Being patient...
I just talked with my neighbor, Jesse...
And I guess the conclusion I'm coming to...
Is that I have to be patient...
That people are, generally...not very fair...and not very thoughtful about much of anything...and certainly not forgiving...though they aren't even very fair or thoughtful when there's nothing to forgive, either...
That people are more prone to get stuck on an opinion...and to defend it...than to really think through it...
And though that IS the primary reason for why most of the most preventable stuff in the world, happens...murder...terrorism...genocide...all the most awful things...
And though supporting a more seriously thoughtful and freer, more democratic culture is the thing that's gotten us this far...and that is going to get us anywhere in the future...
That's it's going to take a long time...far longer than I ever, ever imagined...to get us to a place where people take values that I think of as basic to life...to take them seriously...to think about the world beyond their own narrow and self-centered and self-righteous interpretations...to stop thinking about the world in terms of which gang they can belong to so that they can rationalize which other gang is wrong about the world...or whomever...
To be Crips...or Bloods...or Vice Lords...or Junior Boys (the gang at my high school in Wichita)...
To be men...or women...
To be black...or white...or Asian...or Hispanic...or Native...
To be Democrats...or Republicans...or liberals...or conservatives...
To be Americans...or Canadians...or French...or Brits...
Or Chinese...or Cubans...or Iranians...or Syrians...
Or Sunnis...or Shias...or Christians...or Muslims...or Jews...
Or whatever...
That kind of self-righteousness...that kind of thoughtlessness is so destructive...it solves nothing...it does nothing...it builds and creates nothing...
It is self-serving...and it doesn't even do that very well...
And in the meantime...
It is destructive...of good efforts...from good people...
I listen to all of the criticism of the effort to help folks in Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi and Florida and wherever...
And I hear all that self-righteous nonsense...the kind that saps the energy of good and decent and constructive efforts...
And I experience every day, really...
At work...
Among friends...
Even among family...
And it drives me crazy...
It drives me crazy...
That people spend so much time lost in ignorance...and stupidity...and hatefulness...and bitterness...and cynicism...and whatever...
And hurt who they want to hurt, in the meantime...
Since that shit is never isolated to just who it is intended for...
And, as Terrence McNally's really brilliant movie, "Love, Valour, Compassion" says...
All that hate and bile is for all of us...we all have to eat that shit along with whomever holds onto it...and is blinded by it...and reads the world through its seriously fucked-up vision...
I'll just to be patient, I suppose...
Because I can't make a goddamn person think more...more clearly...more broadly...fairer...more rigorously...and with more inner and outer debate and discussion...
I can't make people think better...
I can only encourage it...model it...be an example for it...and learn from them...keep an open mind...and keep the conversation open...
But goddamn it if I am not infuriated by how goddamn stubborn most people are about this...
How goddamn arrogant most of the goddamn world is that they think that others should take their self-righteous, stubborn opinions about the world more seriously than they should when they don't take the time to think about them more...
And they are so goddamn retiscent to acknowledge that maybe...just maybe...
They might be wrong...
That maybe there is no right gang to belong to...or nationality...or race...or ideology...or gender...or sexuality...or age...or position...or authority or not...
That there is just us...and thinking and feeling...and doing both of those better and more constructively over time...
"Why is that so goddamn hard?," I wonder...
I admit...I used to belong to the Democrat gang...and the liberal gang...because I thought that Democrats and liberals had all the answers...and because Republicans and conservatives were all standing in the way of those answers...
But I've definitely taken off those blinders...
And I don't belong to the intellectual gang...
I think everyone can think at the most rigorous levels...
But most people, I'm afraid, don't really give a shit about doing that...or at least they don't think they can do it...and they resist every effort to do so...
They give a shit about how dumb they think everyone else is...
But not necessarily about thinking seriously in a way that treats everyone fairly...and decently...and takes rigorous thought serious about most matters...
And I guess I'll just have to be patient...as people get over that one...
As people get over the bullshit that I've been dealing with ever since I left grad school...
That neither takes education or the most rigorous thought seriously...except as a kind of fascination...nor does it aspire, really...
The second of which is the really serious problem, to me...
Not having education...or not being the brightest are not necessarily anyone's fault...
But not aspiring...and stubbornly resisting it...that's a whole other matter...
And there's not a goddamn thing I can do about that...
But given that it is the only thing that has a chance of moving us forward...
I just have to wait...and be patient...and hope...hope that we get there...
I have to remember that all over the world...that people go without so much that I take for granted in the world...
And that the only thing they have is hope...
Because they are often genuinely helpless to do much about it...or to know what to do better...
And perhaps there are just things in the world that I will have to learn to just hope for as well...as well as working on them...with far more of a reality-check on where we're at on those aspirations than I ever imagined...
I remember reading Abraham Maslow's The Farther Reaches of Human Nature when I was in grad school...and thinking, "Goddamn...wouldn't that be a great world"...
Abraham called it "Eupsychia"...and I now I know why...because it was this barely scratched out utopia...that even Abraham must have realized what far from realizable in his own lifetime...
But it's better to carve that vision out...and to work on making the world a better place...
Than to just engage in the mental masturbation that is cynicism...the constant, "I told you so"...with no effort to make things better...and to make up a million stupid rationalizations of the way the world is...without trying to imagine how it might be better...and to make it better...
The world is far better for Abraham Maslow's musings...
He is one of the most read psychologists in the world, today...and one of the most read authors in education schools, where I study...
And he got us thinking about where humanity is at in terms of its thinking...and its values...and how its thinking affects its values...and how peoples' thinking about life is what makes us so adaptable to life...what gives us this amazing ability to navigate challenges to our lives and well-being...
This amazing ability called intelligence...
That is so unique in most ways to our species...
And which we totally take for granted...constantly...no matter how much it makes our existence as we know it even the slightest bit possible...
How without it...
We have no internet...or homes...or workplaces...or technology...or a million inventions that make our lives possible...fire...the light bulb...medicines...
How all of our lives are so intimately dependent on our intelligence and the intelligence of others...
And yet how we all take it so much for granted...
And how so many of us just can't imagine that thinking about people -- in the social sciences...in history...and policy and political science...in psychology...and anthropology...and criminology...and education...and a million other places -- like somehow that thinking just wouldn't matter...
That somehow that kind of thinking is just so intangible...that it's just mental masturbation...
Well my fucking mission in life is showing people that it's not mental masturbation...
That is matters...
That thinking matters...
That education matters...
That deep thought...and profound thought...and wisdom...
They matter...
And they matter to all of us...
And that we can all learn that...
With better and better engagement on terms that we understand...
And with better understanding...including the understanding of the need to let go of the propensity to have stubborn opinions about life that aren't accountable to anyone or anything else than our own random rationalizations...
That freedom...and democracy...and all those ethereal values that go along with them...
That they matter...that they really matter...no matter how much we consistently take them for granted...
And that all of us learning these things...and me engaging people on these things...is more important than any goddamn thing on earth that I could spend my life doing...
It matters that much...
But goddamn it if I am not infuriated as all hell both trying without success too much of the time to make things happen that I can't make happen...that people have to choose...with or without me...
And goddamn it if I am not infuriated living in a world where people don't take them nearly seriously enough...and which I have to live with in the meantime...and which affects me as much as anyone else on this mark...
But there is no way to move forward with humanity...until we get clear on this one...
There is no way...
There is no progress without more intelligence...and thought...and care...and concern...and valuing the important things in life...without more decency...and humanity...and love...and compassion...and forgiveness...and understanding...
There is no way forward...
Period...
Everything else is a big fuckin' illusion...
That cannot be skirted just because we don't feel like making the effort...
Goddamn do I hope that the people I'm dealing with right now either give me a really good goddamn reason for why they are treating me like shit, right now...
Or that they give it up...and give up the bullshit that comes with the self-righteous reasoning that most of the world engages in, to be honest...
Because God knows that I have lost all patience with this world...and with the bullshit that comes with it...
I can't think of anything else to say...
I just hope life gets better, I suppose...
I'll keep my fingers crossed:):)...
Love,
Ben
