It occurred to me today that an honest, humble patriotism would be preferable to what we have now.
I’ve written about my concerns for America in posts before, but I’ve recently had some pretty significant discussions with some close friends of mine, and I think that maybe one of our greatest problems is our patriotism.
Before you start screaming, “Hey, what’s wrong with patriotism?!?!”, let me explain.
Unfortunately, I think that the patriotism that is pretty prominent in America today is actually nationalism, in a philosophical sense. The philosophical term, ‘nationalism’, could be described as, “a belief in the supremacy of one nation –its culture, society, interests, etc.– above all other nations, and the promotion of that nation to the detriment of others.”
Patriotism is something else entirely. Patriotism doesn’t force itself on anyone, and patriotism is also not elitist. While patriotism may include a pride in one’s country and its way of life, it doesn’t pretend a supremacy over other countries or other ways of life. While patriotism is, by and large, defensive and unassuming, nationalism is predatory and antagonistic.
When I hear people talking about “America” and “patriotism” and “the land of the free”, and so on, they do it so aggressively these days that I can’t help but think that they aren’t being patriotic –> they’re being nationalistic. Before you start to wonder whether or not there’s really such a big difference, let me illuminate an example.
* * *
There’s a sub-movement going on right now, in light of the recently heightened national awareness of racial injustices, to get Colin Kaepernick reinstated to the NFL and signed by an NFL team. For those of you who are unaware, Colin Kaepernick was a starting quarterback who protested police brutality and racial inequality during the 2016 NFL football season by sitting and/or kneeling during the National Anthem. Not long afterward, he found it hard to get a job because of the widespread disapproval of his actions.
If you want to start a fight among your family and friends, bring up Colin Kaepernick and kneeling during the national anthem and disrespecting the flag; that should do it. If I had a dollar for every person that I knew who, back in 2016, thought that Kaepernick was a jerk and/or an idiot and/or a traitor, I’d be taking us all out to dinner at a fancy restaurant.
I remember in 2016, when this was happening, I had black students in my classes that wouldn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance when we did it at the beginning of the school day, every day, either. They were not alone. Our school district, that serves a significant population of black students, drafted a policy to allow for them to “not pledge allegiance”.
But, I can’t say I blame Kaepernick, or those students of mine. Not one bit.
I think our nation, and its failures, deserve close scrutiny. I believe that any nationalism, that clouds the minds of the people so that they can’t see that we’ve got some serious problems to fix, is pretty dangerous. Any rabid love for the United States that would go so far as to deny our brokenness, both historically and currently, should have a light shone on it. I applaud Colin for saying, publicly, that he was not comfortable paying homage to a nation who treats its citizens —ANY of its citizens– poorly, as part of any systematic approach.
Anyone who loves this country must want it to be better than what it is, and right now, as Kaepernick tried to tell us, racism is still a problem. If you find anyone who says that they love this country, but they aren’t opposed to the racism that has been a part of this country’s history FOR WAY TOO LONG, then they don’t really love this country. True patriotism should include in it a desire for us to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday.
* * *
When we understand that patriotism is modest and that nationalism is arrogant, you really only need to ask yourself this question, if you want to find out which mode our country has been stuck in lately: “Has our country, recently, been honestly looking at where we’re at, as a nation, to try to determine how we might make improvements?”
I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in making sure that we keep the American experiment going, if that just means that we are going to try to postpone, for as long as possible, the horrible death of our democracy. We should be making progress, we should be advancing, we should be looking for new paths to continue to ensure that our nation has an identity and a way of life worth believing in. If America, and the people of America, aren’t going to take it upon themselves, as a nation, to improve our society, then we are just putting off the inevitable point in the future where we are finished.
But, here’s the kicker –> any process for making progress has to start with identifying our weaknesses, our failures, and our inadequacies. One of the most dangerous problems with nationalism is that it is so closely linked with pride and arrogance and conceit to be able to easily look itself in the mirror and say, “We’ve got a long way to go, still.”
I’ve always believed that there’s a cycle of unrest for our country, and it tends to happen every fifty or sixty years, if you look throughout our history; the people of this nation look around and are saddened/disgusted/outraged that no progress is happening. So, they instigate change and, for a while, things improve and progress occurs. But then, it’s almost as if we spend a certain amount of time making progress and then we get tired or bored or sick of it –so we stop. Then, the progress stops. And it only takes a certain amount of time after that for the new generation to look around and be saddened/disgusted/outraged that no progress is happening.
It also occurs to me that, maybe, there are events that coincide with these periods of progress, goads that lead to the outrage that lights the fire of progress. With the pandemic happening right now, and the national spotlight on police brutality and racism, you wonder if it just takes a little bit to shake people awake enough so that they look around and say, “Hey, things shouldn’t be this way.” Maybe the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam, in the sixties and seventies, shook people awake back then, as well.
I just wonder whether or not the overwhelming pride that you get these days from our current variant of patriotism is appropriate. Are we really the example that the world should follow? Have we really done such a great job handling our national responsibilities that we ought to think highly of ourselves? I don’t know about you, but I’m just as broken as the next guy/gal; I’m trying to handle my failings in my own agenda of progress.
It occurred to me today that I have been deeply impacted by The Incredibles.
Now, before I get terribly involved in a discussion of why I think it is that Elastigirl ended up with the wrong guy in the movie, and I why I think she should be with me, instead, allow me to get serious for a few paragraphs.
For me, a significant part of the story is the story of Buddy Pine, the young boy tossed aside by Mr. Incredible as a crazed fan when Buddy tries to reach out to him, to ask if he might be Mr. Incredible’s sidekick. Buddy ends up using the negative energy of that rejection to become Syndrome, a powerful nemesis that Mr. Incredible, with his wife, Elastigirl, and their family, ends up fighting at the end of the movie, for “all the marbles”.
In fact, if you were to plot the progress of Mr. Incredible’s character as he makes his way through the movie and visualize that alongside the progress that Buddy makes –albeit the wrong kind of progress– it’s arguable that Buddy is a more progressive character than Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible’s alter-ego). Not long after Mr. Incredible casts Buddy aside, he and his fellow superheroes, world-wide, are forced into the underground because of society’s growing discontent with having to deal with the fallout from their shenanigans. Bob Parr does not take this very well, and spends a good part of the movie pouting. Meanwhile, since he couldn’t be Mr. Incredible’s sidekick, Buddy (either consciously or sub-consciously) seeks to become the focus of Mr. Incredible’s attention as his nemesis, instead.
And even though Syndrome loses in the end –for he must, of course– I can’t help but admire the degree to which he is able to take the lemons that life hands him, to make the best lemonade that he can. The rejection that powers his ambition for most of the movie, even though it’s quite a dark brand of motivation, is a productive path; in fact, Syndrome, over the course of the movie, is a much more productive individual than Bob Parr, who is only really able to pick himself up by the bootstraps when he is engaged (secretly) by Syndrome in doing the antagonist’s bidding.
* * *
A different sub-plot of the story, which happens to also be the sub-plot of a story about two of the greatest superheroes of all time and their animosity with each other, comes out in a scene about two-thirds of the way through the story, when Syndrome reveals that he, an inventor without any particular super-powers to speak of, intends to one day sell his inventions to allow for everyone –with the money– to become empowered.
And this is the line that sticks with me, wherever I go:
“And when everyone’s super, no one will be.”
And I’ve often thought of that line, from time to time, because it is much more of a general statement on society than, perhaps, the writers were ever intending. What Syndrome means, most certainly, is that he intends to destroy the entire superhero class by making it so that there is no difference between those who have super powers and those who could buy the tools that would make them super powerful.
This desire to destroy what the Parrs –Bob, Helen, Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack– have is vengeful angst resulting from Buddy’s rejection by Mr. Incredible. Syndrome intends to make Mr. Incredible pay for that rejection by rendering all of humanity “super” so that the thing that makes the Parr family special would cease to be that rare.
But, if we pan back a little bit from this specific statement, we can see that there is a lot of truth to these words on a larger scale.
The things that make some people ordinary and others extraordinary are often the abilities that we have. The doctor who is able to perform the most delicate of surgeries is extraordinary. The basketball player who can fly above his opponents to dunk the ball in the hoop is extraordinary. The author who writes the stories that people just can’t wait to read from cover to cover is extraordinary.
Our admiration of those people, who have abilities that we would wish for, is an admiration that wouldn’t exist if everyone was capable of those same feats. Who would we admire if we were all able to do the things that our “heroes” do?
Additionally, this is another approach to looking at the age-old question: “Which is better? Talent or hard-work?” I think that, as a society, when we look at those people who we might identify as extraordinary or super, we tend to assume that they have some skill that we don’t have and couldn’t obtain, which makes them as unique as they are, when in fact, it might more often be the case that the unique and super individuals among us are just those people who have worked hard enough to become so excellent at something that they rise above the level of everyday ability. We don’t want to look hard-work in the face anymore; our easy society doesn’t want us to have to work hard for anything.
Of course, the other side of that argument is that there have been plenty of individuals who have worked very hard and have never arrived at the level of ability that others seem to just naturally possess.
* * *
And of course, the other two superheroes who face off against each other on opposite sides of this “superpower vs. supertools” debate are Batman and Superman. Batman has no superpowers, but it doesn’t keep him from being able to be a super hero, because he has the tools that make him super powerful. Superman, on the other hand, is a super hero because of his super powers. Truth be told, Superman is an alien, and Batman sees Superman –and the power that he has– as a threat to Earth. Batman takes it upon himself, in the Batman v. Superman story line, to attack Superman in defense of the planet.
This story compares pretty similarly to the Bob Parr/Buddy Pine story in The Incredibles. If it weren’t for the fact that Syndrome is so obviously the antagonist in the movie, you might be hard-pressed to try to identify which of those characters –Syndrome or Mr. Incredible– is more worthy of the “hero” moniker. Certainly, from what we see in the movie, Sydrome is the harder worker. He has to strive and struggle for every advancement that he is able to make toward being somebody worthy of Mr. Incredible’s attention, while Mr. Incredible just seems to take his super power for granted.
They say that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. I think both of these characters are made to realize, through different circumstances in the film, that wanting something and not having it can be powerfully motivational. Through hard work and/or natural talent, I happen to believe that everyone can be super.
It occurred to me today that part of the problem is following the rules.
As I am writing this, America is single-handedly powering the global resurgence of the Coronavirus, after so many countries did so well in flattening their infection curves. Just the other day, in fact, most of the European nations decided to deny entry to American citizens because we don’t seem to be handling the business that’s in front of us.
Additionally, it’s such a shame to think of all of the work that we did back in March and April and May, quarantining and distancing and the whole nine yards. As I’m writing this, America’s worst day ever for new cases wasn’t March 29th or April 19th or May 9th; America’s worst day for new cases was yesterday, July 1st. If you don’t believe me, look it up. Then, tell a few friends about it.
The reason that we are having such a hard time with this, as a country, is simple: you can’t tell Americans what to do. The country was founded by people who were sick of being told what to do in Europe, by their respective governments, more than two centuries ago. So, they decided to come over here –a distance removed from the retaliatory power of their respective governments– so they could thumb their noses at their respective governments. This led to the war of our independence from those respective governments, and our Declaration of Independence, etc., etc..
America is a nation built on freedom, independence, and thumbing our noses at people when they try to tell us what to do. And it worked, for a while anyway; America’s love for freedom was something that powered us through the pioneering of an entire continent (whether or not the Native Americans would have something derogatory to say here; and I should know, since I’m a card-carrying member of a tribe that is still technically at war with the federal government), and then it powered us through the Industrial Age, as America rose to become a superpower in the world. And, freedom and independence and love for our country helped us to power right through the second half of the twentieth century, as the Soviets stared us down and we stared them down, missiles armed and ready.
But, unfortunately for America, and the great experiment that has been going on therein, something else was going on alongside all of these wonderful conquests that we were notching into our collective, national belt, something that would eventually allow for our nation to start to crumble. Throughout the twentieth century, as we were showing the world how powerful we were, and they were all quite impressed, according to the (American) history books, the cancer inside of us was taking form.
You see, the things about freedom is this: it goes hand in hand with responsibility –> you can’t have the one without the other.
The founding fathers weren’t fighting to create a nation where people were free to make any ol’ decision that they wanted. They were fighting to create a nation where people are free to make the right decisions, the responsible decisions. We have a responsibility to make right decisions. And, it didn’t used to be the case that people disagreed on what is right and what is wrong, but twenty-first century America has opened up every declaration of right and wrong for debate.
The great American experiment in freedom and independence is starting to fail, and it began when we ditched our responsibility for choosing rightly.
* * *
I am just now thinking about the European decision to deny access to American travelers, largely because we have failed to live up to our responsibilities. And I’m thinking about World War II (I’m working on a novel right now, and one of the main characters is a World War II vet, so that’s been on my mind a lot lately) and how America did away with a foreign policy of isolationism to enter the war. Of course, we were welcomed into the fight, as allies, to defeat the Axis powers.
As a matter of fact, we waited for more than two years to join the Allies, if you count the start of the war as Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. To be honest, we needed to be goaded into the fight –which Japan decided to do by attacking Hawaii– otherwise, who knows if we’d have entered the war at all.
And now, almost 79 years after we were welcomed by Europe to help them in their fight, the Europeans have shut us out because we can’t go so far as to wear our masks, stay away from other people, and embrace the horror of what we look like without a haircut. The responsibility that we took in our hands, as we rose onto the international stage in 1941, ready to open up a can on those who would violate human decency, is now a responsibility that we regularly shirk because (in a whiny voice) it’s too hard.
My wife hates it when my posts end up getting negative, and I sense that things are starting to turn that way, so I should steer away.
I said earlier that you can’t tell Americans what to do. The thing is, it used to be that you didn’t have to tell Americans what to do. Until just recently, we were doing the right things, being responsible, without anyone having to tell us. I don’t know how we got from this place where we did what was right because we knew it was right, but we’ve got to get back there.
America is at its best when it is worthy of being the example that the world has historically looked up to. The example that we have been, of independence and freedom and responsibility, can be ours again, if we rededicate ourselves to being responsible, to being honest and caring and polite and loving and faithful –> those things that people all over the world recognize as noble and desirable. We can restore what our forefathers had in mind when they founded the country, if we can return to FREEDOM WITH RESPONSIBILITY.
All we’ve got to do is get back to following the right rules.
It occurred to me today that I could really use a dollar for every time I’ve heard “I’m sorry”, without there being any sorrow.
Have you ever done something impulsive that you regretted doing later? Who hasn’t, right?!?! Try to bring to mind a time when you’ve done such a thing.
Let me ask you this: this thing that you did, the thing that was regrettable, was it wrong? Most people, with a decent moral code, would regret having done something wrong, if it truly was the wrong thing to do.
Or, let me ask you this instead: have you ever done something that was right that you regretted? Have you ever done the right thing, but it was a bad choice?
What is the difference between regretting something and being sorry for something?
* * *
My wife came home from a bike ride the other day and said that her hands had fallen asleep during the ride, as she was gripping the handlebars and the hand brakes. I told her I was sorry, and she said, as she so often does, “It wasn’t your fault.”
Whether or not it was my fault, I’m still sorry –> sorry that it happened to her.
To be sorry for something doesn’t assume responsibility. I am sorry that clean water is a significant problem for billions of people in the world, but I am not responsible for the dirty water that plagues all of those people. To be sorry means ‘to have sorrow’, and sorrow is a feeling of sadness or grief. It makes me sad that there are children who can’t receive an education because their chief familial responsibility is to walk several miles, one way, every day to collect water for their family’s needs. I am saddened and grieved by that situation.
But that doesn’t mean I’m responsible for it.
And, to go a little further with this example, there are even some things that I can do to try to rectify that situation; I could donate to organizations (and I do) that are working to get clean drinking water to more people in more parts of the world. Doing this makes me feel better –> it helps to alleviate my grief and sadness. In the same way that I might pick up a piece of trash that I find on the ground and throw it away, I can work to try to fix things that are wrong in the world, even if they’re not my fault.
Maybe, to get back to my original example, I could adjust the handlebars on my wife’s bike, to try to fix it so that her hands don’t fall asleep during her rides. Figuring out who’s responsible for the handlebars being that way –if, in fact, anyone at all is responsible– doesn’t accomplish as much as fixing the problem does.
And none of this answers my original question.
Why is it that people say, “I’m sorry” so often? Is it the case that every “I’m sorry” contains in it the sorrow or the grief that the statement implies? I would suggest not; in fact, I would suggest that it is, more often than not, just something that we say, whether we are grieved or not.
* * *
When the kids were younger, and I would catch them doing something that they shouldn’t have been doing, they would say, “I’m sorry”, when I knew full-well that they weren’t. And I would tell them, “No, you’re not, because sorrow includes a desire to change, and you’ll probably do this again.”
While I haven’t had to say that in a long time, since the kids are now much older and more responsible with their decision-making, I don’t even know if I would say that to them. I’m not sure that I was correct to begin with.
I’m not sure ‘being sorry’ includes any intentions to change.
The funny part about those interactions with the kids, all those years ago, was when I would bring some consequence to bear for the choices that they made. It was then –and maybe only then– that they’d be really sorry.
Or, perhaps, that’s what regret is? Or remorse?
Now, I think I am starting to get somewhere with all of this.
* * *
During the winter of my senior year in high school, I was dating a girl that wasn’t a good match for me. I suspect that everyone knew it –> everyone except for me, anyway. We weren’t a good match because we were headed in different directions, cut from different cloth. I was headed to a major university for the upcoming school year, and she had no plans for education after high school. I was taking AP Physics and AP Chemistry and Calculus my senior year; the only class that I had with my girlfriend, that I remember, was choir.
She broke up with me on February 11th, 1994. We were heading out to celebrate Valentine’s Day. I’d bought a stuffed puppy dog and a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates for her. She broke up with me as I picked her up to go out for the evening; we never even got out of her driveway. I think I went home, ate half the chocolates, and ripped the stuffed puppy limb from limb.
At the time, I would have done anything to have avoided feeling that heartbreak, that SORROW and GRIEF. I was sorry for what had happened, for sure. But, it was about six weeks after that Valentine’s Day from hell, that I ended up taking a different girl out on a date. That girl is sitting in the room next to where I’m writing this, and she’s my life-long best friend and the love of my lifetime.
In February of 1994, I was ‘cut loose’ by my girlfriend who was, I suspect, a more mature person, at the time. She did me a favor, even though I would have sworn at the time that it was anything but a favor. The sorrow of that moment, and the regret that I felt about the decision that she made, are gone. What seemed regrettable and unfortunate, at the time, is no longer so.
* * *
I think we should stop saying “I’m sorry” in situations when we have no sorrow; it’s just not an accurate thing for us to say. It would probably be more to the point for us to say “I regret that”.
I think a big part of this issue for me is the understanding that, many times, people are often only upset about their behavior when it brings upon them negative consequences. We make choices, to do what we do, and we regret those choices –sometimes– when they were the wrong choices, but more often, we only regret our choices when they have unpleasant ramifications.
The speeder who gets pulled over and gets a speeding ticket for $200 might regret the decision to speed, but would they have regretted the choices if the speeding ticket was for $25?
I additionally find it exceedingly rare that remorse even enters into these situations much any more. The speeder who gets pulled over and ticketed –whether it’s for $25 or $200 or $1000– is probably going to end up speeding again, because there’s no remorse. While we can cause a person to be sorry for speeding (“Where am I going to come up with $1000? Woe is me!”) and you can make them regret their choice (“Well, that was an expensive decision!”), remorse seems to be something that people decide for themselves.
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “I’m sorry”, without there being any sorrow, I’d be rich. If I had to pay back a dollar for every time that I’ve done the wrong thing without any remorse, I think I’d be back where I started.
It occurred to me today that fifty-fifty is really half and half.
Way back in the early days of this writing adventure that I started, many days ago, I wrote a couple of posts, back to back, that discussed the lesson that I’ve learned from Sudoku (you can find those posts HERE and HERE, if you’re interested). Sudoku is part of my daily routine; I complete at least a couple of puzzles everyday. Normally, if the Sudoku puzzle from my daily Sudoku calendar doesn’t challenge me for very long, I move to a puzzle from a book called “Master Ninja Sudoku”, by Frank Longo.
The thing about the puzzles in Mr. Longo’s book is that, often times, I will reach an impasse in trying to solve them. It’s at this point, when all of the tricks that I know for solving a puzzle have gotten me as far as they’re going to, that I need to make a guess on one of the squares. And once I do, assuming that I’ve guessed correctly, it’s all that I end up needing to move forward with finishing the puzzle.
I try to avoid guessing on squares until I am absolutely sure that the square is one of only two possibilities. That gives me a fifty-fifty shot at getting it correct. Of course, the other problem that I have is that I do my puzzles in pen, which means if I end up making a mistake, it’s going to be very messy trying to clean things up.
This morning, as I was finishing one of Mr. Longo’s challenges, I guessed on a square that was either going to be a 2 or a 3. I turned out to be right, and the puzzle unfolded right in front of me. As I finished filling in the squares, based on what I knew to be true from my guess, it got me to thinking about the fifty-fifty scenario.
* * *
At the start of major sporting events (at least football games), you will often see that a coin toss will be a determiner as to which team gets to make which choice. They do this because you have a fifty-fifty shot at guessing which side of a coin is going to come up when you flip it. Sometimes, the guess will be right. Other times, the guess will be wrong. In a football game, the winning guess will allow the team to choose which side of the field they want to defend and/or whether they want to receive the first kick-off of the game. Now, at the end of the day, whether or not the guessing team gets their choice or loses the coin-toss is not a terribly significant part of the game –if it were that significant, we’d just record the result of the coin toss and everyone could go home (maybe they should play COVID football this way, less physical contact)– but it’s a fair way to make some of these decisions at the start of a competition.
One of the interesting things about the fifty-fifty guess is that half of the time you will be right, and half of the time you will be wrong. And, if you want to kill some time and dive further into this concept, sit down with a piece of paper and a coin sometime. Flip that coin fifty times, guessing heads or tails each time, and record whether or not you were correct. You may notice some interesting things. First off, I’d be willing to wager that your end number is probably going to look something like, wrong – 27 times, right – 23 times, and it’s much less likely to look something like, wrong – 7 times, right – 43 times. Also, you may notice that you can go on quite a string of correct guesses, every now and then. Such a series will usually be followed, at some point, with a corresponding series of bad guesses.
* * *
Thinking about the fifty-fifty scenario got me to thinking about half and half.
I didn’t know this before I looked it up a minute ago, but half and half is 50% cream and 50% milk. The combination of the two gives you something that is not so thick and fattening, but it also gives you something that is thicker than the watery consistency of milk. Basically, half and half is an attempt to combine two things to make something new that carries with it the advantages of each of its component parts. A peanut butter cup is part peanut butter and part chocolate –> they used to market the peanut butter cup as “two great tastes that go great together”. Or, there’s Dove soap, that has moisturizer in it, so it cleans while it moisturizes.
I’ll bet you can think of your own examples of creations that have been designed to be a combination of two other things that are great when they’re combined together.
One of my favorite ways to do something like this is the portmanteau. If you don’t know what a portmanteau is, it’s the combining of words together to make new words. For example, did you wake up too late to have breakfast, but you’re hungry and you don’t want to wait till noon? Then you can enjoy brunch. Do you want to stay at a hotel, but you want your car –or motor– to be right outside your room? Then, look for a motel. Or, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can be more easily referred to as, Brangelina (at least back when they were together).
And, while many of these things are fifty-fifty splits like half and half, it is worth noting that we tend to do this a lot. If you want something to put in your coffee, but you don’t want to add milk and then also add cream –> go for the half and half. If you are going to use ketchup and mayonnaise on your sandwich, you might as well just reach for the mayochup (yes, it’s really a thing).
* * *
I guess, in the end, the lesson is this: you try to do your best in life to leave as little to chance as possible. You try to make sure that you are making the wisest choices that you can, and avoid guesswork whenever possible. But sometimes, guesses have to be made because the best research and planning doesn’t account for everything.
When it comes to guessing, when you have to do it, sometimes you’ll be right and other times you’ll be wrong, just like it is day about 50% of the time and night 50% of the time. The day has its beauty, just as the night, but when you combine them into dusk or dawn, you get to enjoy the real beauty of the sunrise or the sunset.
Over the long hall of guessing that is a part of life, it all evens out (in the fifty-fifty scenario, at least); sometimes a guess leads to the day and sometimes a guess leads to the night. When you even out all of these guesses, over time, they lead to dawns and dusks that aren’t half bad in themselves.
It occurred to me today that we might be suffering because of a lack of classical knowledge.
Now, don’t get me wrong; there are many things that I am enjoying about the twenty-first century. The availability of information has been nice, but I wonder about the quality of that information and the sources of that information. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want to, but I think that there are probably people who manipulate what’s available on the internet –for easy access– to keep people who use the internet in check, to keep them believing in certain things.
Another problem that exists in the modern convenience of the internet, despite how much I, like many Americans, appreciate it, is that having things made easy for us has the unfortunate side effect of making us soft, intellectually speaking.
More to my point, I’ve been wondering about this experience I keep having, where I encounter classical philosophical knowledge, and each time, it seems like the greatest new truth that I’ve never heard of before. It shouldn’t be the case that I’ve been unaware of these authors and their wisdom, in the midst of a life of education and seeking knowledge.
As an example, I have a book of positive quotations that I use to try to motivate my students. I’ve chosen a number of those quotes to push out to my students regularly to keep them motivated and inspired.
The question that I most often get from my students about these quotes are questions like, “Who’s Epictetus?” and “Who’s Publilius Syrus?” and “Who’s Lucius Annaeus Seneca?” And while it doesn’t surprise me that my high school students don’t know who these people are, I wonder how many adults do.
The wisdom and advice of philosophers and intellectuals from the past, as valuable and applicable as that information might be today, isn’t what’s flooding the internet these days. But, it is available, if you go looking for it. In fact, for me, my starting point for this area of interest –other than the philosophy classes that I had many years ago during my undergrad– has been Pinterest. I have a couple of different boards on Pinterest where I am collecting little snippets of philosophical wisdom and advice. As I head back to those boards, looking through them at different points in time, it has occurred to me that I should just break down and start a reading journey through some of the greatest philosophical classics. Maybe you could try it, too.
But here’s the problem with that idea.
I don’t know how long it’s been for you, since you’ve picked up a piece of reading that was difficult for you to read, that contained language that needed to be unpacked, or that contained concepts that weren’t so easy for you to comprehend on a first reading, but if you endeavor to read some classical philosophical works, you’ll discover that difficult challenge, once again. Reading philosophy, especially classical Greek and Roman philosophy –Aristotle and Socrates and Plato and Marcus Aurelius and Seneca– is not at easy as it sounds.
For example, try heading HERE for a short bit of philosophical wisdom from Epictetus, called The Enchiridion. Try reading some of it, and you’ll probably see what I mean –> reading philosophy isn’t easy work.
In fact, I think it is happening, more and more often these days, that the “softness” that I mentioned earlier, the “softness” that comes from having so much made so easy for us, keeps us from being able to engage in hard things. I’m not going to bring up my running in yet another blog post, but I will say that I have recently become acquainted with the idea of doing hard things and finding joy in succeeding at what has been hard.
So, maybe a difficult process of reconnecting to the philosophical roots of modern society could be just the ticket for me in finding something hard to do with my mind to make it more “fit”.
And, as if I needed more motivation, there are some additional problems that are associated with not going to these original sources in the first place, for the wisdom and information that they contain.
If you’ve never noticed it before, the internet isn’t always exactly honest; whether this is the result of people publishing things on the internet that are wrong on purpose or accidentally, you can’t be sure of what you see on the internet.
Speaking on the subject, I have a t-shirt that quotes Abraham Lincoln as saying, “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet.” Unfortunately though, the inaccuracies of the internet aren’t always as obvious as my t-shirt is.
Ever heard of snopes.com or factcheck.org? Would there even need to be websites like these if people only published the truth on the internet? Here’s a thought –> how do you know that you can trust the fact checkers? Who’s fact checking them? Scary stuff, when you stop to think about it.
If you can see where I’m going with this, I think we need to head back to the sources of information, if for no other reason than to avoid being mislead. And, to get back onto the topic of this post –having strayed somewhat– I think that I would probably be better served if I spent less time pinning (possibly erroneous) quotes from classical philosophers on Pinterest and more time actually reading the works of those classical philosophers.
If I am able to get nothing from these readings that I wasn’t able to get from seeing their quotes on the internet, at least I will have had the opportunity to 1) challenge my mind in the difficult reading of the classical texts, and 2) confirm that the quotes that I expected to belong to a certain author, actually do.
So, rather than trying to end this post with some witty closing statement, perhaps I’ll just generate a short list of some of the philosophers who show up most often in my Pinterest feed and on my boards, and the works that I think I am going to read from them.
Epictetus – The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
It occurred to me today that if I hear one more person reference God in a statement highlighting their own stupidity, I am going to lose my mind.
The county commission of Palm Beach County, Florida, a county that is currently one of many in the U.S. where coronavirus numbers are spiking, allowed earlier this week for people from the public to voice their opinions, before the commissioners voted on an ordinance to require wearing face masks in public, to try to help with disease transmission. If you haven’t seen the videos of the people who showed up to speak their minds, just Google “God’s wonderful breathing system” and you’ll get all of the information that you need about the incident.
It continually drives me crazy when people, who insist on being publicly idiotic, have to also reference themselves as people of faith. It makes the rest of us, who believe in God and use our heads and think before we talk, look like we belong to some goofy cult. It’s not just them, either. It’s people that I know, people that I go to church with. They are doing the same STUPID stuff. Not thinking about what they say. Not thinking about what they chose to believe in the media. Misrepresenting God and Christ by being dumb.
If you’ve read The Bible, you know that Jesus wasn’t dumb; he regularly butted heads with the religious leaders of His day, refuting their empty religiosity and making them look foolish. Not only was Jesus a thinker, He knew who to trust and of whom to be suspicious. I just don’t think that modern Christians who claim to follow God and Jesus have any right being willfully ignorant and/or publicly humiliating.
My real beef with these people is this: they’re giving the rest of us a bad name. Here’s how:
For about the last century and a half, the halls of higher academics in the world have been distancing themselves from faith and religion, a previously unprecedented move, since the history of intellectual pursuits world-wide have happened, hand in hand much of the time, with the church. And, this distancing has allowed for, at first, a dichotomy between the two worlds of thought, and then, later, an all-out war. Much of the current academic world would have you believe that people who believe in God are dumb.
But, of course, they’re not trying to convince me that I’m dumb, for that would be, well, dumb. Rather, they are trying to convince the unbelievers.
The world is watching, and it’s wondering about God and people who believe in God and whether or not the academic society, which would paint believers as unintelligent, is correct in their suggestions.
And then, you have all of these people running around being idiots and mentioning God in the same breath.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love these people, because as a Christian, they are my brothers and sisters in Christ –even when I’m not happy with them– but I also have problems with what they’re doing.
If you end up Googling “God’s wonderful breathing system” and you pull up an article on a website, scan the comments on the article. If you don’t find multiple comments in the comments section regarding people who believe in God and how dumb they are, I’ll take you out to dinner. The comments will say something like, “You’d expect this behavior from people who believe in fairy tales” or “They’ll be fine, they’ll just ask their God to save them” or “Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy aren’t real, either”.
So now, those of us who would tell someone that we believe in God, are faced with assumptions –stereotypes, really– about our low level of intelligence. These stereotypes get reinforced by every news story (don’t get me started on how the media works to make Christians look dumb) where someone is being dumb and mentioning their faith.
But, like all stereotypes that exist, they tend not to be true a lot of the time. Do you think that cops are power-hungry brutes? Most of them aren’t. Do you think that gay men are all effeminate? I know many that aren’t. Do you think southerners are racists? I know many who would disagree. These stereotypes exist, in large part, because it’s easier to believe in a stereotype than it is to go around and get to know people to discover that the stereotypes have a low percentage of accuracy.
Part of the problem I have with the “people of faith can’t be intelligent” stereotype is that, for those who believe it, they’re not likely to get near enough to a person of faith to discover that the stereotype is false, often out of fear that they might be thumped over the head with a Bible before too long.
Maybe, deep down inside, I’m just coming to terms with the idea that I belong to a group of people who are stereotyped, and that I don’t fit that stereotype.
If you are an unbeliever –> before you decide that you are going to believe the stereotype and assume that all people of faith are unintelligent, try talking with one or two of them. You could reach out to me, if you’d like, to ask some questions about faith and belief and intelligence, and I’d be happy to do my best to illustrate to you that people of faith aren’t necessarily childish unintelligent mopes who don’t have anything better to do than to believe in fairy tales. Some of the most intelligent people I know believe in God and Jesus.
It occurred to me today that the right thing to do is, often, the uncomfortable thing to do.
There’s a sub-movement going on right now, in light of the recent rise in popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement and a national heightened awareness of racial injustices, to get Colin Kaepernick reinstated to the NFL and signed by an NFL team. For those of you who are unaware, Colin Kaepernick was a starting quarterback who protested police brutality and racial inequality during the 2016 NFL football season by sitting and/or kneeling during the National Anthem. Not long afterward, he found it hard to get a job because of the widespread disapproval of his actions, whether or not that disapproval was, in and of itself, a proper course of action.
I remember in 2016, when this was happening, I had black students in my classes that decided that they wouldn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance when we did it at the beginning of the school day, either. They were not alone. Our school district, that serves a significant population of black students, ended up drafting a policy to allow for them to “not pledge allegiance”.
But, I can’t say I blame Kaepernick, or those students of mine. Not one bit.
I think our nation, and its failures, deserve close scrutiny. I think we should be looking at what we’re doing wrong, so we can try to start doing it right; there’s a word for this and it’s called progress. But, for many people, staring closely at the things that you are doing wrong is an uncomfortable proposition. If I had to guess, I think that stems from too many people working too hard to shelter their fragile egos, or maybe it comes from people not giving constructive criticism as often as they give destructive criticism.
In any case, I think Kaepernick was trying to draw the spotlight onto certain problems that exist, and have existed for a long time, in the United States, problems that we aren’t doing anything to make better. While America might be a great nation, we’re not perfect, and kudos to anyone who wants to see America getting better, even if it’s uncomfortable to address those issues.
I mean, if we won’t even gather the intestinal fortitude to talk about these issues, how will we ever make progress in changing them?!?! I applaud Colin Kaepernick for saying, publicly, that he was not comfortable paying homage to a nation who treats its citizens —ANY of its citizens– poorly, as part of any of its systems.
It’s time for us, as a country, to start getting uncomfortable for the sake of starting to make some progress.
* * *
One of the hardest things for me to do, as a parent, is to admit to my kids when I am wrong. I don’t know if it’s my ego, or the fear that they will see me as fallible and then I will lose credibility as the leader of the family, I don’t know what it is, but I hate having to go back to my kids and tell them that I was wrong.
The thing that usually motivates me to do it, even though I usually don’t want to do it, is an understanding that my children will learn how to apologize when they see me apologize. They will learn to admit weakness when they see me admit weakness.
As a matter of fact, I’ve discovered over the years as a parent, that my children know how to act because of what they’ve watched me do. I know this, occasionally, when I watch them do the right thing and I think to myself, “Look, they learned how to do the right thing by paying attention to their mother.” Unfortunately, I also know this because of the times when I’ve watched them do the wrong thing, and I think to myself, “I guess I need to pay more attention to the example that I’m setting.”
Seriously though, if we pan out a little bit from this micro-view of my family, to take a look at the society at large, we have entire generations who are looking to their parents for the example to follow, and then by and by, those generations raise subsequent generations. This is the way that it’s always been.
Along these lines, I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten aggravated by an old person complaining about young people before, but it just now occurs to me that those old people have no one to blame but themselves, for they raised the generation that ended up raising the generation that they come to despise.
If we don’t want our future society falling apart, it’s up to each of us to raise our children in such as way that our grandchildren are raised by high quality citizens.
And sometimes, that work in uncomfortable work.
* * *
I don’t like people that much.
No, scratch that.
I don’t like having to interact with people. It often makes me uncomfortable.
I often don’t know what to say, or I worry that I’ll say the wrong thing and then the worrying starts to make me nervous. Sometimes, I worry that I am going to run out of things to say to someone, resulting in that awkward silence that signals the death of a conversation. Or, I overthink the interactions, wondering what they’re thinking about while we’re talking or wondering if they like me, or if I like them. And then, because of all of the thinking I was doing, rather than paying attention, I end up noticing that I missed some of what they were saying and then I don’t know how to respond to what I didn’t hear them say.
So, needless to say, it’s complicated.
But, because of the job that I have, and because of some of the volunteer work that I do, I’ve had to pull up my big boy pants and learn to interact with people; I’ve had to try to get better at doing it. And, you know what the funny thing is about being made to do this thing that I don’t enjoy doing?
I’ve gotten better at it. And, it’s less uncomfortable than it used to be.
I still wouldn’t say that it’s my favorite thing in the world to do, but it’s not as bad as it used to be.
Not as uncomfortable.
* * *
And so…
If doing something helps us to get better, and also to become less uncomfortable, and if our world is crying out for us to start doing things better, and that work is often uncomfortable work, I guess we ought to get started doing the right thing more often than we do the comfortable thing.
For if we are truly at the place where the wrong thing is more comfortable to us than the right thing, I’m afraid of what that means for us all.
It occurred to me today that yard signs are somewhat dangerous, if you think about it.
My wife and I have a maintenance contract with an HVAC contractor. Once in the early spring, and then again in the early fall, this contractor comes out to our home and services the HVAC system that we bought from them about a decade ago. They do great work, and they are friendly and courteous, and we’ve enjoyed our business relationship with them, by and large.
When they come out, they ask if they can put a yard sign in our front yard, letting people know about our relationship with the company and the fact that they do our regular maintenance, twice a year. We normally say yes, and leave the yard sign in the front yard for a couple weeks, and then we take it down and throw it out.
It doesn’t ever really do me any harm to do this; having people drive by the house and see that we use this particular company. Because the company has a good reputation, I don’t mind advertising that I have a relationship with that company. I am quite comfortable letting people know that I do business with this company, and, if anyone really cares what I have to say, this company is worthy of my business.
I guess, it’s what you would call an allegiance.
* * *
I’m not sure that it is a secret, but just in case it is, let me allow the cat to leave the bag: I don’t like the President. And, before you jump to the obvious conclusion, let me say that I’ve been a lifelong Republican. I don’t like the kind of person that he is, I don’t like that he’s divisive, rather than unifying, I don’t like that he’s arrogant and rude. And again, I’m a Republican, so this isn’t a party thing.
And, I have certain opinions about people who continue to support him, as well, but that’s more “guilt-by-association” than anything else. I do wonder about people who think that he’s worthy of a second term. He was impeached, after all, and I think it’s wrong that an impeached President is running for a second term as the candidate of a party that he absconded with four years ago.
Anyway…
I drive by a home on my way to work –and then again on my way back home– with three Trump 2020 signs on their property. One of them is a fabric flag that they’ve attached to the utility pole near the road (which I’ll bet is actually illegal, but who I am?). And, while I could describe to you the property on which these signs and flags are sitting, I’ll spare you the details. It’s not actually a part of what I’m about to discuss.
On this property, with their presidential election signage, there is also a sign for a local candidate who is running for a local office. County treasurer or township committee chairman, or something like that. And, admittedly, I don’t know anything about the candidate who is running for the local office, but my initial reaction is to vote for anybody but this person.
And, I’ve been thinking about why it is that I feel this way. These people, who are obviously pro-Trump, are also pro-this-other-person, and I guess I have to wonder not only about them, but about this local candidate. Would I vote for someone if other people, who I disagree with, are going to vote for that person? The answer is no, isn’t it?!?!
I’m not sure.
I can tell you that, if I were a candidate for a political office, I wouldn’t want one of my yard signs on the same property as a yard sign promoting a candidate that so many people despise. I will also say that I will be watching this local candidate in August and November, to see how they end up doing. I’d be interested in knowing whether or not yard sign associations rub off on each other.
* * *
A few years ago, an elderly man in my church paid to have a bunch of yard signs printed up with the Ten Commandments on them. He distributed these signs to different people in our church, and those people posted them in their yards for a certain period of time; I think this man still has his in his front yard, or he did, as of just recently.
The funny thing about posting the Ten Commandments in your front yard is this: it doesn’t go well if you aren’t a person who follows the Ten Commandments. And, arguably so, my neighbors –the people who are going to end up staring at the yard sign of the Ten Commandments more than anyone else will ever see it– are the very people who know me, oftentimes, in a way that my fellow church-goers do not. The people I go to church with, many of them only see me for an hour or two every Sunday.
My neighbors will see me much more than that.
And, they would be the ones to tell you whether or not I believe in the Ten Commandments, not by what I say, but by what I do in my life. My actions will always speak louder than my words, and those people who watched me post the Ten Commandments in my yard, they’ve also watched me scream the Lord’s name in my backyard, and they’ve watched me skip church to sleep in my backyard hammock, and they’ve watched me ogling the female joggers in my neighborhood instead of paying attention to my wife when she’s talking to me.
My neighbors know all they need to know about me, whether or not I’m posting the Ten Commandments in my front yard. Sometimes, I wonder whether those Ten Commandments signs, that the elderly man in my church had printed, ended up doing more harm than good.
* * *
Bumper stickers, sports team clothing, tattoos; they all accomplish the same ends as our yard signs. They are visual representations of our beliefs, our affiliations, our allegiances. The danger and difficulty in these things, for starters, is that most humans tend to be pretty fickle. The seventy-five dollar baseball jersey that I bought becomes a car-washing rag when that team fails to make the play-offs for a few years. Your next girlfriend might not be so tickled about your decision to get your last girlfriend’s name tattooed on your forearm because, hey, it was going to last forever.
Of course, the other issue comes when we are judged by the company that we keep –or that we say that we keep– by those around us, stuck staring at our yard signs.
I’ll have to end this here; I’ve got some yard work to do…
It occurred to me today that I somehow got on the roller coaster, and now I want off.
I have always thought of myself as a pretty even-keeled person. I’ve often said, and even more often thought in my head, “I just can’t abide by those people who let every high raise them up and then let every low bring them down.” In my mind, it’s much better to let the highs and the lows of life wash over you, having no real effect on the course of the ship.
I’ve known some of those emotionally adrift people in my life, some of them very close to me in my not-so-distant past, and I have learned from my interactions with those people in particular, and from my dealings with that type of person in a general sense, that riding the “emotional roller coaster”, as I’ve often called it, has damaging side effects to one’s inner peace.
Sure, getting excited about the amazing highs of life can be so much fun, but I’m pretty convinced that you can’t have this without also then having to agree to the proposition of being brought down by the lows of life; I mean, can you imagine the real world roller coaster that allowed you to enjoy the feeling of flying through the air but spared you the feeling of falling to the ground?
And, I’ve often said that being on those emotional roller coasters is pointless; it’s so much better to try to maintain a steady course, emotionally speaking.
* * *
A couple of weeks ago, I posted something on Facebook that has gotten me in trouble. I shouldn’t have said it –regardless of how true it is– and I posted what I posted because I had something to say and I didn’t exercise the self-control necessary for keeping my mouth shut. I think that’s part of what makes self-control so difficult for me; that necessary moment that I have to take before making a decision to act or to speak, that pause that –if inserted– should allow for me to ask myself, “Is this really what you want to do?”; that pause is so often something that I neglect.
That is, I neglect it when I’m on the roller coaster.
When I am letting the lows of life bring me down –for example, when I am lamenting the generally negative qualities of human existence that I have witnessed via social media– I am more likely to be out of control of the way that I think and act. In these moments, I’m EmoPhil –> capable of saying the dumbest things out loud and of doing things that I’ll soon regret, faster than a speeding bullet.
I think it’s better when I’m SereniPhil (doesn’t that sound like a sleeping medication?!?!) –> the calm intellectual who likes to think things through and who likes to keep a cool perspective on the highs and lows of life.
I think, maybe, I’m going to have a couple of custom capes made –like Superman capes– that I can just wear around the house. One will say “EmoPhil”, and I’ll wear it –or maybe my wife can put it on me, since she notices when I change, often before I do– when I am on the roller coaster and out of control and ready to fly to the heights or drop to the depths. The other will say “SereniPhil”, and I will wear it when I feel like I am in control and life is pretty balanced and I am on the “noble path”.
* * *
I think that, the longer I live and the more I understand about life, I am starting to come to some conclusions about these two different versions of me. One of the most important things that I’ve noticed is that I am often triggered by certain parts of life, and I might just be better off avoiding these triggers as much as possible.
One of the things that my wife and I have noticed, just recently, is that social media seems to be a trigger for me. And, while I’d be happy to sit around and debate the merits and drawbacks of social media with anyone who wants to engage in such an endeavor, it is most certainly the case that there are people out there for whom social media is not a trigger –my wife being one of them. I’ve just discovered that I’m not the best me –I’m not SereniPhil– when I get too caught up in social media.
I’ve also noticed that it’s harder for me to avoid becoming EmoPhil when I am not getting enough sleep and/or exercise. Luckily, just recently, both of those parts of my world have been going well. I wonder what kind of a world we would have if everyone was getting the sleep and the exercise that they need –> maybe I’m not the only one who might find it easier to avoid the roller coaster with plenty of rest and a measure of physical fitness.
* * *
If you’ve been reading many of my other posts, you know how I prefer to try to be moderate in most things. So, where’s the middle ground, I wonder, between being a hot head and being a stolid stoic?
Or, maybe more to the point is this question: why do I seem to be doomed to be Jekyll or Hyde?
If you’ve never read “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, by Robert Louis Stevenson, you really should. It’s pretty short and it’s a lot of fun, psychologically speaking. In certain respects, the story is science fiction (and I love me some sci-fi), but I think it is also an extended metaphor for just the kind of problem that I find myself struggling with sometimes. And, because of the recognizable truth in the story, certain features of the story have become part of our pop-psychology understanding.
The more I get to know me, the more I get to understand how I work and what makes me tick, the better my life is becoming.
I hope that this message reaches someone else –> get to know yourself so you can live a life that is more informed when it comes to, well, you.
It Occurred To Me Today 