A practical reflection on the power of freedom and the failure of cynicism to create change...

There's so much to be hopeful about these days:)...

The Red Sox won the World Series, finally:):):)...and did so, I believe, on a wave of fan support for underdogs everywhere:):):)...at least that what I think people were thinking when they were rooting for the Sox:):):)...that's definitely what I was thinking:):):)...

No matter how haphazardly the effort in Iraq is going and despite so much unnecessary and tragic loss of life going on in that effort, Iraq -- a country that was ruled by a brutal tyrant for much of the latter half of the 20th Century -- is looking to have it's first democratic elections, here, soon:)...

Andrew Sullivan and the Economist have both endorsed John Kerry...strong evidence that we can both support the intentions of an effort, while being both critical of how it is carried out and willing to have a democratic leader step aside -- even if they represent our own ideological bent -- when we believe that it's leaders are act cynically, stubbornly, and self-righteously...evidence that some people take truth more seriously than winning...

So much progress has been made on a whole host of issues I care deeply about...

Awareness of the need for wages that -- at the very least -- pay for basic needs in Lawrence has strengthened, considerably...we need to take wealth inequities head on, I think, which is what the Lawrence Journal World began to do earlier this year (I believe) when it ran its stories on wealth inequities in the Lawrence school system and at Kansas University...

Gay rights...support for single moms...free trade...all kinds of issues I care about have seen advances and setbacks in the last few years...but all of them have been championed by people I wouldn't expect when the forces of cynicism and fear and intimidation had too much of their way, in the last four years, especially...

I always have to qualify...my concern over the last four years is not just with the Administration...it is with liberal groups as well...and people, generally, in America and internationally, as they've given into their basest and most awful instincts...as they have all sought to bully and intimidate where they could not persuade...as they've lost faith in ideas only to give far too much credit to their blind, rash impules...

But in the places where it matters -- where people live their lives, independent of government action -- people have gotten more hopeful and respectful, I think, slowly after a long fall into darkness after the 2000 election commensed and, especially, as this war began...

I have to say that it's been one of the scariest descents into darkness that I think I've witnessed in my lifetime -- Vietnam must have been a similar and worse experience for those who lived through that experience...

And I've done everything in my power NOT to give into to the temptation of ugliness and bitterness that seemed to take over the country like a strange contagious disease, especially as the war broke out...I've done my best be an far from ideal example of something better...

On the personal note...my relationship with really all of my ex-girlfriends -- but especially with one of my best friends, Brandi, my ex-girlfriend of 4 years -- is stronger than any relationship I've ever seen with ex's and an ex of that time and seriousness of anyone I've ever met...I see lots of relationships that really sadden me as they devolve into ugliness and serious conflict and jealousy and control issues...but that relationship hasn't...which I took more for granted, before, but which REALLY, REALLY impresses me, now, since I'm so saddened by the shortsightedness of my friends who decide to persistently fight and declare war on ex's...

My relationship with my parents has suffered some this year, given the circumstances...but I feel more committed to them each time we work through some serious issue:)...and the issue my parents and I are dealing with right now -- poverty and wealth inequities and how it touches our lives -- is an issue we'll work through like every other issue we've worked through up till now:):):)...

I've gotten more honest with my friends and family in the last year -- last 3 or 4 years, really -- than I've ever been in my life...there is still too much that I hold back -- which partly inspires this post -- but I'm feeling more comfortable raising difficult issues with my friends and family and overcoming the discouragement that I think naturally comes when peoples' defenses temporarily overwhelm your commitment to openly share thoughts and concerns...and when someone needs to hear honesty that they so desperately defend against...

Which leads me to the title and inspiration of this post...

I would say most of my friends are cynical...I know I've done everything I can to work through my own cynicism, which infects me like a virus that we all share out of contact with the infected...

But I am getting really tired of hearing cynical observations on life and philosophies of life and politics or whatever as if they are serious thought...as if people are doing anything other than rationalizing why they are still sitting on top of some hurt that's happened to them that they just do not want to let go of, for fear of being burned again -- which will, of course, happen whether they protect against it or not...

What I'm most tired of is people being cynical about my motivations...I am tired of people ascribing bad faith to everyone and me getting cast in that net...I am tired of my friends and family turning their own lives into shit out of their cynicism, failing to recognize that the people that they are so afraid of are staring them in the mirror...I am tired of friends not being able to see that they're cynicism hurst all of us -- me included -- as people look to preserve their little whining, inner victim...

As a rule, as I constantly say to Melissa, people are stupid-ass, whining little bitches...and they need to get off of it...FOR REAL...no bullshit...they need to stop being both so whiny about how the world is full of bad people -- just like them, mind you -- and stop being so stupidly shortsighted and start standing for something better...they need to stop moaning and bitching about a world that they need to spend more time standing for something better than whining and moaning about how it's all just hopeless anyway...

Hopelessness is like a disease that saps ALL of our strength...not just yours...and -- at its worst -- it rationalizes terrible, ugly realities...like murder...and terrorism....and dictatorships...and all kinds of bullshit...and we need to fucking get over it, once and for fucking all...we need to get off of it and stop pretending like the real boogie man is not all the scared little bitches in the world constantly scared of the boogie man...and beating up on whomever, whenever to keep away a boogie man that exists, largely, in their own hearts and minds...

The Nazis may have really believed that the Jews were responsible for all their worst experiences and fears about the world...the Baathists may have really believed that they needed to keep a tight totalitarian grip on folks to make everything better...Kim Jong Il and North Korea's Communist Party may really believe that they need to constantly force and consequently starve their people to save them...

But, more likely is that, at some point, they just all stopped caring about what they really believed and got more focussed on busting some heads to make things go their way...the cynicism crept into their lives like a cold, wet blanket and was just offered too much immediate gratification to give up...more likely is that the cynicism began to rationalize itself and didn't need any reason...just cover...just something to make it look pretty...

Well...cynicism is not a philosophy of life, folks...it's just cynicism...that's all it is...it doesn't constitute a damned thing other than a whining little heart that just can't get over the fact that EVERYONE gets screwed in life, at some point, no matter how much we may try to avoid it...and that we have two fundamental choices in the face of that reality...we can either open our hearts and look for better solutions to our problems...or we can close our hearts up like the scared little bitches we are and whine to our little fucking mommies about how we just don't know if we can handle the pain again...

The pain of having someone take advantage of us when we are generous with them...the pain of break-up after a relationship where we were really in love...the pain of disappointment when we fail at something big...the pain of fucking up something major...

But...much more importantly to me...

The pain of having someone hurt us...terribly...coldly...or not so coldly...but terribly none-the-less...someone beat the shit out of us...someone took serious advantage of us...someone covered their ass at our expense...

That we just don't know if we can get over it or not...

We just don't know if we can forgive...or trust...

We just don't know if we can let it go from our hearts, for real...not as some bullshit defense of a heart that has grown hardened by bad experiences...

It's not that I don't have patience and understanding for the fact that we all go through this...and that it takes time to let if off of our hearts...

What I have lost ALL PATIENCE with is the FUCKING EXCUSES for why people ARE NOT doing this, when they know -- or should know -- that it's the only way from out from under the dark excuse for a life that we have created for ourselves when we do it...

Life sucks...often...for everyone...

But we will get NOWHERE if we spend all of our time fearlfully anticipating being hurt again, putting up those emotional defenses, and BEING THE VERY KIND OF PEOPLE THAT WE ARE SO AFRAID OF...

I give up on noone...but I am tired of the excuses...I've had enough...it's time for so many people I know to not just let down those defenses a little...but to give up the bullshit...and to more proactively let go of the boogeymen that they've created for themselves....

There are plenty of REAL boogeymen to deal with in the world without having to create some of our own...

And let me share at least one little tidbit in that effort:

I am DEFINITELY NOT one of those boogeymen...so, at the very least, as you begin your descent out of the pit of cynicism and despair, stop putting your shit off on me...if you can't trust that I am in good faith, you are in deep fucking shit, my friend...

And I would suggest that you pull yourself out of that shit before it starts to consume you completely...

My dream is of a world where we all learn to be grown-ups...where we solve problems, slowly, patiently, over time with honesty, and engagment, and persuasion, and with less and less force -- except where it is needed, where we recognize that it is a temporary solution to an immediate problem and not a dumb-ass philosophy of life or of politics or the way that we're really going to teach someone a lesson after the million other failed fucking attempts, you fucking moron, and more and more intelligence and understanding and compassion and decency...a world where we take freedom and equity and democracy seriously...where we stop persistently rationalizing our weaknesses and weak ways of dealing with one another and start embracing more authentic strength that comes from courage and intelligence and compassion and decency...all the fucking things that people know they value when they're not rationalizing what a fucking shithead they're being...

I am tired of treating this debate -- this debate between our highest natures and our lowest natures -- as if it is a legitimate discussion...as if it merits serious attention...as if it is anything but one LONG FUCKING EXCUSE for why people don't need to be more decent to one another and to develop more compassion and understanding and to think more about life that is complicated as hell and always more complicated as we understand it more whether you fucking like it or not...

I am tired of people fucking up their lives -- fundamentally -- because they just don't know if they have it in them to be good people...which is, of course, what maintains the illusion that virtue just doesn't pay...if it doesn't pay, then we need to set things up so that we do things because they are right, accept better that noone does right all of the time...and strengthen our faith in the highest values when life doesn't work out exactly as we'd like it, rather than wallow in our own filth...

And the clearly best way to do that -- practiced by those who best, though never perfectly -- since perfection is an illusion -- and always short of ideally -- since ideals are always being newly imagined and developed -- and as imagined by perhaps the greatest thinker on these matters in the 20th Century -- Abraham Maslow -- is to give people MORE FREEDOM to fuck things up...to OPEN them up MORE, not less...to OPEN OURSELVES up MORE, not less...

And the clearest fucking evidence of that conclusion is the realities in places where there is MORE FREEDOM and places where there is LESS FREEDOM...

How is it that so many conventional thinkers in Washington, D.C. right now are so convinced that if the country acts more like Cuba or North Korea or Iraq or Iran or Russia (new or old, as of late), and various dictatorships in developing countries around the world...

That somehow if we act MORE like these cultures...that if we bust MORE heads...if we act more brutall...

Or better yet...

If we don't go too far in being less brutal...they we find a nice middle ground between being COMPLETE SHITHEADS and UTTERLY BRUTAL and not brutal or shitheads at all...that somehow this represents some kind of balance...authentic middle ground...

Are we all REALLY just so completely out of our minds with bloodlust that we cannot see the pretty straighforward correlations on this one?...

Yuri Andropov, the last Soviet Premier before Mikhael Gorbachev and his movement towards Perestroika and Glasnost, has two major initiatives of his tenure (initiatives that Mr. Gorbachev, of course, assumed as well, so as not to upset the apple cart)...

Reducing absenteeism in Soviet era often government controlled work places...and reducing alcoholism...

LIke most legislative initiatives in the States, everyone can understand these initiatives...

But they both fundamentally miss the lack of real opportunity and freedom in a society and the consequent fear and anxiety that might produce problems like absenteeism and alcoholism...

Similarly...our cynicism about human nature leads so many of us to advocate for a whole host of restrictions on our lives that are only made bearable, I think, for a general tolerance for breaking those same rules/laws/restrictions and our often schizophrenic obsession with both forcing problems away and with not having our hands forced, ourselves...

And what we need to resolve that schizophrenia is not MORE FORCE -- as the Soviet Union and China and Cuba and Syria and Palestine and a whole host of countries demonstrate the folly of...We do not need a life of penalties and controls, the likes of which folks like Chester Finn, conservative policy thinker and former undersecretary for education for President Reagan, romanticize in places like Singapore...

What we need more of is more authentic versions of what is SO GREAT in the United States...we need MORE of what makes the United States so unique a country and a culture...

It's freedoms...it's more egalitarian culure...it's opennes...it's spirit of independence for all people (which is how more ideally functioning people aspire)...

We need more of what makes us stronger...individually...socially...and in our communities...

Our deepest respect and appreciation for freedom and democracy -- authentically...compromising as we must on the way towards that ideal...not reversing course in a cynical attempt to do -- and fail to do, again -- what humanity has been failiing at for as long as it has inhabited the planet...

Forcing each other to do better...

And that freedom can be found in a million different places...

It is conservative...when it argues against gun control and seriously failed campaign finance reforms...against taxation (though a vision of a world without taxes must also include a vision of how those institutions that are supported by taxes will be supported...not just discarded)...for tort reform and against frivolous and intimidating lawsuits that, themselves, fail to resolve problems that only people can resolve between on another...when it argues for more openness about faith in public life and more openness about the full range of faith and religious and non-religious ways that people come at life...when it argues that people should be able to accumulate and use their wealth however they want, with responsible engagement on how wealth should better and best used...

It is liberal...when it argues against the terribly failed drug war...and for compassionate and more realistic approaches in criminal sentencing...when it argues for the freedom for people to have sex and marry with whomever and however we want...when it rallies for economic freedom for everyone -- not just those who take the bully positions in various private and public organizations...

It is obviously libertarian and anarchist and radical and a whole host of various ideologies when those ideas apply not only to government behavior respecting freedom, but to private behavior respecting freedom as well...

A more ideal world is a world where merit is more easily identified because bullying does not try to replace good ideas as the basis for a good society...a world where better and best choices and perspectives are identified by people who take them seriously...and where EVERYONE learns to take better and best choices and perspectives and ideas seriously, and to have some perspective about not so great ideas and choices and perspectives...even as some people persistently demonstrate more merit than others in judgment...

And where barriers and incentives, and -- most importantly -- sanctions that obstruct that view for people are removed as means of distorting people doing their best for its own sake...

Where dysfunctional patterns in a society...in a family...in the market...in a school...in a life...in every area of society...

Where dysfunctional patterns are recognized rather than rationalized...

And where they are changed for the better...even against the grain...

We do clearly get better at this...we've clearly gotten better in the last year, even as we make up ground from four years of turmoil of senseless and dysfunctional political conflict that has done very little to solve anything of value...

More ideally...we would learn to be more patient...to collaborate with one other...authentically...without anyone having to "take charge," because we are not victims of our failures...we grow stronger from them and the learning that they give us the chance to engage in:)...

More ideally...we would not clamour for a "strong man" to take charge...because failures would be more compassionately and patiently handled to facilitate learning, rather than to frustrate it, as so many of our institutions do -- especially within government and the market -- often unintentionally...

And we would not rationalize why virtue does not pay because virtue -- in a more ideal society...as Abraham Maslow is famous for saying -- would be paid equitably...

But that world does not arrive because we try to stay comfortable in our cynicism...it happens because we finally step out of our cynicism to clothe ourselves in warmer garments...

And I am tired of the doing battle with the useless armor of cynicism and emotional defenses...

We all need to learn to take the armor off...and to put on warmer clothes...

And to go about the business and making life better...

I hope everyone's having a good day:):):)...I'm feeling a little drained, right now:):):)...but I'm sure I'll be alright:):):)...

Love,
Ben