Among the to-read books on my to-do list is the latest study by Sebastian Junger, Tribe, which, like all of his books, deals with an important topic in a thoughtfully done, wide ranging manner, in this case combining history, psychology and anthropology.
Junger explores our all-important human connection to the community into which we are born or live: our tribe. This in itself makes it noteworthy for me, concerned as I long have been by the dangers of extreme individualism, at the expense of the common good, an individualism that underlies so much American culture (consider the Second Amendment furor). And having taught courses on masculinity, I remain interested in studies that deal with the lives of men as men.
Why has tribal society captured the imagination of people, men in particular, for centuries? The answer is, apparently, found in our evolutionary past as a communal species. Those who study the tribal cultures of earlier times, such as the Anglo-Saxon world of Beowulf, inevitably realize the emphasis on loyalty and belonging rather than individual bravado that typified such a society.
The practical application of this to the contemporary American veteran, especially young men returning from combat in the Middle East shell-shocked, as they once said, or suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as we say today, calls out for the attention that Junger has devoted to the issue.
So many men in our society are disconnected from families, who live far away, from religious affiliation, from other social organizations: they go it alone, often with disastrous results: drugs, alcoholism, depression, maybe violence. This syndrome lies behind the many young men drawn into terrorist groups: they are desperate to belong to some group that gives them a reason to live.
Carl Jung wrote that a man alone, without family or faith, is prone to evil (my paraphrase). The evils involved are often psychological: violence to the self as well as to others.
The famous Swiss psychologist knew that the individual, a social being, cannot be divorced from some form of community; and that he must find his role in the world as part of that society, not as a lone wolf. The life of the lone wolf is unnatural.
We are destined to be part of something larger than ourselves. Men in particular need intimate bonds, not merely sexual, but bonds of sharing and friendship--no group more so that the combat veterans returning to American shores and finding a lack of closeness. The intimate bonds of platoon life are suddenly gone, and they drift because the society they return to values individual achievement more than communal life.
I'm glad that Sebastian Junger has given attention to men and tribes since, every thinking person is concerned about the increase in violence in the world, often perpetrated by young, rootless men.
As someone once said, a man alone is in bad company.
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Time to Go
Ignorance, according some of the ancient Greek philosophers, was one of the great evils. And in a public figure, like Donald Trump, is a source of alarm.
A recent piece (Aug. 1) in the New York Times by Max Boot, a conservative, lists some of the numerous statements Trump has made, indicating the level of his ignorance. Boot does not repeat Trump's statement that he loves "poorly educated people."
Trump seems proud of his lack of learning. He's a man whose source of news is TV, not reading; he told the Washington Post that he reaches decisions "with very little knowledge." He thinks the Constitution has 12 articles rather than seven and, for his own devious purposes, traffics in the conspiracy theories that Obama was born in Kenya and that the father of Ted Cruz was involved in the Kennedy assassination.
Trump seems to be the monster born out of the right-wing media, such as Fox News, with its emphasis on news as entertainment. Well, Trump was a bit entertaining at first, but now his extreme statements are as unacceptable as he is.
Here is ignorance at work: He knows he is right and doesn't care about the truth. He has taken the anti-intellectual element in American politics to new heights--or depths.
If it were merely a matter of his being poorly informed, I would not be worried so much about the American election. It is Trump's willingness to say anything to insult and ridicule people, especially Khizr Khan, the father of the Muslim soldier killed in Iraq; this man, saying Trump had a "black soul," has the kind of moral courage Trump, with his five deferments from military service, lacks.
There seems to be no one he will not insult in an effort to dominate the news; and the media are foolish enough to play along with him. Just as the GOP looks more and more foolish with Trump as their standard bearer.
Why do his party leaders, while try to distance themselves from his statements, not disown Trump? How can they vote for a man with a black soul, lacking compassion? This ignoramus is not only a national embarrassment but the most dangerous demagogue ever to seek the White House. As an American, I feel ashamed.
A recent piece (Aug. 1) in the New York Times by Max Boot, a conservative, lists some of the numerous statements Trump has made, indicating the level of his ignorance. Boot does not repeat Trump's statement that he loves "poorly educated people."
Trump seems proud of his lack of learning. He's a man whose source of news is TV, not reading; he told the Washington Post that he reaches decisions "with very little knowledge." He thinks the Constitution has 12 articles rather than seven and, for his own devious purposes, traffics in the conspiracy theories that Obama was born in Kenya and that the father of Ted Cruz was involved in the Kennedy assassination.
Trump seems to be the monster born out of the right-wing media, such as Fox News, with its emphasis on news as entertainment. Well, Trump was a bit entertaining at first, but now his extreme statements are as unacceptable as he is.
Here is ignorance at work: He knows he is right and doesn't care about the truth. He has taken the anti-intellectual element in American politics to new heights--or depths.
If it were merely a matter of his being poorly informed, I would not be worried so much about the American election. It is Trump's willingness to say anything to insult and ridicule people, especially Khizr Khan, the father of the Muslim soldier killed in Iraq; this man, saying Trump had a "black soul," has the kind of moral courage Trump, with his five deferments from military service, lacks.
There seems to be no one he will not insult in an effort to dominate the news; and the media are foolish enough to play along with him. Just as the GOP looks more and more foolish with Trump as their standard bearer.
Why do his party leaders, while try to distance themselves from his statements, not disown Trump? How can they vote for a man with a black soul, lacking compassion? This ignoramus is not only a national embarrassment but the most dangerous demagogue ever to seek the White House. As an American, I feel ashamed.
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Missing Him Already
The more I look at the two candidates for president of the U.S., the more I start missing Barack Obama. He has some months left in office, but his steady, calm style, more than his policies, remains remarkable in these violent times.
As Timothy Egan wrote recently in the NYTimes (7-15), Obama has been a classy model of dignity whose personal behavior--no scandals--"has set a standard few presidents have ever reached."
As consoler-in-chief, this masterful speaker has been widely praised for providing unity in a time of chaos. This cool, unflappable, patient guy is the same man attacked viciously by the right wing for the past seven years, having his Americanism challenged as well as his religion; yet he has responded with predictable eloquence, not anger.
A careful thinker and writer who spends hours alone reading in his private study after he has said goodnight to his family, Obama is the kind of thoughtful leader we need, the kind who rarely misspeaks or makes embarrassing errors. He remains who he was in 2008: a family man who reads widely, thinks carefully, and knows who he is.
Obama the man will be missed, even if Obama the president has made decisions that are questionable. His cautious foreign policy has been far from perfect in dealing with ISIS, yet he has moved away from the ideology of his predecessor to pursue new areas of engagement (with Iran and Cuba and Asia).
As Fareed Zakaria wrote some months ago, Obama has not been given credit for many significant achievements: his forceful response to the financial crisis of 2008, bringing the U.S. out of the Great Recession in better shape than any other major country. And he provided a health care program that covers 20 million more people, even recently taking the time to write, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a critique of Obamacare, offering suggestions as to how it can be improved. What other president would do this?
He has, says Zakaria, transformed energy policy (solar costs have plunged seventy percent). People will argue about these and other policies, but few can (honestly) say that Obama has acted dishonestly, embarrassing our country in the eyes of the world.
When I look at Donald Trump, I see the antithesis of Obama: I see chaos in the recent convention and campaign, not order; irrationality and anger, not patience or clarity in the face of complexity; carelessness and lies, not a clear policy; and a bleak view of a new dark age that has supposedly fallen on America and the world that only Donald can, single-handedly, fix. Trump is a ludicrous figure who makes Obama's scandal-free White House and his calm, reassuring message of hope and clarity all the more remarkable.
I predict a valuable post-presidency for Barack Obama. He will continue to do important work in the world.
As Timothy Egan wrote recently in the NYTimes (7-15), Obama has been a classy model of dignity whose personal behavior--no scandals--"has set a standard few presidents have ever reached."
As consoler-in-chief, this masterful speaker has been widely praised for providing unity in a time of chaos. This cool, unflappable, patient guy is the same man attacked viciously by the right wing for the past seven years, having his Americanism challenged as well as his religion; yet he has responded with predictable eloquence, not anger.
A careful thinker and writer who spends hours alone reading in his private study after he has said goodnight to his family, Obama is the kind of thoughtful leader we need, the kind who rarely misspeaks or makes embarrassing errors. He remains who he was in 2008: a family man who reads widely, thinks carefully, and knows who he is.
Obama the man will be missed, even if Obama the president has made decisions that are questionable. His cautious foreign policy has been far from perfect in dealing with ISIS, yet he has moved away from the ideology of his predecessor to pursue new areas of engagement (with Iran and Cuba and Asia).
As Fareed Zakaria wrote some months ago, Obama has not been given credit for many significant achievements: his forceful response to the financial crisis of 2008, bringing the U.S. out of the Great Recession in better shape than any other major country. And he provided a health care program that covers 20 million more people, even recently taking the time to write, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a critique of Obamacare, offering suggestions as to how it can be improved. What other president would do this?
He has, says Zakaria, transformed energy policy (solar costs have plunged seventy percent). People will argue about these and other policies, but few can (honestly) say that Obama has acted dishonestly, embarrassing our country in the eyes of the world.
When I look at Donald Trump, I see the antithesis of Obama: I see chaos in the recent convention and campaign, not order; irrationality and anger, not patience or clarity in the face of complexity; carelessness and lies, not a clear policy; and a bleak view of a new dark age that has supposedly fallen on America and the world that only Donald can, single-handedly, fix. Trump is a ludicrous figure who makes Obama's scandal-free White House and his calm, reassuring message of hope and clarity all the more remarkable.
I predict a valuable post-presidency for Barack Obama. He will continue to do important work in the world.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Paying Attention to Light
I advise my writing students to begin by observing: Look closely at someone or something and describe it. Sounds easier than it is. Paying attention is rarely simple, but it's essential if we are to be in the here and now.
I've been paying attention to the light that, even on hot summer afternoons, floods the room where I work. Thanks to shady trees and a southerly exposure, the light is diffused, its glare softened. I enjoy looking at it as it pours through the window over my desk, cooling the room.
Or so it seems. I have never, until now, put it into words. Light is, after all, a silent presence, and that's the whole point: an encounter with silence and stillness.
I ask myself, Why do I enjoy looking at light? Maybe the answer has to do with memories, half remembered, of afternoons elsewhere, in hotel rooms when we were on vacation and after a busy morning, a brief siesta was called for. Or maybe it reminds me of certain paintings, especially Vermeer's, where a lady quietly reads by a window in a room filled with natural light. Thanks to Vermeer, the light is as important as the lady or the room.
I am drawn to light. I can identify with medieval folk in Gothic cathedrals as they felt the power of colored light from the stained glass windows, suggesting a divine presence, as if the barrier between earth and heaven, matter and spirit, had been bridged and they felt, in that lofty space, a bit of eternity.
I think about light because I know the value of contemplation and find too little time for it. Richard Rohr recently wrote that most of our thinking is unstable, a series of self-centered reactions and preferences, of judging and labeling things or worrying, none of which has anything to do with being fully in the present moment.
I need time alone each day--even just ten minutes--so that I can calmly watch everything as it comes and goes, even something as fundamental as light. I need a place in the day when my mind can be still and let things float by, without analysis or judgment or feeling.
Silence and emptiness, when we make room for them in our busy lives, are open to infinite horizons and transcendence in a way that nothing else is, Rohr says.
Time spent gazing out the window, looking at the light, may seem to some busy people time wasted, but it is the overactive, busy mind that is wasting an essential opportunity for something essential to every day: the freedom of contemplation.
I've been paying attention to the light that, even on hot summer afternoons, floods the room where I work. Thanks to shady trees and a southerly exposure, the light is diffused, its glare softened. I enjoy looking at it as it pours through the window over my desk, cooling the room.
Or so it seems. I have never, until now, put it into words. Light is, after all, a silent presence, and that's the whole point: an encounter with silence and stillness.
I ask myself, Why do I enjoy looking at light? Maybe the answer has to do with memories, half remembered, of afternoons elsewhere, in hotel rooms when we were on vacation and after a busy morning, a brief siesta was called for. Or maybe it reminds me of certain paintings, especially Vermeer's, where a lady quietly reads by a window in a room filled with natural light. Thanks to Vermeer, the light is as important as the lady or the room.
I am drawn to light. I can identify with medieval folk in Gothic cathedrals as they felt the power of colored light from the stained glass windows, suggesting a divine presence, as if the barrier between earth and heaven, matter and spirit, had been bridged and they felt, in that lofty space, a bit of eternity.
I think about light because I know the value of contemplation and find too little time for it. Richard Rohr recently wrote that most of our thinking is unstable, a series of self-centered reactions and preferences, of judging and labeling things or worrying, none of which has anything to do with being fully in the present moment.
I need time alone each day--even just ten minutes--so that I can calmly watch everything as it comes and goes, even something as fundamental as light. I need a place in the day when my mind can be still and let things float by, without analysis or judgment or feeling.
Silence and emptiness, when we make room for them in our busy lives, are open to infinite horizons and transcendence in a way that nothing else is, Rohr says.
Time spent gazing out the window, looking at the light, may seem to some busy people time wasted, but it is the overactive, busy mind that is wasting an essential opportunity for something essential to every day: the freedom of contemplation.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Killing for Sale
"More American civilians have died by gunfire in the past decade than all the Americans who were killed in combat in the Second World War." (In other words, more than 418,000.)
This statement is one of several that stunned me in an article by Evan Osnos in the New Yorker (June 27), whose topic, the making of money from the sale of firearms,will probably surprise few readers. But the accumulation of facts he presents is unforgettable, especially about the way a massacre, such as happened near me in Orlando earlier this month, will send stock prices of outfits like Smith & Wesson up.
After the attack in Orlando, the CEO of Smith & Wesson, the leading maker of firearms, said, he was "very pleased with the results that we got." Surprised? Sickened?
Experts like Osnos tell us that sales of weapons, once purchased for sport, are now mostly purchased for protection. Out of fear. Gun sales continue to break records, this article states.
The mass shootings that horrify us result in just two percent of gun deaths. Most of the time, Osnos says, Americans shoot each other impulsively, up close, without political motivation. Handguns in the wrong hands remain a major problem that our Congress is unwilling to deal with, as are assault weapons, which have no place in American homes.
How can people who consider themselves pro-life be opposed to strict laws on the sale of weapons? The answers are complex and involve the American myth of freedom and independence; they also involve good old-fashioned capitalism and greed.
This statement is one of several that stunned me in an article by Evan Osnos in the New Yorker (June 27), whose topic, the making of money from the sale of firearms,will probably surprise few readers. But the accumulation of facts he presents is unforgettable, especially about the way a massacre, such as happened near me in Orlando earlier this month, will send stock prices of outfits like Smith & Wesson up.
After the attack in Orlando, the CEO of Smith & Wesson, the leading maker of firearms, said, he was "very pleased with the results that we got." Surprised? Sickened?
Experts like Osnos tell us that sales of weapons, once purchased for sport, are now mostly purchased for protection. Out of fear. Gun sales continue to break records, this article states.
The mass shootings that horrify us result in just two percent of gun deaths. Most of the time, Osnos says, Americans shoot each other impulsively, up close, without political motivation. Handguns in the wrong hands remain a major problem that our Congress is unwilling to deal with, as are assault weapons, which have no place in American homes.
How can people who consider themselves pro-life be opposed to strict laws on the sale of weapons? The answers are complex and involve the American myth of freedom and independence; they also involve good old-fashioned capitalism and greed.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Hate and terrorism: in my own backyard
The worst incident of mass terrorism in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001 took place not far from where I live in central Florida. Today, I met a young woman whose closest friend was among the 49 clients at the Pulse nightclub who were mowed down and killed early Sunday morning while I slept--along with about 50 others wounded.
She, like many of us here, are sad and of course angry and confused: Is this latest attack a sign that gun violence is out of hand, or is it a hate crime, as it appears to be? The killer targeted gay people and was known to hate homosexuals, raising the question, has the progress made in gay rights led to more homophobia?
The killer was also a Muslim who claimed some connection, still unknown, to ISIS. So we ask yet again, why can the U.S. not persuade Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations from sponsoring extremism in schools and mosques around the world?
And of course, there is the most immediate question: When, oh when, will this country get serious about gun control? Why should a man suspected by the FBI of being a potential terrorist be allowed to purchase an assault rifle?
Who outside the military needs an assault rifle? The right of self-defense with firearms has nothing to do with the easy availability of guns in America, which has become, like other parts of the world, marked by hate and senseless violence.
As I pray for the victims, many Hispanic young men, and their families, I pray too that Congress will get serious about gun control and that the federal government will do much more to stop Islamic extremism. Fifteen years after 9/11, we face the same issues and feel unsafe in our own communities.
She, like many of us here, are sad and of course angry and confused: Is this latest attack a sign that gun violence is out of hand, or is it a hate crime, as it appears to be? The killer targeted gay people and was known to hate homosexuals, raising the question, has the progress made in gay rights led to more homophobia?
The killer was also a Muslim who claimed some connection, still unknown, to ISIS. So we ask yet again, why can the U.S. not persuade Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations from sponsoring extremism in schools and mosques around the world?
And of course, there is the most immediate question: When, oh when, will this country get serious about gun control? Why should a man suspected by the FBI of being a potential terrorist be allowed to purchase an assault rifle?
Who outside the military needs an assault rifle? The right of self-defense with firearms has nothing to do with the easy availability of guns in America, which has become, like other parts of the world, marked by hate and senseless violence.
As I pray for the victims, many Hispanic young men, and their families, I pray too that Congress will get serious about gun control and that the federal government will do much more to stop Islamic extremism. Fifteen years after 9/11, we face the same issues and feel unsafe in our own communities.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
True Freedom
People have always sought one form of freedom or another, it seems: freedom from oppression of various kinds, from injustice, from abuse and danger and so much more. But Rowan Williams singles out something more fundamental: freedom from self-orientation.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury is quoted by Richard Rohr, whom I quote: "You can have political or economic freedom, but if you are not free from your own ego, from your own centrality inside your own thinking, I don't think you're very free at all. In fact, your actions and behavior will be totally predictable. Everything will revolve around your security, survival, self-protection, self-validation, self, self, self."
That this is the great age of self-centeredness and narcissism is seen in the rise of Donald Trump, who thinks that, as long as the world revolves around him, everything will be fine. Truth, facts, knowledge, taste--none of these matter.
As Michael Sean Winters writes today in NCR, toddlers can get away with combining viciousness and feigned innocence when they are caught in lies. Apparently, many American voters see their own self-interests mirrored in the narcissistic Mr. Trump. The consequences are alarming.
The mature person knows that if we think only and exclusively of ourselves at the expense of others, we diminish our own humanity.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury is quoted by Richard Rohr, whom I quote: "You can have political or economic freedom, but if you are not free from your own ego, from your own centrality inside your own thinking, I don't think you're very free at all. In fact, your actions and behavior will be totally predictable. Everything will revolve around your security, survival, self-protection, self-validation, self, self, self."
That this is the great age of self-centeredness and narcissism is seen in the rise of Donald Trump, who thinks that, as long as the world revolves around him, everything will be fine. Truth, facts, knowledge, taste--none of these matter.
As Michael Sean Winters writes today in NCR, toddlers can get away with combining viciousness and feigned innocence when they are caught in lies. Apparently, many American voters see their own self-interests mirrored in the narcissistic Mr. Trump. The consequences are alarming.
The mature person knows that if we think only and exclusively of ourselves at the expense of others, we diminish our own humanity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)