Category: Short Essays

Image of A Good Life

On By Gluteus MaximusIn Philosophy, Short Essays, Spirituality

Written and finished at Starbucks in San Jose with a triple espresso at my side and an EDM band called Tobu blasting in my ears. This is an essay inspired in my continued quest to think deeply and introspectively about the clients that I provide counseling to as they deal with terminal illness.

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I’d like to propose an illustration that, perhaps, captures the image of a good life. For millennia, philosophers and religions alike, have tried to explain what the good life entails. For some, the good life is simply happiness or happiness found in an external agent, like God. Others have pointed out that the good life has to do with love, personal flourishing, or self-realization while doing meaningful activities. With so many theories, it’s easy to feel helpless when confronted with the deeply personal question: what does the good life look like? Rather than succumb to a one-size-fits all answer, I’ll put forth an illustration.

The good life is like a jazz group jamming together.

Allow me to clarify this illustration. The good life is like a jazz group jamming together; whereby people create a melodic harmony through engaging in meaningful experiences through free-flowing unencumbered expressions of living out their full potential. The result is a kind unbroken rhythm of joy and contentment.

You see, with jazz, you get this informal and improvised session whereby the musicians work off one another’s joyful creative expression to form a harmonious whole. Unlike a symphonic orchestra where the group follows a pre-defined musical score, jazz creates space for complex harmony to take place from the free expression of individuals playing together. In order to create harmony, each member must have a receptive sensitivity to the self-expressive performances of the other musicians. As each player grows more musically eloquent, the others draw inspiration from this and are spurred to greater heights. As each player grows more musically eloquent, the others draw inspiration from this and are spurred to greater heights. There is no conflict here between freedom and ‘good of the whole.’ Though each performer contributes to ‘the greater good of the whole’, he does so not by some grim-lipped self-sacrifice but simply by expressing himself. There is a self-realization, but only through a loss of self in the music as a whole. There is achievement, but it is not a question of self-aggrandizing success. Instead, achievement – the music itself – acts as a medium or relationship among the performers. There is pleasure to be reaped from this artistry, and – since there is free fulfillment or realization of powers – there is also happiness in the sense of flourishing. Because this flourishing is reciprocal, we can speak, remotely and analogically, of a kind of love.

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Like jazz, the good life is your creative meaningful expression that’s played alongside other people. In order to have harmony in our lives, we align our meaningful expression with the good of the people around us (good of the whole). Our direction and aim is to realize our potential and true capacity to be better and wiser; and we do this through the lessons learned, and inspiration we receive from others. In doing so, we reap the pleasure, joy and wisdom through the reciprocal melodic love that we give and is given to us.

Does this sound utopian? Absolutely. If only it were that easy. However, we need an aim. We need a compass pointing north. The aim is the good life. Nevertheless, the good life is vague and can be interpreted in innumerable ways that get us nowhere. Going deeper, the good life is a meaningful life, whereby people are able to flourish and reach toward their full potential as human beings. Put more simply, the aim is personal flourishment that is good for the whole. It’s a life in which individuals create values and virtues for the good of the whole. This is the difference between totalitarian and true democracy. The jazz band illustration is representative of the cooperative effort of people to allow space for the discovery of rhythm and harmony through the freedom of meaningful expressions. However, if we reduce the conversation of the good life to an unachievable pipe dream then how would you even know when your life has any value or worth? To the contrary, each jazz band member is challenged to new heights as they play their part for the good of the whole, while realizing that they are not alone in their quest, for they are playing with others who are seeking their own meaningful pinnacle. I readily admit that my answer is vague and anyone can poke holes in it – “meaningful”, “flourishing” and “harmonious whole” are packed full of nuances and contexts that require a proper context. However, they are worthy starting points, albeit a target and aim, that do us well until someone can point to something better.

Lastly, my jazz illustration leaves out is the bass player who goes rogue and messes it up for everyone. And sometimes, we are the rogue bass player. We know what it’s like to experience environments that are rhythmically chaotic, where all seems out of tune. Narcissism, bitterness, resentment, victimhood, poor decisions, etc., all lead to the digression and disharmony of any quest for musical beauty. This is where responsibility comes into play. Just as each jazz musician is responsible for their performance in the band, so to in life each of us must bear our individual responsibility to keep harmony with ourselves and others. While the entire world will never function like a jazz band playing rhythmically off each other in a harmonious whole, we can still take responsibility for our part in the band and play (i.e. live) to our fullest potential. The people around us may be playing off key, however, when it’s our time to engage with life, we can respond and take action in the most meaningful of ways.

jkboin

A Shallow Dive into Meaning

On By Gluteus MaximusIn Philosophy, Short Essays

Written at Starbucks in Willow Glen with my usual blonde roast coffee and Avicii on Pandora. This essay is inspired by my counseling sessions with people on hospice, with months to live. More to come.

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Life is intrinsically meaningless. By intrinsic, I simply mean in-and-of-itself. For life is in fact deeply meaningful once we infuse it with meaning through shared experiences and values between conscious minds. A jug of water that sits on the surface of Mars, unbeknownst to any person in the universe is meaningless. However, a jug of water that is found by a dehydrated traveler in the Sahara is profoundly meaningful; for it can nourish his body or even save his life. It takes a conscious mind (an experiencer) to experience meaning. A letter received in the mail is rather meaningless. But everything changes if the letter inside the envelope reveals whether the recipient is accepted or denied entrance into medical school. For then, it’s not just a letter; it’s a portal into another dimension of life. Given these nuances, what then can we say about a meaningful life?

Meaning is an abstract representation of value and significance. When engaged with meaningful activities, we’re induced with visceral feelings that overtake and move us to acknowledge that some-thing or some-one is valuable and significant. Meaning is abstract like love, in that you can’t point directly to it or put it under a microscope to view it- yet we dare not deny its existence. A meaningful life obtains breadth and depth through engagement in relationships and connecting with the world through the expression of values and passions. Meaning is the elixir to life itself, in that, we need it to get through life. Without meaning, why or how would anyone go on? In contrast, our life takes on more purpose and significance when we allow ourselves to be bowled over by such experiences like beauty, love, and generosity, etc.

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The responsibility of experiencing meaning falls upon you – the individual. We affect the quality and significance of meaning through our outlook and openness to life. Monday mornings, for example, are intrinsically meaningless. In-and-of-itself, Monday morning serves as a designation of time- that’s it. However, Monday morning gains contours and a complexion through its representation as, for example, the ending of your restful weekend and back to the office for another week of grinding it out. When you get out of bed on a Monday, you can either imbue the beginning of your week with a negative and nihilistic outlook or positive and opportunistic outlook. However, the somber and dismal perspective we put on Monday morning is a subjective expression that we imbue. The same goes with the breadth and depth of meaning in your life: the people, experiences, and perspective you take on life is shaped by the value and worth you imbue upon them.

Meaning gets its force and vitality through the value. My bi-annual trip to Hawaii with my family has a lot of value for me; while my business trip last January to Houston had little value. Laying with my 20-month old son as he goes to sleep is deeply valuable; but if my son is replaced with my cat Muffins, then it loses its meaningful force. Value, in the context that I am using it, is a symbolic representation of the worth and significance of some-thing or some-one. The beauty of our neural circuitry and evolutionary trajectory is that we possess the capacity to feel empathic, connect deeply, and express passionately. We have been blessed with the proclivities and predispositions to be turned inside-out by awe and wonder. Thus, we engage in meaningful projects, political movements, hobbies, and relationships that grip our attention while enriching our lives.

Any cursory discussion around meaning most always ends up with someone asking, “Well then, what is the meaning of life?” Well to start, there is a vast and crucial difference between “meaning of life” and “meaning in life.” It’s amazing how one little preposition can have such an impact! The search for the meaning of life is like the search for the fountain of youth – it’s something outside of you that you need to find in order to make you whole. While the search for meaning in life is your personal quest to figure out what keeps you motivated to get out of bed every morning – day after day. Albert Camus begins his essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus”, by stating, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question…” The worth and value of life is found in meaningful experiences, pursuits, and relationships – in life. Meaning is not out there waiting for you to find it, for example, at a yoga retreat in Costa Rica. Rather, our day-to-day being itself, is a mosaic of meaningful opportunities and pursuits that should open our eyes to the panoply of beauty and value that surrounds us – in life.

.kjn;

What is Good Mental Health?

On By Gluteus MaximusIn Short Essays

Last week I attended to a family who’s terminally ill matriarch, Jane[1], was hours away from her last breath. Only 55 years old, the sudden and rapid decline of her body and mind was too unbearable for the family. Just as worse than the cancer that was destroying Jane, was the dysfunctionality of her family as the battled each other throughout the house. Having counseled the family in the months leading up to this moment, I was already well-aware of the decades of unresolved conflict and pathology that permeated this family. A tiny spark was all it took to set this family ablaze, fueled by decades of unresolved bitterness, regret and anger. This day, the two sisters were warring with each other as to whether or not to give her mother more morphine to ease the pain. Mind you, the feud was taking place in front of Jane. Then there was Jane’s youngest son who stormed out of the house slamming the door in rage and yelling at the top of his lungs in the front yard because the grief was too immense. He had an estranged relationship with his mother and was now realizing that reconciliation was too late. Finally, you had Jane’s sister yelling at the adult children for their greediness and selfishness. There was not just a cancer inside Jane, but a cancer within the family that appeared to have the same dire prognosis. I stood off to the side, leaning against the wall while observing everyone’s house of cards tumbling into an oblivion. I thought to myself, it doesn’t get much worse than this.

Every day I counsel people who find themselves in the midst of deep despair, anger, and sadness. One of my chief concerns is how to help individuals gain insight into managing their own mental health. My concern for this essay is to provide a definition for what good mental health is. To be fair, mental health is a vague term that is dependent on innumerable nuances, subtleties, and context. But just as we have a general consensus of what good physical health is, it’s a worthy task to explore what good mental health is.

Let’s begin. A mentally healthy person has a positive and strong view of the self; self-awareness to know what they are feeling and why they are feeling it; the ability to turn their inner struggles and fears into strength; the ability to gravitate to contentment and courage after being swept away with negative emotions; the ability to discover nuggets of wisdom through failure and tribulation; the ability to grow, develop, and move towards goals; the ability to re-frame negative events into insights of wisdom; the ability to accept criticism and view it has an opportunity to learn and understand; a strong sense of values that are inner directed, rather than outer directed; ability to modulate desires, expectations, and perspectives towards healthy ends.

A mentally healthy person is one who has the self-awareness to stay present in emotionally charged moments in life. Rather than being swept away by fear and insecurity of the past or future, the mentally healthy person is able to face adversity with courage. The analogy of a hurricane may help to clarify. Despite the gale force winds swirling around, it’s in the eye of the hurricane where there is an eerie calmness. The mentally healthy person is able to recognize when the environment is changing and the winds are picking up; so too are they are able to position themselves in the peaceful eye of the storm with their feet firmly on the ground, staying resolute and mindful.

This doesn’t mean that the mentally healthy person will never get sad, angry, or feel angst. Far from it. Some situations warrant anger or righteous indignation. Even deep sadness is a natural part of experiencing loss. It does, however, mean that they possess the awareness to re-calibrate, re-position, and re-orient themselves towards perspectives that are good for their mental well-being. I’m reminded of holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl who, while surrounded by death and despair in a concentration camp, was able to mentally cling on to hope while finding scant scintilla of meaning within his dire circumstances. Thus, the mentally healthy person is able to guide and even manipulate the mental self-talk in the head in a way that makes moving forward possible.

What life event and experience pops into your mind when you consider a time where you were overcome with a deep amount of stress, anxiety, or fear? Try and make that experience vivid and lucid in your mind. Recall your dynamic and charged thoughts as well as your raw emotions in that moment. Bring to mind how this experience affected your worldview and perspective of your own life and future. Perhaps the experience that you are pondering brought disillusionment, despair, or anger. Here is the question: How did you cope and persevere through the mental pain?  This question ought to prompt you to consider your own emotional resiliency. Emotional resiliency is nestled with good mental health because it provides a portal into how you manage your own mental well-being. How you navigate your own mental health will reveal how emotional resilient you are when chaos ensues. As you look at your history, how did you persevere through mental anguish? What did the painful experience teach you about yourself? Have you repressed the pain, or have you integrated and adapted the pain into the story of who you are?

The pathology of an angst and tortured mind lies in wait within every individual. Yes, even the most pious of Buddhist monks has to contend with a mind that can spiral into chaos. The psychological detonator that is so easily triggered resides is utterly ubiquitous. When our minds ignite, it’s as if the apocalypse is at hand. A bad week at work or a betrayal by a friend can lead to one’s mind spiraling out of control and thinking the worse. Whether it’s death, trauma, or someone cuts you off while driving, our fragile ego shatters into a thousand tiny pieces. Ask yourself, do you have the psychological resiliency to cling to virtue and hope? Do you have a reservoir within you that provides purpose and meaning in life?

In order to possess mental health, psychological homeostasis, or mental balance, one ought to explore the question: what is good mental health? I encourage you to think through the definition I provided and add or subtract from it in order to enhance your own understanding.

[1] “Jane” is a pseudonym and some of the following events have been changed to protect the privacy of the individual and family.

The Need For Ancient Stories, Even When They Are Barbaric

On By Gluteus MaximusIn Philosophy, Short Essays, Spirituality

Written over two days and finished up while vacationing in Palm Desert. This essay was inspired after meeting with my monthly philosophy group which broached this topic. I finished this essay with a Venti blonde roast coffee at my side, and Antonio Vivaldi playing on Pandora.

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Let’s begin with some rhetorical questions. Is democracy bad because we can isolate some really bad historical offenses? Is science evil because it produced the hydrogen bomb and eugenics? I can say that I have pursued nobility and virtue in my life, but should I be deemed a vile human because I went through two years of narcissistic rebellion from 16-17 years of age? There is a tendency in our culture to isolate grievances within history, and then focus solely on the injustices born from those evils to the exclusion of anything good or lessons learned. This is the current tenor, especially when it comes tearing down statues of southern Civil War generals, demonizing Western Civilization, or dismissing and lambasting religion due to its abhorrent bronze-aged ethics. My point is that just because transgressions occur in history, even horrendous evils, doesn’t mean we should broad-brush with equal opprobrium.

Along these lines, it’s common for secularists to criticize and reject religion because it leans heavily on stories with histories in which “barbaric ethics” were accepted, as opposed to our more enlightened value system of today. I readily admit that I would much rather live in our current era, as opposed to ancient or even medieval times. Our current morality has progressed in such a way that societies have more freedoms, liberties, and rights – all of which contribute to a flourishing society. The mistake, however, is the wholesale repudiation of religious stories due to the ignoble period from which the stories are derived. Secularists are mistaken because these ancient stories address timeless existential concerns that speak to the human condition. Moreover, we interpret them in light of our current ethical framework in such a way that the useful and meaningful elements are distilled and put to virtuous action.

In this essay, I will focus on the secularist’s error in broad-brushing religion as insubstantial due to the savagery “endorsed” in holy writ. For the sake of brevity, I will highlight one of the most widely used stories secularist use to expose the ignobility of the Old Testament God: Abraham’s call to sacrifice his son. How can an ancient story that seemingly endorses human sacrifice be beneficial in our current era?

Here is short synopsis of the story. When Isaac grew to be a young boy, God tested Abraham by telling him to take his son (Isaac) and offer him as a burnt sacrifice. Though filled with sadness and grief, Abraham obeyed God’s words without hesitation and took Isaac to the mountain. Abraham had complete faith that God would provide a way out and that he would not lose his son. At the moment that Abraham tied up Isaac, the angel of the Lord stopped him and said, “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”[1]

This is a wonderful story that has been interpreted a thousand different ways to personify such virtues as faith, love, sacrifice and loyalty. One can see Abraham’s radical faith in his “ultimate” love (i.e. God). One can distill from this notion the idea that we all have an Ultimate in life that reflects a deep foundational purpose for each of us – and making sacrifices to fulfill that purpose is what brings out the richness of life. The story can also reflect the relationship of love God has for Abraham in that God doesn’t want Abraham’s blood, God wants his heart. Moreover, the sacrifice aspect of the story is a motif that the church has adopted through lent, in an effort to deepen one’s dedication to God through sacrificing something meaningful to the believer. We can think of the story as taking us away from our narcissistic self so that we can re-focus on connecting with ideals and worthwhile pursuits that are truly more meaningful.

Unfortunately, secularists have sought to use pseudo-rationalism to dilute any valuable meaning from the story. The secular person will often note the savage ethics “endorsed” in the story which include, a call for child-sacrifice, a supposed loving God ordering Abraham to commit homicide, and the irrational blind faith of Abraham. But is this a fair assessment? I mean, this is a story preached every Sunday in some church or synagogue in America each week, and the rate of child-sacrifices due to divine command is, nevertheless, a non-issue.

The secularist’s curtailment of the virtues within the story is nothing more than the classic fallacy of reductio ad absurdum. In other words, the secularist presumes absurd and ridiculous conclusions. I can think of no church in history that regularly killed babies due to this divine fiat in the Old Testament. The reason for this is because ancient stories like this have been recognized for their deeper meaning and virtues. This story has not been used to justify any horrendous evils because humanity has been smart and practical enough to realize that more significant lessons for life may be gleaned.

It’s important to acknowledge that there have been one-off examples of child homicide due to divine commands, but those are cases in which psychological disorders were diagnosed and swift punishment was carried out. In 2004, Deanna Laney killed her two young sons because God told her to do it. She stated in an interview, “I felt like I obeyed God and I believe there will be good out of this.”[2] This is similar to Andrea Yates of Texas who, in 2001, drowned her 5 children in the bathtub because the voice of God in her head ordered it. These cases are ones in which both Christians and Jews alike firmly believe are egregious and amoral. Moreover, psychological illness is the culprit, not a well thought out interpretation of the text. Never do we see faithful adherents of the Old Testament defending the actions of these one-off cases.

Another retort from secularists is to suggest that we set aside stories like this and conjure up a different story or select a real-life story that conveys Enlightenment virtues? This is a much more charitable rebuttal to the Abrahamic story. However, I would still argue that this suggestion fails to take into consideration the pragmatic elements of these ancient stories which speak directly to our human condition. Ancient stories abound and resonate througout milennia because they address fundamental existential concerns. Ancient narratives such as the Gilgamesh Epic (Sumeria), the Enuma Elish (Babylonia) and Egyptian Book of the Dead all provide motifs that include a fall into chaos, a struggle with evil or suffering, and then redemption – which is the relevant reality that impacts the 21-century person. Thus, whether you are in 3000 BCE Sumeria or 2019 Idaho, the quest to make meaning from suffering still permeates the soul.

Ancient stories are timeless treasures that expose the vulnerability and inclinations of the human mind. Stories from the past, even tall tales, fables or legends, unveil the psychological architecture which propel man to navigate the world – and from which we can look back and learn. Shall we set aside Plato because of the orgies and sexism found within his text? Shall we do away with the lessons and ideals of the Reformation because Martin Luther was anti-Semitic? It is simply intellectual pride to apply the pseudo-rational strategy of the secularist whereby modern moral superiority is exalted at all cost.

My argument holds true for other so-called abhorrent ethics of ancient writ. We interpret them in light of our current ethical framework in such a way that the useful and meaningful elements are distilled and put to virtuous action. Progressive Muslims are currently doing this with the difficult texts in the Quran. While a very small interpret the ancient commands as literal – which I admit is scary – a vast majority are able to employ Enlightenment values onto the Quran and glean life lessons that embolden virtue for today. And this is how culture works. Truth is found in what is useful, practical, and works within a given community. The reason why societies have progressed throughout the centuries is that we are able to view moral conundrums through the question: what does better look like? Thus, the complexion of freedom, liberty, and justice evolve throughout past centuries to reflect to norms and values as we pursue what ‘better’ looks like. Communities have proven that we are pretty good at improving on our mistakes, especially when you compare, for example, the Medieval period with today, or even 1900 ACE with 2000 ACE.

For these reasons, we ought to give these ancient stories their due. We glean what is useful and beneficial. We use them as road maps to live with more vitality and meaning. We recognize that even though they were written within a different context along with different values than we may have today, they nevertheless address the fundamental elements of the angst of being a human being in a world filled with chaos.

[1] Genesis 22:12 (NIV)

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/god-told-me-to-kill-boys-says-mother-54427.html

5 Demands for the Left

On By Gluteus MaximusIn Politics, Short Essays

This essay is an attempt to articulate five demands directed at the American Liberal Left. The demands highlight the weakness and deficiencies in a Leftist group that is currently impotent, ignorant, and crippled beyond belief. Mired in pessimism and negativity, the Left can be found either bemoaning the current President while offering no solutions, or they’re curled up in the corner sulking because of a recent micro-aggression against their identity, or even worse, you’ll find them denigrating and castigating Republicans using mindless name-calling. What’s been lost in the sclerotic rhetoric is an attempt to look forward at what America could be within the confines of a cooperative and collaborative dialogue. What’s been lost is an attempt to articulate what America should look like, and then a concerted effort that follows which seeks to make it actually happen. In the end, America is a project; it’s our project.

I have a deep belief in the capacity for human minds to work things out for themselves if they don’t have to live in fear. – Yanis Varoufakis

Demand #1 : Stop with the pessimism

The pessimism that’s endemic with the Left will make us more spectatorial, disgusted, and politically inactive. From my perspective, it seems that the Left can only feel complete and fulfilled if they are able to complain about our current president – without offering any solutions of course. I am willing to bet that at the end of a rainbow, you’ll find two liberals sharing their frustrations about Trump. But l don’t want to oversimplify. Perhaps the pessimism is due in part to such concerns as the pervasive effect of economic inequality, racial tension, gender inequality and angst over the threat of terrorism. I’m sure there are more examples, but there is an overarching cloud of declinism, which resigns the Left to the perspective that the sky is literally falling down upon us. But what’s wrong with pessimism? Well, pessimism fosters a do-nothingness attitude, simply because, well, everything is going to Hell in a hand-basket anyways.

I am continually awestruck at the Left’s unwillingness or blindness to articulate, and provide a strategy for, future hopes. Rather, there is an incessant desire to talk about how progress is now going backwards, rapacious government who cares little about the common American, or how the world is headed toward either environmental or nuclear disaster. Catastrophizing the world seems to the default rather than persuasive arguments that offer solutions or effective strategies. A better solution is to see America as a project; a project that views America as a bastion for the continued cultivation of freedom, liberty and justice. It’s a forward-looking perspective that relies on hope, open dialogue, and democracy to achieve a better world. If you think I sound too utopian, then simply look across the ocean at Germany, and ask yourself: how did a country, so embroiled in a barbaric past socially, and fiscally strapped economically, rebound to a strong economic powerhouse that is more inclusive and optimistic than ever? I guarantee you that pessimism wasn’t their strategy.

Demand #2 : Stop focusing on sins

The Left has become overly moralizing in its self-loathing of America’s genocidal and racist history, and the result is paralysis. We can’t demand that everyone apologize for the sins committed hundreds of years ago. I can’t apologize simply because I have never enslaved people or participated in Christopher Columbus’s genocidal campaign against the native Americans. The perpetual tendency of the Left is to moralize the past to such an extent that it normalizes guilt, self-hate and self-disgust. So crippling are the effects of the Left’s consensual self-loathing that any specter of hope or future ideal is rarely articulated. Why? Because we cannot talk about the future when it’s been dictated and imposed that we are all complicit in, for example, two World Wars and Vietnam.

Perhaps a better solution is to frame the historical past into ‘What we can learn from this?’ and juxtapose the answer to that question with ‘What kind of future should we create in order to ensure that those injustices do not reoccur?’. Likewise, when it comes to confederate statues that stand in the middle of a southern city, why not leave them up, and put up educational signs which explain to onlookers what subjugation, oppression, and dehumanization looked like in the old South (*Richmond, Virginia is doing this, and is the idea of an African-American history professor). The Left suffers from what’s called ‘presentism’ which fosters the tendency to interpret past events (e.g. sins) in terms of modern [present] values and concepts. The past has its own unique context that we can never fully step into and critique in a pure and uncontaminated way. Any of us would have easily been slaughterers if that ‘world’ was all we new and was enculturated into our personal worldview. And for that reason, we should focus on what we can learn from history’s brutal past, rather than moralizing it for the purposes of advancing a present agenda.

Simply put: we are not sinful because of our past. This thinking leads to passivity. We must have some type of pride for our future, if we are to work towards that kind of future.

Demand #3 : Stop assuming that national pride is white chauvinism

National Pride is not white chauvinism. Instead, national pride is what self-respect is to an individual; a necessary condition for self-improvement. If you have too much of it, you get hostility and imperialism, just as excessive self-respect can produce arrogance. Too little self-respect makes it too difficult to show moral courage. Thus, a lack of national pride makes effective energetic talk about change, unlikely.

National pride is a shorthand for a conception of what it is to be human. National pride illuminates such noble attributes like values, decency, virtue, dignity. National pride is a compass that points us in the direction of what we love and hope for in a society.

So what’s the point of national pride? National pride engenders unity that brings us together, along with a vision of what that looks like. When unity and vision conjoin, then there is something to be ambitious for and achieve. Both John Dewey and Walt Whitman, two 19th century major social thinkers, viewed the United States as an opportunity to see ultimate significance in a finite human historical project rather than in something eternal and non-human. They both hoped that America would be the place where a religion of love would replace a religion of fear. They wanted to put hope for a classless and casteless society in the place most commonly occupied by knowledge of the will of God. They wanted the struggle for justice to be the animating principle, the nation’s soul. For Dewey and Whitman, national pride was a cooperative project that utilized freely achieved consensus (democracy) to elevate justice, hope, and freedom.

Demand #4 : Stop with identity politics

The Left needs to stop focusing on identity politics and focus on solidarity. In America today, every group feels threatened to some extent. Whites and blacks, Latinos and Asians, men and women, Christians, Jews, and Muslims, straight people and gay people, liberals and conservatives – all feel their groups are being attacked, bullied, persecuted, discriminated against. What identity politics does is separate all groups into exclusive segments, which inevitably pits them against one another for a kind of “Oppression Olympics” to see who has suffered the most.

Fifty years ago, the rhetoric of pro–civil rights, Great Society liberals was, in its dominant voices, expressly group transcending, framed in the language of national unity and equal opportunity. The Left, however, has changed its tone. Now out-group members cannot share in the knowledge possessed by in-group members (“You can’t understand X because you are white”; “You can’t understand Y because you’re not a woman”; “You can’t speak about Z because you’re not queer”). The idea of “cultural appropriation” insists, among other things, these are our group’s symbols, traditions, patrimony, and out-group members have no right to them.

Rather than standing up for America, people are standing up for their particular sub-group. Rather than standing up for democracy, equality, and justice, the Left stands up against Beyoncé wearing an Indian bridal outfit, or white restaurateurs who build a business cooking authentic Mexican food, or if a white author writes a novel based on the experiences of a Chinese girl. When liberal icon Bernie Sanders told supporters, “It’s not good enough for somebody to say, ‘Hey, I’m a Latina, vote for me,’ ” Quentin James, a leader of Hillary Clinton’s outreach efforts to people of color, retorted that Sanders’s “comments regarding identity politics suggest he may be a white supremacist, too”. Really?

Identity politics fosters division and exclusion, while weaponizing each sub-group with an arsenal ready for battle. Unfortunately, the Left has cried wolf too many times. If the Left is offended by somebody saying, “All lives matter” rather than, “Black lives matter,” then how can we face the real trauma of, say, 44 million Americans (of all identities) having no health insurance?

Demand #5 : Stop having street parties as a guise for protests

Change in society comes by appealing to conscience, not by today’s so-called “protests”, or by blocking highways with marchers, or condemning segments of society as impure or sinful. Today’s protests are absent of any strategy to make actual changes to law – unlike the 60s. What even counts as a protest? Civil rights protests of the 60s involved an appeal to conscious. You forced people to confront the horrible things going on, and there were specific demands being made and they were directly made to an appeal to conscious, e.g. we should not be made to sit in the back of the bus. Today, what we call “protests” are really inconvenient street parties. What specific Occupy Wall Street demand do you remember? And think about how the Left handled a call for women’s rights in 2017. The solution was a nationwide block party of women (and men) donning pink p*ssy hats with their BFF’s and a Starbucks latte in hand. Do you think Capitol Hill was seriously nervous over millions of Leftist’s protesting with their goofy pink hats? Or do you think that shutting down a highway and frustrating the motorists in your city will force the police to be more just? If so, you’re being naïve. In contrast, when you had a sit down in factories or rallies against the Vietnam War in the 60s, it was actually part of a negotiation tactic that fomented change.

Protests can’t be a giant “F You!”. It can’t be that certain segments of society are deplorable and we demand in some vague way that they change. We have to operate within the system, the discursive fabric, which means you have to have some type of power that’s not a type of pseudo authority from on high, you have to appeal to conscious, or you have to persuade, or as with the workers you have to have a relationship with the people you’re trying to get to reach demands.

A protest that realizes this vision, is not simply a protest that condemns, or says America is bad because of all these atrocities. It says we all can work together for this possible future, and we’re all worthy of it, and we’re all capable of it.

Given the present tactics are not working, philosopher Richard Rorty suggested an appeal to conscience and persuasive arguments which gain sympathizers for a worthy cause. We see such tactics when we look back to political shifts like the civil rights movement and gender equality. With civil rights and gender equality, there is a stark difference in rights, or lack thereof, when you compare, say, 1910 with 2010. The reasons for the shift were persuasive arguments that appealed to the conscience of American society. It wasn’t name calling and violence in the street that united both sides, rather, it was people like Martin Luther King and feminist icon Betty Frieden who used their passion and mind to not only change minds but also change legislation. You simply can’t win people over by shutting down the highway for a march or castigating people who think differently.

The iconoclasts of the past that garnered tectonic change in society had one thing in common: they had a hope for a better future. As opposed to pessimism, talk that expresses hope of a future is what can catalyze change and spread like a contagion.

Final Words …

If I had a #6 demand, it would be, stop insisting we let everyone into our country. This #6 highlights a deeper thought that is weaved into my initial 5 demands, and it’s this: there is always a middle between two extremes. When feeling threatened, it’s consoling to gravitate to the extremes and hunker down. However, most often, cooperation and the collaborative process remains in the middle between the extremes. Just as we shouldn’t let everyone into the country, we should not give everyone a gun. The answer to our current vexing dilemmas lie in the shared democracy that takes place in the middle.

Christopher Hitchens once said, “the first step towards being stupid is being partisan.” In other words, we all become stupid when we hunker down with our tribe, and only our tribe. I listed my 5 demands because the Left has become so partisan, that a collective anxiety has taken over. This pervasive angst is paralyzing the Left making political action a distant option. Unlike most of the Left, in no way do I think the sky is falling, and I refuse to. It’s in my refusal, that hope, dignity and opportunity can remain viable pursuits for the America I want.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups . . . it is the rule. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Concepts as Absolute Truth

On By Gluteus MaximusIn Philosophy, Short Essays, Spirituality

 

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I was sitting in a Bible study last week and couldn’t help but notice how Christianity is built on a Mount Everest of human-constructed concepts. Within an hour, I heard such phrases as “God is love,” “God is just,” “It’s all about a personal relationship with Jesus,” and “God protects us.” What stands out with these concepts is that they are not beliefs that can be concretely known. Rather, they are statements of faith based on hope. I found myself smugly thinking, “none of these Christian concepts are even demonstrably real!” The implicit conclusion in my thinking is that Christian concepts are illusory, but I – on the other hand – possess concretely “real” beliefs. But this is not true at all.

A concept is an abstract notion, or general idea. Concepts are not regarded as facts, rather they are an amalgamation of ideas that form a basis or conclusion. Unlike an idea which is more akin to a mental inkling, a concept has gone through some fine-tuning with a start and end point. Everyone is guided by concepts in order to make sense of the world. Even the secular person abstracts concepts from this world and acts as if it’s concrete reality. Several secular examples include: (1) there is an inherent worth and dignity in every person, (2) we ought to pursue justice, equity and compassion in human relations, (3) a democratic process through collaboration and cooperation is more valuable than an authoritarian style, and (4) love is real. All four of these examples represent concepts that are abstracted out of “reality” and embraced as possessing some intrinsic real-ness. There are some heavy concepts laced into these four examples that secular people define and defend quite effortlessly. Words like ‘worth’, ‘dignity’, ‘justice’, ‘equity’, ‘cooperation’, and ‘love’ seem real and objective to the secular person, just as it seems for the Christian who utters with supreme confidence “God is love.”

Let’s stick with “love” for just a minute. For the secular person, even something as simple and common as love between two people may seem like an obvious concrete reality, but really, it has no sustenance. All love is, is a feeling abstracted out of a relationship that takes form and shape based upon how one defines “love.” One person may define love as being unconditional and/or a much deeper feeling than affection. Another person may define “love” as a feeling one experiences when they (finally) feel secure and not alone. There are innumerable ways to articulate love, however, we are at an impasse as to any type of precision that makes ‘love’ a concrete reality – it is simply a floating and fleeting concept.

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My point is whether it is love, justice, or human worth, these are concepts that we abstract from reality and give it a complexion that appears real and concrete. Just as Christians fight and kill for their abstract concepts (e.g. salvation), so do secular people for the sake of what they think is “right.” Ask ten secular people how to define “justice” and you’ll get eleven different responses. And ask ten Christians to define “image of God” and you will never get two answers that are the same.

Why is this important? It’s important because when we turn concepts into concrete objective reality, we fall victim to tunnel vision that only reveals our “truth,” which results in a type of tribalism that reinforces all-or-nothing and black/white thinking. The Christian falls prey to this when it comes to concepts such as heaven or hell, as well as the secular person when it comes to the concept of justice. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have concepts, because embracing concepts are inevitable. I’m simply encouraging us to not absolutize concepts, because in doing so we invariably retard our capacity to look to other viable possibilities.

Let’s face it, both Christian and secular people abstract from their world concepts that serve to help us make sense and articulate what appear true to us. Concepts, which are abstractions that we presume to mirror reality, are nevertheless our personal mental short-cuts that reflect our values and worldview. Thus, before we do an eye-roll at Christianity’s “delusions,” perhaps the secular person should reflect on their own concepts that are incubated in the same quicksand.

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