Boom! it's over

We all live as if we had an infinite number of years ahead of us. Well, I'm here to tell you: another one just passed you by, and you have no idea how many you may have left. Let me let you in on a little secret: it's not nearly as many as you think, and regardless of how many there are, they are all going to go by faster than want to admit.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not here to put a damper on your end-of-year celebrations. I think you should celebrate. Go out and imbibe, smoke, shoot off fireworks, bang pans ... whatever it is you do to mark the transition. Have fun. Celebrate. Live it up. Life is short. Shorter than we want to admit. Maybe too short to do all we think we'd like to do. Definitely too short to do what needs to be done.

Yes, another year has slipped by. Is your life better now than it was a year ago? Are you richer? Do you have more money? Did you get all the gifts you had hoped for? Do you feel safe? Have you escaped death and taxes? Are you satisfied with yourself? Do you know in the meantime what's important to you and why you're even here on the planet?

My guess is that most of your answers to the questions above were somehow "negative". That's no reflection on you, it's just how things are. Those of you who are reading this have more than you need to begin with; you're far better off than you most likely want to admit; but you don't want to admit that you're not doing your part to make the world a better place.

No, we won't be around forever. Most of us have relatives and friends who are younger than us. When we're gone, they're going to have to deal with the world we leave behind. So, for me, here at the end of the year, when so many love to get sappy about the past year, I have to ask just what you've done to ensure that the world will be better when you leave it than when you entered it.

You don't have a lot of time left. You've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about yourself and your needs. You have complained about the politicians you voted into office, the bosses who don't recognize your true value, the nefariousness of others cultures and religions. You have overvalued what you have, underestimated how badly your are being deceived by those you trust, and have become just a little bit more bitter, more dissatisfied, more unhappy, but you're going to act as if nothing has happened and everything is fine. Well, it's not.

We have advanced to the point where everyone on the planet could have enough to eat, have a roof over their heads, have access to healthcare, enjoy a modicum of peace and satisfaction and feel safe and secure enough to look forward to tomorrow: not just us and those we know, but everybody ... every single living human being on earth. But it's not that way, and each and every one of you has contributed to ensuring that some have and others have not.

No, no ... you haven't done it actively, you haven't gone out of your way to ensure that others suffer. You have closed your eyes, turned your head, rationalized your thoughts, ignored the facts, and spouted inanities in defense of your actions.

As long as there is unjust inequality, unwarranted suffering, ruthless discrimination, cold-hearted oppression, unfair business practices, calculated deception and unjustified oppression, you haven't done all you can do to leave the world a better place than you found it. You've lost another year to do your part. Just how many years do you have left? No matter how many you think it is, it isn't enough, unless you stop talking and start acting.

And now it's passed

Well, the big day has come and gone ... again. Oh, I know, most of my American friends already have the tree untrimmed, down, set out by the trash and the decorations all put away for next year. At some point, those shedding needles have to be shown where they belong. For me, the season is far from over. In fact, it has just started. (For those of you who may have missed it, go here and then read the following four or five posts for the whole story.)

I'll admit it: I love this time of year, I love this holiday season, and I love everything it's supposed to stand for. And, I'm sad about what's been made of it, I'm unhappy about what most people do about it, and I find it depressing how little most people know about it all to begin with.

Today is a holiday all over Europe, in fact. I'm thinking only the Americans don't have time for a second Christmas day. Of course, it's not about the days one might get off work. Americans dismantled that "tradition" a long, long time ago. No, for me, it's about being able -- regardless of how briefly -- to stop and reflect on how good most of us have it, how more-than-I-probably-deserve good I have it, and how we managed to develop a social and, above all, economic system that ensures, that guarantees, that actually judges its success by how badly others are doing.

We've made a lot of technological progress and are in a position to produce more than enough food to feed the world -- even with its overbloated population -- three times over, but nevertheless we allow 50,000 people a day to starve to death. That's something to be proud of, isn't it? It's not about lazy takers in some heathen corner of the world. Some of those starving live within 50 miles of your own home. But we all know that because there's enough for everybody, there's no reason why those without couldn't have more, if they'd only get off their lazy bottoms and work harder, work longer, or simply work at all. Yeah, if the amount and intensity of work were the key, Somalian mothers would be the richest people on the planet. As it turns out, those who actually do the least have the most to show for it. How perverse is that?

Well, I know that I'm one of the few who is willing to call it what it is: perverse. We don't need to get into a religious or theological debate, the system we've thought up and imposed upon the world is, in a word, inhumane. End of story. We don't need crazed Islamist extremists to strike terror into our hearts, an honest look in the mirror and a moment's honest reflection would do just as much. Pogo was right; he hit the nail on the head: We have met the enemy, and he is us. It really is that simple.

But, I don't want to disturb any of you while you're getting back into the swing of things and seeing to it that you get more of what you don't need or want at the expense of the rest of the world. Let's face it: Christmas is about us and how good we've got it, and now that we've got it out of the way for another year, we can get back to doing what we do best: ignoring those in need and praising ourselves for how great we are.

An un-Christmasy message, I know. But sometimes, you just have to get it off your chest. I've now got it off mine, and I'm going to stop and reflect and think about what I can do to help others to get more of what they deserve, whether they meet your standards of effort or not.

The big day's almost here

It certainly won't be long now. The long awaited climax that began on the marketing side over five months ago has almost arrived. It's hard to believe how quickly the time has passed, and what is even more remarkable is how little this year's Christmas is going to be different than last year's or most Christmases before that. Apart from individual catastrophes and unexpected blessings, we're every bit as divisive, argumentative, confrontational, unyielding, insistent, aggressive, and, yes, violent as we ever were. This is true nationally, politically, communally, and individually. If all of us were better people than we were before, the world would be in better shape, but it isn't.

In spite of all the marketing hype, Christmas is about reflecting, being thankful, caring, and sharing. It is season in which Love, Peace, and Hope should abound, but I'm seeing -- and feeling -- very little of that this year. Oh, we've got our houses decorated, we're going to make another big family meal, we're going to eat too much, drink too much, and, before it's all over, complain too much and get upset too much.

I, for one, am not willing to trade the holiday in or much less give it up just because so many folks just "don't get it". I can't repeat it often enough: it is time to recognize just how much all of us (not just us in the West, I mean ALL of us) have in common: you've got family members who are more challenging that you think you can handle, well so do they and so do I; you have self-serving, out-of-touch political "leaders", well so do we; you're being made to work more and more but less and less to show for it, well, the same's true here; you are sick of the lack of commonsense and decency around you, well so am I; you wish there were more peace and less war on the planet, well so do I; you wish other people could be more like you, for then there would be fewer problems in the world, well, no, it doesn't work like that.

Christmas is the biggest Christian holiday we have (though why it's not Easter still makes me wonder, a lot). Yes, over the years it has been secularized and commercialized beyond recognition. There is not, nor has there ever been, a War on Christmas. In fact, the very notion of a "war" in relation to this particular holiday is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard, and insisting that others celebrate like you do is, well, simply narrow-minded and unreasonable.

In the West, this holiday has been the high point of the year for the last two millennia. This holiday is Christian because almost 2 billion people the world over believe that Christ, their redeemer and, as they believe, the world's salvation, was born on this day. This individual (and whether he really existed or whether he was actually born this day is so irrelevant that it's not worth mentioning) spent his short life preaching, teaching, and healing. He cared for the outcast, the downtrodden, the abused, the sick, the needy, the infirm. His message, evidenced not only by words but by deeds, was as simple as you can get: love whomever you meet as much as you love yourself and show it by helping and caring. What is so difficult about that?

The message in itself makes sense, regardless of whether you believe he was the one G-d sent to save the world. Why you act this way is completely and utterly irrelevant, so it doesn't matter how others greet you for the season. If you're offended by someone saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", you simply don't get any of it at all. It's not what we say that makes a difference in the world. Talk is cheap. What matters is what we do. The person's birthday that is the reason for the holiday rejected no one, was offended by no one, and was willing to help and heal anyone and everyone he met. It's this story -- whether true or not -- that is the reason we should be stopping to think and reflect just what kind of standards we have in our own lives, and that is why we should try so hard to make others' lives happier at least once a year.

Christmas is a good thing, regardless of why we celebrate. Too bad so many of us don't even get it just once a year.

Is there such a thing as "Western culture"?

If I take my own "definition" from last time seriously, the answer would be "no", but that would be a bit short-sighted.

The factor that stops us is the first one -- Language -- for we in the West certainly don't speak a single tongue. In the narrower sense of the term "language", this is true, but we need to step back a bit and look at the bigger picture. Linguistically, most Western languages (Hungarian, Finnish, and Basque excepted) are at least loosely related. The number of Greek and Latin-based words that have found their way into all Western languages, often in their own language-specific forms yet they are still often recognizable (e.g., the differences between philosophia-philosophie-philosophy-filosofia, etc. are not all that extravagant). Very often, key concepts are shared, even if the words themselves are different (e.g., notions like "holiday", "illness", names of body parts, etc.); that is, there is often almost a 1-to-1, word-level translation possible. Keeping in mind my admonition to look for what connects rather than what separates, we need not dismiss language outright.

Similar, but perhaps not as obvious, comparisons could be made in regard to the other factors I identified, but what interests me most is what is not obvious at all, what is so taken-for-granted, that we don't think about such things at all. This is particularly evident in the Beliefs and Customs areas: for example, that marriage is between only two people and is generally done in a ritualized manner in front of witnesses; that the roles played by men and women are asymmetric; that the individual is special; that the notion of "property" held in very high esteem; that a scientific, objective approach to problem resolution is worthwhile; that reason is a good thing; that we have at least one holiday honoring our home country and that most of the other holidays have Christian roots. When I was young, however, much of this was much more apparent and, consequently, taken even more for granted. But there are indications that the underlying cement of Western culture is starting to crumble.

Our beliefs and customs most often found their expression through the medium of religion, and that's what's changing most quickly and most deeply. Even though Christianity is anything but monolithic (i.e., three primary divisions: Catholic Protestant, and Coptic; two flavors of Catholicism (Roman and Orthodox, the latter breaking down into a growing number of subgroups); Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Pentecostal Protestants, the latter three having split into innumerable specific denominations, as well as special-cases like Mormonism. What binds them together is much, much less than what makes them different. In times past, most people were either unaware or unconcerned about the differences, but these days, they are playing an increasingly important, decisive, and divisive role. Couple this with a dramatic rise in the number of individuals declaring themselves atheist (whereby, the vast majority of these are, I believe, merely agnostics), and a growing number of people who more or less reject religion altogether in favor of a much less clearly defined "spirituality", and it soon becomes rather obvious that what made us in the West a WE is rapidly losing its cohesive strength.

As is so often the case, these factors, trends, and developments are neither good nor bad, but that our thinking make it so. The current attempts to unify the West religiously to combat what is perceived as a more monolithic religious threat (e.g., Islam) clearly show just how disconnected we've all become. Maybe it is time to finally drop the notion of a "Western culture" all together. The world is getting smaller by the day, so perhaps it is really time to starting thinking more about what we can and do share and stop worrying at all about what makes us different. Deep down, we're hardly different at all.

What, then, is "culture"?

Nations are new. Cultures are as old as humanity's presence on the planet. There are, indeed, various kinds of cultures: tribal, local, regional, corporate, national, or transnational even. When we think and speak of "culture" these days, we almost automatically think of a "national culture", but only because we are often ignorant of all that history, anthropology, ethnology, and sociology may have to offer us. I'm not going to try to fill that gap, I'm merely going to point out a few salient features of "culture", because our ignorance is causing a lot of misery in a lot of lives.

In simplest terms, a culture is the language, customs, beliefs, and actions of a given group of people who feel bound together because of those four things.

1. Language is a strong component, to be sure. This is why one often speaks of the Anglo-American culture (which also includes, oddly enough, the Australians, and for some, the South Africans, but not necessarily (or at least not consciously, the Belize), or the German culture, whereby the language is spoken as well in Austria and parts of Switzerland, and these are included in the concept.
2. Customs describes "the way we do things around here". It includes holidays, like a big, family meal at Thanksgiving, or Santa Claus (or whoever brings Christmas gifts); and sports (baseball, football, soccer, lacrosse); and little things like whether people shake hands when they meet, and more.
3. Beliefs include the stories and myths that a particular group holds dear, be it the Pilgrim Fathers, Charlemagne, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. These may be religious in nature, but they can also be secular and profane, like owning guns is a fundamental right, or all persons are created equal, or property rights trump personal rights.
4. Actions are what really defines a culture, though. These are the things a group does, not only because that's the way they do things, but because they believe they have a right to do them. It's not only the way a group acts towards others, but because they have always been able to act that way. In other words, the customs and beliefs often drive what a culture thinks it's OK, good, right and proper to do.

I would be the last person to say what a given culture says, believes, or does is good or bad or right or wrong. All I know is that there are a lot of different ways to slice the reality pie. What I also know, however, that there are way too many cultures on this small planet which think that however it is that they have decided to slice that pie is the "right" way, the "proper" way, the only "reasonable way" to slice it. My only response to that is, well, "bullshit".

Beneath, behind, and beyond whatever we think our culture "entitles" us to, we need to recognize the simple, unalterable fact that everything any of us, individually or collectively, say, believe, and in particular, do has effects on others; that is, anyone other than ourselves or our (cultural) group. We forget that all too often.

Whatever we think is good, right and proper is only what we think is good, right and proper. Some values are universal (not harming others, for example), but even these can be relativized once we start thinking that "our" culture is "better" than "their" culture. Unfortunately, that's where we are today.

We believe we are the good ones, and those "others", well, they're the bad ones. It turns out, however, that they are merely the others whether we like it or not, whether we want to admit it or not. Knowing what that otherness is and understanding what we have in common rather than what separates us are the true marks of the cultivated, civilized person. No more, no less.

Is there culture beyond yoghurt?

Our English word "culture" derives from the Latin cultus which means more or less "tilling, cultivating, tending". The very roots of civilization can be recognized as it was when humans first learned to systematically till and cultivate the soil, to farm, that they initiated what we today refer to as "history": the story, the narrative of where we as a species have been. That, of course, is the most general, all-encompassing view of the situation.

There are individual, isolated and particular histories as well. At the other extreme we have individual histories, which we no longer call such, but rather call biographies. Just about any geographical region that you can name, has its own, often oral history. And, since the late 17th century, we find the development of national histories as well, many of which are intertwined. The history of the United States in unthinkable without the history of Great Britain, and its history is tightly interwoven with that of the Portuguese, Spanish and French, all of which were greatly influenced by the history of Rome and Greece, and voila we've got the makings of Western Civilization.

These histories don't only describe what this or that person or this or that group have done, they also describe means of expression (statuary in Greece and Rome, painting in the Renaissance, music in the 18th and 19th century, just to intimate some readily recognizable motifs), rules of interaction (e.g., Roman law), and institutions (in the West, primarily the Church) which have left an indelible impression on how we do things, how we express and how we organize ourselves, and, not the least, what we believe.

When we stop to reflect upon such things, they come into much sharper relief than usual. Our everyday mode of interaction with them is on the contrary subliminal, unconscious, assumed, or simply taken-for-granted. Whatever it is that makes a culture, however, takes time, long periods of time. There is never just one thing that distinguishes one culture from another, that's for sure. They consist of an amalgamation of traditions, legacies, stories, works of art and language, and more that operates so far beneath the threshold of consciousness that we have difficulty saying what they are. And many of them sit so deep, so firm that we have trouble recognizing them even when they are specifically pointed out to us.

What appears to happen, though, when someone, like Mdme Thatcher, rips the heart of the economic-political-social-religious-cultural matrix is that the entire edifice collapses and we end up with an every-person-for-themselves situation: John grasping firm to the political, Joan to the cultural, Jane to the religious, and Jim to economic. We become like the blind men describing the elephant, as a tree (if all you can feel is a leg) or a snake (if you happen to be holding the trunk) or a rope (if you've got the tail). We've got all of the pieces but no keystone to hold it all together.

How does a "we" become a mere "me"?

Although it has been a while, I've dealt with the notion of "Advent", what it's about, how it not only marks a change of seasons, but also what it means in a yearly sense.

There's no real need to rehash old themes. This year is not all that different from previous ones: there's too much trouble, pain, strife, war, death, and suffering going on out there; the greedy still can't get enough; the poor are still looked down upon, if they're not outright despised; the first salvos in the so-called "war" on Christmas have already been fired; and my own desire to hear a collective voice of reason in the hectic remains unfulfilled. Too few people care ... about any of what this "season" should bring; and even fewer are willing to budge even an inch out of their own self-righteous comfort zones to fill the season with any kind of reason.

Margaret Thatcher, the Female Godhead of Neoliberalism, maintained -- and her acolytes and adherents proclaim -- that there is no such thing as society; it is merely a collection of individuals. That is unchallenged dogma in the meantime, and even the briefest glimpse at anything calling itself news confirms its "truth". But, religions -- and neoliberalism has taken on this mantle -- cannot exist apart from cultures, so that is the next falsehood that must be destroyed, and all of us worldwide, though more markedly we in the West, are rallying to the Call for Destruction. Just like the often illiterate and ignorant destroyers of culture known as ISIS, even we non-military, supposedly peace-loving, non-violent types are just as effective as they are at destroying common history as well.

Without a society; that is, without some kind of social grouping that views itself as "us", it is difficult to imagine a culture forming. A culture, in this sense, the linguistic, artistic, musical, literary, and value-oriented backdrop that provides the context in which a given group can function. In certain regards it is all those unspoken rules, guidelines, customs and mores that let everyone knew "how things are done around here". That group will then organize itself in relation to other groups in civil (political) and economic (commercial) ways. Politics and commerce are, by their very nature, unable to support culture. Given the influence she enjoyed throughout the West, when Mdme Thatcher conceptually eliminated "society", she did as much to destroy our culture as Muslim radicals do when they go around blowing up cultural heritage sites or chiseling facades off of walls. We readily recognize the one, and deal very ineptly with the other.

Though only one example, it is indicative of why we find ourselves in crisis these days ... and everything has become a crisis. Whatever it was that made us "us" has been so weakened, so debilitated that we're left primarily with ourselves. And individuals are never a sound basis upon which to build.

An iceberg sunk the Titanic, and it could happen to us

The thing about icebergs is you can't see most of what they are, but they're there anyway. The thing about prejudices is that you don't know where they come from, but they're there anyway. The thing about stereotypes is that you don't know why you believe them, but you believe them anyway. The thing about myths is that you don't know where they come from, but you believe them anyway as well. Just like we don't know how to account for 75% of the mass of the visible universe, we can't account for the motivations for most of what we believe and what makes us act the way we do.

Truth be told, we don't know what we're doing, nor why we're doing it most of the time. Why is that?

Sigmund Freud, G-d bless him, opened Pandora's box at the turn of the last century. We can think what we want about his theories on how the mind works, but one thing you can't take away from him is his insight into the fact that the unconscious determines much more of what we do and how we act than we would like to admit ... well, more than we are willing to admit. No, Siggie didn't get a whole lot right, but in that regard, he hit the proverbial nail smack on the head.

Just because we "know" this, doesn't mean for a second that we've done anything about it. Most of us are still driven by our unconscious. More of us are Mr. Hydes than we are Dr. Jekylls, whether we want to admit it or not. Why is that? Well, quite simply because we are (truly) afraid of shining the light of day (or knowledge or truth) on the dark (that is, unknown, unconscious, repressed) part of ourselves.

We like to think we are good, upstanding, and humane, yet, at night, when we turn off the lights, in the twilight prior to sleep, we are plagued by the ghosts of fear (of others), hate (of Muslims, or ), uncertainty (about how we're seen by others), guilt (perhaps someone has seen through our personal facade), and simple trepidation (how do we continue to keep up appearances). Our problem is that what we proclaim to be good, right, and proper is based on unconscious assumptions and beliefs that most of us don't even know we have. In other words, we have our own (personal) myths that we hold to be true.

In some cases, these myths tell us that we are the "good guys", that what we do is for the best of all, that our history is one of benevolence and enlightenment, that our intentions were always pure and that our actions, even when they fell short of their goal, were unselfish and noble. Yes, that is what we would like to believe, but for those who have taken the time to look honestly and intently in the mirror, we know that the reality has fallen rather short of the desire.

We in the West are not alone in this. It is, it would seem, a universal illness of our age. We like to think we are informed, knowledgeable, enlightened, even wise. And so our myths get a bad name, because we accept them blindly, without thinking, without consciousness.

Myths, however, are real, and they are true in that realm in which they operate. What we also need to know is that we must engage them as they are, and unlike the unmovable and unbreakable iceberg that sunk the world's mightiest ship, we can reshape and remold them into those stories who unfortunately tell us who we are, but mercifully, can show us who we really want to be.

We can't stop terror

Tomorrow is the second of the four Sundays in Advent. It is also St. Nicholas Day, and tonight millions of children throughout the German speaking world will be putting out their shoes in hopes he'll stop by with treats. It should be a day of peace, reflection, joy, and togetherness, but it won't be in much of the so-called "Christian West", for the simple reason that the terrorists are winning the fight for our hearts and minds. How sad is that?

Sure, we feel for all those who were ripped out of life in the attacks in Paris. Sure, we feel for those who were killed by the shooters in Colorado Springs, Savannah, and San Bernadino. We find ourselves asking "why" again and again, but we simply refuse to acknowledge what we all know is the answer to our question: we've become what we hate; we're complicit. And that's why we can't stop the terror.

Oh sure, we like to point to the turmoil in the Middle East and look down upon those uncivilized souls who simply can't stop fighting with one another and the world. We love to point our fingers in disgust at those who our misconceived religious fanaticism says we're justified in despising. And we overreact, both blindly and wildly, to the least bit of provocation from "them", whereas in truth we know that we are not one bit better.

Our reaction to 9/11, an alleged attack on our freedom? The Patriot Acts and more restricting and even eliminating many of those freedoms which had been attacked. Our reaction to the Paris attack, the latest attack on our freedom? Declaring a state of quasi-martial law and placing unrelated, environmental activists under house arrest during the recent climate summit; that is, restrictions on those freedoms (free speech, assembly) that had been attacked.

What do we abhor about terrorist attacks and mass shootings (which are, whether we want to own up to it or not, acts of terror)? The killing, the bloodshed, the violence. But how do we react? With even more violence. We started an illegal war in Iraq which directly and indirectly has caused the death of over a million innocent civilians. We aided and abetted terrorist organizations when they suited our purposes. After 14 years of violence, bombing, and killing in Afghanistan, the Taliban (a CIA creation) holds more territory and has more supporters than when we started. ISIS is a product of CIA intervention and years of funding and supplying by our so-called allies (Saudia Arabia, Qatar, Turkey), yet we say we are fighting them. We're supporting other "moderate terrorists" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) to oust a legitimate head of government in Syria, even though no one can explain to me how we acquired the right to decide who other nations select as their leaders. By what right do we inflict such violence on others? Imagine for a moment some foreign country would be doing this to us? There would be fanatic violence from every corner as every gun-owning American and others would be violently reacting to the violence inflicted from without.

Of course, when that same violence comes from within (the attackers in Paris were European citizens) but they fit our propagandized profile (Middle-Eastern names will suffice) it's terror and the reaction is more violence to "them". When the same violence come from within but they're more like us, they are mere individual psychopaths. But, they aren't. They are the products of the veil of violence that covers all our actions and reactions. All we know anymore is violence, be it in sports, competitions of any kind, politics and political campaigns, family disputes, communal security or foreign policy.

We've become what we hate. We can't stop the terror. We could, if we changed, but we won't.

You become what you hate

This is a special time of year in many regards. We're between holidays that are not so important anymore and perhaps the biggest American holiday and the universally Christian holiday of Christmas which is right around the corner. It is fitting, I think, that these all occur when they do, here at the end of the solar year, after the harvest, and in preparation for the retreat before the winter. This is a time of turning inward -- or it should be -- a time of reflection upon who we are, what we believe, and what we are doing.

There's an old mystic's adage that is particularly appropriate given all that I've been posting about lately: "You become what you hate."

Yes, speaking of hate at this time of year seems a bit incongruous, but only at first glance. The world seems to be full of hate these days. It's directed toward all kinds of "others": immigrants, political opponents, particular lifestyles, adherents of other religions ... you name it, there is a good number of people ready, willing, and able to stand up and decry just how evil all those others are, even if loudly decrying, and hating generally, are values we (and more often our religion) proclaim not to have.

Hate -- and it is actual hate in most cases -- is a dangerous emotion, not only because it is inherently destructive, but because of its insidious power to change us in such a fundamental, essential way. Someone who hates invests a lot of time and energy (and given the short spans of our lives, rare and precious resources) in that hate. The object of one's hate plays an essential and central role in our thought, speech, and actions. We are offended by the slightest of details which we come to see as ever more proof of the rightness of our hate. We end up knowing more about what we hate than we know about ourselves.

In the wake of WW2, it was the Communists who reaped our ire. Those God-hating, atheist oppressors and suppressors of freedom. But who is it these days turning on whistleblowers, passing legislation to rescind basic rights and persecuting dissenters? Oh, we still claim to love God and can't reaffirm enough our religious values, but ignore every precept which that rebellious Nazarene carpenter put so much trust in. We hate Muslims, those bellicose terrorists who want to turn the clocks back to the Middle Ages. But who is it that places religious values above so-called democratic ones and who worship a constitution that is centuries old itself? In place of the KGB which we held high as the prime example of suppression of freedom, we have the NSA and CIA who can't pry broadly and deeply enough into our own lives. In the place of humane values of community and cooperation, we have raised the values of competition and money to religious ideals.

It's not surprising, at least not to me, that we have come this far. And, it is even less surprising that most people I know would argue that I couldn't possibly be speaking to them. But I am. The change from one to the other is slow and subtle, but it's apparent nonetheless. The mystics were right then, and they're still right today: you become what you hate.