Give Me a Break, Gail—Spare Me the Trivial

One of the reasons I call this blog Op-ed Madison is that I am fan of the op-ed page of The New York Times. They have a new regular contributor, Gail Collins, apparently a Maureen Dowd wannabe, which is OK, but sometimes writers like this are too cute for our own good. Her recent column, “Change on the Cheap” (July 26, 2007), assails John and Elizabeth Edwards for being willing to give up tangerines because of the amount of energy it takes to get them to market. This type of article is exactly what trivializes politics and gets us distracted from looking at the fundamental issues that would motivate such comments by a candidate in the first place.

John Edwards is a serious candidate with a passion for issues like global warming, health care, poverty, and this God-awful war in Iraq. Dealing with global warming is going to require sacrifice and change in how we live in this country. We are going to have to work much harder on conservation, probably pay more for the energy we do consume (or the same as we are paying now while using less because we are conserving). There’s nothing wrong with stating that, but there is something wrong with trivializing this by focusing on a statement about giving up tangerines as if that were the heart of the matter.

Any candidate for national office is a target, but let’s make sure that our criticisms are either based on honest disagreements with the candidates or that they are truly out to lunch in their positions. Anyone who reads what I have to say in this column will soon ascertain that I am a liberal (and proud to say so) and that I find Republican candidates and their pandering to the folks whose issues center around God, guns, and gays despicable. On occasion, I will also disagree with liberal candidates, but it won't be because of some offhand remark that I can somehow stretch into one of these posts. Entertaining columns are great but not at the expense of getting in the way of serious consideration of the problems we have in this country and potential solutions being offered by our candidates. At least that’s the way I see it.

—John Woods, July 31, 2007

It Doesn’t Make Sense

I've been thinking about how Republicans in the Senate (including Joe Lieberman, who I have concluded is not the Independent Senator from Connecticut, but the Likud Senator from Israel), will not allow a vote on resolutions to withdraw American armed forces from Iraq, and they believe it’s the right thing to do.

Imagine, if you will, a war in which way more than half of the American public believes we were wrong to start and wrong to continue. How can Republican representatives continue to vote as if the opinions of their constituents don't matter?

My sense is that if a country goes to war, it’s because there is a real reason to do so (we are under threat and we have exhausted every other means to solve the problem), and everyone in the country gets behind it. Everyone contributes to the success of the enterprise because they know it’s in their and their country’s best interest. The fact is no one, no one has shown me why the U.S. should be in Iraq. It is clearly not something that is our best interest and in fact is making us more vulnerable to Islamic crazies, destroying the value of the U.S. dollar, and diverting resources from greatly needed constructive uses into waste and destruction. Where is the intelligence in this? How does this protect Americans?

The absurdity of being in this prolonged and fruitless debacle that was a war and is now an occupation and policing of Iraq is profound. Why do Republican Senators continue to believe it can possibly be good and appropriate for the U.S. to be engaged in this mess? I think if I was one of these people, I would be asking myself the hard question about why people don't support this war. Why don't they see it being good for the U.S. to do this?And if I couldn't come up with a good answer to that question, I would vote and campaign for us to get out of there as quickly as we can and never allow this to happen again.

—John Woods, July 18, 2007

The Sad Story of Edward and Florence

One of the best writers of our time is Ian McEwan, who has written books like Atonement, Saturday, and his latest, On Chesil Beach, which I just finished listening to (remember, I like recorded books). The reason McEwan is so good is that he has great insight into the nuances of human nature that motivate our behavior. Through his use of language, he captures, in a manner of speaking, the “what if” thinking that we all engage in, almost unconsciously that leads us to do one thing or another. That a writer can so richly delve into the emotional/rational inner world of his characters is almost awe inspiring and provides us with more than a little insight into our own inner lives.

In On Chesil Beach, his two main characters are a just-married couple, both virgins, approaching their wedding night. The action takes place in 1962. Edward, 22, is the more conventional of the two, a man who looks forward to what the blurb on the book calls the promised rapture of the honeymoon, while Florence, 23, his new wife, is completely dismayed by this prospect. All during their courtship, Florence loves the companionship of Edward, a budding historian who is an afficianado of rock and roll. Florence, though, is a far more sensitive person and the founder of a string quartet. Every time Edward tries to take a step in the physical expression of their affection, Florence resists and withdraws in one way or another.

Still, Edward remains hopeful and attentive to Florence despite the fact that she barely gives him any reason beyond the platonic to feel this way. As they finish their meal at the Chesil Beach hotel where they are staying, he is getting more and more excited about what awaits him when they go to their room, while she, on the other hand, is resigned to but also dreading what's to come. The story, which is only about 4 hours long on tape, plays out from here. It's fair to say that, as often happens in human experience, things don't end up as we might wish or they might wish. Their emotions come destructively pouring out, and because they've have both repressed their feelings during the courtship, they just have no way to resolve their differences.

In a manner of speaking I think we can call this a novel of “wishful thinking,” where these two young people projected onto each other what each hoped the other would be like. And when neither, for whatever personal reasons, is able to live up to these expectations, the relationship, literally, dies, and they end up leading uneventful, and perhaps, especially for Edward, unfulfilled, lives.

McEwan has written a sad story but one so well crafted and so true to human weakness that it is a pleasure to read or listen to. In the end, it becomes a memorable lesson in the folly that too often characterizes human interaction, behavior that ultimately results in the sacrifice of happiness at the altar of emotional and intellectual dishonesty—when it doesn't have to be that way.

—John Woods, July 16, 2007

Schadenfreude: Not Always a Bad Thing

One of the reasons I like the NY Times is that I come across words that I didn’t know before. One such word is schadenfreude, a noun, I believe, clearly German, meaning taking pleasure from the misfortune of others. The first time I saw the word was in a column by Maureen Dowd. So I looked it up. After that, I didn’t see it for a while and then it appeared again, and I looked it up again. This inspired me to write these few paragraphs. I think I will now remember this word and its meaning.

Schadenfreude is, in most circumstances, a pretty unattractive part of our human nature. After all, it suggests that we are building ourselves up at the expense of someone else. It’s not “there but for the grace of God …,” but rather “I’m kind of happy you are having problems.” Such an attitude is counter to my overall philosophy of life, which I can quickly summarize as “we’re all in this together” (see entry on altruism). This means that we should take joy in the success of others and empathize when others have problems.

Still, there are jerks in the world, people who really do stupid things, reaping misfortune after misfortune, all self-induced. This may be a good thing as we can hope that at some point these folks will wake up and appreciate that the bad things that are happening to them come from a pretty deep misunderstanding of how their behavior negatively affects others and themselves. Schadenfreude may infuse us when this happens, even while what these people are doing potentially hurts us at the same time.

All of which brings me to George Bush and the morass his “administration” has fallen into. With each piece of Bush bad news, I actually experience schadenfreude and don’t feel bad about it at all. I am glad he has fallen into bad times.

After the fact, it’s easy to see that what has happened to Bush, given his actions, was completely predictable. All his problems are indeed self-induced, and I am glad this has happened. I want it to continue. We can hope this will bring, in 2008 if not before, the long needed change in the direction our nation has taken, and we can put this sad sorry episode in our history behind us.

If you too feel schadenfreude about what's happening to Bush and his cohorts as they reap what they have sown, that’s OK. I think of it as an affirmation that there is a more intelligent, less ideologically bound, more fact-based way to decide and act in our political life. And the sooner we wake up to that, the better.

—John Woods, July 9, 2007

The Intelligence of Altruism

Here's one of those philosophical posts I warned you about.

I want to talk about altruism. First of all, let's look at the premise that most people think about when considering altruistic behavior: that is that we are each separate entities and we are each responsible for our personal welfare. Altruistic people from this perspective are willing to sacrifice their personal welfare for that of others.

I am positive that this is not a valid premise. I am going to suggest an alternative premise that is based on a more realistic understanding of nature, including the human form of nature.

Let's start by asking the question of how self-awareness evolved and why. My response would be that the more of the world we can know about, the more successful we can be negotiating within and
adapting to that world. So eventually, we see beings evolve who are aware that the universe is their environment, with the understanding that this takes in themselves, not as something separate from the environment, but as another aspect of the environment they can know about.

This means, therefore, that to look out for ourselves, means looking out for that of which we are inextricably a part. The point is that if we don't look out for the larger world, including others, we don't look out for individual selves—because we’re part of that world.

If you ask yourself who you are as a person, every answer you come up with will denote some kind of relationship to the world in which we exist. I am a father, grandfather, son, brother, book developer, student, letter writer, homeowner—it doesn't matter what descriptor I choose. All of my answers or all your answers will imply relationships. The self, then, is really the sum of our relationships to the world.

To look out for the self means to look out for that to which we are related. To the degree we do that, we succeed. To the degree we don't, we hurt ourselves. In other words, enlightened self-awareness has consequences—we avoid behaviors that are self-destructive, physically, psychologically, economically, socially, politically, and any other way you want to describe it. Unfortunately, all too few people recognize this.

Exploitation from this perspective doesn't make sense. Hurting others from this perspective is self-destructive behavior. I often state that I am not my brother's keeper, I am my own keeper, but this means I am my brother's keeper as well.

I have a small business. My whole philosophy for that business is that my job is to facilitate the success of others, to help them do what they want to do. This is not an altruistic philosophy. I am successful to the degree I help others succeed. If you look at the basic premise of the success of any business, it is to create a mutually beneficial relationship between itself and those that it serves. When businesses don't do this, they disappear.

I like to say that profit from this view is a measure of the quality of our service to others. Profit provides the resources that allow businesses to continue to be able to serve their customers and the larger society. When businesses don't take this perspective, they hurt themselves. Short-term profit that comes from exploitation is hurtful because it undermines the long-term success of the exploiter as well as those who were taken advantage of. (With that said, there are certain human enterprises that should not be subject to simply dollars and cents. It’s clear to me that healthcare is one of those enterprises.)

Altruism is a word that suggests selflessness. It's also an idea based on a dualistic understanding of the world—me versus you—and sometimes I'm willing to “sacrifice” my welfare for yours. However, as stated above, this is a false premise. When we look out for others, we look out for ourselves because we are all in this together. Altruism seen this way is just intelligent behavior.

In a fairly abstract sense, we might suggest that all human behavior is aimed at survival. But if we examine what people do, it's never their personal survival that’s at stake, but their personal sense of the order of their world. In other words, we act so as to preserve our world as we know it to be. When world views of different people or societies clash, we have conflict, but here’s the point. We can know this, and we can transcend these differences and act in ways that are to our mutual benefit. Do we do this? Not often enough, unfortunately.

Three final thoughts:

1. Think about how we feel when we help others in one way or another. It always makes us feel good about ourselves. Now think about when we hurt or take advantage of someone else. It always makes us feel anxious about what we did. This is our bodies telling us what behaviors make the most sense for our personal survival. These feelings are not an accident.

2. When we look at conflict, especially war, one way of understanding it is that this is nature's way of deselecting from the gene pool those who don't understand that everything is interconnected, and survival depends on our accommodating one another. It’s sad that many innocent people die in war, but maybe one day we’ll wake up and discover the sheer insanity of such conflict.

3. Finally, with regard to the Golden Rule—a concept related to altruism—my take is this: it's something we cannot not follow. By definition we do unto others as we have them do unto us—for good or ill.

—John Woods, July 2, 2007