The force of our convictions and our ignorance

I am just reflecting, tonight, after those Virginia Tech killings, which, in all likelihood, are made more likely by the high pressure ways that we deal with one another, including that kid who committed this terrible crime.

It's so insane. Our forceful, pressuring, strong-arming ways are so destructive so much of the time. They accomplish so little in real time (except, generally, to cover our rear ends), and they undermine so much, including and especially our real and developing capacity for reflecting on our behavior and choices, which is the only real basis for sustained behavior change, if we consulted just a smidgeon of the psychological research and if we thought it for about two seconds.

It is so destructive, for good people and in ways that increase the propensity of not-so-good people to turn to the most destructive means. Remember, pressure and forcing one's way through political negotiations IS the underlying purpose of terrorism. They just think we don't have any balls to go to the lengths they go to. And, in the meantime, it completely fucks a healthy life for good people, as we are all scrambling like mad to keep one step ahead of our fears that take more thought and engagement and communication to adequately mangage (that's why more educated and more thoughtful liberal democratic societies do such a better job managing such situations we would realize if we weren't such stubborn knuckleheads about this issue), which means lives of misery for no good goddamned reason. We're just too scared and foolish to wisen up.

The truth is that, as in Iran or Cuba or Syria or North Korea, our convictions aren't worth a cup of warm spit if they aren't guided by more enlightened thought about how to accomplish those things that our convictions seek to accomplish.

Have we rid the world of sin by legislating or moralizing or ostracizing or socially, legally, economically, or politically pressuring people to act better?

No is the most obvious goddamn answer to that simple observation about life. Does the legislating help? No. Has it helped for the millenia that we've been trying it? No. Is is going to help on other matters when there is no immediate danger and where reflection has not caught up with behavior yet?

No, is the simplest goddamn answer to that question.

Will people catch up if they are in good faith? Sure. Because they'll catch up if they're in good faith regardless. Will it catch up if they are not in good faith? No. And, unless there is immediate danger, it doesn't do any goddamn good and it makes it all the more attractive for both good and not-so-good people to taste forbidden fruit until they are in good faith.

Meaning, sin and lawbreaking and all sorts of disrespect for social codes is a monster that we create for ourselves, much of the time, because instead of faciliating reflection and communication and understanding about issues and more patiently allowing peoples' consciences to work out such problems, we make sinning and lawbreaking and disrespect for social codes all the more attractive for our efforts to dissuade people.

Hopefully, they get it figured out, and only because they give a shit.

But if they don't give a shit, we just make it more interesting for them to break the rules.

So nicer, softer, more reflection provoking methods get us closer to our goal because they cut through all the middlemen of temptation and forbidden fruit and blind rebellion that are the consequence, largely, of people rebelling against the rules and not understanding their own mistakes while they are making them.

Do I despair that we will never learn that lesson and forever be lost in this wilderness of self-righteousness around our various causes? Often and deeply:):)LOL:):)

But is that the only course available to us? Obviously not. We are not cursed to be dumbasses till the ends of humanity (although Mike Judge makes a convincing case that perhaps that is where we are heading if we keep embracing tough and sexy and immediately gratified over smart and strong and compassionate and decent).

The force of our convinctions will continue leading us down the path to hell, if we can't get our heads out of our sanctamonious asses for one moment to look around and ask ourselves, "Where's all that progress that we were promised?"

It's not in Iran. It's not in North Korea. It's not in Iraq. It's not in the environment (although I have to say that the environmental ethic that has developed in the free market is the most promising sign of real environmental progress that I have witnessed in the last 5 years or so). It's defintely not on race issues, which are at a dead stand-still, as far as I am concerned, as we all continue to keep quiet about how we really feel so the thought police are appeased. It's not on wealth equity issues, where we continue to fail to develop some kind of sustainable means of dealing with the problems of poverty. It's not gender equity issues, as women make 75 cents on the dollar and as a more genuinely open and equitable conversation about sexual equality is kept at bay by so much more repressive liberal and conservative moralisms about a woman's place and men's responsibilities.

I can't name a place in American or international life where real progress is taking place these days and unequivocally say, "Thank god that more repressive forces has shown us the way."

And the most serious place where we lack progress in 21st century political life is in our romanticism of force. Two hundred plus years of liberalization all treated like they were some kind of historical accident that interrupted thousands of years of force and aggression dominating humanity's fate, with liberal values leading us out of that dark and unfortunate and long period of human history.

What we need, reason the forces of repression, is to put that genie back in the bottle. We need to let go of our aspirations for freedom and learn to live with the compromise of a forced, miserable, exhausted, cynical, unhappy existence.

It's almost like we've reached the promised land with that kind of thinking, isn't it? How could I have missed all of the progress in that vision of the future?

The big lie of the Nazis and the Soviets was that they imposed a harsh, miserable, unproductive existence on their people, and then when things never seemed to turn out as well as they planned they would intone, "Just wait. The progress will materialize. Once we have finally imposed our will for good."

"Just wait," I can hear Democrats saying, right now, "Progress is on the way. Just wait." And when it comes, they will say, "See what we created?" And Republicans will say, "But no. You didn't create that progress. We are responsible for all that progress."

And noone will have the courage to acknowledge that perhaps that progress comes largely from the efforts of individuals and not from political parties, at all. And perhaps, just perhaps, it comes from our learning and a discussion that more openly facilitates it, not from force that presupposes right answers that it cannot possibly know.

And sadly, it is the force of the convictions of terrorists that kill innocent Israeli and American and British and Spanish and Lebanese citizens who say to Muslim populations, "See all the progress that we create in the name of Allah and Mohammed? See how we have confronted the Infidel and assured a stronger place for Islam in Islamic society and Muslim nations in the world of nations?"

And the Chinese will laugh and say, "Progress does not come from some god. Progress comes through the party. It comes because we make it so. Liberalization is a fancy Western word for the good things that the Chinese government has created for you."

And on and on and on. Everyone claiming the banner of progress, whether they have actually produced it or not.

And meanwhile, free peoples continue to look to their political authorities to provide them with progress that is only possible when they are more free and not when they are more regulated and fearful of their government.

And I just breathe a heavy sigh and think to myself:

"I live in this foolish, foolish time with these foolish, foolish people and all I want to do is be left alone if they cannot learn to live with one another more reasonably and with more respect for one another and their consciences. I just want these foolish people to leave me alone if they can't treat me decently and constantly make excuses for what shitheads they are to me and one another. If people are going to perpetually rationalize why they are so selfish and mean-spirited and hurtful, I just want to spend as much time away from them as possible. Because these are not people that I could ever aspire to be."

"Why would any child want to be like us when we are behaving this way?" we must ask ourselves. Why would anyone look on our culture and think, "That is the best that humanity has to offer?" we must think to ourselves at some point. Why would anyone look at out debates and discussions and boycotts and protests and pressure and strong-arming and forceful and aggressive ways and say, "That is what humanity has been aspiring to be for all its glorious history?"

We can't say any of those things. Because if we did, we'd be big fat fuckin' liars.

We are not the best that humanity has to offer. And the quicker we come to terms with that, the better we can move on to BECOME the kind of people that are the best that humanity has to offer rather than constantly making excuses for why we are such dicks all the time.

I am embarrassed by this little race of ours. I love them. A lot. I care about them. A lot. But I'm not going to lie to them and tell them that they are the best that humanity has to offer when they so clearly are not.

I love them more than that.

And I can only hope that people will, one day soon, I hope, learn to love themselves enough to be honest with themselves in that way. So that we can get about the business of becoming the kind of people that can proudly call itself the best that humanity has to offer rather than the piss-poor forced cynical compromise with that vision.

I can only hope that we will face up to ourselves. Because we are a shitty little species in the meantime.

Love,
Ben