People we know well often remain mysteries to us, just as we can sometimes be mysteries to ourselves. So it is not surprising that complex public figures we think we know are (and may remain) enigmas.
So it is with Barack Obama. All the photos and interviews and press conferences and speeches in the world only give us facets of this unusual man.
I notice that Maureen Dowd in the NYTimes, along with many other pundits and politicians who are able to observe the president up close, have been trying for the past four years to psychoanalyze him or understand what makes him tick. Dowd found the Bushes easy to skewer with that father-son rivalry, but Obama is a frustrating puzzle for her, elusive, hard to satirize because he is not simple.
Without analyzing Obama's policies, I decided to sort out for myself how I understand this complex man because I see history as a record of people and how they have shaped events, rather than of economic forces or military decisions. What is history but the human story?
Obama first impressed me as an Un-politician back in 2008 as he thoughtfully responded to interviewers' questions with an intelligence rarely found in pols. So I became intrigued with the man, his books, his family, the way his bi-racial past made him the cautious, cool outsider even while functioning as the ultimate insider.
In reading a recent piece in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer on Obama's distaste for fundraising and the belief of those around him that "big money is corrupt," a light bulb went on for me: he started to make sense. Obama is wary of the strings attached to big donations and keeps his distance from big donors, even at the risk of insulting them. I applaud his ethical standards, even though he knows he has to attend a Beverly Hills or Park Avenue bash and play the game he finds morally tainted. But he won't have his picture taken with the big donors, won't send thank you notes to them or invite them over. His parameters are clear just as his private time is private. Good for him.
The insight I had into the real Obama, as far as this can be discerned, comes from David Maraniss in his recent biography; he describes Obama as a man "with a moviegoer's or writer's sensibility, where he is both participating and observing himself participating": he sees much of the political circus that surrounds him as ridiculous, even as he is deep in the center of it.
What interests me is the ambivalence of such a man and the kinship I can identify with as a writer and teacher (as he was), one who likes the life of the mind probably as much as his family. I am intrigued by his ability to distance himself from his own life.
This will make him a superb future autobiographer, after all the hoopla is over, as he looks back on what he has achieved. Whether it will translate into political success with a hostile Congress is quite another matter. Somehow I think his eye is really on what history will say about him.
I think it will say he was a highly disciplined man who, without much background as a leader, has done fairly well in uncommonly difficult times because he pays meticulous attention to details; this often results in delays in announcing decisions that have disappointed many, but it also results in an almost gaffe-free spoken record. Contrast this with his VP.
Obama has a quality I greatly admire: he is a patient listener who can skillfully think through complex issues as well as a speaker who can rise to great oratorical heights because, I think, he is, as Maraniss says, a writer (and reader) at heart, with a respect for language, thought and precision.
To his liberal supporters and many others, he has proven himself a disappointment because he has never fully revealed how essentially conservative he is at heart, which means in today's world of extremes that he is what moderate Republicans once were. With a touch of intellectual arrogance, he has not fully explained his policies as he should nor defended them with the vigor that comes with old-style politics.
But he has the historical good sense to know something important: that the founding fathers cared as much about discussing ways to advance the common good as they did about ensuring freedom. This concern with the common good, which he shares with the Catholic tradition of social teaching, says that we measure our success in the public sphere by how the working class and the poor are doing. This means that the government must in some ways be caring; Obama understands this and often references this. His policies may be called liberal, but his philosophy is more traditional and more difficult to categorize.
Obama is the postmodern politician, wary of the very process he has tried to re-fashion, as he re-defines his role as a national and world leader while also responding to the daily crises that arise. He has done so with admirable poise and dignity, much to the dismay of his many critics, even though he has made mistakes; at the same time he has raised many unanswerable questions about who he really is.
As frustrating as it may be to the pundits, he will doubtless remain, as all complex personalities are, forever interesting in his ambivalent responses to a world that is not (and never has been) black and white.
Showing posts with label common good. Show all posts
Showing posts with label common good. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
The ideology of self-absorption
I was glad to see that Frank Bruni, writing last month in the New York Times, agrees with me (just kidding). His article, "Individualism in Overdrive," complements nicely some of the remarks about the new narcissism I have written about here as the pervasive evil underlying our culture and political life.
I refer to the Tea Party belief that taxes are not needed because each of us is meant to help ourselves rather than ours. This, after all, is the basis of the extreme indidivualism that has moved the country so dangerously to the right, even in the name of Christianity, which is about loving thy neighbor.
Bruni describes the new Johnny Appleseed of Hypernarcissism, the personal improvement guru Tim Ferris, who suggests putting an unloaded starter pistol in your luggage to make sure that the TSA people at the airport won't lose it. You get peace of mind that way; no matter that government time and money is wasted, which is our (collective) money.
I hope Ferris, a best-selling author, is only joking. Bruni is not when he zeroes in those who try to "game the system" to advance their own cause at the expense of the common good. "Selfishness run amok is a national disease," he writes; too many people act as if they live in a civic vacuum, with no responsibilities to others.
Consider the huge increase in Social Security disability applications, many by people who don't need such assistance, based on the view that the federal treasury is too big to be affected. But isn't that treasury the sum of us? And cheating it is to cheat your neighbor. Looking out for No. 1 may sell books and get you on TV, but it is immoral and destructive of the social fabric.
How many fundamentalist Christians, voting for Republicans, subscribe to the anti-government, me-first principle without seeing that it contradics the Gospel? There is no reason to be surprised by this since there is nothing new under the sun. Selfishness, sometimes called pride, has been, for about 2,000 years, the chief of the deadly sins, and anyone who has read Dante or other earlier authors knows that the avarice of earlier times is little different from that of today. It is always rooted in the self at the expense of the other.
This brings me back to selfishness as the essence of evil--and to its opposite, love, which brings compassion and whatever justice we deserve on this earth.
I refer to the Tea Party belief that taxes are not needed because each of us is meant to help ourselves rather than ours. This, after all, is the basis of the extreme indidivualism that has moved the country so dangerously to the right, even in the name of Christianity, which is about loving thy neighbor.
Bruni describes the new Johnny Appleseed of Hypernarcissism, the personal improvement guru Tim Ferris, who suggests putting an unloaded starter pistol in your luggage to make sure that the TSA people at the airport won't lose it. You get peace of mind that way; no matter that government time and money is wasted, which is our (collective) money.
I hope Ferris, a best-selling author, is only joking. Bruni is not when he zeroes in those who try to "game the system" to advance their own cause at the expense of the common good. "Selfishness run amok is a national disease," he writes; too many people act as if they live in a civic vacuum, with no responsibilities to others.
Consider the huge increase in Social Security disability applications, many by people who don't need such assistance, based on the view that the federal treasury is too big to be affected. But isn't that treasury the sum of us? And cheating it is to cheat your neighbor. Looking out for No. 1 may sell books and get you on TV, but it is immoral and destructive of the social fabric.
How many fundamentalist Christians, voting for Republicans, subscribe to the anti-government, me-first principle without seeing that it contradics the Gospel? There is no reason to be surprised by this since there is nothing new under the sun. Selfishness, sometimes called pride, has been, for about 2,000 years, the chief of the deadly sins, and anyone who has read Dante or other earlier authors knows that the avarice of earlier times is little different from that of today. It is always rooted in the self at the expense of the other.
This brings me back to selfishness as the essence of evil--and to its opposite, love, which brings compassion and whatever justice we deserve on this earth.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Public Selfishness
I recently wrote about a young man using his cell phone, loudly, while exercising in the fitness center near me, a place where some awareness of other people should be taken for granted. This guy ignored the needs of others to satisfy his own desire to have a long, private conversation in a public place.
It does not take much imagination to apply this selfishness to the rancor over public policy, especially in the health care debate. Sometimes a simple word like "selfishness" sums up the underlying attitude of those who say, "I have health care and I don't feel responsible for those who don't."
In what many insist is a "Christian nation" that also happens to be the richest on the planet, 45,000 Americans die each year because they lack access to health care. Fifty-million of our fellow citizens lack health insurance and must rely on emergency rooms if they want to avoid dying in case of a medical crisis.
Arguments about health care can and have been made about government intrusion and expanding government control, and many disagree with the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare. Some feel strongly that they are being forced to purchase a product against their will. I can understand this point of view because I, too, value individual freedom.
But, as I have earlier stated, individual freedom without concern for the common good, for the whole of society of which each of us is a part, is a very limited view of the issues involved. Most people do not see, or want to see, what all major religions teach: that individual freedoms must always be balanced against the needs of others.
Greg Garrett recently made this point, using the Gospels as evidence (his book is Faithful Citizenship). He quotes Martin Luther King, on the last night of his life: faithful citizenship requires a "dangerous unselfishness."
King learned the hard way how dangerous his cause was; so did Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who stood up to Hitler and was executed.
President Obama has often addressed the importance of the common good, often to deaf ears. In his latest State of the Union address, he asked us to imagine what our country would be like if it were founded NOT on absolute concern for individual freedoms but on concern for everyone. This perspective, which has so much in common with the Judaeo-Christian tradition of social justice based on the common good, is often overlooked or misinterpreted as a kind of government dictatorship ("socialism").
Obama and his people must do more to explain how the ACA (health care act) helps rather than harms us as a people. He must continue to invoke Lincoln and others who spoke of the better angels of our nature, which tell us that it may be easier and more comfortable and more logical to act in our own interest, but we are all part of something greater than ourselves. It is called America.
In the 1820s, Alexis de Tocqueville was worried that the extreme individualism of the new American democracy might sap "the virtues of public life." Since then the debate has raged between those who insist that public policy must guarantee the voters' self-interest and those who uphold the legal and moral obligation each citizen has to help his neighbor.
As a recent debate in the New York Times letters column indicates, we in America have become conditioned to think politically in terms of "me" whereas democracy requires that we recognize that we are all in this together.
As Paul L. Nevins writes, what J. K. Galbraith observed fifty years ago--the existence of "private affluence and public squalor"--has grown worse. And the inability of politicians to address this social injustice is leading us deeper and deeper into a malaise: selfishness is, whether we want to admit it or not, the cause of America's political and economic problems.
It does not take much imagination to apply this selfishness to the rancor over public policy, especially in the health care debate. Sometimes a simple word like "selfishness" sums up the underlying attitude of those who say, "I have health care and I don't feel responsible for those who don't."
In what many insist is a "Christian nation" that also happens to be the richest on the planet, 45,000 Americans die each year because they lack access to health care. Fifty-million of our fellow citizens lack health insurance and must rely on emergency rooms if they want to avoid dying in case of a medical crisis.
Arguments about health care can and have been made about government intrusion and expanding government control, and many disagree with the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare. Some feel strongly that they are being forced to purchase a product against their will. I can understand this point of view because I, too, value individual freedom.
But, as I have earlier stated, individual freedom without concern for the common good, for the whole of society of which each of us is a part, is a very limited view of the issues involved. Most people do not see, or want to see, what all major religions teach: that individual freedoms must always be balanced against the needs of others.
Greg Garrett recently made this point, using the Gospels as evidence (his book is Faithful Citizenship). He quotes Martin Luther King, on the last night of his life: faithful citizenship requires a "dangerous unselfishness."
King learned the hard way how dangerous his cause was; so did Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who stood up to Hitler and was executed.
President Obama has often addressed the importance of the common good, often to deaf ears. In his latest State of the Union address, he asked us to imagine what our country would be like if it were founded NOT on absolute concern for individual freedoms but on concern for everyone. This perspective, which has so much in common with the Judaeo-Christian tradition of social justice based on the common good, is often overlooked or misinterpreted as a kind of government dictatorship ("socialism").
Obama and his people must do more to explain how the ACA (health care act) helps rather than harms us as a people. He must continue to invoke Lincoln and others who spoke of the better angels of our nature, which tell us that it may be easier and more comfortable and more logical to act in our own interest, but we are all part of something greater than ourselves. It is called America.
In the 1820s, Alexis de Tocqueville was worried that the extreme individualism of the new American democracy might sap "the virtues of public life." Since then the debate has raged between those who insist that public policy must guarantee the voters' self-interest and those who uphold the legal and moral obligation each citizen has to help his neighbor.
As a recent debate in the New York Times letters column indicates, we in America have become conditioned to think politically in terms of "me" whereas democracy requires that we recognize that we are all in this together.
As Paul L. Nevins writes, what J. K. Galbraith observed fifty years ago--the existence of "private affluence and public squalor"--has grown worse. And the inability of politicians to address this social injustice is leading us deeper and deeper into a malaise: selfishness is, whether we want to admit it or not, the cause of America's political and economic problems.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
No Man (or Woman) is an Island
John Donne wrote the famous words, "No man is an island, entire of itself..." We are all, he said, involved when the bell tolls for one individual; each death touches us because we are involved in mankind. (Meditation XVII)
This is not a sentimental bit of poetry from the early 1600s; he truly believed in the greater good, the unity of believers of which he was a part known as Christendom.
Our multicultural world has replaced Western Christendom, but the idea that we are all in this together, in the same boat, as the cliche has it, remains valid. Obama has spoken of this many times, yet no amount of speeches will convince some people to examine their radical individualism, which I see as a great social evil.
Although I hate to bring up the health care debate, it provides a salient example: nearly every day, I encounter a posting or letter to the editor which says, in effect, "I have good health insurance and I don't want to hear any more about government brainwashing." Or "socialism." They resent a health-care plan for everyone because they don't want to be reminded of their obligation to be part of a whole greater than their own individual world.
There may be many valid objections to Obamacare; what concerns me is the dismissal of the moral obligation to care for those whose lack of insurance costs us all in the end, financially as well as morally.
The conservative political agenda seems to be all about the individual, his or her rights and freedoms, which are guaranteed by the Constitution; but as Robert Bellah and others have long noted, respect for individual rights must be balanced by a concern for the common good. The whole (nation) is only as strong as its parts (citizens).
"A man alone is in bad company," Jacques Cousteau once said: this is not a religious sentiment. The isolated individual, cut off from family and community, lacking love in the broad sense in which Dante meant it when he connected love and justice in his Comedy, is prone to do evil: consider the loners out there and the violence that we often learn about too late. Read the powerful novel by Russell Banks, Affliction to see how male violence in particular destroys.
Life is not all about me, as our consumer culture keeps preaching; it's about us. Is it too late for our diverse, multicultural society to re-learn this essential lesson?
This is not a sentimental bit of poetry from the early 1600s; he truly believed in the greater good, the unity of believers of which he was a part known as Christendom.
Our multicultural world has replaced Western Christendom, but the idea that we are all in this together, in the same boat, as the cliche has it, remains valid. Obama has spoken of this many times, yet no amount of speeches will convince some people to examine their radical individualism, which I see as a great social evil.
Although I hate to bring up the health care debate, it provides a salient example: nearly every day, I encounter a posting or letter to the editor which says, in effect, "I have good health insurance and I don't want to hear any more about government brainwashing." Or "socialism." They resent a health-care plan for everyone because they don't want to be reminded of their obligation to be part of a whole greater than their own individual world.
There may be many valid objections to Obamacare; what concerns me is the dismissal of the moral obligation to care for those whose lack of insurance costs us all in the end, financially as well as morally.
The conservative political agenda seems to be all about the individual, his or her rights and freedoms, which are guaranteed by the Constitution; but as Robert Bellah and others have long noted, respect for individual rights must be balanced by a concern for the common good. The whole (nation) is only as strong as its parts (citizens).
"A man alone is in bad company," Jacques Cousteau once said: this is not a religious sentiment. The isolated individual, cut off from family and community, lacking love in the broad sense in which Dante meant it when he connected love and justice in his Comedy, is prone to do evil: consider the loners out there and the violence that we often learn about too late. Read the powerful novel by Russell Banks, Affliction to see how male violence in particular destroys.
Life is not all about me, as our consumer culture keeps preaching; it's about us. Is it too late for our diverse, multicultural society to re-learn this essential lesson?
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Self-interest properly understood
In the current Vanity Fair, of all places, a significant, thoughtful essay by a distinguished economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who says America has become a country where inequality has been allowed to grow. A country where the majority are doing worse year after year "is not likely to do well over the long haul."
We have allowed a powerful elite, the top 1% of the population, to emerge.
Much of the inequality has been caused by the manipulation of our financial system made possible by changes in rules paid for by the big bankers themselves.
The most damning and alarming passage: Virtually all the Senators and most members of the House are "members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well, they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office."
Stiglitz points out most tellingly the consequences of this recent policy on our sense of identity, opportunity, and community; in short, on social justice issues. He quotes Tocqueville's identification of something uniquely American: self-interest properly understood.
If we don't think of ourselves, who will? But if we think only of ourselves, who are we?
This statement, paraphrased from Hillel, is basic to the notion of the common good, that essential element in any governmment worthy of the name, while recognizing the rights of the individual.
If we have "properly understood" self-interest, we recognize that paying attention to the needs and self-interest of others is not only a spiritually correct notion but "a precondition for one's own ultimate well-being," in Stiglitz's words. In other words, looking out for others is not only good for the soul; it's good for business.
So our ruling elite, if they fail to see that they are obligated to the 99 percent of the citizenry, are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, as they did in the recent financial debacle.
All this reminds me of the important point made by Robert Bellah twenty or more years ago in Habits of the Heart: that extreme individualism may seem as American as apple pie, but it must be balanced with a concern for the common good. We exist as individuals within the context of a community; we cannot go it alone. We depend for our very identity on those who have created the society to which we contribute.
Perhaps this is why I can tolerate only so much news about what happens in Washington, where unbridled self-interest rules in spite of lofty rhetoric that promises something more noble, where Tea Party members do all they can to advance self-interest--not properly understood.
We have allowed a powerful elite, the top 1% of the population, to emerge.
Much of the inequality has been caused by the manipulation of our financial system made possible by changes in rules paid for by the big bankers themselves.
The most damning and alarming passage: Virtually all the Senators and most members of the House are "members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well, they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office."
Stiglitz points out most tellingly the consequences of this recent policy on our sense of identity, opportunity, and community; in short, on social justice issues. He quotes Tocqueville's identification of something uniquely American: self-interest properly understood.
If we don't think of ourselves, who will? But if we think only of ourselves, who are we?
This statement, paraphrased from Hillel, is basic to the notion of the common good, that essential element in any governmment worthy of the name, while recognizing the rights of the individual.
If we have "properly understood" self-interest, we recognize that paying attention to the needs and self-interest of others is not only a spiritually correct notion but "a precondition for one's own ultimate well-being," in Stiglitz's words. In other words, looking out for others is not only good for the soul; it's good for business.
So our ruling elite, if they fail to see that they are obligated to the 99 percent of the citizenry, are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, as they did in the recent financial debacle.
All this reminds me of the important point made by Robert Bellah twenty or more years ago in Habits of the Heart: that extreme individualism may seem as American as apple pie, but it must be balanced with a concern for the common good. We exist as individuals within the context of a community; we cannot go it alone. We depend for our very identity on those who have created the society to which we contribute.
Perhaps this is why I can tolerate only so much news about what happens in Washington, where unbridled self-interest rules in spite of lofty rhetoric that promises something more noble, where Tea Party members do all they can to advance self-interest--not properly understood.
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