I really wish Dick Cheney would slide into the bog of retirement and let the peat close over his head. The only way I can be tempted to want to hear what he says (repeatedly) to justify himself is if he is hauled before the War Crimes Commission at the Hague.
When I was growing up, torture was something that the bad guys—the enemy did. The good guys, the Allies were above that and it was a plot line in war movies that the hero would be mistakenly underestimated by the enemy because he was apparently “soft” until, of course, the hero won.
Admittedly, a lot of this was propaganda for the home folks to keep spirits and resolve high, and admittedly also the side that wins gets to control the history books, but I was raised on the idea of torture as uncivilized. Torture has probably always been part of us, but the British liked to portray themselves as obtaining information through shrewd intellectual gamesmanship.
When Sid Scott, the sole survivor of my father’s Halifax crash in 1944, was interrogated by the Nazis, they threatened to shoot him if he didn’t give them details about his squadron. He gave them only the required name and serial number and also told them, “We don’t shoot German POWs in England.” His interrogators looked at one another and backed off. Apparently, they accepted what he said to be true. Sid says now that even if they had tortured him they wouldn’t have got much since they knew more about his squadron than he did. Torture, it would seem, is not a substitute for a good spy network. If the Nazis could find out details about squadron leaders, aircraft, and leadership without torture, it seems there are other ways to get what is desired.
But that was WWII and maybe the ideal of the gentleman flyer was a carryover from WWI. Today, it might be argued, things are very different with the threat of nuclear weapons. Still, it’s a matter of involvement. When a dictatorship uses torture on political prisoners, the rest of the population can (or may want to) distance itself from the inhumanity of it. Everyone is, to some extent, a prisoner of the regime. Those who disappear from the streets are only the most visible symbols of general repression and injustice. When the regime changes, there is room for the population to reclaim self-respect by repudiating the past.
The extent to which we are willing to accept that argument, of course, forms the basis of war trials, but at least the population can claim to have some shred of decency left.
But even that excuse, weak as it is, is not the case when a population accepts the idea of torture and allows it to be codified into its legal system. At that point, the greatest victim of organized torture is the self-respect of the population that allows it because there is no where else to shift the blame. It has nothing to do with the evil of the person being tortured. It has everything to do with who the people are. Are they a people who torture? If they are, they align themselves with South American dictatorships, near Eastern demagogues, and genocidal African lunatics.
Perhaps I am just naïve. Perhaps torture has always been one form of political expression and perhaps even the British have done it. But I certainly don’t want to be part of a culture where torture is legally enshrined, if only because if it’s part of our judicial system, anyone of us might be subject to it.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Au Revoir Immortality
I hadn’t thought before about how much recovering from surgery resembles what Hospice likes to call the grieving process and death researchers call the steps to acceptance. There even appear to be the same stages although in different forms and emphasis: denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance (more or less) among them.
This correlation really shouldn’t be surprising now I think about it. Surgery, after all, usually entails loss. In many cases, it means parting company with some body part, even if in my case it was a torn and useless meniscus. The impact on the body is still enormous and there is certainly suffering of one kind or another. My sister, Wendy, told me she was on morphine for two months after she had knee replacement and I’ve been on Tylenol for the past three weeks for a supposedly kinder procedure.
Of the four stages, I empathize most with the denial part of the process since I went into the surgery with a large dose of it. I lapped up the surgeon’s telling me that the operation was routine and non-invasive, which I, of course, took to mean that I’d walk out of the hospital in some slight discomfort that I would nobly overcome and set a recovery record for this type of surgery in a woman my age. Ha.
I really should have known better as I sat in the surgeon’s waiting room where the closed-circuit television continuously played some video about animals—not your usual cutey-pie stuff but footage showing a wolf cutting out a baby caribou from its mother, chasing it down, and killing it, followed by a killer whale hunting down seals for dinner and eating them in the middle of waves died red from their blood. The images of rending flesh should have warned me to give up my daydreams.
But the anger part was a good second. I couldn’t get the surgeon’s office to return my phone calls asking them what I could do about my painfully cramping calf and thigh muscles that the pain meds weren’t touching. When I limped in at last with gritted teeth to get the stitches out, I learned that the office admitted to internal communications challenges and they hadn’t received my messages. If I hadn’t been so grateful to just be free, I might have said something unrepeatable. Instead, I just vented my feelings that evening to Sid, who patiently listened to me and reminded me I had survived and was on the road to recovery. I realize now that I needed to be angry about something at that point, if only to express the shock of having my body invaded and two weeks of pain.
The bargaining part of the process came afterwards—at the start of the three weeks of physical therapy I’m now embarked on. In comparison to the cramping, bending and stretching the knee is a breeze. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying to negotiate how fast the physical therapists expect me top do things like squat—my latest nightmare. The therapists, of course, will get me to do whatever I need to despite my bleats. The negotiation is merely letting me have the illusion of control over my life, which, I suspect, is what terminal patients are trying to regain.
Yes, I’m coming along. But the surgery has made an impression on me. I’m being forced to accept that maybe my body is that of a senior lady, even if she has been something of a jock in her day. I’m not going to parachute or bungee jump, nor am I going to ride roller-coasters or speed boats. I’m not going to try to advance my skiing skills beyond where I am and I’ll leave the steep stuff (where I first got injured) to Generation X; I heartily wish them luck in avoiding injuries. In fact, I am not going to be anything other than wary to avoid obvious threats to my body. Now I know I can get hurt.
I guess you could say I’ve been grieving the realities of what time does to even an active body. The usual creaks, aches, and limitations of age are mine now and I’m not going to avoid them. It’s really too bad because I don’t feel my age—or maybe just don’t want to. In fact, I guess what I’ve primarily accepted (finally, you might say), is that I am not immortal. Shucks.
This correlation really shouldn’t be surprising now I think about it. Surgery, after all, usually entails loss. In many cases, it means parting company with some body part, even if in my case it was a torn and useless meniscus. The impact on the body is still enormous and there is certainly suffering of one kind or another. My sister, Wendy, told me she was on morphine for two months after she had knee replacement and I’ve been on Tylenol for the past three weeks for a supposedly kinder procedure.
Of the four stages, I empathize most with the denial part of the process since I went into the surgery with a large dose of it. I lapped up the surgeon’s telling me that the operation was routine and non-invasive, which I, of course, took to mean that I’d walk out of the hospital in some slight discomfort that I would nobly overcome and set a recovery record for this type of surgery in a woman my age. Ha.
I really should have known better as I sat in the surgeon’s waiting room where the closed-circuit television continuously played some video about animals—not your usual cutey-pie stuff but footage showing a wolf cutting out a baby caribou from its mother, chasing it down, and killing it, followed by a killer whale hunting down seals for dinner and eating them in the middle of waves died red from their blood. The images of rending flesh should have warned me to give up my daydreams.
But the anger part was a good second. I couldn’t get the surgeon’s office to return my phone calls asking them what I could do about my painfully cramping calf and thigh muscles that the pain meds weren’t touching. When I limped in at last with gritted teeth to get the stitches out, I learned that the office admitted to internal communications challenges and they hadn’t received my messages. If I hadn’t been so grateful to just be free, I might have said something unrepeatable. Instead, I just vented my feelings that evening to Sid, who patiently listened to me and reminded me I had survived and was on the road to recovery. I realize now that I needed to be angry about something at that point, if only to express the shock of having my body invaded and two weeks of pain.
The bargaining part of the process came afterwards—at the start of the three weeks of physical therapy I’m now embarked on. In comparison to the cramping, bending and stretching the knee is a breeze. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying to negotiate how fast the physical therapists expect me top do things like squat—my latest nightmare. The therapists, of course, will get me to do whatever I need to despite my bleats. The negotiation is merely letting me have the illusion of control over my life, which, I suspect, is what terminal patients are trying to regain.
Yes, I’m coming along. But the surgery has made an impression on me. I’m being forced to accept that maybe my body is that of a senior lady, even if she has been something of a jock in her day. I’m not going to parachute or bungee jump, nor am I going to ride roller-coasters or speed boats. I’m not going to try to advance my skiing skills beyond where I am and I’ll leave the steep stuff (where I first got injured) to Generation X; I heartily wish them luck in avoiding injuries. In fact, I am not going to be anything other than wary to avoid obvious threats to my body. Now I know I can get hurt.
I guess you could say I’ve been grieving the realities of what time does to even an active body. The usual creaks, aches, and limitations of age are mine now and I’m not going to avoid them. It’s really too bad because I don’t feel my age—or maybe just don’t want to. In fact, I guess what I’ve primarily accepted (finally, you might say), is that I am not immortal. Shucks.
Friday, May 15, 2009
I Want the Same Care as My Cat
Last week I went to have my knee scoped. My joint was done in by an old cartilage tear from being on a ski slope I had no business being on and a much newer tear caused by riding a stationary bicycle. Not even a real bicycle for heaven’s sake. I must indeed be getting old.
Sky Ridge Surgical Center, where the surgery was done, was very good with attentive staff and a crisp proficiency—they see idiots like me on a regular basis and know how to deal kindly with us. My surgeon was communicative and said it was routine and went very well. I had more than adequate pain medicine. I was in bed for two days, had about three days of real misery when I used two crutches, three days of moderate with a single crutch, and the last two not bad on a cane. All as predicted, more or less.
So why, might you ask, am I so discontent? Simple answer: Because I am envious of the surgical patients down at Dr. Weldon’s Coal Creek Veterinary Hospital here in Aurora, Colorado, where I take my cat, Squeak.
Squeak has had her share of surgical misadventures, like the time she ate a small rabbit, furs, whiskers, and all. The only evidence left behind were two paws. She had to be cleaned out, which would have been enough except that she then ate a mouse on top of it and required surgery. It must have been some tropical madness that suddenly gave a well-fed middle-class cat the overwhelming desire for fresh meat, but whatever the reason she came home with a line of neat stitches and a collar to prevent her from removing them.
I found myself remembering her as I sat brooding about my own discomfort. In contrast with me, she seemed to have made a remarkable recovery and was down moping only a couple of days before sitting in the window making irritated faces at the nesting birds outside.
When I took her in today for her senior annual exam (she’s nearly 18) and her rabies shot, I asked Dr. Weldon what they do to help their patients after orthopedic surgery. “Oh,” she told me,” we massage the area, do acupuncture and chiropracty, and treat them with heat.”
I drooled with envy. Right now I could kill to have a massage on my aching calf and thigh muscles and on my back, which is cramping from the tilted way I am walking. My massage therapist is willing to do it but only with permission from the surgeon since I still have the stitches in place. The surgeon is busy doing surgery as he should be. His staff is too busy with other idiots like me to get back to me. So I am stuck.
In the old days, it was common to give massages in hospitals. It’s a lovely lost practice that was especially common in Europe which gives more credence to the idea of a therapeutic massage. I can’t think of a time when it would be more soothing or kind than just after surgery when every muscle in one’s body is traumatized. I am in love with the idea of a long, sweeping movement followed by a deep knuckle into the middle of my cramped, tight calf muscle. Ah luxury. I would be willing to pay whatever it takes for the comfort. But it’s just out of reach and I guess it will just have to wait.
Part of me admires the contextual brilliance and technical artistry of American medicine. We have dandy machines like MRIs and incredibly evolving techniques. I know my surgery was done perfectly and the result eventually will be wonderful. But the other part of me wants the comfort of something like a local shaman to provide hands-on psychological comfort and attention.
I wonder if Dr Weldon would be willing to include me among the cats, dogs, birds, and rabbits.
Sky Ridge Surgical Center, where the surgery was done, was very good with attentive staff and a crisp proficiency—they see idiots like me on a regular basis and know how to deal kindly with us. My surgeon was communicative and said it was routine and went very well. I had more than adequate pain medicine. I was in bed for two days, had about three days of real misery when I used two crutches, three days of moderate with a single crutch, and the last two not bad on a cane. All as predicted, more or less.
So why, might you ask, am I so discontent? Simple answer: Because I am envious of the surgical patients down at Dr. Weldon’s Coal Creek Veterinary Hospital here in Aurora, Colorado, where I take my cat, Squeak.
Squeak has had her share of surgical misadventures, like the time she ate a small rabbit, furs, whiskers, and all. The only evidence left behind were two paws. She had to be cleaned out, which would have been enough except that she then ate a mouse on top of it and required surgery. It must have been some tropical madness that suddenly gave a well-fed middle-class cat the overwhelming desire for fresh meat, but whatever the reason she came home with a line of neat stitches and a collar to prevent her from removing them.
I found myself remembering her as I sat brooding about my own discomfort. In contrast with me, she seemed to have made a remarkable recovery and was down moping only a couple of days before sitting in the window making irritated faces at the nesting birds outside.
When I took her in today for her senior annual exam (she’s nearly 18) and her rabies shot, I asked Dr. Weldon what they do to help their patients after orthopedic surgery. “Oh,” she told me,” we massage the area, do acupuncture and chiropracty, and treat them with heat.”
I drooled with envy. Right now I could kill to have a massage on my aching calf and thigh muscles and on my back, which is cramping from the tilted way I am walking. My massage therapist is willing to do it but only with permission from the surgeon since I still have the stitches in place. The surgeon is busy doing surgery as he should be. His staff is too busy with other idiots like me to get back to me. So I am stuck.
In the old days, it was common to give massages in hospitals. It’s a lovely lost practice that was especially common in Europe which gives more credence to the idea of a therapeutic massage. I can’t think of a time when it would be more soothing or kind than just after surgery when every muscle in one’s body is traumatized. I am in love with the idea of a long, sweeping movement followed by a deep knuckle into the middle of my cramped, tight calf muscle. Ah luxury. I would be willing to pay whatever it takes for the comfort. But it’s just out of reach and I guess it will just have to wait.
Part of me admires the contextual brilliance and technical artistry of American medicine. We have dandy machines like MRIs and incredibly evolving techniques. I know my surgery was done perfectly and the result eventually will be wonderful. But the other part of me wants the comfort of something like a local shaman to provide hands-on psychological comfort and attention.
I wonder if Dr Weldon would be willing to include me among the cats, dogs, birds, and rabbits.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Not Your Usual Mother's Day
Well, it’s that time—the day when, in my mother’s words, they trot the old girl out of the rest home, stick an orchid corsage on her, and turn her into mother of the year. It’s all around me. I’ve been getting gooey forwarded e-mails and the supermarkets are full of folk snapping up bouquets. I guess it’s nice that we can have a cathartic cry in our beer over the little, grey-haired old lady who sacrificed so much for us to get ahead, except for the selective memory going on. The gooey-est e-mail I read—the one saying that “mother” is another word for “angel”—came from a friend whose mother was a major narcissist and with whom she has an estranged relationship. I guess it is silly time in family relationships.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, families are fraught with the perils common to all human endeavors. Given the odds of a congenial bundle of joy landing on one’s doorstep, it’s a miracle if the personalities thrust under one roof get along. Some people just naturally seem to have the skills to raise children who love one another (to my mind, the primary parental responsibility other than keeping the kids from killing themselves) but also in my experience it’s more likely that people unthinkingly visit on their children all the misery with which they were raised and then expect special recognition for having done so. My former mother-in-law, as an example, expected sweet, flowery expressions of appreciation regardless of how unpleasant and demanding she had been through the years. And she was not above comparing cards from her offspring so she could judge who she thought loved and appreciated her more.
Don’t get me wrong—I am no mother hater. But I am a pragmatist. Since my mother died in 1985, hardly a year goes by without some major reevaluation on my part. Some of the things she did for me were kind and marvelous. Others were highly destructive. The contradiction between what she intended and what she accomplished was so extreme as to leave me completely confused.
It’s been the work of the last twenty years of my life to try to figure out who she was completely separate from her role in my life. Interesting question: if I had met and worked with her and not been her daughter, what would I have thought of her? If I answer honestly, the result would have been mixed.
On the one hand, as a colleague rather than a daughter, I could have admired her commitment to life and her optimism that somehow, no matter things appeared, there was something within her power she could do that would turn things around. For the most part, she succeeded. I could have respected her dedication to her nursing profession. Her patients and fellow staff respected her skills. She did a job well and took pride in it; she was loyal and no quitter. I could also have admired her strong sense of responsibility—she gave her best—and her slightly off-kilter but wonderful sense of humor.
At the same time, I am her daughter. I know even colleagues would (and did) find it difficult to deal with her emotional outbursts. Her feelings for someone could change dramatically in an instant and she looked on disagreement as betrayal, although an outsider might have been easier to know what was likely to upset her. Until I grew too old to be physically disciplined, I couldn’t always connect my punishment to whichever one of my numerous sins had got me in trouble (probably my tendency to answer back—but that’s another issue). If I hadn’t been her daughter and what she called “high-strung,” perhaps I might have understood more of the incredible pressures she was under, raising a child alone first in post-war Britain and then in Canada, a completely new country. But that would have been asking a great deal of a child, even one who accepted immense amounts of responsibility at a very young age.
It's taken me years to even get to the point where I can begin to sort out my feelings for this complex, forceful woman who blew through my life like a hurricane.
I suppose we are all mixed bags of successes and failures as parents. I hope one day that my son doesn't write something like this about me. All I can say is I tried my best, which I am sure she would say also. This is why I think there should be an asterisk and footnote to this whole idea of Mother’s Day. By all means, let’s celebrate the things that went well in our family dynamics. At the same time, though, I think the day should permit us to lay out both the strengths and the weaknesses of what we learned from our parents, meditate on our relations with our own children, and see if we can lessen the baggage we pass on from one generation to the next.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, families are fraught with the perils common to all human endeavors. Given the odds of a congenial bundle of joy landing on one’s doorstep, it’s a miracle if the personalities thrust under one roof get along. Some people just naturally seem to have the skills to raise children who love one another (to my mind, the primary parental responsibility other than keeping the kids from killing themselves) but also in my experience it’s more likely that people unthinkingly visit on their children all the misery with which they were raised and then expect special recognition for having done so. My former mother-in-law, as an example, expected sweet, flowery expressions of appreciation regardless of how unpleasant and demanding she had been through the years. And she was not above comparing cards from her offspring so she could judge who she thought loved and appreciated her more.
Don’t get me wrong—I am no mother hater. But I am a pragmatist. Since my mother died in 1985, hardly a year goes by without some major reevaluation on my part. Some of the things she did for me were kind and marvelous. Others were highly destructive. The contradiction between what she intended and what she accomplished was so extreme as to leave me completely confused.
It’s been the work of the last twenty years of my life to try to figure out who she was completely separate from her role in my life. Interesting question: if I had met and worked with her and not been her daughter, what would I have thought of her? If I answer honestly, the result would have been mixed.
On the one hand, as a colleague rather than a daughter, I could have admired her commitment to life and her optimism that somehow, no matter things appeared, there was something within her power she could do that would turn things around. For the most part, she succeeded. I could have respected her dedication to her nursing profession. Her patients and fellow staff respected her skills. She did a job well and took pride in it; she was loyal and no quitter. I could also have admired her strong sense of responsibility—she gave her best—and her slightly off-kilter but wonderful sense of humor.
At the same time, I am her daughter. I know even colleagues would (and did) find it difficult to deal with her emotional outbursts. Her feelings for someone could change dramatically in an instant and she looked on disagreement as betrayal, although an outsider might have been easier to know what was likely to upset her. Until I grew too old to be physically disciplined, I couldn’t always connect my punishment to whichever one of my numerous sins had got me in trouble (probably my tendency to answer back—but that’s another issue). If I hadn’t been her daughter and what she called “high-strung,” perhaps I might have understood more of the incredible pressures she was under, raising a child alone first in post-war Britain and then in Canada, a completely new country. But that would have been asking a great deal of a child, even one who accepted immense amounts of responsibility at a very young age.
It's taken me years to even get to the point where I can begin to sort out my feelings for this complex, forceful woman who blew through my life like a hurricane.
I suppose we are all mixed bags of successes and failures as parents. I hope one day that my son doesn't write something like this about me. All I can say is I tried my best, which I am sure she would say also. This is why I think there should be an asterisk and footnote to this whole idea of Mother’s Day. By all means, let’s celebrate the things that went well in our family dynamics. At the same time, though, I think the day should permit us to lay out both the strengths and the weaknesses of what we learned from our parents, meditate on our relations with our own children, and see if we can lessen the baggage we pass on from one generation to the next.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Of Moral Universes
One of the few sites I follow carefully is Judith Gayles “political waves” (http://polwaves.planetwaves.net/ ) She spends a great deal of time searching blogs and national newspapers daily looking for profound and interesting political articles, which she either reprints or links to. These are serious thought pieces with careful substantive comment. I recommend her wholeheartedly and if you haven’t checked out her site, please do. I hope one day she sets up a donation site as she spends so much time hunting and gathering for us.
One of her recent editions included an article reporting on the research of Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia who maintains that liberals and conservatives “inhabit different moral universes.” In order to demonstrate this, he identifies what he calls “five foundational moral impulses” that are hardwired into who we are as a species. His five are listed below with his explanation. (This gets increasingly interesting, so hang in there).
Harm/Care: Not harming others and relieving suffering.
Fairness/Reciprocity: People have rights that need to be protected.
In-Group Loyalty: Patriotism and loyalty are vital.
Authority/Respect: Social order should be a primary goal
Purity/Sanctity: Chastity and respect for life, lust and greed are bad.
Liberals, he maintains, prioritize the first two; conservatives the last three.
Most of us are probably some combination and if you’re not sure where you stand, you can go to Haidt’s site www.yourmorals.org and take some tests. That’s what I did, and I found that—just as I have always maintained, I’m somewhere in the middle, favoring conservative positions sometimes and liberal at other times.
Sure, I believe very strongly about harm/care. I’ve been grateful for public education, public-supported healthcare in Britain and Canada, and the willingness of the US to take in an immigrant and give her a chance that was denied to her elsewhere. But I’m no-raise-the-ladder thinker (the British call the phenomenon “I’m all right in my corner, Jack”). I’m glad to extend the opportunities to others in the hopes they will pay back as I have tried to do. I’m always intrigued by people who tell me they are “self-made,” when they have accepted public education, FEMA, air-traffic control, dispute mediation, fire services, protection from cheats and swindlers, and so on, and fully expect the government to “do something” in the face of natural disasters, economic downturn, and national pandemics.
I hate injustice and have walked on picket lines to protest various issues. Yet I have a problem with all the claims of rights. I think it has turned the US into a nation of lawyers where nobody knows where we stand until some court or another has clarified what ought to be common sense. Anybody can claim their rights have been violated and the consequences can be ruinous.
In-group loyalty and patriotism I will support to the extent that the loyalty is deserved. I’m not going to blindly support or excuse a crook just because he or she happens to be on my Super-Bowl political team. Like Hilary Clinton I initially supported Barry Goldwater until Kent State happened. People just walking across campus were shot. That could have been me. I learned then that authority—all authority—needed to be questioned. My friend Peter loves to label me a screaming liberal because I don’t agree with his extremely conservative positions. He doesn’t want to see the nuances in where I stand because (I suspect) his positions are based on what he finds comfortable.
Authority/Respect is important to me. I pay my taxes, and unlike others, don’t feel it’s “my:” money once it leaves my hands. I like having fire service and police protection. In these hard times, I’ve particularly enjoyed my local library. I wish that there had been more respect for authority and balancing of competing “rights” when it came to regulating the financial markets in their mad scramble for unregulated profit. If there’s a law for the common good, I really don’t like breaking it deliberately.
Puriity/sancitity I am not so hot on because in my experience “respect for life” in social issues turns people self-righteous and judgmental (sometimes even hypocrital as it’s almost impossible to live perfectly). I do not want anyone interfering in my family’s end-of-life decisions, for example. I had to decide whether to approve heroic measures for my dying mother. I had to decide to administer morphine to my dying husband, knowing that it was depressing his respiratory system and hastening death. I needed no “guidance” from others to do what I believed to be right and had anyone said something to me—no matter how well-intentioned—I would have heaved them out on the sidewalk. Yet I also support groups that protect society’s suffering and seek to protect farm and family animals from abuse.
Personally, I would argue for some compassion instead of the quick rush to judgment, along with pragmatic experiment as to what works. God save me from the theoreticians. I’m very fond of a section from Milton’s Areopagitica, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race . . . “ Lets judge things by how they work before rushing to condemn because it suits our particular prejudices. I guess it’s all a matter of balance and self-awareness. That’s what Haidt says. America needs to balance the founding virtues. I would also argue for some good manners instead of all the shrill screeching about who’s right or wrong and which side we are on. We are all on the side of the United States.
One of her recent editions included an article reporting on the research of Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia who maintains that liberals and conservatives “inhabit different moral universes.” In order to demonstrate this, he identifies what he calls “five foundational moral impulses” that are hardwired into who we are as a species. His five are listed below with his explanation. (This gets increasingly interesting, so hang in there).
Harm/Care: Not harming others and relieving suffering.
Fairness/Reciprocity: People have rights that need to be protected.
In-Group Loyalty: Patriotism and loyalty are vital.
Authority/Respect: Social order should be a primary goal
Purity/Sanctity: Chastity and respect for life, lust and greed are bad.
Liberals, he maintains, prioritize the first two; conservatives the last three.
Most of us are probably some combination and if you’re not sure where you stand, you can go to Haidt’s site www.yourmorals.org and take some tests. That’s what I did, and I found that—just as I have always maintained, I’m somewhere in the middle, favoring conservative positions sometimes and liberal at other times.
Sure, I believe very strongly about harm/care. I’ve been grateful for public education, public-supported healthcare in Britain and Canada, and the willingness of the US to take in an immigrant and give her a chance that was denied to her elsewhere. But I’m no-raise-the-ladder thinker (the British call the phenomenon “I’m all right in my corner, Jack”). I’m glad to extend the opportunities to others in the hopes they will pay back as I have tried to do. I’m always intrigued by people who tell me they are “self-made,” when they have accepted public education, FEMA, air-traffic control, dispute mediation, fire services, protection from cheats and swindlers, and so on, and fully expect the government to “do something” in the face of natural disasters, economic downturn, and national pandemics.
I hate injustice and have walked on picket lines to protest various issues. Yet I have a problem with all the claims of rights. I think it has turned the US into a nation of lawyers where nobody knows where we stand until some court or another has clarified what ought to be common sense. Anybody can claim their rights have been violated and the consequences can be ruinous.
In-group loyalty and patriotism I will support to the extent that the loyalty is deserved. I’m not going to blindly support or excuse a crook just because he or she happens to be on my Super-Bowl political team. Like Hilary Clinton I initially supported Barry Goldwater until Kent State happened. People just walking across campus were shot. That could have been me. I learned then that authority—all authority—needed to be questioned. My friend Peter loves to label me a screaming liberal because I don’t agree with his extremely conservative positions. He doesn’t want to see the nuances in where I stand because (I suspect) his positions are based on what he finds comfortable.
Authority/Respect is important to me. I pay my taxes, and unlike others, don’t feel it’s “my:” money once it leaves my hands. I like having fire service and police protection. In these hard times, I’ve particularly enjoyed my local library. I wish that there had been more respect for authority and balancing of competing “rights” when it came to regulating the financial markets in their mad scramble for unregulated profit. If there’s a law for the common good, I really don’t like breaking it deliberately.
Puriity/sancitity I am not so hot on because in my experience “respect for life” in social issues turns people self-righteous and judgmental (sometimes even hypocrital as it’s almost impossible to live perfectly). I do not want anyone interfering in my family’s end-of-life decisions, for example. I had to decide whether to approve heroic measures for my dying mother. I had to decide to administer morphine to my dying husband, knowing that it was depressing his respiratory system and hastening death. I needed no “guidance” from others to do what I believed to be right and had anyone said something to me—no matter how well-intentioned—I would have heaved them out on the sidewalk. Yet I also support groups that protect society’s suffering and seek to protect farm and family animals from abuse.
Personally, I would argue for some compassion instead of the quick rush to judgment, along with pragmatic experiment as to what works. God save me from the theoreticians. I’m very fond of a section from Milton’s Areopagitica, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race . . . “ Lets judge things by how they work before rushing to condemn because it suits our particular prejudices. I guess it’s all a matter of balance and self-awareness. That’s what Haidt says. America needs to balance the founding virtues. I would also argue for some good manners instead of all the shrill screeching about who’s right or wrong and which side we are on. We are all on the side of the United States.
Friday, May 1, 2009
The Lemming Pandemic
It’s amazing to me that many Americans have never seen a lemming given the regularity with which they behave like the little animal. Lest anyone not know, at certain times of the year, lemmings become affected by some strange compulsion to go over cliffs. If one lemming takes the dive, all the others follow. In human terms, it’s as Shakespeare’s Bardolph says: “In faith, I ran because I saw others run.” In lemming terms, it’s a lot of little carcasses heaped one upon another. In human terms, it is the latest panic—or should one say pandemic.
We all know that, for a variety of self-seeking reasons, the media adores creating a panic and then getting out in front to fan the flames. That’s what keeps readers/viewers/listeners coming back for more. The general pattern seems to be create some threat to personal lives, exaggerate the consequences, and then become the savior of humanity by holding the key to salvation. Of course, the media isn’t completely to blame. This system couldn’t work as well as it does if there weren’t people only to willing to succumb to the excitement. Some people are said to be in love with love. Well, there seem to be even more who are in love with panic.
Let’s be realistic. Every year influenza carries off 37,000 lives. This is plain, garden variety, unhyped flu. It picks off the young, the weak, and the elderly. So far, this year’s strain of flu has picked off a couple of hundred, the vast majority having a very unpleasant experience and then recovering. The only difference seems to be that young adults are affected. But is that enough for panic?
I caught the Asian Flu when it came round in the 1970s. That flu was hyped as the flu to end all flu’s. Sure it was nasty, but it never reached its hype. If I sound jaded, it’s becauseI’ve been there and done that. I’ll even go out on a limb and say this one won’t reach the exalted heights of pandemic either.
The fact is that pandemics just aren’t what they used to be. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote about a real one—the Black Death in Renaissance Florence. It began with a sneeze (which is why we say God Bless You when someone does) and rapidly led to skin boils and respiratory failure. No vaccines, no antibiotics, no respirators. If someone caught it, the doors and windows of their house were boarded up with everyone inside. Too bad if there wasn’t any food in the house. If they survived, they starved unless some brave family member smuggled them something to eat. Corpses were piled five or six high on carts and lugged off to mass burial pits. The only solution was to leave town and let the plague burn itself out. That’s what the characters in Bocaccio’s Decamerone have done.
Bocaccio described the different ways that the citizens of Florence responded to the very real threat of death. Some got drunk and lived hedonistically—they preferred to see death coming through the bottom of a bottle. Some tried to live moderately and avoid sick people as if virtue would protect them. Some intensified their prayers as if imperfect faith had visited the disease on the city. Others fled and potentially spread the plague to others. Self-preservation became the order of the day. Families abandoned members who showed signs of sickness, and medical help was non-existent if the fear of contagion, as was any use of law enforcement except to keep those infected locked away.
All we are asked to do is to keep ourselves indoors while yet another set of government contracts are issued to create a vaccine. And if we are sick, no one gets turned away from Emergency Rooms. The citizens of Renaissance Florence—who had real reason to be fearful--would undoubtedly consider us the wimps we are.
We all know that, for a variety of self-seeking reasons, the media adores creating a panic and then getting out in front to fan the flames. That’s what keeps readers/viewers/listeners coming back for more. The general pattern seems to be create some threat to personal lives, exaggerate the consequences, and then become the savior of humanity by holding the key to salvation. Of course, the media isn’t completely to blame. This system couldn’t work as well as it does if there weren’t people only to willing to succumb to the excitement. Some people are said to be in love with love. Well, there seem to be even more who are in love with panic.
Let’s be realistic. Every year influenza carries off 37,000 lives. This is plain, garden variety, unhyped flu. It picks off the young, the weak, and the elderly. So far, this year’s strain of flu has picked off a couple of hundred, the vast majority having a very unpleasant experience and then recovering. The only difference seems to be that young adults are affected. But is that enough for panic?
I caught the Asian Flu when it came round in the 1970s. That flu was hyped as the flu to end all flu’s. Sure it was nasty, but it never reached its hype. If I sound jaded, it’s becauseI’ve been there and done that. I’ll even go out on a limb and say this one won’t reach the exalted heights of pandemic either.
The fact is that pandemics just aren’t what they used to be. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote about a real one—the Black Death in Renaissance Florence. It began with a sneeze (which is why we say God Bless You when someone does) and rapidly led to skin boils and respiratory failure. No vaccines, no antibiotics, no respirators. If someone caught it, the doors and windows of their house were boarded up with everyone inside. Too bad if there wasn’t any food in the house. If they survived, they starved unless some brave family member smuggled them something to eat. Corpses were piled five or six high on carts and lugged off to mass burial pits. The only solution was to leave town and let the plague burn itself out. That’s what the characters in Bocaccio’s Decamerone have done.
Bocaccio described the different ways that the citizens of Florence responded to the very real threat of death. Some got drunk and lived hedonistically—they preferred to see death coming through the bottom of a bottle. Some tried to live moderately and avoid sick people as if virtue would protect them. Some intensified their prayers as if imperfect faith had visited the disease on the city. Others fled and potentially spread the plague to others. Self-preservation became the order of the day. Families abandoned members who showed signs of sickness, and medical help was non-existent if the fear of contagion, as was any use of law enforcement except to keep those infected locked away.
All we are asked to do is to keep ourselves indoors while yet another set of government contracts are issued to create a vaccine. And if we are sick, no one gets turned away from Emergency Rooms. The citizens of Renaissance Florence—who had real reason to be fearful--would undoubtedly consider us the wimps we are.
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