That Could Be Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates, an African-American writer for the Atlantic, has an interesting perspective about the brutality involved in slavery and the cruel residue of racial prejudice never completely eradicated.  He is, of course, against it, appalled, but he doesn't take it personally and cites other instances of the human capacity for cruelty.

[During] the last years of the Thirty Years War…eight million people died, and the population of "Germany" (to the extent it existed) was reduced by a third….ten million Russians died in the first World War, and then 15 million more died in the second.

These examples are not comforting but offer a useful insight into human nature.  It reminds us that we all have to beware of a dark human potential for cruelty, especially if that cruelty is promoted by our culture.

The book Slaves in the Family came out in 1998, and I read it soon after.  In it Edward Ball examines the volumes of documents his slave-owning ancestors left behind including inventories of “property,” both material and human.  To me, one of the most shocking documents he found was a record of sending a woman slave to be beaten by a professional who punished slaves if the owners were unable to do the job themselves.  It was a terrible and shocking idea, and yet, something hit me when I read it:  if I had been a member of Ball’s ancestral family, there is a good chance I would have accepted this as normal and a much smaller chance that I would have had the courage to fight what was a deeply embedded cultural system.  It was a chilling insight.

Coates says “…I am subject to the same whims as any slaveholder. I don't feel that there is anything in my bones that makes me any more moral.”  It’s not just racism, but this human potential for cruelty.  He also says, “There is very little that "white people" have done to "black people" that I can't imagine them doing to each other. America's particular failings are remarkable because America is remarkable, but they are not particularly deviant or outstanding on the misery index…At some point you tire of yelling about the evils…and you settle into a much different frame. I believe…that I am subject to the same whims as any slaveholder. I don't feel that there is anything in my bones that makes me any more moral.” It requires a lot of contemplation for Coates to see that he is not totally different from those who would oppress him. It is knowledge both frightening and profound.  He concludes, “The question hanging over us though is this: Is this what we will always do?”

Dear Jackie

My House representative Jackie Walorski had a opinion piece earlier this month touting her common sense approach to government budgeting.  Here's my response from the South Bend Tribune February 22.

Jackie Walorski's Viewpoint in the Feb. 1 Tribune makes an important point that "Michiana families consider common sense principles to be a fundamental part of their proud Hoosier values." That's certainly true for me. However, she needed to add that for many Hoosiers, debt is part of common sense planning.

Personally, I have borrowed to buy cars and houses. I used student loans to get a college education and so did my daughters. These loans were common sense for us and benefited us greatly. Another thing that needs to be added to her report is the difference between common sense for a family and common sense for a government.

Many economists stress that during a big recession the government needs to spend more.
Walorski says she wants to freeze the wages of federal employees; I assume she means all federal employees or approximately 2.8 million people. She implies the top budget priority is cutting government spending.

This is a high priority after we reduce unemployment and strengthen the middle class and the economy. Debt can be alarming and stressful. Sometimes increasing debt is taking the easy and irresponsible way. But other times, increasing debt is an act of courage and faith that our debt will lead to a better future. I suggest we go easy on the cuts for a while longer.

A Fictional Betrayal

Warning, if you are a fan of Downton Abby and haven yet watched the end of season three, this post contains a spoiler.

They killed off Mathew.  I knew something bad was going to happen.  I watched it the night after it aired Sunday on PBS, so I had already seen a Monday morning Facebook post, “Downton Abby sucks.”  I watched ready for tragedy.  And then it finally came, that accident—like a cartoon show from my childhood with that ridiculous toy-like milk truck.  Downton is a mysteriously gripping show for many people I know and for me too.  That death was just wrong.  However, that’s not a very articulate critique.  Jace Lacob says it better:

[W]hat I found frustrating was how Fellowes orchestrated his demise, having Matthew run off the road by an errant milk truck after joyfully greeting his baby boy for the first time. It was maudlin and too predictable, especially compared with the way in which Sybil had just been sent out of the world a few episodes earlier. Sybil’s death rocked both the audience and the show itself,… Matthew’s death, on the other hand, was pure melodrama bordering on camp. As he revels in his newfound fatherhood, he’s driving his car…with an almost beatific pleasure. Carefree, ecstatic … and completely unaware that the massive milk truck is bearing down on him at roughly five miles per hour. Naturally, he drives off the road and the audience is treated to the sight of blood trickling down Matthew’s face, lest we think that he could have somehow survived this collision…The heavy-handedness of all of those elements detracts from the momentousness of Matthew’s death and how it will affect each member of the Crawley household and their staff….It also rings as particularly false, given the odd foreboding that filled the earlier parts of the episode, mentions of packed rifles, a drunken Molesley (Kevin Doyle), and deer stalking in Scotland.

The accident was a flaw in a fiction that is often so smooth and griping. It makes me ponder again the attraction of fiction in the first place.  Why and how did Downton become such an inordinate hit with so many in the PBS circle?  In a way, I pondered this in late December in a post I called “Inside My Reading Mind,” and I’m still pondering.  I’m also pondering another statement from Lacob which may be serious or sarcastic, but either way it poses questions about the construction of fiction.

[L]et’s be honest, the minute that Lady Mary gave birth to a son, ensuring the continuation of the dynasty and a rightful succession … Matthew was a goner. He had served his purpose, ensuring that the Crawley line would continue and that Downton Abbey—which he had absolutely and completely saved by dragging it and Robert Crawley into the 20th century—would not only remain in the family, but also turn a profit.  Matthew was, in essence, a stud bull. His only purpose was to father a son. With that act completed and Downton saved, what was Matthew’s future importance within the narrative? Other than potential squabbles with Mary, serving again to prove how headstrong she is, where would the drama have come from? His plots were tied up way too neatly for him to survive, in other words.

We depend on fiction writers to save us from the superfluous.  Was that what Matthew became?  I can’t decide and his death was deeply unsatisfying.

Something Doable

It's hard to read anything hopeful about the fate of the environment.  And all the things we can do seem like a drop in the bucket.  Here's another drop.  Stop using plastic bags.  When I go to the grocery story with my motley collection of bags, I notice that not many shoppers do this.  I do sometimes think "What's the use?" but I know I don't want to bring home anymore bags.  I wonder, if more of us were carrying our own bags, would more people follow suit.?

t's not that this will make a huge difference, but it's so easy--so doable.  The loveyourearth website gives these "Nasty Plastic Facts."

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U. S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually.  (Estimated cost to retailers: $4 billion)...

Plastic bags are made of polyethylene which is a petroleum product.  Production contributes to air pollution and energy consumption.

It takes 1000 years for polyethylene bags to break down.

The amount of petroleum used to make 1 plastic bag would drive a car about 11 meters....

As I said, it's a drop, but they use petroleum and they don't biodegrade.  They're nasty.

Why We Travel

My last post was about travel.  Here Pico Iyer says it so much better than I do:

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

This is the first paragraph in his article "Why We Travel," an article I keep coming back to because it's a stunning description of what many of us find when we leave home behind.  Here's one more sentence:

Yet for me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.

Now, if you wish, read his article.

Falling in Love

The other night at a party a woman was telling me about Germany.  She had “only” spent a month there and was planning another trip there this summer.  For lack of a better description, she seemed in love with Germany.  I understand because I’ve been in love with Spain for years and just last year I fell in love with Ireland too.  I have a strong affection for Senegal as well.

For some of us, travel is a powerful experience, too mysterious to explain.  One description is, it seems to break me and open me.  It breaks up a sense of this-is-how-it’s-done; this-is-how-the-world-looks-sounds-tastes.  Before world travel, I knew the United States and South Bend were not the only lenses from which to view the world.  Travel helps me feel that.  It bursts open the walls that house my perception of the world and allows me to reside in a bigger more expansive place.

Travel also reminds me that there is much going on that I don’t understand.  South Bend is pretty predictable.  Travel abroad reminds me that the world is full of surprises and that I don’t know as much as I sometimes think I do even about South Bend.

I look forward to hiking in Scotland next September.

What do you think? Don't know. Couldn't care less.

My goal for 2013 is to go through every shelf, drawer, file, and closet and decide anew what to keep and what to toss.  It’s a touch job.  But I keep finding things I forgot I had, and often these things bring back good memories.  A photocopy of an essay in a February 6, 1995 New Yorker—“The Intellectual Free Lunch” by Michael Kinsley—was still mostly relevant.  Earlier this year, I wrote about my annoyance at a call from a poll taker.  This annoyance came partly from common sense and partly from internalizing Kinsley’s point in this essay:

The typical opinion poll about, say, foreign aid doesn’t trouble to ask whether the respondent knows the first think about the topic being opined upon, and no conventional poll disqualifies an answer on the ground of mere total ignorance.  The premise of opinion polling is that people are, and of right ought to be, omni-opinionated—that they should have views on all subjects at all times—and that all such views are equally valid.  It’s always remarkable how few people say they “aren’t sure” about or “don’t know” the answer to some pollster’s question.  (“Never thought about it,” “Couldn’t care less,” and “Let me get back to you on that after I’ve done some reading” aren’t even options.)  So, given the prominence of polls in our political culture, it’s no surprise that people have come to believe that their opinions on the issues of the day need not be fettered by either facts or reflections. 

It’s depressing and maybe even more of a problem now that when the article was written almost 20 years ago.  I think I’ll continue to say yes to the poll-takers who call so I can give my honest I-don’t-know answers.  Maybe from time to time, I should question a published poll, but I probably won’t.

Balance

From The Naked Now by Richard Rohr on nonduality in a dualistic world…

You cannot bypass the necessary tension of holding contraries and inconsistencies together…Everything created is mortal and limited and, and if you look long enough, always paradoxical….it is a holding of a real tension, and not necessarily a balancing act, a closure, or any full resolution.  It is agreeing to live without resolution, at least for a while….
 Dualistic people use knowledge, even religious knowledge, for the purposes of ego enhancement, shaming, and the control of others and themselves, for it works very well in that way.  Nondual people use knowledge for the transformation of persons and structures, but most especially to change themselves and to see reality with a new eye and heart.

Right or Wrong? Good or Bad?

This morning I’ve been composing a letter to my representative in the United States House of Representatives, and as I wrote I was thinking about the perils of dualism—the I’m-right-you’re-wrong mentality.  It’s tough to move beyond that perspective.  I took a break and went back to a book I’ve been reading lately:  The Naked Now by Richard Rohr.  The main theme of his book seems to be the need to move beyond dualism.  He tells the story of young Buddhist monks being trained in Tibet. 

During…the young novice’s training, he or she is presented over a period of three years with each and every one of the Buddha’s teachings.  During that time, she has to name all of the difficult and problematic consequences that would follow from observing this teaching.  After each answer, the older monks clap their hands in approval, and they smile at one another.  When all of the possible negative consequences are exhausted, they move onto the good consequences.  The same procedure is followed until all of the good consequences have been unpacked… There is no declaration of the perfect answer or the wrong answer.  The novice is quite simply being taught how to weigh and discern, see and understand the good and bad consequences—and from that open field, to learn himself and learn how to wisely advise others.  (43-44)

I’m letting these words settle before I complete my letter, but I fear it will still be  somewhat dualistic.  It’s difficult to distinguish between reasonable judgments and a closed mind.