Category: Philosophy

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Pay It Forward

Am I conservative in my world views? Am I liberal? I am conservative when it comes to my money and what I think taxes ought to pay for. I also believe that society tends to take care of its own. That makes me more libertarian, I suppose.

I have a fairly liberal way of looking at the world in a lot of situations. I believe some of my attitudes could be considered progressive. I’m compassionate to the disadvantaged and I take social issues to heart. I value equality and appreciate diversity.

I believe each of us has a moral obligation to aid someone else who needs it. I subscribe to the “Pay it Forward” philosophy. Karma comes around for us all, and our “savings” of good deeds will make us more likely to benefit from someone else’s good act as well. Luck is a state of mind as much as it is effort. When I see someone who makes an effort but can’t quite get to her goal, I’m more inclined than not to give her a boost over that last hurdle if I can. And I will go out of my way to do it – especially if going out of my way isn’t a big deal.

Look at the couple who had no children, but with the help of a friend or even a stranger was able to adopt. If we could help the girl who, before she was 18, was kicked out of the house by her mother’s boyfriend, will we miss the money? Will we regret the hours spent on the telephone listening to a teenager cry as yet another foster mother tells her she has to leave?

The common thread here is family, and children. A teenage mother, thrust into the foster care system and astounded that anyone could buy groceries without food stamps; an abused and neglected child who only wants to be accepted for who she is; a loving couple with more love to give than they are allowed by nature to share. These are the people who make up our world. These are the people who shape the present and the future, and the present and future of every single person who comes into contact with them. And each one of them is worth the extra effort.

I wish more people would subscribe to the “pay it forward” mentality. The world would be a better place.

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Ishmael, Part II

I appreciate the comments on the first installment of my blog on Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. The second installment on this book is the more interesting, in my opinion. Why? Because it explains part of the mythology of our culture by retelling two important stories we all know. Both are stories from the Book of Genesis.

Although I may draw the ire of Bible literalists when I say this, I think the explanations Quinn gives of the Fall of Man (Adam’s banishment from Eden) and of the story of Cain and Abel make supreme allegorical sense. The explanations opened doors in my mind.

All of us are familiar with the story of the Fall. God tells Adam that he can eat from any tree in Eden except the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam eats from it so God banishes him from the Garden. (I am deliberately leaving out Eve and her role because the word “Adam” means “mankind, ” and mankind is what Ishmael is concerned with.) Most of us are taught that this act of disobedience was something God could not tolerate. When Adam ate the fruit of the tree he realized he was naked and was ashamed. Hello, instantaneous cultural mores!

Ishmael explains the story from a slightly different perspective: that of the gods. The fruit of the tree gave knowledge of good and evil, but it did not impart the wisdom of how to use that knowledge in the long term. Knowing that something is good in the moment does not mean that that same thing will be good in the future. Also, what is good for one may be evil for another. Mankind is too selfish to make that distinction: if something is good for Man now, then that is Man’s choice. If it results in later harm, well, Man will choose to deal with the consequences later. Just like someone commented on yesterday’s blog, humans want instant gratification.

The example Ishmael gives is of predator and prey. If the lion kills the gazelle, it is good for the lion and the lion lives to hunt another day but it is bad for the gazelle, which dies. If the lion misses the kill, it is bad for the lion because the lion starves to death, but it is good for the gazelle which lives for another day. By controlling his ecology and his world, Man has assumed the mantle of choosing which lives and which dies in this scenario. Although man has the gods’ knowledge of good and evil, Man does not have the gods’ wisdom to choose correctly every time. Man’s poor choices result in an ecological imbalance.

The knowledge of good and evil is therefore something entirely situational for Man. Man only chooses what is good for him at the time. Man does not choose what is good for the world at all times. He cannot. Man’s arrogance and his mistaken belief that he has both the power and the wisdom of the gods is his own undoing. It will cause his own destruction.

The second Genesis tale Ishmael relates is what we know as the First Murder. The sons of Adam, Cain, a farmer, and Abel, a herder, both make sacrifices to their god. Cain is jealous because the god prefers Abel’s sacrifice, and kills him. Cain is banished from society as a result and carries a mark that identifies him as evil.

Ishmael tells the man that although the Hebrews preserved the story of the brothers, it was a Semite story to begin with. The Semites were a culture that predated the Hebrews and the Arabs. The Semites lived on the Arabian peninsula and in the fertile crescent of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. As Leavers, they took only what they needed and left the rest alone. The were hunter-gatherers and later nomadic herders. In years of plenty, humans and other animal and plant species flourished. In years of famine, the numbers of all species diminished. They would flourish again when food became plentiful.

Agriculture is believed to have begun in the Fertile Crescent. When Man began farming, animals were no longer allowed to graze on farmland. The farmers produced much more food than they needed, and times of famine became less frequent. The species that had lived where the farmers were cultivating land moved elsewhere. As more land was put under cultivation, the farmers, now a Taker society reshaping the world to suit themselves, pushed the nomadic Leavers from their lands. The story of Cain murdering Abel is the story of the northern Taker Semitic tribes murdering the southern nomadic Semitic Leaver tribes to make room for more agriculture. It is a story of war.

The gods prefer Abel’s way of life, which allows all living things to flourish in good times and which means all living things suffer equally during lean times. Cain is banished from living in the hands of the gods because he has assumed the mantle of the gods by reforming the world to his own purposes. The mark that identifies him as evil is his arrogance and continuing destruction of the very planet he needs to maintain in order to survive.

Basically, Ishmael explains, Takers believe that the world belongs to Man, whereas Leavers believe that Man belongs to the world. Takers see themselves as running the world. Leavers allow the gods to run the world. The gods, of course, prefer Leavers, and Leavers are sustainable. Takers are not, and will eventually destroy themselves along with their world in contradiction to the gods’ intentions.

In his final lesson with Ishmael, the man asks for a program to save the world. Ishmael tells him,

“The story of Genesis must be undone. First, Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you’re to survive. The Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world- not because they’re humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is no one right way to live. And then, of course, you must spit out the fruit of the forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet.”

“Yes, I see all that, but that’s a program for mankind to follow, that’s not a program for me. What do I do?”

“What you do is to teach a hundred what I’ve taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That’s how it’s always done.”

“Yes, but . . . is it enough?”

Ishmael frowned. “Of course it’s not enough. But if you begin anywhere else, there’s no hope at all. You can’t say, ‘We’re going to change the way people behave toward the world, but we’re not going to change the way they think about the world or the way they think about divine intentions in the world or the was they think about the destiny of man.’ As long as the people of your culture are convinced that the world belongs to them and that their divinely-appointed destiny is to conquer and rule it, then they are of course going to go on acting the way they’ve been acting for the past ten thousand years. They’re going to go on treating the world as if it were a piece of human property and they’re going to go on conquering it as if it were an adversary. You can’t change these things with laws. You must change people’s minds. And you can’t just root out a harmful complex of ideas and leave a void behind; you have to give people something that is as meaningful as what they’ve lost – something that makes better sense than the old horror of Man Supreme, wiping out everything on this planet that doesn’t serve his needs directly or indirectly.”

I shook my head. “What you’re saying is that someone has to stand up and become to the world today what Saint Paul was to the Roman Empire.”

“Yes, basically. Is that so daunting?”

I laughed. “Daunting isn’t nearly strong enough. To call it daunting is like calling the Atlantic damp.”

“Is it really so impossible in an age when a stand-up comic on television reaches more people than Paul did in his entire lifetime?”
The above quotation is taken from Daniel Quinn: Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Bantam, NY (1992)), pp 248-249.

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Ishmael – Part I

Yesterday’s Earth Day post drew some interesting comments and left a burning question in my mind. If “going green” isn’t enough to slow the global climate change and stave off the apocalypse, what can we do?

I want to tell you about a novel I read recently. Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, explains why human beings are such poor stewards of our planet. We have destroyed our world because we believe ourselves to be gods. We change our surroundings to suit us and we kill anything that gets in our way.

Quinn is a radical Neo-Tribalist, and he lays out the philosophy and the reasons for Neo-Tribalism in a Socratic dialogue between a telepathic gorilla and a man. Neo-Tribalism is a theory based on the writings of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (the “Noble Savage” guy) and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (the god of structural anthropology), among others. The idea is that modern culture will result in the annihilation of the human race. Overpopulation and abuse of resources, coupled with the idea that mankind has a right to use up the planet as it sees fit is what modern man does, and is it not sustainable. We will survive only if as a species we return to a hunter-gatherer existence, living in harmony with the planet and the other species on it.

Quinn’s novel Ishmael contains more than ecological philosophy, though. It is a dialogue between man and ape. It is social philosophy. It is religion. It is profound. It shifts paradigms. It moves the cheese. This book has changed lives.

The human protagonist in Ishmael responds to a newspaper ad: “Teacher Seeks Pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in Person.” When he applies for the pupil position, the man must grapple with the surreal discovery that the teacher is a telepathic silver-back gorilla who calls himself Ishmael.

Finally, in answer to Ishmael’s question of why he seeks a teacher, the man admits that he wants to understand “how things came to be this way.” The man feels that something is wrong with the world, that there is a Great Lie being told, but he can neither identify what is wrong nor identify the lie.

Ishmael begins teaching the man about his own species and his own cultural biases. First, the man must understand that many of the things he believes to be true are part of a mythology. The most important myth to recognize is the myth that the world was made for Man to do with as he pleases.

Ishmael divides mankind generally into two groups: Takers and Leavers. Takers are those who take from the world and from the other creatures around them. Takers take all they want, which is more than what they need. They believe the myth that the world exists for their kind, and they brook no argument otherwise. We are Takers.

Leavers are the people we call primitive. They do not farm, they do not take more from the world than they need to survive. They are hunters and gatherers. Very few Leavers continue to exist, because the Takers plant the Myth wherever they go and convert the Leavers to Takers.

Once the man understands that the notion that humans are the pinnacle of creation is a myth, he is better equipped to understand “how things came to be this way.”The great lie is that man can do as he pleases to change the earth. The lie is based on the myth.

Ishmael’s student comes to understand that Man, in his guise of Taker, is the only creature on the planet to believe the myth and the lie. Other species compete within the ecosystem; man changes the ecosystem to suit himself without regard to the consequences for other creatures or even, ultimately, for himself. Leavers and the rest of the species on the planet compete for survival, but they do not “wage war” against the planet or other species to do so. Takers wage constant war against the earth and against the species Takers perceive to be competition. The competition may be the way a river flows, the existence of an insect, or plants Takers consider to be weeds in their gardens.

To live sustainably, Quinn argues, “you may not hunt down competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food.” By killing our competition (the pests that invade our crops, the wolves that hunt our sheep, the swamps where we want to build our cities, the Leavers whose way of life is alien to ours) we Takers wage war against the world.

Think about this. Tomorrow I’ll tell you more about this amazing book and its philosophy.

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Human Subspecies Identified: The Drive-By Critic

What prompts people to be ruder to one another online than they would ever be in person?

I pondered this question this week when, having suffered without a computer for most of the week, I noticed a bizarre pair of quick comments buried on my page. The first comment branded someone a “liar.” Since I haven’t had that particular experience with the person in question, that comment was easy enough to ignore, especially since it was left by someone I had never before encountered whose profile has now been deleted.

The second comment by that same person was a bit odd, even as far as odd comments go. It said: “Why dont you tell everyone how you said everyone on your list are loosers, unemployed bums and you are just having fun with them to see that they have no life and believe your bullshit stories, lies and how they are just a number. (Dont whisper ever a word to anyone Tom please I am just having fun with them but I dont care if they live or die as long as they keep me entertained).” Sic, sic, sic, all the sics.

Since most of what I write isn’t personal and has nothing to do with real people, this was a strange statement to be directed at me. The person has no idea who I am or what my blog is all about. Even more obviously, it has never read my page. (I’ll settle on the pronoun “it” for this commenter, since assigning a “he” or “she” would humanize it beyond what it deserves.) I doubt that if it bothered to read my blog it would even understand it. (Do I dehumanize them by doing this?)

First of all, if there is drama on my page, it will be an outrageous fictional drama of my own making. Witness the recent Giant Cock/Baby Chick Paternity Scandal. Secondly, anyone suffering through a personal crisis will have my sympathy and support, never, ever my derision or insults.

Obviously, the commenter was lost and thought they had found the page of someone who would get stirred up by these weird allegations. What’s so strange is that I cannot imagine anyone I don’t know coming up to me out of the blue and calling someone a liar. Nor can I imagine anyone spreading gratuitous untruths just for kicks in real life.  Why does this happen here? [Edit: 5 years after this post, I finally know someone in real life who does this. They are a twisted, narcissistic, malicious person who thrives on upsetting others, perhaps for the attention.]

So I am led back to my original question, prompted by this commenter’s bizarre antisocial behavior: What prompts people to be ruder to one another online than they would ever be in person?

I read a column in the April issue of Discover, one of the very few publications I’ll actually pay money for. The columnist, Jaron Lanier, suggested that online nastiness is the product of easy, “drive-by” anonymity. When the commenter can create a quick and disposable ID, more hostile comments are left. Where more information must be given, and the ID creation process is a little more cumbersome, fewer hostile comments seem to be the rule.

For instance, on sites like Slashdot, where a new ID can be created for each comment without providing much information to the host site, people get indescribably nasty with one another. The same holds true for some of the edit wars hosted by Wikipedia. On the other hand, I’m told that players on World of Warcraft rarely encounter such boorish behavior. One reason for the politeness of the WOW site might be that the penalties for such conduct result in the person being banned from the game.

Lanier proposed several different considerations as to why online behavior can be either good or bad. Demographics of the users and the times of day that the users in question tend to visit the site to leave their comments were two considerations he named. I would add something else to his list: topic. If the blog or article contains a personal topic, then personal comments are made and sometimes those comments are personally insulting.

You can see it everywhere on social media, probably among your own contacts. People who have the “diary” blogs and overshare on Facebook, the ones who talk about their personal lives and their trials and tribulations, often seem to be the ones whose blogs attract insults and “drama” from perfect strangers. There are people who allow people they don’t know to view their posts even when highly personal matters are addressed. Mental illness, chronic physical illness, substance abuse, and the crises that necessarily go along with such things are fodder for judgmental people. And so many judgmental people love to cast those stones at the ones they see making decisions they wouldn’t make given their arm-chair quarterbacking of someone else’s life.

How can we truly claim that someone who has a mentally ill family member, and coping the best they can, is making bad decisions? Even if we read their posts every day we don’t have the whole story. We don’t have the nuances of interpersonal interactions, or even a vivid description of what the caretaker is dealing with on a day-to-day basis. What about the person who is writing about her fibromyalgia? Who among us can really say to her, “Quit complaining. It can’t be that bad,” when we really don’t know what it feels like to be her? And what about the mother who is dealing with the drug-addicted son who is stealing from her, beating her, and otherwise abusing her? Can we really tell her she is stupid not to call the police when we don’t know all the dynamics of the situation?

I am aware of people who write about extramarital affairs they have, or who write about overtly sexual matters. They provide gossip to others about themselves and even about other people. Their soap opera of life is right here for anyone to read and comment upon. Some of them claim to eschew “drama,” but they invite that drama in the same breath. Do we blame anyone for jumping into the fray? I don’t think too much of the people who lay overly personal things on the table for the world to see, but those who attack them are just as bad.

Then there are the social media accounts that are not who they seem to be. For instance, one person might have multiple IDs and different pages where they post different things to each, even to the point of having the accounts interact with one another. Others pretend to be someone they aren’t. Both of these types of people are masquerading. When they are unmasked, some among us feel righteous and triumphant. Others feel betrayed. Occasionally the “victims” of this duplicity feel a need to strike back. I have seen multiple accounts suddenly disappear because their owners felt persecuted.

The bottom line is that no one deserves rudeness. No one, even if they seem to invite criticism, should be judged by anyone else. The evil pettiness in our human natures that tempts us to throw stones at someone else’s glass tower is our undoing. No one, ever, deserves our enmity. If we don’t like what someone says in his or her blog, the best way to handle it is not to clash with it head-on, but to pointedly ignore it. It’s none of our business, anyway.

There are exceptions to the “ignore it if you disagree” rule. Debating issues is one of them. I like it when people disagree with me and explain why. The keyword here is “debate” – labeling someone as “stupid” or lumping in them with an ill-defined “you all” isn’t debate. It’s an insult. There should be no place for it here. Articulating an opposing point of view is not offensive. Assuming someone is “liberal” or “Republican” or “fundamentalist” because of their views is. Name-calling is not a debate. If a commenter says they disagree with me because they “feel sorry for my shortsightedness” then they can go their merry way to hell, and please never darken my door again. They have given me no reason to listen to them at all.

We should all feel free to create and recreate ourselves as we see fit., on the Internet. We can be anything we want to be. We might decide to be a pirate, a lion-tamer, a virgin, a debutante, a musician, a model, a Wench of Aramink. We can be anything we want to be. Where else is such a flight of fancy possible? Where else can we live out a dream and not hurt anyone?

By the way, in case anyone’s not sure, I probably don’t really qualify to be a wench. I’m too old. Whoever heard of a wench with gray hair at her temples? And my name isn’t Aramink. Aramink is a place. Gasp. Don’t hate me because I’m such a bald-faced liar. Embrace me, and admit that occasionally you decide not to post unflattering pics of yourself in your blog, too. I promise not to be critical as long as you’re polite. And I promise lively debate where it’s appropriate.

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For Wolfio

I have a good friend on Yahoo 360.  Wolfio is musician with a heart and a brain and a soul that reaches around forever.  He rants and raves, but he also writes some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen here.

His life hasn’t been particularly great lately.  He’s going through a divorce from a woman who adores head games.  She even had her boyfriend call him up and invite him to Thanksgiving dinner with them.

His oldest son, from his first marriage, recently moved home and was seriously depressed.  The young man had suffered some blows that left him despondent almost beyond life. Wolfio despaired that this adult child would ever even get out of bed, much less get a job and lead a normal life.

Then, as parents are sometimes able to do, he reached within himself and found something to inspire that young man who had no direction in life, that young man who felt he had lost all hope.  What Wolfio said to his son was powerful.  I think what he said bears repeating.

I killed a guy.

It was not planned. Most killings are like that.

It was long ago, before I knew who I was or wanted in life.

Fern. The guy’s name was John Fern. You don’t forget a guy you kill. Most killings are like that.

I never spoke to him. I never met him until I killed him. It was his choice, the only one he may have believed he ever made, that he really wanted. Decisions are like that.

I didn’t want to kill him. I would rather have gone on, never running into him at all, but…. That’s how I killed him. John. By running into him. Over him, really. Crushing him. Huge trucks do that.

I was at work, on the job on a four lane highway, of course, in the fast lane. Driving is like that.

I saw him on the overpass. He disappeared behind the sign showing the next exit. I was thinking of something – I don’t remember now – it was not important I’m sure. It’s hard to remember what you were before you became something else. Hindsight is like that.

It did seem strange. Why would someone put a leg over an overpass railing? But, what are the chances? He didn’t drop something. “He’s right there, dead center. Why, if he was to…”

That part I remember: how I forced my vision not to look directly into his eyes just before he hit the windshield, rolled down and under the truck. I would imagine he was in a lot of pain. I dragged him maybe fifty yards. Somewhere in there he died. I wondered if he may have reconsidered while under there. Stupidity is like that.

After I pulled over I got out, walked to the back of the truck, lit a cigarette and sat on the bumper. His body was still. I could only make out the shape. I found his sweater had been pulled off. It was tangled on the drive axle under the truck. I wanted a drink. I asked the state trooper, “Look no cameras, I don’t want to be on the news…” Yep, I was an asshole, even then. Karma is like that.

I’ve wanted to off myself millions of times since then. It’s clear I will not.

It’s funny…

I told that story to my son while he was here, staying with me during this whole wife/whore fiasco. His mother died in a car crash 3 years ago. He was in the backseat. T-boned in a fucking Neon.  It took her head clean off. The kid wanted to end it. He was not kidding. Reality is like that.

I couldn’t fucking believe it. I was crying, not knowing what to say, but if I didn’t say something he was going to do it. I can’t kill again by accident.

And then there was John. John Fern. I never knew what I thought about it all before this moment. I never spent much time on it. Then I knew.

After the story I told him, “John Fern was his own man. I never knew him but he chose to do the one thing he could do without anyone’s OK. He offed himself. They told me he had been in years of therapy and he just gave up.

“Would you be able to just give up like that, and still have hope to see your mother again knowing the one thing she would have wanted for you was to grow up the be a fine young man? She would be proud of all the sacrifices she made for you. It will be all worth it, even her passing, if the most important work in her life was successful: raising a good son.

“John Fern did what he had to do. You have to live to the betterment of your mother’s memory, and if that fails then you’ll also be man enough to go like John.”

Two weeks later he had his old job back, got an apartment, and told me – me! – “Thanks, Dad.” Luck is like that.

Thank you, John. I’m sorry I killed you, but you saved my son, and at least I forgive you.


Dedicated to John        Wolfio182

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‘Well! That wasn’t very Christian!’

Recently I have read blogs about topics that either called for religious responses or were about religion – which is perfectly fine, don’t get me wrong – but in a couple of cases I was left with the feeling that either the specific post or the comments in response to the post were sanctimoniously narrow-minded. This never fails to get under my skin.

No offense to its followers, but it really bugs the bejeezus out of me when someone appears to claim that Christianity has the corner on the market of good and charitable acts.

I’m not going to publicize what my religion is. There are exactly four people on my friends list who know what it is, and three of them are closely related to me. I don’t talk about religion a lot, but I do study it. I study it mainly because I tend to study anything controversial, and religion is one of the most controversial things out there. I don’t tend to talk about it much because I never know who’s going to get hacked off thinking that I’m blasting their precious dogma.

So, with the intent of blasting no one’s dogmata with nuclear weapons, here I go, talking about religion. (I know, I should prepare to get blasted myself.)

Fact: There are many different religions practiced on this planet.

According to Wikipedia, the dominant religions and the numbers of their adherents are:

1. Christianity 2.1 billion
2. Islam 1.3 billion
3. Secular/Atheist/Irreligious/Agnostic/Nontheist 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism 900 million
5. Buddhism 708 million
6. Chinese folk religion 394 million
7. Primal indigenous (“Pagan”) 300 million
8. African traditional and diasporic 100 million
9. Sikhism 23 million
10. Juche 19 million
11. Spiritism 15 million
12. Judaism 14 million
13. Bahá’í Faith 7 million
14. Jainism 4.2 million
15. Shinto 4 million (see below)
16. Cao Dai 4 million
17. Zoroastrianism 2.6 million
18. Tenrikyo 2 million
19. Neo-Paganism 1 million
20. Unitarian Universalism 800,000
21. Rastafari movement 600,000

Yes, Christianity has the largest following of any religion. However, more people in the world are non-Christian than Christian. This is something many Christians just don’t seem to appreciate when they blithely talk about something not being the “Christian” thing to do. Oh, the ignorant arrogance of that statement!

Think about this:

Fact: Every religion, without exception, provides a moral framework for its adherents.

Fact: That moral framework is virtually identical to that of every other religion.

Ergo: All religions are virtually identical in their morality.

When I hear the phrase, “That wasn’t very Christian!” it is usually with the sound of judgment ringing in my ears. The speaker has just measured someone else’s conduct or words and found them lacking. Likewise, when someone says, “I’m a Christian, so I wouldn’t _________” (fill in the blank with your own imagination), they are also normally passing judgment on someone they find to be behaving inappropriately.

If every religion teaches the same moral rules, how is it that Christianity has a corner on the morals market? The answer is, of course, that it doesn’t. What’s worse for Christianity is that those people passing judgment are doing one of the very things their religion teaches that they should not do: the are judging. I hear either of these two phrases and I assume, from that point forward, that the speaker is a hypocrite.

I have heard an argument that this country was established on Christian values and morals. I respectfully disagree with that assessment. Even a casual reading of what was recorded in The Federalist Papers on this subject will enlighten us. The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights wrote the establishment clause to give Americans freedom of religion, as well as freedom from it. Not all of the founding fathers were religious men, and at least one was publically an atheist.

School prayer has been a big issue for many Christians. It is challenged only rarely, but always by parents who do not want to have religion thrust down the throats of their children.

As long as there are tests in school, there will be school prayer – just not necessarily praying out loud. We should remember, though, that unless our children go to a school connected with a specific religion, the children there are of many faiths, and not just the Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions that worship the same god. Yes, that god is the one worshipped by the most people in this country. But there are Buddhist and Hindu children in our schools, too. Wiccans send their children to school. So do Unitarians. And there are plenty of children who are not being instructed in any form of religion.

What is the function of religion? Basically, religions exist to provide that moral framework I mentioned. It’s something all religions have in common. The tenets of each religion may be different, but the basics are the same. Religions instruct us how to get along with other people in a society.

Most of our morality is actually codified as law, but there are still issues of fairness that simply can’t be codified. Those uncodified morals are the ones we have to make choices about in daily life. Sometimes they can be condemned as situational ethics, which is another entire area of contention, and maybe the subject of another blog. But as for the morality that is not part of the law, we should remember that teaching morals is the province of parents, not the school system. If we want our children to have honor and integrity, we must teach them those things at home. If we want them to be compassionate and generous, we must teach them that at home. If we want them to be faithful to their spouses, nurturing to their children, and keep their flower beds tended as adults, we as parents must teach them that those things are important.

And we should also teach them that when the neighbor parks his boat on our petunias, the neighbor is not being un-Christian, he is being rude and troublesome. No religion would condone such behavior. For that matter, no society would.

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Ambition

DAD1 magnify

I love this old photo of my dad as a toddler. The expression on his face is so recognizable! His sense of humor and his devilishness beamed through his personality even when he was a little guy.

Because of my father, I make a great effort to be the best person I can be.

While this may not extend to wearing makeup every day, it does extend to the quality of the work I do and the interactions I have with other people.

I am ambitious. I am generally motivated by the need for achievement. I expect the people around me to be motivated by this need for achievement, too, and I am dumbfounded when it appears they are not. I have lost respect for people close to me who lose ambition or who claim to have it but just don’t work for it.

I desperately want my son to be ambitious enough to achieve the satisfaction of at least moderate success so that he can lead a productive, happy life. Being productive in society is vital to finding satisfaction and happiness, I believe. I don’t think we have to contribute to charity, volunteer at soup kitchens, or invent a new vaccine to be productive.

Parents are productive when they give their children values, structure, and education. When they teach a child how he or she may succeed, a parent is fulfilling his obligation to his child. Possibly one of the most productive things my dad ever did was to imbue each of his children with the confidence to surge forward, to try. He gave us the courage to fail and then to try again.

He loved to quote this poem to us:

 

It Couldn’t be Done
By Edgar Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it”;
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it. 



Sometimes, ambition counts more than actual success. Trying matters if the effort is an honest and assiduous.


I quote Yoda’s “Try? There is no ‘try.’ There is do, or do not.” But the truth is, Yoda’s maxim really only applies when “do” or “do not” is a choice. It applies to turning in homework. It applies to keeping the house clean. It applies to meeting reasonable deadlines. It applies to yard work. It does not apply to playing the guitar perfectly, to making A’s in math, or to mastering the nuances of the Force without a mentor to demonstrate how the force can be used.


I have to make sure my determination and my belief that others should share my ambition doesn’t cost me my close relationships.


I think it cost me my marriage, in part. I could not understand how my husband seemed to have so little interest in personal achievement, especially as bright as he seemed to be when I first knew him. This was not a failure of his personality, it was simply an aspect of it that I found unfathomable. I failed to recognize this characteristic of his for the destructive force it could be – not to me personally, and not to him because it simply WAS him, but destructive to our relationship.


I lost my respect for him because I perceived his lesser drive to achieve to be a shortcoming that he refused to address. For a long time I did not understand that he couldn’t change it, and why he really had no interest in changing that part of him. But just like my drive and ambition are an integral part of my personality, his are an integral part of his personality. He and I simply don’t manifest our desires for success in the same way, nor do we consider “success” to be of the same importance.


Even when I later came to understand that his level of ambition simply WAS, I could not regain the feelings I had for him before ambition became a defined problem for us. I just didn’t feel the same. I didn’t love him any less, but I recognized how mismatched we were and how frustrated I was by this one aspect of his personality. Recognizing that his level of ambition simply WAS didn’t help me to accept it, because I just didn’t approve of it for someone so close to me.


People with ambition take on projects and see them through to the end. We have ideas, we start planning and collecting information, we put the people and materials together, we oversee the work, we build the ideas up and take them to the next level, and we run the course of things. We don’t quit before we succeed. We are focused and determined. On the rare occasion when a project sputters out or doesn’t work the way we intended, we chalk the failure up to experience and move on to the next idea. We are Movers and Shakers.


Shakers, the people with the ideas, need the Movers to gather the committees of people who can actually make the dream a reality. The Shaker explains to the Mover what the goal is, and perhaps explains a couple of steps along the way. The Mover listens to the idea, considers how to implement it, and puts together a team of people and materials who can get the job done.


Movers direct the Managers and tell them what the Shakers’ ultimate goals are. The Managers are perfectly willing to carry out instructions, but Managers don’t have the innovative ideas. They can take a vision, though, and make it a reality.


Some people are the Craftsmen. They can take an aspect of an idea, hone it to perfection, beauty and grace, and incorporate it into the great scheme of things.


Some people are the Data Entry Operators. They are willing to help and work hard by organizing things or putting them in their places.


Others are the Drones, who are not interested in the work they do but can be counted on to perform adequately and then to put their energies into other aspects of the greater whole: the community or their families.


Each type of person is vital to the operation not just of a business, but of a government, of a society, of a community, of a family. Every person plays every role at one time or another, but the dominant roles they play often are a result of their personal ambitions.


Compatible relationships are those in which the level of ambition are complimentary or alike. A Mover and a Shaker can do well together, but a Shaker and a Data Entry Operator don’t necessarily communicate in the same language. I cannot and will not say where my ex-husband fell in these categories I’ve described. Most likely he fits into more than one depending on the task at hand, just like everyone else. but he and I did not communicate very well when it came to ambition and work, and thus we were frustrated together.


This isn’t the only reason we divorced. There were so many other reasons. This is only one contributing factor. We were very frustrated by each other. I am so glad we parted when we did rather than wait until our frustration levels with one another were so great that we could not remain civil. I treasure my relationship with my ex-husband. It is a sparkling emerald to me – not the hardest or most perfect stone by any means, but a beautiful one that can be clear and bright as well as shattered or murky.

	


	



	
		

	

	





		


		

			

				

	

	

		
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