“I want to be an honest man and a good writer.” — James Baldwin

Michel Montaigne, patron saint of essayists, declared once that “Every man has within himself the entire human condition,” a line as true as it is deliciously politically incorrect. In the introduction to an encyclopedic collection of essays which he edited, Phillip Lopate notes, “The personal essay has an implicitly democratic bent, in the value it places on experience rather than status distinctions.” 

That anthology, The Art of the Personal Essay (Random House, 1995), gave me the push I needed to get this blog rolling. I’d been raised in the school of thought that credentials gave one license to speak, but I realized along the way that often the most credentialed are the biggest windbags. The personal essay appealed to me because it was a direct line to the reader from the writer—as close to conversation as one could get in prose. It is the perfect form for the unabashedly curious and for those who do not know what they believe about something until they see it in writing—preferably their own. 

William Hazlitt, Henry David Thoreau, George Orwell, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Wendell Berry have been my mentors. To read their work is to eat a loaf of dark, firm, warm bread. They are savory, not sweet; muscular, not soft; wise, daring, and transparent. Each of them is a virtual window thrown open to the world they have discovered, yet to read a paragraph of any of them is to hear a distinctive voice. When I began to write essays I strained to hear my voice, and then I saw that I would grow into my voice. 

I began this blog almost two years ago because I wanted to see if I could write honestly and without pretense. Like the bear who went over the mountain I, too, wanted to see what I could see. And I wanted to put to use the books that waited patiently, silently, on my shelves. 

I rarely had a subject in mind, but I usually had an epigram, something I’d come across in my reading, a sentence splendid in its isolation, waiting for companions. I used that sentence like Ariadne’s thread as I descended into the labyrinths of thought and passion. The pleasure in the work was to inch my way back to the surface, clutching what I had found. And sometimes, like David Crosby sang, “Beneath the surface of the mud. . . there’s more mud there. Surprise!” At those times I learned to be ruthless, dropping full paragraphs without tears and cutting a new path back to the thread. 

The comments have been stimulating, the repostings have been gratifying, the stats on my audience have been intriguing. Next to the United States my biggest readership is in Russia—way up in . . . the double digits. Somewhere in Holland is a regular reader and also in the United Arab Emirates. I see readers from Germany, France, Italy, the UK, Hong Kong, and Brazil. “Of all things,” said John Dewey, “communication is the most wondrous.”  Yes, it certainly is: at no other time in the history of the world have we had such possibilities of communication across cultures. What would Seneca have done with a blog or Montaigne with a regular online column? Would H. L. Mencken have tweeted his scathing comments or Mark Twain his sardonic bon mots?  

So, thanks for reading and listening and responding! I’m stepping back for awhile, writing in some new directions, and going back to the well. If you’re subscribed to Wretched Success you’ll get notice of new posts  as they appear. 

See you on the other side of the mountain.

“We have lost a sense of moral clarity that would give rise to the fear that certain actions—whether we privately feel guilty about them or not—could lead to disgrace. For they don’t. If enough, and enough well-placed people do them, the only disgrace you need fear is the failure to get away with it.” — Susan Neiman, Moral Clarity, 369

In 1994 Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was released and immediately bent the needle of the outrage meter. No matter. It went on to win an Oscar and solidified Tarantino’s bad-boy status. Critics said it glorified violence, but they were not quite right. It didn’t glorify violence so much as trivialize the pain behind the violence. 

After the outcry died down I went to see it, lured like anyone else by the promise of sex and violence. In one particular scene, John Travolta turns on a guy in the back seat of his car and threatens him with a gun. But the gun accidentally goes off, splattering the guy’s brains all over the back window. Travolta’s reaction provoked an instant response in the theatre; almost everyone laughed. Nervously, at first, and then in embarrassment, but laughter nonetheless. I felt three reactions in rapid succession: shock with revulsion, spasmodic hilarity, followed by shame and bewilderment. It was the shame that stayed with me long after the plot line had faded. I was trying to understand why I and so many others had reacted that way. 

It’s not hard to figure that we cover our embarrassment with laughter, but why are we embarrassed? It’s not as if we need to apologize to the character, a fictional being after all. Would we have laughed watching it by ourselves? It occurred to me that one reason for our embarrassment was that we didn’t want others to think we were heartless, stone-cold bastards. On reflection I came to think embarrassment was the appropriate response. It means that there’s still something in us that can’t bear to watch someone’s humiliation at their most vulnerable moment.

“Guilt,” says philosopher Susan Neiman, “is the internal sense that you’ve done something wrong, even if no one ever discovers it. Shame records your consciousness of wrong before a community whose values you honor.” There it is: our moral behavior has a powerful social kick behind it. We want to do right, to be in favor with God and man. Like it or not we carry the community with us and we measure ourselves up against its approval—approbation is what philosopher Adam Smith called it in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. 

Smith thought that we were basically good people, but he saw the approval or contempt of society as a means for keeping our conduct in line with social norms. It was in our interest to do right and receive the praise of others just as the implied threat of community anger at our actions would fill us with shame. That depends, of course, on whether we cared at all what others thought of us. Smith was pretty sure most people did care, leaving out the insane and the psychopaths. And just as his “invisible hand” guided the spirit and function of capitalism, so his “moral sentiments” appealed to our self-interests as well as the interests of a stable society. The balance and order was kept because most of us had both the need and capacity to love and be loved as well as the need to avoid the disapproval of our community.  

Neiman makes a persuasive case that shamelessness is pervasive in our culture and our lack of shame is what made such violations of human rights as Abu Ghraib possible. “If the ideal of human rights is destroyed by the violations that were said to be needed to realize it, our children will pay the price. Many of them are already paying, for they believe in next to nothing.” 

It’s easy to lose sight of the presence of human decency when we face into the perfect storm of perversity in the media every day. I’m not ranting about particular TV shows, films, fashions, musicians, Wall Street shysters, TV evangelists, or politicians. What I’m trying to get at is the underlying tone of mockery at the human plight that runs through so much of media culture. You can’t avoid it at movie previews where upcoming films, all PG-13 at least, are reduced to slapstick or thunderous exhibitions of firepower. It was there in the photos of grinning soldiers posing with heaps of humiliated and terrified Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It is there when Lance Armstrong, a symbol of courage and endurance to millions, bullies his way through years of doping, lying, and degrading the sport. 

Neiman believes that the only way to reverse the erosion of shame is to “return to the language of good and evil.” In a culture such as ours, in which a helpless relativism reduces moral dialogue to diatribes or a pouty solipsism, this is strong stuff. The word “evil” is over-used and abused, trivialized and rendered almost meaningless when it is applied where it does not belong. But even more threatening to our own sense of human dignity is when we refuse to apply it to our own actions—we frail, bumbling, confused and pitifully arrogant human beings. 

Kant thought the foundational principle of right action was this: Act so that you never treat other people as a means to an end, but as ends in themselves. That means that we treat ourselves with respect and treat everyone else, even our enemies, with respect also. To demean and demonize them means first of all that we could wish for such a world in which everyone did just that. 

We have the means but not the wisdom nor the right to call anyone evil. But recognizing our limitations in that regard does not mean we should give up on trying to understand why we—and others—may do evil actions. We are so easily drawn into situations in which evil actions are the consequence of fear and ignorance; we need a reverence toward words and language such that we could choose to speak of good and evil again. 

The degradation of our humanity sometimes pulls us down through enormous events such as genocide or systemic rape and exploitation of women. But if we regain, as a society, the capacity to be ashamed of our evil actions, there is hope. We can retrace our steps, make amends, learn humility, and receive grace. 

If evil is not our nature, but in our actions there is hope. We do have choices, tragic though they might be at times. But if we wish to remain human we cannot be passive. Our humanity erodes, slips away, sifts through our fingers when we look only to our own self-interest. This freedom to shape our responses in situations both mundane and extreme is what separates us from lentils and aphids. It truly is the image of God in us. 

“Whoever lives long on earth, endures the unrest of these times, will be involved in much good and much evil.” — Beowulf

What can I tell you about my recent—no, current— obsession with Beowulf, except that it’s caught me like a healthy virus, drawing me through a fiery portal into Denmark in the 9th century? In one of those serendipitous grazings through my library that I’ve come to see as a deja vu in the making, I pulled down The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology, Including the complete Beowulf—the full title—and began to read the main feature. It had been years since I had first ventured into the story, probably through an assignment, and as these things go it had gone poorly. I read as much as was required, did the assignment, and placed it on a mental shelf of books that I resolved to get back to in due time. Apparently the time had come because I read through it in two days and came back for more. 

By now Beowulf has been translated many times, edited, commented upon, anthologized, stretched upon the rack of many a Ph.D. dissertation, and even filmed, but its power to enthrall has not diminished. Seamus Heaney, one of the finest poets in the English-speaking world, comments in his translation of Beowulf, that “It is impossible to attain a full understanding and estimate of Beowulf without recourse to this immense body of commentary and elucidation,” but first-time readers, he notes, will be as delighted as they are discomfited by the strangeness of that world.

The strangeness derives from the names (Hrothgar, Hnaef, Hilderburh, Ecglaf, and Ecgtheow), the places (‘the land of the Scyldings’), and the style, but most of all from what counts the most—the virtues they honored and strove to live by. 

The story was written by someone in England who wrote about the Swedes, the Danes, and the Geats, the forebears of many who called themselves English in the centuries after the Romans left. Christianity shaped their world but the old gods lingered in stories and songs. The poet lives and breathes a robust Christianity and ascribes belief to Beowulf and his companions. He pities those whose gods are idols and who cannot count on them for deliverance. 

Midway through the poem, jacked up on various translators notes, it dawned on me that the author and I have something in common: we both look back in wonder on those times. For him they are the exploits of his distant ancestors; for me they walk in the realm between myth and history. For both of us the poem reveals the epic conflicts of life and death, good and evil, chaos and harmony, light and darkness. In other words, like all great literature Beowulf  illumines human experience. 

The hero faces three consuming tests of strength and character: he battles Grendel and defeats him, he battles Grendel’s demon mother and defeats her, and late in life he battles the dragon that threatens his people. He battles the first two monsters alone because he is determined to win renown and glory, to be known throughout the world for his strength and prowess. Fifty years later, facing the dragon that is terrorizing his people, he stands alone again. But this time, when he needs them most, his warrior band melts back into the forest, sorrowful in their cowardice. Only one stands with him—Wiglaf—a young man whose loyalty to his king overrides his terror. When Beowulf finally falls it is Wiglaf who buys time, driving his sword into the belly of the beast. The king, his life ebbing away, draws his sword and kills the dragon. “That,” says the author, “was the last of all the king’s achievements, his last exploit in the world.”

As the poem draws to a close, Beowulf’s body is burned on the pyre, a massive barrow is raised in his memory, and his deeds are recounted in song. His people, now defenseless, await with dread the attack of their enemies. 

The values of honor, loyalty, and courage came to mind as I watched The Hobbit this week. Tolkien, whose epic story of the battle for Middle-earth drew on his deep knowledge of Beowulf, had given the twentieth-century its own ‘ring-cycle’ in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It was Tolkien’s seminal essay, ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, published in 1936, that changed perspectives on the poem because he assumed, and proceeded to show, the artistic integrity of the piece. It was Tolkien’s view that the author had melded the traditional stories of a heroic past together with the mythic qualities, and through his own oracular artistry had created a masterpiece for the ages. 

It does us well to ask why our children are so drawn to heroes such as Superman, Spiderman, Batman, and the myriad creatures that sweep across their gaming devices. Could it be that this hunger for the heroic is a necessary element in their own character formation? The heroic age of the earth is over, but our fascination with them continues. 

Coursing through Beowulf, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and many other epics is the loyalty to family and clan. Loyalties are put to the test time and time again, and as Michael Alexander, translator of one of the most well-known versions of Beowulf puts it: “Northern heroic tales involve a conflict between the obligation to lord or kinsman and obligations to an ally, a spouse, a host or a guest.” Later in his introduction to BeowulfI Alexander remarks that, “an ethos of retribution for slighted honor or slain kindred governs most of the stories behind the central action.” 

It is striking that we do not condone this way any longer. The Enlightenment emphasis on individuality, personal autonomy, and an ethic of responsibility helped to erode the ties to clan and family. In Western societies the individual’s rights are claimed above all else, often times to the detriment of the community or the family. When we do hear of such things it’s usually in the context of ‘warlords’ in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and it’s anything but heroic. 

So I read it in Beowulf and I’m drawn to the courage and the honor exemplified; the idea of following a leader worth following stirs up something deep inside me. Yet, blood feuds sicken me as does any war that purports to defend God’s name. Can we aspire to such virtues without bloody conflict? Can we hold to a view of life that rules out any war on evil? Gandalf, the formidable wizard of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, didn’t think so. Evil is always looking to break, corrupt, and destroy, he said. 

Is our natural state of existence one of constant conflict, like Hobbes believed? Are we doomed to be cannon fodder for the powers that be? The evil that arises in Beowulf and in Lord of the Rings comes from greed and aggression that is unrelenting and remorseless, serving no end but destruction and chaos. The tragedy for the valiant and the brave is that their nobility is seen only in war and destruction. 

Why does it seem that the choices back then, though hard, were at least clear? Either you fought for the right or you capitulated to evil. It was never that easy then and it still isn’t easy today. One enduring lesson of Beowulf is that evil is never just Out There in the darkness of the night; it runs right through us, all of us. In the moment of our greatest triumph we can succumb to the lure of power, fame, and wealth. Our true heroism lies in understanding that we are all ‘poor, blind, and naked’—and fighting bravely anyway.

Recognizing reality and demanding to change it are fundamentally different activities. Both wisdom and virtue depend on keeping them separate, but all our hopes are directed to joining them.” — Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought,  60-61.

In a relativistic world a murder mystery in the hands of a master writer can be a sword, rightly dividing hypocrisy from truth. The mystery writer is also a problem-solver and a moral arbiter; the pleasure for the reader is in the careful twining of many threads to make a coat of justice. 

James Lee Burke, author of 30 novels and two collections of short stories, is a master of the genre—indeed, he was named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America in 2009 and has twice won their Crime Novel of the year.

Dave Robicheaux, former cop for the New Orleans Police Department, a dry alcoholic, and a police detective in Iberia Parish, is one of Burke’s most compelling literary creations. Robicheaux, a Vietnam War vet and a life-long resident of coastal Louisiana, has no qualms about calling out the evil ones in our midst. 

In Robicheaux’s cultural hierarchy the small-time hoods and grifters make up the lowest level. They are the bottom-feeders, those desperate enough to attach themselves to powerful and twisted people whose need for distance and deniability make them almost invulnerable. Robicheaux is not without sympathy for these figures whose lives are steeped in violence and despair. It’s a measure of Burke’s vision and compassion that he gives them a solid dignity in the midst of every trigger pulled or fist cocked. As for the rich, morally bent, and self-righteous, Robicheaux finds them, binds them to the case, and pulls the threads together. 

Reading Burke at his best is like swallowing nails dipped in chocolate. On the one hand, he’s a word-painter who can put you in a late-summer electrical storm along the bayou in a flash. In the next moment, violence erupts as inevitably as lightening. Robicheaux believes in evil because he has seen it in the eyes of the wealthiest, the most powerful, and often, the most revered in his society.  What truly distinguishes these people from their small-time counterparts is the level of self-deception they are capable of maintaining. While they believe themselves to be virtuous, natural-born citizens of the elite, educated, and genteel, their feral nature is only a few insults from the surface. In those moments Burke’s prose reveals the skull beneath the skin. It’s like walking in a thoughtful daze through a gallery of impressionist paintings and rounding a corner to find George Bellow’s paintings of bare-knuckled and bloodied fighters surrounded by dissolute ghouls. 

But Robicheaux—and Burke—live in a universe that is tragically evil, that is, those who are marked as evil may have chosen their actions, but were acting on compulsions beyond their control. Through a long apprenticeship in deceit and denial, they now look back in anger to see how far from their innocence they have come. There was no moment in which they stepped across a threshold into evil, but they are undeniably in that far country now. 

Perhaps the one thing, besides shock and grief, that unites us in the face of an unspeakable tragedy like the shooting of schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, is that we search for a reason Why? We look for trace elements of aggression in the killer’s childhood, we mine the memories of his neighbors, we sift the impressions of doctors, teachers, relatives—anyone who might be able to put the mark of Cain on his forehead with some degree of certainty. Psychologists and pundits stack up the similarities in the profiles of mass murderers and we all look for patterns. This is natural and even noteworthy, futile though it is for determining cause. But if society does not care enough to search for answers in the face of such tragedies, then we are truly at a moral tipping point. Outrage is a sign of conscience: the lack of it may be the first symptom of moral paralysis. 

The moral philosophers of the Enlightenment  separated natural evil from moral evil. Tsunamis, wildfires, hurricanes, avalanches had all been thought to issue from the hand of God as punishment for sin. But Rousseau took the evil out of natural evil by thinking of them as simply nature following the laws of God. What mattered more was the ‘evil that men do,’ and especially so since we are beings endowed with reason. Why do we do evil then? It makes no sense from a rational standpoint, so we have to seek an explanation elsewhere. Broadly speaking, Rousseau located the cause of evil in the subversion of the individual by society. Kant saw moral evil arising from our denial of our autonomy and our moral duty.

Rousseau thought the key to moral improvement was education. He spent much of his time trying to work out a social contract between the individual and society. Most problems, he thought, could be negotiated by reasonable people working together. One result of this was the decreasing role of God in human affairs. In her rewriting of the history of philosophy in Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman says, “The more responsibility for evil accrues to the human, the less belongs to the divine.” 

This resistance of nature that we see and experience, says Neiman, is not the work of angry gods “but simply part of the arbitrary stuff of the universe.” They are part of living with limits. Finitude isn’t a punishment, it’s simply part of our structural framework. As Neiman so succinctly puts it: “We have purposes; the world does not.”

So the problem of evil became irresolvable. The way Kant figured it the problem of evil was one of us being dissatisfied with the difference between the way things are and the way they should be. The first is the realm of nature, the second of reason. “Happiness depends on events in the natural world,” comments Neiman, and virtue depends on us exercising our reason. We can’t control much in nature—and that includes our happiness—but we may have more control in the realm of virtue driven by reason. “The one [reason] is a matter of what ought to be; the other [nature] is a matter of what is.” For Kant, what was most important was distinguishing between the two. “Recognizing reality and demanding to change it are fundamentally different activities. Both wisdom and virtue depend on keeping them separate, but all our hopes are directed to joining them.”

Or as the Rolling Stones said: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.”

Kant would agree. The gap between the is—the way things are—and the ought—the way things should be will never be entirely bridged. But we’ve got to try: our dignity as humans and our hopes for this world demand it. 

Such tragedies as the Newtown shooting, the Aurora killings, the Columbine massacre, demand a rational explanation. We struggle to find one and if we can’t find a common pattern or a series of movements we despair because above all else we want to live in a rational universe. We shudder to think—and we dare not say—that there may not be a rational explanation for these people running amok. If that is true then we are faced with the fact that without a clear cause these events cannot be predicted nor can they be prevented. And the tragic result of that is a fortress mentality and officially sponsored societal paranoia. 

We may find a cause someday that will explain—as fully and as clearly as possible—why these killings occur. We should continue to gather evidence, try out theories, hope to understand. But we must also realize, as Kant so brilliantly works it out and as most scriptures testify, that we humans are limited, finite, even broken and fractured. This is not a cause for despair, said Kant, but rather simply the way things are. We can do better and we should try to, even while realizing that all our efforts will fall short of perfection. 

And the worth of our striving can be measured by the degree to which we act with compassion toward those who are suffering and with humility and wisdom toward those who bring the suffering.

“Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment.” — Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

It is fortunate that at least once a year we are reminded of thankfulness and gratitude—lest we forget. To the market forces Thanksgiving is the occasion for the holiest day of the year—Black Friday—when all the bare-knuckled commercialism that has been throbbing resentfully since Halloween can finally burst into the open. From Black Friday until Christmas it is open season on consumers, a vortex of induced guilt that results in final quarter earnings and the measure of economic success. 

But Thanksgiving as a concept is harder to identify. For many, “thanksgiving” is part of religious services, a pouring out of praise to God in return for all the blessings received. Thanksgiving, Thankfulness, Gratitude—all live in the same neighborhood, but Gratitude doesn’t get out as much as the other two. Call it reticence or shyness on their part, or even general neglect or misunderstanding on the part of the public, but Gratitude and its sibling Gratefulness do not make it into the public’s eye on many occasions. 

Gratitude doesn’t appear on Aristotle’s list of virtues nor does it show up in St. Paul’s fruits of the Spirit. You won’t hear it mentioned much, if at all, in politics, except during victory or concession speeches and almost never in the entertainment industry except for Oscar night. 

I’ve wondered why we seem to find it difficult to utter the words, “I’m grateful for. . . “ or “I have gratitude for . . . “ Perhaps it’s just awkward to speak the words or we find ourselves slightly embarrassed to be uttering them because one never knows where emotions such as these will go. 

But it’s more likely, I think, that gratitude is seen as weakness or even a craven kissing-up to those who wield power over us. Who wants to be seen as being in debt to another, especially if that person is someone for whom we also feel resentment? Having to call on someone else for help is embarrassing; it taps into our fears of becoming redundant and it might allow others to see our incompetence. 

There are days when I walk out of the classroom  absolutely convinced that every student there sees me for what I am—an imposter. What gives me the right, I rage to myself, to imagine that my pitiful scraps of shared knowledge will be of use to anyone? Where do I get off thinking that my explanations and descriptions are clear, that my logic convinces and my credibility isn’t fragmented by a well-lobbed question? The dark magic of pride, hypocrisy, and self-doubt combine to become a catalytic converter for resentment. What begins as an opportunity for reflection sours into excuses: If I had better students . . . . If I had more time . . . . If they’d pay more attention and actually study the readings. . . . 

It’s all a dodge, a pitiful attempt to salvage some self-respect on the barest of pretenses. Other professors make it look so easy. Their discussions flow like cream, their questions are simple and yet profound, their students cannot help but be enlightened. In Kurt Vonnegut’s vivid phrase, ‘they glow like bass drums with lights inside.” Do I forget those who have helped me over the years? No! In moments like these I remember them with shame and embarrassment and shame finds it difficult to be grateful. 

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) was a Catholic priest  and author of 40 books. In his commentary, The Return of the Prodigal Son, a meditation on the parable of Jesus and the painting of the same name by Rembrandt, Nouwen says, “Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift. My resentment tells me that I don’t receive what I deserve. It always manifests itself in envy.” 

There is in ungratefulness a rough shouldering aside of others, a terseness of speech and a looming sense of denial. In his multi-layered biography, John Lennon: The Life, Philip Norman notes Lennon’s frequent callousness toward those who had served him without complaint, in some cases for decades. Employees were dropped without warning, the prodigious artistry of the Beatles’ producer, George Martin, was dismissed by John as “production shit,” and lifelong friendships jeopardized by his impatience and insecurity. Yet those who knew him best and loved him most could cite many more instances of his kindness and thoughtfulness than of the cutting remarks and cruel comments.  As his self-confidence waxed and waned his gratitude did so also. At times his vulnerability was achingly apparent such as in the lyrics to Help!:

But every now and then I feel so insecure/I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before.

In the last years of his life, before he was murdered outside the Dakota on December 8, 1980, he reached out to people he had hurt over the years and thanked them for what they had done for him. Spending so much time with his infant son, Sean, taught him patience and brought out in him a paternal instinct that he was not at all sure existed. As he took less and gave more his need to impose his will on others diminished and his generous nature became more evident. 

So perhaps that provides a clue to gratitude, that it is there to be drawn upon when we relax our grip and learn to open up to others. Nouwen says that gratitude is a spontaneous response to our awareness of gifts received, but also that gratitude can be lived as a discipline. “The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.” 

I’d like to think of gratitude as both a virtue to be practiced and a gift to be received. In receiving there is re-cognition, a rethinking of who we are and how much we have been given. In the practicing of gratitude there is constancy and commitment. How much we could transform our world through such simple acts!

“The inevitability of cynicism often looks like the twentieth-century legacy, but one goal of philosophy is to enlarge our ideas of what is possible.” — Susan Neiman, Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists

Now that our long national nightmare is over we can take up a new opportunity for idealism. In the rather confined circles that I spend my working days and nights in, there was relief rather than ecstasy at President Obama’s re-election. In other parts of the country—and, no doubt, in our fair city—they were dancing in the streets, provided they weren’t splashing through water up to their knees or slogging through sand and mud in the aftermath of Sandy. 

Immediately after a battle is as good a time as any to ask oneself, was it worth it? And while I watched the fight from the middle distance, I was fascinated enough by the posturing and the propaganda from both ends of the political spectrum to ask myself some questions: Does it make a difference (the “it” being the right to vote)? Is there still a place for hope in these post-apocalyptic days? What, if anything, does a progressive Christian faith have to offer a society that is fed up with fundamentalists of all stripes? 

[Full disclosure: I do not vote, since my citizenship is Canadian and my card is green, but having lived in this country most of my life I travel on parallel paths.]

It does make a difference, for a number of reasons, whether the citizens vote or not. The usual reason is that every vote counts, a truism which cannot be denied in states like Florida for example. But surely casting a vote, as commonplace as the action itself might be, has some kind of moral validation to it? If we act on our best judgment we make that which we might only tentatively hold dear all the more real. 

As Susan Neiman points out in her enthralling argument for a reasoned idealism (Moral Clarity, 2008), “. . . . the American revolution was nothing short of miraculous. ‘We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ was, metaphysically speaking, an astounding move. . . . In 1776 a band of colonials had the audacity to declare the idea self-evident—and thereby began to make it come true.” 

Even aside from the obvious reasons, the act of voting, like the efficacy of prayer, has less to do with tracing the cause to the effect as it does with changing our attitudes toward “we the people.” Maybe the American people aren’t quite as passive and imbecilic as they are made out to be if they can resist the millions of dollars pumped into the media-political pipeline by Citizens United, Sheldon Adelson, and the Koch brothers. 

These people certainly have the right to spend their money as they wish—after all, the Supreme Court likened that spending to a form of free speech—but it’s still somewhat reassuring to see that this time around such blatant manipulating of a Constitutional right came up way short of the goals. And that would still be the case had the Democrats done the same.

Is there hope for those on the left of the political spectrum? If this election served as a wakeup call to the Democratic Party and those affiliated with it, then an unintended consequence of good has glimmered into light. Against the odds, the President has been re-elected, despite a dragging economy, a dragged-out war, and some liberal measures that might not have flown four years ago. Despite four years of ideological gun-slinging progress has been made in human rights, restoring the infrastructure, and setting new directions. 

This election blew the gaskets of some on the right to a degree I’ve not seen before. Donald Trump, Ted Nugent, Victoria Jackson and others were apoplectic over the election results. This would almost be funny if it were not for their malignant disavowal of democratic principles. Apparently—if Donald Trump had his way—there would be lynch mobs marching with pitchforks up Pennsylvania Avenue as we speak. Isn’t it time the media fired Donald Trump?

Nevertheless, free elections were held, no one was machine-gunned in the waiting lines, millions of people of good will and conviction—Democrats and Republicans alike—made their wishes known and moved the country fractionally ahead by the sheer virtue of acting on their convictions. This is no small thing in today’s world and we should be grateful for it. Immanuel Kant said, “If we depreciate the value of human virtues we do harm, because if we deny good intentions to the man who lives aright, where is the difference between him and the evil-doer?” 

So how can idealism be taken seriously again? Susan Neiman, a philosopher who is also an expert on Kant, looks to him: “Kant says you do it by talking about heroes: those who risk their lives rather than resign themselves to injustice.” 

The form of religion expressed in a twisted and malevolent way by those on the right is seen for what it is by its fruits. By contrast, as a knee-jerk reaction, those on the left who reject religion do so by allowing their understanding of it to be defined by the distorters of it. There is no reason why religion cannot have a voice in the political realm if those who speak for it point us away from the naked grab for power and if they hold out for something better in the world. This is transcendence and Neiman says that the urge for transcendence expresses two drives. “One is to criticize the present in the name of the future, to keep longing alive for ideas the world has yet to see. The other is to prove our freedom, and dignity, by having a hand in bringing those ideals about through some form of human creativity.” 

The criticism that we fall short of our ideals is no thunderbolt of truth—our sins are ever before us. But neither is it an excuse not to try. As Kant reminds us in his Lectures on Ethics: “The remedy against such dejection and inertia is to be found in our being able to hope that our weakness and infirmity will be supplemented by the help of God if we but do the utmost that the consciousness of our capacity tells us we are able to do.” 

It would be a change for the better if those who invoked God did so from the humility of hope rather than the hubris of hypocrisy.

“Culture is man’s medium; there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture.” — Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture

According to Ed Hall, American anthropologist and writer, culture is not innate but learned, all of it. Everything in a culture is bound together and culture sets the boundaries that define one tribe or group from another. The odd thing about this is not that we have to learn our culture, but that having learned it we are no longer aware of it. Knowing our context so well we take everything for granted and only pay attention when we stub our toes in the dark because someone moved the furniture. In other words, we only see what we are when we come up against someone who is not like us.

This can be a profoundly disturbing experience, one that sets us back on our heels and causes tempers to flare. Since we learn best through comparison and contrast we should not be surprised when the contrasts between what we think we know about the world, and the way others experience and shape the world, get up in our face. That becomes an ordinance of humility, a teachable moment, an occasion to learn from our mistakes without rubbing out the one who points out our mistakes. 

Amartya Sen, Harvard economist and Nobel Prize winner, explores the presumption that we live in an overarching system which categorizes all of us in exactly the same way. This way can be either religious or cultural, but inevitably it sets us against each other. “A solitarist approach,” writes Sen in Identity and Violence, “can be a good way of misunderstanding nearly everyone in the world.” Sen’s reflection on this leads him to the conclusion that when we are assigned one dominant classification  —whether it be religion, or community. or culture, or nation, or civilization — which ignores so much that is essential to our personal identity, the many diverse roles that we play and the interlocking communities we move through — violence is almost always the result. Holding hands and singing Kumbaya no longer works in promoting peace, and the wish to see ourselves as really all the same under our skin ignores the recognition that we are, says Sen, “diversely different (italics the author’s).”

Crises can lead to opportunities for us to learn more about our pluralistic human identities and to use those very differences to wake up and hone our sensitivities. Sen and Hall do not exaggerate when they suggest that our very survival as a species may rely on us understanding those diverse differences, not in seeking to conform us all to one identity. 

This understanding is hard work, very hard work. In fact, some virulent strains in our own culture inoculate us to these exposures. Religion and politics, the two things most avoided in close relationships, seem to thrive on the us-them dichotomy. Since we tend to grow our own identities in proportion to acceptance by our groups, the easiest way, apparently, to quickly build solidarity in the group is to turn it against other groups. That’s a shortcut we cannot afford these days. This is such a natural law of group formation, in my experience, that we may well expect it sooner rather than later in the life cycle of the groups we belong to or desire to join.

Many years ago, in the wake of the Second World War, Gabriel Marcel, the French Catholic existentialist philosopher and playwright, grappled with parallel issues of individuality and freedom. Writing in Man Against Mass Society, Marcel asked what freedom meant in a society which routinely places us in situations that erode our ethics. We have a choice, of course, but we may not always have the means to live out our convictions. There are others who rely on us and for whom we make compromises just to survive to fight another day. In a materialist culture, says Marcel, everything is reduced to commodities and objects, even human beings.

While he could not have foreseen the reach and scope of the global economy of today, he seemed acutely aware of how entangled our convictions and duties are. If you have a problem with the economic conditions that make affordable clothes, food, and electronics, how far will you go to buy only those goods produced in fair  labor conditions? 

We don’t know the future, Marcel says, but it is that very ignorance that keeps us hopeful. By way of revolt against the mass society, Marcel argues that “all philosophies of immanence have had their day (italics his).” And we are called to fight against the idolatries of race and class that they foster. Such a fight, he intimates, isn’t just reserved for those with power, assuming of course, that they haven’t already succumbed to the degradations that go with power over others. He puts it in a sentence: “A man cannot be free or remain free, except in the degree to which he remains linked with that which transcends him, whatever the particular form of that link may be. . . .”

Artists have the possibility of creative action against this materialism more readily than most of us, says Marcel. But he’s quick to note that being an artist brings temptations to startle, to innovate at all costs, to sell oneself to the highest bidder or to retreat into the world of the aesthete. All of us are called to be creators of our own freedom. And the way to that freedom lies through remaining open to others. Materialistic societies like ours, says Marcel, sin against this freedom by excluding as forcefully as possible this openness to others. For Marcel the individual could not claim to be free in a culture which callously excludes some and commoditizes almost everything. 

It’s not easy to reach for the transcendent in a culture that rewards selfishness nor should we presume that our mere opposition to such a culture means that we are open and unselfish. But on the eve of a bitterly fought election perhaps we can remind ourselves that no matter the outcome we may choose the side of the transcendent by learning to listen and to understand those unlike ourselves.

“Life is long if you know how to use it.” — Seneca

When someone in the public eye passes away it causes us to refurbish old memories. Such was the case when Senator George McGovern died at 90 this week, and Jacques Barzun, perhaps our last public intellectual, died at the age of 104 in San Antonio, Texas. Both men were, in their own ways, the last of a kind, the public figure who lives out his or her convictions with grace and irony right up to the end.

McGovern is often remembered as the man who lost to Richard Nixon by a landslide in the 1972 presidential election. Nixon, our most paranoid of presidents, was fearful that George Wallace would take away votes and sought to find anything he could to smear Wallace. The assassination attempt that left Wallace paralyzed took him out of the race and all but assured Nixon the victory. While he sympathized with Wallace in public Nixon privately exulted that the way was now clear. As for McGovern, Nixon’s men explored the possibility of trying to link his campaign with funding from Castro’s government. That particular move proved unnecessary: the country resoundingly rejected McGovern and his liberal politics. Nixon went on triumphantly to a second term in which he disgraced himself and the country by attempting to subvert the Constitution. He avoided impeachment only by resigning on Friday, August 9, 1974.

Nixon’s resignation speech, a rambling, self-indulgent paean to his mother and his lack of money, was picked up by radio by a group of us that day on a windy, rain-swept headland overlooking the sea in the south of Wales. At the time I remember feeling relief that the whole sordid episode was finally over and that we wouldn’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore. 

In moments like that you wonder what alternate history might have been written had McGovern miraculously won. The Democratic Party was never so aligned again with politics that was unabashedly for the rights of women, blacks, the poor, the lame, the halt, and the blind. After defeat McGovern went on to devote himself to the war against hunger in the world. Richard Nixon resurrected himself in time as an elder statesman and at his death was feted by the living presidents of the time. McGovern’s political beliefs seem almost impossibly naive by today’s “whatever” standards. Forty years of Democratic centrism has meant that the party has all but abandoned its constituency of the marginalized. 

History unreels behind us, not so much a transcript of orderly actions, but rather a confession of conflicting desires. We gather it up  occasionally, expecting a confirmation of our cherished memories. We are often rudely shocked by the distance between our present selves and our reverenced past. The passing of George McGovern, himself a scholar of American history, reminds us that there is more to life than Real Housewives and that we learn best from that which we have understood.

Jacques Barzun, in the words of the New York Times’ obituary for him, was a “distinguished historian, essayist, cultural gadfly and educator who helped establish the modern discipline of cultural history.” A man who resisted authoritarianism and the dominance of systems, he lived and breathed a liberal humanism that treasured reflection and gratitude for great learning. 

Barzun’s bemused and ironic sensibilities could be read as support for the status quo. In his last major work, From Dawn to Decadence, he notes that “most of what government sets out to do for the public good is resisted as soon as proposed,” and that “The upshot is a floating hostility to things as they are. . . . The hope is that getting rid of what is will by itself generate the new life.” The answer, he suggests, is neither in baptizing the past nor in embracing the new. Rather, “Our distinctive attitude toward history, our habit of arguing from it, turns events into ideas charged with power.” 

Both George McGovern and Jacques Barzun lived with the assurance that ideas matter—profoundly—and that what today seems so new and unprecedented may have already appeared in our past, either as an Angel of Light or of Darkness. What we do with our interpretations will create our futures. 

 “If monarchs have little sympathy with mankind, mankind have even less with monarchs. They are merely to us a sort of state-puppets or royal waxwork, which we may gaze at with superstitious wonder, but have no wish to become . . . .” — William Hazlitt, On Personal Identity.

Why would anyone wish to become president? On the face of it, the highest office that we were told anyone could aspire to and some could attain, is a thankless job. Daily the president is assailed on all sides, sometimes by his own kind, but relentlessly by the disloyal opposition. When he does something that approximates the right thing to do, someone—Charles Krauthammer, most likely—will thunder from the Washington Post and George Will will mutter and mewl. Everything he says and does is subject to the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for “persons of interest” by the FBI or Kim Kardashian. 

Of course, anyone in that position should expect that they’ll be held “accountable”—our favorite euphemism for who is to blame—but the accountability factor often becomes a political football and a blanket term for general dissatisfaction. We don’t often hear that someone is held to be responsible, perhaps because that implies actions governed by ethics rather than just a faux economic term. 

William Hazlitt, writing in the early 19th century, had in mind kings and princes when he disavowed any interest in changing places with them, but his words could apply almost as well with the office of the President. In a way we ask the impossible of our presidents. We expect them to be extraordinary communicators who can talk to anybody—Saudi princes or Joe the Plumber, pizza makers or heads of state. We expect them to have the intel at their fingertips to make a definitive statement on horrific acts that are still unfolding. And we believe that everything that happens between their inauguration and their reelection—or defeat—is a direct result of some action they’ve taken or left out. 

They must be one of us, yet without our annoying and petty grievances. They should be smart enough to solve world economic problems but they shouldn’t be tarred as one of the ’Harvard elite.’ We ask them to maintain America’s dominance by any means necessary but we don’t want to pay for it. We want them to tell the truth but we don’t want to hear it. 

There are a number of reasons why a person might want to be president. First, they want the perks and the power. It’s not the money: the President makes $400,000 per year plus expenses. The CEO of Goldman Sachs made $16.5 million in 2011; John Hammergren of McKesson made $131.19 million in a recent year. But they get the use of a plane, Air Force One, a helicopter, Marine One, a nice place in the country—Camp David—and a tony address in downtown Washington. They’re referred to as “the most powerful person in the world,” and people wave as they drive by in motorcades. 

Another reason is that they might be driven to accomplish what few people do—make it to the top in a profession. If you’re a lawyer I suppose the Supreme Court would be your last and best job offer. Some academics aspire to be presidents of universities, actors to win Oscars, and athletes to compete and win in the Olympics, the Superbowl or the World Cup. And politicians want the White House. Lyndon Johnson ran for the Vice Presidency, not because he wanted it, but because his mentor, Sam Rayburn, couldn’t bear the thought of Richard Nixon getting it. In time and tragically, Johnson got his turn and his term, a position he’d been climbing toward since his early days as a Texas congressman. Bill Clinton found his inspiration in a meeting with President Kennedy as a teenager. Kennedy himself was groomed for the presidency by his father, so the legend goes. 

And no doubt there are those who believe they might do some good, might shape the events of history toward justice or freedom or prosperity. We believe them enough to elect them but we doubt them before they are done. “Why will Mr. Cobbett persist in getting into Parliament?”, asked Hazlitt about a perennial candidate. “He would find himself no longer the same man.” There’s the rub: if you’re man (or woman) enough for the job are you willing to pay the price? 

The price is literally in the millions. Some estimates put the total cost of the 2012 election at over $5 billion, an obscene amount for the return on investment. At least three times a week I get an urgent email from Democratic headquarters: for a mere $3 I can help turn the tide and rout the Republican berserkers. The money will go, I am assured, to paying for ads to refute the latest lies the Romney camp is spouting. Money for truth. . . .

To run, to put yourself and your family through the merciless gauntlet of American public opinion, you’ve got to have a massive ego, strong enough to withstand the constant criticism, supple enough to dodge the blows and yet deep enough to listen to counsel. You have to realize that you ran to make a solid difference in the world, but now it’s not about you, but the myriad powers that be. And if you have anything different to say about it you’d better be sure the mic isn’t hot and it’s off the record. Because you didn’t get there on your own. There are many who put you there for reasons of their own, reasons that will demand a return on their investment. 

But at the end of the day, climbing the stairs to bed like any other person, can you look back on your efforts that day and feel like you rolled the rock up the mountain with purpose and intention? Can you be glad for small victories and brush off the defeats? If you’ve got the ego strength and the humility to realize that the hinge of history may not turn on your command, but you might have pushed the door open just a bit wider for Goodness—then may you sleep well.