I was talking with my friend, Tyler, the other day about vampires and he suggested there are degrees of vampirism—the less vampirish lamenting the horrible way they are forced to stay alive, the more, of course, having no regrets whatsoever.
Our discussion was particularly relevant to me given the imminent sentencing of Bernie Madoff, whom I see as a vampire of a particularly 21st Century type. Vanity Fair recently published a lengthy article on Madoff and his sons, mainly focusing on how much his family (all of whom worked for his firm) knew about the swindle. It’s a good question because the answer will determine how many others join Madoff in jail. All, of course, plead innocence.
How much one is willing to believe (or disbelieve) strikes me as an interesting question in its own right that many people seem to cast in terms of a failure of values or ethics.
The values group blame the investors who, they say, were blinded by greed and didn’t ask how Madoff was making money. It’s tautological: if they’d been honest, they would have asked how Madoff was succeeding where others weren’t. That they didn’t ask provides one more example of how society is going to hell in a hand basket. Certainly, Madoff was a cheat and a criminal but, they would argue, there are always cheats and criminals in any society. Anyone morally righteous and honest would not have been cheated because they would have asked about fair and right profit and realized something was terribly wrong. No sympathy here: send Madoff to jail and stress individual responsibility and let the learning curve begin among the investors.
The ethics group, on the other hand, prefers to point to some moral flaw or sociopathy in Bernie Madoff’s genetic inheritance. How, otherwise, could he have cheated his friends and those who trusted him? They would argue his fraud must result from some character flaw (or worse) with the bilked investors merely innocent victims. The only protection from the sociopath, they would argue, is regulation so let government intervention begin and let the losses be mitigated.
On a cynical note, let me say that I am attracted by neither position. I find both somewhat hypocritical and more or less fluid depending on how much the government is willing to mitigate: the most dyed-in-the-wool values evangelist tends to stretch out a hand as far as the ethicist. To me the larger question is one of character.
There may be some who feel that my distinction between ethics and values is too precise and that talking about a general failure of character is merely a diversion. While I can respect that position, I have to believe there is a larger question here, one that underlies and perhaps emphasizes a good deal of what passes for public debate these days. Let me explain.
The other day, George Sweanor, whose blog is linked to this one, forwarded a wonderful letter from a comrade not in arms but in conflict. This man had been part of an enemy air force charged with bombing England at the same time that George had been charged with bombing Germany. They met after George returned from being a POW at the Great Escape Stalag. Between the two men, both separated and joined by a common war, there grew a lifelong friendship based on compassion, empathy, and a wisdom that grew beyond judgment and pettiness. That’s what I call character and I think we’re missing it today. How easy it would have been for them to carry forward all the jingoism and propaganda of the wars. Yet they did not. They recognized a common humanity that illuminated them and, in a way, set aside the horrors of the conflict in the hope of communication and understanding.
As I say, this finding of common ground is character, and it is missing in those who indulge in name calling and vitriol, particularly from the group I have come to call the valueists. These are people who use their so-called values as ways to distinguish between themselves and others and deride those who do not agree with them. I have found values, whether they be religious, cultural, or political, not generally compassionate despite original founding principles that might suggest otherwise. If I have to be honest, I am frightened by those who use their values as clubs to beat others who do not share them.
I guess, when it comes to vampires, I am uninterested in whether they have approved values or whether they justify their behavior by appeals to their own survival. I prefer vampires, if I must have them, to be willing to drive the stake through their own hearts.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Taking Back Death
A few days ago, I had to say goodbye to my little cat. She had been with me for 171/2years and her life spanned all the meaningful events of my recent life. She came up from Hawaii with us when we moved to Colorado. She was there when my grandson was born and there when I lost my husband of 37 years. She moved into a new house with me and was the one constant as I tried to rebuild my life.
I knew it was time to let her go when she started having seizures and I realized they could only continue and get worse. Despite knowing this, though, I grieved her loss intensely and found myself wondering what it was so hard for me to let her slip away.
After much reflection, I realize it wasn’t really to do with her. She’d had a wonderful, long life, much loved and cared for, and I knew that keeping her alive would have been merely selfish. My grieving was a tsunami of emotion, built in volume by every other loss in my life. Her death made me remember every one that had preceded it, some of which I understand now that I have never discussed, let alone dealt with.
For example, I found myself dealing not only with actual death but also figurative regret. With little Squeak, I mourned again the loss of my mother, husband, three dogs, and four cats but also more intangible things such as the father I never knew (killed in WWII), the mentally ill grandmother who was unreachable during my childhood, the brother who died the year before I was born, the end of my professional career, the onset of new physical challenges, and the realization that I can no longer promise myself that I still have time to achieve the things I wanted to as a young woman.
You might say that a lot of issues were triggered by the loss a little black-and-white girl of barely ten pounds. These were things I had congratulated myself as having laid to rest or else never had dealt with.
The opportunity to reflect and grow is probably the gift that death gives us It’s a time when those remaining alive can touch the membrane between life and death and perhaps see just a little further. It’s also a time, I believe, to look at one’s own beliefs about death itself.
I’ve never found much comfort in religious leaders who preach about resurrection and expect me to be joyful. In my experience, there is no substitute for dealing with grief. If it’s not now, then it will be later. I also don’t accept the idea that our animals are kept out of whatever heaven is being promised. Life is life. If I want to believe in the Rainbow Bridge where the animals wait for us, and if I agree with the Indian belief that it is the animals who will decide who crosses, then I will do so. I don’t know when it was that we handed death over to religion: it’s the only power they really have over us. They threaten and promise but in the end, everyone dies alone. I think it’s time to make death personal again and take it back from the constraints of religious dogma.
Meanwhile, I am going to believe that I heard my blue heeler, Kepa, settle for the last time in my office after we had to put her down. I heard the familiar chink of her tags on the wood floor and I smiled—she was home. I’m going to believe that my late husband was on the other side to greet our pets. I’m going to believe that I will see my husband and mother waiting for me as well, along with all the other animals I have loved and that my little Squeak will be sunning herself as she waits for me.
.
I knew it was time to let her go when she started having seizures and I realized they could only continue and get worse. Despite knowing this, though, I grieved her loss intensely and found myself wondering what it was so hard for me to let her slip away.
After much reflection, I realize it wasn’t really to do with her. She’d had a wonderful, long life, much loved and cared for, and I knew that keeping her alive would have been merely selfish. My grieving was a tsunami of emotion, built in volume by every other loss in my life. Her death made me remember every one that had preceded it, some of which I understand now that I have never discussed, let alone dealt with.
For example, I found myself dealing not only with actual death but also figurative regret. With little Squeak, I mourned again the loss of my mother, husband, three dogs, and four cats but also more intangible things such as the father I never knew (killed in WWII), the mentally ill grandmother who was unreachable during my childhood, the brother who died the year before I was born, the end of my professional career, the onset of new physical challenges, and the realization that I can no longer promise myself that I still have time to achieve the things I wanted to as a young woman.
You might say that a lot of issues were triggered by the loss a little black-and-white girl of barely ten pounds. These were things I had congratulated myself as having laid to rest or else never had dealt with.
The opportunity to reflect and grow is probably the gift that death gives us It’s a time when those remaining alive can touch the membrane between life and death and perhaps see just a little further. It’s also a time, I believe, to look at one’s own beliefs about death itself.
I’ve never found much comfort in religious leaders who preach about resurrection and expect me to be joyful. In my experience, there is no substitute for dealing with grief. If it’s not now, then it will be later. I also don’t accept the idea that our animals are kept out of whatever heaven is being promised. Life is life. If I want to believe in the Rainbow Bridge where the animals wait for us, and if I agree with the Indian belief that it is the animals who will decide who crosses, then I will do so. I don’t know when it was that we handed death over to religion: it’s the only power they really have over us. They threaten and promise but in the end, everyone dies alone. I think it’s time to make death personal again and take it back from the constraints of religious dogma.
Meanwhile, I am going to believe that I heard my blue heeler, Kepa, settle for the last time in my office after we had to put her down. I heard the familiar chink of her tags on the wood floor and I smiled—she was home. I’m going to believe that my late husband was on the other side to greet our pets. I’m going to believe that I will see my husband and mother waiting for me as well, along with all the other animals I have loved and that my little Squeak will be sunning herself as she waits for me.
.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Go, Girl
Golly. Gee. Sonia Sotomajor said that a Hispanic woman might have better insight into issues regarding women and family than “objective” white men. To hear the outrage (in the US largely coming from old, privileged, white males on the right who hate parting with the least shred of control) is to assume that all the decisions made by “objective” men regarding women and children must always be the height of wisdom and fabled objectivity.
Let’s take a look at that.
My grandfather wouldn’t educate my mother because it would be a gift to another man. Golly. Gee. My mother was property that he didn’t want to improve and give free to someone other man. Never mind her talents or even her eventual children (me), it was all about goods and property. Same time period: children belonged to the man and he could remove them from the mother with no explanation or recourse on her part. Wife beating was merely someone exerting his husbandly rights. Golly. Gee. If you look on women and children as belongings I guess such decisions seem very “objective.”
Then there’s the lovely practice of genital mutilation—very “objective” indeed if you don’t want another man trespassing on your private preserve. Take away her pleasure and she may not stray. Or covering a women head to toe so she doesn’t attract attention—makes lots of sense if your woman belongs to you and you don’t want to risk someone stealing your exclusive reproductive rights. Whipping and stoning is a very nice touch—let’s keep those women in line and their legs tightly closed. After all, it's in the Bible, isn’t it?
And what about the genial practice of binding feet among the aristocratic classes in China. If a woman couldn’t walk she proved the man’s wealth since he didn’t need her economic contribution. Golly. Gee. Cripple the woman as a demonstration of wealth. How “objective.”
The thing I most dislike about the paternal tradition is not only its paternalistic assumption of knowing what is best for a women but also its dual emphasis on competition and display. Historically, men compete with other men by hiding their women, amassing large numbers of them and thereby denying them to others, raping to show power and superiority, refusing them education and then sneering at their lack of it.
This admittedly one-sided analysis is only exaggerated to a certain extent. And I certainly do not excuse those women who profit from becoming decorative and expensive trophies. I guess there will always be experts at making lemonade from other people's lemons. But claiming that men have the innate ability to be “objective” without input from those who actually bear children does not strike me as a sensible, let alone wise, attitude for either of the sexes yo accept, let alone promulgate.
In this country, the times have long changed from when women were chattel (won in poker games, anyone?)although even their getting the vote was a study in prejudice against female intelligence and stability. In other parts of the world children of eight can still be married to much older men and then not divorced unless a male relative makes the complain in court. It must be wonderfully ego-building to feel superior to a whole class of people without having to do anything to earn it except being born.
I say hail to a woman not afraid to take on the smug, paternalistic demagoguery of the males on the right. This is one qualified lady who knows her legal stuff and knows reality. It may be clichéd, but I repeat what I was told as I systematically outperformed all the men in my graduate programs—“You go, Girl.”
Let’s take a look at that.
My grandfather wouldn’t educate my mother because it would be a gift to another man. Golly. Gee. My mother was property that he didn’t want to improve and give free to someone other man. Never mind her talents or even her eventual children (me), it was all about goods and property. Same time period: children belonged to the man and he could remove them from the mother with no explanation or recourse on her part. Wife beating was merely someone exerting his husbandly rights. Golly. Gee. If you look on women and children as belongings I guess such decisions seem very “objective.”
Then there’s the lovely practice of genital mutilation—very “objective” indeed if you don’t want another man trespassing on your private preserve. Take away her pleasure and she may not stray. Or covering a women head to toe so she doesn’t attract attention—makes lots of sense if your woman belongs to you and you don’t want to risk someone stealing your exclusive reproductive rights. Whipping and stoning is a very nice touch—let’s keep those women in line and their legs tightly closed. After all, it's in the Bible, isn’t it?
And what about the genial practice of binding feet among the aristocratic classes in China. If a woman couldn’t walk she proved the man’s wealth since he didn’t need her economic contribution. Golly. Gee. Cripple the woman as a demonstration of wealth. How “objective.”
The thing I most dislike about the paternal tradition is not only its paternalistic assumption of knowing what is best for a women but also its dual emphasis on competition and display. Historically, men compete with other men by hiding their women, amassing large numbers of them and thereby denying them to others, raping to show power and superiority, refusing them education and then sneering at their lack of it.
This admittedly one-sided analysis is only exaggerated to a certain extent. And I certainly do not excuse those women who profit from becoming decorative and expensive trophies. I guess there will always be experts at making lemonade from other people's lemons. But claiming that men have the innate ability to be “objective” without input from those who actually bear children does not strike me as a sensible, let alone wise, attitude for either of the sexes yo accept, let alone promulgate.
In this country, the times have long changed from when women were chattel (won in poker games, anyone?)although even their getting the vote was a study in prejudice against female intelligence and stability. In other parts of the world children of eight can still be married to much older men and then not divorced unless a male relative makes the complain in court. It must be wonderfully ego-building to feel superior to a whole class of people without having to do anything to earn it except being born.
I say hail to a woman not afraid to take on the smug, paternalistic demagoguery of the males on the right. This is one qualified lady who knows her legal stuff and knows reality. It may be clichéd, but I repeat what I was told as I systematically outperformed all the men in my graduate programs—“You go, Girl.”
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