their parents’ love in the hope of obtaining it … finally.
  • We want to get along with others: neighbors, friends, co-religionists, family members, and co-workers. Well-functioning relationships often require compromise and depend on seeing the best in those near us.
  • If unsure of what to think or believe, it’s nice to go to experts who claim to be more learned. Financial advisors and almost all other professional disciplines rely upon this to make a living. Trust is necessary unless we wish to go through life alone.
  • Counting on those exuding confidence and a record of success transmits assurance to us. Relief and appreciation upon hearing their apparent truths are byproducts.
  • Our high-speed lives and responsibilities are pressured with complexities. Simple solutions relieve stress and doubt.
  • Not knowing the proper direction to go is troubling when the map of life is confusing. Happiness and satisfaction appear attainable if we receive straightforward instructions, “the” solution (so we are told) to problematic issues.
  • We are prone to perceive people as if they are one thing. Good or bad, bright or dull, kind or harsh. Once placed in a category, humanity tends to stick with such impressions despite future contradictory information. No one is great, generous, loving, and self-sacrificing in every circumstance. Halos are for the divine.

  • Most of us not only wish to be seen but care about being recognized, accepted, and admired for something close to the fullness of our personhood. Con-men figure out this vulnerability and exploit the qualities that enhance their value to us.
  • Truth can be painful. When discerning a devastating or costly truth, the draw of fantasy is powerful.
  • Certainty in your spouse’s fidelity sometimes lasts longer than the actuality of it. Few mates seek to break up families, hire lawyers, and face this challenge to a historically loving foundational relationship. Looking away may be a comforting alternative if we succeed in self-persuasion and ignorance.
  • Passionately spoken untruth, if repeated many times, often seems more convincing than raw facts.
  • Imagine telling a friend about someone you both know and reporting the fellow’s deceit. Assuming your comrade did not witness the misbehavior, his hesitation in accepting your observation is understandable, all the more if your buddy has a long positive history with the miscreant.
  • As death is not considered a fun topic, many avoid the issue, including some of the implications that demand our attention in creating a fulfilling life.
  • Homo sapiens must envision the world’s doubtless beauty and capacity for enhancement. If humans consider the planet beyond repair, it would be harder to sustain any sense of optimism or find courage when difficulties arise.
  • Some knowledge also fails the test of usefulness. Assume you require surgery. Not everyone can understand all possible side effects, make wise choices among different types of procedures, and interpret medical research that helps inform such decisions. Nor is the ability to choose doctors always easy.
  • Sometimes, the patient might enlist a friend or loved one to take over a good-sized portion of the task, ask questions, process information, and make suggestions. Doing so might reduce the stress of those in need without endangering the medical outcome.

Taking in too much of the world carries the potential to disable us. The challenge for everyone is knowing how much we can handle and under what conditions.

Whether we comprehend it or not, prioritization or triage is required, thereby recognizing what is essential to face and what can wait. This is easier than it sounds, of course, because the unconscious plays its shadowy role.

Not everything must be known, and not every battle be fought to have a good life.

You might consider this … every so often.

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The first image is a Dark Matter Map from Hyper Suprime-Cam survey, 2018. Beneath is a Blindfold Hat by Dale and Kim Schoonover. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

October 20, 2022

When We Stop Thinking

Something has happened, and few are thinking about it.

We live in a time of more books, movies, and accumulated knowledge than ever. The world should be ripe for thoughtful discussion, yet nuanced ideas are in short supply, if not dangerous. 

Not necessarily a danger of physical harm, but sleepless nights, depression, and anxiety. Lost personal connections, too.

We don’t want to look outside after dark. I’m not speaking of the time when the sun goes down. Instead, differences among friends and relatives who we believe have gone over the edge.

It doesn’t matter what side. Neither tribe (and maybe more than two) takes enough time to move beyond surfaces.

When a statement conflicts with our beliefs in conversation or public debate, friction starts and sometimes stops in two seconds. Our brains turn on the mute.

Better not to think about it, some would say. Better to search for distractions. Better to rely on authorities we believe in, news outlets who echo only what pleases us, and topics unlikely to cause trouble at work or home.

The current remedy is to grasp simple answers acceptable to the folks we live near, attend our church, and like our spouse.

Of course, there are other things to think about. Getting the groceries, raising the kids, saving money, and looking forward to a Saturday night date.

Are the Chicago Cubs a lousy baseball outfit? At least, that is something about which we can agree.

But the questions don’t go away because we don’t want to enter the dark space inside or outside ourselves.

My take is that while some of the “other guys” are opportunistic and deceitful or worse, not all are, and not everyone on our team is pure. Nor am I always a paragon of virtue.

The talking heads have mostly made up their minds and ours along with theirs.

I like to learn more than what a closed mind offers.

It won’t take you very far to think that the other party or clan is full of stupid or evil people. Better to ask why they take the positions they do and what is important to them and read books that tell us things we don’t know.

In other words, get past comfortable explanations to those that might enlighten us.

And, once we’ve thought through the present and learned the unsettling lessons of human history and experience, to take responsibility.

Consider action intended to make the world better for everybody, not just your team, club, party, religion, race, country, gender, or tribe. That’s where the best possible future is to be found.

But first, you must focus, ask questions beyond what you are told, and move past the madness of the crowd.

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The late 19th-century painting by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior is Girl with a Book. The bottom image is Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Tower of Babble. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

September 9, 2022

On the Need for Privacy

We are much occupied with public words these days. They often involve the need for privacy. Others focus on what is patriotic and nationalistic and whether you and I are one or both.

We think we understand the meaning of all these words, though some people express certainty about the interpretation of the U.S Constitution without having read it.

Not that such reading is time-consuming. I own a small paper-covered booklet of 38 pages containing every word. It is in the back pocket of my blue jeans right now, with room to spare.

I won’t go on at great length here. I am not an attorney, though I know the document just mentioned and studied it a bit with a gifted scholar on the subject.

What I will do instead is to provoke your thought with the brief and wise words of two people more knowledgeable than I am.

The first is Louis Brandeis, who offered an opinion on privacy in a 1928 Supreme Court Case: Olmstead v. United States. Brandeis was an Associate Justice of the Court at the time.

The second comment attempts to distinguish between the motivations of two different groups of people. The thoughts come from Jill Lepore’s short 2019 book, This America: The Case for the Nation. The author is a Professor of History at Harvard.

You can read these excerpted thoughts in a minute or two. I hope you think about them much longer.

1. Louis Brandeis:

The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect. They knew that only part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

2. Jill Lepore:

Patriotism is animated by love, nationalism by hatred. To confuse the one for the other is to pretend that hate is love and fear is courage.

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The first photo is of Louis Brandeis by Harris & Ewing. It was sourced from Wikipedia Commons. The second one is Jill Lepore from Amazon.com/

May 16, 2021

Confused by Friends, Family, and Neighbors? Why is the World so Messy?

When I think back to my Chicago Public School education, only two answers existed for the many questions presented to us. One was right, the other wrong.

No, I suppose it wasn’t quite so simple. I had to find the one right answer. All the rest were wrong.

It is evident today that even my five-year-old grandson has opinions, and an astonishing number of us choose to believe a select group of those who deliver opinions. Unlike my elementary school, our country doesn’t agree on the question of what’s right and what’s wrong.

What shall we do with this condition of our equally human lives together? We are assailed by so many who offer a certainty not shared by other voices. They and we live in unshared tents of true belief.

First, dear reader, I don’t want you to accept automatically what I’m about to offer you. I don’t want you to receive my ideas without asking yourself about them. If you don’t step back and consider whether I’m wrong, I shall become another of those supposed authorities who might mislead you by accident or the intention to deceive.

Let’s get back to what I learned early in life.

My sliver of religious education encountered authorities similar to the secular ones employed by the city, in this case having to do with alleged truth about our obligations to a creator and fellow mortals.

Depending on one’s religion, one received God’s all-knowing words, some etched into long-unavailable stone tablets. So the believers believed.

Friends told me about the Catholic churches of the time. Bible reading was discouraged. The priest would inform you of all you needed. Accepting his pronouncements was expected.

The various authorities delivered top-down stature and insistence. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t dare ask who or what is in the boat or where the vessel is docked.

You could ask questions in these centers of learning, but I didn’t ask many early on—most who did attempted to understand what the teacher or the text said, not challenge the instructor.

Parents also authored a version of the law: the rules of the home and how to behave outside. Again, follow the drill. If you don’t, no thrill.

If the city elders put a sign on the Chicago block containing Jamieson School — the gigantic mortar and brick edifice I attended through the eighth grade, it would have read:

WANT TO FAIL? ASK QUESTIONS!

Somehow I got a doctorate. I made a jump of several years here. Hope you are still with me.

What was going on then? What is going on today?

The average American has not been encouraged to ask queries of himself. Not well-considered, thoughtful ones, at least. For example, when the teacher told us about slavery, the telling including a few uncomplicated explanations of how and why.

Almost no instructor asked students, what else? Might there have been other causes, more or fewer?

We could have been asked, “What do you think was going on in the minds of the slaveholders? What motivated them? If you were a slave, how would you have felt?”

Many of the slaveholders claimed adherence to high-minded religious principles. How did these “masters” combine the vision of a loving God with their treatment of men they considered property?

What does this tell us about the ability of some folks to hold contradictions in their minds? Do you think the plantation owners resolved those contradictory beliefs and actions? How? Do such contradictions present themselves in today’s world? Do they live inside you?

What would you have done if you were the son of a mom and dad who kept slaves? Can you be sure without having lived in that moment, in an identical place and time?

Well, you can imagine. If I taught such a class to young people in certain places today, I’d be terminated along with this agenda.

To my benefit, I was a curious kid, one who led a one-person in-home questioning of my family’s life on Talman Avenue.

Whatever the cause, most of us should harbor lots of questions about the world we live in. An endless number. In particular, those without easy answers

Even before we start, however, we must begin by observing more of the world. Socrates, Martin Heidegger, and other philosophers said a typical person sleepwalks his way through life. We see without awareness. We hear without listening.

We peek at life through a tiny lens — as if through the small end of a funnel. We walk down the street peering into phones, examining texts, tweets, headlines, and emails fed to us by those opinionated others I mentioned before. Taking selfies along the way, as well. Everything gets blurry.

Meanwhile, if you challenge yourself to absorb everything else, you might see without a funnel. Notice the road. Why is it closed off? Perhaps you would wonder who decided this? Who benefits? Who doesn’t? How are the asphalt and labor paid for?
 
You’d see homeless people instead of walking past them as we tend to do with discarded furniture, recognizing the humanity in them described in Sabbath sermons. Do these creatures cause problems? How? What do they need? What is your responsibility? Where do they sleep?
 
Recognize the weathered skin of those too long in the sun. Were they born to other homeless people? Did medical bills lead to the loss of proper shelter? Was prescribed medication a stepping stone to addiction?
 
You’d see trees and insects. In some locals, few flies, bees, and butterflies live. Was it always this way? What explains their reduction in numbers? What happens when these beings are in short supply? Are there human consequences due to their diminished number?
 
Do you know population growth is slowing in many countries? This started before the pandemic. Is it a good thing or not? Why are people having fewer babies? How significant a factor is a living wage to the decision to have a child?
 
If you take another intellectual step, immigration policy enters your conversation with yourself. Pro or con? More newcomers would increase the number of inhabitants and produce more children. Helpful for business or not?

I hope you recognize how many issues like this are interconnected with other observations you might make as you widen your eyes to consume what is in front and around you. Prepare yourself for one question leading to another. The experience can be both unsettling and exciting.

We are interlinked to things, bugs, bridges, people, the folks harvesting our crops, the guy who collects our garbage, the environment, the people who build businesses, the men and women working three jobs of necessity, and the police.

We are attached to entities like us who toil in never heard of villages or cities, absent from dusty maps. Some are decent, some indecent, some would give you the shoes they use to walk, and others would steal yours and laugh about it.
 
Socrates, Parmenides, and Heraclitus all observed their neighbors’ failure to open themselves to the world, wonder about it, and raise internal inquiries instead of accepting the opinions of those thought to be more learned or wise. They believed this the natural state of humanity.
 
Why? Why do we hear but don’t listen? Why do we step forward through the day, the places, and the living things without “seeing” them?
 
Why don’t we reflect upon what we perceive of this magnificent, baffling, racing life and begin more questioning rather than reflexively buying into so-called authorities, assuming they are right?
 
The philosophers I mentioned suggested explanations like this one:

We want simple answers. Quick conclusions making us feel better are preferred, whether they help us feel secure, confident, and adequate or project blame for hard times on others instead of ourselves.

If a person admits he doesn’t understand something by asking a question, he risks self-doubt. If this man is unsure around associates, he may appear foolish.

Uncertainty experienced within our complicated lives provokes anxiety for many. Confused, shaky members of the group can be cast out or lose status. Rejecting the accepted ideas of the tribe breaches the unstated rules of membership.

The world is a demanding, competitive place, where few own the luxury of time. It is one where fairness and prosperity are not guaranteed. Making a living, finding a mate, achieving a safe place to live, and raising decent and healthy children can’t be assumed.
 
Better, many believe, not to overthink what others don’t ask about, thus avoiding worry. Last, we cannot escape the grim reaper: death. We will die, as will everyone we know or will know, those dearest to us included—another troublesome topic to be set aside instinctively.
 
Few have the courage to look at the most pressing conditions of existence in the face, nor the person seen in their mirror. Thus, only the strongest can take on the surroundings in one swallow that includes everything — the beautiful and the awful together.
 
Small bites of the least unsettling bits of it come naturally to the human condition. No, don’t ask too many troublesome questions without comforting, fortifying answers. When in doubt, trust your friends and maybe the people they trust. If you take a widemouthed gulp of the whole world, you might drown.
 
Ah, but the same philosophers also believed there is an upside here. If you are brave enough to perceive everything as it is and engage in questions on a large scale, you will become a more excellent person. You may then alter your life’s path and the history of those around you.

This kind of courage, curiosity, and wonder offers engagement with whatever exists ahead. The well-being you want for those you love and the world’s future requires people such as you shall thereby become.

The possibility of discovering the best possible version of yourself remains down this road. I hope you seek it.

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The first image is the Yukon River, Dalton Highway, Alaska by Laura Hedien, with her kind permission. Next comes Oswaldo Guayasamin’s Waiting. Finally, a Buddhist Lama, 1913, sourced from History Daily.

November 22, 2020

Have Men Changed? Curing the Culture of Complaint

We live in a culture of complaint, as Robert Hughes first called it in 1993. Maybe a malicious physician transfused the once belittled stereotype of the angry old white men into the national bloodstream. Some younger men now glorify their righteous anger.

It shouldn’t have been surprising to find the written word “unfairness” used 36% more often in 2018 than in 1961.

Raucous whining was not always tolerated when I grew up. Loud expressions of self-pity and bellyaching served as the stock material of situation comedies. Fulminating males like Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden and Carroll O’Conner’s Archie Bunker depicted the stuff of laughter and futility.

A “real” man projected quiet, decisiveness, and courage, enduring disappointment in silence. Pushed far enough, he settled matters with his fists or on the playing field. After a loss, he got up, shook hands, congratulated his opponent, and returned to do better the next day.

This male accepted the rules. Dads of his kind lived next door to everyone in the 1950s and ’60s. They weren’t an easy bunch, however. A few pushed the family around or worse. Some drank to excess but had comrades and friends who believed in shared sacrifice. Shouldering responsibility was taken for granted.

A dark side lived inside them: crushing, unspoken privacy. One had the sense they kept secrets, things about which they harbored shame.

The “real man” role demanded they carry too much weight, but not the kind measured in numbers on a scale. It came from the psychological armor covering their tender parts. The burden of maintaining a livelihood also added poundage. The home was for the spouse to care for in a time of unmentioned gender discrimination.

Their battlefield, they’d been told, was downtown.

These gents did not kick down or suck up, but the toll of all they were and what they weren’t stalked them. Such fellows put their hearts into fulfilling the standard image of manhood. The ticker continued to beat but also beat them down, failing at an alarming rate in a time before statin medication and a healthy diet.

Much has changed. I’ve described a myth, of course, but one that featured select qualities worth admiring. Its white and black quality matched the lack of color in the movies and on TV. Black men, too, aspired to the white man’s model. They understood endurance.

These fathers were solid. Hard at times, yes, but when a broad hand rested on your shoulder, it encouraged and melted you. You wanted to embody it, to create yourself in the mold out of which it emerged.

The best of men still aspire to a modified version of the old fiction. A new gentleman’s design encourages him to show love to his offspring, listen more, and recite fewer solutions. The spouse is a partner saluted in her desire for fulfillment beyond her mother’s old and conventional slot.

Kids today still want certainty and security from their parents, who, if they allow themselves to remember, recall their own place as children once: young people needful of adults to rely upon.

Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) acknowledged the challenge: how to persuade your family you will protect them from everything when you aren’t sure you can ensure your own survival.

Bacon believed achieving this required hocus pocus, a magic act of sorts. Guardians hide something, a least for a while:

The joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other.

For most, this entails self-deception, burying enough self-doubts to accomplish the charade, both in the competitive workplace and at home.

Perhaps the irate men of today are finding the masquerade more difficult. They return from work without a living wage of the kind their poppas achieved — if they have employment. Many seek a reason for this outside themselves and, it must be admitted, there is no shortage of unfairness to point to.

Our triple troubles of unemployment, inequality, and pandemic enable the defensive closing of too many minds. Certitude takes the place of thoughtful examination. Belief in demigods squeezes out the supreme beings who are neglected once the sabbath is over.

Simplified answers drip from those who would misuse the widespread terror of failing at the basic job of meeting family expenses and caring for one’s kids. Their demagogic rants offer an example their followers imitate.

Francis Bacon recognized this dilemma, too, offering the remedy of mindful inquiry, not unsupported jumps to judgment:

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Despite the distracting and desperate circus performance sometimes masquerading as leadership, the modest, neighborly man and woman deserve respect. The world would do well to toast their everyday labor to make an honorable living and a home.

These decent souls put their families ahead of their own needs. They form the ranks of our best public servants, the people who do their jobs with integrity. This group of adults continues to give us reliance on the democratic republic we live in. Their oath of office binds them to serve the Constitution and not loyalty to any person.

Hope and the possibility of trust survive, partly due to the faceless and nameless citizens who do not place their advancement on the auction block.

Most of us recognize the same values and work to instill them in our children: enough fortitude to overcome hardship, enough effort to meet challenges, and enough humanity to comfort our fellowmen.

In the face of disease and want, the words of Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) add to Bacon’s 400 hundred-year-old guidance. Roosevelt was a daughter of privilege who lost both her parents by age 10. A timid and frightened child by her own report, she became a voice against racism and disadvantage. Her life was a triumph over anxiety and the second-place status of women:

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

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The painting Freedom from Fear, reproduced above, comes from the Four Freedoms, a series of four 1943 oil paintings by the American artist Norman Rockwell. The paintings—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—are each approximately 45.75 inches (116.2 cm) × 35.5 inches (90 cm), and are now in the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The four freedoms refer to President Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s January 1941 Four Freedoms State of the Union address in which he identified essential human rights that should be universally protected. The theme was incorporated into the Atlantic Charter, and became part of the charter of the United Nations. The paintings were reproduced in The Saturday Evening Post over four consecutive weeks in 1943, alongside essays by prominent thinkers of the day.

As noted on the United Nations website, “First lady of the United States of America from 1933 to 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt (photographed above) was appointed, in 1946, as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly by United States President Harry S. Truman. She served as the first Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights and played an instrumental role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At a time of increasing East-West tensions, Eleanor Roosevelt used her enormous prestige and credibility with both superpowers to steer the drafting process toward its successful completion. In 1968, she was posthumously awarded the United Nations Human Rights Prize.”

As further noted on the UN website, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.“

October 11, 2020

When Politics or Religion Enter the Therapy Session

We all hear stories of political differences breaking families and friendships, setting neighbor against neighbor. Romantic partners recoil upon discovery their partner excuses inhumane and unconscionable policies advocated by elected officials.

“Oh, my, who is this person?” enters their mind if not their speech.

But what happens to the relationship between a therapist and his patient when religion or politics slips under the door?

We don’t ask about party affiliation when someone requests an appointment. Nor do patients tend to inquire who a potential counselor is voting for, though I fielded occasional questions about my creed before a possible client booked a session.

Therefore a few did not.

Revelations about the client’s convictions are, like his history, something unveiled during the treatment’s course. Counselors try to separate political and religious ideas (indeed, values in general) from their effort to help improve their patient’s life.

Health care practitioners do not treat only those who share our world view or the prospect of a life beyond.

A majority of written records of Christian patients filled-up my locked metal file cabinets. Productive therapeutic relationships with Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, atheists, and agnostics made up my practice, as well.

One who wishes to understand a new person intends to learn about his overall background, including the role faith plays, if any. I found religion to be an essential boon to some, the steadying foundation upon which they mounted their life.

I came to recognize a number, however, whose sense of inadequacy appeared tied to church teaching.

Sometimes they had so-called “devout” parents who condemned, abused, or neglected them from an early age. Others described a painful lack of support experienced in their adult faith community. Some felt judged because their reliance upon God alone proved insufficient to surmount their psychological injuries.

In these cases, I asked questions to prompt reflection on the complications of the views and people they were struggling with, as well as their benefits. If they resisted, I worked around the problem and dealt with what was permitted. My approach with the non-religious was similar.

What does this (belief, or behavior, action, or inaction) cost you?

Part of the counselor’s dilemma is this: certain viewpoints and values, scriptural or political, can be like the most important load-bearing walls within a home. To remove or fracture such supports will cause the whole building to buckle if not collapse.

Strong opinions about politics share characteristics with dogmatic religious ones. Unshakable gut reactions often drive those certainties. Reasoning about them is not the job of a helping professional and is fruitless in any case.

While a devoted person might offer a rationale for his choice of church or candidate, Jonathan Haidt’s research underlines the extent to which emotions, not logical thought, precede these convictions. Reason tends to follow long-imbedded, instinctual affiliations, not create them.

The therapeutic process of unwinding self-injurious attachments of this kind is usually more than psychotherapy can or should take on.

Healers must be wary of their own limitations and biases. A danger exists when formidable gaps take up the space between the personal ideals and principles held by their patient and themselves.

Those differences transform the doctor’s singular focus of aiding a fellow human’s quest for a better life. He now risks harming the sufferer by inadvertent indifference, failing empathy, or judgmental statements. Body language and facial expressions, as well, may intrude on the benevolence needed to help.

The individuals we take in our charge depend on our goodwill. No one desires to gaze at narrowed eyes seemingly edged with daggers. Past history has already filled their cup of accumulated unkindness above the “full” mark.

In addition to suicide, the most extreme tendencies our clients bring to us are problems of lawbreaking and a threat to the safety of the community. If we meet a spousal abuser seated in our office, it matters little whether the person claims his denomination or politics justifies his brutality.

A therapist’s responsibilities include protection of life if the patient poses an imminent risk of harm to himself or others, regardless.

I am sure there are people I could not engage in a joint healing project because of my feelings about their beliefs, especially in the current pandemic-infused election leadup. A white supremacist would be just one such example for most counselors.

Perhaps outpatient therapists are fortunate because antisocial extremists tend not to seek our service. By the time they reach the stage of showing force or worse, few unburden their souls to strangers. A therapist is neither a magician nor a divine being. More than ever, he must acknowledge his limits to himself. His job inside those boundaries is difficult enough.

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The top image is “The Bramante Staircase,” Vatican Museums, as photographed by Andreas Tille. Next comes The Horseshoe Falls, Niagra,” by William England. Both were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.