Is It Cowardice? Wondering about Why Liberalism in America has Avoided Confronting this Dark Force
“If we learn nothing else in 2010, can we please finally acknowledge that our partisan divisions are about authentic principles that lead to very different approaches to governing?”
I’m very fond of E.J. Dionne. And I respect him, too. He’s often perceptive and he’s always sound. He’s a good and effective spokesman, generally, for a fine liberal spirit.
But here I see liberalism’s weakness, too. He’s giving the Republicans the benefit of the doubt about a matter on which there should be no doubt. Principles? When they reject their own ideas, embodying their own principles, just to jockey for power, you KNOW that the principles are just a cover for the lust for power. And you are called upon –for your own self-protection in a battle for control, AND for the health of the world –to make sure that that lies and bullying and hypocrisy ought not be rewarded with control over our society’s steering wheel.
Why does Dionne grant them principles when the Republicans have shown themselves so unprincipled, rejecting their own ideas in order to make their opponent look like a failure to the American people.
They will not repudiate the hatemongering of the likes of Limbaugh and Beck. They are willing to leave no distance between themselves and that hatemongering.
Some principles. The dark spirit is revealed. And DIonne should use his voice to call us into battle against it and instead he veers away from that course. He’s ready to talk about the POLITICAL battle of liberalism against this dark Republican stuff, as if there were nothing remarkable about this Republican force on the political world, that deals in lies and that prefers war to seeing what good might be accomplished together.
It is a fight that must be fought.
Why have liberals not risen to that challenge? Is it COWARDICE?
Is liberalism at some fundamental level cowed by this aggressive dark spirit attacking them by making it all about power and all about making things up to serve the growth of one’s power? There has been no place of decent accommodation with the Republican Party, no place in which it could stop being all-out war and become something of a detente to serve some mutually agreed upon interest. The Republicans have insisted on war, from Clinton’s impeachment, to the grab of the 2000 election, to the manipulations of war for political ends, to the refusal to respect bounds to their own exercise of power. It has been an assault.
And the Democrats have defended poorly. Why?
March 1st, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Tell you what: What if the case is that liberal-progressivism has itself drifted onto unholy ground as well.
There is the expression . . Satan does not cast out Satan.
So ! Perhaps he’s laughing. It’s hard to picture, but, under the circumstances, quite possibly so.
March 1st, 2010 at 4:46 pm
The idea that no one should be forced to pay any taxes except possibly to fund the military and the idea that the government should provide no one with anything that he or she has not earned by his or her own labor are principles, it seems to me, whether or not one feels that the strict application of those principles is desirable.
That 2002 BBC documentary I discovered for myself this morning thanks to MaskedMarauder demonstrates the evolution/devolution of much of American society away from the social principles of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s time into the belief that the highest priority of our society is the satisfaction of individuals’ unconscious beliefs and desires as determined by the use of sophisticated marketing techniques administered by psychoanalysts employed by corporations. Ex-President Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. were leaders in this change.
Republicans are not the only ones who have compromised their espoused principles to a greater or lesser extent for the sake of gaining power. How President William Clinton allowed himself to be affected by the results of marketing techniques that studied closely the unconscious hopes and fears and sexual and aggressive desires–of which we are only dimly aware–of swing voters, when he was running for his second term, is a most interesting story.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1122532358497501036&ei=PJmKS4ynNZqqrAPNuoGgBw&q=century+of+self#
Larry
March 1st, 2010 at 6:21 pm
A few weeks ago on this site I listed many Liberals who stood up and fought in many places at many times and often against odds to do dthe right thing. Part of the problem is the democratic party has become too close to the party-raise money system that the people in power are too compromised to do much for the common good because they have taken huge corporate largese. Also as some have succintly said, some in the liberal persuasion, don’t like to fight, don’t like the messiness of jaw to jaw confrontations. True I say: but then they need to be replaced with those who will get the jobs of the people done. We are at a very critical point: if the ‘right’ can stop the majority, then I say in America, elections will not matter and the corporations and sadists will write the laws and we will become, in many places little more than fiefdoms.
I don’t really think it is cowerdice in the main: I don’t like brawling either. But, I know its necessary and sometimes I know it is right!
Richard
March 1st, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Just from what you say, Larry, I have no way of knowing if there’s anything unprincipled about using those techniques. As a writer and activist and artist myself, I am always interested in understanding how best to persuade my audience. I find that there are only a few ways of being me that are consistent with my calling and my capabiities, so there’s a limit to how much I can use any good “techniques.” (I know, for example, that I substantially ignore Lakoff’s advice, because I couldn’t very well take it if I tried, and besides I am refusing to accept his description of the ineffectuality of straight-forward argument with integrity.)
To know if Clinton was being unprincipled, I’d have to know whether the ends toward which Clinton was striving were consistent with the principles he claimed to believe in. In the case of the Bushites, it never was: it was always a lie, and it is a lie again now with the Republicans in Congress. What they seek to achieve is not the good of the nation, but their own power. And when they act unprincipledly, it is not a means to any good end, but just a demonstration of their indifference to principle.
March 1st, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Boy, I don’t know how to respond to this. What I do know is this nation is in serious trouble and danger. If we do not come together as a nation we will go down.
First of all, who said that the right doesn’t want to pay taxes? They pay them all the time. Do you know there is a difference between the neocons and neolibs together from the regular left and regular right? All the press, owned by the bankers (96% at last check) and talking heads with the exception of Madlow and Olbermman are also neocons or neolibs?
They feed us hate and fear toward each other, and did you know that is what the professionals do in Afghanistan and Pakistan and did and are still doing in Iraq??? Why??? BECAUSE NATIONS THAT UNITE ARE MORE POWERFUL THEN A FEW BANKERS AND THEIR MINIONS THAT THEY BOUGHT OFF.
This is not a right left fight, its a world citizens against the international bankers adn America is serving as the military for this global effort to suppress and obtain control over other nations. I believe the word these satanists use is “dominion”. Wake up, many on the moderate right, and the independants who are conservative voted for Obama. So their concerns are bigger than who pays taxes, which is what your fed by the controlled opposition press. Its all a disinfo game and we buy it. We must stop.
If you care and want to stop all this & save our country from the Bush/Cheney cabal that is still functioning without breaking a sweat, then please join us over at http://www.vaticproject.blogspot.com.
We are building a global “people-to-people” initiative to promote NON COOPERATION GLOBALLY in fighting anymore wars, in destroying anymore third world countries, in poisoning our soil and theirs, their air and our air and water, etc. WE all on this globe are under attack and have been the victims of an undeclared war.
Austrialia for instance sent us a notice of the legislation pending that would all MONSANTO TO USE GMO SEED ALFALFA which is currently designated as a non GMO product for obvious reasons. It would damage the meat supply, organic farming, and pollute produce around the globe. But nothing here from our own left and right normal notifiers of this assault on our health. Natural rememdies would help mitigate the affects, but McCain on the right and Dorgan ON THE LEFT both sponsored a bill to turn such remedies over to the FDA with the authority to ban those they deem harmful which is a croak. That can be done now IF THEY PROVE THEY ARE HARMFUL, but this new bill won’t require they prove it, it will just be based on the word of the DRUG CO CONTROLLED FDA.
Wake up and smell the treason in both parties, damn it.
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:25 am
Andrew Bard Schmookler said,
The answer to that depends on whether or not you think politicians ought to have principles, announce what they are, and try to get elected based on their stated principles, or whether you think it is fine for politicians to take detailed policy positions based on intimate psychological analyses of a collection of individual voters’ unconscious personal desires as opposed to any rational discourse. It is important to understand that these focus groups involved things like having people do drawings and act out rather than engage in verbal discussions. I think the concealment of the precise origin of new policies could be said to involve some serious dishonesty.
The documentary portrays ex-President Clinton as having abandoned anything that might be termed principles in favor getting reelected in 1996. He allowed himself to be controlled by the results of psychological polls under the direction of marketing experts named Philip Gould and Mark Penn. See Wikipedia links below. One result, whatever you think of it, was the much publicized termination in 1996 of the guaranteed welfare system that had been in place since Theodore Roosevelt, in favor of the “welfare to work” system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Morris
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Penn
Larry
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:45 am
oops, …since Franklin D. Roosevelt, not Theodore Roosevelt. Sorry
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:18 am
oops again!
I meant to say Dick Morris, whose Wiki page link I gave, not Philip Gould. Philip Gould, a British marketing expert, had worked on ex-President Clinton’s 1992 campaign, I believe.
Larry
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:44 am
Of course a further aspect of politically oriented focus group stuff, as I have hinted to Jim Z, is that corporations get to use this psychological research data as a starting point for manipulating people into doing things they didn’t know they wanted to do, such as supporting this or that foreign war, for example, or opposing health care reform, using methods the speak to people’s unconscious inner desires. It is important to emphasize the word “unconscious,” because most people very often override their unconscious in making decisions.
It seems to me that presenting material that makes fulfilling unconscious desires seem socially acceptable would tend to weaken people’s barriers, moral or otherwise rational in some way, against allowing their unconscious desires totally free rein.
Larry
March 2nd, 2010 at 2:09 pm
There’s a tendency to equate Left malfeasance with Right malfeasance. People tend to stop probing when the claim “the other side does it too” is made. Tit-for-tat-ism, tweedle-dum tweedle-dee-ism seems to have grown out of the reporter’s, or the media’s, desire to appear objective. My perception is that over time the Right has increasingly recognized that that approach to deflecting arguments succeeds for them.
Liberals like Dionne heard that so much from their right-leaning co-pundits that they started saying it too. It became the rallying cry for all those folks in the middle, the independents etc., who are absolutely the WORST voters, constantly changing their minds, able to be worked into a froth by whatever muddle-headedness comes down the pike.
Needless to say, there are always orders of magnitude between Right malfeasance and Left malfeasance (Iran-Contra or stacking the Supreme Court with idealogues vs. Al Gore making phone calls to campaign contributors from the Lincoln bedroom, GW Bush’s secretive war-mongering and subversion of the constitution vs. Clinton’s philandering).
March 2nd, 2010 at 3:51 pm
I am currently dealing with a family member, whose behavior many people in the know would describe as evil. (This seems to be a consensus).
I am also the one person in a position to “confront” or fight for what appears to be right in a key situation. The situation is a bad one – there’s no question about that – and it involves human suffering.
My own general philosophy is that when facing with any situation that seems “negative” (in this case quite negative), I want to draw something positive out of it. I recognize that, even in a case where it is not possible to change the outcome, new growth or learning for oneself often is possible.
My hope is that the challenging situation I am facing can be of benefit to others as well as myself. Here, learning may arise from seeing the situation as, in Gandhi’s words, “an experiment in truth.”
March 2nd, 2010 at 4:11 pm
In the past I have suggested for people’s attention the following article published in 1997 – way ahead of his time – by Joseph Turow:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/is_n11_v19/ai_19977827/
The title is “Breaking Up America: The Dark Side of Target Marketing.” It was in the journal American Demographics,” November 1997 issue. While on the surface it appears to be about segmenting consumer markets and the effect upon our social identity, towards the end of the article it speaks to the ominous trends (incipient then, at full roar now) that the development and perfection of this effective business practice could tear our polity apart. Larry’s comment here very closely tracks this argument. Perhaps 20% of my students “get it” upon reading the article – that is, the impact of target marketing upon the political realm not just the consumer or even social realm.
In addition to the above URL which requires paging through the article (I’m glad that it can still be found online for free), I am going to email Andy a PDF version of Turow’s article, so that (if this is OK with Andy), he could email it to others as an attachment as well.
March 2nd, 2010 at 4:18 pm
It seems quite possible that one reason that the dems are shying away from seeing and naming evil as such has to do with a deep form of laziness.
Scott Peck’s words seem to apply here. Dealing with “evil,” I’d say, is the ultimate kind of “life problem.”
From The road Less Traveled:
“What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair.
“These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of pain that events or conflicts engender us that we call them problems. And since life poses endless series of problems, life is always difficult and full of pain as well as joy.”
***
Another element may be that a number of Dems may believe that calling out evil would tear the country apart because we, the people, “can’t handle the truth.”
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Beyond the elements I just mentioned >>>
We not only tend to recoil from the experience of evil (feel a sense of repulsion, turn away from facing it)…the very nature of evil itself is that it is often disguised and difficult to discern.
The person/situation with whom I am dealing conforms rather remarkably with Peck’s definition of evil:
…”In addition to the abrogation of responsibility that characterizes all personality disorders…’evil’ people would be distinguished by these traits:
a) Consistent destructive, scapegoating behavior, which may often be quite subtle.
b) Excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury.
c) Pronounced concern with a public image and self-image of respectability, contributing to a stability of lifestyle but also to pretentiousness and denial of hateful feelings or vengeful motives.
D) intellectual deviousness, with an increased likelihood of a mild schizophreniclike disturbance of thinking at times of stress.”
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Of course, everyone in the world should see that BBC documentary (see discussion above). But then I wonder whether everyone knowing about the techniques would be of any practical value in opposing operating our country according to those techniques. My guess is not, although everyone knowing about them would be a change that would probably require the use of more focus groups ongoing as corporations learn the effect on people’s unconscious minds that might result from the knowledge that those techniques are controlling our political system. :-7
I know, I know, that everyone would watch that video is an extremely unlikely premise. So my speculation on what might ensue is just an idle thought. You here might appreciate it as (very) dark humor.
Larry
March 2nd, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Following Hanu Man Ji, for general knowledge and review:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Somewhere along the line, the Dems seem to have lost contact with a deep sense of morality. Remaining on the surface of life (or holding only superficial levels of morality), we tend to not want to be bothered by matters such as “evil.”
I do not know how this occured. However, I believe Scott Peck’s words are again very relevant:
********************
“When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school that we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is through the pain of confrontation and the resolution of problems that we learn.
“Most of us are not so wise. Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate, hoping that they will go away.
“We ignore them, forget them, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them, so that by deadening ourselves to the pain we can forget the problems that cause the pain. We attempt to skirt around problems rather than meet them head on. We attempt to get out of them rather than suffer through them.”
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:54 pm
(con’t)
“This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness.
“Since most of us have this tendency to a degree, most of us are mentally ill to a degree, lacking complete mental health. Some of us will go through quite extraordinary lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far away from all that is clearly good and sensible in order to find an easy way out, building the most elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the total exclusion of reality.
“In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, ‘Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.’”
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:15 pm
I mentioned “laziness” as a problem for Dems. Yet, the truth is this condition pervades both parties. I will suggest that there is a profound connection between laziness and evil.
Peck writes:
“Much of our fear is fear of a change in the status quo, a fear that we might lose what we have if we venture forth from where we are now. More often, people will fight against the new information rather than for its assimilation. Their resistance is motivated by fear, yes, but the basis of their fear is laziness; it is the fear of the work they would have to do.”
And also:
“Our failure to conduct – or to conduct fully and wholeheartedly – this internal debate between good and evil is the cause of… evil actions…
“[We] human beings commonly] fail to consult or listen to the God within…the knowledge of rightness which inherently resides within the minds of all mankind…..[But] it is work to hold these internal debates.
“They require time and energy just to conduct them. And if we take them seriously – if we seriously listen to this ‘God within us’ – we usually find ourselves being urged to take the more difficult path, the path of more effort rather than less. To conduct the debate is to open ourselves to suffering and struggle.”
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Peck moves inexorably toward this conclusion:
“…evil is laziness carried to its ultimate, extraordinary extreme. As I have defined it, love is the antithesis of laziness.
“Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love. Some ordinarily lazy people may not lift a finger to extend themselves unless they are compelled to do so. Their being is a manifestation of nonlove; still, they are not evil.
“Truly evil people, on the other hand, actively rather than passively avoid extending themselves. They will take any action in their power to protect their own laziness, to preserve the integrity of their sick self….
“As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them…. Ordinary laziness is non-love; evil is anti-love.”
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:49 pm
Hanu Man Ji said,
I’m not sure you are allowing for “acceptance of the things we cannot change,” and “the wisdom to know the difference,”* Hanu Man Ji. Larry
* Reinhold Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things that I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:12 am
Rienhold Niebuhr’s famous prayer is very individual. Different individuals have different capabilities to change or affect things, and people are located in environments that involve a variety of greater and lesser difficulties. Hanu Man Ji, I assumed your reference to “Dems” meant people who pulled the Barack Obama lever in voting booths in 2008. But perhaps you meant to refer to some smaller group of particular individuals, Hanu Man Ji. Larry
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:47 am
Why speak of “acceptance of things we cannnot change” in such a context, Larry?
We’re dealing here with a situation in which there was an actual OBLIGATION to fight against this evil (at least on the part of those who take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution), and in which the effort was essentially NOT MADE.
To fail to fight what one must fight is not to accept what one cannot change. How does one know what one can or cannot do if one does not try?
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:52 am
Andrew Bard Schmookler said,
To begin with, you are making a radical change to the context, Dr. Schmookler. It did not occur to me to understand Hanu Man Ji’s reference to “Dems” as referring to office holders or to those who have taken any oath. Perhaps that is what he meant, perhaps not. And Hanu Man Ji also did not refer to the Constitution.
That said, knowing that I am quite old-fashioned in some ways, I am of the opinion that each and every citizen has an obligation to value and uphold the Constitution, not just officeholders. But the predominant media, under the influence of commercial marketers, has succeeded in distracting most people from any focus on the United States Constitution at all. And I am sure you have heard mention of the fact that many regard the Constitution as “quaint” when they do think of it.
I am not suggesting that one ought to quit fighting for the Constitution just because doing so has gone out of style, only that it seems to be a difficult fight. But as I said, I’m old-fashioned in some ways.
I trust you did not have to exert actual effort to fly yourself to the moon before you decided you can’t do it.
Of course I believe in encouraging other people sometimes to try to do things that in fact they may not be able to do, up to a point. But ultimately I cannot pretend to know what someone else can do until I see him or her do it.
Quakers are notorious for having gotten themselves right smack dab in the way of people doing evil at various times and places, out of love and perhaps a sense of obligation. Quakers have also learned and decided that there is good even in those engaged in doing evil,and that the good can be reached and that people do sometimes change.
I admit to having gotten a bit bitter and frustrated at times over not being able to get more people to join me in various fights. But making negative personal judgments on people who feel they have better things to do or who feel they are incapable in their particular circumstances may not affect them, and the effect on me is negative. Eliminate resentment from yourself, by one means or another, no matter what seemingly good excuse there might be for it. Resentment is bad for your soul and bad for your health, like smoking cigarettes. Be thankful for what you have.
As to people who are clearly actively engaged in doing evil it is not strictly necessary to make personal judgments on them either. More to the point is trying to put oneself in their way and implicitly or explicitly encouraging others to do so as well–something that is often easier said than done, of course.
Larry
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:09 am
Hanu Man Ji, if in fact you did mean to be referring to “Dem” officeholders, particularly in the federal government, this current article might relate to what you said. Despite being overly pessimistic about the future of this Presidency, this piece relates to our recent discussions about politicians who have decided it makes more sense for them to get elected than actually to stand for anything in particular. Larry
“Rahm Emanuel: Obama’s Chief Of Sabotage”
by Dan Froomkin, March 2, 2010, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/02/rahm-emanuel-saboteur-of_n_482638.html
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:40 am
Has liberalism –from officeholders on down to the rank and file– combatted this Bushite darkness as vigorously as it ought to have?
Absolutely not, I would assert. And I doubt, Larry, you’d assert otherwise.
Was this not the issue we were discussing?
Can it be said that any major segment of American liberalism tried hard enough to justify any conclusion that it had become time for “acceptance of what cannot be changed”?
No. Not at all. Do you, Larry, see it otherwise?
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:16 am
Andrew Bard Schmookler said,
I need to make what I see as an important correction. My first reference to The Serenity Prayer was a misquote. It does not say, “…accept the things we cannot change.” It says, “…grant me the serenity
[t]o accept the things I cannot change.” The misquote risked creating an unnecessary ambiguity.
First, you are applying Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer in very specific broad stroke ways that I never intended. You might want to consider my original reference in speaking to Hanu Man Ji as a form of objection to his apparent generalization about everyone in the class of people who pulled a voting booth lever labeled “Barack Obama” in 2008. It does not help me that much that you are now revising the classes to “liberalism –from officeholders on down to the rank and file” and “any major segment of American liberalism.” I am referring to individuals, and I have never even met most of them nor heard anything about their strengths or their circumstances. And no, this is not me being evasive. To attempt to respond otherwise would be to bury one of my two main points about mentioning the line from The Serenity Prayer. My other point is that there are some things that particular individuals, for one reason or another or for very complex reasons, cannot do much about.
Larry
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:31 am
Are you saying, Larry, that you do not fault the general run of American liberals for what they have and have not done these recent years in the face of the dark force from the right that we have been facing? Are you saying, more specifically, that you don’t think there was anything that these individuals could and should have done more to fight that dark force, and that the reason is that it was reasonable for those individuals to conclude it has been a case of accepting what “I cannot change”?
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:38 am
Larry,
I was in fact speaking about the “office-holders.” It seems clear to me that there is much that, as individuals and as a group, the Dems in Congress, for example, can do to create change.
What so many people, including pundits, are finding astonishing is that the Dems are acting as if they are 1) the minority party and 2) powerless and needing “to accept the things they cannot change,” – when they damn well should be finding the courage to “change the things they can.”
The same applies to the democratic base.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:58 am
Re: laziness, as applied to Dems…
Paraphrasing Peck:
But some might say, “I cannot be lazy, all I do is work, work, work”. However, laziness takes forms other than mere number of hours dedicated to one’s responsibilities….
In the early stages of spiritual growth, individuals are mostly unaware of their own laziness. This is because the this part of the self cloaks its own laziness in treacherous disguises and employs all manner of rationalizations which the more healthy, growing parts of the self are too weak to see. Recognition of laziness for what it is and acknowledgment of it in oneself being the beginning of its curtailment.
For these reasons, those more advanced along the journey of spiritual growth are the very ones more aware of their own laziness. It is the least lazy who know themselves to be sluggish.
The fight against entropy never ends.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:04 pm
I am in no position to say what a large class of unknown individuals could have done, and I most certainly do NOT conclude anything at all about particular individuals as to whether or not any or all of their behavior that I might wish were otherwise is a case of their having accepted that they could not do anything about what I wish they would work to change, or, if such an acceptance does apply in a particular case, whether said acceptance was or was not wise given their particular strengths and circumstances. But sheesh, I never remotely suggested any conclusion about the basis of anyone’s behavior, and I am not about to go there in this immediate context. I simply pointed out a possible basis that might be considered at certain times with respect to certain individuals as a hypothetical alternative to the conclusion that in each and every case people’s lack of response to what I wish they were doing represents some form of evil! I certainly never anticipated this huge a discussion over it. lol
Larry
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:10 pm
I currently have a front row seat from which to observe and battle evil in the situation I am now facing.
I am witnessing evil shining through the following facets – which I believe are the basis of actions many of us would label as evil:
Monstrous selfishness (self-centeredness), grandiosity, and sense of entitlement
Intense inner anger and hostility
The desire that others suffer, and actions to create this result
A tight, essentially delusional system of rationalization justifying the above.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Hanu Man Ji, my post just previous was addressed to Dr. Schmookler, of course. Your post just prior to mine was not visible to me.
Hanu Man Ji said,
Well I certainly do try to suggest that to as many as I can, in a Quakerly (i.e. respectful) fashion, of course.
I even go so far as to try to find that courage myself!
Larry
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Hanu Man Ji said,
Perhaps I am having a somewhat similar experience. It’s particularly tough when it’s a family member. In the case I’m thinking of, which is bad enough for me, thanks, it is someone who was never part of my nuclear family, which makes it a bit easier for me than it is for some others who have been associated more closely and for a much longer period of time. I am trying to support everyone who is in the situation.
Larry
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Let me say, when it comes to dealing with such political divides within a family, I am not necessarily in favor of the confrontation. The enduring family relationship is a given, and warrants considerable weight. If there’s a genuine likelihood –gauged after some testing of the waters– that real damage could be done to such an important human connection, then that damage likely outweighs in importance what such “retail” speaking moral truth to the amoral lies might accomplish.
Not just family relationships: any of genuine importance.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:42 pm
… depending on what level of actual destruction the family member or other person of particular importance to you might be engaged in, I am sure you would say. Larry
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Yes, indeed, if Dick Cheney or Rush Limbaugh were a member of my family, I would speak the truth to them as best I could and let the chips fall where they may.
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:38 pm
The issue in my own specific case is doing whatever I can to stop the relentless momentum leading to actual, concrete human suffering.
However, the pivotal question is how this is to be accomplished. In this case I would say that two things are needed:
1) to not be naive re- how far the person inflicting the suffering is willing to go to keep their sickness “in charge or the game.”
and
2) to proceed by judo-like indirection when seeking to unseat a force emanating from both malice and duplicitousness.
***
I may have misunderstood you, Andy, re- your comment about Cheney, et. al.
Are you in fact saying that you would not do everything in your power to stop the destruction emanating from such a being – family or not? Many of the Nazi’s I’ve been told, were “good family men.”
If you are saying that “blood is thicker than water” – speaking for myself, I would find such a stance inconceivable.
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:41 pm
I see the stage on which we humans fulfill our roles as a place where abuse of power is played out in innumerable forms – including, but not limited to family contexts.
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:46 pm
I’m not sure what was ambiguous in my earlier statement:
But if that was not clear, for whatever reason, here it is in different words: I agree with Larry, if I understood him correctly, that if a family member is making a serious contribution to evil, working to stop THAT evil would outweigh my general desire, in family relationships, to avoid a rift.
I’d run the danger of a rift with a family member like Cheney or Limbaugh because the importance of that rift would be outweighed by the magnitude of the evil from which I might have SOME chance of drawing them away.
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:20 pm
I agree. Evil does not limit itself to this or that level. It is just as happy to play itself out in scenarios involving organizations, parenting or partnerships.
As I see it, the challenge is in perceiving all of humanity, and in fact the Biosphere as a whole as “family.” I’m referring here to the experience of that reality, rather than a nice sentiment.
Beyond this, a greater challenge exists: to allow oneself to see through the illusion of seperateness. That is, while doing everything in one’s power to do what is right or “righteous,” (in the sense of working to relieve suffering) while simultaneously experiencing the One God (if you will) that is playing Itself out through the many (in the Tao – “the 10,000 things”)
That is, to not lose one’s connection to selflless loveand compassion. To “condemn without condemning.”
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:03 pm
“But if that was not clear, for whatever reason, here it is in different words: I agree with Larry, if I understood him correctly, that if a family member is making a serious contribution to evil, working to stop THAT evil would outweigh my general desire, in family relationships, to avoid a rift.”
IIRC the Unamomber’s brother was the one who first recognized the person behind the manifesto the manifesto and contacted the FBI.
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Andy wrote:
“I agree with Larry, if I understood him correctly, that if a family member is making a serious contribution to evil, working to stop THAT evil would outweigh my general desire, in family relationships, to avoid a rift.
“I’d run the danger of a rift with a family member like Cheney or Limbaugh because the importance of that rift would be outweighed by the magnitude of the evil…”
I’ll add an obvious point: that magnitude can refer to the effect of one human being upon another, rather than the large scale execution of evil actions, affecting many.
March 4th, 2010 at 1:02 am
I want to get back to the questions around “Democratic cowardice,” but before doing so, I’d like to share a few thoughts additional thoughts re- “fighting evil” when one concludes that in fact this force is showing up in the context of “family members.”
Above, I said that, “Beyond this, a greater challenge exists: to allow oneself to see through the illusion of separateness,” and that this entailed maintaining one’s connection to selflless love and compassion. To “condemn and not condemn” simultaneously.
In dealing with evil the greatest challenge I’m aware of is two-fold:
Whatever one actually does…
Remaining dis-identified from considering myself the “do-er” of actions, and
Doing all that I deem necessary without being attached to the outcome of my actions.
Now that’s a challenge!
March 4th, 2010 at 1:22 am
From the Tao:
The follower of knowledge
learns as much as he can every day;
The follower of flow
forgets as much as he can every day.
By attrition he reaches a state of inaction
Wherein he does nothing, but nothing remains undone.
To conquer the world, accomplish nothing;
If you must accomplish something,
The world remains beyond conquest.
****
Looked at but cannot be seen – it is beneath form;
Listened to but cannot be heard – it is beneath sound;
Held but cannot be touched – it is beneath feeling;
These depthless things evade sensation,
And blend into a single mystery.
In its rising there is no light,
In its falling there is no darkness,
A continuous thread beyond distinction,
Lining what can not occur;
Its form formless,
Its image nothing,
Its name silence;
Follow it, it has no back,
Meet it, it has no face.
Attend the present to deal with the past;
Thus you grasp continuity,
The essence of flow.
****
Harmony is in accepting.
Flow is without form or quality,
But expresses all forms and qualities;
Flow is hidden and implicate,
But expresses all of nature;
Flow is unchanging,
But expresses all motion.
Beneath sensation and memory
Flow is the source of all the world.
How can I know the source of the world?
By accepting.
March 4th, 2010 at 1:46 am
A thought:
Evil arises out of Ego — the I, Me, and Mine: “self-will run riot.”
What happens when we do the work of self-transcendence——-allowing ourselves to slowly but surely, become more “Ego-less?”
Rather than feeding evil by opposing it with our own ego (even when our cause seems quite “righteous”) what skillful means might we discover if we seek to follow Gandhi’s lead on this?
Let it be said that “the Mahatma” was a man who emanated fierce determination and, while dedicated to non-violent resistence to evil, he was no milquetoast:
“I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of own free will put himself last among the fellow creatures, there [will be] no salvation…
“Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.”
March 4th, 2010 at 9:34 am
Hanu Man Ji said,
Yes!
Except I don’t regard taking that stance as selflessness at all. In fact I am not sure I believe in any such thing as selflessness in the end. I think you and I may have been part of that discussion once upon a time. But “condemning without condemning” makes me better off from a purely selfish standpoint. Not only do I feel better, but also that kind of respectful stance seems much more effective in influencing someone to change his or her mind and agree with me–something I enjoy when it happens! Also I may get treated better by other people, the ones who don’t just decide they’d rather not have anything to do with me any more. Perhaps that was what the Golden Rule was really about.
Anyway, with respect, I regard talking of the Golden Rule in terms of selflessness as hypocrisy, conscious or unconscious. For what it’s worth.
Larry
March 5th, 2010 at 12:54 am
Larry, thanks for sharing your thoughts. You wrote:
“Except I don’t regard taking that stance as selflessness at all. In fact I am not sure I believe in any such thing as selflessness in the end.”
*********
I have two initial responses:
1) I agree with you here. Until one has completely uprooted the ego there is always a selfish component underlying our activities. Folks who have advanced a ways down the Path…and who understand that the work of thinning the ego is “the only game in town” (in terms of relieving others’ and one’s own suffering) also realize that “Truth is God” and hypocrisy – a clever and determined enemy. Deception (of self or others) of course, is one of the ways that the ego keeps itself on its throne.
Thus, even a being as conscious, wise, and compassionate as M.K. Gandhi affirmed that all of the selfless work for which others lionized him was done for his own satisfaction and to move toward his own goals of spiritual and political liberation.
However, just as one can “condemn without condemning,” one can also acknowledge the reality/presence of the ego, while using daily life as grist for the mill of awakening…into selfless action. (See the material from the Tao Te Ching above).
***
2) My second response is that it would appear that as of yet you have not met, heard of, or spoken with a being who has genuinely vanquished the ego – finally and ultimately. Such a being has risen above “ego needs,” and may be thought of as a “species forerunner:” revealing the grand promise of the growth that is possible for us human beans.
From where I’m sitting there really is no substitute for actually encountering such a being. And, should one have the great good fortune to do so, the proof is found “in the puddin.”
March 5th, 2010 at 1:24 am
Larry wrote:
“But ‘condemning without condemning’ makes me better off from a purely selfish standpoint.
“Not only do I feel better, but also that kind of respectful stance seems much more effective in influencing someone to change his or her mind and agree with me–something I enjoy when it happens!
“Also I may get treated better by other people, the ones who don’t just decide they’d rather not have anything to do with me any more.”
***
Yes, Larry, all of that IS an ego-centric and probably narcissistic orientation….Which is to say it reflects a focus on “I, Me, and Mine” (George Harrison wrote a song with just that title!).
And no, no, no! We humans are not condemned to repeat these same dead-end attitudes and behaviors ad infinitem. The reality is that we can get off the rodent wheel – the vicious cycle of one set of egoic actions leading to another – at any time.
The only prerequiste is clarity about the suffering generated by the “illusion of separateness,” a desire to gain one’s freedom, and the faith that such an attainment is possible. The rest will follow naturally.
…….
Unfortunately, it seems that the extent of our own human ignorance (a part of which can be called stubbornness and complacency) creates a situation in which we don’t even begin to consider the possibility of liberation from the ego’s clutches until we hit a kind of bottom. That is, not until life hurts enough to break the shell of our “knowing” – of all that we think we know….
…When Life has pushed our backs to the wall and echos the famous words of Dr. Phil as he asks a participant:
“How’s that been workin’ out for ya?”
March 5th, 2010 at 1:53 am
Larry, you wrote:
“Anyway, with respect, I regard talking of the Golden Rule in terms of selflessness as hypocrisy, conscious or unconscious. For what it’s worth.”
*****
I’d say that if that grim picture accurately reflected the end-all and be-all of our human situation, there would be a very valid argument to be made for suicide. For, this view suggests that the human situation is truly hopeless. A great many of us do limit our vision of life and human potential to the boundaries established by this worldview. We remain confined inside the walls of a “mental box.”
This often happens when we have been hurt, disappointed and/or betrayed a number of times, such that we unconsciously assume that this cynical view of life is actually only realism.
Come to think of it – as a species we are in fact well on the way to suicide. Tolle articulates our situation well, stating:
“The predominance of mind [ego] is no more than a stage in the evolution of consciousness. We need to go on to the next stage now as a matter of urgency; otherwise, we will be destroyed by the mind, which has grown into a monster.”
So, I say: don’t sell yourself short.
My friend, you don’t have to settle for “consensus reality” (which has always reflected mass delusion) no matter how many people conform themselves to it.
There is more.
Pure selfless love is possible. You need only knock and the door truly will be opened!
March 5th, 2010 at 2:03 am
From the 15th century poet-saint Kabir:
O Kabir, there is a way out of this illusory world: Know the soul at any cost….
I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.
Man wanders about without purpose to Mathura or Kashi
Without the knowledge of the inner spirit,
Like a deer that runs listlessly from forest to forest
In search of the musk which lies within its own navel.
*******
But wait! There’s more:
*******
Kabir also sang this song:
Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think…and think…while you are alive.
What you call ‘salvation’ belongs to the time before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
Just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.
March 5th, 2010 at 10:49 am
Hanu Man Ji said,
I can almost see your argument that my view creates an argument for suicide. My difficulty is that I simply do not feel that way.
I think you have dismissed, ignored, or failed to consider fully the concept of enlightened self interest and the possibility of each of us increasing his or her own enlightenment and also influencing others to reach an understanding of what seems to be in their true interest. Sometimes that may even include choosing to go so far as to sacrifice one’s own life for someone else! See generally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_self-interest
I don’t particularly want to prolong this. I am not sure that your view is harmful except that I think most people see themselves as selfish except possibly with relation to their families. Therefore you may seem too different from “normal” for you to be able to provide any seriously useful guidance. Not meaning to criticize nuns, by my arguments for caring what happens to other people based on enlightened self-interest is difficult enough without adding a goal that seems normally considered to be reserved for special people like nuns, the goal of being “selfless.”
I just don’t think most people really pray for that. Yes, many good people do pray, “Lord, not my will but Thy will be done.” My hesitation to recognize all of them as being truly selfless is that many of them seem to think the Lord’s will is what they think it ought to be in various ways based on evidence that seems to me insufficient. Following this line of thinking has notoriously led sometimes to people saying “God is on my/our side” and against you others. It seems to me that you yourself may run some risk of coming over that way. What this or that leader says is the Lord’s will lacks evidentiary value as far as I am concerned. Everyone may have something of value to contribute in terms of helping me to develop a useful framework, and I have listened to many people including you. But no one is a final authority on how the universe works or the “intended” role of humankind in it.
I intend this as food for thought.
Larry
March 5th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
** “Therefore you may seem too different from ‘normal’ for you to be able to provide any seriously useful guidance.”
Larry,
— IMHO the last thing we need is to affirm each other in our delusions. At present we all are challenged to make a quantum leap of consciousness.
Yet, I also must agree: “normal” is something I’m not. Just never have aspired to this goal!
Why be normal??!
*******
** “I think most people see themselves as selfish except possibly with relation to their families.”
Ah there’s the rub! Humanity caught in the mor[e]-ass of an illusion – that the separate self exists in the first place. This is a form of mental illness we simply gotta grow beyond – or else!
In my view our species simply needs to mature, to go to the next level – or endure the consequences of not doing so.
*********************************
“The essence, the very foundation, of the teaching is that a different state of consciousness is possible for humans. The state of consciousness that is considered normal and that has been running human history for thousands of years is not the only possible state of consciousness. It’s also not the most advanced state possible for humans.
“It’s nothing new. All the great teachings and teachers have pointed to the fact, since the normal state of consciousness is a state that is extremely deficient, a state that in the ancient teachings has been called suffering.
“The Buddha called it suffering, Jesus called it a state of sin and illusion, and the Hindus call it a state of illusion.
“So, all ancient teachings agree that the normal human state of consciousness is, as I call it, a state of insanity.
“Anybody can verify this for themselves if they look at human history, 90 percent of which—really, if you look at it objectively—would be called the history of collective insanity, with the enormous amount of suffering inflicted by humans on other humans and on themselves and other species.”
- Tolle
March 5th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Larry wrote:
“I think you have dismissed, ignored, or failed to consider fully the concept of enlightened self interest and the possibility of each of us increasing his or her own enlightenment and also influencing others to reach an understanding of what seems to be in their true interest. Sometimes that may even include choosing to go so far as to sacrifice one’s own life for someone else!”
— Larry, enlightend self-interest is exactly what the Dalai Lama advocates. Until the ego is completely transcended (or seen through, made transparent), it is actually the utmost of which we are capable. However, such a stance can emanate from a deep awareness of the interconnectedness of all things and a desire to contribute to the whole.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
My way of dealing with the “selfish/selfless” dilemma is via the concept of service:
Since selfless service (as an ideal) can be a path to enlightenment: I work on myself in order to help others and do what I can to help others as a vehicle for working on myself. At its best, this process appears like a self-sharpening tool.
For most of us, transcendence of our identity as separate egos involves much patience, persistence, and one-pointed focus over the span of a lifetime.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
And what happens if the Democrats continue to show up as spineless hacks?…And why working on ourselves can be seen as an imperative.
*********
“Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race.
“The insanity of the collective egoic mind, amplified by science and technology, is rapidly taking our species to the brink of disaster. Evolve or die: that is our only choice now.
“You…perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm.”
- Tolle