Category Archives: The World, The Flesh, and the Devil

Commentary and reflections on current events.

Occupy Evictions Are Raise Serious Concerns About Our Freedoms

Posted on December 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

Saturday morning around 4:30 Boston Police removed the Occupy Boston protesters encamped at Dewey Square. From what I’ve heard so far, the police seem to have behaved with more restraint than in other cities: no injuries among the 46 or so arrests. My Veterans For Peace chapter, which has openly supported and stood beside Occupy Boston, credits an ongoing relationship between Boston Police Superintendent Evans and the Occupy Boston protesters with avoidance of the excesses we’ve come to see around the country. Well and good; peaceful protests should not be met with heavy-handed tactics.

Nevertheless, some of the tactics employed by the BPD should still be causes of concern. Early morning raids seem to have become the modus operandi these days. These have always struck me as troubling; we know from history that totalitarian regimes use this tactic–think Gestapo, STASI, Stalin’s Internal Security, Peron’s and Pinochet’s secret police, and a host of other regimes. Nighttime raids guarantee a degree of cover, and once the deed is over & done with it’s easier to spin the event. Or at least it used to be. Now we have the internet, mobile phones, social media, and so on, so the night no longer hides everything. Still, Occupy members report that…

“Credentialed press, citizen journalists, academic researchers, and #OccupyBoston media members were repeatedly corralled and moved to surrounding areas 50 feet away or more, prohibiting many from thoroughly covering the raid. From pointing lights in photographers’ lenses to targeting the two official #OccupyBoston USTREAM live videographers for removal, officials went to great lengths to block media access.”

Clearly there’s an attempt to adapt on the part of the police, though it’s self-evident that such efforts are not completely effectual. The point, however, is that this country’s police forces are behaving less like community-centered constabulary, which one would like to believe takes a narrow and restrained view of “keeping the peace,” and more like a national force intent on controlling the unruly masses.

The fact that Occupy Boston has ultimately been “dealt with” like other Occupy protests raises a number of points, not the least of which is the self-evident coordination between mayors and police around the country. While not in itself a bad thing (witness the successful spread of community policing over the past two decades), the fact that such coordination was done in response to citizens exercising their Constitutional right to protest against both their government and the corporate world should at the very least raise a flag. As the examiner.com reported last month, the coordination was not about so much about responding to specific & local legal issues as finding the procedural means and rhetorical cover to end the protests. The apparent participation of the FBI & Homeland Security should make us all concerned about the attitude of those in political and social power towards ordinary American citizens. Developing a consistent, nationwide set of talking-points, willingly and uncritically disseminated by the media, to justify heavy-handed, even militaristic police tactics is not to be taken lightly.

The extent to which all of this reflects a unified, systematic process to silence dialogue, debate, and protest on the status quois an open question. Yet one does not have to delve into the murk of conspiracy theories to be understand that the effects are the same. Whether the cause is an oligarchic group of power elites or an institutionalized attitude of distrust of the people, one of the fundamental pillars of our democracy–the right to petition the government for redress of grievances–is threatened.

This issue is neither left nor right. While my own politics and social sensibilities are certainly left-of-liberal, I try to listen to and understand those who consider self-identify as conservatives (or at least those who articulate their beliefs using reason rather than emotion & aggressive jingoism). The Occupy and Tea Party movements have some fundamental similarities; though they often advocate for different solutions, both movements spring from long-term frustrations over  our governmental institutions’ increasing inability to serve the interest of the citizenry. The Tea Party has not engaged in direct actions as the Occupy Movement has, and as such has not been targeted by authorities (though we can probably guess that many of its members have been kept under surveillance). And much of the libertarian sensibilities of Tea Party members has played well into the hands of politicians whose loyalties lie more with the corporate world than with the American people. Still, it seems to me that Tea Partiers should be upset at how their legitimate anger over the corruption of our government by wealth and power has been co-opted & effectively neutralized by disingenuous politicians and irresponsible media organizations. I think we can be assured that if those on the right took a more activist approach to their protests, they would be handled in much the same manner as those on the left.

The problems that lead to both the Tea Party and Occupy movements show no signs of going away. Nor does the default, heavy-handed response. But when we consider that the anger & distrust is not just an American phenomena but is surfacing in countries around the world, it seems clear that confrontations will both continue and escalate, here and abroad. It’s critical that protests remain non-violent, though that will become more and more of a challenge as the reactions become more and more harsh (which I have no doubt they will once it becomes clear that the protests will not end with the removal of tents). If we are to have a more peaceful & just society, peace and justice must be practiced from the start.

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Posted in peace & justice, The World, The Flesh, and the Devil

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Remembrance & Compassion on 9-11

Posted on September 11, 2011 | 1 Comment

It’s hard to imagine anyone living in the United States who doesn’t know thattoday is the 10th anniversary of 9-11. September 11, 2001 is etched in our collective consciousness as few other events in American history have been. One would be hard-pressed to count the number of remembrance events taking place today; from grand, civic events like New York City’s to small, more intimate services in churches, synagogues, & temples, (and–yes–mosques), today will be a day for mourning the nearly 3,000 lives lost on that day. This is right and good. It is important to take time to recall those lives, and how those loses touched us all. These are things that unite people into a community, be it large or small.

On this day, it is also important to remember the families and friends of those who died. Our sadness over those deaths is and should remain the source of compassion that we feel for those whose pain of loss will never go away.

It may be argued that today should be strictly for remembering those who died ten years ago or were immediately touched by those deaths. Unfortunately, compassion–once felt–has a tendency to expand, reaching out to others who suffer.

This day should serve, too, to remind us of the lives lost and families that suffer as a result of 9-11. The first responders who spent days and weeks in the toxic ruins of the Twin Towers carried the devastation in their bodies and minds, and many of them died as a result of their dedicated service. Many more struggle with the after-effects, their suffering exacerbated by cruel bureaucracies & politicians who have denied them the health care they deserve.

The events ten years ago also propelled our country into two wars-of-choice. As of this morning, just over 7500 American servicemen and women have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than twice those who died on 9-11. They, too, have families for whom the pain of loss will not end. Of the hundreds of thousands of others who were sent off to those conflicts, tens of thousands returned home wounded in body and mind. They, and the families who care for them, should be remembered on this day, too.

The ripples of suffering for ten years have expanded even beyond America as a result of the wars, to include millions of people of in Afghanistan, Pakistan, & Iraq whose lives have been forever shaken through death, the collapse of society, displacement, and mental & physical trauma. By some estimates, between 1 & 1-1/2 million Iraqis have died, and tens of thousands of Afghanis & Pakastanis, as a direct result of American (and British, and NATO) policies post-9-11. Just as those murdered on 9-11, the vast majority of these people did nothing deserving of death. They should be remembered as well.

We do no dishonor to those who died on that Tuesday ten years ago when we recall those who have suffered and died subsequently if our remembrances inspire a spirit of compassion in us both as individuals and as a people. We are at our best when we feel and act on compassion towards others. It matters little whether those others are close to home or far away.

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Posted in peace & justice, The World, The Flesh, and the Devil

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The Devolution of American Discourse

Posted on August 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

I haven’t posted as much as I have wanted to over the past couple of weeks; I keep trying to bounce back from this chronic, upper-respiratory condition that I’ve had since Iraq. Aside from the annoying chills and sweats, it leaves me very fatigued and cognitively dull. I saw a doctor this week who specializes in toxicity, so hopefully over the next few months we may get some answers.

I wanted to write today largely because of a series of exchanges on a friend’s Facebook page. The English major in me can’t say in one sentence what I can say in a paragraph, so my posts tend to be somewhat long (if you’re reading this, you’ll understand). But even more, the topic under discussion was about the violent rhetoric that seems to permeate an unfortunate amount of the political discourse today. This is neither a simple nor an easily discussed topic; considering the amount of cliché, sound bites, and ultimately meaningless words and phrases meant to inspire emotional response (“liberal,” “conservative,” “communist,” etc.), I also think that it’s best to make oneself as clear as possible by steering away from such terminology. So let me recap briefly the issue.

I’m certainly not the first person to have noticed the incivility and outright hostility that currently passes for “political dialogue.” Not that I think that there’s ever been a time in American history when we’ve discussed differences in the marketplace of ideas as civilized, thoughtful, dignified human beings. However, it seems to me that we at least used to hold that as an ideal to strive towards. This is no longer the case. Neither side of the political spectrum–right or left–is innocent; however, the political right seems to be much more tolerant of harsh, even violent language in advancing its agenda. Case in point: the number of so-called “jokes” that circulate in which the current president or another political figure is harmed in some way. One or two such incidents can be dismissed, but when these go on for years at a time, and appear against a background of strident, hostile, ad-hominem attacks, we see a symptom of a much larger problem.

It would take a large number of sociologists and historians several years to tease out all the different threads that have gone into creating the current climate. Personally, I think it goes back at least to Ronald Reagan. I can recall very well comments he made which portrayed those who disagreed with his policies as un-American, traitors against the country and all it stood for. This began a 30-year process in which those who identified themselves with the political right felt it was acceptable to demonize those who held alternative beliefs. Over time, the appellation “liberal” lost its meaning and came to simply signify “a person set out to destroy America.” And, in true McCarthy-era style, terms like “communist” and “socialist”, also devoid of their original meanings, became joined to “liberal” to create visceral, irrational anger directed towards anyone on whom the label fell.

Along with the devolution of discourse, the hyper-emotional nature of right-wing rhetoric unsurprisingly came to employ references to violence. It’s understandable: if one perceives his or her home as being under threat, and if that person believes that violence is an acceptable means of resistance, then violence becomes a viable option. This is not to say that people who identify themselves as “conservative” or “on the right” advocate or will engage in violence; what it does say is that violent language and behavior becomes a part of a mindset that underlies one’s politics. And because this is based largely on emotions rather than rational thinking, as soon as a dialogue becomes emotional, out comes the violent rhetoric. I see this happen in particular when people are confronted with facts and logical arguments that call their viewpoints into question. Rather than arguing back with facts and logic, rather than having a dialogue, out come the accusations and threats.

I have personal experience with some of this. After I returned from Iraq, I was involved in several organizations working to put a stop to this illegal, immoral, and unjust war. I gave talks & speeches and participated in rallies & protests. Quite a few times, there were so-called “counter-protesters” who screamed–literally screamed–vulgarities, slurs, and threats at me. I particularly resented being called a traitor, as I had given 20 years of my life to military service, and deployed to a war that I didn’t believe in because I felt duty bound to do so. [An aside: I find it interesting, too, the hypocrisy of having been told one must always support one's president in time of war, until the president comes Obama.]

We also have to acknowledge the debt we owe to Fox News in having contributed to the erosion of civility. This is not simply because I dislike Fox News–although I do. Rupert Murdoch and his crony Roger Ailes make no secret of their conservative, pro-business bias, and their willingness to do anything to advance their beliefs. Now this in itself may or may not be a bad thing (although I still have this antiquated notion that news reporting should be as objective as possible, not biased). The problem is that Murdoch and Ailes have a long record of willingness to engage in distortions and outright lies to advance these beliefs. This was of course aided and abetted by the conservative Ronald Reagan who did away with “the fairness doctrine,” which from 1949 until 1988 required news broadcasts to be balanced in their reporting (another antiquated notion that an intelligent electorate could make up its own mind if given all the facts). Anyone who believes that Fox News is truly “fair and balanced” is remaining willfully ignorant of the facts. Murdoch made his fortune in sensationalist, tabloid news; it’s what he knows, and is what he uses.

Of course I can’t say that there is any one person at Fox News who openly advocates violence against “liberals”. However, by continuing to feed people’s negative emotions, by continually telling them that the people who disagree with them want to destroy their homes, their families, and their lives, such reporters, anchors, and pundits become part of this larger problem. While one cannot say that Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity encouraged a specific act of violence, their over-the-top rhetoric and demonization of others creates an environment where violence can happen. Sad but true: people can be pushed to behave in anti-social ways. It was none other than Hermann Goering, Luftwaffe Reichsmarschall, who said, “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

One of my professors in graduate school always asked the question, “who does this benefit?” The beneficiaries of the hyperbole-driven, intolerant, violent-laced rhetoric are those who seek to maintain the economic and political status quo. Economically, the United States has seen a decrease in the standard of living over the past 30 years, where the earnings of middle-class and working-class Americans have stagnated or fallen, and the wealth of the top 10% has risen. Additionally, corporations have been granted the same rights as human beings, even though corporations are political entities, some of which possess wealth in excess of many countries. Only a person living in a fantasy world would imagine that the American economy is a level playing field for all participants; the game is rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful corporations. Politically, the divide within the American people along this arbitrary left-right, liberal-conservative spectrum serves to ensure that the majority of Americans spend more time questioning the sanity and patriotism of other Americans than they do pay attention to the laws and policies that continually erode their lives. The phrase “divide and conquer” comes to mind (see the Goering quote above).

One of the ironies in all of this is that there actually seems to me to be broad areas where so-called liberals and conservatives actually agree. For example, the rise of the “Tea Party” over the past couple of years shows the anger that many Americans feel towards their government. I and many of my friends on the left completely agree with this anger. The problem is that the justifiable anger becomes co-opted into a political movement which ultimately supports the interests of big business, as well as the political status quo. The American people, naturally, lose out.

So what’s the answer? I don’t know. There is an inertia that has built up over 30+ years that’s going to be hard to resist. However, I do have faith in the American people. I believe that most Americans are honest, hard-working, tolerant, and fair-minded, no matter what label one puts on them. I believe that most Americans are perfectly capable of setting aside bias in order to engage in meaningful discussions that can reach common ground. But this is going to have to happen at the grass-roots level; we cannot expect our political, social, or business leaders to bring this about. For my part, even though I’m still somewhat prone to anger (one of those things that war does to you), I try very hard to respond to those who attacked me with calm, reason, understanding, and compassion. I always hope that I will be accorded the same respect, of course; ultimately, it’s all I can do.

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Posted in News, The World, The Flesh, and the Devil

Self-Actualization and privilege

Posted on July 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

[The following was a posting for a psychology course I'm taking this summer.]

From the time I was first exposed to Maslow years ago, I’ve always held his theory of self-actualization being the goal of human development close, both professionally and personally. At the least, it acknowledges what so many people intuit, that life has more to do with meaning than existence. But even more, the goal of self-actualization (using his term) is both practical and achievable for individuals rather than something only available to ascetics living in mountain caves.

But what I find myself wondering about is the processes by which an individual can strive for self-actualization. I well understand that his hierarchy of needs is a description and not a prescription, that a person moves up & down the pyramid many times in her or his life. Drawing on my own experiences, particularly having come into adulthood through a working-class background, I wonder how an individual for whom the lower strata of physiological and safety needs are still salient can move further towards self-actualization. Maslow’s theory seems to imply that one must move up the pyramid sequentially, but is this in fact always the case? Yes, we can easily imagine that a person who is thirsty, hungry, in need of shelter, under threat, etc. can’t be expected to keep his or her mind on achieving transendence. But we all have the image of the above-mentioned ascetic for whom physiological & safety needs are no longer a concern; we assume that that person has overcome & surpassed their influence through some process to the point where even food, water, and air are minor factors in their lives. How does a person transcend those in the real world?

I’ve been reading two books lately: Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi and Dorothy Day, by Robert Coles. Both of these saints’ extraordinary lives are inspiring, but I’m also aware that both begin their lives with their physiological, safety, and belonging needs largely met. In fact, it seems to me that the majority of narratives of the lives of those who achieve some degree of stabilized transcendent state are those of people who begin from a place of privilege. Taking nothing away from the struggles of their personal journeys, their early lives permitted them a degree of freedom to pursue self-actualization (again, to use Maslow’s term) that many others don’t have.

My interest here is largely practical. What examples do we have of individuals whose lives are more precarious, who grow up without many material & intellectual resources, but who still achieve the degree of self-actualization/transcendence/enlightenment of those who start from more privileged positions? Is it possible to overcome the power of those lower needs without having to first secure them? And given those examples, what generalizations can be made about the process by which a person transcends privation & want without first working to gain those material resources with which others begin? If this can be articulated, then it seems more likely that self-actualization can be shown as a realistic goal to all and not just the few.

[Just a final note: I firmly believe that there are many examples of people who transcend want to achieve profound states of consciousness. One has only to visit places where basic needs are in short supply to see these people. What I’ve had difficulty finding are the narratives and studies, at least to the extent to which we find those of individuals from more privileged backgrounds.]

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Posted in conscience, Psychology, spirituality

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Plato’s Cave & The Problem of Pain

Posted on July 8, 2011 | 2 Comments

[The following was a posting for a psychology course I'm taking this summer.]

I first read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in an undergrad philosophy course and have never forgotten it. I’ve used it many times in my own teaching, usually in the conventional way of prompting my students to think about ways of knowing, looking at things in a new way, and so on. Personally, though, I’ve focused upon a different aspect of the story over the last several years, that being the difficulty of bringing new knowledge (or, in Plato’s terms, knowledge itself) to the prisoners. I’ve always like the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph:

Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.

Of course, we all know what eventually happens to Socrates, but many people who “see things differently” know the frustration of trying to communicate those visions to others, sometimes suffering, like Plato’s philosopher, ridicule and worse. But I don’t want to dwell too much on the price one pays; rather, I’m interested in the challenge of making understandable that which is only partially or vaguely grasped by others.

A key element herein is, I think, pain. The philosopher feels pain when “compelled to look straight at the light” that creates the shadows. Being forced out of the cave into the sunlight is even more painful. Upon returning to the cave hoping to liberate the prisoners, he/she again feels pain, this time of the loss of the more perfect sight, followed by the pain of rejection by those who refuse to even listen. Pain, then, is an integral part of  experiencing a more…(advanced? complete? inclusive? holistic?) understanding of…(the world? reality?).

We’ve all, I’m sure, experienced the pain of letting go of old ways of thinking and behaving as we grew into new and better ones. We probably have also felt the desire to share these new ways with others. As in the Allegory, part of coming to new ways of understanding seems to be the need to make others aware of these ways and, in doing so, hopefully change their understandings as well. But too often we forget about the pain that is apparently part of the process, and the very human desire to avoid pain (suggestions here of hedonism & the Pleasure Principle). If one truly wants to teach new understandings, it seems to me that that person must do so with compassion and tolerance. It is hard to let go of beliefs and values, biases and habits, that one has had for years, even decades, particularly if those form the basis of that person’s world-view. The philosopher-cum-teacher’s role is to help the person transition from understanding to understanding in stages, acknowledging the difficulty of the process.

All of this seems fairly well understood in counseling circles where goals relate to overcoming internal & external pathologies to achieve a more functional, hopefully happy, life. I think it’s also well understood by some of those who counsel & teach others towards Maslow’s “self-actualization” (or, in more religious terms, “enlightenment” or “grace”). One of the reasons I’ve been drawn to transpersonal psychology (& ITP specifically) has been its ability to bridge the established understandings with more progressive ones: more directly, with being able to speak of transcendent experiences and insights in the vocabulary, style, & syntax of an empirical, materialist world. Plato’s philosopher doesn’t necessarily have to fail.

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Posted in Philosophy, Psychology, The World, The Flesh, and the Devil

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Deconstructing The Green Lantern

Posted on July 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

One of the pleasures of summer is to not only have the time to do things like go to the movies but also the time to think. Yesterday Anne, Mary & I saw The Green Lantern; it was a fun diversion for a warm, humid Sunday afternoon. As a movie, I would have to give it 3-4 stars (out of 5). The plot was somewhat formulaic & predictable; but the writing was otherwise good enough, and the actors accomplished enough, to keep it one’s interest going. I would recommend seeing it–for fun. But this is not going to be a movie review.

As we were waiting for the movie to begin, I found myself thinking about the spate of superhero movies over the past several years. It has long been argued that we tell ourselves stories about superheroes during times of uncertainty, unrest, or dramatic social change. The argument goes that people need reassurance that their world is an orderly place, where truth & justice will triumph in the end, where a few special individuals will rise above the norm to restore order & defeat the forces of chaos & destruction. The appearance of Superman (1938) and Batman (1939) after ten years of Depression and on the brink of another World War are held up as classic examples of the theory. In a capricious & mutable world, these characters and their exploits provided not simply escape but the reinforcement or reaffirmations of beliefs and values. Certainly the superheroes of the War years–Captain America, Wonder Woman, The Green Lantern, The Flash, et al–were obvious responses to those dark times. But my point here is not to cover territory that others with more knowledge & talent have already discussed (Wikipedia articles on Superhero and Superhero Fiction are as good a place to start as any, but Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay gives an excellent, Pulitzer-Prize-winning overview of the topic). Rather, I wanted to look at the society that is giving new life to this venerable genre.

Hal Jordan, the protagonist of the story(-ies), is a Top-Gun-style test pilot. The Hal Jordan test pilot character goes back to the 1958 rebirth of The Green Lantern (the original Green Lantern was a train engineer), a time when test pilots really were superheroes, so the character is not an Everyman by any means. The movie tries to soften this a little in making Jordan’s pre-Lantern personal life a mess: at one point he admits to his young nephew that he is irresponsible & negligent (although he can really fly). Still, Jordan possesses extraordinary qualities from the start, which already raises him above the mortal sphere.

I find it interesting that most superheroes are, at their core, “super.” Of course, there are those who are by nature “others,” insofar as their pedigrees are  extraterrestial (e.g. Superman), divine (e.g. Thor), or mythical super-human (Wonder Woman, Aquaman). But those who begin life as humans already have, generally speaking, personal qualities that set them apart: Jordan is a test pilot, Bruce Wayne/Batman is exceptionally rich, Brit Reid/The Green Hornet is a wealthy newspaper publisher, Tony Stark/Ironman is a billionaire industrialist & engineering genius, Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk is a brilliant physicist, and so on. The inborn “super”-ness of mortal superheroes leads to a couple of conclusions that seem to speak volumes about contemporary life. [Note: There are a few notable exceptions, such as Spiderman, Captain America, The Daredevil, etc.; perhaps I will devote another posting to discussing these deviations from the superhero norm.]

Given the above argument that superheroes speak to anxieties that people experience when their society is unstable, their futures uncertain, their values challenged, it follows that “ordinary people” experience some degree of powerlessness. Moreover, the mechanisms by which people feel empowered have been undermined, eroded, or destroyed altogether. We know that society is not working for us “ordinary” folk. We also know that those for whom it is working live lives wholly different from our own–politicians, the upper echelons of business-people, celebrities, professional athletes, and so on. Even if we do not see these people as villains, we are still conscious of the fact that “they ain’t like us.” If, however, we do see as malign either the successful people or the society that separates us from them, then clearly the person-in-the-street does not have much hope of success, even if success means simply keeping what one has. Only someone with “super” abilities can stand up to the super-villains who have corrupted our world. We need saviors.

Basic to the struggle between the superhero and his or her nemesis is what Tom Wolfe discussed in The Right Stuff as the lone-warrior-in-single-combat motif. Even if we stretch a super-villain into a metaphor for some aspect of modern life–Parallax, Hal Jordan’s/The Green Lantern’s adversary, gains his power by feeding on fear, so it could be argued that he represents the fears & anxieties that define late-industrial, capitalist society–we are prevented from seeing the superhero as a representation of modern humanity by his or her super nature. The superhero is and always will be an “other.” It is the superhero, the lone warrior, who battles for humanity against forces that mere mortals cannot resist.  Collective action is laughably useless: at best hopeless martyrdom, at worst ignominious destruction. Our role is to run or/and die.

The superhero genre is at once conservative and liberal, at least in the more sociological definitions of those words. Because superheroes battle against nemeses that seek to tear down society–literally or figuratively–they struggle to preserve the common good. In a world where individuals feel helpless–be it the fictional world of superheroes & super-villains or the real-life world of depressed economies, wars, political corruption, and corporate greed–we want to feel reassured that those values and beliefs upon which we have built our lives can be successfully defended against the scoundrels who attack them. We want things to be the way they were (even if “the way things were” was not really all that great to begin with). Superheroes are not revolutionaries.

In the same sense, superheroes reinforce liberal beliefs. Liberalism, as it has been understood in this country since the 19th century, holds that one’s society can be improved through thoughtful, systematic change. Sometimes such changes can be unpleasant, even drastic (e.g. “The New Deal,” “The Great Society”), but liberalism does not believe that the fundamental system is itself at fault. The superhero, again, is not a revolutionary. His or her role is to mitigate and rectify the damage to society inflicted by those forces too powerful for the collective action of ordinary people. The superhero will change things, through his honesty and her sense of justice, but he or she will not change things too much. Only villains do that.

It is probably obvious where I am going with this train of thought. Superheroes and superhero fiction entertain us, but they also disempower us in subtle ways. Although they are born out of the fear and anxiety we feel as a result of all the pressures put upon us in and by contemporary society, they also take away the idea that ordinary people like us can stand against the forces, the super-villains, that create those fears and anxieties. We are the damsels in distress awaiting our white knights. Moreover, that white knight is not going to change the system that imperils us in the first place; he is simply going to remove the peril and restore what was. And await the next peril, of course.

In disempowering the common person, the superhero motif points to a very real danger: believing that this politician or that businessperson, this religious leader or that self-help guru can correct our problems and restore order to our world. On both individual and social levels, entrusting our futures to others has generally proven to be unwise. Literal superheroes are fictions, and figurative superheroes are by definition rare (how else can they be “super”?). Our world is not threatened by intergalactic monsters, nor by evil geniuses in subterranean lairs. Rather, our threats are of a much more mundane nature, though not necessarily any less destructive. Such threats do not require superheroes. These dangers can be met & overcome through the principled actions of individuals, acting collectively.

People like me want very much to see fundamental, systemic changes in our society. But, you know, I would be happy with simply tackling the worst problems for the time being.

Yes, yes, I know: superheroes and super-villains are works of the imagination and should be enjoyed as such. Hey, I was English major, and I teach literature (and film), so I both know and embrace the argument. I enjoyed The Green Lantern, as I have enjoyed the Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Ironman, Megamind, Kung Fu Panda and all the other movies starring superheroes. They are fun. But their entertainment values should not dissuade us from looking through the genre, through the motifs, to see the very real world from which they spring. And having seen that world, we cannot sit and passively await for a superhero to show up & make things right.

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June 16, 2004–The Sacred Wound

Posted on June 16, 2011 | 8 Comments

June 16, 2004

I began writing this entry earlier today, and had several paragraphs written before I realized I was hiding. For the past 5-1/2 years, my VA psychologist (a woman to whom I quite literally owe my life) has been patiently coaching me to speak of my feelings rather than explaining my thoughts. I have been gifted with some intelligence, but I too often use the rational as a mask for my emotional side. I’m doing it now, in fact. But the truth is that Iraq & its aftermath has been, is, and will remain an emotional battleground within me, so I’ll leave my “thoughtful” description of how I got to where I am for another post. Today I need to write from the heart.

Because today marks the seventh anniversary of my mobilization with the National Guard for the Iraq War.

It’s one of those “anniversaries” that have come to punctuate my life since I returned in late 2005 and began living with PTSD. For those who carry the lingering affects of trauma, anniversaries can be triggers for troubling memories, anxiety attacks, poor sleep & bad dreams, relationship issues, and (for some) problematic behaviors. At least, these are the affects that I’m most familiar with, having been learning to manage them over the past 5-1/2 years. All things considered, I think I’m doing fairly well; despite this disability, I’m able to work full time, and the most important relationships in my life–those with my wife and children–are not only sound but have even grown stronger in many ways. Still, I’m not sanguine about how my mobilization for & participation in the Iraq War has impacted my life. I’m not the same man I was seven years ago.

I was betrayed. We were betrayed. And I can never again–never again–trust the men & women who have been placed (by…?) in authority in our nation’s institutions.  I have promised myself, my family, my God that I will never again allow myself to be an agent of evil wrapped in the flag of patriotism.

I have been angry for seven years. I’m angry now. I’m angry at what I was made to do. I’m angry at how the sincere, honest, and honorable intentions of the men & women in my unit were taken advantage of by cynical, venal, self-righteous men. I’m angry at how the military, an institution that I gave twenty years of my life to, was made to prosecute an unjust, illegal, and immoral war against a nation that posed little threat to us. I’m angry at the cost my family has had to pay for my service. I’m angry–very angry–over the thousands of young American lives snuffed out by this war, and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have suffered & died as a result of what we as a nation have done. Most of all, I’m angry at myself for having been a part of this.

Anger is an emotion that springs from the very core of our being. It’s a symptom, really, rather than a state. I’m angry, but I’ve followed that anger deeper into myself to discover that it springs from a hurt deep within–a wound, as it were. No bullet or shrapnel pierced my body, but Iraq wounded me, wounded my soul. Not only seeing evil all around me but also realizing I was participating in that evil cuts & burns very, very deep. Such realizations slash through one’s self-image, one’s view of humanity, one’s faith in institutions and (for some) even in God. One’s self is left is tatters.

The turning point in my healing was coming to believe that this soul-wound need not lead to death–spiritual or corporal. Some wounds can lead a person to become a new person altogether, one who is wiser, stronger, better at being him- or herself. Some wounds can become sacred.

I’m by no means suggesting that I’ve achieved any degree of enlightenment as a result of Iraq. I haven’t, and I doubt that I’ll come anywhere near that state any time soon–probably never in this life. But having understood that wounds of the spirit can potentially lead one to a better place, I’ve been able to move beyond the all-consuming pain & anxiety that I felt early on. The pain and anxiety can serve a positive purpose; and, although I have little idea what that purpose might be, I can live with the hope.

I never wanted the experiences of the past seven years, just as I never imagined that they would cause such a dissolution of the old “me.” It has happened, though, and I believe that I will eventually emerge a better person for having lived through these experiences. At least, that’s my hope, and my prayer.

—–

A footnote: It’s been a surprise how isolating these experiences have been. I’ve been very fortunate to have a wife and children who never gave up on me during those dark years after I returned home. With their love & help, I was able to learn again how to show love & affection, how to laugh & cry, how to live as a part of a family. It must be like a stroke victim learning to speak and walk again by using different parts of the brain; for me it was learning to love using the undamaged parts of my heart.

On the other hand, I’ve learned how few people are willing to come up to a person and ask truly how he or she is doing. I suppose people are uncomfortable with approaching someone struggling with PTSD. Perhaps our seemingly isolating behaviors are taken personally. Perhaps there’s a fear that asking, “How are you?” will somehow trigger a sort of negative response. I don’t know. What I have come to see is how few people whom I have considered friends have been willing to simply maintain a personal connection to me, how few people are willing to help support my healing. I suppose such things are easier when the damage is physical: cancer, a missing limb, a crippling disease. But, that’s another thing I’ve learned to accept & live with; it does, however, add to the sadness.

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Posted in family, News, The World, The Flesh, and the Devil

Why I stay home on Memorial Day

Posted on May 30, 2011 | 1 Comment

For the majority of Americans, Memorial Day marks the beginning of summer. It has become our national summer solstice, the bonfires and welcoming of the summer sun being replaced with picnics, barbecues, family get-togethers, and so on.

Some Americans, however, recall that Memorial Day is the day that has been set aside to remember the men and women who died in America’s wars. It is marked by the placing of flags on the graves of those who served and wreaths at the national cemeteries to honor the fallen.

I used to be one of the latter. I participated in the marches to cemeteries, listened to the speeches in honor of our American dead, held back tears at the playing of taps, and generally tried to contribute my feelings to the secular prayer of remembrance. As a veteran (and up until a few years ago, a member of the reserve forces), I felt it to be a particularly important act of solidarity with my brothers & sisters in arms who not only “answered their country’s call” but “gave the last full measure of devotion.” For me the truths that underlay the cliches were tangible. I always seemed to feel the lives that had been cut short by the sudden violence of war, lives that were every bit as full and complex as mine. These were people with whom I shared a bond, and that bond required my remembrance & honoring of their lives on this day.

Then I went to Iraq.

If anything, my time overseas has deepened the emotions that Memorial Day has always inspired in me. As I have always made plain, my experience of war was far, far less than that of many. I never pulled the trigger of my weapon while aiming at another person, nor do I believe that anyone ever had me specifically in his sights. I experienced the death and destruction of war from one degree of separation; the IED explosions, rifle fire, RPGs, rockets, and mortars were always just beyond my bubble. I cannot even say that I ever felt really consciously afraid while I was “there” (though my psychologist has helped me to understand that, unconsciously, I felt fear for almost an entire year). The proximity was enough, though, to change how I experience Memorial Day. The bond that I felt for so long has moved beyond the concept of “honoring the dead” to “grieving for those we lost.”

I’m going to indulge in generalization and say that I don’t believe any normal person goes off to war intending to die. He or she may fear, perhaps even anticipate, the worst, but I doubt that it is anything other than unusual for a soldier* to feel that his or her death is inevitable and inescapable. Our will to live is strong, and even being surrounded by death doesn’t necessarily manifest a death wish. Even the soldier’s fatalism–”If it’s your time, it’s your time”–implies that life is always the preferable option.

But war is and has always been about death. No matter how much it’s glamorized, no matter how much we paint it over with ideas like “duty” and honor,” war is about death. The death of others and the possibility of our own. And death in war is not clean. The human body was not built for absorbing steel-jacketed bullets, red-hot shrapnel, concussion waves, intense & immediate heat, and all the other means that people have devised to tear apart other human beings. As so many warriors have remarked over the centuries, there is no honor or glory in battlefield death. Those are terms the living use to deal with the horror of war.

This is why I’ve chosen to stay home on Memorial Day since 2006. I feel that solidarity with the dead even more for having been close to the dead. The dead have faces for me now, faces of the men & women with whom I served for twenty years. All the speeches and flags and parades and bugle calls cannot hide those faces from me. I feel grief far too deeply, and I feel it far too personally to share with a crowd of others.

Perhaps it’s alright in a larger sense to honor the fallen. I will certainly never presume to take away the sincere sentiments of those who remember the dead, even those whom we only know through a name on a brass grave plaque and a small American flag. For me, though, no speech, no flag, no parade, no playing of “Taps” can hide the horror that is war. No collective memorializing can, for me, mask the individual deaths of the men & women who never wanted to die. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. The grief from the loss of all these individual lives combines into the heat of a bonfire that overwhelms me, heat that holds me in thrall while threatening to consume me. I am left looking at the brutal, awful, distillation of, in Joseph Conrad’s words, “The Horror! The Horror!

I cannot participate in Memorial Day because the substance of its meaning is too much for me. When I think of the dead on this day (and as I write this I find myself thinking especially of four soldiers who died on a hot August night in 2005 about five klicks from where I stood), I find myself wishing that we as a nation could honor our brothers and sisters, our husbands and wives, our sons and daughters by dedicating ourselves to the goal of never having another person sacrifice his or her life in war–any war.

In the meantime, perhaps Memorial Day should be about forgiveness.

* I’m using soldier in the generic to refer to any person in the military sent to war–soldier, sailor, marine, airman; it is not intended to slight the member of any service.

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Enjoying Vacation WAY too much

Posted on May 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

(Note: I began this entry during April Vacation but only just got around to finishing it.)

It’s been a couple years now since I began noticing how much better I feel–physically & emotionally–during school vacations. I keep telling myself that it’s still at least four more years (until Mary graduates CC), and that I shouldn’t think too much about life after teaching. Doesn’t work. I’m sitting here looking out the window into the woods behind our home, six days into April Vacation, and thinking about how much I’ve gotten done in the past couple of days and enjoying the doing. I’ve gotten more writing done on my story than in the past six months, have gotten bills & budgets taken care of, have started prepping the walls of our sewing room/office for painting, continued reading three books, taken several naps…and I’m feeling better than I have in months.

When Anne was at Seattle U, she took a philosophy course in which she had to read Josef Pieper’s book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture. She told me that I had to read it, which I did. It remains one of the books that has a major influence on my thinking. Although there’s much more to Pieper’s argument, the basic thesis is captured in the title: it is leisure time is what allows culture to develop. This has serious implications on both a personal and societal level.

Our late-industrial, consumer-capitalist society has made the very concept of leisure anathema. Those who work more-or-less continuously are extolled as paradigms of virtue; those who take “too much time off” (an idea subjective at best) are considered unreliable slackers. At the same time, members of this society show alarmingly high instances of stress-related physical and emotional disorders. The Wikipedia article on Chronic Stress lists the following among the symptoms resulting from long-term stress:

  • social isolation
  • upset stomach
  • headache
  • backache
  • insomnia
  • anxiety
  • depression
  • aggression
  • loss of concentration / poor concentration
  • heightened confusion in mildly stressful situations
  • inability to complete tasks
  • suicidal thoughts

Can anyone doubt that these not only erode the quality of individuals’ lives & relationships but also create broader economic and social problems? 

The Wikipedia article on Stress Management lists a number of strategies currently in use to combat the ill effects of stress, some of which are…

What is striking about all of these is that they take time, time away from the source of the stress. Time that could rightly be considered “leisure.” One wonders why these activities must follow on the symptoms of stress. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a social structure that allows the time for such activities before chronic stress sets in?

I’ve always been a bit suspicious of the motivations behind those who push stress-management techniques of any sort that seem intended simply to return the person into the environment that produced the stress in the first place. It’s not qualitatively different from medicating people so that they can continue to perform their work. [I recall during my Navy years coming home after a particularly grueling two-week cruise in which I spent way too much time keeping equipment running and far too little time sleeping. Anne hit the roof when I told her that the hospital corpsman had given my "uppers" to keep me going (I had to stop her from turning the car around and hunting out the captain.] Again, it makes far more sense to create a structure in which stress is mitigated before or while it happens rather than after it becomes a problem.

The benefit of increasing the amount of time off is not limited to just individuals; it would benefit society as a whole. Even a consumer capitalist economy would do better by having a well rested, emotionally content workforce. The forty-hour workweek didn’t break the American economy when it was introduced in the late nineteenth & early twentieth centuries; in fact, the increase in productivity was what influenced the business world to accept it as a good idea. By extension, can’t it be argued that a 40-week work year, or a 30-hour work week, or both would have similar results?

The benefits of reduced work and increase leisure time go beyond, however, the narrow economic concerns of the business classes. Pieper’s arguments point out that the things that make up modern cultures–the arts, literature & writing, philosophy, learning, travel, experimentation, etc.–spring from people having the time to pursue them, i.e. “leisure.” Culture might contain work; culture certainly not work. It is through having the time to pursue the elements of culture that we become fully human, I would argue. It makes far more sense to me that we encourage & celebrate leisure time than treat it as some sort of social pathology.

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Fathead

Posted on May 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

I posted the following on a forum at http://jimharold.net–which, by the way, I highly recommend as both an entertaining and thought-provoking website & podcast. The subject was the documentary Fathead, by Tom Naughton (http://www.fathead-movie.com/), which argues that a diet high in protein & fat is actually healthy. Nevertheless, I found that I had a few problems with Naughton’s tone. Here’s my original post:

__________________________________

A good interview, and I will certainly check out the video.

That said, I’ve gotten to an age where I’ve had to acknowledge the extent to which I’ve been far too trusting of people who argue from positions of certainty. Several of Mr. Naughton’s comments raised flags, such as referring to a “radical” vegetarian agenda (“radical” is, in my experience, most often applied to social progressive whose beliefs challenge the status quo), George McGovern (a favorite target of political conservatives until Jimmy Carter) having been the driving force behind the FDA’s low-fat initiative, and his use of the term “personal responsibility,” which has been used by economic conservatives to excuse all sorts of corporate wrong-doings (hey, you chose to eat unhealthy food and live an unhealthy lifestyle). I hope that this is a combination of an unfortunate choice of words and my own sensitivity after having been attacked (many times viciously) by social & political conservatives.

I DID take a look at fathead-movie.com, and was pleased to see the extent to which Naughton challenges the cozy relationship between the government and big-agra. I also appreciate the references he’s given to support the legitimate science behind his arguments. He has important points to make about low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets that are worth serious discussion.

He loses me again, however, in his questioning the idea that there is a place for the government in helping citizens manage their health. I’ve no problem with the idea that our government–liberal, conservative, bureaucratic–screws things up, often times to the detriment of the very people it is supposed to serve. And I agree that these cases incidents seem to come from taking biased & ideology-based positions. If the FDA, CDC, & other three-letter agencies have adopted the “liberal” positions that he & many of his commentators argue take away our individual freedoms, these same groups have also taken “conservative” positions that favor the bottom lines of corporate interests & the business world’s manipulation of information over the good of the American citizenry. The question then becomes, where does a member of this society turn in order to find unbiased information (such as that which Naughton purports to champion)? Do we expect each individual to spend the time surfing the internet & weeding through the mountains of information to reach informed conclusions? Do we turn to the corporate world that cares only about profits? Do we turn the “radical” organizations pushing this or that narrow & ideology-based belief? The answer seems to me to hold public, governmental agencies accountable for acting in the public interest rather than saying they have no place in the discussion.

Personal responsibility is a noble ideal, but in a society as complex as ours one cannot simply dismiss something like obesity as a lack of personal responsibility; this seems to be a case of preferring to blame the victim. The reality is that many Americans live on marginal incomes, are two paychecks away from bankruptcy, and struggle to stretch their earnings in an economy where real earnings for working & middle-class Americans has not changed in 30 years. Compare the cost of foods that are high in sugars and carbs to the cost of those high in proteins and it’s no wonder huge swaths of the population consume these foods. And, yes, people can eat less. But we have to also consider that many of these foods create those “feel-good” sensations based in biology that we developed to put ON fat to avoid starving to death in times of famine. Then we have to add in the subtle but constant pressure through the various meda from those corporate interests that want us to consume these products, remember that most of advertising works on the unconscious mind, not the conscious. Naugthon seems to deride the notion of corporate responsibility; given the economic power these corporations have, and the success they’ve had in having themselves declared as having the same rights as individuals, his dismissiveness seems more an act of corporate favoritism than supportive of individual freedom. After all, look at how hard the food industry has fought against having to declare what their products actually contain. Do we really think that an individual can exercise her or his responsibilities in the face of the profits-above-all mentality?

I guess it comes down to my feeling that the very serious and valid points Naughton makes are undercut by the manner in which he presents them. I’m willing to admit that I’ve been led astray in the past by people whose facts got intermingled with ideology. Seeing ideology peeking through his work…well, fool me once, etc.

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