Jesus was a young man when he changed the world

When I think about it, for all the talk about youth and experience in this election, there is one huge rebutal to the notion that age and experience should trump youthful idealism in a country as Christian dominant as America is.

Jesus of Nazareth was in his thirties when he changed the world. The world changed more than a 100 years after his death, when Rome had largely converted to Christianity. But the work that Jesus did to change the world and challenge the repressive political and religious forces of his day was done when he was quite a bit younger than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Guliani, John McCain, Ron Paul, or any of the contenders for the American presidency (if I'm Barack Obama, I'm summoning the youthful image of John F. Kennedy to my cause; I think Lloyd Benson would appreciate and everyone can agree that Hillary Clinton is no Jack Kennedy). Jesus also did a hell of a lot of more good than any of these folks are likely to do and with a lot less formal power.

I've often said that Jesus' teaching that we should pluck the beam from our own eye before we pluck the splinter from the eye of our neighbor is better aphorism than approbation. What I mean by that is that it's just a fact of life that Jesus had figured out at the ripe old age of 30 that people tend to assign blame and recriminate about the sins of others more than reflect on their own sins, mistakes, and ways they've hurt others or hurt their interests. And more than 2000 years later, it is still more of a reality than wisdom that any of us follow very well.

Me too.

As I reflected on the self-centered nature of U.S. policy in this war and toward the Iraqi government - how it has blinded us to our failures in the course of that war - I started to reflect on my own failures and selfish impulses. I've had too many of them to count (and I don't trust just putting them all out there for the whole world to see, frankly; though I am very sorry when my selfishness has hurt or scared others or hurt their interests or when I'm otherwise been an asshole).

Generally, good people do not go around advertising their flaws and sins and mistakes. It is this tendency that more repressive forces and folks can use to exploit their shame about their sins and mistakes and shortcomings to rationalize more repressive efforts to deal with them. It is also this tendency which keeps them under wraps and us unable to be more honest with ourselves and one another about our sinning and self-centeredness. And the repression makes it so. Less repression means more openness about sinning and making mistakes. More openness means more honesty about those mistakes. And more openness and honesty means that mistakes get made less over time.

This is why liberal democratic societies are empirically stronger cultures, societies, and have stronger governments than less liberal societies. It is not our propensity to get rid of such folks. Such a foolish and shortsighted theory of democratic government is almost laughable given the universality of such a repressive propensity. That is the history of the illiberal world and too much of the illiberal history of the liberal world, sadly, in a nutshell. Throwing the bums from our midst is the history of illiberality of the world. The only distinction in that illiberality is how illiberal was it. How harshly or brutally did we treat people. How severe were our punishments. How many people died or went to prison or were treated harshly in the name of our hubris and hypocrisy and self-righteous mean-spiritedness.

That was the essence of Jesus' teachings that transformed civilization and his own more illiberal time: that we should love our neighbor as ourselves and treat people accordingly.

Two thousand years later we are just as likely to screw up this most important teaching as we are to screw up our propensity to pluck the splinter from the eyes of others before we pluck the beam from our own eye.

Me too.

And as I reflect on my own selfishness (maybe if I get to know you and trust that you're a friend and not looking to get me in any way, I'll share my shortcomings with you; some people have already earned that trust and those who have know who they are) I don't just regret it and regret, especially, the way my defensiveness blinded me to my selfish behavior. I realize that despite our more vindictive, repressive turn here, as of late, that there is a responsibility to value people in and of themselves. There is a responsibility to do good by them and not do bad by them or hurt them unnecessarily, to be decent to our neighbors and love them as we would love ourselves, that transcends even the enlightened self-interest that might lead some people to take this path.

We should look after others because it is the right thing to do, completely independent of whether it helps us or not, whether it serves our interests or not, whether it incurs or staves off God's or the Democratic or Republicans parties' or Federal, state, or local regulators' or law-makers' or any of the various law-enforcers' wrath or not, or whether it does anything for us, at all.

And this comes from a soft atheist (meaning that while I don't believe in the literal existence of God, I take matters of morality and conscience and decency seriously and understand and appreciate the very important role that religion and morality and universal values both play in individuals' lives, but also the real, empirical value they have in every person's life and in the cultural, educational, political and other life of every person in the world, even non-believers like me).

In fact, my experience has been that those who want to be good because it's the right thing to do and not because it keeps at bay the wrath of their chosen God are often better people or at least as good as those who do so out of fear or worship that doesn't allow their reason to question their religion or their upbringing or things like the existence of God. Many Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, etc. are some of the most decent people in the world. And many Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, etc. are some of the most despicable people in the world, as evidenced by the strong religious beliefs of many terrorists and despots.

And one thing I am fully confident of, today, after much thought and life experience that I was not as well aware of when I was more narrowly Christian: people who choose to be good completely free of whether they are forced to do so or afraid to do otherwise are, I believe, better people, generally, than people who do so out fear or a less developed conscience (I still claim the liberal-minded Christian heritage I grew up with; I was a youth leader and a regular Church-goer for much of my youth, after all, and I have attended a very broad and numberous array of religious groups as a young person and as an adult, and I take the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as some of the most serious and important teachings that the world has known in its long history, even as I claim nor believe claims on his divinity or that he was a messiah).

Freedom of conscience is the most honest and clearest route to being and doing good. And no other route is as honest. And all of our more repressive instincts, in the last few years, have blocked that more honest route out of the pride and the hypocrisy inherent in more repressive instincts which have their holders rationalizing that they have finally found the route to stronger conscience: through their use of power and control over others. It is the most serious lie that humanity has ever told itself. It is the most serious lie that has ever been told. And it is responsible for more hubris, death, destruction, and serious and minor incursions on liberty that have all too tragically been a sad norm of too much of human history.

That doesn't let free people off the hook. As free as I am and feel, today, I have screwed up plenty. And I am responsible for that. For all my selfishness.

But the real hope for humanity is not found in the lie that our ability to address sin and mistakes and selfishness is found in our capacity to repress and hurt and control others. The real hope for humanity is found in the truth that our consciences can and will (often) correct for themselves when repression is not present and does so, today, empirically, where repression is not present.

We often doubt that, for periods at a time, when repressive forces are on the move and we get suckered into that lie (far too often over the course of human history). And our consciences are often taken up by our more selfish concerns, in the meantime. It took America a long time to debate and discuss and understand and face up to its responsibilities to our ourselves, our allies, and all of those people overrun by Adolph Hitler and his legion, and many people died and lost their freedoms and dignity and other consequences while we failed to do so. And doing so was human. It was a human instinct that we are all subject to, when we are not making excuses for our behavior and failing to understand the gravity of its consequences. And it is taking America far too long, today, to acknowledge its full responsibilities in its dealings in Iraq. I only hope that we do not repeat our mistakes in Vietnam and abandon people to their unnecessary deaths because of our self-centeredness and hubris at home.

But I know that kind of hubris and self-centeredness. I have been guilty of it many times in my life, sadly.

Many people are harsher about such matters. But that harshness is a big fat lie meant to cover up their own failures and hypocrisies and not face up to their original hurtfulness and their subsequent efforts to cover them up with lies about who they really are.

It also happens to blind them to their self-centeredness and how it impacts their ability to answer important questions ranging from "What should we do in Iraq?" to "How should people be treated when they have harmed others?"

I've said many times that I don't really care, frankly, why people find it so difficult to find the decency and compassion and love in their hearts to forgive people and treat them decently. It's a big lie that we tell to ourselves and to one another to pretend that any other kind of behavior is better behavior. It's a lie that we tell ourselves over and over and over again. And it is this lie that creates the mistrust with one another, with those who lie about their behavior to cover their hind ends, within the world at large that rationalizes all of the cynicism that rationalizes the repression that keeps all the lying and the mistrust and the cynicism and the repression in place. It's one long self-fulfilling prophecy. And the only way out of it is to face up to the lie and the bullshit that we all tell ourselves and one another about how being shitty to others makes all of it all the more likely.

But, in the meantime, none of that excuses our selfishness or bullheadedness or foolishness. It just makes it all so damned hard to see and understand and take responsibility for it.

That goes for me too. Jesus or no.

I guess I should say that my conviction that more genuine, decent, humane, compassionate, and freedom-respecting liberal democratic commitments does not just come out of my belief in the redemptive qualities and propensities of the human heart, mind, and soul. My conviction comes from a recognition and acceptance of the baser and less noble qualities of more decent and good people and a recognition of their limitations to offer up more repressive, brutal, and mean-spirited, aggressive responses to the problems they face.

All of us. Jesus. Me. The whole world. We all need to be better. And being better means stronger liberal democratic commitments, not weaker commitments. It means stronger commitments to liberal values of freedom, decency, humanity, compassion, democratic values more than government, and a culture where our hearts open up in the face of the ugliest that life has to offer rather than close up out of fear and bitterness.

That goes for me, too. As I forgive a world that has been acting like damned fools.

Me too.

Love,
Ben

A failure of vision - how self-centeredness undermines international policy

Reading the current issue of Foreign Affairs - with a fascinating discussion by Barak Obama and Mitt Romney of their international policy outlooks and policy proposal and an interesting roundtable discussion of important international policy experts about what to do with the war in Iraq, I am struck by one underlying truth of American foreign policy:

We are blinded by our self-centeredness. Almost every proposal in this group focuses on how to make Iraq do our bidding, rather than supporting a more genuine democratic solution in Iraq by its own people and representatives with military support for the security to provide the security and political space for such a solution to be found.

Almost every political proposal I have read or heard about what to do in Iraq focusses on what American must do to make the political resolution of Iraq's problems rather than on how American can assist in security efforts, where it is needed, so that Iraqis can come to their own more authentic democratic resolution.

Such self-centeredness reinforces every stereotype that Iraqis and the world have of Americans only looking after their own interests and leveraging for those interests at the expense of the interests of others. And it reinforces that stereotype because there is too much truth to it to ignore.

The Greeks' warning of hubris is as relevant today as it was in Ancient Greece because every civilization since then has persistently assumed as the Greeks did: that their own supposed virtue warranted whatever exercises of power they deemed necessary. And the devolution and loss of confidence in power that has characterized liberal democratic development and progress from that time has occurred as people become clearer about the how the self-interest and self-centeredness of various political parties does not match their own.

This is why enlightened self-interest rather than more narrow self-interest is the hallmark of liberal democratic values. Because it is the first step toward a more genuine concern for the interests of others, intrisincally and in-and-of-themselves, rather than as means to pursue one's own ends.

What is so disturbingly missing from almost every proposal around the war in Iraq is a concern for Iraqis and Iraqi democracy and it's own self-determined, self-governed development, rather than a primary focus on how it impacts American interests (and Americans wonder why Iraqis and the world are so suspicious of Americans and the American government). It is this concern by Iraqis and the Maliki government which has animated their open frustration with Washington for pressuring for political solutions that are hard and complex enough to reach, on their own, without Washington undermining the process with efforts which reinforce the image and reality of Washington and America as a self-serving player in political negotiations interfering in domestic Iraqi or other foreign politics for its own advantage. Most players in Washington do not see the problem because it is a game they have all too happily taken part in as long as it served their interests. And Americans wonder why Iraqis do not view or trust them as fair arbiters of their own internal squabbles.

As long as American international policy is animated by this myopia of self-interest, it should expect Iraqis and people around the world, including American citizens, too often, to view it, rightly, with suspicion and mistrust.

Noone should trust anyone who views them as a means of satisfing their own ends. No individuals should trust another individual who reasons this way. And no people should trust another people or another government who reasons this way.

And America should expect failure in Iraq as long it looks at Iraq as a means to its own ends.

When the liberal world leads in a repressive direction, the illiberal world follows

Repression is all the rage in the liberal and illiberal world, these days. The trend towards strict dress codes in Iran is just one of a number of incursions on liberty that are so popular all over the world, these days.

Iran launches new crackdown on unIslamic fashion

It is our fears leading us rather than our thoughtfulness, and our callousness rather than our compassion, that makes all of this possible, in the liberal democratic world as much as in the more illiberal, less democratic world.

As long as aggression is glamorized as the means to save the world rather than a tool with limited utility in our dealings with the world, this trend will go on. The Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians, the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the Americans, the British, the French. All of us. We'll all keep reinforcing this ugly direction the world has taken until we face up to its legacy.

Why is it so hard for people to take seriously the notion that loving your neighbor and feeling something genuine for them, even when they act poorly, is the only decent way to live? How long does that message have to be with us before we learn to take it seriously? Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, King. All of the of the most important teachers in the world have taught this lesson. And we perpetually ignore it out of our hubris that we have outthunk them.

This story isn't about Iran, alone. This story is about a bigger trend all over the world to scare people and for people to scare one another into more repressive, defensive stances in the world, rather than to engage it with more decency, thought, and confidence in our liberal values.

If the liberal democratic world wants the rest of the world to know that liberal values are stronger values, then they need to embrace them and the freedom and learning that comes with them and stop fearing them and leading the world like those values only matter insofar as they get us what we want. Liberal democracy is not about power or repression to get what we want. Liberal democracy is about freedom for people to live lives that they think worthy. And those are the values we need to lead with if illiberal governments and cultures of the world are to see in starker contrast just how ugly and repressive their behavior is.

Love,
Ben

Where real democracy and governance takes place: on the inside

The New York Times has an excellent article, today, on the movement that is most likely to secure a more democratic, secular, and liberal (meaning liberty-loving) direction for Turkey: by its own people.

Election in Turkey May Be a Watershed

And, interestingly enough, it does not come from liberal and independent Turks rallying around their secular military. It comes from liberal and independent Turks rallying around the rights of conservative and religious Turks who secular elites and military officials have attempted to stigmatize with a campaign of fear.

A very nice analysis by Sabrina Tavernise about how liberties of thought and conscience and expression - the right of women to wear head scarves without being stigmatized, as they often are in Turkey and France, for instance - are far more fundamental than who wins or loses power and elections. And how those liberal values are being taken more seriously by many Turks than who wins power.

What a refreshing approach to liberal democracy, huh? Americans and Europeans have a lot to learn from that example. And it is certainly a better example than European efforts to manipulate Turkey with sticks and carrots, rather than genuinely nurturing liberal democratic values and institutions internal to Turkey.

Even in liberal democracies, we just get so focussed on getting our way, that we forget that perhaps there are more fundamental values involved.

Love,
Ben