The big picture...
Today I learned a lot about why so much of the world is in its sorry shape, in so many places...
Why so much greed...or laziness and momentary living...why so much fatalism...and why so many problems persist in places like public schools like the ones I've talked about...or private businesses, which get so many headlines...and noone really does anything about them...
The biggest reason...
Is that there are just not nearly enough people who take responsibility for the big problems...and prefer to keep their minds on the smaller problems, instead...to avoid the bigger problems as much as anything, I suspect...
Most problems are somebody else's responsibility as far as most people are concerned...or unsolvable...or doomed...or incapable of escaping the cynical cycles in which such problems persist...
And the reason for all of this...
Is because most people either never take on the challenges of life...
Or because they give up...
Luckily...there are many who don't...
As Margaret Mead said...it's a small group of people, compared to the overall population of the living...but luckily...once those few demonstrate that something can be done...most people follow, I think...eventually...
What most people called selling out...
Is really just people who give up...
It's kind of sad...a little lame...and foolish all around, since the problems people give up generally affect everyone, whether we give up on them or not...
Most problems require thought at a level that most people do not want to give to them...because they're so goddamn focussed on the little picture...that they just can't/won't get their heads wrapped around the big picture...
Today was not the first day that I heard a teacher describe some kids as "doomed"...but most people get lost in this kind of cynicism, I think...because it seems easier in the moment...than believing...that something not only can be done...that something must be done...or else problems persist...
I was telling Carson last Saturday...the reason why I take the most idealistic path...
Is because it's the only way out...
Because all of the other paths are futile...
And the reason is because cynical paths are not about solutions, at all...
They are about making excuses for not giving enough of a shit...or for giving up...
And I'm not interested in making excuses or supporting excuses for not giving a shit...or for giving up...
I'm interesting in getting problems solved...
Most people aren't interested, enough...because it means caring enough...and so many people are just afraid that if they really care...then they might get disappointed...
Which they might...
But...as I have written for my kids on my chalkboard...they is no paths to success...except ones paved with plenty of failure...
Not for people who are really interested in solving problems...and not just in moaning about them...
And as I look around my school...at teachers who take the biggest picture responsibility for kids...and those who are constantly laming out, languishing in the little picture...
I know that there is no way that I could wake up...and look at myself in the mirror, every morning...if I were one of those teachers always laming out of the big responsibilities...
Because in my heart...I would know that I really was just giving up...
Cynicism...which is so much of the bullshit that passes for political and otherwise wisdom in the world, now and since time eternal...
Is really just giving up...
It doesn't mean shit, really...
And I don't care where it comes from...
Left...right...politics...churches...schools...
businesses...the smaller-minded...or relatively bigger-minded folks...
Cynicism is just quitting...and it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously as anything else other than that...
Maybe that's what I've been going through, lately...this weekend, in particular...and the week before, as well...
I've been contemplating the logical conclusion to cynicism...which is quitting...
And I'm just not willing to do that...
Higher ground is found with higher ideals...and bigger ideas...
And that's the only place to go if you're clear...
That you're not quitting...and that you really give a shit, at all...
I'm clear...and I want others to get clearer, as well...
And I guess what gives me that clarity...
Is the freedom...to make whatever choice I want to make...without guilt...or any other sense of obligation, at all, really...
I have scholarships that obligate me to teach special education that I decided long ago I would walk away from and pay back once I found a more lucrative career if I was convinced that the cynicism would will out...
But it won't...
Because I have no plans on giving up...
And I'm learning that cynics generally follow bigger and better ideas...
Because bigger ideas and higher ideals are the only thing that can solve problems that others have given up on, in their cynicism...
Because cynicism offers no real solutions...
Just excuses for why it quits...
Cynicism or realism or whatever foolish name you want to give for giving up...is not strength...
It's quitting...
And quitters just pretend to have strength that they lack...
Because it's easier to doing the thinking...and the hard work...
To get stronger...and to tackle challenges that seem overwhelming...absent a stronger understanding of them...
And that's what I love about this work...
The opportunity to take on challenges...
That so many people have either given up on...or are on foolish paths to solve...because they just can't get their heads out of the small picture...and wrapped around the biggest picture...
It's the biggest problem in the world, today...
Too many people...with too small an outlook on the world...
And it is the biggest challenge of humanity...and education...right now, I think...
Getting more people focussed on the biggest picture...
And getting people with the smallest picture outlook focussed on a bigger picture than the one they carry around, right now, in the meantime...
Who would you rather be in 17th Century Europe?
A rich monarch...with plenty of money and power...but plenty of enemies, too...exploiting religious divisions for your own power base...and whom noone remembers...except to deride what you represented for your age...
Or Thomas Hobbes...imagining a world...where secular thought gave legitimacy to governance...rather than religious propaganda and civil war...
A rich plantation owner in 19th Century America?...or a rich industrialist in late 19th, early 20th century Great Britain?...
Or John Stuart Mill or Fredrick Douglas making the most persuasive cases for ending the ugly practice of slavery?...or John Dewey or Jane Addams constructively criticizing those arrangements and imagining better ones and working to support people to create better futures for one another, in the meantime?...
There's a reason why we remember people with the biggest picture outlooks...
Because everyone else is just too small-minded to give much attention, really, by the standards of their progeny...
The real question for people today is...
Would you rather work to impress your friends and family with your new purchases or power?...or your sure plans for retirement?...
Or would you rather impress your grandchildren...with your thought and courage...for the sake of future generations, as much as for your own?...
I'd rather work for my grandchildren...
But most of all...
I'd rather earn my own self-respect...
Doing the right thing...whether anyone else recognizes it or not...and learning from and teaching others along the way...
I've got some work to get done before tomorrow...
But I'm convinced, now, that there's no way that I can face any more tomorrows...
Without getting clear that I'm committed to making tomorrow a better day...meaning tomorrow morning...and the future, generally...
Because without that kind of clarity...
My life lacks the purpose...
That makes it so worthwhile...
Have a great week, everyone:):):)...
Love,
Ben
5 comments:
Rev. Wm. Sloane Coffin, noted anti-nuker and all-around activist died yesterday. In addition to being the inspiration for Doonesbury's Rev. Sloan, Coffin also provided an interesting perspective on pessimism/optimism, etc.
I heard some interview excerpts with him this a.m. while driving and it reminded me of your post, which I read last night.
Coffin's position was that hope is a reflection of the soul, rather than of one's environment. Thus, hope and optimism aren't really the same thing at all.
Coffin: "So hope is not the equivalent of optimism. Its opposite is not pessimism but despair. So I’m always hopeful. Hope is about keeping the faith despite the evidence so that the evidence has a chance of changing.
As I wrote in my book Credo:
Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts."
So, in Coffin's estimation it appears as though hope has some potential pragmatic value even in the face of long odds.
Even if it didn't, I think embracing it would at least offer some sort of illusory value to life that is vaporized in the face of hopelessness.
OK, and it has to be mentioned that any time someone with the last name "Coffin" dies, it is sort of weird.
p.s. Rev. Sloan did preside over Duke's funeral in Doonesbury. To my knowledge, Coffin was nowhere near Aspen when they took care of HST's remains.
That's a pretty fascinating analysis, I think, Carson...
I agree that hope often has to transcend experience...Maslow cites the Victor Frankl's experience as a Jew who survived the holocaust that he described in Mans' Search for Meaning around how some people suffer incredible experiences like the Holocaust or genocide or other terrible experiences and maintain such incredible strength in the face of them...and Frankl would talk about how other people would just crumple, psychologically, in the face of those same experiences...
Meaning...the environment can be literally hell on earth...and some people still maintain hope...and those people see everybody else through the experience (Jakob the Liar is such a great movie about that kind of thing during the Holocaust...and Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan for the War, generally...etc.,etc...)
But I think the place where we get fucked up is that we lose track -- and I mean me, here, as much as anyone else -- of how distant the problems that most people experience, today, are comparable to the Holocaust or the Inquisition or the barbarism of early Rome or whatever...and how much progress we've made...
Because our aspirations grow...which is beautiful and exactly what needs to happen...but which I think we fail, often and consistently, to develop a more authentic realism around...and by realism, I don't mean the cynicism of every-man-for-himself and a foreign policy based around Machiavellian strategic self-interest...to the contrary...I think authentical realism can only be idealistic in the face of terrible realities...or realities that fall short of our ideals...because it's our ideals that make the reality look so crappy in the first place...and its our ideals that then makes us uncomfortable enough, as you were saying, before, to make things better...
But there is reality that we have to deal with amidst that, I think...and that's one of the things that I really appreciate about scholarly work and policy work, in particular...is this really rigorous expectation of dealing with realities that don't square with our aspirations...and to reconcile them...which I think that, within politics, the best liberal and conservative writers both do, in part, if they could just see more clearly how exactly their ideals are realizable...
Meaning...we'll never have a world where people always do right...you work with kids for 5 minutes, you know that we start out of selfish, whiny little bastards, at least at a certain point in our lives...and most of us get better over time...
The trick is what makes us better...and how some people grow enormously in the same period that others grow much less...which is Maslow's point when he's discussing the Frankl stuff...that some people grow amidst the most awful of conditions...and others fail to grow nearly as much, even under more ideal conditions...some people like Frankl grow enormously amidst a mass eradication of his people...and others remain petty and small-minded even while all of their basic needs and several important luxuries are provided for...and that last point is rich or poor...meaning you have rich people who fail to grow despite so much available to them...because they never quite figure out that the kind of happiness they are looking for will be found with money or anything it can buy...it just buys them what they want, in the moment, only to leave them unsatisfied at the deepest levels, down the line...
Now...I've still seen enough historical evidence, though, Carson, to be optimistic that we do grow -- generally, as people...humanity as a whole, as much as individuals -- over time...in really clear and significant ways...more freedom...less wars...more material development, even for the poorest in more relatively developed societies...more education and understanding and opportunities for both and their impact on those other areas...more measureable and real happiness...less drudgery...less disease...less death...more health...
I mean along so many variables, Carson, our lives are better today than our forebearers thousands, hundreds, even several tens of years ago...
But our expectations are always growing...which is terrific...but I think because our expectations grown, things seem more disappointing, sometimes, than they actually are, objectively...
I better get home and get some sleep, Carson:):):)...it's so nice to get to engage a question like this at this level of thought, Carson:):)...
By the way...who's HST?...
I'm so sorry to hear about Reverend Coffin's death, by the way...in an earlier life (like around 12 or so) my family and me were major peace activists...I performed the Butter Battle in Wichita in protest of the B-2 Bomber, when I was a kid:):):)...my views have evolved quite a bit since then, as you can imagine:):)...but I still have a special place in my heart for people who have the guts to believe in the possibility of world peace...even as I am much more aware of the limitations on that idea at this point in humanity's history:):):)...
I'll talk with you soon, bud:):)...
We should definitely take in a Royals game here, soon enough:):)...
Love,
Ben
Is it better to be don Quixote and know it, or to really believe those windmills are dudes?
In some ways, it doesn't matter, as long as you are don Quixote. In other ways there is a really profound difference.
I have a point in all of this, but I am not going to make it. Instead, I will just leave that little riddle and two sentences worth of introductory commentary alone and let it stew.
Not because I am not interested in finishing it, but because clocks keep ticking.
If you're referring to that last point in my post, Carson, I think I see where you're going...
I think we have more peace than we did at the beginning of the 20th Century...and we can have more, still...but I know, now, that bombers are important to realistic peace in the future, a much as diplomacy...though diplomacy and soft power are more important, I think, much of the time...
When you say "In some ways, it doesn't matter, as long as you are don Quixote," that's where I think I share a sympathy for people who believe in the impossible dream, even if it's a little far-fetched...
Have you seen that movie, dude?...Peter O'Toole, Sophia Loren...it's one of my favorites:):)...
I root for Quixote, every time...knowing that he always loses in the end:):)...
Ben
I should add an addendum, Carson...
I have no interest being Quixote, however...
Losing battles never interested me if they are truly losing battles...
I root for Quixote because someone had to take on the fuckin' Spanish Inquisition (I'm only referring to the movie story, here)...and while I probably would have played it smarter, I hope...I applaud courage in the face of overwhelming odds, even if finding a winning game plan is probably the better option:):)...
Ben
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