The myth of unity

You can think what you want about America's Founding Fathers. I have -- I'll be honest -- more than just mixed feelings. Yes, yes, yes, they might have been products of their times, but history is replete with great thinkers and doers who looked beyond and were not just victims of their own particular time and place of birth. That's part of my dilemma, I suppose: if these guys were such great visionaries (as is so often claimed) why couldn't they see beyond their own cultural context, why couldn't they envision something more universal, why were they tripping over their own feet to set a standard for the world to come?

To me, the most enigmatic of all the Founding Fathers is Benjamin Franklin. I'll admit it: he has been ever since I was forced to read his autobiography in 11th grade. Granted, I didn't always do what I was told, but I waded through that one. I was taken aback by the contradictions and enthralled by the moments of genius. I couldn't believe any text could be that boring, but found such inspiration for life, that I live quoting the man.

It was Uncle Ben (not he of rice fame) who inspired me for this post. Ben, when arguing before the Continental Congress on what the colonies should do in regard to the Crown, let loose a most impressive statement: "Either we hang together, or we hang separately." What wise words.

Right here at the beginning of American history, at a time when the idea of the individual was concreticizing in the Enlightenment mind, Mr. Franklin quipped out a truth that would stand the test of time. He knew, and the circumstances dictated, just as they do today, that it was in togetherness, in overcoming petty differences, in seeing the bigger picture, in cooperation in the face of adversity, in solidarity that something new could be achieved. The world recognizes the French Revolution, which transpired 13 years later, as the irruption into modernity, but it was Mr. Franklin's simple statement that made that other revolution possible. Yes, in the Enlightenment, in the Age of the Individual, in the transition from collectivism to individualism, Uncle Ben reminded us that we are only strong and capable of survival when we band together, when we collectively react, when we cooperate, not when we compete.

Since then, as history as patently demonstrated, the individualists have done what they could to gain the upper hand. Our own current, post-modern attitude is that the individual is supreme, but Ben knew, and we know deep inside, that the individual is nothing without the collective to support him (or her, as the case may be).

The antithesis of the Roman adage to divide and conquer is Mr. Franklin's admonishment to pull together. Not quite 100 years later, one Charles Darwin would generalize this idea into his theory of evolution. It's as obvious as the noses on our faces, but there is a significant number of individuals these days who would like the rest of us to think otherwise. And they are doing a damn fine job of it, I hate to admit.

We -- America, any modern, Western country, any significant political organization or grouping -- praise the individual, raise him to almost godly status, but we know, and have known for quite a long time, that real strength lies in coming together. That's why our ideal of unity is a mere myth. It does not and cannot exist. We mouth the words, but we live our actions: me first, everyone else second; as long as I have mine, you're free to try and get yours; it's every person for themselves.

No, Ben was right. if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately. It really is that simple.

The myth of justice for all

If you don't have shared values; if you erroneously believe that you can do everything yourself; if you refuse to recognize that where and when we are born has a lot to say about what's even possible in our lives; if the notion of personal responsibility is perverted into a justification that it's your own fault if things are better for you; and if you believe that only the individual is capable of anything positive; it is, well, simply beyond my ability to imagine, let alone comprehend, how you can think that we're all treated equally in the eyes of the law.

In the United States, money is free speech, though there's no hint of that in the First Amendment. In the Western World in general, there is the legal precedent that social standing, background or history, may not be considered in assessing your standing in society. For anyone who wants to see -- and I realize that means "damn few" -- it is clear that different measures are applied to different individuals in our everyday reality.

To me, the most emblematic, the most telling, the strongest statement of the negation of the notion of "justice for all" is the notion of "affluenza". Don't get me wrong, I'm quite a fan of linguistic dynamics, of the ability of a language to change and adapt to the world around it, of neologisms, and more, but "affluenza" ... well, that one, I must admit, stopped me in my tracks.

It was, I believe, a judge in Texas (otherwise not known for its forward-thinking decisions) who declared that a young man who was drugged and drunk and who drove into a crowd of people, killing several of them, was, in fact, innocent (and sentenced accordingly) because he suffered from "affluenza": he came from such a rich family, that he was no longer able to determine the difference between wrong and right. It wasn't an isolated incident; the defense has been successfully invoked since then. How, in the name of all that's holy, does that make any sense at all? How can money absolve you from moral responsibility? Well, in a "society" in which the only real value is money, money talks, and the guilty walk.

There was no outrage. There were no demonstrations against the injustice. There was no outcry, no anguish, no speechlessness, unless you take the silence that thundered across the land as speechlessness. It was just another day in paradise, just more business as usual, another instance of "nothing to see here". It passed as good as unnoticed. And all of us, whether you like it or not and whether you want to admit it or not, had our hands stained with blood that day. Some community service, a few hours doing something for others so that maybe, just maybe, it starts to dawn on you that there are other people on this planet other than yourself ... that was it.

On the same day, not a small number of people of color were frisked, searched, pulled over from traffic, arrested, incarcerated, sent to prison, and executed for alleged crimes that they may or may not have committed. (When you have an error rate of 5-10% of innocent people being executed, you can't really claim anything for the "system" other than it doesn't work.) And there was no outrage, no demonstrations, no outcry, no anguish, no speechlessness, just business as usual.

You're a person of color in America, you're an immigrant, most likely Muslim, here in Europe. You're different in that you are not what we aspire to be. Too many want to suffer from affluenza. They dream of it. They long for it. Justice should be blind, but only so long as she doesn't see me.

The myth of shared values

When I was a very young child, I fell in love with the image of painting oneself into a corner. The picture in my mind was more than rich enough, and there were -- don't ask me why -- enough comic strips and cartoons that materialized that image before my very eyes. I always wondered how that was possible? How can you paint yourself into a corner? How little can you know about what's going on around you to end up in a situation like that? And then I grew up.

We like to think that we're a free and open, a tolerant and forward-looking society, but all we've really done is paint ourselves into a corner. We have those flag-waving patriots who still believe in "my country, right or wrong" even though the world has recognized America for what it is: the latest version of Empire which acts not based on values but on violence. We have those free-market libertarians who think that money is the answer to all problems and the more they have themselves the more the problems are solved. We have those gun-crazy tea-baggers who think that the government is out to get them when all it's really concerned about is seeing to it that those that have get more and those that have less get less. Then we have all those hopelessly exposed racists who can't bring themselves to admit that the United States simply hasn't overcome its genocidal history. And, of course, there are my favorites, the über-Christians who want God to save America from the satanic machinations of a crypto-Muslim dictator, who can't take enough away from those who need it most, who deny science -- publicly and without shame or contradiction -- and who don't hesitate a second to decry, condemn, pursue, and persecute anyone who even thinks of straying from their own perverted view of Christianity.

How, in the name of all that's reasonable, can we even start to think that we have anything even approaching shared values? Which values might these be? It's obvious from recent legislation, attempts at legislation, Supreme Court decisions, and other public phenomena that there are so many splintered, specific, interest groups which are patently unable, and unwilling, to even think of speaking with any other group that the mere thought of "shared values" is not only chimerical, it's downright absurd. Who is speaking for whom? And when? And how? And why?

No, dear reader, we have achieved the complete and utter disintegration of all that we once held in common. We have a society -- if one may even use that term -- of fragmented, dispersed, alienated, isolated, and unreconcilable pseudo-groups, which are, in turn, plagued by self-centered, self-absorption, and egoistical individuals who all trying the best they can to get what they can for themselves, and to hell with everyone else. Where is the basis here for shared values? Please excuse me if I don't see it.

The real losers in this scenario, of course, are those who can't get beyond themselves to see that the entire evolution of humankind (... and no, I have not forgotten that the majority of Americans no longer accept the theory of evolution ...) has been possible because of one, single trait that has set us apart from all others: our ability to cooperate, to work together for the benefit of all.

Now, I don't want anybody thinking I'm just picking on Americans. They may be closer to me than other nationalities, but they are not unique. Every single Western culture is suffering from the same malady. As is so often the case, though, the Americans have taken this misery to a heretofore, unseen level of sophistication. All of us in the West suffer from the disease. The Americans are simply better at it than the rest of us.

And that is the corner into which we have painted ourselves: the inability to recognize, to acknowledge, to accept, to engage, and to deal seriously with an other (or, Lord forbid several other) point(s) of view.

The myth of self-sufficiency

If we follow the line of thinking that's been forming over the past few posts, we have to ask ourselves just what are the consequences of the thoughts. There are lots of folks, particularly in the West, who like to think that they are somehow self-sufficient individuals who are untouched by the situation of others. These are the biggest fools of all.

The debunking of the myth of the individual pointed out that our set of values are determined to the largest extent by the circumstances and timing of our birth. The debunking of the myth of personal responsibility made clear that the choices we have to make in life are largely determined by factors outside ourselves. The debunking of the myth of equal opportunity showed us that external circumstances limit and determine what kinds of choices can even be made. In sum, it would seem that there is little about what we do or can do that is solely determined by ourselves. But, there is more.

Who amongst us builds their own shelter, digs their own wells, grows their own food, weaves their own cloth and sews their own clothes? Who amongst us is completely self-taught and self-educated? Who amongst us has and needs absolutely no social or other interaction with other human beings? I can't think of anybody. Can you? I didn't think so. The answers to these questions determine what it would mean to be self-sufficient. We can't be. We aren't made that way. Human beings are social creatures and we have evolved to cooperate with and depend on others for our well-being and survival. I don't know what's wrong with that. I don't know why that's the indication of some sort of weakness. I don't know why this fact should be so vigorously denied, unless ...

You have been conditioned to believe that it is a sign of weakness. This is the fact, actually, only in the West. Other cultures across the globe are very other-oriented. The Japanese are well-known for being a collective culture. The role of the family in Mexico and South America is also widely known. Only in the West, particularly in America, we have this crazy idea that the problem with life and the world are others. This wasn't always the case, and there are still pockets of resistance in rural areas for the most part. I started off in life in a multi-generational household. There are still areas where the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents are close enough to visit, at least weekly, if not daily. What is more, school, sports team fanship, church or other organizations promote dealing with others. Truth be told, we are engaged with and want to be engaged with others most of the time. And as long as it's fun and everybody's getting along, we're all for it. The moment things get sticky, a bit problematic, or challenging, we think for some reason that we have to withdraw to the impenetrable fortress of self-sufficiency. If you take a moment to step back and look at the big picture, you quickly see how silly it is.

No, dear reader, we are all in this together, and I mean all of us, every single, last one of us. It may be the family, the people in the neighborhood, the community, the state or nation ... it really doesn't matter. All of these "levels of otherness" make quite clear that none of us -- regardless of how much we might like to be (for whatever distorted reasons) -- is an island unto him or herself. What make us individual and unique is our own set of talents and strengths, our own frailties and weaknesses, and these are complemented and compensated by the talents and strengths, frailties and weakness of others.

For the like of me, I can't figure out why that's a problem of any kind, but the myth of self-sufficiency drives us apart. We need to pull together.

Valentine's Day interlude

It's that day again: the biggest holiday that isn't. The absolute most deceptively devastating self-image and self-confidence destroyer known in the US of A. Valentine's Day. This is the day that simply makes losers of us all.

First of all, we don't even really know who St. Valentine was or what he was good for. Second of all, it was the greeting card industry that marketed it, like so many other faux holidays, to increase sales; and yes, we fell for it ... again. And, third, and finally, of it all, how depraved and degraded do you have to be to single out one day a year to allegedly honor "Love". If you have to do that, you don't know what it is to begin with. You're just another loser who bought into the fad.

There was a time, and there have been cultures which have taken the notion of LOVE seriously. No, America isn't one of them: it doesn't know how to take anything that is serious seriously. Let's take the Ancient Greeks ... now there was a love culture. Why? Well, they recognized that there are simply different kinds of "love" and lumping them all together under one "word" is, well, a bit short-sighted. They had and understood different kinds of love, like eros (sexual love or attraction/desire), philea (brotherly love), or patria (love of the fatherland; yes, they were masculine oriented in that one), or agape (divine or transcendental love). But us, we English speakers, what have we got? Nothing really.

We're one of those poor, unfortunate cultures that has one central, therefore rather diluted notion of something -- in this case, "love" -- that needs to be further specified by adding some kind of descriptor, an adjective, if you will, so we end up with all kinds of phrases, like "platonic love", "sexual love", "brotherly love", "love of country", "love of self", but even though we use different words to describe them, they aren't all the same. Love is simply not love. But we've lost sight of that.

So what is it, really, that we celebrate on Valentine's Day. Well, let's examine the prototypical scenario for the day. Mr. I-hope-I-get-lucky BUYS flowers, candy, a card (or any combination, mix-and-match, variations or augmentations (I'm thinking balloons here) of those things, and these are the context for the GIFT (too often, depending on the intimacy of the relationship, something from not-too-serious, but noticeably firmly priced jewelry to intimate attire, or even -- gasp -- an engagement ring ... and tell me that's not tacky on Valentine's Day), and this will all be presented either throughout the day or at, yes, a special, intimate, romantic dinner at a restaurant that is one (or if you're particularly anxious or horny (if there is in fact a difference) at best two) price-class(es) above your usual dinner-date place. Commercialism has never been so venerated. But what does any of this have to do with love?

If you are together with someone and every day is not some kind of Valentine's Day, you've missed the whole point. Love, in particular the love between two individuals, is not expressed through goods and gifts and fancy meals. Love is expressed through sacrifice, most often self-sacrifice; through dedication and stick-to-it-ness when things are tough; through being there when you don't want to be, or even better, when you think you can't anymore; through pain and tears and heartbreak and sickness and building "the other" up when the world is coming down around them.

Yeah, I LOVE Valentine's Day, for it's the perfect day to let your significant other know that you haven't the slightest clue about "love" at all. And what's even better, how many of those "others" expect all that nonsense?

The myth of equal opportunity

It should be clear by now that every one of us is faced with different circumstances, different timings and different contexts within which we make our personal decisions and choices. I would be the last person to maintain that one's environment, one's social standing, one's economic situation is to blame, or is responsible for who or what one is or becomes in life. What I am saying, however, is that we can't completely ignore these factors either. The overall context in which we find ourselves always shapes and influences which choices we are presented with. I can't imagine that I will ever be in the situation to decide whether to buy the Bentley or the Rolls. A lot of things would have to change in my life for that choice to even become a possibility. I have also never been in the situation in which I had to decide whether I buy shoes or food, but there are many people on this planet who are. Are there right or wrong choices to made in either of these situations? I don't think so. It all depends on what got you to where you are and where you think you are heading after the decision. To blame the outcome merely on the decision is more than short-sighted.

It is quite obvious, at least for anyone who has even a minimal understanding of what the world is like, that different people in different contexts have different opportunities. Rich people in America are faced with much different choices that poor people there. Poor people in America are faced with much different choices than poor people in Iraq. Which choices one can make are determined to a great extent by the circumstances in which one finds oneself. When things are good, you certainly have better chances of making good decisions. When things are bad, the chances of making bad ones increases as well.

To assume, or worse, allege, that everyone has the same opportunities is simply ignorant. Rich people may be able to decide between Harvard or Yale for a college degree, but a poor person in rural Mississippi may have to decide between finishing high school or day-laboring to feed his mom. The opportunities of the two individuals are anything but equal. The notion of equal opportunity is a myth for the simple reason that it is an abstraction at such a level as to be theoretically admirable but impossible in practice. In other words, it's a nice thing to say in order to extract yourself from the awkward situation of having to admit that some people have it much better than others, and those with more don't have it because of anything they've done themselves, nor are those with less necessarily responsible for their shortcomings. In other words, it gives us all a convenient excuse not to have to deal with the fact and reality of any given situation, rather we can retreat into an unreal, abstract sphere where we may remain untouched by anything as dirty as reality.

The myth of equal opportunity is just like the myth of personal responsibility or the myth of the individual. They are merely excuses to not to have to think very deeply at all about things that affect everybody, those near to us and those far away. If you believe in the myths, then you also believe that you can absolve yourself of any responsibility for anyone else. And that, dear reader, is the wellspring of inhumanity. In invoking the myths we remove ourselves from the lives of others. Whatever befalls the others is their own doing, and I can wash my hands of any and all responsibility. What a cold, lonely world that must be.

The myth of personal responsibility

As we saw last time, where and when you are born has a massive impact on who you become. But, I know there are many of you who believe that it is up to each of us individually to make decisions in our life that affect its outcome. To a certain extent, that's true, but it's not an absolute truth. We in the West, in the so-called advanced, industrialized world, like to think that everything that happens after our birth is simply a matter of the choices we make in life. Make the wrong ones, you have a bad life; make the right ones and life is good. This is, of course, pure and utter nonsense, because it ignores everything we talked about last time. The choices one makes cannot be seen in isolation from when and where you were born to begin with. Let me explain.

We can take me as an example. I don't mind. I was born and raised in a humble but secure environment. There was a feeling of excitement and optimism for the future. My family, the church, and the school all impressed upon me the hope for a better future. All I had to do was stay in line, obey authority, look out for myself, and work hard and I would have a good life, mostly likely a better life than my parents.

But let's say, just for contrast, that I was born in Sub-Saharan Africa instead. Now I find myself in an impoverished and hostile environment. There's a feeling of desperation and the future is as far away as the next meal. I'm surrounded by family, my tribe perhaps, but there's no school, a traditional religious establishment to impress anything on me, for everybody's doing everything they can to stay alive. I have little choice but to stay in line, adhere to the established hierarchy, and looking after myself means struggling day and night to survive; there is no harder work. And what is going to change? Very little, if anything, and whatever change happens will be slow in coming.

Do you really think that these two me's will be making the same life decisions? If you do, you are in serious need of a reality check. My circumstance of birth, where and when I live growing up, all impact to a large extent which choices I can make, which decisions I'm even confronted with. I don't think this should be all that hard to understand, but for reasons unbeknownst to me, it apparently is, for when I hear acquaintances, friends, strangers on the street or talking heads on the TV, they can't have taken this simple fact into consideration. They spout their platitudes of self as if they were universal principles of life. They're not.

This is not to say that there are individuals who do manage to escape their environment and themselves. I have the greatest respect for them. But to assume that if one person can do it then anybody can do it is simply foolish and naive. One person wins an Olympic gold medal, then anyone can win one, but not everyone can. In this case, not only your own physical disposition plays an important role, but so does your opportunities for training, access to the right people and contexts, and sponsors of all kinds. It's not just the desire of the individual; there are a wide range of factors and decisions and, yes, downright luck that go into it. For every single gold medalist, we should remember, there are 1,000 ruined existences of those who tried and did not succeed. Their failure cannot be attributed only to their individual decisions. Too many people and too many circumstances were involved to justify such a simplistic view of reality.

The circumstances of your birth and your environment may not be to blame for who you end up becoming, but to act and believe as if they had no influence at all is disingenuous.

The myth of the individual

Even though it's now pretty clear that I keep repeating myself, let me slide down that slippery slope again. There is a modern myth, a misunderstanding really, that life is just up to us, that life is simply what we make of it, that the individual is the final arbiter of his or her fate. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

It is exceedingly difficult to distance ourselves from ourselves, but that's what I'm asking you to do: to take a step back from yourself, a step far enough to take an objective view of yourself as a person, and to take a closer look at what you see. I'm going to pose a few questions to help clarify that picture.

• Where were you born? (I, for example, was born into a run-of-the-mill, working-class family, in Western Pennsylvania.)
• When were you born? (Again, for me, it was near the beginning of a very strong economic upswing, though the country in which I was born was still at war in the Far East.)
• What was life like when and where you were born? (Things were relatively simple, straightforward, everybody knew how they fit in (or didn't fit in) to the community; we went to church regularly; parents, older people, teachers, police and other professionals were treated with deference, if not respect.)
• How did you come to be born where and when you were born? (And for this one, personally, the only answer I can find that makes any kind of sense to me is that I ended up there by pure chance.)

That's right, pure chance, a mere accident of fate, if you will. One day I woke up and there I was in small-town America, surrounded by a way of life that I was taught to accept and respect, that was full of unspoken rules and customs, ways of doing things, accepted topics of conversation, attitudes, and more, none of which I had any idea about before I got there and merely accepted because, well, that was all I knew. In other words, much of who you are today was established in that context in which you were born and that context has to do with the timing of your birth and the circumstances of your environment. That, if anything, is just the way things are, and there is nothing that you can do to change that.

The early years of life are the most formative years. Any child or developmental psychologist will tell you that, so let's try a small thought experiment: try to imagine that you were born somewhere else. Try being born in a ghetto where you are forced to live because "your kind" suffers heavily from discrimination. Try being born into utter poverty, in the middle of nowhere. Or, try imagine you were born in another country, say, Poland, or Nigeria, or Bolivia, or India. (This last experiment will be all the more difficult the less you know about anything outside your home country.)

Now, I ask you: who do you think you would be if the timing and placement of your birth were different? Do you really think you would think, believe, and act just like you do now? If you do, I have to question whether you really seriously tried the thought experiment.

If you were born poorer or richer, all your surroundings change. If you are born in another country, you grow up loving that country, not your current one. If you are born in an economic crisis, things develop quite differently than if you were born in a period of economic growth and stability. In other words, the cards a shuffled anew, and you are a completely different person than the one you are now. And that's why the "individual" is for the most part a myth. We are who we are largely by virtue of the accident of our birth. No more, and no less.

Groundhog Day

Today's a special day for the denizens, and those who hail from Western Pennsylvania. In a little town, known for nothing other than a cranky rodent, each year on this day, Phil, as he is affectionately known, comes out of his burrow after his long winter's sleep. If he sees his shadow, I suppose he's happy, because that sight sends him back underground to wait another six weeks for winter to end. And so the legend goes, year after year, time and time again (which was the inspiration for the movie of the same name).

Over the course of the movie, for all the wrong reasons, the main character, played by Bill Murray, does the right thing(s) in order to become a better person and win the heart of the leading lady, played by Andie McDowell. How touching (and humorous) it all is, but how true as well. Einstein -- no slacker in the thinking and intelligence department -- is credited with saying that doing the same thing over and over again in hopes of a different result is a sign of insanity. If Uncle Al is correct, then I guess we're all insane.

OK, I may not do the same thing over and over again, but it has come to my attention that I say the same things over and over again. It's not really that I expect different results, but any result would be OK with me. Still, I can't help but feel that what I do, and what Al was talking about aren't really all that different.

Today, I included a picture -- a word cloud, to be exact -- to show you what I keep talking about. The cloud is a visual rendition of the frequency of key words or labels for my blog, from the very beginning to the end of January this year. I sort of like the picture, it tells me a lot.

I wonder if it tells you anything.