It was an interesting week in a comment thread I joined. An article described a priest in New Mexico going before a judge to be sentenced to six months in jail for peacefully standing up against the war. The initial posts to the thread were from people happy that someone had the courage to stand up to the government. But soon it started devolving into criticism of the Catholic Church, and dissing the priest for being a part of a corrupt religious tradition.
I jumped in to defend the goodness of one man and got several hot answers in reply. Though I'd encouraged people in my post to allow one man to be good even if the organization he represented was corrupt they weren't able to do so. Alongside the strong and immediate responses against my plea I noticed the absence of anybody supporting me.
So I tried a different tactic. One of the responders was good enough to write that I was defending my church, so I had the opportunity to write that I had never been part of the Catholic Church and had stepped away from religion altogether, though I still seek spiritual instruction. The responder wrote back, this time much more genial, and described what his or her stance on religious beliefs was (the name could be a man or a woman...it's Pat!, or something like that). An apology was offered for the mistaken assumption and we came to agreement.
What happened was that once we started talking about who and what we are, we found that there is not enough difference to call ourselves enemies. That fostered a space for us to talk in cooperative discussion, not competitive debate. This has been the recommendation to eliminate discrimination in all forms. And by golly, it worked.
This leads to a question that has defied answer for me and countless others: how can we get the masses to understand and use things like this? Thousands of people have put in countless years trying to do it. On the surface, it's just not that difficult. But there are underlying social dynamics that work against it -- the continual push of marketing to define ourselves as individuals apart from others (with the laughably strange result that we all use the same products, look the same, talk the same, and so on), the constant political and religious messages to distance ourselves from those Not Like Us and to think badly of Them, the devaluation of critical thought and resulting shallowness of thinking that makes it a threat for people to look inside themselves -- and make our task difficult.
I don't know if we'll ever get there. But I've got to say, having small connections here and there despite the opposing social dynamics puts some really cool moments into life.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Statement
In thinking about issues, when I arrive at nuclear weapons everything else stops. It is the one thing that could end the possibility of working through anything else. It is the most dire, the scariest thing, that we have ever come up with. It is the most important bit of material for us to learn the lesson of laying aside that which is wrong. The ability to annihilate can never be comparable to strength of spirit and character. It is essential that we master this as soon as possible: the potential to end all life on the planet is with us at every moment, even accidentally.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Extraordinary People: Gene Allen, Sr.
Since the first writing about an extraordinary person recently I have been flooded with ideas of others who deserve recognition. One I have thought about time and again, and there is so much to write -- and so much I never knew about him -- that it seems folly to try capturing him in a few short paragraphs. Yet he is compelling and I want to try.
Gene Allen, Sr. was my grandfather. He was born three years after the Wright brothers made the first powered flight. At the age of nineteen, less than twenty-five years after that first flight, Grandpa taught himself the principles of aerodynamics, designed an airplane, and built it using a motorcycle engine in his parents' basement. They had to be exceptionally understanding; the wall had to be knocked out to get the plane out of the basement. A good illustration of how genius can be focused on one area and blind to others near, no? The airplane was first flown from a grass field that later became Kansas City's downtown airport. He later designed and built another, this one a low-wing monoplane in an era of biplanes.
Grandpa spent his working life as an engineer. He only had a high school education. Through intense curiosity, observation, experimentation, and motivation he designed the first self-propelled Gleaner combine, bringing the company out of the horse-drawn era. An exact scale replica of that combine, carefully made from tin cans, still survives in a family member's home.
One of Grandpa's nicknames was Genius. I don't know how he would have scored on an IQ test, but there are two qualities that put him into the exceptional category: practicality and creativity. It probably was a factor that he was around during the Great Depression, but he had that quality of not wasting things, not disposing of things when tired of them or they were just a little worn. In fact, if it were possible he would avoid buying something if he could make it himself. Photography was one of his passions, and rather than buy darkroom equipment he made it all himself. That equipment still works and is in my sister's home. He made tools, picture frames, sailboats, house modifications...just about anything he really wanted or needed.
Grandpa was more self-sufficient than many. He taught himself to draw (a color plate of butterfly drawings is framed in my mother's living room). He modified car accessory designs. He taught himself to cut gemstones. He loved camping in the mountains, and set in motion the family habit that is now in its fourth generation. Thinking about it, the word can't must have been a bit foreign to him. This, too, has been passed to successive generations.
Grandpa was kind, moral, and unpretentiously religious. He was Scoutmaster when his sons were in Boy Scouts. He delighted in his family. He was never harsh, and instead was quite patient. He grieved for his wife's sudden death in a car wreck before age 50, and went on with his life.
It's impossible to gauge the ripples of influence Grandpa sent out into the world. There may be only a handful of people alive who know what he did for farmers gathering their crops. The qualities he mastered and lived have been impressed into his family, and doubtless to all the families he was involved with in daily life, and the qualities have been passed on and on without his name attached. Yet but for him things may have been very different for many people. A regular George Bailey.
Grandpa died in 1980. We would probably miss him more, but since we are what he passed on there's a smile involved, too.
Gene Allen, Sr. was my grandfather. He was born three years after the Wright brothers made the first powered flight. At the age of nineteen, less than twenty-five years after that first flight, Grandpa taught himself the principles of aerodynamics, designed an airplane, and built it using a motorcycle engine in his parents' basement. They had to be exceptionally understanding; the wall had to be knocked out to get the plane out of the basement. A good illustration of how genius can be focused on one area and blind to others near, no? The airplane was first flown from a grass field that later became Kansas City's downtown airport. He later designed and built another, this one a low-wing monoplane in an era of biplanes.
Grandpa spent his working life as an engineer. He only had a high school education. Through intense curiosity, observation, experimentation, and motivation he designed the first self-propelled Gleaner combine, bringing the company out of the horse-drawn era. An exact scale replica of that combine, carefully made from tin cans, still survives in a family member's home.
One of Grandpa's nicknames was Genius. I don't know how he would have scored on an IQ test, but there are two qualities that put him into the exceptional category: practicality and creativity. It probably was a factor that he was around during the Great Depression, but he had that quality of not wasting things, not disposing of things when tired of them or they were just a little worn. In fact, if it were possible he would avoid buying something if he could make it himself. Photography was one of his passions, and rather than buy darkroom equipment he made it all himself. That equipment still works and is in my sister's home. He made tools, picture frames, sailboats, house modifications...just about anything he really wanted or needed.
Grandpa was more self-sufficient than many. He taught himself to draw (a color plate of butterfly drawings is framed in my mother's living room). He modified car accessory designs. He taught himself to cut gemstones. He loved camping in the mountains, and set in motion the family habit that is now in its fourth generation. Thinking about it, the word can't must have been a bit foreign to him. This, too, has been passed to successive generations.
Grandpa was kind, moral, and unpretentiously religious. He was Scoutmaster when his sons were in Boy Scouts. He delighted in his family. He was never harsh, and instead was quite patient. He grieved for his wife's sudden death in a car wreck before age 50, and went on with his life.
It's impossible to gauge the ripples of influence Grandpa sent out into the world. There may be only a handful of people alive who know what he did for farmers gathering their crops. The qualities he mastered and lived have been impressed into his family, and doubtless to all the families he was involved with in daily life, and the qualities have been passed on and on without his name attached. Yet but for him things may have been very different for many people. A regular George Bailey.
Grandpa died in 1980. We would probably miss him more, but since we are what he passed on there's a smile involved, too.
Monday, January 21, 2008
MLK Day
On this observence of Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday I reflect once again on the person and legacy that is commemorated on this day. A local radio station plays his speech, "I Have Been to the Mountaintop", given the day before he was killed, on every anniversary of his birth. The speech awes and inspires me every time I hear it.
I think every year on this day of the reason Dr. King was killed. It was the same reason that Mahatma Gandhi, John Lennon, and Jesus Christ were killed. Dr. King spoke plainly. He told a truth that so many labored to keep in the dark. It is only when a person no longer has a reasonable argument that he resorts to violence. Many are so desparate that they would rather kill the bearer than allow the light to illuminate their ugly side. And so each of these men died violently. God must cry when he sees the desparate souls. Imagining God crying deep, racking sobs is ubelievably sad.
It is a statement -- a judgment, a conviction, a damnation -- that 140 years after blacks were legally freed in the United States we still have to struggle with immoral and illegal discrimination. Is there any wonder that rap music sounds angry and is beset with images of power? What is so difficult about letting someone be equal with us white folk? Personal and social insecurity is no reason to deny the sharing of life's riches.
If God were to give me the option of choosing which age to live in I would wonder mightily what the world will be like once we overcome insecurities on a grand scale. But that would be an easy age for someone like me to live in. Whether it is to feel satisfied that I was able to strive against wrongness with my abilities in this age or to merely accept that I am here despite any wishes, I wish to be a part of the struggle to bring my brothers and sisters of all shades into the equality of estimation and opportunity, to not fear merely based on ethnicity, to love regardless of type. From all I was ever taught, this is what God expects of me.
I think every year on this day of the reason Dr. King was killed. It was the same reason that Mahatma Gandhi, John Lennon, and Jesus Christ were killed. Dr. King spoke plainly. He told a truth that so many labored to keep in the dark. It is only when a person no longer has a reasonable argument that he resorts to violence. Many are so desparate that they would rather kill the bearer than allow the light to illuminate their ugly side. And so each of these men died violently. God must cry when he sees the desparate souls. Imagining God crying deep, racking sobs is ubelievably sad.
It is a statement -- a judgment, a conviction, a damnation -- that 140 years after blacks were legally freed in the United States we still have to struggle with immoral and illegal discrimination. Is there any wonder that rap music sounds angry and is beset with images of power? What is so difficult about letting someone be equal with us white folk? Personal and social insecurity is no reason to deny the sharing of life's riches.
If God were to give me the option of choosing which age to live in I would wonder mightily what the world will be like once we overcome insecurities on a grand scale. But that would be an easy age for someone like me to live in. Whether it is to feel satisfied that I was able to strive against wrongness with my abilities in this age or to merely accept that I am here despite any wishes, I wish to be a part of the struggle to bring my brothers and sisters of all shades into the equality of estimation and opportunity, to not fear merely based on ethnicity, to love regardless of type. From all I was ever taught, this is what God expects of me.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
ABCXYZ
Over many years I have had the opportunity to know people in the homosexual community. Four of my coworkers are lesbian. I have been hit on by several gay men, and have discovered that instead of beating them up all I have to say is, "No, thank you." It seems to me that their sexual orientation isn't explained by one simple theory (that it's a choice, that it's an inborn condition, that it's a reaction to horrible experiences with the opposite sex, and so on); there seem to be multiple reasons, and none of them owe me an explanation any more than I owe them an explanation of my heterosexuality. Sexual orientation is only one aspect of a person, and if I'm not going to be sexual with them I am free to enjoy their friendship just as I do with anybody else. If there is a divine judgment on homosexuality then the Divine will judge, not me.
That said, there is an observation that I've been paying attention to lately, and was emphasized last week by the gal at the next desk at work. One of the lesbians. When I was young, people of anything but a hetero orientation were referred to as gays and lesbians (the epithets need not be listed here). Then we started making distinctions between the types; for many years we've used the acronym LGBT to add the bisexual and transsexual crowds. Now it's apparently becoming normal to add another distinction so that it's LGBTQ (queer). As my coworker and I laughed, it's nearly LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ.
Not that we were being insensitive. There is a concern beneath our laughter, though. I understand the reasons why people seek distinction for their 'type': to protect themselves from hatred and discrimination by earning an accepted designation as a type and gain legal protection; to establish a legitimate image in an image-driven culture; to decrease feelings and suspicions of badness or wrongness; to be able to identify and congregate with those like oneself; and more. My concern is not that these things are happening -- they do indeed need protection, they do have the need, as we all do, to feel legitimate and accepted -- but that by subdividing they may be weakening the overall designation.
It's similar to when I joined the Peace Division of the American Psychological Association many years back. Once I started receiving their quarterly magazine I discovered the quixotic infighting for legitimacy between subgroups in the name of peace. There were gender studies (as if there were different brands of peace for men and women), race and ethnic studies, American and Israeli and South African and all kinds of international studies...while all 'different' groups may have had different experiences with peace or the lack of it, I sensed that underneath it was still the attitude of 'we want our group to be legitimized in this field' as opposed to the commonalities all groups shared. It was the capitalistic competitive model rather than the peaceful cooperative model. I didn't renew my membership after the first year.
It's similar to looking up 'feminism' on Wikipedia. There are, what, fourteen different types of feminism listed there? The complexity makes it hard to think that there's a unified group out there looking for a unified good.
Maybe it's a necessary step to elucidate all the differences. Kind of like going through a whole lot of education and actual work experience before discovering that most of what was learned in school doesn't actually get used, but was necessary to arriving at the simple understanding of one's job. Or studying and struggling with the Bible for years before understanding that the tenets of religion are really quite simple.
I only hope that the subtyping doesn't make things too divisive so that it brings weakness to the whole. Like blue and red states.
That said, there is an observation that I've been paying attention to lately, and was emphasized last week by the gal at the next desk at work. One of the lesbians. When I was young, people of anything but a hetero orientation were referred to as gays and lesbians (the epithets need not be listed here). Then we started making distinctions between the types; for many years we've used the acronym LGBT to add the bisexual and transsexual crowds. Now it's apparently becoming normal to add another distinction so that it's LGBTQ (queer). As my coworker and I laughed, it's nearly LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ.
Not that we were being insensitive. There is a concern beneath our laughter, though. I understand the reasons why people seek distinction for their 'type': to protect themselves from hatred and discrimination by earning an accepted designation as a type and gain legal protection; to establish a legitimate image in an image-driven culture; to decrease feelings and suspicions of badness or wrongness; to be able to identify and congregate with those like oneself; and more. My concern is not that these things are happening -- they do indeed need protection, they do have the need, as we all do, to feel legitimate and accepted -- but that by subdividing they may be weakening the overall designation.
It's similar to when I joined the Peace Division of the American Psychological Association many years back. Once I started receiving their quarterly magazine I discovered the quixotic infighting for legitimacy between subgroups in the name of peace. There were gender studies (as if there were different brands of peace for men and women), race and ethnic studies, American and Israeli and South African and all kinds of international studies...while all 'different' groups may have had different experiences with peace or the lack of it, I sensed that underneath it was still the attitude of 'we want our group to be legitimized in this field' as opposed to the commonalities all groups shared. It was the capitalistic competitive model rather than the peaceful cooperative model. I didn't renew my membership after the first year.
It's similar to looking up 'feminism' on Wikipedia. There are, what, fourteen different types of feminism listed there? The complexity makes it hard to think that there's a unified group out there looking for a unified good.
Maybe it's a necessary step to elucidate all the differences. Kind of like going through a whole lot of education and actual work experience before discovering that most of what was learned in school doesn't actually get used, but was necessary to arriving at the simple understanding of one's job. Or studying and struggling with the Bible for years before understanding that the tenets of religion are really quite simple.
I only hope that the subtyping doesn't make things too divisive so that it brings weakness to the whole. Like blue and red states.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Junk Blessings
Language oddities: why couldn't they make the word succinct a little bit shorter? And why does monosyllabic have five syllables?
But on to the subject for today. Yesterday I got one of those emails that shows pictures that compare differences between cultures. This one featured the weekly food intake of families from various nations around the world. Three of them, from second and third world nations, showed mainly fresh foods, vegetables, and rice. The one from Africa was quite sparse. So was the one from Nepal, come to think of it. Whoever started the pictures around ended with the quote, "Seeing these makes me count my blessings."
The picture from the American family shows pizza, chips, soda, and lots of other processed, convenient, and junk food. Is it any wonder we have a national weight problem if this is representative of our food? Is it a blessing to have an abundance of junk?
I tell people I'm not a health nut. I'm not. I smoke a pipe. I don't eat enough fresh veggies. But I have learned to listen to my body. I rarely drink soda, don't use salt and sugar in preparing food, don't buy canned fruit or vegetables, and stay away from things with high sugar content. I eat a lot of nuts, fresh and dried fruits, grains, and have a reasonable supper. The beef counter at the store suffers from my lack of patronage, but I will eat pork, chicken, turkey, or seafood a couple of times a week. While eating I only consume enough to feel satisfied, not full. I may have a burger and fries three or four times a year. I exercise enough to get sweaty several times a week, stuff like competitive ping pong or hiking at a good, sustained clip. I get regular sleep at regular times and refuse to let life issues keep me awake (when I go to bed I'm there to sleep, not to solve problems) (and though I never remember them, I always look forward to how bizarre dreams can be). I don't have to take medications for anything.
In the thirty years since high school I've gained ten pounds, and will attribute that to age.
Again, I'm no health nut. I don't demand that others do as I do. But when I'm raking leaves in the yard and see the overweight man a few houses up using his leaf blower it strikes me strange. He's driving up my health insurance rates. I don't care if his income trumps mine and he can believe he's more successful; he can't climb mountains like I do, and will likely take all kinds of medications way too early in life. Probability-wise he will die before me even though he's about ten years younger.
As a final thought, if everybody went to fast food restaurants as often as I do most of them would go out of business. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.
But on to the subject for today. Yesterday I got one of those emails that shows pictures that compare differences between cultures. This one featured the weekly food intake of families from various nations around the world. Three of them, from second and third world nations, showed mainly fresh foods, vegetables, and rice. The one from Africa was quite sparse. So was the one from Nepal, come to think of it. Whoever started the pictures around ended with the quote, "Seeing these makes me count my blessings."
The picture from the American family shows pizza, chips, soda, and lots of other processed, convenient, and junk food. Is it any wonder we have a national weight problem if this is representative of our food? Is it a blessing to have an abundance of junk?
I tell people I'm not a health nut. I'm not. I smoke a pipe. I don't eat enough fresh veggies. But I have learned to listen to my body. I rarely drink soda, don't use salt and sugar in preparing food, don't buy canned fruit or vegetables, and stay away from things with high sugar content. I eat a lot of nuts, fresh and dried fruits, grains, and have a reasonable supper. The beef counter at the store suffers from my lack of patronage, but I will eat pork, chicken, turkey, or seafood a couple of times a week. While eating I only consume enough to feel satisfied, not full. I may have a burger and fries three or four times a year. I exercise enough to get sweaty several times a week, stuff like competitive ping pong or hiking at a good, sustained clip. I get regular sleep at regular times and refuse to let life issues keep me awake (when I go to bed I'm there to sleep, not to solve problems) (and though I never remember them, I always look forward to how bizarre dreams can be). I don't have to take medications for anything.
In the thirty years since high school I've gained ten pounds, and will attribute that to age.
Again, I'm no health nut. I don't demand that others do as I do. But when I'm raking leaves in the yard and see the overweight man a few houses up using his leaf blower it strikes me strange. He's driving up my health insurance rates. I don't care if his income trumps mine and he can believe he's more successful; he can't climb mountains like I do, and will likely take all kinds of medications way too early in life. Probability-wise he will die before me even though he's about ten years younger.
As a final thought, if everybody went to fast food restaurants as often as I do most of them would go out of business. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Friday, January 11, 2008
The Athiest and the Believer
Talking with athiests, it seems to me that they hold a sense of a great power; they just resist, for whatever reason, calling it God. The power can be a variety of things, from the self to money to dark forces to nature. Regardless of what it is, it seems that underneath it all they are seeking the same thing as so many seeking God: some sense of control in the universe. Whether it is to assuage fears of control within -- too little or the frightening prospect of too much -- or a vast question of Who or What is in charge of everything everywhere, all seem to be looking for the same thing.
Looking for the universal control within religion, the most difficult point is that people ascribe control, positive and negative, to something outside themselves. They attribute everything good to God and everything bad to the devil, and an entire discussion can be had about people being too short-sighted or selfish to accurately judge good and bad. In the focus on things outside themselves people fail to recognize that every human has both the good and evil within (Isaiah 45:7, in the King James version, says that God creates evil. Why is that ignored? Why was the word 'evil' modified in later versions?). Seeing everything as outside the self, one unavoidably gives the responsibility for anything and everything to things outside the self. One becomes a pawn to awesome forces. How maddening! Nothing can be done by a puny human compared to these vast forces.
It's handy, of course. Anything bad can be blamed on the devil, anything good can be given to the adopted loyalty to God. The person gets to withdraw into the shadows and not take responsibility. And any manner of personal pathology can thus be exercised and responsibility denied. My own observation is that the more fundamental the religion, the stronger this tendency this is. And not just in Christianity.
But here's the main point: many athiests, sensing this exercise of pathology and denial, choose to say that religion is nothing more than rationalization for human failings and choose the belief that it's all made up. They miss one important point: even if too many people engage in religion for personal failings, which is undoubtedly true, it doesn't mean that there isn't a God. Even though I drew away from religion a few years ago -- after forty years of going to church and ten years of no longer being challenged to grow -- this has been one of the most intriguing questions that has escaped answer for me: getting past all human ignorance, misunderstanding, pathology, and rationalization, what is God beyond these things? There is a vastness that I cannot even begin to approach with my limited understanding, and the search is boggling. Yet believing that it is based in Love -- the most positive power in the universe, the forward-moving impulse, the exercise of cooperation between all things in existence, the thing which no amount of darkness can ultimately resist -- gives my search the flavor of excitement and wonder that they promise in religion.
A related thought: in religion why do they try to figure out complicated things like what the Book of Revelation means when they haven't even mastered the simplicity of the Golden Rule?
Looking for the universal control within religion, the most difficult point is that people ascribe control, positive and negative, to something outside themselves. They attribute everything good to God and everything bad to the devil, and an entire discussion can be had about people being too short-sighted or selfish to accurately judge good and bad. In the focus on things outside themselves people fail to recognize that every human has both the good and evil within (Isaiah 45:7, in the King James version, says that God creates evil. Why is that ignored? Why was the word 'evil' modified in later versions?). Seeing everything as outside the self, one unavoidably gives the responsibility for anything and everything to things outside the self. One becomes a pawn to awesome forces. How maddening! Nothing can be done by a puny human compared to these vast forces.
It's handy, of course. Anything bad can be blamed on the devil, anything good can be given to the adopted loyalty to God. The person gets to withdraw into the shadows and not take responsibility. And any manner of personal pathology can thus be exercised and responsibility denied. My own observation is that the more fundamental the religion, the stronger this tendency this is. And not just in Christianity.
But here's the main point: many athiests, sensing this exercise of pathology and denial, choose to say that religion is nothing more than rationalization for human failings and choose the belief that it's all made up. They miss one important point: even if too many people engage in religion for personal failings, which is undoubtedly true, it doesn't mean that there isn't a God. Even though I drew away from religion a few years ago -- after forty years of going to church and ten years of no longer being challenged to grow -- this has been one of the most intriguing questions that has escaped answer for me: getting past all human ignorance, misunderstanding, pathology, and rationalization, what is God beyond these things? There is a vastness that I cannot even begin to approach with my limited understanding, and the search is boggling. Yet believing that it is based in Love -- the most positive power in the universe, the forward-moving impulse, the exercise of cooperation between all things in existence, the thing which no amount of darkness can ultimately resist -- gives my search the flavor of excitement and wonder that they promise in religion.
A related thought: in religion why do they try to figure out complicated things like what the Book of Revelation means when they haven't even mastered the simplicity of the Golden Rule?
Friday, January 4, 2008
Extraordinary People: Ed Chasteen
How many people do we know who are quietly exceptional? People who represent the better end of the bell curve in humanity, even if they never receive the praise that is due them? There have been many such people in my life. Even if my recognition of their excellence doesn't go far into the world, in a way it is irresponsible of me not to do my part to say how their influence has impacted me and so many others. It's not even a part of the Golden Rule to recognize them; they ought to be recognized purely on their own merits.
I grew up next door to one such exceptional person. To say that he's not known would be a misstatement. He's known around the world. It's just that he's not known by enough people.
Known variably as Ed, Big Ed (to those of us who know him), the Pedalin' Prof, and Dr. Chasteen (sociology, anthropology), he has a story that would take volumes to explain. In a nutshell, Ed has spent his life exposing people to those of other cultures, always believing the best about everybody. He started a nonprofit organization called Hate Busters (www.hatebusters.org) that promises to help people impacted by hate with no expectation of compensation. He encourages us to be World Class Persons, being able to go anywhere at any time and without fear, meeting those we don't know because they are wonderful people like ourselves. Despite having multiple sclerosis for the last quarter century he has bicycled thousands and thousands of miles for causes, from proving to himself that people are good across the nation to raising money for MS. He once started at Disney World in Florida with no money or food bound for Disneyland in California, and only relied on the goodness of people he met to get him there; he made it to Anaheim by way of Seattle (it is obvious, and less recognized, that his wife, Bobbie, is also an exceptional person). Ed sees himself as Don Qixote, doing battle with the giants of the world (hatred and the negative end of the way humans treat each other). In a way he has accomplished the transformation to the persona: he is one of the craziest people you'll ever meet, but only because he's one of the sanest men alive.
It is so interesting that I didn't realize the value of this man until well into my adulthood. It didn't hit me what he was really doing until my own sense of injustice led me to look at who was doing what to right humanitarian wrongs. It was a bit of a shock, realizing that the man I grew up next door to was a mover who had put years of work into such effort. And the effort, he is fond of saying, is sublime.
I am glad for such people as Ed Chasteen in the world, and privileged to know him so well. I only wish that more people were like him. As the ripples he has sent into the world have affected me it becomes my duty to amplify them and send them along to others.
I grew up next door to one such exceptional person. To say that he's not known would be a misstatement. He's known around the world. It's just that he's not known by enough people.
Known variably as Ed, Big Ed (to those of us who know him), the Pedalin' Prof, and Dr. Chasteen (sociology, anthropology), he has a story that would take volumes to explain. In a nutshell, Ed has spent his life exposing people to those of other cultures, always believing the best about everybody. He started a nonprofit organization called Hate Busters (www.hatebusters.org) that promises to help people impacted by hate with no expectation of compensation. He encourages us to be World Class Persons, being able to go anywhere at any time and without fear, meeting those we don't know because they are wonderful people like ourselves. Despite having multiple sclerosis for the last quarter century he has bicycled thousands and thousands of miles for causes, from proving to himself that people are good across the nation to raising money for MS. He once started at Disney World in Florida with no money or food bound for Disneyland in California, and only relied on the goodness of people he met to get him there; he made it to Anaheim by way of Seattle (it is obvious, and less recognized, that his wife, Bobbie, is also an exceptional person). Ed sees himself as Don Qixote, doing battle with the giants of the world (hatred and the negative end of the way humans treat each other). In a way he has accomplished the transformation to the persona: he is one of the craziest people you'll ever meet, but only because he's one of the sanest men alive.
It is so interesting that I didn't realize the value of this man until well into my adulthood. It didn't hit me what he was really doing until my own sense of injustice led me to look at who was doing what to right humanitarian wrongs. It was a bit of a shock, realizing that the man I grew up next door to was a mover who had put years of work into such effort. And the effort, he is fond of saying, is sublime.
I am glad for such people as Ed Chasteen in the world, and privileged to know him so well. I only wish that more people were like him. As the ripples he has sent into the world have affected me it becomes my duty to amplify them and send them along to others.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
American Anger
Listening to an interview the other day with an American psychologist who had moved to Mexico, she said two things that I've heard (or read) other people say about getting outside of American culture: life was noticeably slower, and she realized she was harboring a lot of anger she didn't know she had. A psychologist who didn't know she had so much anger...only in America, I guess.
Unfortunately, these people never say what they're angry about.
Regardless, there are a few thoughts. First, let's separate anger from hatred. Hatred is an enculturated loathing that we have the choice to nurture or lay aside. Anger is very different. In our caveman side it has two functions: as a natural reaction to someone entering our space uninvited (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, social, etc), or when our wants or needs aren't fulfilled. In other words, when we're caught off guard or frustrated. I have a whole lecture on the difference between wants and needs, and how confusing them leads to all kinds of unnecessary grief, but won't go into it here.
Are Americans harboring so much unacknowledged and unexpressed anger? Anger, if ignored, doesn't go away. It builds and builds until a human turns into a volcano. Or finds some way of leaking off the hot energy, either through hostility, challenges, or socially acceptable actions (would we have ever heard of Martin Luther King, Jr had it not been for his anger for what had happened to his people in our nation?) (and illustrating the point that anger and violence aren't the same thing; anger is a feeling, violence is a chosen action).
What could we be so angry about? Are we so threatened? With our hands in the tills of two thirds of the world's nations, with the most advanced and powerful military, with the ability to go to every new ruler or president or prime minister of any nation on earth and say 'Comply or die', how can we doubt the power we possess? Are our needs so frustrated? With less than a fifth of the world's population we use more than forty percent of the world's resources. The only thing I can imagine is that we have become so conditioned by marketing that we believe we don't have enough and that we're not secure enough and believe it without thought.
I'd love to spend time with these people who realize they're so angry. I'd love to find out what they're so angry about. Maybe we could do something about it, but then the whole world of capitalistic marketing might collapse and we'd find that there is no reason for us to go to war. What are we without those things?
In a separate thought, in the last two weeks a coworker has been challenging me to ping pong every day. She's as competitive as I am, and occasionally wins. But it's brought home something to me: as much as I've figured out about human nature, as much as I've overcome unhealthy stuff within myself, as much as I've come to be in control of myself, I'm still intimidated by a beautiful woman. Her repeated bending to pick up the ball gives me space to observe and notice silent thirst, and today nearly undid me by saying, in the heat of sweaty battle, that she should take off her shirt. I'm not often speechless. She can play the psych game, too. Common sense tells me to not date a coworker, her boyfriend is probably bigger than me (I'm not a fighter, anyway), and she's half my age. But desire refuses to listen to logic. So my ping pong game, fueled by frustrated energy channeled into the game, is getting pretty damned good.
Unfortunately, these people never say what they're angry about.
Regardless, there are a few thoughts. First, let's separate anger from hatred. Hatred is an enculturated loathing that we have the choice to nurture or lay aside. Anger is very different. In our caveman side it has two functions: as a natural reaction to someone entering our space uninvited (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, social, etc), or when our wants or needs aren't fulfilled. In other words, when we're caught off guard or frustrated. I have a whole lecture on the difference between wants and needs, and how confusing them leads to all kinds of unnecessary grief, but won't go into it here.
Are Americans harboring so much unacknowledged and unexpressed anger? Anger, if ignored, doesn't go away. It builds and builds until a human turns into a volcano. Or finds some way of leaking off the hot energy, either through hostility, challenges, or socially acceptable actions (would we have ever heard of Martin Luther King, Jr had it not been for his anger for what had happened to his people in our nation?) (and illustrating the point that anger and violence aren't the same thing; anger is a feeling, violence is a chosen action).
What could we be so angry about? Are we so threatened? With our hands in the tills of two thirds of the world's nations, with the most advanced and powerful military, with the ability to go to every new ruler or president or prime minister of any nation on earth and say 'Comply or die', how can we doubt the power we possess? Are our needs so frustrated? With less than a fifth of the world's population we use more than forty percent of the world's resources. The only thing I can imagine is that we have become so conditioned by marketing that we believe we don't have enough and that we're not secure enough and believe it without thought.
I'd love to spend time with these people who realize they're so angry. I'd love to find out what they're so angry about. Maybe we could do something about it, but then the whole world of capitalistic marketing might collapse and we'd find that there is no reason for us to go to war. What are we without those things?
In a separate thought, in the last two weeks a coworker has been challenging me to ping pong every day. She's as competitive as I am, and occasionally wins. But it's brought home something to me: as much as I've figured out about human nature, as much as I've overcome unhealthy stuff within myself, as much as I've come to be in control of myself, I'm still intimidated by a beautiful woman. Her repeated bending to pick up the ball gives me space to observe and notice silent thirst, and today nearly undid me by saying, in the heat of sweaty battle, that she should take off her shirt. I'm not often speechless. She can play the psych game, too. Common sense tells me to not date a coworker, her boyfriend is probably bigger than me (I'm not a fighter, anyway), and she's half my age. But desire refuses to listen to logic. So my ping pong game, fueled by frustrated energy channeled into the game, is getting pretty damned good.
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