Metaphorical Mystical Spring

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Nancy Pace

Wallowing in winter’s woes is so addictive. Sometimes it seems life will never change, things will never get better, we won’t ever improve. March lions look back at us ominously as they depart, tails lashing, mouths dripping with blood. As we grope for ways to ease past losses, our bleary eyes may see only the faded evidence of passing winter, only bare black branches crossing dirty snow, too-recent reminders that there is a time for dying, and the Lord indeed taketh away.

But babbling and burbling, surging and burgeoning, importunate idiot spring insists we wake up now to springtime’s morning, that we set about now to recycle new selves from old. Kicking us out of hibernation, spring slaps us silly, shakes off our inertia and bad habits, wakes up our slushy sap, pulls us up out of past muck by our own muddy bootstraps, and stirs our clods to go outside and just do it.

“Triumph Tulips” really do triumph over Old Man Winter, while old irritating Mister Smiley-Sun lingers longer, warming us to new energy, new meanings and purpose. Frozen sloughs of mental and emotional despond thaw in spring, clarifying into watery resolution. Spring has the audacity to demand we dive back into the cold waters of life that cleanse and replenish, and splash around.

Spring offers us a mustard-seed faith that can’t quite remember what it knows or why it knows it, that isn’t even sure it does know, but acts instinctively as if it did. Spring is that swelling, blooming seed rising, blossoming into I-can-do-it, I can learn it, achieve it, move past it, live life again.

Spring forces us to see, if only from the corners of sleepy eyes, the first fine frills of coreopsis feathering up through bare sticks; baby buds of lilacs, magnolias, forsythia, pussy willows, and dogwood; the fat impertinent baby-grapes of hyacinths, the raspberry popsicles of promised peonies poking us to wake up too. Spring’s heavy-lifting builds up our faith, stone by stone, strengthening our belief in new hope, new opportunities, and new forgiveness.

Spring flatly refuses to allow anyone to miss twitterpation’s anticipation of the first robins, bunnies, crocuses, daffodils, and witch hazel. A whisper…then a hum…then a chorus of celebration, and a great hallelujah spring-shout–Look at me! Look at me!

Spring is so profligate we can’t help finally remembering that the Lord also giveth abundantly and eternally.

We know again in spring that our loved ones will come home safely, God will bless America, we will find manna to feed the hungry. For there is a time for living too, even in war-torn Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine/Israel, where Christians celebrate resurrection's promise while Muslim's spring holiday of Noruz affirms once again that neither earthquakes nor explosions nor tsunamis nor terrorism nor war nor hate nor fear can ever separate any of God’s eternal children from their bountiful Creator’s love.

Spring tells us to watch and wait, and have faith, for joy has come again, though winter has been long and it’s been dark in the long night of the garden, dark waiting beside the tomb. Watch for, wait for the faint first signs of the promised rebirth, for the return of the light, the resurrection of earth’s yearly lyrical miracle.

Watch and wait, and have faith.

The 2008 Democratic Party Platform I'd Like To See

Posted on July 19, 2008 by Nancy Pace

Here are my suggested goals for the 2008 Democratic Party platform:

War: Stop using war as an imagined solution to non-military problems.
Democracy: Reform democratic processes in the United States.
Violence: Reduce violence in American culture.
Culture: Use public airwaves to teach positve values and behaviors.
Education: Give each child a computer and the necessary local mentoring and support to learn with it.
Openness: Open the workings of government to the public.
Values: Teach acceptance.
Environment, Population (and Energy): Reduce the world’s population.
Foreign and Trade Policies: Offer equal respect and support for human life everywhere.
Ethics and Compassion: Assist the poor everywhere to live healthy, productive lives.
Energy: Initiate a Manhattan-type-race-to-the-moon national effort to harness nuclear fission energy.

By the way, these were my suggestions (posted on this blog in May 05) for the last election….

Why Jason Furman, Walmart Defender, Is A Great New Economic Policy Director for Barack Obama

Posted on June 10, 2008 by Nancy Pace

Barack Obama just nominated economist Jason Furman, 37, a visiting scholar at New York University and former Walmart defender, as his economic policy director. Let's look more closely at this brilliant and independent thinker before we dismiss him out-of-hand for supporting Walmart.

Mr. Furman is the author of a thoughtful 2005 paper titled, “Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story.” Mr. Furman argues in this paper that the considerable cost-savings which Walmart extends to its low-income customers by far outweigh the negative impacts of the chain. During a debate in Slate.com in 2006, Mr. Furman argued: “If I heard that Wal-Mart was coming to my neighborhood (in New York)…. I wouldn’t kid myself into thinking that (opposing Walmart's arrival would have) anything to do with helping the poor. If anything, I would feel guilty that I was preventing moderate-income New Yorkers from enjoying the huge benefits that much of the rest of the country already knows so well.”

As I wrote in this blog in 2005, I'm the last lone liberal who is still shopping at Walmart. Here's my very carefully-considered rationale for shopping there:

“My liberal friends hate it that I shop Walmart. They consider Walmart a perfect symbol of the damage caused by globalization. But because Walmart offers millions of working-class shoppers real value for their last dollars, I doubt that even a successful liberal boycott could bring Walmart down. And even then, an outraged public would demand, and quickly receive, a replacement lookalike.

Globalization in its present form is a passing phase anyway, albeit a very destructive one. People hate change. Which is what globalization is, a temporary economic change. Does anyone remember AT&T? Microsoft ? (Perhaps I'm premature….) In today's world, it's only a few years before someone comes up with a better idea. Isn't that the way free trade is supposed to work? Change happens. People hate change. And while they're hating it, they whine about Walmart.

Consider the Canadian Walmart lately in the news. First, all the locals screamed because Walmart's arrival in their town pushed everybody out of their jobs. Now they're all screaming again because Walmart's departure (the store closed to stop unionization) pushed everybody out of their jobs. People hate change.

The question is not how to get rid of Walmart (though its size and profitability make it a convenient scapegoat for liberal anger.) Rather, it's how to make human life more equitable, more socially just, more humane, more environmentally sustainable. And how to empower everyday people, instead of consolidating wealth and power in the hands of CEOs and stockholders.

A walk through a Walmart isn't a walk in a parklike J. Crew or Pottery Barn. Walmart employees and shoppers are the hundred million Americans who work fulltime jobs at hourly wages in order to bring home incomes of less than $20,000 a year. You'll see the disabled, poor, uneducated, homeless, and jobless–everyday Americans–daily facing economic slavery, enduring far more struggles in a month than I meet in a year.

Let's do away with their favorite store! I don't think so.

Their desperate situation isn't the fault of Walmart. If we must assign blame, it's every American's fault. It's just too easy and too convenient to pick on Walmart. And besides, it lets the real culprits–all of us–off the hook. Walmart pays as well or better than its community competitors–why else would people work there? Walmart offers comparable health insurance and promotes from within, which not everyone does. Walmart even lets its employees unionize when that's the law (as in Germany.) It isn't Walmart's fault that America doesn't support unions. But it is our fault. It's also our fault that we haven't demanded universal health care, public transportation, less global adventurism, a responsive government….

Big corporations have many advantages, but they also have disadvantages. Walmart and McDonald's, along with every other big namebrand corporation, are magnets for litigation, protest, innuendo, rumor, and boycott. Walmart has even attracted an anti-Walmart report to Congress; what mom-and-pop store can boast that distinction? Big corporations are the ultimate prize of unions, too, which, though good for their workers, make competing with non-unionized labor at home and abroad challenging. Consider the success of China.

Walmart has a lot of very angry enemies, because its rocket growth shifted a big hunk of profits away from established local businessmen. Of course these displaced people were furious; their very livelihoods, the welfare of their families, were disastrously affected by change–which happened to arrive in the form of the Walmart steamroller. Note I said they were affected by change–not by Walmart. It should come as no surprise, nevertheless, that the injured parties were thrilled to welcome the anti-globalization liberal crowd into their let's-hate-Walmart-club.

But Walmart won't last forever, and not because of any boycott, either. Walmart saw an opening, an economic niche, an opportunity, and jumped into it with all four feet. Their phenomenal success is the rest of the story. Of course they're hated for shoving the old out with the new. People hate change.

Protest has had a great day, but that day has passed (remember change?); resistance is becoming not only futile, but outre. Being against something doesn't work that well anymore, besides making everyone tired and sad. What does work especially well in these times is being for stuff, creating new solutions, working hard collaboratively to make things happen in a hurry.

Someday soon, someone will start up a new global Walmart lookalike that is franchisable only by locals. Or someone will lift and transform Walmart from within. Or someone will think of something else that's even better and more profitable.

Someday, someone will teach us all that we live together on a very small, fragile, interconnected planet. Someone will use the internet to shift our allegiances and money away from nation-states, perhaps toward NGOs serving every interest at every level, from local to regional to international. Someone somewhere already knows what the next great political and economic organizations will be, ones that will respect and serve both people and the earth.

And when these changes come about, much weeping and rending and gnashing of teeth will again be heard in the land. People hate change.

Boycotting Walmart won't bring back the bucolic utopias of yesteryear (which never existed anyway.) It really won't. On the other hand, the first time someone offers me a shopping experience that gives me a comparable value, and even more equity, justice, and sustainability, I will absolutely jump at the chance to disloyally move my money. I just haven't been offered that opportunity yet. So come on America, get with the program.

Until then, you will find me shopping the friendly aisles of Walmart and Sam's Club, in solidarity with a motley bunch that looks a lot like America, getting the biggest bang for our shopping buck–you know, the good old American way.”

Addendum in June 2008: I understand Walmart has madea considerable effort to become more green, and more responsive to and supportive of their workforce. I haven't followed the issue closely. My point is: they still offer me the best values, and still employ my town's least employable workers at locally very competitive wages and benefits. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. And let's not reject Mr. Furman without taking into consideration that he is an original, profound and independent thinker, which is exactly what we need right now.

Mr. Furman was previously with the Brookings Institution as director of its Hamilton Project, an economic policy project whose advisory council includes many distinguished executives from the business world.

Please send your comments to njcpace@gmail.com. Thank you! 🙂

Bill Gates and the End of High School As We Know It

Posted on January 5, 2008 by Nancy Pace

Bill Gates is right. Our high schools are failing far too many of those who count on them. Americans spend vast amounts on education, but too much of it goes to support entrenched interests and bureaucracies, while our kids get stiffed.

The good news is that we can gradually make the changes we need by shifting our talented, dedicated, skilled, hard-working (and powerfully unionized) school workforce toward new roles and goals as professional mentors. The bad news is that practically every other long-standing interest has to go.

What is it about our American high schools that doesn’t work anymore?

It makes no sense to transport students expensively to large, distant, costly, energy-inefficient, underutilized buildings where they’re wastefully herded from class to class, despite vastly different interests, abilities, strengths, and personal goals–in order to fulfill an entrenched, outdated curriculum.

What could work better? Build no more huge expensive buildings, use the ones we have differently, and completely change our teaching approaches as we currently know them.

Instead, give each student a safe, well-maintained home computer, the support necessary to use it well, and wonderfully-designed content software. Give them well-paid, highly qualified teacher/mentors who can work closely with them daily to help them plan their own educations according to their individual needs, guide them toward efficient learning, and help them master necessary skills. Give them a small, safe working environment near their homes for daily regular mentoring and studying. Give each student well-designed opportunities to understand and practice the social skills, values, and habits they need to become good students, good citizens, good people.

A range of mastery standards in math, reading, science, and technology could provide limitless personal goals. Computer-based content could be flexibly supplemented by an efficient computerized library media support system, doing away with expensive and quickly-outdated textbooks. Personalized computer-based scheduling and messaging could daily anchor each child's educational experience. Well-organized flexible learning groups and clubs could support innumerable important curricular goals, such as improved learning habits, personal organization skills, health, character, cultural awareness (music, art, literature), a sense of place and heritage (geography, history) as well as other emerging interests and social values.

Every student could belong to a local team enjoying friendly local competition with other teams in healthful, inexpensive, well-supervised and refereed sports. Low-cost school and sports uniforms, and more readily-available and anonymous (or universal) support for shoes and school expenses could be provided. Progress, good citizenship, excellence, and scholarly habits could be publicly recognized and rewarded. Field trips in all areas of interest could be offered. Financial support and mentored places for evening study in lieu of night jobs could be awarded to demonstrably conscientious scholars.

What do we stand to lose when we make such radical changes?

Our children's dangerous daily swim in the over-stimulating hormonal soup we now call high school, where the lowest cultural common denominators too often prevail…. The wasted time our children interminably spend transitioning–coming and going, changing and starting classes, standing in lines, waiting, waiting, waiting for something to start, something to happen…. Our children's sense of being anonymously factory-processed, instead of compellingly involved in their own highly-desired learning goals, outcomes, and futures…. Anger, rebellion, and desperation among too many students (and their teachers….) Pointless and harmful man-hours spent credentializing…. Proms…. Debilitating, expensive, space and energy-inefficient, exclusive competitive school sports systems which, themselves, create health and emotional problems, and primarily provide fodder for the sports industry…. Lost lives and liability suits from the inevitable violence arising from our contemporary culture's too many unnecessary school pressures…. Lost time for learning due to shootings, mercury, guns, drugs, viruses, terrorism, prank calls, snow (etc!)….

We stand to lose, in other words, nothing of any great value.

And what do we stand to gain? A better education and a better future for our children and our country. (That is, everything. Priceless!)

How We Can Help Each Other Let Go of Guilt, Anger, and Attack

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Nancy Pace

I used to think of anger as something “caused” by someone or something outside of me—most often, another person’s bad behavior. I experienced anger as an uncontrollable emotion that just sort of washed over me unexpectedly (anger as a tsunami wave, destroying everything in its path….)

I was sure my anger and retaliatory attacks were completely rational and justified. Always, someone had earned my outrage by doing something that hurt me, whether consciously or cluelessly. And not only did my tormenter deserve to be jumped for his egregious error, but I also was sure that his abuse would escalate if I didn’t instantly and harshly avenge the injustice.

Now I see anger as deriving mostly from my own useless guilt feelings, since anger comes up for me mostly when someone or something touches a subject I already feel at least a little guilty about.

If I start to feel angry now, I can almost always put my finger on something I’m feeling guilty about; it’s always a deeply repressed guilt so heavy that I’m almost desperate to push it off onto someone else, to release my feelings of panic over my weakness. My consequent flashes of anger result from wanting to push my guilt off onto someone else, to somehow lighten my load.

But guilt isn’t a hot potato that can be passed on to someone else. It’s not a balloon about to burst, not a burning coal, not boiling water about to blow under pressure. All attempts to pass guilt off through angry attacks just increase the guilt, usually in both parties. These metaphors only serve to reveal how urgently we all want to find some way to release our loads of guilt, and why we so quickly turn to anger and attack.

Pop religion and pop psychology sometimes hint that harboring guilt feelings is useful, that somehow, holding on to guilt will makes people strive to be better. On the contrary, I’ve finally realized that guilt and anger—yours, mine, and everyone else’s—are always crazy, insane, mad, deranged, completely useless, and completely harmful. They never accomplish anything positive, ever. Guilt feelings only hold us back, paralyze us, depress us, and urge us to angrily attack others, and thus keep us from moving forward and doing our best, while anger always just makes everyone feel guiltier and angrier.

I used to believe that “repenting” for my mistakes at some painful length–suffering a long term of anguish and guilt after I “sinned” (or made mistakes, or failed to live up to my ideals or standards)—was the only way I would ever improve. If I didn’t feel guilty most of the time, I supposed I would somehow run amok, maybe burn down the world, become a serial killer or something (and I wasn’t even raised Catholic!)

When we’re willing to forgive ourselves and let our guilt feelings go without at first groveling and spiraling down into the unavoidable black depths of guilt's self-hatred, when we can accept the support and forgiveness of our loved ones without first guiltily and angrily pushing them away, kicking our pets, and feeling like scum, then we can begin to make progress toward a new life.

But we’re afraid to let go of our heavy loads of self-aggravated guilt. We’re afraid that without the benefit of abject guilt to torture and spur us on, we’ll never get anything right, never fix any bad situations. We’ll be leftk, finally, with nothing but the same tedious, incremental, arduous, step-by-step process of self-improvement that everyone else has to master—a terrifying prospect for those of us whose lives feel chaotic, yet who really want to be different, and who aren’t very good yet at changing our own behavior.

I thought that piling guilt on myself was sufficient evidence that I wanted to change, that I really really really was trying, especially as I kept failing to improve. At least, I thought, my guilt made it absolutely clear to God and everyone, and to myself, that at least I meant to do better. The more abject my guilt, and the deeper my depression, surely, the better the person I would become. Why else would anyone choose to keep on suffering like that?

But it doesn’t matter what you want. It only matters what you take action about.

I don’t know why I kept believing this myth so long, when it never once worked for me. The only times in my life I’ve ever gotten back on track were the times I managed to let go of my guilt feelings—usually with another person's help, or God's, reminding me that I was still lovable.

This first giant step, away from the blackness and self-condemnation of feeling guilty about the past, can make all the difference in success at making changes in life, and certainly in ending a frustrating cycle of anger and attack and depression. I finally had to learn to let my whole past go. And, consider: after all, it was gone.

Our path to a better life begins with letting go of our guilt feelings, and it doesn’t matter how this happens. We may find a way to let go of our own guilt, or perhaps someone will remind us of our value as a person, or perhaps our higher power will help to release us.

The great teacher Jesus’ primary message was about letting go of guilt. Over and over he explained that we are not the guilty, miserable sinners we’ve been taught to see ourselves as, but rather, forgiven not-guilty creatures, now and for always. Jesus’ peaceful message was that, at least on earth, we were merely human, and humans make mistakes; so we should let go of our burdens of guilt, lighten up, know that we are forever and always forgiven, and then go forth and lead good, happy lives.

However it is that we manage to let go of our guilt, this release always feels wonderful, light, free, and very powerful. Only letting go of guilt feelings can give us the motivation, the lift, the transformation, and the necessary energy to move forward to achieve our goals.

Too often, though, instead of letting go of our guilt, instead of forgiving ourselves and affirming our own worth and lovability, we sidestep into angrily pushing away our guilt feelings, unloading big chunks of that guilt by angrily attacking others. Then, unfortunately, we're not only stuck back with our original guilt, but we feel the additional guilt about our angry attack, as well.

This cycle of guilt, anger, and attack is always completely pointless, because nothing and no one is ever helped by our guilt or anger or attack. Have you ever noticed that when you attack someone, they don’t like it? Have you ever noticed that dumping anger and guilt on someone else isn’t considered the best human relations trick out there?

Whenever you blame anyone for anything, whenever you attempt to shift your unwanted guilt feelings onto another, they’ll usually start feeling uncomfortable and guilty themselves, and of course then they’ll want to shift that guilt right back onto you. It’s called the blame game, and it accomplishes nothing, and always makes situations worse. Who cares who's to blame? Isn't it more important for us all just to get back on track?

Guilt can never motivate anyone, no matter how hard we kick ourselves. Letting go of guilt, on the other hand, can lighten up our load miraculously, freeing us to move forward again, motivated and eager to improve.

If we let go of our guilt, will we keep on making mistakes? Of course. Forever. And continuously. People can always think up new mistakes, because we’re human, and mistakes are what humans do. But through our efforts, we can also learn to make fewer mistakes, can keep on forgiving ourselves, can keep on learning and enjoying life.

The only way we can ever improve in any area of life is to chip away at carefully selected behaviors, goals, and problems. No one wakes up one day with their bad habits transformed. Even when our sins are washed clean in the blood of the lamb, as many Christians believe, even when we’ve managed to let go of our load of guilt, even when we feel whole and new and free, even then the path to human improvement is long and tedious and step-by-step. However, without guilt and anger weighing us down and making us miserable, we at least have the confidence in our own worth necessary to meet old and new challenges.

So when is anger justified?

Never.

Anger always only makes things worse, never better.

Another reason anger is never justified is that everyone else is just as fallible and as human as we are, and therefore just as prone to make mistakes. The only difference between ourselves and other people is that our own particular sets of mistakes are different from theirs. But all of us still make a lot of mistakes.

Sure, it’s so hard to accept the stupid mistakes other people make—things you and I would never do. Other people’s mistakes seem so deliberate, so unbelievably cruel and obtuse. But consider that people all tend to be blind to their own particular weirdly original sets of shortcomings and confusions. Really, we’re all in the same leaky little boat. All human beings struggle continually for betterment, doing our best and yet failing miserably, over and over again. Everyone is the same as you. No one is an exception. Everyone makes mistakes.

And when they do, what they need most from you is exactly what you need most from them–a little patience, a little understanding, a little help, a little forgiveness, a little love and consideration and kindness to help them over the tough spots in life, to where they can start chipping away at their goals again…. And there are a lot of tough spots in life!

The mistakes of others are those very choices and actions which seemed, at other moments, like the very best ideas they could come up with their little pea-brains. It’s tragic to realize this, isn’t it? That some people can be so confused, so unenlightened, so sad and clueless as to make such dumb decisions? Just as sad, in fact, as we are ourselves, sometimes, when we make grievous mistakes that we later regret.

So give all of God’s fallible children (and yourself, too) a break whenever we need it the most, because we all need love, especially when we’re at our weakest and stupidest and saddest points.

Sometimes we’ll be out innocently gamboling about on a sunny day and wham! someone will angrily attempt to offload their guilt onto us with a seemingly senseless, vicious attack.

We can always choose to push our guilt right back at them, by angrily attacking them in return. But this strategy won’t work, except to make us both angrier.

Besides, what people really want, what they need most whenever they’re feeling guilty, when they’re attacking us—is help. Just a little helping hand from us, just because they, like us, get so sick and tired of feeling low, of feeling awful about themselves, so weary of carrying around all that guilt. They’re only hoping, deep in their unconscious, that they’ll get a little relief if only they dump all their guilt and anger on us. But what they really need and want most, even though they may not be aware of it, is for someone else to help them by reminding them that they’re still lovable.

An angry attack should signal to each of us that here is someone who desperately wants, deep down, to let go of his guilt and feel good about himself again. We can choose to help all angry and attacking sufferers release their guilt by reminding them, with our love, acceptance, and understanding, that they’re not alone in their struggle with the pain of being human. We can remind them with our kindness that everyone messes up, it's a disgustingly human trait, and that, regardless of this fact, that they are still so very lovable, valuable, and worthwhile. They need to know that, just as we need reminding of that, too.

It’s true that an angry attack is a rather peculiar way to ask for help, especially from the point of view of the one who’s being attacked, and especially when the attacker catches us in our most vulnerable places where we already feel most tender and guilty. Angry attacks always hit those places right on the money.

It helps a lot to remember that no one really wants to attack us. It's not about that. Just like us, at times when they feel most down and guilty, and are trying to pull themselves back up any way they can, they may crack, and try to shove off their heavy weights of guilt onto a handy innocent bystander at a difficult or weak moment.

When someone angrily attacks us, we don't need to pick up the guilt they’re trying to foist on us. Guilt isn’t something real that can be passed back and forth, anyway. Instead, we can help them let go of the guilt and anger they’re trying to push onto us. In doing so, we’ll enjoy experiencing the nice return miracle of receiving, for ourselves, freedom from guilt and anger; because when we forgive others for their mistakes, we’ll remember that we too, are forgiven, forgivable, lovable. And our lives will start to get a lot more peaceful.

We are what we are, we aree what God made us to be, what he meant us to be—which is, mistake-prone, fallible human beings, not little godlings. None of us is omniscient or omnipotent. Evidently, we were never meant to be. We’re just pitiable, glorious, amazing, feeble, growing, learning earthy creatures doing our lower-than-the-angels sporadic best to get some things right. And no human being ever gets anything right, not perfectly, not once-and-for-all, and certainly not for long.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t well worth our while to keep on chipping away at things, and to enjoy our life while we do. Because when we keep working and trying, we’ll stay out of trouble a little more often, we’ll learn a bit more here and there, come closer to the people we love, and gradually become the people we want to become.

God expects us and everyone else to screw up. He made us mistake-prone, not in order to torment us, but perhaps because he loves diversity (consider the snowflakes! and the beetles! Think how long and predictable eternity would be without the wide range of human choices….) Part of being unique is having our own particular sets of human weaknesses. Maybe God would be eternally bored with any other kind of creation…? Whatever the case, he made us as we are…fallible and mistake-prone.

What we need most from other people is help in letting our mistakes go. And we need to treat others with the same kindness we hope to receive from them, because we all need to be accepted just exactly as we are, so that we’ll be able to forgive ourselves and others, let all guilt and anger and attack go, and keep on getting better.

It’s sad, but the last thing any of us wants, is to be equal to the rest of God’s children—that is, just as stupid and fallible as everyone else. Surely not, we hope. Yuck. Surely we’re not like all the dreck, the hoi polloi, the huddled masses, those unenlightened, classless, hurtful, sinful, oblivious scum? Surely mortality is some sort of competition, which–well, look at us, hopefully we’re winning! Surely the deep black sins of others are far more grievous and dangerous and harmful than our tiny gray ones? Surely others deserve self-righteous wrath, while our little mistakes are only tiny oversights? Surely “they” have reason to feel guilty, while we don’t, not really….

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work this way. We can’t see our own particular sets of mistakes as the only ones which aren’t important, as superficial, understandable, tiny momentary lapses based on misunderstandings and difficult, unusual circumstances, while everyone else’s mistakes are cold-hearted, obtuse, oblivious, calculated, deliberate, oft-repeated, defiant, shameful, and unforgivable mortal sins.

It’s only when we can forgive everyone's mistakes, all of them, (in biblical terms, only when we can “bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things”) that we will be able to see clearly to forgive ourselves, to release ourselves from guilt and anger. We’re all human, and all our results will always be inadequate, insufficient, and disappointing. We all blow it, big time and small, over and over again. So when we can find it in our hearts to forgive all of humanity, to go easy on everyone, we’ll find we've finally let ourselves off the hook, too.

If we attempt to maintain our delusions about ourselves, that we’re different than others, and that our mistakes are unimportant, while others’ mistakes deserve immediate and harsh, angry attention, we’ll eventually crash hard. Because when we harbor the delusion that we’re better than others, we eventually swing to the polar opposite direction, and start believing that really, truly, we’re worse than everyone else. That's a hard, dark place to spend time in.

Neither delusion works. The only thing that works is humble acceptance that we’re all human, we’re all a mess, just like everyone else—if not exactly the same kind of mess as everyone else, rather, we're our own special kind of mess, one finely honed and refined, a unique, particular mess of our own creative making, quite different from everyone else’s mess. But still, a mess.

The most exhausting activity in the world is carrying around the pain and torment of constant judgment about guilt, both ours and others'. Loving and learning—what humans do best, and what we’re here for—is so much more peaceful a process when we can let all the negatives and guilt about the past—ours and others—go, and instead focus on and experience the joys and. yes, sorrows, of the present moment, free of guilt, anger, and attack.

Learning to change the present moment from a sad one to a wide-open one by letting our past guilt go and seeing only present good in any person or situation, is how we can create, for ourselves and others, a new, different, peaceful past, present, and future.

God, by definition, is infinitely good. Whatever plan he has for all his children (and there are many theories) must involve loving them all equally. Somehow, on whatever eternal scale, and by whatever process, all of his children will have ample opportunity to learn whatever we need to know to return to him.

It cannot matter to God that his children are presently at different points on the path to human improvement. Our current comparative levels of status and achievement couldn’t be less relevant, ultimately. If God believes each of us is deserving of his acceptance, love, and forgiveness, who are we to judge ourselves differently? We all need help from other people, and from God. Someday all of us will find our way back to our Source. Until then, our best opportunities for forgiveness and release from guilt lie in helping one another by looking for, and reflecting back, only the good, and not the guilt, in each of us.

I know that nearly everyone has a more difficult life than I do, and many are daily cruelly challenged by guilt, anger, and attack . Still, I hope these insights will offer someone somewhere greater peace in her daily life, relationships, and in solving day-to-day problems.

Anger, attack, and other forms of judgment, resistance, and non-acceptance are completely useless emotions, whose basic foundation is needless guilt. They never improve any situation, and are always harmful. They hurt and kill many people every day, and their spread throughout the world has the power to destroy human life on this planet. I pray that we all work together to help each other let go of all guilt, anger, and attack, in all its forms, both personal and global.

Please write your comments to epharmon@adelphia.net.

Left, Right, Left, Right…Wrong?

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Nancy Pace

I received a letter from a reader of the conservative political persuasion who has kindly and thoughtfully taken the time to outline our political differences. In hopes of continuing our dialogue, I herein reprint his letter, followed by my response.

To E. P. Harmon:

I am amazed at your naiveté and willingness to lay down your arms in face of certain death.

You misinterpret religion in saying it does not advocate defending oneself against one’s enemies. I can’t quote scripture but it seems to me that there was a lot of smiting with swords and ass jaws when it was all said and done. Remember the bit where one guy lays his sword down to get a drink of water and gets whacked? Good lesson.

Based on your logic, if I broke into your house and started raping you, your husband’s proper reaction would be to sit on the couch and pray that I go away. I don’t think he would do that.

We are presently engaged in World War IV—WWIII being the Cold War, which we won, by the way, when Reagan called the communists’ bluff and built up our arsenal, and they couldn’t match the pot.

Whether you want to recognize it or not, we have a world-wide entrenched enemy who wants to turn the entire world back to the 8^th century. They are using some 20^th century tools to do it and I can appreciate the irony of that. Instead of embracing the freedom that you espouse, they would be happy to have every country on earth have women clad in burkas, not attend school, and be told when and whom to marry.

I think that if we tried to engage them in the 60’s hippie love-fest you seem so eager to try, they would exploit that weakness and set off the very bomb you are afraid of.

Despite your misgivings, security agencies are busy dismantling terrorist groups inside the U.S. every day.

In my opinion, Iraq and the entire world are in better places today with Saddam behind bars and on trial by his countrymen, than they were previously. There are no more rape rooms, no torture chambers, no knocks on the door in the middle of the night. The country is bouncing down the bumpy road to democracy. They have achieved within a year something that took our founding fathers sixteen years to accomplish—a constitution. Their country is not going to look like America, nor do we wish it to; it will be what they want, and what their citizens, for the first time in fifty years, actually get to vote on. Last time I looked, Saddam got 100% of the vote; now a popular candidate gets maybe 40%. That is progress. For the first time ever in that country, women voted. The U.S. armed forces, whom you despise, have restored power, brought power where none existed, brought water, hospitals, rebuilt schools. Their citizens are joining their army and police forces in droves to protect their fellow citizens, even knowing they may get blown up by some thug with a bomb while they’re standing in line at a recruiting station.

There are now newspapers that print what they want with no fear of reprisal, not just papers run by the state. The most popular things to own are a cell phone, a PC, a satellite TV dish, and a car, all of which were illegal before.

Too bad we can’t get North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam on the same footing as the Iraqis.

The world is safer. It’s kind of scary knowing we are in a shooting war, but we have their attention focused, and whenever they stick up their heads we take them off. We are dismantling their networks and making life more difficult. The jihadists are having trouble recruiting people. The Iraqis certainly aren’t. Why should they, with all the improvements in their lives? Why should they want to go back to the 8^th century? The terrorists are coming in from outside countries—Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc., but not Iraq. If we were so bad for them, wouldn’t they be getting more Iraqis?

I didn’t see this in your articles, but I do have to admit I got a laugh out of the poor schmuck peace activists who got kidnapped by the terrorists. Talk about a group of people that can’t get no respect–it’s gotta be them. The first group goes to Iraq before the war, says we’re here to protest, gets told, “OK, that’s great, form a circle around the Ministry of Defense Building, we think that it might get bombed.” Then the war is over, we are in the square helping the Iraqis pull down Saddam’s statue, when some of the recently freed locals see some of the protesters coming out to chant at us, and tell us to go home, and the locals want to go kill them. Now our guys are having to protect them from the people that Saddam wanted to keep enslaved. Then to top it all off, they get captured by terrorists whom they wanted to support all along. You just have to wonder what was going through their heads. I wonder if it was, “Hey, Ahmed, I love you, I want your side to win, you’ve got the wrong guys.” LOL.

Seems to me you also have some issues to resolve with your father. You might want to seek some professional help. If I read that, and you were my kid, I’d be writing you out of the will. You equate people in the U.S. Armed Forces with your basic terrorist? Maybe your Dad didn’t take you to the base often enough, or teach you the code of the armed forces, or let you read the UCMJ or something. You apparently believe Kerry’s lies (which he has since denied, once he got caught) that there was widespread baby killing going on in Vietnam, or that all soldiers are like the losers in Abu Graib. You think someone who regrets the taking of innocent civilian lives, and who can get punished if he does, is morally equivalent to someone who straps on a bomb wrapped in nails and steps onto a school bus full of children. You simply amaze me.

But isn’t it nice, to be able to post this blog in a wonderful country like America, where you don’t have to walk two steps behind your husband wrapped head to toe and be kept illiterate, where if your blog were discovered you would be whisked off to the rape room where you would be gang-banged in front of your husband and children?

Your basic premise, that all we have to do is be nice enough and kind enough and that the rest of the world will turn away from evil simply because we wish it so is not real.

Sleep tight. Your American soldiers are protecting you, whether you want them to, whether you appreciate it, or understand it, or not.

From E. P. Harmon:

A lot of left/right political disagreements arise because people come to trust very different sources of information; the basic “facts” and assumptions we each accept as “true” are often quite different ones. Yet we all have to trust someone, sometime, and no one can arrive at a belief system entirely from firsthand experience. For instance, probably neither of us has ever been to Iraq; yet even people who have visited there, or who have lived there, or even grew up there, don’t agree about what’s going on there. It’s always hard to know whom to believe.

We can choose to listen to and trust generalists and popular authorities—public school texts, teachers, ministers, politicians, talk-show hosts…or we may choose to read and listen to experienced specialists with sterling credentials in various fields of expertise. But regardless of whom we read and hear and consider, all authorities are biased, because they, too, have arrived at their conclusions secondhand, and using incomplete information. No one ever knows everything.

Yet you and I and everyone else must nevertheless struggle to make a living, understand life, contribute, care for ourselves and our loved ones, and perhaps, realize some of our dreams—and most of the steps we take along the way are difficult ones—from childhood until the day we die. I think we would both agree that we live in a world full of people who are often angry, confused, and dangerous, and that to be human is often to be mistaken and harmful.

In the midst of all this struggle, pain, and confusion, we have to make a myriad of moment-to-moment decisions on every conceivable thing. With each decision, we can take only one of two courses of action, neither of which guarantees good results, safety, or prosperity, neither of which feels like an obvious best choice, neither of which is completely defensible, and both of which are risky, confusing, frightening, and difficult.

One course of action is to focus on our fears about the evil that mankind is capable of. This fear-based course of action can seem like common sense if we feel individually and collectively under constant attack from those who would hurt or compete with us. This course urges us to prepare to defend ourselves, to act aggressively, and to return fear with more fear, on both a personal and global scale.

A second course of action focuses on the good people are capable of, believing that love, in all its forms (respect, gentleness, openness, kindness, listening, patience, forbearance, acceptance, tolerance, forgiveness, cooperativeness, agreeableness, and so on) is stronger than fear in all its forms (hate, anger, violence, envy, suspicion, jealousy, greed, etc.), and also works better to improve human lives and relationships in the long run, whether personal or global.

A fear-based life assumes that, aside from minor human similarities, few people are really very much like you; most are less trustworthy, less virtuous, and less reliable, and most are more dangerous—so it makes sense to hold people at arms’ length, to hurt them before they hurt you, and to hurt them back, even more, when you are hurt.

A love-based life assumes that, despite superficial differences, most people are very much like you in most ways, having the same human sets of fears and needs and goals and loves and failings as you do—so it makes sense to offer compassion, respect, and forgiveness to all, including yourself (i.e., treat others as you would want to be treated—the “golden rule.”)

Both courses of action rely upon having in mind a particular attitude—“where you come from” mentally—rather than any differences in “what’s really out there.” Both courses of action are difficult paths to travel, confusing, and tenuous. Both require courage to live faithfully. Neither offers any guarantee of safety.

A life based on self-protection can offer comforting feelings of power, control, and safety—at times. But since most people like to be trusted, loved, and forgiven for their many mistakes, a defensive/aggressive attitude can become an increasingly lonely option, as relationships become more complicated and difficult to control, micromanage, or resolve—both personally and globally.

A life based on open giving also has many drawbacks and disappointments. No one likes getting kicked in the teeth, suffering injustice, or being walked on. A life based in love can be very frustrating, since love is an ideal impossible for humans to live up to—and no one ever gets it right. At most, you can chip away at such goals, and hope to keep on improving. Even then, since everyone is human and fallible, others will still hurt us and let us down, and we’ll still do the same to others. On the whole, though, people who care and trust and forgive draw other like-minded people to them, so lives based in love often move toward greater sharing, acceptance, support, and peace—both personally and globally.

Both general courses of action are logically indefensible. Laying down one’s defenses and allowing oneself to be vulnerable and open seems like asking for nothing but trouble—both personal and global. And just as surely, schoolyard bullies and warmongers seem to be asking for trouble, since they frighten and alienate others and accumulate dangerous, angry enemies, both personal and global.

Is either of these approaches right, and the other one wrong? Who can say? Everyone gets to choose the approach they think will work best for them.

In response to some specific comments in your letter: No, I don’t hate military forces, either ours or “theirs.” I believe that most soldiers everywhere, on all sides, are trying their best to live good lives and live up to their ideals. I have lived around soldiers all my life, and am drawn to their courage, idealism, and selflessness. It is true that I don’t distinguish between the actions of soldiers who drop expensive high-tech explosives on civilian populations, and the actions of suicide bombers who strap themselves with cheap nail-bombs and climb on school buses; both choose to further their political goals by indiscriminate, deliberate acts of violence that result, as you say, in dead babies, which I can’t agree with, no matter what the cause; there has to be a better way to achieve one’s political ends. Yet both sides believe their cause is just, and both are willing to sacrifice their lives, and others’, for their ideals and beliefs.

I am profoundly impressed by the vision and courage of the many senior officers currently in our Department of Defense, not to mention the line officers and foot soldiers, who are exploring and suggesting peaceful, effective, and far less costly alternative approaches to defending our country that don’t involve militancy and war, demonstrating the admirable and thoughtful tradition of leadership and high ideals historically associated with our military.

I’m not a pacifist, although I suspect I might be safer and happier if I were, just as the noncombatant Quaker farmers who welcomed all weary soldiers from both sides were safer during the Civil War. If someone were climbing in my window, though, I would defend myself and my family, although research tells us that reacting fearfully and aggressively (especially using weapons) during such situations usually produces worse results all around.

I don’t believe God co-authored any religious documents (including the Bible and the Koran), although we can all receive his inspiration if we ask for it,. I do, however, think that most collections of ancient religious writings (like the Bible and the Koran) offer a lot of wisdom, along with some clunkers; fortunately, God gave us brains so we could thoughtfully tell which passages are which. Anyone can find a rationale for anything if they look hard enough in religious texts, including both violent and non-violent action.

I’m wary of all explanations of what went on in the past—what we call “history”—because history is always written by the victors. The truth is, no one can ever know for sure the whole story about any event in the past, just as we can’t even be sure we have the whole story today when reading the newspaper—which is the first, and always controversial, rough draft of history. There are, for instance, a variety of versions of why the Cold War ended. I always like to ask myself, when reading someone’s theory: “Who is benefiting from people believing this particular version?” And although I approach all history cautiously, I was a college history major, and love reading history.

I don’t think either you or I are naïve about the depths of ignorance, depravity, despair, and cruelty to which people everywhere can fall. I do think it’s naïve, however, to imagine that one’s own familiar, particular culture has a lock on moral superiority. Every culture has much of value to learn from every other, so it’s naive to think that “we” (“our” culture, religion, nation, race, ethnicity, gender, kind, etc.) is “right,” “superior,” and “good,” while other, unfamiliar ones are “wrong,” “inferior,” and “bad.” We should be very suspicious of all the frightening things we hear about foreign nations, religions, and cultures, because well-paid demagogues whose last interest is truth create huge profits for those who pay them well to drum up fear. If America had as many crazed, bloodthirsty enemies as some demagogues now claim, all the kings horses and men couldn’t have prevented whole U.S. cities from being blown away long ago, our civic water supplies and food supplies being poisoned, and so on. It’s just too easy to wreak civic havoc cheaply and anonymously.

I also think it’s naïve to assume that our own local or national politicians are generally any more trustworthy than are politicians anywhere, or smarter, or any less greedy, or any less megalomaniacal. That’s why our framers built checks and balances into our constitution, and why we should strive to maintain them.

I also think it’s naïve to think that a non-violent democracy can arise courtesy of a violent foreign occupation, or that torture and rape are not natural outcomes of, and necessary to the maintenance of any violently-achieved power structure, or that freedom of the press is not repressed by unchecked power, or that the ranks of armies are not filled with desperate people willing to accept jobs and money from any well-heeled power.

It’s naïve to think that any war, ever, is initiated for unselfish, pure motives. It’s naïve to think that gentle, cooperative people living quietly in the lands of their ancestors are the bad guys, while the good guys are the armies from afar blowing everything up. It’s naïve to assume that partisan politicians are ever fully in control of any situation, or have much of a clue about taking care of people, or about international relations, or about running wars. It’s naïve to think that more killing ever results in less killing, and that hatred and violence don’t create more hatred and violence. It’s naïve to think that any nation with a growing number of enemies will be safe during the 21^st century.

It’s naïve to think that the most-endangered and most-threatened nation in the world today, the one most urgently in need of taking pre-emptive military action to protect itself, is also the single, most-feared hegemonic empire best-armed with far more nuclear and conventional and high-tech weapons and money and soldiers and political and economic power than any other alliance of nations in the history of the world, the one nation with established military bases all over the world, the one nation currently waging wars in countries with prized economic resources, while ignoring (or supporting) dictatorships and tyrannies elsewhere.

It’s naïve to assume that any bureaucracy allowed to hide its activities behind a cloak of “national defense” is telling the truth about its results. It’s naïve to think that a small minority of citizens who perceive they have an interest in voting every four years for one of two unappealing candidates from two smarmy and very similar political parties running big-money campaigns in elections replete with fraud, have achieved much more than a degree of democracy. To be sure, I count my blessings and strive to strengthen the many great things this nation has achieved, because many countries are far less democratic. On the other hand, there are many far more democratic countries (including some without constitutions, by the way) from whom we could learn a lot.

On the subject of Islam: No one likes change, and Islamic migration has frightened those in the West who know only enough about Muslims to be terrified of what TV, radio, and pulpit demagogues tell them. Yet the highest and best practitioners of all major religions, including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, are people anyone would respect, for their caring, their responsible lives, and for their great wisdom—if only we had the opportunity to know and understand them. On the other hand, there are practitioners in every religion, including Christians, Muslims, and Jews, who are ignorant, terrified, angry people who would bomb whole countries, who hate whole civilizations, races, and even genders, because they fear them too much to make an effort to understand them.

The West has much to learn from Islamic culture, as Islam has much to learn from us. Furthermore, both cultures are often wrong, mistaken, and cruel—in different ways. All cultures, ours included, grow accustomed and blind to their own particular sets of shortcomings. For instance, most Muslims are simply aghast that our culture allows so many young girls to grow up alienated from their families, schools, and churches, to become diseased, pregnant, promiscuous, alcoholic, addicted to drugs, divorced, abandoned, prostitutes, single mothers, etc. Just as we, in the West, are dismayed when we hear that Muslims cover their women and keep them hidden and schooled at home. The only thing we can know for sure, though, about what we hear, is that nothing is ever as simple as it seems, and to be wary of well-rewarded demagogues and their sponsors, who have a lot to gain financially from terrifying people with horrifying visions of the inhumanity and stupidity of our imagined enemy-of-the-day. The only road away from fear is understanding, which only comes with willingness to actively learn more about what it is we fear.

Non-violent activism, a form of love, is the most powerful force in the world, far more powerful than armies and weapons and bombs. Gandhi’s non-violent protests brought down the most powerful empire in the world in India, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s non-violent power brought civil rights to blacks in the American South. Both of these were long-standing, hard, hard problems, resolved, not by cowards and flakes, or by violence, but by courageous people of faith, who believed in the power of love, and who offered the tough, powerful solution of non-violent political activism.

The night before he died, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It’s nonviolence—or nonexistence.” The Dalai Lama has declared the 21^st century, “the century of dialogue.” We can all learn more when we exchange views, listen to one another, ask questions, and keep an open mind.

Please send your comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

If You Love the Little Children of the World

Posted on January 13, 2006 by Nancy Pace

Sing this song to the tune of “Jesus Loves the Little Children…” (or the Civil War song, “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching,” which is the same tune.)

We’re so sick of all the fighting

Sick of wars around the world

Red and yellow black and white

Stop the fighting, it’s not right