Humility

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.”  Proverbs 11:2

It is an interesting time as those who shape public opinion and the news fall like dominoes -- disgraced by their own transgressions.  It begs the question, will this current sense of outrage continue until we achieve a new equality where all are held accountable for their actions, or will we soon tire of these public beheadings, and the powerful will again possess the weak?

Call me a cynic, but I can’t imagine the celebrities of politics, entertainment, and the news now reaching deep within themselves for introspective and returning to a time when they held themselves to the same standard as the rest of us, or reported the news without a political and moral bias. It seems more likely they are now looking over their shoulders with the fear of what may fall out of their own personal closets. Perhaps, it never was fashionable to accurately report the news, or hold a moderate position, and I was just naive when I thought it was. 

It is almost cliché when we talk about the corrupting nature of power, but the original quote is attributed to John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, (AKA Lord Acton), who wrote in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Great men are almost always bad men.”  

As long as those who report on the politicians enable them to hide their “open secrets,” we value celebrity above honor, and believe entertainers opinions are worth listening to I expect we will soon return to life as normal; or at least something that approximates the previous normal.

Perhaps, and this is just my speculation, if the feminist movement was really about empowering all women and not just furthering the cause of some women, there would be a chance we could achieve a more balanced relationship between the powerful and the powerless.

Due Process

noun.  An established course for judicial proceedings or other governmental activities designed to safeguard the legal rights of the individual.

In these days of instant communication, we now have instant judgment, but at what cost?

We see in the oft times ill-informed statements of individuals a willingness to ruin someone’s life at the first blush of a wrong-doing.  I wonder, would they be so quick to accept the condemnation of society if they themselves were the accused?

The legal system in the United States is a flawed system, it is not always just, it is not always right, and it most certainly is not always equal.  The problem with the system comes not from its design, but from the human beings who are the essential part of it.  We human beings are flawed, and because of those flaws, any system we create and run must account for those flaws.  But, for better or worse, it is our system and it has worked reasonably well for the last 228 years or so and appears to be as good or better than most of the other justice systems of the world.

So here we are in the world of 2017, where the political parties have divided us into two color groups and every news event now carries some sort of political implication.  The shrill public voices on the left and right define everything as good or evil depending not on a stable morality, but on the political gain or loss.

Almost 30 years ago the news outlets started to report public surveys as if they are factual news and we have a generation now who thinks if 60% of the people agree on a poll then it must be true.  If it must be true then we must convict the guilty and send them to wherever the guilty must go.  Of course, we do this without the accused having a right to defend themselves in anything other than edited 15-second soundbites.

To me, it seems like we are willingly surrendering our belief in the design of our legal system and seeking a return to mob-rule or the Roman Circus where all we needed was a good thumb.  

I Wonder, What Has Changed?

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I am a “Baby Boomer.”  A child of parents who lived through the depression and the second World War.  When I first became aware of a world outside my family, my school, and my friends, I was introduced to a world where America was reaching for the stars.  A world where anything was possible, and we thought we could accomplish anything we set our mind to do.  After all, we had won the world war, we had an industrial base that was the envy of the world, and we dominated the world’s finances.

John F. Kennedy told my generation, “My fellow Americans ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

My generation failed to heed his advice.  When we came to authority we created a society that is self-centered and an America where the first question is what’s in it for me?  We have grown our political parties electing individuals who have no idea how to govern, but know only how to vilify those who disagree with them.

In the Kennedy era, the nation was divided by the racial prejudice and discrimination that had openly existed since the end of the civil war, a war fought to save the union.  Martin Luther King, Jr. showed a hostile and unrepentant America what equality could offer.  Today we see million dollar athletes taking a knee because of the racial prejudice and discrimination that still exists.

We now have a younger generation that sees America not for what it could be, but for the ills that still exist.  Yet none of them seem to have a vision for how to make us better than we really are.

I wonder if 10-years olds have the same sense of wonder and destiny that John Kennedy gave me when he became the President?

Where Does Our Morality Come From (continued 2)

I know I am entering into an area of deep political and emotional and divisive rhetoric with very little real concern with a common morality, but a significant percentage of us have accepted that it is morally justified for one individual to kill another, to end a human being capable of self-sustaining life independent of the mother.  Within the most recent Presidential campaign the whole issue of “woman’s rights” was a significant point of contention between one half of the country and the other half.  The political parties were both willing to make this a core of their political positions, and we have for at least the last 40-years been engaged in an escalating battle of what the government should allow, and now what the government must pay for.  Increasingly it has been the position of the liberal feminist movement, and their political allies, that the right to determine the intentional death of a fetus rests solely with the woman carrying the infant.  Of course they use more sympathetic terms and explain how problematic those lives would be if allowed to continue, but in the end there is one harsh reality.  We, for better or worse, have sanctioned the determination of life as a right of the mother, but only for the period of pregnancy.  If she ends that life one day after birth I think society and the state still consider it murder.  It seems just a bit convoluted to me as we wrestle with the law and moral choices.

The argument for determination of life or death is now moving on.  It is expanding to include the position that an individual with a diagnosed illness who wishes to end their life has that right and the state should approve of individuals who wish to assist in that choice. 

Couple these changes in our society with the development and popularity of violent game playing in computer simulations and alternate reality games and it does not seem to me to be a great leap to ask if we are creating a nation of young men and women driven by alienation, who see ending life as acceptable moral choice, and deciding that their 15 minutes of fame should be in the taking of another’s life.  It seems only a matter of time (and not too much time) before that argument will be made in their defense.

I believe we already see influencers in the media and entertainment industry beginning the virtue signaling that this is acceptable, as long as the targets are those they approve of.  For example, in the past year, we have seen liberal entertainers calling for the assassination of the President, going so far as to hold up a clearly recognizable severed head.  (As an aside, I find the whining of the entertainer who did this to be a fascinating study on denial of personal responsibility and outrage over the consequences of her actions.  Either she is a complete idiot, or she lives in such a sheltered world the reality most of us live in never gets in.)

Along the way should we consider the impact of the social media that has come to dominate the internet?  From our beginnings, the predominant position of this nation was that we must be a nation of law.  Where justice, based on the moral standards of the nation, is applied fairly across the society.  Today does that still remain true, or are we moving ever closer to the concept of mob rule, where those who control the dialogue now control the judgments of the many who become inflamed over the mere accusations of unknown voices?

-- to be continued --

Door to Door Salesmen

When I was young, there were salesmen who would come to the door offering the women of the house all sorts of wares.  The ones that seem most prominent in my memory are the Fuller Brush, and vacuum cleaner salesmen.  Kirby and Electrolux were the two brands I remember my family getting sold by some stranger who offered to vacuum the entire living room to show off their product, but they paled in comparison to one memorable evening at our neighbor’s house on Madison Avenue, in the Holt Development.

I think I must have been about seven or eight, but maybe a little older since the memory remains so vivid.  It was a warm spring night and we (my parents, sisters and I) along with several other families were invited over to the house next door, where a stranger in a bow tie introduced himself and said he was there to cook us dinner.

He then set out cooking dinner for probably a dozen people including the kids.  As he cooked, he explained the wonders of the revolutionary new stainless-steel cookware and how it brought out the amazing tastes of fresh vegetables and meat.  After some time of getting chased out of the kitchen and into the basement we kids were all shuffled up to the living room and sat at small tables to enjoy the fruits of the salesman’s efforts.

I can still recall the moist pot roast, steamed potatoes and carrots, spinach (yuck), and a beef gravy. 

I can’t speak for the other families, but I know my Dad, always a sucker for door to door salesmen, came home with a full set of this revolutionary new cookware.  It was actually a great purchase as he and Mom used it until they passed away.

In these modern times of infomercials, and on-line shopping, I wonder how much we miss out on in our buying when everything is so impersonal?

Where Does Our Concept of Morality Come From? (continued)

Who or what fills in for the parents once a teenager begins to understand the concept of morality and how he or she must act?  Is it peers, teachers, ministers, entertainment celebrities, video games or self-assessment?  How about all of them?

Let’s start with peers since studies[1] have shown that peer pressure is probably the single biggest influencer on choice for most humans.  We hear anecdotal stories all the time where an individual is characterized as a “good boy/girl” by family as they are being taken off to jail for some felony.  The need to “fit-in” is one of the great human survival tools, and is probably a key element of why we have been so successful as a species, but it is also one of the great dangers for mankind.  Peer pressure and the need to fit-in goes a long way to understanding how populations tend to accept leadership that ultimately proves itself to be destructive and self-serving.  How else do we explain things like the rise of Communist dictators who kill tens of millions of their own people, or a National-Socialist regime that sets out to eliminate the Jewish population, as it moved to dominate Europe?

Today, we see in America two social phenomena that on the surface seem contradictory, but I believe are both symptoms of the same issue.  In the first case, we see the tremendous growth of gangs, beginning in the inner cities, flourishing in the prison system, and now moving to the suburban and rural parts of the nation. The gang recruitment is on-going and unfortunately reaching for younger and younger recruits to indoctrinate into their society.  There are black gangs, Hispanic gangs, oriental gangs and white gangs.  They all seek and offer the same thing, peer acceptance.  They, just like their underdeveloped country counter-parts, grow to dominate a particular region, and become self-sustaining through illegal activities, just like the infamous Costa-Nostra “families” J. Edger spend so much time investigating in the late 1940’s through the 1960’s.

The second case is “the loner” or social outcast who so often erupts, seemingly from nowhere, to wreak violence and havoc on some unsuspecting individual or group.  We see this in the increasingly frequent mass murders that make our evening news.  What leads these individuals to isolation, is it rejection from family, friends, or peers, or is there some other force at work?  Again, I suspect, although I’ve done little in-depth research that isolation grows from negative experiences with the social structure including peers.  Or from possible addictions to any of a number of devices or drugs. 

It is easy to say this is a manifestation of mental illness, but if we think about the increasing frequency of these events the question must be asked, is it mental illness that is growing uncontrollably, or a shifting standard of personal morality? Have we as a society made murder an acceptable personal choice?

-- To be continued --

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[1] For example,  Peer Pressure? It's hardwired into your brain, study finds

Where Does Our Concept of Morality Come From?

I seem to be on singular path right now.  A conversation with an avowed atheist got me thinking about what is moral and what is immoral, in these days of rationalization.  As I said in my previous post, according to most modern theories, where God is removed from the equation, “Morality is the product of the evolutionary development of man, and society.  Morality is always relative and never absolute.”

If we assume this is true, where and how do we learn what the moral standards for our society are?  What is the basis for our own moral judgements, and how does society change its views?  I don’t know how many people spend much time thinking about this, but I have.  From those times; I’ve formed a number of opinions.  Some are researched, others just based on the empirical observations of life around me.

Back in the olden days of my youth I think the family was the principle basis for passing along the moral education of society.  Today we call that familiar process “White Privilege” because our society has done a wonderful job of destroying the Black Family.  Even then, not all families were deeply religious, those that were may have done a better job of instilling faith into the children, but my experience is a good church (I don’t assume all churches are good), built upon the work of the parents, it could not substitute for it, only supplement the foundational basis for moral judgement.

But what happens when the parents have a sense of morality that differs from society’s?  What I’ve observed is, for the large percentage those differences are accepted by the children and incorporated into their own moral standards.  The groups become sub-cultures within the larger context of the nation.  For example, the gypsies are infamous in Europe for a society that crosses national boundaries.  It has its own moral code, that is often at odds with the various civil cultures and laws.

Consider the growth of the Moron Church from its founding until the push for the statehood of Utah.  Polygamy was a morally acceptable aspect of life.  It wasn’t until the statehood issue that the church had to acquiesce to the more normally accepted concept of marriage.  Funny how now that we are changing that concept of what marriage is, the Mormons are again being criticized for not accepting the right value.

So, I believe the parents and extended family are the most basic teachers of morality for children, but who else plays a role, and what about those crazy teenage years as a young person begins to really explore and define his or her own personality, and personal belief set?  As they move away from their parents who fills in the missing spaces?

-- To be continued --