Progress for humanity
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Death in Gaza...documentary of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by filmmaker James Miller...
Topic: least pos nec aggres

This weekend, in addition to a weekend of cleaning and grading and IEP's, has been a weekend of movies, documentaries in particular...

Unfinished Business, a documentary on Japanese internment in the U.S. during World War II...What America Needs, an amateur documentarian asking the question of Americans around the country, "What does America need?"...

And today...Death in Gaza, an HBO documentary by filmmaker James Miller about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, with a personal look at the conflict and its consequences for Palestine and a national culture so full of hate for Israelis and anger at Israeli occupation that they will support murder and resistance independent of its clear and disastrous consquences for their lives...

It is very tragic, I have to say, to watch histories replete with human tragedy and harsh treatment and little regard for one another and to somehow try to make sense of why so many people see the way forward in Palestine, in Israel, in America, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, most definitely in the Arab Middle East and in other more traditional cultures around the world...

That everyone seems to be rationalizing the very ugliness that has us all so stuck and steeped in our bitterness, our disappointment, our cynicism, our foolish attachment to control and power, our obsession with force and with causing pain to others in a fruitless and foolish effort to make our own pain go away...

It is the rationalization of revenge in the name of power and morality and humanity and decency...it is the most profound lie and excuse...our failure to face ourselves and our failures as human beings that humanity faces and has faced since it's birth...

And the saddest tragedy of all...as I watch this documentary about a culture that embodies this failure and this tragedy more than any other in the world, right now, likely -- Palestine -- is this rationalization so clearly fails to promote anything decent or humane or good or courageous or true...

And if we want to make progress in our capacity to face that reality...we will have to get honest about that failure...honest with ourselves...and honest with one another...

It can only happen with more trust...and more trust can only be developed with more space to fail and to acknowledge our failures honestly without being treated harshly...there is no other way forward...no matter how we, like Palestinians, may pretend otherwise...

As I watch this documentary about Palestine, with its demolished neighborhoods, with its political, cultural, and economic bleakness, with its children repeating the hate for Israelis that their parents and adults around them have taught them, with its failure of imagination to consider a world of peace and co-existence, with its rationalizations of all of this ugliness in the name of religion, nationality, warfare and resistance...

As I watch a culture of death and destruction, with men and boys falling victim to their own contempt for Israel and Israelis...

As I watch the utter irrational bitterness and fear and hate that animate this self-destruction and destruction of both Palestinians by Israeli armies and Israelis by Palestinian terrorists...

As I watch a little girl who, over the course of the movie, loses her ninth sibling to this senseless destruction...and yet still aspires to be a lawyer to fight for justice, she says, rather than a terrorist, who fights for blood...an important step forward, I think...

I wonder how far we will go to pretend that the direction we have taken over the last 6 years has served us? How far will we go to pretend that things are better than they are? How far will we go to pretend that our hate and fear and self-righteousness have promoted progress for humanity? And how long will we pretend that we really can live like treating others as we would want to be treated is naivete rather than a necessity for our common existence and future?

How long will we pretend that this is best that we have to offer?

I worry, often, about whether I've written enough about situations like North Korea or Iran or Iraq or Lebanon or wealth and poverty or freedom, authority, and aggression...

But if you have to sum up these issues in a single thought...
It is that progress for humanity, as completely straightforward as it sounds, will only occur as we treat each other better...Desmond Tutu is right...Martin Luther King was right...Mohatma Ghandi was right...Henry David Thoreau was right...Jesus of Nazareth was right...the Buddha was right...

As are the thousands of more enlightened leaders and thinkers and writers (and millions, billions, of people who have moved consistently in this direction over the course of humanity's history) who have consistently pointed us in the direction of greater compassion and love and concern for one another...towards peace and freedom and more democratic and equitable treatment of one another...

There is no other source for our progress...every other path is illusion or folly...

And every other path is, sadly, the source of the great bulk of our misery and human tragedy...and certainly the tragedy that is most preventable, since it happens at our own hands...

And that tragedy -- the tragedy that is the consequence of our failure to treat others as we would want to be treated -- will go on as long as we fail to face that very plain fact of life, for anyone not trying to rationalize their own bitterness and fear and hate...

Hubris, the Greeks tell us, is our most profound sin, our most profound mistake...

And today the source of our hubris is the foolish thinking that either we have arrived at a final stage of humanity that needs no more thought or progress...or that we have finally mastered our capacity to control and hurt and force one another to do good and to do our bidding after 2000 years of failure with that principle...

That aggression, not freedom and free will, is the source of our virtue and our common future...

We are a proud species...humanity...too proud...

And the only way forward is found in our humility and capacity to acknowledge our failures in our humanity and how we treat one another and have treated one another...and to move forward with forgiveness and compassion and love and thought and understanding as the source of our common humanity...

There are times when aggression is needed to genuinely protect us and our freedom, our lives, and our dignity...but everything else but the least possible necessary aggression and as much thought and engagement and genuine resolution of conflicts between peoples undermines our freedom and safety and dignity and common humanity...

And the only honest progress is found in our recognition of our need to treat each other better if we are going to move forward...

I have grading and IEP's to do...and Curious George to get to:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Heading for higher ground...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Superman Song...Crash Test Dummies...
Topic: least pos nec aggres

Very promising developments for Lebanon and Israel...

Bush cautions on Lebanese cease-fire...Yahoo News/Associated Press...August 7, 2006...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060807/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_mideast

John Waterbury, the President of the American University in Beirut, writes a really incredible editorial for the Washington Post, this morning...it is amazing how crises can often bring out both the most irrational impulses in people and the most remarkable analyses of situations...and this crisis is no exception...

A Bad Status Quo...Washington Post...August 7, 2006...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/06/AR2006080600838.html

It is remarkable to me how when a bad status quo prevails, that so many people will advocate more of the same stupid bullshit that got them into the situation they are experiencing in the first place...

I read this really foolish response to a Jerusalem Post piece by David Horovitz, this morning, arguing that the most serious mistakes Israel had made in dealing with its threatening neighbors was peace agreements which had encouraged terrorists hostile to Israel...

Every time I read this nonsense, I think...outside of defensive operations, the only thing that has provided any real security to Israel in the region has been peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan and the reminents of a peace process with Palestine which has nurtured the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and splintered support for the likes of Hamas and more hardline, violent alternatives in Palestine...

What exactly did 18 years of occupation of Lebanon secure for Israel? Outside of defensive operations, what exactly has 80 years of violence between Israel and her Arab neighbors secured for Israel? A legacy of hostilities and violence that has claimed the lives of countless Israeli and Palestinian citizens, as much and more than military forces...

It's the most irrational and foolish thinking process to watch people engage in...

President Bush has been arguing for the need for America and Israel to get to root causes of the conflict in Lebanon to negotiate a sustainable peace...

That will only happen as the parties address those issues mutually and open-mindedly and open-heartedly in dialogue as a part of a peace process...there is no other way...military action in the region has proven to ignite hostilities that sometimes lead cooler heads to turn to peace discussions that begin to address such issues...but military action, except when it has been genuinely defensive, as in the case of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the 1967 Six-Day War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, has not produced a meaningful end to either the terrorism or the hostilities between Israeli and Arab populations which fuels it...

Though I must say that the arguments by conservatives and folks like Michael Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and a reserve major in the Israeli Defense Forces, interviewed by Paul Gigot on the Journal Editorial Report, that peace-keeping forces must be able to engage offensively to disarm Hezbollah and not remain the incapacitated forces that they have often been in the past is a strong one and one that deserves our upmost attention, I think...

http://www.opinionjournal.com/jer/?id=110008758&mod=RSS_Opinion_Journal&ojrss=frontpage

Though any disarmament, no matter how well-designed, politically, for purposes of the international community, in the form of an international force with the backing of the United Nations, would still have to contend with an active and actively arming Hezbollah (with the help of Iran and Syria, presumably) as long as they remain committed to terrorism...and Hezbollah's reason for existence, in particular, is tied to an Israeli presence in Lebanon, so the most recent incursion emboldens them and anyone in the Arab world and international community sympathetic to Lebanon's desire to have Israel out of its sovereign territory...

And Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora made that crystal clear, today, rejecting the U.N. cease-fire proposal unless Israel pulls out of Lebanon immediately upon cessation of the fighting...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060808/ap_on_re_mi_ea/lebanon_israel

It is understandable that Israel, which has fought several defensive wars against the odds of multiple adversaries, expelled them, and even gained ground, would view their military strength as the source of their security...and it most certainly has been and continues to be an important source of security in the face of so many serious security threats, from Lebanon and Palestine, directly, and Syria and Iran, indirectly...

But it is foolhardy in the extreme, I think, to suppose that the current offensive in Israel -- even if it were to create the Litani River buffer zone that is being discussed in Israel currently -- will somehow end hostilities with Hezbollah and security threats to Israel and her citizens from the North...it flies in the face of 80 years of experience around this issue, and two decades of experience with Hezbollah, specifically...and it ignores the most successful experiences Israel has had, with Jordan and Egypt, through peace processes...

In fact, it is the commitment to peace that has been responsible for even the very small but significant amount of success that Israel has experienced with Palestine, with the most proactive commitment by a Palestinian leader to peace in Mahmoud Abbas that I have ever seen in my lifetime and likely in the history of the hostilities, largely through the peace efforts of folks like Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, President Bush, President Clinton and others who maintained the hope of peace in the Oslo Agreements and Camp David Accords which the respondent for that Jerusalem Post column blamed, foolishly, for the continuing security situation that Israel finds itself in and the current crisis in Lebanon...

I very much doubt that this situation will somehow permanently route Hezbollah, any more than Israeli firepower has resolved issues with past military incursions...a buffer from Hezbollah firepower would be desireable, obviously, but a military incursion -- rather than negotiation with the Lebanese government and the United Nations member countries over the composition of a peace-keeping effort (though Israel may have been very well correct that the United Nations and its member countries, which do seem to have something of an anti-Israel bent, may have ignored such a request; we will never know, though, because Israel foreclosed on multilateral options before it even engaged them) -- has boosted support for Hezbollah in Arab countries and killed and displaced many more people than might have been necessary than would have been the case had Israel negotiated with partners in good faith, up front...

And the lesson that Israel must learn is that the significant victories it has experienced in past offensive operations (distinct from Israeli defensive wars) -- the capture of land in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula, the occupation of Southern Lebanon, and the relocation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization to Tunis during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon -- have been Pyrrhic victories, at best, and political liabilities, at worst, in the case of the occupation of Palestinian and Lebanense populated terrorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon...

I very much care about the security of Israel and her citizens...I care deeply about the security and welfare of Palestinians and Lebanese in this conflict, but I do not see Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah on equal moral ground in these conflicts...Israel has shown a much stronger propensity to respect her neighbors and to promote workable peace plans, while Hamas and Hezbollah and other such terrorist groups not only target innocent civilians -- a quite significant departure from accidental civilian death during military operations -- but they have actively and by military means opposed peace plans, in the past, and show little indication of favoring peace currently...

Where hope for peace lies is in political groups in Palestine and Lebanon who are more reasonable peace partners...

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, is the most proactive and moderate leader of peace efforts that I am aware of in Palestine...ironically, as a founding member of Fatah, he has been the most proactive post-Barak of either Palestinian or Israeli leaders in brokering a sustainable peace...

Similarly, the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers by the Hezbollah military wing has been met with resentment by the political wing of Hezbollah in the Lebanese parliament, whose new democracy offers those political leaders both a means to address their grievances and to moderate their outlooks, as with Fatah in Palestine and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland (and we can only hope like the ETA Basque separatists in Spain who have announed a "permanent ceasefire" and will soon be working out a peace deal with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero)...

It is with the cooperation of these more good faith political actors that peace can be negotiated...and where the future of a peaceful Middle East are most likely to be found...

There will never be peace without such a commitment...and there will always be terrorism and violent hostilities without an active commitment to peace...

The Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation process following apartheid and their mutual foundations in democracy and peaceful transitions of power and a commitment to a free and peaceful future offer us the best hope for resolving many of the world's most serious conflicts and the bloodshed that stains them...

Military force, and force and power, generally, whether we like it or not, is limited in its capacity to resolve important problems...generally, because underlying issues remain unresolved and remain a source of conflict...

But the underlying principles of democracy have always pointed us in better directions...always...because, at their heart, democratic principles are committed to authentic resolution of humanity's most serious matters of conscience...and it is those matters that are at stake in the most serious conflicts in the world today and always...Israel and Lebanon being only the most recent flare-up...

Power, people, and the study of both are so important, I think, because the stakes are so high and often involve the most dangerous, difficult circumstances that humanity faces...

People often turn to power to resolve their problems, often because the halls of power are the only place where some problems can be resolved...no single Israeli or Lebanese can engage in foreign or international policy on their own...they rely on their governments to both engage in such diplomacy and to be responsible for security for their countries and their homes...

It is when peoples, governments, and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah decide that those security concerns must be mutually exclusive with the security concerns of neighbors that the kind of ugliness we witness today is borne...

I can only hope that Israel will win more than a Pyrrhic victory in this fight...while I, of course, sympathize with Lebanese citizens who are being killed and displaced for this fighting and with a Lebanese government only recently democratic concerned for its sovereign borders being overrun over the course of this conflict...

But I very much fear that this conflict, like so many before it, will only deepen resentments and enmities between Israel and her Arab and Middle Eastern neighbors...and sadly breathe new life into Hezbollah and Hamas and other terrorist groups committed to fighting Israel and committed to undermining peace efforts...

Underneath all of our cynicism, surely we must all hope that one day Israeli children and Lebanese children and Palestinian children and children all over the world can live and grow up in peace, as arrogance and bloodthirst and power-hunger give way to a greater respect for neighbors and for humanity...

This political moment needs an international community committed to that purpose more than any other...more than any ideology or political or military party...more than any cynicism...more than any animosity or mistrust...

The history of the twentieth century and the history of the world, really, is littered with peoples and governments foolishly believing that military force would resolve problems that it could not resolve...

Force, and military force, in particular, is needed, at times, obviously...for defensive purposes (though all people involved generally view their purposes as defensive, at some level, no matter how ugly and distorted that rationalization often is) and offensively to promote genuinely democratic and peaceful purposes that respect matters of self-determination, at individual, group, and state levels, as much as possible...

But the long history of humanity must surely tire of warfare and bloodshed and its accompanying rationalizations for the purposes of ideology or for advantage or to resolve conflicts where it perpetually offers no resolution...

Moderation, in this context, needs to be an affirmation of humanity over power and advantage...and power only in the genuine and fair-minded service of humanity...

We will surely still feel and genuinely need aggression, at times, to deal with conflicts...the least possible and necessary aggression we can muster, I can only hope...

I am not so foolish as to believe that this is how power will always actually be wielded in these early years of the 21st century...but neither am I so foolish as to abandon a vision for humanity that holds ourselves and our leaders to larger purposes for fear of being disappointed...

I'm quite sure that those advocating an end to imperialism and Nazism and Communism and all of the worst evils of the world in the our most recent history were afraid of disappointment...but their vision provided the hope and the context for those ideologies to face an end...

I am committed to a world where such issues most central to our humanity are resolved with as peaceful, persuasive, decent, and humane means as possible...where ideas and sharing of ourselves is the basis for our most serious discussions and resolutions of issues, as possible...and authentically peaceful and democratic world...where the least possible necessary aggression is used to resolve immediate conflict...and where underlying issues are more effectively resolved with changes in hearts and minds than by force, which is the case, today, even as we often fail to see or understand this fact of humanity, and recognize its converse...that force often undermines this more authentic change of hearts and minds, as it engenders resentment and alienation and all of our more destructive sentiments...

I am partisan for humanity only...every other cause seems so petty by comparison...especially given the useless and senseless destruction that partisanship for any group generally yields...

We do not have to live at the expense of one another...it is not a necessary condition of life...and it happens at the expense of our humanity and the humanity of those around us...

And all of the strongest analyses of the current situation in Lebanon and Israel point us in that general direction...

I am open and welcome to being wrong about that idea, now and always...but the current situation has not proven to be a persuasive counterargument, by my lights...

And there is much reason for me to believe that our highest ideals offer us to highest moral and strategic ground...and the most recent cease-fire efforts of the Administration, European leaders, the United Nations, and Lebanon all work very much in this direction...good reason to have faith in the power of moderate, peace-loving sensibilities to find solutions where others only see hostilty...

Love,
Ben

Now Playing: One...U2 (I've given U2 too much shit, I think...I still think Rattle and Hum is their best album and the gospel version of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For is their best song...but this song is an appropriate one for the moment)...

Limits...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Let Her Cry...One Love...Hootie and the Blowfish...
Topic: least pos nec aggres
In so many ways, it's so appropriate that my first book will be called The Limits of Power:):)...

I've been internalizing the lessons of limits, recently...

Time, money, personal, professional, personal organizational...people's limits, generally...

It makes so much more sense, I know now, better, from experience than from intuition, to internalize limits by screwing them up rather than unreasonably expecting people to be either scared their whole lives and not learning the lesson, for real, at all...

Freedom is the best climate for learning...that's why free countries are so much stronger than unfree countries (and why free peoples and individuals, I think, are so much stronger than unfree peoples and individuals)...

And I've just been learning a whole cluster of limits over the course of the last year...and in this last summer school semester, in particular (largely because the bigger issues that I needed to learn, more, are already much more under my belt)...

And just appreciating, better, how much more sustainably we learn these lessons when we have the freedom to experiment and learn and screw them up rather than unreasonably expecting that people learn them by being afraid to make mistakes (which doesn't actually learn the lesson...it just leaves people afraid of it)...

Morality works the same way, I think...as does the law...

As does power, I think...

And America is just learning that lesson the hard way, right now, I think...which is fine, actually...sometimes the hard way is the better way...when it involves more freedom to screw it up, I think...

There are signs that we are learning our lesson on this, I think...or at least that the Administration is...

Ashton Carter and William Perry, former Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, suggested in the June 22, 2006 Washington Post that the Bush Administration strike North Korea's recently developed ICBM missile capabilities (which have range to reach U.S. mainland and which are in violation of North Korea's agreements with the U.S. and the six party negotiations on North Korea's nuclear weapons development...

Carter and Perry are in good faith...as was the Administration in Iraq...they are also almost assuredly mistaken in their belief that such an attack would not be interpreted by the North Korean people and the world community as an attack on North Korea and have very, very serious political consequences, internationally and in North Korea and very likely speed up the development of their defensive capabilities -- after being attacked, of course -- or worse, as Jack Pritchard suggests in the Washington Post following Carter and Perry's suggestion, that North Korea sells its capabilities, in retaliation, to highest or most dangerous bidders, like Al Queda...

There are just limits to power that people who are going to exercise it responsibly need to face...

And, thankfully...on this count...the Administration seems to be learning the lesson...
Dick Cheney is downplaying the idea of an attack on the North Korean missile capability, quite reasonably and with much respect to Ashton Carter and William Perry...

And demonstrating that, hopefully, that the Administration is learning some of the lessons around power and its limits (though their policy toward Iran is not promising, at this point, on this count)...

Limits, I'm learning -- including the limits of power -- are often best learned by screwing them up...not by expecting, unreasonably and perpetually in serious conflict with reality, that people live their lives afraid of them and never really learning the lesson at all...

Moral, political and legal limits work the same way...

And the Administration seems to be learning this lesson, better, it seems...let's hope it's a lesson that is being internalized, more generally...

In the meantime, I'm just proud that I'm beginning to internalize these limits for myself...

I'm so sad that doing so meant losing Brandi and souring my relationship with my professors and even some of my friends...

But I'd rather sour those relationships and learn the lesson than not really ever learn the lesson, at all, which was the alternative:)...

Even my relationship with Brandi, as incredibly difficult as it is for me to say that...

I've got work to do:):)...have a great weekend, everyone:):)...

Go screw some things up and learn, this weekend, will ya:):)...

Love,
Ben

Crazy...
Now Playing: Eric Clapton...Tears in Heaven...Killing Me Softly...Lauryn Hill...
Topic: least pos nec aggres
After this sustained, self-assured feeling about my work that I experienced, yesterday, I found myself in doubt, again, last night...

What always fuels my doubts is not any argument or logic or thinking or idea that has ever made me seriously rethink my ideas...

It's always just feeling and often perceived as so much in the minority in how force should be used...the perception that I am too soft...

Softness I regard as a good thing...as soft as is reasonably possible while still dealing constructively with serious problems and threats we face...

Clapton's Tears in Heaven reflect this kind of softness, I think...and the way it reflects greater wisdom in the face of tragedy...as does Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly (and Lauryn Hill's really incredible, if illegal, cover), in its own way...

I've never heard someone make strong arguments against the principle of least possible necessary aggression or any of the more general ideas around force that I've articulated, that I at least can't account for better, I think, with these ideas (though I acknowledge that I need to do so in a more clear, organized way so that people understand the arguments better)...

So what's crazy it's that it's not argument, at all, that fuels so much self-doubt for me, on this one...

It's just this popular prediliction against softness and my openly alligning myself with softer, more constructive approaches, as much as possible...and the way that this gets me persistently condescended by people who haven't spent nearly the amount of time or effort thinking about these things...

I've lost a lot over the course of doing this work, so I'm decided to write the work, put it out there, and if it gets rejected for good reason that can be articulated then I'll listen and change my thinking accordingly...

But if it gets rejected because of some feeling that a defense of efforts to justify more aggressive approaches on matters of international and domestic policy and the professional and interpersonal applications that I think these ideas have isn't needed and that people can go on justifying the often terribly circular and underdeveloped ideas around the often self-centered and overbearing use of force then I guess I don't quite know what I'm going to do...

I guess I'm prepared to go do something less public and more independent than teaching and writing...

Something where I can just be left alone, as much as possible, I suppose...

But first I'll write the book...I've gone to too much trouble on this, at this point...

I just believe these ideas, too much, at this point, to give them up without hearing some really, really effective rebuttal to them...

I'm prepared to give them up for the right reasons...I just haven't heard them, yet...

I guess I'm preparing myself for either the latter...or just kind of doing something else, altogether if the silence gets too deafening or if my bosses or professors decide that I'm just too much of a hassle with all my newfangled thinking to keep around...

Anyway...I've got work to do...just thinking...

Love,
Ben

Enjoying the moment...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: What a Wonderful World...The Great Satchmo...
Topic: least pos nec aggres
I have classwork still to finish...

And I have a book to get started writing on...

I leave in mid-July to go work a high school forensics camp at Illinois State University with my best friend from my WSU forensics days, Bond Benton, who is doing impressive work these days training diplomat-type folks in intercultural communication...

But I'm enjoying the moment, for just a moment...knowing that my work is a very important contribution to the worlds of policy, psychology, education, economics, the social sciences and almost any professional field that deals with people issues (which is every professional field)...

My education work, in particular, has refined so much just from this most recent stint as a student, again:)...

I have much to write...many books in me...

But the last few weeks have been a period of recognition that for all my self-doubt over the last 4 years...that I think my work will be recognized for what it's already been in my own personal and professional life...as a very significant contribution:)...

The integration of policy and psychology work, in particular, and a better understanding of both from the perspectives of both fields and with applications of how least possible necessary aggression, as a set of principles, reflects on so many issues in both fields, at aggregate levels of understanding people and policy and politics and culture and in more intimate personal, professional, and organizational levels...

I've got work to do...but this has been an important day of appreciation, on my own part, that if my big life goal was to contribute understanding that people either can or not take advantage of...I've definitely done that...and I still have quite a bit more to go:):)...

Now if I can just find love and get my apartment clean:):)...and get some finances in order...

My life would be complete:):)...at least for now:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Munich...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Louis Armstrong's 1970 version of What A Wonderful World
Topic: least pos nec aggres
Melissa and I rented Munich tonight...

It's a remarkable movie...for anyone wanting to understand terrorism and counterterrorism efforts, our efforts and their consequences...this is an excellent tutorial...

You also might check out one of the best documentaries I've ever seen, One Day in September, which documents the same events with real life commentators and more historical analysis than dramatic representation as with Munich...

But Munich is remarkable, in its attention to historical detail, it's terribly powerful script and performances, choices around softer characterizations and soft lighting and modest costuming that I think, like Capote, very much focus audience members on a very powerful story of Israeli assassination policy after the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics...

I must say that before this film, I felt much more agnostic about the Israeli policy of assassination largely because of the complications of bringing people to justice in a militaristic environment with those responsible for terrorism being protected, often, in lands and by people sympathetic to terrorism...

This movie made me very much rethink that agnositicism...

Spielberg's goal is to promote discussion and he introduces the film on the DVD with an express purpose of wanting audience members to engage in dialogue about the Munich killings, the assassination of the terrorists, and Israeli, American, and other policies about counterterrorism, generally...

But the story is clearly one of not only assassinations where operatives are very unclear about the guilt or innocence of those they are assassinating...but where their efforts are clearly counterproductive by any fair observation of the responses and consequences of their assassinations...many more Israelis are killed in response to the assassinations than Palestinians assassinated by Israeli operatives...and the security situation is clearly made far less safe by the policy, in terms of civilians killed, in particular, than a reconsidered strategy...

A recommitment to the peace process is the only realistic way out of bloodshed in Israel and Palestine, today, even with a Hamas leadership that there is much reason to mistrust, including and especially their rationalizations of recent suicide bombings in Israel...unilateral withdrawal has clearly not achieved its objective...and military options have been terribly counterproductive up until this point...

Palestinians must hold their leadership accountable for its failed leadership, domestically -- as Palestine grapples with critical capital and resource shortages prompted by the failure of Hamas' leadership -- and for its failed leadership in promoting a violent and hostile relationship with Israel rather than the stumbling but real path to peace that Mahmoud Abbas continues to lead along with Israel, the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia and those committed to the road map for peace...

And Israelis must do the same, expecting a genuine commitment to a peace process from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or voting for a leadership that will bring to the peace table a genuine commitment to peace...

Revenge -- the title of George Jonas' historical novel about the assassinations of Palestinians following the Munich murders from which the screenplay of Munich is drawn -- sums up much of the problem with the assassination policy...the desire and rationalizations for revenge...and its all-too-tragic and counterproductive consequences...

Though work by people like Joe Nye around soft and hard power, Amartya Sen around universalizing democratic values, Benjamin Barber around decentralized participatory democratic engagement, and Francis Fukuyama around multi-multilateralism all have important roles to play in this on-going tragedy, Munich will play a unique role in providing a broad-based opportunity for dialogue, discussion, and reflection on terrorism, counterterrorism, and the pursuit of ideas and polices that will deal most effectively with each...

I do sincerely hope that my ideas around least possible necessary aggression will also contribute to those ends...or that if my ideas are wrong that my thoughts and ideas might help contribute to the all-too-important end of developing effective policies to end terrorism, bring terrorists to justice, when possible, and kill only in self-defense over the course of that effort, and any and all proactive peace efforts that might effectively end terrorist campaigns...

Peace is an option in Palestine as it was in Northern Ireland and other pockets of terrorism where self-determination and therefore sovereignty and democratic representation are at stake, I believe, but not possible with Al Queda where such issues are not at stake, though Al Queda members must be brought to justice, I believe, when possible, and killed only in self-defense in the course of that effort...

We need far better collaboration between military, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts to make that possible...we make moves in that direction, though the persistently failed effort to create stronger authority within and among those organizations rather than better collaboration and coordination between them along with flatter, less hierarchical organization -- very smart advice that policy researcher Paul Light has been offering for quite a while -- will need to be faced honestly if we are to make our efforts effective...

Each terrorist campaign must be addressed independently insofar as they act independently, I believe...maximum force against all terrorist activities is a good faith and still unrealistic, foolish, and failed effort that must be rethought for our efforts to be effective, I believe...

And Munich provides a look at why and how policies of blunt force without a commitment to peace, democratic justice, and thoughtful reflection on each are both rationalizations for revenge and why such rationalizations and policies based on revenge fail as a matter of realpolitik as much as a failure of our strongest values and thought...

Munich was the best picture of 2005 that I've seen, thusfar...Capote was my pick up until tonight...but Munich transcends the remarkable humanity, beautifully subtle acting and and equally subtle movie-making (with nods to lighting and costuming, in particular) in Capote to touch on an on-going and important issue of policy and the human heart with remarkable clarity and an invitation to open-ended discussion...

Crash was sensationalistic, sentimental, myopic, liberal propaganda around the issue of race that never should have been nominated for Best Picture nevertheless won, as far as I'm concerned...that fifth slot should have gone to Walk the Line, I think, though there are many other really terrific movies from 2005 that could have been nominated well before Crash, I'm sure...

But Munich offers us something that films would do us well to do more of...which is provide us with an opportunity to discuss and debate and reflect on important policies like counterterrorism and international policy, generally, with a realistic portrayal of the consequences of policies past...

I highly recommend Munich to anyone who cares about terrorism and its impact on humanity...our individual humanity as much as on the lives that it ravages and impacts...

And for those responsible for the development and carrying out of counterterrorism policy in Israel, the United States, and elsewhere...I highly recommend that we begin to take seriously the very thoughtful recommendations of the most esteemed international policy experts -- people like Joe Nye and Benjamin Barber and Francis Fukuyama and Amartya Sen -- and the rest of the most thoughtful among the scholarly and practicing international policy, practicing and retired military leadership and military historians, intelligence and law enforcement officials and scholars, and the general scholarly and practicing policy community...to take seriously the idea that careful thought is far more necessary to develop more effective counterterrorism policies than simply more force...

That thought matters...and that the deepest thought matters most...even when we might doubt that reality...out of hubris and unthinking...

I guess I better get to bed...I'd see the movie when you get a chance...to clarify the human issues involved with our responses to terrorism and difficult policy issues, most of all...

Have a good night, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

How fear distorts perception...and life...and how freedom offers us a better way...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: A State of Mind...a documentary about two North Korean gymnasts...
Topic: least pos nec aggres
Melissa and I watched this really great documentary, tonight, called A State of Mind, about two North Korean gymnasts, that was an amazing and rare inside look at North Korean society...

The girls are very talented...and the film is almost a propaganda film for the North Korean government, it's so uncritical of what is being said and what different points of view are on the problems in North Korean society...though still a fine documentary...

But the thought I came away with strongest from this film...was a much stronger appreciation for the freedoms in democratic societies...

It is always so ironic to me...and something that never fails to amaze me...

How much peoples in freer and more democratic countries like the United States...will perpetually take those very freedoms and democratic guarantees for granted...constantly calling for more limitations on their freedom...more harsh treatment in the name of doing good...and remaining stuck in fear about those freedoms...that often quickly dissipates...the more openly those freedoms are practiced...

The girls in this movie...are disciplined...they definitely love and respect authority...in a way that is spooky, really, much of the time...so much do they adore Kim Jong Il, the North Korean dictator who has starved and so seriously repressed his people...

They are every parents' dream...

And it is a creepy dream to watch unfold, I must say...

The movie gave me so much more appreciation for all of my students...for all of their independence...and rebelliousness...and the chaos that often unfolds when they get a chance to exercise their freedoms...that they can and do learn better social norms for mutually managing that freedom...

It's amazing to me...how a society like North Korea...can be so obsessed with group loyalty...at total expense of both individuals...and consequently...of individual responsibility...or any responsibility, much of the time...the Arduous March, the most recent bout of mass starvation that North Korea experienced, is blamed on American and Western economic sanctions (a bad policy, I must admit) rather than as a natural consequence of North Koreans' foolish faith in Communist totalitarian rule...and the fact that North Korea is dependent on the United States and other Western countries for foreign aid and that those same countries are wholly independent for food and all of their economic needs and live with an abundance unprecedented in human history does not seem to phase the film's North Korean citizen commentators...

More than that...is the fear that the North Korean government...and North Koreans live with...and which leads to terribly irrational policies...their fear of the West and American imperialism being the most obvious...but other examples including the lack of free international markets to compensate for problems like food shortages (and issue that Amartya Sen has commented on, at length, in books like Development as Freedom, and which he understands all-too-well in his own home country of India) and the longest lasting and most serious border movement restrictions during the SARS epidemic, despite no confirmed cases of SARS being discovered in their country...

This fear borne of too little freedom and openness, often producing more fear, is a problem all over the world, I believe...it is more pronounced in less open societies like North Korea...but it is present to one degree or another in all countries, including democratic countries like my own home country of the United States...it profoundly distorts understandings of the world outside the boundaries of those fears, in my study and experience, and it makes progress along a whole range of issues more difficult because of this distortion in peoples' perceptions of reality...

The beautiful thing about this movie...is demonstrating just how good and decent North Koreans...like good and decent Americans...can have so many distorted and foolish beliefs about their own world and the world outside of their study and experience...how North Koreans often see the failures of their Communist system as the function of their struggle to be self-reliant and independent of international pressures for them to give up their Communist system...and how those pressures are, generally, counterproductive, making North Koreans more resistant to the influence of the democratic community and more committed to the Communist model of government that is so responsible for so many of their miseries...

And Americans do the same...afraid of the world outside of their study and experience...afraid of the very freedoms that make them so great...and carrying around so many irrational attitudes and making so many irrational policies in the name of those fears and distorted perception...

It's the long story of humanity's history, really...and it is a history replete with profound mistakes and self-destruction and destruction to others borne of such fears...and a distorted sense of what fears are justified and what fears reflect the persistent paranoia of humanity facing new challenges...many of which are, in part, further facilitated by the freedoms that offer them the opportunity to deal with those problems more effectively and responsibly...

Our fears so often produce obsessions about experiences unknown...that distort our sense of the realities behind those fears...and our sense of purpose in the face of realities that we are concerned about...

And the saddest legacy for humanity...

Is that no matter how many people these fears and our failure to let them go has killed, imprisoned, oppressed, limited, and otherwise hurt...in the 20th century, alone, nevertheless over the course of humanity...

We still cling to them...like a security blanket that never offers any real security...

And we still, thus, live with the problems that the fears, themselves, and not even those things that we are afraid of, create for our lives, together...

Drug use and abuse is an excellent example of obsession created by fear...both for and by drug users and abusers...and for and by those who seek to legally restrain people from using certain illegal drugs...

All for naught...a drug war that accomplishes almost literally nothing...and drug abuse that is a self-destructive waste of potential and life...

Fear of foreigners -- as opposed to a reasonable fear of terrorism, where being aware of foreign involvement in terrorism might be relevant -- is a similar irrationality held tight to by North Koreans and Americans, alike, no matter how much it hurts both natural born citizens of those countries and those seeking to get inside their borders...

So many fears that parents and teachers have for children only create obsessions for those children with defying the adults responsible for their welfare and rebellion that often leads to the exact problems that those adults are so concerned about...

And the irony is...it is the free and independent nature of democratic societies...and of the individuals who live in those societies...that makes them so much stronger and more productive and smarter and more decent and generous...

As theologians and our religious forebearers discovered long ago...

Our consciences are better developed...with a respect for free will...rather than with the terribly concering obsession with group and national loyalty and security at the expense of freedom and individuals that more traditional societies like North Korea regularly engage in...

I definitely recommend this documentary...for an inside look into North Korean life...and for an inside look at a totalitarian society...

And for a well-deserved appreciation...for the freedoms...that democratic societies like the United States...offer the people within their borders...

And a reality check...for all of those who romanticize a society of more serious deference to authority...the fears that produce restrictions on our lives...rather than creating freedom to facilitate greater responsibility...for our individual lives...and our general welfare...

And the movie helps me to appreciate those same freedoms...which...no matter how much hardship I have experienced from our still far too punitive and harsh and controlling tendencies in American society...are available to me...on a level unparalleled in much of the world...

And which I would much rather practice imperfectly and not always with consequences that are fair or constructive...

Than not have the freedom to practice them at all...

A reflection that inspires me...to take advantage of the life I have...no matter how imperfectly experienced...in a country where I have more freedom to live it well...than perhaps any other country in the world...

Have a good weekend, everyone:):):)...

Love,
Ben

Our fundamental natures (and the honest and scary fact of our humanity)...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Saving Face...The Beat My Heart Skipped...
Topic: least pos nec aggres
I'm grading papers today...I think I'm going to have to skip the Superbowl party I was invited to in Wichita with a 3 hour drive putting me back in Lawrence around midnight and me having to go in early on Monday to finish an I.E.P. that I was unable to finish Friday night because of technical difficulties and and some other problems...

Melissa and I rented six great movies, this weekend...two -- Happy Endings and Forty Shades of Blue -- were terrible...

Nobody Knows...a Japanese movie by director Kore-eda Hirokazu and true story of four children abandoned by their mother with an eldest young teenage son trying to raise his brothers and sisters with no money and no real connections to the outside world (the mother discourages them from going to school and the only people who even seem to know they exist are a landlady and her husband and a girl who befriends the eldest son)...

Sexo por Compassion...written and directed by Mexican director Laura Mana...a story of a married woman in a small, rural Mexican town abandoned by her husband who makes love to the men of the town to bring color back into their bleak lives...a really terrific exploration of the virgin/whore dichotomies of more traditional, chauvinist Mexican culture...

And Saving Face...written and directed by Alice Wu...an exploration of contempory Chinese-American life embedded in the more traditional Chinese community of Flushing, New York...a gay love story of a girl finding her own way amidst the pressures of traditional Chinese society to find a way more to the liking of her elders...

The Beat My Heart Skipped is a French film starring Romain Duris that tells the story of a French real estate businessman and thug learning to play concert piano and falling in love with his partner's girlfriend, slowing discovering a better life for himself outside of the ugly and heartless world of big money thuggery that he inhabits...

Four really beautiful films about people whose lives don't conform to traditional scripts of how they should...in four different cultures which, like our own, put often overwhelming pressures on them to do so (to see how cold and uncaring those pressures can be, I would definitely check out Nobody Knows, a really beautiful movie about survival against incredible odds, on the one hand, and The Beat My Heart Skipped about the pressures on a thug to remain a thug, even as he searches for something better)...

I've been spending time, this weekend...coming to terms with just how self-centered most people are...how most pressures have nothing, at all, to do with being good or moral or doing the right thing...

And have everything to do with everyone trying to look good (or what they think will mean looking good) for everyone else...and to provide some cover...for just how self-centered they really are...

Everyone...

Politicians...parents...teachers...professors...
journalists...businesspeople...lawyers...soldiers...

Everyone...

It's so fucked up, too...

Because it's so obviously counterproductive and bullshit to actually being good people...

In order to have people conform to my idea of how they should be...

I'll just pretend that they aren't who they are...that they aren't in the circumstances they're in...that I Know -- with a capital K -- how others are supposed to be...and they're input is just not that important...

And I'll just apply enough pressure...socially...personally...financially...
politically...legally...

To get what I want...which is what my life is all about, anyway...

And all the while...my thinking about the matter can be just as stupid and self-centered as I want it to be...as long as I can apply means of pressure to get what I want...

And the irony is...

That noone respects me as long as I conduct myself like this...

Yeah...we are one big fucked-up family, aren't we?...

The human race, that is...

We're all far lesser human beings than we pretend or think ourselves to be...

And meanwhile...we make so few efforts to really be better...

Because there are just so many pressures...to be worse...

What is wrong with us?...that we can't learn to treat each other decently...with respect for one another's autonomy and freedom...that we constantly bullshit ourselves into thinking that we are better than we really are...that the freedom to be ourselves really is the same thing as being pressured and pressuring others to be who we want them to be...

All I know...is that I don't want to be around people who treat me like that...especially the recalicrant assholes who, like the Godfather or the Emperor in Return of the Jedi or Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il, are constantly driven to hurt others enough to get their way...

If you try to control me...pressure me...or otherwise force me to be something that I'm not...

I don't respect you...or like you...or think anything of you...except that you're a shithead...

And then I just want to be out of your presence...

I won't follow your example...and one day you'll die...and I'll thank goodness that I have one less
shithead in my life...

Until you can learn to be a decent human being...

The better a person you are, the more you respect others' freedom and autonomy...because, as a person of strong character and conscience, you understand that free will is critical to the development of a strong conscience...

And everyone else...which is most people...have weak consciences...and character structure...with little respect for conscience...which is why they pressure for what they want, so goddamn much...because they have so little interest in being really good people...

Lord Acton's aphorism is so true...but it's not just politics where power corrupts...

It's schools...and families...and communities...and businesses...and in the financial world, generally (especially the financial world, actually)...in the military...

And it means never having to say you're sorry...for fear that taking responsibility is the same as weakness...because taking responsibility is for pussies...real men...tough women...make things happen...by by putting their foot down...on whomever's neck needs to be stood on to get what they want...

It's kind of creative excuse for being a controlling prick, isn't it?...

And it happens everywhere...

And, right now...there's just a great big bandwagon of people eating it up as a means of making the world better, supposedly...

But really..it's about trying to feel better...about what controlling pricks we all can be...

I do wonder, sometimes...if we'll break the cycle...

If we'll ever learn to treat each other as we want to be treated...do unto others, and all that..

Or if we're forever condemned to this futile, fruitless, counterproductive, and disrespectful cycle of fantasizing that if we can just apply enough pressure, punish enough, hurt people enough, fuck them over enough, force their hand enough...

If we just make people do what we want them to do...

Then the world will finally be the kind of place where we want to live...

We are so fucked up...

Humanity, that is...

And the big question...is whether it's terminal or not...

Whether we can learn to stop being such dickheads, all of the time...

Or whether we're condemned to be such assholes...

And thus hardly worthy of our children's trust, each successive generation...

Because...realistically...those are our choices...

Learning our lesson...learning to be better human beings...and respecting our and one another's fundamental nature...our freedom of thought and conscience...

Or forever being unworthy of the trust of each successive generation...

And of the people in our lives...

The more I've learned about the worlds of money and power...the more I distrust both of them...to offer anyone anything...except for money and power...which can be used for ill as much as for good...and with little reason to value for their own sake outside of what good they can actually accomplish, and not just wish for...

And the more I learn about them...the more people's success at navigating them...impresses me less and less...

My father's strongest qualities...are what kind of human being he is outside of money...and the ways that his money can serve those ends...not the money, as an end in itself, as my dad is so fond of touting, these days...

Because the world of money and power just don't impress me, at all, anymore...

The only thing that impresses me...is the wise and fair and decent use of money and power...of the genuine service that money and power can be to our lives...rather than their abuse...which is probably more common, unfortunately...

Which so many...most...people in those worlds...lose track of...so lost are they in chasing money and power for its own sake...as my father seems to be doing, more, these days...

Here's a good question to illustrate the point...who would you rather be?...

Mary Wolstencraft?...or the overwhelming number of less intelligent and thoughtful men of her day who would keep her from voting, nevertheless having more substantial impact on the policies of her day?...

Frederick Douglas?...or his would-be wealthy slave-owners or the many very powerful politicians who fought so hard to maintain a world where men like Douglas were treated with so little real dignity?...

Henry David Thoreau?...or the millions of less independent-minded people who lived lives of quiet desperation that Thoreau so pitied?...

Adam Smith?...or one of the many wealthy, politically-connected, mercantilist class of his day and even more independent businessmen whose avarice Smith was so suspicious of, even as he believed that its free exercise was better accomodated to the needs of people than the self-righteous legal declarations of governing classes of his day?

John Stuart Mill?...or the thousands of emerging greed and power-driven capitalists and slave-owners and members of parliament regularly infringing on the very freedoms that Mill celebrated, rightly, as central to human nature and human progress?...

John Dewey?...or the emerging monopolists or the less thoughtful or profound democratic leaders of his day, with, generally, far less concern for the lives of average people and the poor and the pragmatic aspirations of a growing and diverse modern society?...

Abraham Maslow?...or the millions of men and women of more petty and small-minded values Maslow contrasted with the purposeful and meaning-driven values of higher-minded leaders of public thought and action?...

Would you rather help to more thoughtfully enlighten the world?...or more mindlessly follow its less enlightened ways?...

Ideally...by my lights...we would do both...enlightening the world...and accepting and embracing its less enlightened ways...

What all these people have in common...is that while the world operated under whatever the conventional logic of their days were...right or wrong...good or bad...more or less decent and humane...

These people were critiquing that logic...to help us rethink how we might live better lives...shaping the deepest currents of history...with that rethinking...

What I think is the strongest rethinking for this generation of new ideas and living...is the need to both become better, more thoughtful, and more enlightened people...by embracing our baser and more smaller-minded selves...

To integrate our B-values -- as Maslow describes them...our higher, more enlightened, more confident values -- with our D-values -- or our lower, more base, more insecure values...

To become better people...by openly acknowledging and embracing our baser selves...

We can all aspire for the better examples of our past and our present...and we are all better for aspiring more thoughtfully...rather than giving in to our baser reactions to the world...even as we thoughtfully accept and embrace those reactions...

The scary part about humanity...is that...ultimately...our fundamental nature...our progress...lies, as John Stuart Mill powerfully argued...in our freedom...

And our improvement...our betterment...must be freely chosen...whether we like it or not...

All of the most consequential areas where the baser elements of our humanity stand in the way of our higher purposes...

They must be embraced...and we must choose higher callings...for our highest purposes to be realized...

For us to be worthy of our ideals...we need to work, fundamentally, at actualizing those ideals...a respect for a free conscience being the most fundamental of those ideals...rather giving into the lower instict of bullying one another, self-righteously, into submission to our more reactive, less thoughtful whims...

The law and policies can enlighten our consciences...but only by their ideals...and not (and certainly not primarily) by their use of force...

And the law and force can also undermine our consciences...Dred Scott undermined the higher calling of freeing slaves with the lower calling of enforcing slave contracts and recapture laws...Nazi Germany passed laws that required Germans to turn in Jews not reporting to the ghettos and engaging in Jewish Resistance movements...

The law, like science, is the ax in the hands of the ax murderer, Albert Einstein said...

The law...policy...rules...can be used to inspire more enlightened thinking about difficult issues of our time...anti-slavery laws within the British Empire long before the outlawing of slavery in democratic America, for instance...

But they can also be used to enforce our uglier and more self-centered whims...the legal segregation of blacks and whites in the South and elsewhere, for instance...or rules prohibiting women and African Americans from voting...or rules against the Irish from being employed with certain businesses...or policies forcing Native Americans to live separately from other Americans on reservations...

Einstein's point about science...was that it was easy to romanticize science...to see it as more than a tool to be used by the better or worse judgments of human beings...

The ax is a form of technology used by the ax murderer to kill his/her victims...or to chop wood and other needs it might fulfill...not good, in and of itself...but good based on its purposes...

And the law and policies and rules work similarly...they are tools...that can be used to enlighten and inspire the world in better directions...

Or they can be clubs...to beat people into submission...to Imperialism...Nazism...Communism...
Facism...Socialism...mercantilism...and even more protected and subsidized capitalism...

Or liberalism...or conservativism...

Those laws and policies and rules are being romanticized, right now...with fantasies of them being synonymous with justice and fairness...which they are most clearly not, to anyone with any kind of serious, thoughtful study of law and policy...

The romanticism of laws and rules and policies...is far more dangerous than the romanticism of science...

Because the romanticism of law and rules and policies...is the romanticism of tools to infringe on freedom...which naturally leads to serious and important encroachments on freedom...

Democratic and republican power arrangements can only, at best, check power...

But the only way for power not to be abused...is for free individuals to develop a commitment to using it, only, for high-minded purposes...to not abuse it...

And that is the honest and scary fact of human nature...

That unless people with power...or money...or the use of force, military or otherwise...or any similar tool...which is all people, at some level...choose, freely, not to abuse power...and to only use it for high-minded purposes...it can and will, perpetually, be abused by those who have it...

And the hope of humanity...is found in our free will...and our capacity...and our more fundamental natures more suited to...a world where we choose not to abuse our power...to use all forms of power...hard and soft...for the most high-minded purposes...for the benefit of humanity, ourselves and others, equitably...for each person's benefit...and not for the benefit of some at the expense of others...

The hope for humanity is found, only, in our highest ideals...our aspiring...and our actualizing them in our lives...

Our cynicism is not an alternative...it is a baser instinct to be embraced...and transcended...

I've got to get some sleep...I have a long day, tomorrow:):)...

I should probably check to see how the Steelers and Seahawks are doing...

Have a good day, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

The letter of the law...and the spirit of the law...
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For...U2...Rattle and Hum...
Topic: least pos nec aggres
I have a teacher I'm working with, right now, who, more clearly than anyone I've ever met, reflects the important distinction between someone who lives by the spirit of the law...and someone who -- tediously -- lives by the letter of the law...

The teacher I'm referring to is the special education teacher who is mentoring me, currently, around matters of paperwork and school bureaucracy...

She's getting better...a lot better, some days, when I think about it...

But the major difference between our outlooks...on life, nevertheless on teaching...

Is that this teacher lives her life, often, by the letter of the law...no matter how ridiculous and horribly out of touch with the lives of the kids she teaches...

And I live my life...and I do serve my kids...by the spirit of the law...knowing that the law is far too crude an instrument to understand or serve the interests of anyone, nevertheless of a learning, growing, and developing child...

This teacher is convinced that if she just has the right IEP/legal leverage...if she just gives the right command...if she just finds the right punishment...if she just asserts control in the just the right way...that she will, somehow, shape up kids that have never been shaped up by this approach, even though it is, by far, the dominant approach to dealing with kids, their educations, and in their interactions with adults in a school building...

The irony is that she is kind of a push-over, really...and she has had some of the lowest expectations for kids in the building...she's gotten better...but, for a while...the entire time while I was first teaching at Eisenhower...there was no worry...no fear...no insecurity...no boogey man lurking around the corner...that she did not warn everyone was following her and her efforts every day I worked with her...

This teacher operates the way she does (and she's recently changed from a policy of wimpy low expectations to a policy of tough low expectations:):):)...out of fear, primarily, I think...

And...other than my advisor...who I swear is this teacher's mentor-in-waiting...so alike are these two...

Her whole orientation is survival in the educational bureaucracy...with fear and insecurity driving much of that survival...very much, in fact, like her university counterpart in my graduate advisor...

This teacher is getting better...and I feel much better, today, than I did in grad school, leading people with more age and experience than me...who just have all the wrong priorities operating in their lives and in the lives of the students they serve...

But she has been the best evidence, for me, of why I am not someone who lives my life by the letter of the law...afraid of some ax swinging my way...rather than with purpose...and by the letter of the law...caring more about kids than about laws...

Every chance that she gets to use an IEP (which is a legal document) as a billy club, she uses it...and I think it's been a long time before Linda has really thought about whether it really serves the kids or not...

She's getting better...I think we've persuaded her, for instance, to just ignore an IEP requirement of "negotiation" with one kid we have who manipulates kids and adults as a regular course of life...with whom negotiation would not only not serve him, but would feed every impulse that brings him our direction in the first place...

It took some doing...but she is developing a sense of humor about the whole thing...

Which is good...because the last thing I wanted to do as a teacher...was relive my experiences as a student with my graduate advisor...

Seeing this teacher...what I can now see...is that my advisor was, really, for all his huff and puff...kind of spineless, much of the time...he was kind of a weasel, often...just trying to keep his tenured full professorship at a prestigious university and graduate program...

So incredibly sad, I think...not just what a distortion that kind of thing is of everything that universities should stand for...

But so incredibly sad for the people who live that life...

For my graduate advisor...and for this teacher...

My Ph.D. advisor, especially...who worked 7 days a week at that job...

All just to keep a shitty and not-terribly well-paying job...

So sad, to me...

Anyway...

When I meet people like this...no matter how much I want to help someone like my graduate advisor and this teacher to learn to have some backbone...and have some sense of self-respect...

I realize just how much I appreciate being me...no matter happens in my life...

And the more I encounter people...who I don't always understand...nor need or want to earn respect from, necessarily...

The more I'm proud to live a life that I'm proud of...regardless of what others think...

Though...if my academic peers don't take up my scholarly ideas (my teaching colleagues are taking up many of my ideas...but they aren't terribly intellectually astute or honest about the whole thing...which is kind of tedious, sometimes...though, at least it serves the kids better, I think)...I think I'll just give them up...give up the jig...and do something else...

A life lived by the letter of the law...rather than the spirit of the law...

Is a life of cowardice...and fear...and a loss of a sense of purpose, I think...

It's been a long time since this teacher did this job for the kids, first and foremost, I'm afraid...which is sad...for this teacher, most of all (though, as I said, she's getting better)...

I'm proud not to live a life by the letter of the law...which seems like a pretty bleak and purposeless life, really...

I'll be and am inspired if and when either I:

1) discover or come across ideas that persuade me or inspire me as much as the ones I work on, including least possible neccessary aggression, or...

2) my ideas are thought useful by practioners and/or scholars in the fields that they touch...

If not...I'll wait for someone else to develop ideas or otherwise inspire me in a direction that either persuades me that I'm wrong...or builds on my ideas...or others' ideas in ways that are as compelling to me as these are ideas are to me, right now...

Sometimes I wonder if I would have become a teacher... or even a policy thinker...if I had known just how little people really care about the work...how little teachers care about their work and kids, sometimes, as surprising at it sounds...at least by my standards...and how little policy and political folks care about taking responsibility for good policy, rather than getting access to power, exercising it, and deflecting responsibility for anything that goes wrong...and that goes for politicians, journalists, activists, and even too many policy thinkers, unfortunately...

But I also don't know what I would do where people would care more about doing a good job...

All I know...is that if this job is all that this particular teacher and too many teachers in this building have been acting like it means...and too many teachers and folks that I've encountered in the last 3 years or so...

It wouldn't mean much, at all, frankly...

In fact, it would mean so little...that I can hardly imagine staying in the job...unless I was just too afraid to go get new one that might be something to take seriously...

I've got an IEP to finish before I make it home, tonight:):)...

I hope everyone's having a great Friday night:):)...

Love,
Ben

Why we fight reality...when we know that it can't budge...
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: least pos nec aggres
I'm beginning to realize why -- in addition to the fact that a lot of people have just not thought very much about life -- people fight reality...when they know it can't budge...

Why do people insist on realities...that only backfire...or are counterproductive...or where their friends and family and colleagues would all function a lot better if they would learn to accept difficult realities, better, to generate better ones...

And the answer is...

That they're scared...

We obsess about realities we can't change...

When we're scared of those realities...

Why are people obsessing about rules so much, right now?...

Because the reality is that people don't follow them, much of the time...except when they understand them...

And they are scared of what they think -- wrongly -- is the alternative...a world without rules...which isn't the only or best alternative...

The better/best/only alternative...is a world where people follow the intent of good rules (and ignore bad rules...noone wants people turning in Jews during the Holocaust, I hope)...

And where they rely, first and foremost...on their consciences...not on rules...

People of deep conscience have to recognize the irony of an emphasis on rules when history is replete with good being done only by bending the rules and by no other way...

Most people don't operate at that level of conscience...and most people are afraid...sometimes for good reason...about what the world would look like if force could never be used to prick a conscience or to deal with harm imposed on others...

Which noone is seriously proposing, truth be told...

But many folks fear that this is what is being proposed...and obsess about rules and conformity to them, as a consequence...

Living in the self-delusion...that this will be the generation that will finally stamp out all that tedious non-comfortity:):):)LOL:):):)...

How incredibly foolish people are, sometimes:):):)LOL:):):)...

And then the moment will pass...just as many other ugly moments in humanity's history have passed...

And we'll start fresh, again:):):)...

Hope everyone has a great Friday and weekend:):):)...

I've got a debate tournament to judge:):):)...

Love,
Ben