A clarifying moment around forgiveness

I'm feeling much better today.

I've been upset with my administration because they've been pushing me too hard. I think they still think they can pressure their way to better results. And I've resented the shit out of it. It's clearly not working and has been seriously counterproductive both in dealing with me, without a doubt, since I just can't be emotionally up to being as productive as long as I am feeling like shit, and I think when dealing with the kids, as well.

A lot of folks who are responsible for others feel like they need to pressure others as long as they are going to be providing for them in some way: paying them a check, providing them an education, raising them to be grown-ups, etc. And especially when people have no alternative, they will often take that. But I'm way past taking it, whether I have an alternative or not. And I'm quite confident that I have other alternatives. I have lots more to learn. But I learn best when I have plenty of room to learn and to make mistakes and make better judgments and I have a much harder time, as do most people, when people are riding me or pressuring me.

And amidst all of this craziness, amidst the general mood for force and against more forgiveness, openess, communication, discussion and debate and space to resolve issues, and as I reflected today with a friend about situations I've had with other friends at different points in my life, something occurred to me.

There is this paradox that we all face that is at the heart of some of the ambivalence we are feeling about a more forgiving and openhearted, openminded spirt, right now.

The paradox goes like this:

We all screw up. Sometimes we screw up big. I've done it. I hope to stop doing it now with some reflection and responsibility on the matter. When we do, we violate peoples' trust. Either in big ways or in small ways. And we are responsible for the screwups. People do not have to forgive us. And, sadly, too often, they do not. But we definitely need to forgive ourselves and take responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Many of us do not. Many very powerful and wealthy people do not. It's far too common, really. But it's a sad fact of life. But it's only in the screwup and in the forgiveness that we learn a lot of lessons in life, including this one.

The paradox is that though noone owes us forgiveness and we do not owe others forgiveness, necessarily, we cannot function as individuals, as communities, as societies, and as a species without it. We function terribly without it, actually. All kinds of violence and hatred and oppression and terrorism and genocide and all the worst forms of oppression find their source in our failures to forgive some past wrong or legacy.

We need the forgiveness, big and small, to do the learning, big and small. Without the forgiveness, there is no learning. And without the learning, we are stuck with the same old poorer ways of doing business.

Both facts of this paradox are important truthes about the world.

Noone owes us forgiveness. And we can't function without it.

So something's gotta give.

At the very least, we need to learn to forgive ourselves. And we can always control the fact that we can forgive others, even if those jackasses won't return the favor or do the same for someone else.

But if we're going to function better as friends, family, lovers, and neighbors, we're going to have to learn how to forgive more readily. There is just no way around this one.

We shouldn't go around assuming that people owe us forgiveness as an excuse for taking advantage of their generosity. But we need to give each other that kind of generosity if we are going to be able to do the learning that is the foundation for our forward movement.

So our trust in one another is built on a necessary paradox. We must be able to trust one another to not take advantage of our decency and kindness. But we need that decency and kindness and forgiveness to make our lives bearable, functional, and with any capacity for thriving in this otherwise cold world (although to be fair to the world, it offer plenty of hot spots and mild weather, as well). Without forgiveness, we can't learn from our mistakes. And without that learning, we can't move forward. As individuals and as nations.

And my experience on this one has been that the larger the stakes - meaning both the importance of the screw up and the harsher the consequences we threaten to impose - the harder it is to cough up the apology or to face the shortcoming. And the harsher we treat one another, the worse we make that predicament, no matter how much we may pretend otherwise or sometime get a lucky strike and call it genius for the forces of repression.

Repression drives the shortcoming from our own good sense and judgment, nevertheless from the view of others. It and the threats and harsh treatment that enforce it make it harder for us to acknowledge our follies and serious and not-so-serious errors to ourselves, not just to others. Which makes it all the more difficult for us to take responsibility and to cut the bullshit out.

There has never been a time when our more threatening or mean-spirited efforts have made those same mistakes go away. Ever. We just pretended more, kept things to ourselves more, kept one another in the dark more, and otherwise kept our secrets closer to our chests.

The only way to end that cycle is to do what wise men like Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha and Mohatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu and others have implored and encouraged us to do which is to take forgiveness and letting go of the pain seriously as a personal and societal commitment. As Jesus argued, it is the only way to see better our own faults rather than forever being obsessed with the faults of others. And as Desmond Tutu has argued, it is the only way to work through the most serious sins, like genocide and crimes against humanity, nevertheless the ordinary sins in our ordinary lives.

That part I knew before today. What I wasn't as clear about that I am more clear about today is that it is actually important that people know and be clear about the fact that we are not owed forgiveness. Not because we don't need it, when we've done wrong and when others have wronged us, because we surely do. But that forgiveness is not an entitlement. To be given genuinely, it must be given freely. And to be given freely, it cannot come out of any sort of pressure to be better than we are ready to be when we finally get around to doing the right thing.

A clarifying moment. I'm getting used to them these days. Makes life so much easier to understand and navigate when I can get peek at a little more wisdom than I was planning for.

Love,
Ben

Coming to terms with self-righteous pursuits

As I watch this godforesaken and poorly argued Iraq war debate in Congress, between Congress and the President, in the media, and in international circles, I am coming to terms with the fact that some people will only see the world the way they are already for damned sure that it is.

This post isn't about the substance of that debate. I've written about that ad nauseum. Especially about what should be some humility on this debate, but, inevitably, is overwrought and self-righteous claims of certainty.

I'm even less concerned about the lack of depth in this discussion and the simpler and more polarized divisions that characterize the discussion than I am with the fact that so many people seem so convinced that they are right on every question that's ever occurred to them at this very moment, no matter how much they might have felt differently at another time or might feel differently in the future.

I'm more concerned, right now, with what self-righteous asses we all can be. How certain we are the difficult matters of conscience for so many people most assuredly can be resolved by our superior wisdom. So much so that we would be better to compel their submission to that wisdom than share it, since persuasion is just so fraught with uncertainty and force so guarantess our success.

I think about all of the folks who have taken a series of fairly predictable self-righteous stands during one political period - the 1960's is a popular period for this phenomena for baby boomers - only to be convinced that they were wrong and now are right about another set of fairly predictable self-righteous stands during another period - for those same people, typically today. And it's not just these more obvious folks like David Horowitz or Michael Medved or Christopher Hitchens or David Brock. It's all of us.

"I may have been wrong, at times, in the past," we reason, "But now I've got it figured out. And may God have mercy on the soul that doubts my wisdom or my will."

It's sad. We spend years studying the similar failures of past generations to finally compel righteous behavior from their fellow citizens and all of the tragedy that is wrought from our impositions and self-righteous witch hunts. But we never fail to think that we have somehow all escaped that tendency in the present.

Our forebearers were often fools when it came to regulating the lives of their fellow citizens, we reason. But thank goodness we have learned from their mistakes and finally figured out how to get it right.

Puritan values may have led to scarlet letters and burning of alleged witches, but we've figured out how to protect the moral order today. Alcohol prohibition may have been a miserable failure that led to historical murder records in the U.S. in an underground vice industry that was enforced by a violent underworld, but our current war on drugs is a more noble pursuit that only deals with more serious threats to our civil order. Money and politics may be a marriage that dates back to the invention of government, but we have finally found the rules and finance regulation that will weed out the peddlars of political smut. We may have been more harsh, more brutal, more violent, and more destructive in eras past, but this generation we must get tougher to mirror the strength of our more ruthless legacies.

It's a sad and not terribly well-reasoned spectacle. And it is a perpetual sense of self-doubt in our liberal democratic commitments. We want to be humane, but not too humane. We want to be open and forgiving about our faults, but not too open and forgiving. We want people to be free, but not too free.

And the saddest thing to me is that our self-righteous tendencies never have to face up to themselves. Instead of just acknowledging that we are making uncertain calls in an uncertain world, we constantly argue that we know more than we really do or that are efforts are more successful than they necessarily are. It's a sad, somewhat comic self-fulfilling prophecy. It's Marx and first time tragedy, second time farce without all the revolution. If I never question if I am right, then I am never wrong. And there certainly is no reason for me to take seriously the arguments or concerns of those who disagree with me if I am right all the time.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this uniquely human tendency. No other animal has to justify its actions, because no other animal has the intelligence to think otherwise than what their simple experiences with the world allow them.

Humans, uniquely, have the capacity for intelligent thought. And thus uniquely feel any responsibility to justify their thoughts and judgments to others and have the capacity to make up any justification that suits them, especially when their careers or their reputations or their liberties feel threatened.

How refreshing it would be to have those same discussions with a sense of humility and without feeling threatened and just making our best calls with a sense of openmindedness and openheartedness and no need to justify bad calls just because we made them. How refreshing it would be to acknowledge the much more thorough reality that we tend to make more mistakes than we are want to admit for fear of looking foolish to one another, when the larger foolishness is that we are both so want to admit those mistakes and that it is all the threats that we make against peoples' careers and reputations and families and well-being and lives and freedoms that make us all such cowards and fools. Unless you're Mark McGwire, that is.

To anyone who isn't part of this debate or who aren't making the calls that we are making today, namely our progeny, we have got to seem like a bunch of dimwits and simpletons, heads full of steam and little else. And that goes for almost every political issue that we opine about these days.

We know that's true about our forebearers because we study it for years in schools that we are compelled to attend (and that too many are all to eager to escape as soon as it is possible). And yet, somehow, we all convince ourselves that we have finally escaped that legacy, despite the fact that all of the even most recent history that we have available contradicts that notion.

The way out of that mess is not to make no calls, at all, obviously. But it is to walk more lightly with the calls we make and with the notions we grow attached to. And to presume that perhaps our neighbor may know more than we give him credit for, not necessarily because he actually does, but because perhaps we or anyone know better substantially less than we are more want to acknowledge.

That's the most important lesson that this war has taught me. How little I can trust that most people know for sure anything. Especially the things that matter most. And including the people who know most.

Sadly, the people who are most eager to compel their neighbors are the least likely to bring with them that kind of humility about the matter. And in our own particular brand of democratic irony, we generally call those folks political leaders.

And the sad thing is that so many of those calls really do matter. It just matters more that we have that more humble discussion to get to more right answers than it does to constantly threaten and protect our egos, as we currently tend to do with all of the threats to things we care about, namely our self-images, hanging perpetually over our heads.

Perhaps we are doomed to be self-righteous fools to the ends of our days. But perhaps the hope of liberal democracies is that we might figure this kind of thing out. Because the beauty of that big brain of ours that so many other animals might envy if they had the sense to think about the matter is that we have been given an unprecedented opportunity to reflect on our foolishness and correct our course.

If someone thinks I'm wrong about that observation or that hope, I will, of course, listen. Because it is that capacity to argue and to consider the alternatives that uniquely makes us human. Even when it means that we argue ourselves in circles. And often at our neighbor's expense.

Love,
Ben

The current apex of progressive wisdom

"The Adventures of Thomas Jefferson Bailey"

...or something like that. "Emma Finds Her Way," "It Happened One Christmas"...something...

I just got done myspacing my friend, Leslie. And as I read about her kids I was feeling totally inspired to work on my childrens' book ideas.

I have three ideas for scholarly books that I will try my damndest to combine into one, largely because I know that it's hard enough for most people to read one scholarly book, nevertheless three. So only the most nerdy biographers will read all of my work if I spread it out too much. And I'd like for people to get a lot for their money in that one purchase, if possible.

But I also want a legacy as a humorist and a childrens' book writer, if I could. That will first require that I be funny. Which, like common sense and auto repair, I can do with effort. But I'm willing to be unfunny for awhile until I write something that kids and adults alike don't have to toil so hard to read as a tome on the nature of humanity. Just seems to me that one should be able to gleam that sort of stuff with real people bearing witness to some small bit of wisdom rather than having to listen to some philosopher tell them how the world is as if they really know. And I'm for damned sure that what we need more of in this world is a little humor and little humility about ourselves and how much wisdom we have to offer the rest of the world, because my experience is that the amount of wisdom a person actually has to offer is almost totally inverse to the passion with which he wants to impose it on his neighbor. The less you know, the more you're convinced that noone could manage without your ignorance superimposed on their lives, is my experience. And I've got to have a story or two that can speak that fact of life, I imagine.

And younger people, adolescents, in particular, understand that fact of life better than their elders, in my experience. Although it might do them some good to see clearer why their parents and teachers have so much reason to want to send them to their rooms until they're in their early 20's or so and then send them on their way. Everyone knows it all. And I am the worst of the bunch. So it's appropo, I suppose that I write about the foibles, failures, and shortsightedness of people like me. Who better to tell the story of humanity's blindspots than someone whose got a standing collection.

And it would be fun to write about adventure and romance and imagination and courage with kids being the kind of people that their parents wished they themselves might be.

Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, Jim Henson, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, Charles Dickens, John Knowles, Charles Schultz, A.A. Milne, Beattrix Potter, E.L. Konigsburg, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, M.E. Kerr, Barbara Robinson, and especially Mark Twain all wrapped up in one or two or three stories for young people (I figure I've got to fail a couple times before I get something right, and maybe try to get it right again).

I've never been one to necessarily want to write the great American novel. Until I think about all the great stories that made my childhood magical.

Love,
Ben

Creative uses of the term "force"

The more I hear the word "force" used in ways that play so fast and loose with the term to dillute any meaning - "I was forced to think," "You are forced to deal with the reality," or "I'm forced to use bad metaphors" - it becomes clearer and clearer to me just how much people will wallow in their own bullshit before they face up to their big lie.

Here's to a little honesty in the current democratic discussion: when you make no distinction between your idea and its alternatives - in this case, the freedom to choose - it's probably to cover for a bad idea.

Love,
Ben

Understanding ourselves to understand the world
Now Playing: The crazy eclectic CD burn that the guy next to me at the Washburn library is listening to

99% of our experience of the world is based on how we relate with the world, I'm convinced at this point in my life. It's Heisenberg's principle with Martin Luther King's message.

The world is as we make it. And we too often make it lousy because we relate with it poorly.

The bottom line for humanity is that we fight too much. And we are far more convinced that we know what we're doing than we ever deserve.

Aggression is our natural reaction to fear. It is a reaction that too often betrays us. Thought and free will and compassion and the least possible necessary aggression in life are what offer us our best chance to end the self-fulfilling prophecy of a world made too violent, too combative, too hateful, and far too tragic and absurd by our propensity to turn to fear, aggression, power, and control to relate to our problems and to one another around them rather than through more throughtfulness, compassion, and respect for free will.

The world is not any particular way except for the way that we make it. And even in the most dangerous and violent affairs that humanity faces, thoughtfulness and understanding are more important than force, which is used most wisely when it is used with greater understanding of all people, especially of the people to whom it is directed.

Understanding people, especially ourselves, as King and Ghandi and Tutu and others have taught, is the single most important thing that humanity can do to improve its lot.

If we want to know how the world is, how it has been, and how it can be, the most important thing we can do is to understand ourselves, in a context of good faith, forgiveness, a serious sense of humor, and a respect for our own free will, good and bad.

As we better relate to ourselves, we better relate to the world around us. And that is where the world changes most intimately and profoundly for the better.

And if you don't buy all that, check out Natalie Portman lampooning the violent alternatives. And check out Dick In a Box when you get a chance.

Love,
Ben

No need to consider that you might not know when everyone else is dead wrong

Ariana Huffington has a pretty funny post on her blogpage today I thought worth sharing.

The Mainstream Media's Take on Iraq: Right, Left...And Dead Wrong

Huffington's concern is with mainstream, objective, thoughtful analysis, as she makes clear in her post:

Divorced from the reality of what's going on in Iraq. Wedded to a deluded perception of the war. Unwilling to acknowledge widespread and irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Sound like anyone you know? No, I'm not talking about President Bush -- though it's certainly true of him as well. I'm talking about the mainstream media, and their relentless depiction of the Iraq war as a left/right issue, even as the facts give lie to this hoary framing.

According to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, 60 percent of Americans oppose Bush's escalation of the war, and 65 percent want to "withdraw right away" or "withdraw within a year." Other polls reach the same conclusion: Iraq is simply not a right vs. left issue.
But you'd never know it from watching the pundits on television.

Here's Howard Fineman on Countdown with Keith Olbermann: "...that's the tension that people like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden are caught in as they try to move to the left on the war without taking themselves out of the mainstream of the country."

Of course, what Fineman means by "left on the war" is being in favor of ending the war, and against Bush's handling of it. No Democrats need worry that taking those positions will take them out of the mainstream.

But don't tell that to Candy Crowley. Here was her cobweb-covered analysis of Ted Kennedy's anti-escalation measure: "What Senator Kennedy is going to do is lay down the liberal view of things, which is to say, he will say, look, no additional troops and no additional money for additional troops, unless Congress approves."

The "liberal view of things"? More like the view of things of almost two-thirds of the nation."

The same 2/3 of the nation that supported the invasion going into Iraq - as well as the same 2/3 plus of Democrats in office who supported that invasion - and have backed away from the decision now that things have gone terribly wrong, Ariana argues, are being ignored now that their collective conventional wisdom has finally got the right answer on this whole war in Iraq thing.

As Ariana argues:

"When the macro framing of the war is so warped, it makes productive discussion of how to deal with Iraq even harder. The encouraging thing is that while so many in the mainstream media continue to believe that being in favor of ending the war means you're a "left-winger" and "out of the mainstream," a growing number of politicians don't.

How long will it take for the media to recognize reality and drop their outdated, obsolete, and thunderingly inaccurate framing of the war debate?

Iraq is not about right and left. It's about right and wrong -- and the vast majority of the public clearly knows this. It's time for the media to catch up."

The problem with the war in Iraq is not that we don't know exactly what to do or that a fuller and more good-faith policy discussion might both create more humility about the situation and more ideas about how to facilitate better political and security solutions for the situation there.

The problem is that the media is not listening to the wisdom of the American people. And that they, like the corrupt conservatives and Republicans that they toadie for, have seen the choice between right and wrong and they have chosen to do wrong.

Ariana goes on to outline all of the reasons for why she thinks a withdrawal will most effectively facilitate a more democratic and peaceful Iraq:

...in another post, I'm pretty sure.

I mean, Ariana's a smart gal. She's not going to claim that she understands the basic rights and wrongs of Iraq and the world without making her case. Ariana's only concern is with the strongest, most thoughtful, most decent and humane policy - the right decision - in how to handle the mess in Iraq, right now.

The truth is that I like Ariana Huffington. I think her and Nancy Pelosi and Democrats are being really self-righteous, right now, about what they are sure are the right answers to handle the situation in Iraq, but I like Ariana and Nancy Pelosi both. The truth is that, like everyone else, they really don't have much a clue exactly what will make the situation better. Everyone knows what they would like to see (although, for many, many people, Democrats and Republicans, this means a situation that is better for America, first and foremost, and better for Iraq as an afterthought).

But getting to a more democratic, more peaceful, more free, and less bloody Iraq is a more difficult question that everyone wants to play Emperor with and yet noone is really wearing much clothing, these days.

Here's my thinking about Iraq.

I don't know exactly what will make the situation in Iraq better. The current moment has made it so much clearer to me how little anyone does, including a lot of the more thoughtful policy people I've read and respected. The people who have really earned my respect in the last few months have been people like George Will and David Patreus, the new commander of operations in Iraq, who have said as much about the situation, and yet maintained some commitment and hope that a workable and more democratic solution can be found.

I tend to agree with military historian Frederick Kagan and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol - All We Are Saying Is Give Petraeus A Chance - that the best hope in Iraq is to better secure Iraq with necessary additional troops to create sufficient security to facilitate constructive dialogue to find a political solution and the necessary compromises on the outlook for a democratic Iraqi government between competing parties. Following through on even the threat to withdraw troops - which would be necessary to make that threat credible - would leave parties in a civil war engaging in ethnic bloodshed with no credible third party, in an underprepared Iraqi national army, to put an end to that bloodshed and facilitate a political solution.

The truth is that I don't know what exactly will resolve the security and political problems of Iraq, right now. I'm just convinced that the only hope for a political resolution is found in the context of an improved security situation, which I (and the Iraqi government) am not confident at all, at this point, would be facilitated by the withdrawal of American troops. If the Iraqi government or the Iraqi people were asking for an American withdrawal, I would feel different about what we should do, not because I would all of a sudden have more confidence in the Iraqi army and law enforcement to handle the situation, but because I would respect the self-determination of the Iraqi people, right or wrong. As is, I have very little confidence in the Iraqi government and people to handle the explosive and very complicated security situation in their own country and respect their government's request for assistance until they are ready to be responsible for the situation without the presence or with limited presence of American troops.

I could be wrong about that. The presence of American troops could be the cause of much of the insurgency and sectarian bloodshed may calm down if Americans are out of the picture, or the threat or actual withdrawal of American troops might be what is needed to motivate the Maliki government to find a political compromise, to effectively challenge and undermine the sectarian commitments of Al Sadr's Shia militias as well as the sectarian efforts by Sunnis and Kurds, or as Charles Krauthammer has posited, this might be a situation that only Iraqis can resolve and that an escalated American presence is unlikely to improve.

I'm not sure exactly what will undermine and halt the violence and create the space for a political solution that only Iraqis can arrive at. I just happen to think that the arguments and plans laid out by people like Frederick Kagan are the best I've seen thusfar.

It makes sense to me that an precipitous American pull-out would only create a power vacuum in the competition for a monopoly on the use of force that Shias and Sunni militias would only feel emboldened by and too afraid not to engage for fear of being killed, mass murdered, and oppressed should their competitors will out in such a conflict, and that such open conflict without credible third-party security, aligned with the sovereign Iraqi government, will make political solutions and political compromise both less likely and for such political compromise to become a pawn in a military conflict meant to up the ante on the use of force to leverage for political power in the emerging Iraqi governing compromise solution.

I have to say that it is really, really refreshing when I read people saying that they're not quite sure about what to do in Iraq. It's more honest, first of all. And it shows more genuine humility in the face of this most serious issue that America and the world faces, nevertheless in the myriad of other issues that America and the democratic and non-democratic world face.

It is always interesting to me that the people least likely to say that they don't know how to find sustainable resolution on various issues are, generally, the same people who are completely sure of their need, right, and wisdom in bullying me or others in doing what they hold such absolute wisdom over.

The less likely people are to question their own wisdom, the more they think they should be able to impose that wisdom on others is the one rule of life that you can count on more than any other, in my experience.

And there is no other issue in America where that truism plays itself out with more tragic absurdity than the war in Iraq, right now, sadly.

I've never followed an issue where such absurdity was so clear to me and tragic as a consequence in my all too brief lifetime. So many people so goddamned sure of their respective solutions, so sure that they feel the compulsion to impose it on the Iraqi government, the President, the American people, and anyone else who gets in their way, and yet so few people in agreement that any particular solution is likely to yield success.

The whole exercise bears out the reason to be skeptical that people in government or who aspire to steer the ship of state, as journalists, activists, scholars, minor and major politicians, and even everyday citizens, are somehow wiser or better in their understanding of the world. We must participate in a democratic society and government to contribute and be responsible for efforts as serious as war and peace, especially, and yet we all engage that discuss so self-righteously, with so little thought and genuine efforts to listen and consider and respect different perspectives, ideas, and arguments, and with so much too-certain certainty about what will resolve our shared and especially our independent problems.

Even around an issue like the war in Iraq which burden is clearly shared by the American people and which clearly needs a government response, the certain answers for how to resolve our most serious problems are still so elusive (except to those who most certainly do not deserve our trust that they really have arrived at certain answers).

And the war in Iraq is our best case scenario for a political question that most certainly needs a collective, government (and therefore imposed) response.

Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us. Hubris.

Love,
Ben

What sustains our values?
The craziest thing for me to observe as I watch this period of rationalizing control in the name of freedom is asking and answering the question, "What sustains our values?"

And I say values, I don't just mean our value for freedom or democracy. I mean all of them. I mean our commitment to gender equity, to racial equity, to equity based on income and needs met, I mean our opposition to slavery and our commitment to universal suffrage and one vote for every person. I mean our commitment to intelligence and education. I mean our commitment to a healthy world, a safe world, and world with as clean an environment as possible. I mean our commitment to economic abundance and shared abundance. I mean our commitment to ethnic and religious equity that we can take less for granted as we watched ethnic and religious sectarianism tear apart Iraq. I mean our commitment to openness and transparency, to decency and humanity, to honesty and hope.

Do most people really believe that such values are sustained primarily, if at all, by laws? By rules? By force? By coercion?

Because the plain reality is that if these values were sustained primarily if at all by laws and rules and force and coercion is that none of them could be sustained at all, for long. They couldn't maintain themselves in the face of opposition from a culture that had not internalized those values, by conscience, mind, heart and soul.

Without a commitment to conscience, mind, heart and soul to ground and give real expression to abstrat values and their far more blunt and abstract expression in laws and rules, by force and coercion, these values would never find real life. They would always be tucked away in dusty and little consulted codes of conduct, only to be considered when a violation is alleged, which would be often and regular in a society that had not internalized the values they aspire to pass on.

There can be no doubt, really, that it is conscience and not rules that embody our values, since conscience is what distinguishes between good laws and bad so that they can be amended. There would be no need for democracy were values found in laws, because there would be no need for revision since no other authority could trump legal or political authority.

It is not just the inspiration for a free society, it is the function of a free society and our greatest check against tyranny that conscience trumps laws and rules and other political and legal controls.

Would all of those rationalizing force as a central governing philosophy really collude with Nazi-era laws that mandated the reporting of Jews to the German government? Would they really collude with fugitive slave laws of 19th century America? Would they really collude with laws that imprisoned adulterers, homosexuals, sodomizers, imbibers of alcohol, and heretics to the Church?

And the sad answer to that question is that during another era, many of they would and did. Sadly. And the law was excuse and rationalization for all of it. Sadly. So much human tragedy for so little purpose. And all in the name of human or divine law. Sadly.

We have escaped all of that tendency, thankfully, finally finding the present and forever future balance between freedom and control. We should be thankful for our own unflinching wisdom. It would be difficult to find this balance without such foresight.

But the truth is that, in so many ways, we are just like those past generations, thinking that we have found the right path or balance, convinced of our decency and humanity because of how much more brutal and controlling and indecent past generations were, and convinced of our own unchallengeable wisdom that will sustain itself over the generations that we have summoned because we have finally arrived upon the means of promoting good behavior that has eluded past generations, even as it mimics those eras.

Hubris is how the ancient Greeks referred to this mistake of humanity. Arrogance is a good enough common term.

Do we really believe that force could sustain and enlarge all of those values?

Somehow I doubt it. Especially given its clearly poor historical record on the matter.

But we rationalize it anyway because we are afraid to live without it. I do the same, I think. I'm trying to let it go. To learn where more force or aggression is more appropriate. But to avoid it as much as possible.

I'm probably off the mark like everyone else. But presuming against the use of force and aggression, as much as possible and only using them when they are necessary as much as my forever fallible judgment can render, is a good start, I hope.

It is frustrating to me that we would give such cover to our pretense of infallibility, during this period. And it is more frustrating for me to watch people who least deserve that cover taking the most advantage of it.

Hubris, the Greeks wrote. Cynicism, I would add. They generally go hand in hand, is my experience.

I can only hope that we can slowly grow our way out of them.

Love,
Ben

The Age of Infallibility

The American Interest features a really interesting opening reflection in a current book review.

The Age of Infallibility by John Patrick Diggins

Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (Viking, 2006), 480 pp., $26.95.

Damon Linker, The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (Doubleday, 2006), 288 pp., $26.

The history of our era seems to move in tragic circles, strangely analogous to those presented symbolically in Greek tragedy. The democratic nations of the world are involving themselves more inexorably in world catastrophe by their very efforts to avert or to avoid it. . . . Why are democratic nations so tragically committed to this dance of death?

—Reinhold Niebuhr

Christianity and Power Politics (1940)

The war in Iraq, tragic though it may be, provides an occasion for some sorely needed philosophical reflection. Such reflection would soon lead us to the realization that in situations leading up to war, action often precedes thought. Sometimes decisions have already been made before debate begins, and in such circumstances the mind does not so much determine events as respond to them; as history unfolds, philosophy invariably arrives too late to be of any use. “The Owl of Minerva takes flight after dusk”, Hegel warned, leaving us in the dark when confronting the rush of events.

Also, Francis Fukuyama's and the American Interest's editorial blog posts an excellent critique by Patricia Murphy of Democratic and Republican efforts to curb ethics violations in Congress while both parties sacrafice democratic engagement to do so.

Is Pelosi Walking a Tightrope Over Sugarcandy Mountain?

For a cause that may fail to face the realistic likelihood that ethics violations will always be with us (and I would add that ethics violations are often more likely the more taboo and cynicism fuel temptation).

You know the one biggest reason to enjoy working with kids is that the cynicism hasn't quite taken over most people when it comes to kids. We carry it, as we carry it with others. But we haven't quite given into it with young people. We need that attitude to become more generous for all people, not just kids.

But my observation is that the more freedom people get, the more cynical we become about them and their use of that freedom.

And the irony is that it is our freedom, as evidenced by cultures and governments that embrace repression and suppress freedom throughout the world, that is completely responsible for our good will and good deeds.

The same freedom that offers us the opportunity to do bad offers us all the opportunities that we take advantage of, regularly, to do good.

But we take more advantage of that freedom to do good the more freedom we have to do it with.

I find myself growing more cynical, these days, the more my freedom is limited. Which just maintains the cycle of repression and regressive politics and policy.

Is there a way out of this cycle, I hope?

I can certainly understand a more bleak worldview if there is not. But I can't bring myself to resign myself to it.

Love, Ben

The why of cynicism
You know why I think that adults, including me, (very sadly, since I'm among the more idealistic of my age, I think, and have always thought of myself as a truer idealist than most people of any generation) grow cynical, I think.

Because we all find out that no matter how much we contribute, how much we give everything that we have, no matter how much we try to be the best people and best professionals and give the best that we absolutely have.

That we are all all expendable. That it is never enough. And that the culprits for this situation is all of us, even and especially the good folks who give their all around us.

To our credit, we are better to children than we are to one another. But then we go on to rationalize and make excuses for why our uglier impulses tell us we should be shittier in our treatment of young people (especially young people in trouble, with the law or otherwise) rather than why our treatment of one another should be better.

None of us seem to matter, really, to one another, except when it is too late. We miss each other when we are gone. And treat each other like shit while we're around (and people like Christopher Hitchens and Robert Novak treat people like shit whether they're here or gone, apparently, so sour were their obituaries for a decent man like Gerald Ford; Hitchens lowballs persistently, so we shouldn't expect too much from someone who holds everyone in such low regard and himself in such high regard).

I don't really know how to help humanity out of this rut, anymore, is the truth. We treat each other so awful. And if you're someone who wants people to be more decent to one another, you just open yourself up to people who feel a need to prove to you just how naive you are about how shitty people can be and treating you shitty, just to prove their point).

We make each other and ourselves unhappy. And then we look at the mess we've created and we say, "You see how shitty people are? That's why I'm such an asshole."

I do my best to change that, but I'm limited by people choosing to always make excuses for what dicks they are, all the time.

Jesus was this very decent guy. The world was full of dicks who captured, tortured and crucified him. And that's about how the world treats decent people.

Billy Budd is Herman Melville's update of the Christ story. Billy is a sweet, idealistic young man. Claggart is a dick with a grudge against the world and something to prove to Billy about how naive his sweetness really is. Claggart sends Billy over the edge and Billy kills Claggart with a blow, by accident. The ship hangs Billy, with the dickish impulses of the captain overruling the decent impulses of the ships' officers. And that's about how the world treats decent people.

We are all, generally, decent people. Even when we're being shitheads. Most of us, at least. And the world shits on us. It flunks us. It fires us. It evicts us. It throws us out. It puts us in our place. It tries to prove why the selfish or destructive impulses of some are more clever than the more decent impulses of others. And it tries to prove why the self-righteous impulses of many of us are smarter than the more understanding impulses of others.

And that's about how the world treats decent people.

And so we grow cynical in a world that treats us like shit. Or threatens to. So much that we forget what it was like to be appreciated when we volunteered to do good efforts out of our generosity or on our honor or our sense of doing good in the world.

And that's they why of cynicism, I think.

I've never wanted to give into it. The cynicism. But I do have to say that it sure has a way of making it's point.

I've got to believe there's something better out there. Even as a possibility for how we might be.

But the reality is too goddamn depressing to just accept as the only or best option.

I've got an office to clean up. Have a good weekend.

Love,
Ben