It has been 2 weeks since I’ve had even the urge to write and that is unusual. From a writing standpoint I am in my Elie Wiesel mode, where a better understanding is more the purpose than being understood. I could use an ‘Ah-Ha’ moment right now, it would make my day.
It has long been observed that religion and politics have no place in polite conversation. In Roger McWilliams’ self help book titled DO IT, religion & politics were referred to as The Gap. He had nothing to say or recommend other than it is a mine field with little to gain by going there. For the most part I follow his advice there. But like my hero Wiesel, writing is my way into the process. If I don’t shake the tree I end up sitting on my hands and that’s no good either.
Growing old can wear you thin but it beats the alternative. I reference myself with that distinction frequently, not that it has import in itself but with any story you need a point of reference. Long life gives me that. But this is not polite conversation and all I want here is the better understanding. I was 6 when FDR died and since then I have been through 14 presidents, going on #15. My parents were blue collar, Yellow Dog Democrats and that influence on me cannot be dismissed. My dad was in the skilled trades, a tool & die maker. It was their firm belief and who am I to argue, without trade unions we would have scratched out a sharecropper’s living in a tarpaper shack.
Our religion required we pray over food and at bedtime. Mom studied the bible, sometimes read aloud, other times she had us read to her. Sunday church was mandatory. In summer there was vacation bible school and a week-long, every night revival with an itinerant evangelist, dreadful prayers that put you to sleep, alter calls and baptisms. In self defense my dad said, “. . . we don’t fall down or hoot and holler like the Pentecostal’s down the road.” I got baptized at 13 because Mom said it was time. She asked if I felt the Spirit and I told her I did but I knew that was what she wanted to hear. What I got was all wet. With the benefit of hindsight and candor; from a lifetime of stumbling, falling and getting back up I think I can take a hard look at The Gap.
All religion has its roots in Myth (Joseph Campbell). By definition Myth is a man made story that uses familiar language and shared experience to explain the inexplicable (giants in the sky, hammering out thunder and lightning and supernatural powers that can save the soul). It is how humans flesh out a plausible story when experience is either inadequate or incomprehensible but very real, a metaphor that gives you something you can hang your hat on. Made up stories with happy endings can offset the grim reality of a scary, unforgiving world. A large part of that construct involves a fabricated, spiritual life boat that we call religion.
In a broader sense, religion has provided an important social matrix. Tribal clans were reluctant to cooperate with strangers. Religion allowed for large numbers of unrelated individuals to identify with each other and cooperate together (division of labor). It was necessary for the evolution of society and civilization. Myth did not go dormant after the Greeks gave us Zeus and Poseidon. Modern myth uses contemporary language and is compatible with modern times. But it is still the mind’s way of dealing with the inexplicable. We write poetry and build starships but we are no better than our primitive forebearers at rationalizing the mortality caveat.
I (me) understand that this life is temporary, that birth and death are knots at the ends of the same cord and I just have to deal with it. For those who can’t cope, they can take shelter in the myth. If you need religion in your life then by all means you should have it. My parent’s religion served them well. I wanted to please my mother and I did everything she asked but Jesus was just a character in bible stories like super heroes today. By now my abiding faith is in gravity, replication and photosynthesis. I take comfort in Mark Twain’s, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” When this life is through with me, my descendants will carry on. Whether or not there is a God is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter. Zealots who castigate others for following a false myth or demonize unbelievers for heresy are stretching the story, as if they can earn a greater reward in heaven.
Politics and religion; sometimes they overlap, you can’t tell where the one ends and the other begins. Consider the Taliban. Consider the ‘fall down, hoot & holler’ Pentecostals down the road. But for my purpose here, politics is nothing more than the process of making decisions that affect groups of people. It may be simple as two people deciding on the opera or a ball game, or complicated as two nations at war. The Conservative vs. Liberal rift that has divided America is what comes to mind. If you think it to be as simple as the issues, you must have drunk the Kool Aid. As a disclaimer remember; mankind has been negotiating collective decisions for at least 20,000 years under the illusion that common sense and free will are reliable. We know better now but the rift between knowledge and tradition creates a terrible stumbling block. The brain/mind makes decisions, often without our permission. That is usually predetermined by what makes us feel good or feel right as in (righteous) and how we feel is a revelation, not a decision.
Some people/cultures tend to be more impulsive while others more reflective. But all humans suffer the same hardwired program that gives us false confidence in our ability to do the right thing. Before there were people, there was no such thing as right or wrong. What is right or wrong, true or false turns out to be whatever we agree on and that is not as reliable as we trust it to be. Pogo, the comic strip character once observed, “We have met the enemy and they are us.”Throughout history, some lessons have been learned so we don’t have to repeat costly mistakes. That idea is true in some cases but evidently not others. Waging war out of fear and lust has never been put to rest and the curse of privilege & oppression is a thorny perennial with no apparent cure.
My ideological leaning is to the left, progressive if not liberal. I do question, even challenge my own feelings and I play the devil’s advocate against myself. When you do that honestly, with open ended possibility, having values and convictions that are carved in stone becomes difficult. You realize that right and wrong are parts of the modern Myth. I think it boils down to a few basic, acquired assumptions. First is the juxtaposition of centralized, authoritarian leadership with emphasis on material gain and vindictive punishment. Its counterpart is leadership that is diversified and collaborative with rehabilitation or consequences appropriate to the circumstance. Second, the one would cling to an unchanging, traditional model of vertical hierarchy and unswerving group loyalty. The other option is that change is good if it is managed with attention to an (egalitarian) greater good. Loyalty would be pragmatic, about looking forward in principle, not leaning back on iron clad traditional paradigms. Lastly, human nature gives us both a selfish, stingy side and a generous, sharing instinct. How they balance out is a reliable indicator of an individual’s political orientation. I would represent the latter possibility with all three examples making me progressive in the least.
I don’t care much for political parties, maybe necessary evils considering the way democracy and freedom work but they all suffer the risk of addiction to power. You can’t serve your constituents if you don’t get elected so the first order of business is fund raising and counter measures. In that game, ends justify means and there has never been a more direct path from noble intent to corruption and deceit. So I vote for candidates who believe as I do that we have a collective responsibility to help each other. Those who have more than they need owe it to a system that put prosperity within their grasp. Some believe that their success is the direct result of their own decisions and actions, and it is but it doesn’t stop with that. No mater if your success is one of just scraping by or one of grandeur, someone else’s, many other’s finger prints are all over it too. I think of the Christian parable of footprints in the sand. When all you can see is one set set of tracks you think they are your own but that was where someone else was carrying you. You can’t have it both ways. You have to work as if you are on your own but without a full cast of actors the show doesn't have a plot, the curtain never goes up. To say, “I got mine, you get your own” is untenable.
As a career educator my experience with poverty has been indirect, through children who lived with their mother or an aunt in a parked car or got shuffled around as need be from one relative to another. In school their most important lesson was lunch. I know enough to believe a comment from a radio interview with a single mom; “The hardest job in the world is being poor.” Of course my conservative counterpart would say, “It’s not my problem.” That opens a can of worms and I could go on but I have opened the door and drawn a line, exactly what I set out to do.
It has long been observed that religion and politics have no place in polite conversation. In Roger McWilliams’ self help book titled DO IT, religion & politics were referred to as The Gap. He had nothing to say or recommend other than it is a mine field with little to gain by going there. For the most part I follow his advice there. But like my hero Wiesel, writing is my way into the process. If I don’t shake the tree I end up sitting on my hands and that’s no good either.
Growing old can wear you thin but it beats the alternative. I reference myself with that distinction frequently, not that it has import in itself but with any story you need a point of reference. Long life gives me that. But this is not polite conversation and all I want here is the better understanding. I was 6 when FDR died and since then I have been through 14 presidents, going on #15. My parents were blue collar, Yellow Dog Democrats and that influence on me cannot be dismissed. My dad was in the skilled trades, a tool & die maker. It was their firm belief and who am I to argue, without trade unions we would have scratched out a sharecropper’s living in a tarpaper shack.
Our religion required we pray over food and at bedtime. Mom studied the bible, sometimes read aloud, other times she had us read to her. Sunday church was mandatory. In summer there was vacation bible school and a week-long, every night revival with an itinerant evangelist, dreadful prayers that put you to sleep, alter calls and baptisms. In self defense my dad said, “. . . we don’t fall down or hoot and holler like the Pentecostal’s down the road.” I got baptized at 13 because Mom said it was time. She asked if I felt the Spirit and I told her I did but I knew that was what she wanted to hear. What I got was all wet. With the benefit of hindsight and candor; from a lifetime of stumbling, falling and getting back up I think I can take a hard look at The Gap.
All religion has its roots in Myth (Joseph Campbell). By definition Myth is a man made story that uses familiar language and shared experience to explain the inexplicable (giants in the sky, hammering out thunder and lightning and supernatural powers that can save the soul). It is how humans flesh out a plausible story when experience is either inadequate or incomprehensible but very real, a metaphor that gives you something you can hang your hat on. Made up stories with happy endings can offset the grim reality of a scary, unforgiving world. A large part of that construct involves a fabricated, spiritual life boat that we call religion.
In a broader sense, religion has provided an important social matrix. Tribal clans were reluctant to cooperate with strangers. Religion allowed for large numbers of unrelated individuals to identify with each other and cooperate together (division of labor). It was necessary for the evolution of society and civilization. Myth did not go dormant after the Greeks gave us Zeus and Poseidon. Modern myth uses contemporary language and is compatible with modern times. But it is still the mind’s way of dealing with the inexplicable. We write poetry and build starships but we are no better than our primitive forebearers at rationalizing the mortality caveat.
I (me) understand that this life is temporary, that birth and death are knots at the ends of the same cord and I just have to deal with it. For those who can’t cope, they can take shelter in the myth. If you need religion in your life then by all means you should have it. My parent’s religion served them well. I wanted to please my mother and I did everything she asked but Jesus was just a character in bible stories like super heroes today. By now my abiding faith is in gravity, replication and photosynthesis. I take comfort in Mark Twain’s, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” When this life is through with me, my descendants will carry on. Whether or not there is a God is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter. Zealots who castigate others for following a false myth or demonize unbelievers for heresy are stretching the story, as if they can earn a greater reward in heaven.
Politics and religion; sometimes they overlap, you can’t tell where the one ends and the other begins. Consider the Taliban. Consider the ‘fall down, hoot & holler’ Pentecostals down the road. But for my purpose here, politics is nothing more than the process of making decisions that affect groups of people. It may be simple as two people deciding on the opera or a ball game, or complicated as two nations at war. The Conservative vs. Liberal rift that has divided America is what comes to mind. If you think it to be as simple as the issues, you must have drunk the Kool Aid. As a disclaimer remember; mankind has been negotiating collective decisions for at least 20,000 years under the illusion that common sense and free will are reliable. We know better now but the rift between knowledge and tradition creates a terrible stumbling block. The brain/mind makes decisions, often without our permission. That is usually predetermined by what makes us feel good or feel right as in (righteous) and how we feel is a revelation, not a decision.
Some people/cultures tend to be more impulsive while others more reflective. But all humans suffer the same hardwired program that gives us false confidence in our ability to do the right thing. Before there were people, there was no such thing as right or wrong. What is right or wrong, true or false turns out to be whatever we agree on and that is not as reliable as we trust it to be. Pogo, the comic strip character once observed, “We have met the enemy and they are us.”Throughout history, some lessons have been learned so we don’t have to repeat costly mistakes. That idea is true in some cases but evidently not others. Waging war out of fear and lust has never been put to rest and the curse of privilege & oppression is a thorny perennial with no apparent cure.
My ideological leaning is to the left, progressive if not liberal. I do question, even challenge my own feelings and I play the devil’s advocate against myself. When you do that honestly, with open ended possibility, having values and convictions that are carved in stone becomes difficult. You realize that right and wrong are parts of the modern Myth. I think it boils down to a few basic, acquired assumptions. First is the juxtaposition of centralized, authoritarian leadership with emphasis on material gain and vindictive punishment. Its counterpart is leadership that is diversified and collaborative with rehabilitation or consequences appropriate to the circumstance. Second, the one would cling to an unchanging, traditional model of vertical hierarchy and unswerving group loyalty. The other option is that change is good if it is managed with attention to an (egalitarian) greater good. Loyalty would be pragmatic, about looking forward in principle, not leaning back on iron clad traditional paradigms. Lastly, human nature gives us both a selfish, stingy side and a generous, sharing instinct. How they balance out is a reliable indicator of an individual’s political orientation. I would represent the latter possibility with all three examples making me progressive in the least.
I don’t care much for political parties, maybe necessary evils considering the way democracy and freedom work but they all suffer the risk of addiction to power. You can’t serve your constituents if you don’t get elected so the first order of business is fund raising and counter measures. In that game, ends justify means and there has never been a more direct path from noble intent to corruption and deceit. So I vote for candidates who believe as I do that we have a collective responsibility to help each other. Those who have more than they need owe it to a system that put prosperity within their grasp. Some believe that their success is the direct result of their own decisions and actions, and it is but it doesn’t stop with that. No mater if your success is one of just scraping by or one of grandeur, someone else’s, many other’s finger prints are all over it too. I think of the Christian parable of footprints in the sand. When all you can see is one set set of tracks you think they are your own but that was where someone else was carrying you. You can’t have it both ways. You have to work as if you are on your own but without a full cast of actors the show doesn't have a plot, the curtain never goes up. To say, “I got mine, you get your own” is untenable.
As a career educator my experience with poverty has been indirect, through children who lived with their mother or an aunt in a parked car or got shuffled around as need be from one relative to another. In school their most important lesson was lunch. I know enough to believe a comment from a radio interview with a single mom; “The hardest job in the world is being poor.” Of course my conservative counterpart would say, “It’s not my problem.” That opens a can of worms and I could go on but I have opened the door and drawn a line, exactly what I set out to do.
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