“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

I understand of course the mindset behind this idea. Life is complex, and the difference between right and wrong is not always as easy to determine as we would like it to be.  On the one hand, people who believe in an absolute morality tend to cling to religious authority or to political ideology to define it. They may cling to their dogma even when their instincts or common sense tell them that a behavior is hurtful. On the other hand,  the idea that we can each define  right and wrong individually or culturally, and that one opinion is as good as another, has us flailing about in a sea of sloppy reasoning, a sea of gray where black and white no longer exist.

I would suggest that rather than moral relativism, we think in terms of moral prioritization.  In other words, absolute morality does exist. We instinctively recognize it on some level. Murder is always wrong, stealing or cheating are always wrong, and lying is always wrong. But in a particular situation, a person may have to choose one moral absolute over another. An example would be lying to protect a human life, as when those persons courageous enough to hide Jews in their homes during the Holocaust lied to the Gestapo.

Similarly, most people I know who are adamantly opposed to  assisted suicide  for  terminally ill  hospital patients will still consent to have artificial life support removed from a dying loved one in order not to prolong suffering. Life is full of tough choices, as when a military commander sends soldiers into a situation where he knows the casualty count will be high because he believes that more lives will be saved by their sacrifice. In other words, like it or not, we are sometimes forced into a dilemma where there are no good choices. We must sometimes choose the greater good or the lesser evil, but that does not give us the license to define right and wrong according to our own preferences. In all instances, the most noble moral choice is the one that does the most good for the most people and that does the least harm. Granted that is not always easy to determine, and such responsibility can be mishandled, but such choices cannot always be avoided.

Related to the idea of moral relativity is the replacement of the concept of universal moral principles with the term values. We may value art and beauty, or education, or material well-being, or economic justice, or sexual freedom, or any number of things, but we must not lose sight of the fact that one person’s  life is of greater value than any of these other lesser goods. If we don’t place this absolute value on human life and liberty, then none of us is safe.

Wicked

Published in 2005, this book has been around for eighteen years, but like most serious works of literature, it remains relevant for our times and for all times. The novel Wicked is a political satire which turns the original Wizard of Oz upside-down and inside out by making Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, into a heroine, presented as a non-conformist in a hypocritical and corrupt Oz.  Ever the eternal optimist, I love L. Frank Baum’s  original  fantasy  and the truths contained in it.  I have such happy memories of watching the movie with my daughter and grandsons,  and of reading the classic and playing the  soundtrack for my daughter in the late seventies and early eighties.  So I was glad to see that the musical  derived from the two books had a more upbeat and encouraging message than the satirical novel, even though it was essentially a good representation of it.

But the realist underlying the optimist in my personality could not but recognize the importance of  the deeper philosophical meaning in  Wicked  the  novel,  which attempts to examine the nature and causes of evil. When I read a serious work of fiction that is meant to teach as well as to entertain, I always look for the meaty passages that seem to drive home the most important truths  that the author is trying to convey. In this novel in which paganism devolves into lewdness, and in which the preservation of power is corrupted into the rationalization of cruelty,  we are confronted with the dark potential that each of us has for letting  unbridled passions be the forces that drive us.

Sometimes when an author has said it better than anyone else can say it, a book reviewer is better to share the words of the author.  Some of the  excerpts  in which Maguire analyzes the nature of evil through the words of his characters are as follows:  ”To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi tale about where evil arises; it just arises; it always is”(p. 231). And from the same passage, “Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions”(p. 231).  And in this same dialogue with Oatsie, Elphaba remembers: “This was too much like her childhood discussions with her father and Nessarose about where evil begins.  .  .  .  Her father used to orchestrate proofs about evil as a way of persuading his flock to convert.  .  .  . But surely evil was beyond proof . . . .”(p. 231).

Then during a dinner table discussion later in the book, the subject is addressed again: “Well, I stick with my suggestion,” said Alveric. “Evil isn’t doing bad things, it’s feeling bad about them afterward. There’s no absolute value to behavior”(p.370). In the verbal  exchange which follows,  evil is called institutional inertia, an attribute, a power, an infection, the corruptibility of creation, and a disjointedness betweeen our bodies and our souls. But finally Alveric is refuted when one of his dinner companions claims “No, you’re all wrong, our childhood religion had it right: Evil is moral at its heart–the selection of vice over virtue; you can pretend not to know, you can rationalize, but you know it in your consicence”(p.371).  Still the  debate goes on: “Evil is an act, not an appetite.  .  .  .Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.”  And then, “Oh no, evil is repressing that appetite. I never repress any appetite”(p371).

Toward the end of the novel, the author revisits the explicit exploration of this subject as Elphaba muses on the nature of all she was taught and has experienced: “That night she sat up in a chair and thought about what she had said.  .  .  . A person who doesn’t believe in the Unnamed God, or anything else, can’t believe in a soul.  .  .if you could withdraw the scimitars of religion from your mental and moral systems—could you even stand? . . . .The history of peoples who have shucked off religion isn’t an especially persuasive argument for living without it. Is religion itself–that tired and ironic phrase–the necessary evil?.  .  .  .There may be no real city in the clouds, but dreaming of it can enliven the spirit.  .  .  .Perhaps in our age’s generous attempt to (unite) all devotional urges life and breath under the canopy of the Unnamed God, perhaps we have sealed our own doom. Perhaps it’s time to name the Unnamed God, even feebly and in our own wicked image, that we may at least survive under the illusion of an authority that could care for us.  .  .  .For whittle away from the Unnamed God anything approximating character, and what have you got? A big hollow wind. And wind may have gale force but it may not have moral force; and a voice in a whirlwind is a carnival barker’s trick.  .  .  .And would we recognize the Unnamed God if it knocked on our doors?”(pp. 387-388).

This last passage is very telling. Could it be that our cynical author is an agnostic in the first phase of believing? Or is he a closet believer honestly confronting his doubts? Whichever he is, he speaks for the spiritual vacuum in all of us which must suck in belief. He also recognizes that what we believe matters. If our beliefs do not give moral purpose that can withstand intellectual scrutiny  to our lives, and if our beliefs do not influence us to value each individual human life and to live so as to advance the well-being of humankind in general, then our beliefs need to be re-examined.

Are Americans divided into opposing teams?

A nation ever passionate about sports, we have divided ourselves into two opposing teams we call conservatives and liberals, which we usually see as represented by the Republican and Democratic parties, although within the two parties, views range from what we call extreme to moderate. We have become blinded to the larger view of political philosophy  by the political platforms of the two parties, particularly as they have been defined since World War II.

A broad definition of conservatism is the desire to hold on to the traditions and institutions of the past. A broad definition of liberalism is the desire to reform society by effecting positive change. But are not both these approaches part of good government? Is it not a good thing to hold on to what has worked in the past, the tried and true, and to protect what has meaning for people, the values that parents like to hand down to their children? On the other hand, is it not also a good thing to fix what hasn’t worked or what could possibly work better, to make things fairer and more optimum than they have ever been before? In the life of an individual or a nation, conservative values must be balanced with progressive, innovative ones. We need to respond to the challenges of the particular times in which we live by bringing both kinds of values to the table. We learn from the past, what has worked or not worked or what is no longer working or what could work better, and we should respond accordingly in the present, independent of political dogma. We must balance caution with courage. We must be generous in spirit, but realistic about limitations. We must preserve what is good, but look for ways to make it better.  Moderates and independents have long recognized this. Balance is a healthy principle in all of life.

If we are honest, we can admit that loyalty to party often blinds us to inconsistencies in some of our mindsets. For instance, conservatives who feel passionately about the sanctity of life when it comes to abortion and euthanasia, are often willing to rationalize the loss of innocent civilian life, even the lives of children,  that takes place during war in their eagerness to have a strong national defense. We do need strong national defense, but being too quick to resort to arms can exacerbate a tragedy that could perhaps be averted or ameliorated by detente,or  by establishing goodwill through commerce, joint educational endeavors and help with third world economies.

On the other hand, liberals who tout the importance of civil liberties and free speech may be all too ready to censor the ideas of anyone who disagrees with their ideology. Both “conservatives” and “liberals” are all too willing to enforce their values on everyone else by legislating them. Economics  and the environment are red flags politically, but,  logically,  conserving the environment by objectively studying the science involved without political bias  should be a conservative issue, for nothing is more worth preserving than nature.

Similarly, liberality of spirit or generosity is hardly served by running  the credit card up to monstrous proportions and then handing  the debt down to the next generation, whether a family or a nation is the financially irresponsible culprit.  Accepting that all is not possible is a mark of maturity in both an individual and a government. But conservative doesn’t have to mean greedy or stingy, and it shouldn’t mean that.  In a country that allows people to prosper through free enterprise, the prosperous should recognize their responsibility to give a great deal back to a nation that permits such opportunity. It is also a  form of self-preservation, since hoarding too much of the fruits of your employees’ labor invites political unrest.

In short, the teamwork needs to take place between the parties, not just within them, since we are all connected and what is good for the many is good for the few. We need the strengths of both conservative and liberal thinking to form a strong American team, that can both hold its own among its international competitors and upgrade the quality of the global league within which we play as well. The planet is too small not to aspire toward a win-win situation for the world.

Interdependency

It is impossible to be in a loving relationship with anyone without eventually confronting some independence issues. For this is what healthy boundaries are about–finding ways to share and be closely connected while still maintaining autonomy and independence within the relationship. Robert Frost  questions what constitutes  healthy boundaries in his poem “Mending Wall”, which begins with the line “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” but  ends with the words “Good fences make good neighbors.” In other words, we hunger for the intimacy that comes from breaking through the barriers of our separateness, but to enjoy optimal relationships with each other, we must respect one another’s separateness.

When it comes to boundaries, people’s comfort zones vary widely. Our family patterns, our cultural norms, the habits of our particular subculture all impact our individual needs when it comes to balancing openness with privacy. No where is this felt more keenly than in family interactions. In these most intimate connections, we are most likely to overstep our bounds in our eagerness to be protective or close, or we are most likely to feel our identities threatened or violated and to resent it.

The truth is that to be truly intimate with another person we must give up some of who we are. Ideally, two people become more self-actualized by closeness, but the reality is that this rarely happens. In place of two independent people, you have an interdependency, which is hopefully the most optimum compromise between what each would consider ideal.

No place is this tug of war between intimacy and separateness discussed more than in addiction literature. A special word has even been coined for a person who is in a relationship with an addict, whether the addiction is sexual, alcohol or drugs, gambling or some other obsession. The word is codependent.

According to contemporary wisdom, a codependent person  chooses to stay in a relationship with an addicted person  because of the codependent person’s  addiction to being needed. By staying in an unequal relationship, the healthier partner feels superior, in control, and enjoys self-righteous feelings of martyrdom. While there may be some truth in this analysis, or while it may be true of some people, it assumes a one-size-fits-all scenario. All  alcoholics are not alike; nor is any other addict exactly like everyone else who is hooked on the same drug. So every individual is entitled to make the most positive choices based on all the particular aspects of that person’s relationship.

There is a difference in choosing to stay with someone who nurtures you in many ways, but who has a weakness that you are willing to tolerate,  and in choosing to stay in a relationship in which you feel  trapped, fearful  and resentful. There is no one right way to manage a relationship. It irks me when well-meaning psychologists, or people who consider themselves amateur  shrinks, are too quick to blame a spouse or a parent for a loved one’s undesirable behavior. The assumption is that if the “enabler” stopped helping the dependent person, the dependant’s  behavior would improve.  Observation indicates otherwise.  While such an approach may  sometimes work, more often the person who was being “enabled” by a loved one just becomes the problem of society. For instance, when the wife of an alcoholic isn’t there to be the designated driver, the drinker is more likely to drive impaired and endanger someone else. Who knows how many lives have been saved by spouses who prevented  drunks  from driving? (Although it is also true that drunks can be belligerent and won’t always allow a designated driver)

Similarly, when a burned-out parent stops  supporting an addicted teenager or adult child, that child may get a reality check, but is just as likely to end up homeless, or on food stamps or in public housing.  In the case of homelessness, the  addict is in danger; if you love the  person, it is important to remember that you cannot rehabilitate  a dead person.  In the second case, the addict is still being enabled, but by society, and the parent has lost the opportunity to have an influence. This is not to imply that most of the people helped by churches or social services are addicts, but that the do-gooders in the world are more overwhelmed when families don’t share the burden.

Once again, we see that we are all interdependent. When a family relationship fails, people outside the family are affected. When troubled families occur in large numbers, society is impacted in a big way. We are experiencing this right now, and it will take a lot of teamwork–interdependence–to turn it around.

Photo: Flickr by wallyg

In this blog on the first of March, I am continuing with the vocabulary theme, but am switching my emphasis to the ways that we think about independence. Probably no word strikes more at the core of American identity. Our very first document in which we attempted to define ourselves as a nation was the Declaration of Independence. We are fiercely protective of our autonomy, but our  perceptions of freedom and independence can be very different. In general, we have evolved into two mindsets–one that feels freedom is more threatened by government, and one that feels freedom is more threatened by the monopoly of economic opportunity. We are struggling to find the optimum balance between big government and big business, and to create the best partnership possible between them in order to assure the greatest good for the greatest number.

With no financial maneuverability, political freedom becomes an abstract idea, rather than a reality one can experience.

As individuals and families struggle for economic independence in today’s changing world,  more people are finding themselves trapped by either unemployment or by jobs that don’t pay enough for housing, food, transportation, health care and the various kinds of insurance one needs.  With no financial maneuverability, political freedom becomes an abstract idea,  rather than a reality one can experience. People whom we describe as being on the political left are more concerned with looking to government to provide this kind of independence for people–the opportunity to be upwardly mobile in order to pursue the American dream.

On the other hand, most of the Europeans who settled this country came in search of not only economic opportunity, but religious freedom as well. They were escaping a great stuggle between Catholicism and Protestantism that could result in religious persecution and even death for anyone who dared have a different opinion about theology or morality from the party in power. I use the word “party”  deliberately, because without separation of church and state, the religion of the ruler becomes the religion of the people. Whatever beliefs weren’t ”politically correct”, to use our modern phraseology, were considered heretical. For all practical purposes, Protestantism and Catholicism were the political parties.

Therefore, just as many people feel that for them free enterprise has become an abstract idea which is no longer a realistic option, many people of various faiths feel that free speech has become a political abstraction.  With no freedom to question the moral or philosophical assumptions of the political party in power, free speech becomes an abstract idea, rather than a reality one can experience.  People whom we describe as being on the political right are more concerned with this kind of independence–independence of thought and speech–the right to hold different views from the fashionable assumptions of the majority.

Perhaps at this juncture we would all be wise to recognize our interdependence. No matter how unpopular a person’s opinions may be, if that person cannot express them freely then none of us are truly safe to express our opinions. No matter how much we rave about free enterprise, if a person cannot find a job or cannot meet cultural expectations for a minimally secure and decent life in the world as it now exists, then real economic freedom is null and void. So we need to dispense with the rhetoric and recognize that both mindsets are right, and that both mindsets are wrong. We are all connected. Just as our ecosystem is interdependent, so are we –  economically, environmentally, and morally, as human beings. So the word for the new millenium, is not independent, with all the naive arrogance that we bring to that word, but interdependence. We must respectfully disagree, when we disagree, but allow the disagreement while working together for good goals that affect us all.

Love Mosaic. flickr by marie ll

Romantic love is at its best euphoric, and all those positive emotions can have an uplifting effect on everyone around the lovers.  But romantic love can also distract us from our duties and responsibilities. It can make us jealous, possessive, insecure and selfish.  Romantic love,  like sexuality,  can be a great source of joy and goodness, or it can be very destructive.  In his book The Road Less Traveled,  M. Scott Peck, an eminent psychiatrist of our time who truly inspired me,  explores the nature of healthy love and the distortions one encounters.  While he affirms love and spirituality as the road to serenity and fulness in our lives, he at one point notes that romantic love is the source of a large percentage of his patients’ problems.

Karl Menninger  was one of the earliest and most important psychiatrists  to assert that love is the best prescription for most of what ails us psychologically. But the love that Menninger  extended to his patients was a radically accepting  love that caused him to pen the following words: “I’ve dealt with what you call crazy people all my life, and I don’t know what they mean by insanity.” Such unconditional love as that is rarely a component of romantic love, and perhaps that is a good thing during courtship. But the kind of  love that Menninger practiced with his patients is a very good kind of love on which to base a marriage, provided it works both ways.

Such unconditional  love is  less based on emotion, and more grounded in attitude.  The word that comes to mind is agape,  a Greek word that did not originate with early  Christians, but that was adopted by them. It is also at the heart of  all genuine compassion practiced by all people everywhere.  Agape love often involves a decision to love even when your emotions tempt you to do otherwise. It is based on wanting the best for another person, and for other people in general.

Agape love is not emotionally neutral, but it involves harnessing our emotions as a positive energy source to attain this higher kind of love. It involves discipline, because we must  turn away from the negative emotions in ourselves and focus on the loving, positive ones. For me, what works is not to suppress negative emotions until they fester, but to work through them by talking about them with the person provoking the emotions, or with an outsider who is a safe confidante, perhaps a counselor or a spouse or a parent or sibling.  Exercise, especially walking outdoors, also helps me to alleviate stress,  and often it is better to walk before I talk.

But strive to shift your thoughts and feelings to the positive as quickly as possible. Maybe assume a relaxed Yoga position and empty yourself of all stimuli. Once you feel quiet, open yourself to all goodness, clarity, love and goodwill. For me, this means letting God flood my being. I can then see people objectively, as products of their situations who like me are struggling to make the most of our human condition. I feel empathy rather than anger for them, and I am able to forgive and feel some warm connection. In  an earlier blog, I talked about empathy. Empathy is an important component of agape love.  Happy Valentine’s Day to all.  ”Beloved, let us love one another.” 1st John : 4: 7

The Sandcastle Girls

Most dominant in the heroic tale is the protagonist Elizabeth Endicott, who invites one woman and little girl to live with her in spite of discouragement coming not only from the local officials, but also from her own peers, who are uncomfortable with this unconventional way of helping. Like many of us, these officials, volunteer physicians and one missionary prefer to keep a tasteful amount of distance between themselves and the objects of their beneficence. They also have trouble rationalizing the singling out of two human beings for special help, when multitudes of the less fortunate are overwhelming the hospitals, orphanages and refugee camps in the desert, where most of them die. In the midst of all this tragedy, however, there is the refreshing sweetness of a love story.

This is a life-changing book. Like books about the Holocaust and other testimonies of man’s inhumanity to man, it challenges us to be on our guard lest we get lulled into thinking that “it can’t happen here,” and also it spurs us to greater courage and compassion in our outlook and actions. The creative ways in which the heroic characters manage to help a few people, although they cannot help everyone, demonstrates for us how a lot of people doing little things can make a big difference when evil threatens. Books like this motivate us to think about where our priorities would be if we were faced with life and death moral dilemmas. Also, this is a must-read because this forgotten people who were almost wiped out deserve to be remembered.

It is a standard joke that we don’t usually make much progress with the more challenging parts of our lists. Or if we do achieve some improvements, then we are proned to recidivism. Many people give up the idea of making New Year’s Resolutions at all.

Should our reach exceed our grasp? Flickr by Timothy Kirsty Sewell

But  at what point does the passion for perfectionism become counter-productive? We baby-boomers are fond of saying that you cannot be too rich or too thin. But corporate greed has demonstrated that the quest for wealth  can  be overdone,  just as anorexia has demonstrated that the national passion for thinness can be overdone. Not only that, but so much obsession with those particular external ideals have resulted in many people’s rebellion–hence our problems with counter-culture “acting out”  against the values of a wealthy capitalist establishment on the one hand and our ever greater problems with obesity on the other. Tell people that they must  or that they can’t , and you can expect a certain amount of inevitable backlash. Similarly, when we as individuals force ourselves into an all-or-nothing battle of willpower, we are usually doomed to failure.

Not only do we set ourselves up for frustration and failure, but even when one is successful, the  personal push for perfection involves possible downsides for the individual.  Destructive perfectionism is the theme of much of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work. Hawthorne’s story “The Birthmark”, for instance,  tells of a chemist with a beautiful wife. Her one flaw was a small birthmark on her face, which many admirers considered to be a unique trait which added to her loveliness rather than detracting from it. But the chemist became obsessed with removing it to the point that he spent all his days experimenting to find a “cure.” The story ends of course with his finally removing the birthmark, only to find that the dose that did the deed also killed his wife.

Hawthorne’s writing also dealt a great deal with  hypocrisy, which results from trying merely to appear perfect. But whereas hypocrisy is generally recognized as a bad thing,  sincere perfectionism seems desirable.  Excellence in any area of life is certainly admirable. But excellence in every area of life is impossible, since limitations on our time, energy and resources require that we prioritize, placing more emphasis on some things than others. There are trade-offs in life.   For instance,  when we as individuals or as a culture emphasize personal aggrandizement more than interdependence, or when we value a luxurious lifestyle and material things more than we value other human beings,  we actually become less rather than becoming greater. But self-interest is in all of us to such a degree that we rationalize personal indulgence at the expense of  moral advancement.

Yet even moral advancement can become a form of egotism at the expense of true magnanimity. Genuine humility eludes us. We seek even moral perfection at our peril when we are motivated by a need to feel superior, to be like the man in Christ’s parable who thanked God that he was ”not as other men.” Christ rather commended the man who prayed, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”  This of course can be an excuse to wallow in lots of delicious vices!  So balance seems to be the key. The greatest good comes from great effort, but also from accepting compromise when greater real good is accomplished by doing that.  Perfectionism becomes a kind of tunnel vision focused on some narrow view of what is good or desirable.  A perfect house doesn’t always make the happiest home; inner beauty often trumps outer beauty; more money doesn’t always lower one’s misery index.  A physician I admire, who also happens to be my neighbor,  put it succinctly: “Perfect is the enemy of good.”