Failure and recrimination...

The headline is almost more important than the article...

America's Longest War...A nation once joined together in shock and vulnerability is now riven by failure and recrimination...

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7854412

If there is one word that describes my concern with America, right now...and I don't mean the American government...I mean Americans, although it's not just Americans...I've heard it with people from all over the world these days...

If there is anything that describes my concern with the world, right now...it is the recrimination...

I don't just mean looking for who to blame, although that is a fairly ignoble instinct as well...

I mean all of the ugliness and destructive attitudes about who to get, where retribution needs to be meted out, and how else to rationalize ugly feelings post-9/11 and post-Iraq war...in its most extreme, it manifests itself as genocide and terrorism and oppression...in it's least but still important extreme, it manifests itself as hurtfulness and insensitivity and a lack of compassion...

The partisanship we've experienced, I think, is a function of a nation lost, still, in its grief over 9/11 and the failures of the Iraq war and looking to take that out on someone...and, at some level, everyone...and a world wracked by violence and power-struggle and inequity and repression...and all of the ways that our worst instincts divide us...

My concern is with the us vs. them mentality that is the foundation for partisanship that assumes that one group of good people must dominate another group of good people if goodness is to be restored to the world...

It's all the rage, these days...liberals believe it...conservatives believe it...it's nonsense, of course...it is just as much nonsense as when democratic citizens in the 20th and 21st centuries look back at sectarian divisions among Protestants and Catholics in Great Britain or France or Spain that plunged those countries in endless wars and civil wars...it is just as much nonsense as 21st century democratic citizens look on with incomprehension at Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq or the broader Middle East and wonder how any group can believe that theirs will win some kind of final control or why they want to win even temporary control over the other...

It's foolish and nonsensical...and deeply destructive, for no good purpose...

But, sadly, what both divides Americans and people all over the world, right now, and what so many of them have in common is recrimination...is the desire for revenge and retribution...is the constant hair-splitting over what is unpardonable, because we are just too cowardly to forgive...

It is profoundly wrong-headed and destructive and it is nice to see one magazine pause and ask us if we have not lost track of our souls in the process...

It's the seriously troubling self-fulfilling prophecy of aggression and power-hunger...pursuit of power rationalizes destruction and the maintainance of power rationalizes destruction, which creates grief for others who then seek revenge or power to impose grief on those they see as enemies or opponents...

It doesn't start out that way...but it always ends up that way...
And right now is the worst that I have seen it in my lifetime...
And the more I see how ugly all people can be of all political, religious, nationalist, ethnic, gender, racial, class, and whatever other backgrounds, the less I romanticize any of it and any member of any group...

Fundamentally, we all are human beings...

And this time, more than any other, I see how important it is is think in those terms rather than in terms of all of the things that divide us...because we are too easily divided, for very little good purpose...
Power does not resolve our problems...nor does it resolve our grief...or our desire for revenge...

Forgiveness is the only way out of the recrimination and grief and desire for revenge...and power and aggression must be used as little as possible if we are to get anywhere as a species and a human family...and as long as we rationalize power and aggression for the benefit and at the expense of another, we will suffer this kind of division and violence and destruction...it doesn't matter for what purpose...we will always suffer together until we learn to treat one another better and respect limits on our capacity to hurt and force and compel one another to do our bidding...

The last 6 years, and as my friend Carson says, in the last 5 years, in particular, we have been lost on a road of darkness that promises to deliver us nowhere...

I no longer believe that that dark road is led by one group or one ideology or another...anyone and everyone who does not take forgiveness and dealing with the pain and grief seriously leads us down that road...and anyone who creates more pain and grief while detaching themselves from responsibility for that compounds the problem...

We will not ever resolve the important issues among us with power or force...we will, at best, win a battle, only to prolong a longer war...
We can, on the other hand, learn to respect and embody democratic ideals that sort out our fundamental needs, together...we can learn to respect one another's need for self-determination and self-governance, our need for freedom and our need to learn to take responsibility for ourselves without coercion (as a general rule), our need to be treated as equals and with an attention to equity when it comes to the talents and abilities we have to offer, our need to be helped when we are suffering, and our need for dignity while suffering or not...our need for love and genuine concern...our need to be loved and cared for and to love and care for others as human beings, not as members of parties or ideologies or religions or ethnicities or genders or races or sexual orientations or nationalities or any other way that we too often divide ourselves...

And as long as we do not take those ideals seriously, we can expect to be divided and to be treated badly as a consequence of those divides...

Martin Luther King was not some naive idealist, some pawn or passive collaborator in the brilliant machinations of Malcolm X...he was the most genuine moral leader of the 20th century, outside of Mohatma Ghandi, despite his foolhardy embrace of radicalism in his later, apparently more bitter years...and it is his message of love and compassion and forgiveness that is his greatest legacy, no matter how much our rationalizations try to twist that differently...that is the reason that his loving message is taught in schools and why we celebrate Martin Luther King day...to embrace what brings us together, not to vindicate what divides us...

And the significance of love and forgiveness is stronger than King or Ghandi or Jesus or Buddha or any of the people who taught about it...
And there has been no other time in my lifetime which has so embodied the need for love and forgiveness as our center...as our moral center, as our political center, as our human center...

The grief and repression and overweaning power that we impose on one another perpetually rationalizes further rounds of those ugly impositions, as Pablo Freire and Desmond Tutu remind us...just as the violence and bloodshed perpetually rationalize more violence and bloodshed until at last humanity can think and feel its way out of the ugliness and destruction...

Maslow was incomplete in his description of people losing their emotional life and vitality because of what happens to them in their lifetimes...what is more true is that people lose life and vitality in their lives because they lack the courage and willingness to face the pain and heartache and let it go...our lack of will more than what happens to us is responsible for our smaller visions...and the consequence is the cynical world that then further rationalizes our cynical outlooks which then further rationalizes a cynical world which then further rationalizes our cynical outlooks...

There is only one way out...Desmond Tutu writes powerfully about it...it is our need to forgive and to be forgiven...to love and to have compassion...there is no other path...everything else is a fool's journey...

There is no division of people that will finally vindicate us...vindicate how right we are/were or vindicate why we are superior to others or worthy of our larger rewards...

All of our divisions are premised on the notion that if we can root out those we see as different from us or defeat them or oppose them, then we can live in peace...it is false premise of peace and of a more universal humanity which is necessary for that peace...

We obviously must use force and aggression, at times, for our self-defense and for the defense and liberty of others...but we should use power as little as possible -- so that we can trust better when authorities must use power when it is genuinely necessary -- and we must use the least possible force and aggression necessary for our purposes at times when terrorists threaten or genocide must be stopped or dangerous and violent people must be captured...we must widen the scope of freedom, not narrow it, to build faith in our common political institutions -- particularly for times when that faith is necessary, as in the case of collective self-defense or criminal justice -- and to build our trust between one another...there is no trust with power...there is only fear...and fear is not a sustainable or decent way to lead people...it is a means of control that inevitably leads to abuse and/or corruption...

We must earn the trust of one another and build institutions -- with our words and our votes -- that earn the trust of all people...anything less is a recipe for prolonged and sustained conflict which will always threaten those institutions until it is resolved...

It is not power that keeps us together during these dark times...it is an idea...the idea of our common humanity...of our need to look after ourselves, and help others as we can...our need to be decent and take each individual seriously in their own rite...our need for love and compassion and understanding...our need to forgive and to share burdens and to mutually engage one another...our need to think and be open to ideas of people who disagree with us or see the world different from us...our need to be our best selves and to forgive our worst...

We have a million reasons for why we don't live up to that idea...for why we don't take that idea seriously...

But those reasons are all excuses that serve neither us nor anyone else...

As Jesus said, we are much more apt to see the splinter in our neighbors' eye than the beam in our own...

And as I hope we are learning during this period, our rationalizations can go as low as we'd like...that is the nature of our free will...whether we try to force away that reality or not...

Power and violence rationalize themselves...because someone exercises power over me or because they are violent with me, I must aspire to be likewise to avoid their grip...as my good friend John Shtupka (sp?) used to say when I first moved to Lawrence, "Life is a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you eat." Fill in power for bread -- meaning money -- and you have the essence of that rationalization...it happens to be false, by the way...we all eat shit, no matter how much money and power we have...and often we eat more shit when we have more money and power, which then reinforces peoples' desire for more money and power for the greater amount of shit that they eat...

It is a powerful rationalization that animates much of the world, sadly...though it genuinely serves noone...

And our capacity for rationalization is the reason why ideals and ideas are so important...because they check our capacity for acting rashly and compounding the rationalization...and they are the only basis for a sustainable future...

I think I understand in this period more than any other the importance of the idea of public education, where we all learn together and take thought seriously together...

As adults and as kids we often pair and divide off into people who think or act or we believe are more like ourselves...but the truth is that what has sustained us through this period has not been any central power...to the contrary, in the realm of politics, divided power and our ability to dissent and to criticize and to engage and to block abuses of authority, when necessary, has been terribly critical to checking the power-hunger of all people with authority...and there is still much more to do, in that regard...

What has sustained us, independent of the political process, has been our capacity to think and reason and aspire independently and together for something better than our current malaise...

This Economist article or Joe Nye's work on Soft Power or Mark Twain's literature, in that regard, are and have been, during this period, much more valuable than anyone being elected or unelected...we just persistently take it and the ideas and heart that are the real backbone of humanity and human life for granted...

For the same reason that most people choose long-term monogamous relationships over the thrill of fucking strangers, I have confidence in peoples' capacity to recognize this...recrimination or power-frenzy or identity politics or ideological or any other form of polarization are all highly charged forms of rebellion and dark impulse for people in the short term...

But they can't sustain a culture or a democratic government...that can only be sustained with something more genuine and honest and sincere and true...

We all know that...even as we indulge our darker temptations and impulses...

Failure and recrimination can rally us around ignoble ends...but they cannot sustain us...thought and compassion and common bonds are the only things that can sustain us...everything else is a fool's journey...

Love,
Ben

Healthy regression as a necessary element of progress...

When I studied Maslow for the first time more than 4 years ago, now, while I was in grad school, he introduced me to so many new ideas in his really remarkable theoretical work, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature...

But one idea that I don't think I had encountered before was the idea of healthy regression...

At the time, I didn't understand it very well...I appreciated the idea as an appreciation of the human experience...but I didn't quite understand what he meant...

But I think I'm beginning to understand what he means...

What I think Maslow meant was that progress is not an automatic march forward...that's why I didn't understand the idea when I first read it...because at the time I thought of progress as more of an automatic march forward, or regress as some kind of temporary reaction by a society...

But I think I'm beginning to understand, better, what Maslow was saying...at the cultural and political level as much as at the individual level...

Freedom is central to Maslow thinking about people and their thinking and values the ways that their thinking and values evolve over time in response to realities...

And I think what he was saying, now, is that we don't get better in some steady, automatic march...quite to the contrary, we have all kinds of moments of weakness and foolishness and ignorance and hurtfulness...

And there are times when we indulge or give into that weakness and foolishness and ignorance and hurtfulness...

And progress results from our thinking about our experiences and making choices from experiences and reflections on experiences...
But experiences include good and healthy choices...and they include bad and hurtful and ugly and unhealthy choices...

So, while the choice, itself, may not be a good choice...the need for freedom to make the choice...and the need to experience our choices and their consequences results in learning that is absolutely necessary to progress...

Meaning, not only is there some inexorable march forward to progress uninterrupted by regress or bad choices or reactionary cultural and political moments (which I think America and the world is in the midst of, right now) and poor reasoning and adaptation of values to realities...

But bad choices are necessary for us to better appreciate and internalize values and good choices...they bring a reality to our experience and learning that is only abstract until the experience is a part of our choices and lives...

There is no life where people don't make bad choices...that's the insanity and futility of trying to beat bad choices out of people...people need to make bad choices if they are going to learn better values and ideas and experiences...

And the irony is that the more we try to beat bad choices out of people, generally, the more they are attracted to the very choices we are trying to steer them away from because, fundamentally, people have a healthy aversion to control and a need to make choices freely...they can repress that need, but it has consequence in their lives, first and foremost being both an insecurity about a world full of uncertainty and their own propensity toward making bad choices, but also an internal conflict that never gets resolved while people try to live lives of perfection that are not possible and unhealthy until people are able to learn from their choices...

As the really brilliant play, Genesis, performed by EMU recently and written by high school kids, amazingly enough, at the Manhattan Theater Workshop, says, choices, including moral choices -- meaning including sin or serious mistakes -- are epistemological...we're not quite sure if what we've been told about sin or mistakes or choices is true...so we want to try it out to see if we can trust what people tell us...because we are all individuals, living individual lives and cultivating individual judgment...and that judgment, quite naturally and healthily, is skeptical of the judgment of others...

So we try to choice...and if it's a real sin, we get burned...or perhaps we
don't but the thrill of the sin wears off as we are humanized to our experiences, good and bad...

Jonah Goldberg is just wrong...hurting people for making mistakes is not necessary or helpful...protecting ourselves from people who engage in seriously dangerous or violent behavior is reasonable...but hurting them is often retribution, not justice...they are not the same thing...retribution is our rationalization of our desire for revenge...a weakness or sin, not a value of nobility...there are just many among us who have a hard time looking honestly at themselves, enough, to be honest with themselves about this weakness...many, many people have a hard time being honest with themselves, constantly absorbed in their defenses of their egos...

But a loving, compassionate attitude towards are sins and mistakes and choices allows us to live more functional lives where we make choices -- good and bad -- and learn from them, rather than being obsessed with tasting forbidden fruit, hiding our true selves, lying to ourselves and others about our behavior for fear of being found out and suffering sanction, pretending that we believe things we don't for fear of being hurt while believing otherwise in our hearts, and otherwise compounding our original mistakes with all kinds of deception and self-deception...punishment creates the need for deception and self-deception, in fact...there is no need for it, otherwise...and ironically, punishment is generally our own flawed belief and habit of indulging a weakness for revenge or for believing that punishment actually makes a behavior go away, which any basic psychology student could tell you does not happen, since punishment generally wears off over time...that's why we have to go to more and more severe punishments, because lower level punishments -- from the time of our childhoods -- wear off over time...

Punishments hurt people without really leading them to think differently...to the contrary, they often obscure the reflection process which is responsible for behavior changes because they lead to deception and self-deception to avoid hurt as a defense mechanism and thus shortcircuit the reflection process which is really the critical process...

The key to behavior change is thinking differently...and punishments often obscure the terrain, unnecessarily burden people with stresses that serve very little real function -- except perhaps to cower some people, but even then either temporarily or with the counterproductive consequence of cowering them from worthy pursuits, as well, as cowardice becomes a habit...

Our propensity to want to hurt people for most reasons is often related to our own pain -- whether we are honest about or recognize that or not -- that, as Desmond Tutu and Pablo Freire teach, we often want to inflict on others out of a illusive hope that it will make us feel better...it generally doesn't, as most people who hold onto various bitternesses either figure out or live in misery not figuring it out...

But it doesn't serve any objective purpose in promoting better behavior, generally, except as an indirect means of prompting reflection that is often shortcircuited or undermined by the punishment itself as people try desperately to avoid facing painful realities and sharing painful realities with others...

The truth is that people like Jonah Goldberg just haven't thought about this very much, I generally think...because almost never do I hear a reasoned discussion of the matter...almost always it is to reinforce our biases and vanities about our desire to see ourselves as successful in changing behavior in ways that are generally inaccurate and untrue...
I think the reason why less educated people tend to be, often though not always, more aggressive is because they have the hardest time learning to reflect on their aggression enough to consider whether it has been effective in achieving their goals or not...and when it doesn't achieve their goals, then often just go on doing the same dumb thing again and again...especially if they have people all over the culture reinforcing that stupid original mistake, as is the case now...

We are amidst a period of regress, I think, because everyone is reinforcing the same dumb mistake that somehow change in behavior can be forced (which it clearly can't to anyone who is looking seriously and not just reinforcing the same biases...it can influence behavior, short term, but choices and the conscience that develops from those choices always controls behavior, long term...

It's just a really dumb mistake that people can't let go of, for whatever reasons...

Which is fine, because as I said, earlier, eventually we have to face the consequences of our choices...good and bad...we can't just keep making the same dumb mistakes into perpetuity and never learn from them...ok, some of us can, but a lot of people don't, and most people end up following stronger wisdom once people get off the stupid notions...

This is a regressive period, in my view, because it is a time when a mistaken notion -- that serious behavioral change can be forced -- that this idea is holding sway and choices in that direction are being reinforced like gangbusters...so people follow the idea, no matter how bad it is, because an awful lot of people look more to others to answer the question, "Is this a good idea?" then they look to their own developed thoughts and consciences...we all do, is the truth, though there are those among us with more developed thoughts and consciences to deal more effectively with the problems we face and to develop values that are consistent with better thinking about those problems...

But it is a healthy regression, insofar as bad choices are necessary to understand, better, what good choices look like and to internalize rather than just abstract why choices are good or why choices are bad...

There just is no way to make forward progress all the time...life is not a race where we do the simple task of running over and over again into perpetuity...life is a long and dynamic experience that involves thought and choices about how to navigate that experience, and making choices involves making good choices and bad choices...

There is no way out of that, no matter how much parents and teachers and politicians try to force people to only make good choices...it's not possible to only make good choices...and those who are trying to are fooling themselves...we can make better choices, over time...but better choices necessarily involve bad choices as well...there is just no way around that...if we can develop patience for that fact...which we clearly can...though so many people -- most people -- are still foolishly convinced that somehow we can force away bad choices, which is just a mistaken way of looking at our experience as people...

Freedom is fundamental to our natures because freedom is necessary to learn...it always has been and has had to be stolen in the night when it was more closely guarded, restricted and repressed...

But more open freedom has allowed us to both make better decisions with more freely made choices in a way that is sustainable wisdom rather than relearning the wheel each generation and more open freedom has allowed us to be more realistic about people's learning and experiences that contribute to learning rather than fruitlessly repeating the same mistakes from past generations...

This particular regressive period has involved people romanticizing a fairy tale past, I think, believing that there once existed a moment in time when mistakes were not made...or when repression served us better than it really did...and giving into the weakness and foolish belief that such repression can actually make choices we don't like go away, rather than just allowing the mistakes and the learning that comes with them...

The latter is much more healthy and was what Maslow was referring to with the concept of healthy regression, I think...and I think we are wise to heed his thinking about the matter rather than to foolishly and arrogantly make the same mistakes from past generations...

So much more to write, but I'm exhausted and need some sleep:)...another time:)...

Love,
Ben

Freedom, consequences, and progress...

After reading Michael Wilbon's brilliant little critique of the arrogance of U.S. basketball teams in international competition...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101815.html

...and Jonah Goldberg's really terrible defense of Barry Goldwater as a social conservative (why would this be a legacy to defend? Could Jonah be more oblivious to the failures of this philosophy in American culture and in cultures like Iran, China, Cuba, Iraq, etc., today?)...

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MWRiYmY2YTg1OTJkZjdlNDk5ZDFjODg3NDRiYmE4NWM

This is the same Barry Goldwater who defended the right of homosexuals to serve openly in the American military before he died, mind you...that is the Barry Goldwater legacy that is worth defending...

I grow increasingly amazed at how much a leading power or leading figures in a leading power (Jonah's got enough fame and influence, I think, to call him a leading figure) will defend its/their failures...

Here's a better quiz than at the beginning of Jonah's arrogant recasting of Barry Goldwater as a social conservative...

Can anyone name a serious successful foreign policy initiative in the last 6 years?

Iraq? Iran? North Korea? Relations with our democratic allies nevertheless with our international partners?

Aside from the the hypocritical stand to sell nuclear components to India but spend enormous, largely unsuccessful efforts to keep Iran from exercising its sovereignty and self-determined defense policy (a notion that is screamed from the rafters from the U.S. when it serves us, President Ahmadinejad might say in that hypothetical debate with President Bush)...

What major foreign policy success have we experienced in the last 6 years?

I can't name one...

More worrying to me, I am hard-pressed to identify serious progressive domestic policy (meaning, policies that accomplish their aims while genuinely respecting free and democratic principles...I know we've had such policy changes...Justice Kennedy's majority Supreme Court decision overturning sodomy laws comes to mind)...

The number of power grabs in the last 6 years -- by both liberals and conservatives -- so outnumbers authentic progressive democratic policy that it is truly amazing and strange to me that so many people could continue with such reckless abandon refer to their policy aims as progressive...the only thing that matters, apparently, for a policy to be progressive, is that the people passing it favor it...which is why everyone and their grandmother -- the Soviet Union, Iraq's Baathist Party, Fidel Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Queda -- everyone can claim to favor an agenda that is progressive for humanity...

Because as long as it favors their view of progress, then it must be progressive, by God...no matter how many freedoms and human and civil rights or civil liberties it trambles or who it condescends or promotes or defends a state of inequality or inequity...

So then the question is how do you separate real progress from propaganda...

And, to my mind, there is both a progressive historical standard -- meaning, history is generally regarded as progressive the more freedoms, equality, and generally people are treated better over time...and once we have freedoms and equality and treat and get treated better, we are less likely to give up freedoms or treat or tolerated being treated worse -- and there is an objective standard...

The objective standard is pretty simple, as well...

Do things get better?

Meaning, does the way that we operate now make things better? Do we accomplish more of our goals? Do we actually advance the things that we want to advance?

The bottom-line is, "Were we successful in promoting the ideas that we wanted to promote?"

And I can't think of many policies -- certainly none in the international arena, but not a lot in the domestic arena, as well, where our more genuine progressive, democratic, and freedom-loving traditions hold more stead -- where we have been successful...

And I have a very quaint, probably naive and certainly not nearly cynical enough notion for a world that is just too ugly for my sweet and innocent notions of democratic ideals...

Perhaps policies or attitudes or ideas we adopt should accomplish our goals...

And perhaps, when they don't, we should begin to ask the question, have we gone down the wrong road?

I'm pretty clear that America (and the world, really) has gone down the wrong road for the last 6 years or so...
And the proof is in the perpetually burnt pudding...we keep fucking shit up...and we keep sticking to our self-righteous little guns no matter how much we fail...

Which is great for me, I suppose...because I've had so much success with approaches that take freedom -- my own, especially -- and equity and treating people better more seriously (and beyond plenty of failure, that, with freedom, becomes something to learn from, not to fear) that I guess at some point I'll just be able to kick back and wonder why everyone keeps stumbling on this one...when we keep failing on this one, what are we proving?...that we were willing to stick to our guns, no matter how much it fucked shit up?...not a terribly noble intention...that kind of attitude, by definition, I think, is called self-righteousness...

And the amazing thing to me and I'm sure to the world, right now, as they watch America's hypocritical leadership and example in the world...is how in the world can you be self-righteous and maintain such hypocrisy?

We love freedom, but we clamor for power...we value democracy, but just not Iran's democracy...we favor democratic norms, but not debate or diplomacy or discussion or all those tedious "diversions" from us getting what we want...we love free trade, except with Cuba...we value free expression, except with video games and saying fuck and shit on TV and showing booby at the Superbowl...

Now I'm a hypocrit, just like everyone else...I have plenty of things I've fucked up in my life...plenty of places where I owe apologies...plenty of ways that my life has not lived up to my highest ideals...

But the single most important thing I respect about Mark Twain and his own acknowledged hypocrisy...is that he was being honest about it while he worked on being a better person...and a better man he was, which is why we still read him, today, and his great contemporaries -- Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman -- but not most of his contemporaries...

Being honest about being a hypocrit is the the only real honesty there is in the world, as far as I'm concerned...because everything else is a lie...pride is a sin, the morally self-righteous amongst us perpetually forget...and the core of genuine morality and certainly of the messages of Jesus and the Buddha and Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi and all of the strongest moral traditions is love and compassion and forgiveness...and Twain's disposition demonstrated compassion for his own fumbling and the fumbling of others, as well all work each day to be better people...as we make moral choices -- sometimes good ones, sometimes bad ones -- on our journey to becoming better people...

But the larger question for me is not just letting go of self-righteousness for its own sake, which I think is a noble endeavor and one that wins respect for people from me (the reason why I respect my friend, Carson Brackney, so much, as well as my friend, Brian White, for instance (Carson my more liberal debate coach and good friend from WSU debate and Brian is my more conservative colleague and good friend from WSU forensics), neither of whom have much love for the kind of moral sanctioning that Jonah favors in this article, and why I have so little respect for Jonah Goldberg, right now, who is a serious hypocrit and a half and all the while preaching all kinds of government control over drugs and guns and moral sanction for those who don't live up to his standard (although porn's ok with Jonah since he's developed a penchant for the stuff)...

The much bigger and more important question for me is, "Is it working?"

Meaning, do the self-righteous stands actually accomplish their goals better?

And generally, I think the unequivocal answer from the last 6 years, when self-righteousness and power-hunger has blinded us all to those failures...

Is no...

Have self-righteous notions of unilateralism worked to bring a stable, democratic Iraq? Have you read the papers, this morning?

Have self-righteous stands around nuclear weapons by countries we don't like or trust made them less likely to pursue such programs? Do you remember North Korea or Iran pursuing nuclear programs so ambitiously before they were linked as the Axis of Evil, with the third wheel on that Axis, Iraq, being invaded, and before the U.S. and international power pressed to have them abandon such pursuits? No...because they weren't pursuing them as ambitiously...

Have self-righteous stands around steroids rooted them out of sports? Obviously not, unless you're just blind to the clearly exponential rise of steroids in sports post-crack down...

Have self-righteous notions control and harsh punishments for drugs and guns and crime led to drops in the crime rate in the U.S.? Not if you've seen the 2005 statistics and not if you've seen the charts I've seen that show the murder rate peaking during two periods, in particular...in 1933, at the height and the last year of alcohol prohibition, and in the early 80's through the very early 90's, when the drug war was at its height...everything we know about the violence and propensity toward seriously dangerous and murderous behavior that accompanies an illegal alcohol and drug trade match that data...

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm

We've seen drops in the crime rates since 1993, but they took the community of scholarly criminologists and folks like James Q. Wilson who favor harsh sentences completely by surprise, largely, I imagine, because they were related more to more proactive and more decent, humane, and opportunity-creating educational, economic and criminal justice policies than harsher polices and aggressive policing that had so consistently failed in the 30's and 80's...

And here is the true spirit of America that is captured in our capacity for progress in the last few years...

Do you know, by my lights, where the most substantial progressive efforts in the country have come in these dark days for freedom?

From free citizens...from individuals and individual groups working on such mediums as the internet, amongst average people developing less restrictive social norms, among young people not as freaked out by porn or by cursing or by a whole host of socially restricted activity, by people less scared of supporting illegal aliens no matter how they came to the country, by people more open and supportive of gays and lesbians and transgendered people, by peoples' concern for abortion rights even as they have been curbed in places like South Dakota, by peoples' concern for the right to die and for the right of free thought and expression even as Florida's terribly arrogant Governor Jeb Bush and its arrogant Republican state legislature sought to decide for Terry Schiavo when and if she could authorize her own life to be ended and whether professors and teachers in Florida can have unpopular views in Florida universities and schools...and by ordinary people with authority...teachers and police officers and diplomats who have given people more space and been more proactive in resolving issues through communication and relationships, more than with force...

The most important progress in the early 21st century, quite appropriately, has not come from politicians or America's power-hungry political leadership...it was not politicians who defeated overbearing European Union power in France or the Netherlands...it was citizen referendums that checked power in Europe...

It has not largely been opposition parties or activists who have checked the Bush Administration's arrogance in international policy circles...it has been freely expressed opinion in the international community...Bush has often been indifferent and hostile to pressure and sanctions from the U.N, from Democrats and from liberal interest groups (all while espousing pressure and sanctions and military force as the solution that it clearly to anyone honest it has not been)...but international opinion has had serious impact on the winds that the Administration has paid attention to...

Progress in the 21st century will not be led by power or politicians, primarily...it will be led by free citizens, enlarging their freedoms and expecting less overbearing and controlling leadership and more genuinely collaborative relationships from their leaders...it will not be ideological in nature, primarily (though ideology, like nationality, can be a healthy expression of identity...I am a liberal in the same way that I am a Christian...not exclusively, any more, but certainly not exclusive of my liberal or Christian roots)...it will be more thoughtful and open-minded, and less dogmatic and sectarian...

Progress in the 21st century will do what we can only imagine progress doing and being...it will fulfill our highest free and democratic ideals more genuinely...it will be more peaceful, more thoughtful, more idea-driven, more open-ended than we have been accustomed to in the 20th century, but which has set the stage for progress in the 21st century...

That seems like a bold claim, I'm sure, given the lack of peace and the amount of serious and dangerous conflict facing the world, at the beginning of the 21st century...with the clamouring for power from all sides, here in our early days in the century...and with politicians who seem to know no limits to either their power or their wisdom in exercising it...

But progress is only accomplished as we fulfill our ideals...everything else is always remembered as regress and folly...

It is our highest ideals that both define our progress and our failures and disappointments...

The reason why the situation with Iran will give way to democratic principles of self-determination is because those ideals are the only way to sustainably navigate us out of serious conflict over matters of self-determination...the reason why a peace deal with be signed between Israel and Palestine and peace will be achieved between Israel and her neighbors like Lebanon or Syria or Iran is because the conflicts that dominate there now will remain until the party come to terms with peaceful coexistence...the reason why freedom wills out is because it is more conducive to our natures as free, self-governing, democratic peoples who respect free will and engaged thought as our only real determinant of social and moral progress, with force always losing to commitments to such freedom...always...the reason why equity will be taken seriously in international power circles, the international and domestic economy, and within relationships in America and the world is because inequity undermines us and our goals...because universal values and common bonds are needed for us to achieve our dreams together...

No matter how cynical we get, our ideals always guide us because our cynicism can't sustain us...the purpose of ideals are to help us navigate the unresolved problems in the world that we often grow cynical about as we fail and fail and fail on our road to a more thoughtful, effective, mutually respectful future...

Eventually failure must give way to success...because while we may be stubborn...we are not stupid...eventually we learn our lessons...even if some of us learn them faster than others...and even if some of us seem bound and determined never to learn them at all...

Generally...we must learn from our failures...or be subject to them until we do...

The wonderful thing about our freedom is that the more we exercise it, the more we learn...we make mistakes, but we learn from those mistakes the more we have the freedom to take ownership...and ownership, as President Bush reminds us, comes from freedom, not servitude...

Freedom allows us to make choices...good and bad...wise and unwise...and from those choices, we learn better values as we try out our ideas and values in a world that often needs for us to learn and often make corrections...

Freedom allows us -- and certainly has allowed me -- to learn the lessons from the consequences of our actions...at its base, the standard for progress is not a self-righteous one...it is a simple question...

Did we fail? Or did we succeed?

And most importantly, did we succeed around those things that we know matter most?

And I, for one, am 100% convinced that such success comes with greater freedom, not greater control or acquisition of power....

And those who are similarly convinced will have to do what people who have loved freedom have had to do since the dawn of humanity to enlarge their freedom and learn and grow from that experience to accomplish our deepest aspirations and highest ideals...

We will often have to do so despite those who would force us to do otherwise...and expect relationships from those with power to be genuinely collaborative, and more genuinely collaborative over time...

I'm sure many of my students feel this very way right now...I have a lot of work to do to be more genuinely collaborative, myself...

And they do what I do in that situation...what President Bush does in such a situation...what President Ahmadinejad does in such a situation...what Kim Jong Il does in such a situation...what we all do in such a situation...

They resist and ignore anyone who won't let me make my own mistakes and learn their own lessons...yeah, I have a lot of work to do...

And a lot of lessons to learn from my failures, as much as from my successes...

Love,
Ben

On being strong-armed...

The post previous -- The consequences of too much pressure and too little thought and engagement on middle school math -- is all about how teachers being strong-armed on something that really matters to me is undermining the goal that it says that it is promoting...namely, not leaving children behind in school, and in life...

But the other consequence of all the strong-arming, right now, is that it is robbing me of the enthusiasm and energy and concern that I generally have for so many issues in my work and life...

And I have just decided -- I decided 4 years ago, really, when I left school -- that I am not going to live my life that way...

Meaning, over time, as much as possible, I will ignore strong-arming and avoid people who do it with me, as much as possible...

I just can't take it any more...I'm at my wits end with it and I would just rather quit teaching or quit policy or quit whatever than I would go on trying to appease people who would perpetually bully me around things that I already have a much stronger passion for than most people do...

I used to feel guilty about that, but I don't anymore...if the consequence of people's bullying is that they lose someone who is as dedicated and committed as I am to their cause, then so be it, is my thinking, today...you reap what you sow...

I am no longer a liberal, because I'm tired of being strong-armed by liberals...I quit grad school because I was tired of being strong-armed in grad school...I will quit teaching and writing if and as long as I am finally tired of being strong-armed in those arenas, as well (though teaching and writing are the most promising avenues for ending the strong-arming, as well, so I will probably still do both of these activities, in some capacity)...

But I will not be strong-armed into perpetuity...

If anyone does it with me long enough, I will eventually leave...everyone is welcome in my life...but I may take a hiatus from places where people can't get the message that their bullying is not welcome in my presence...

I have many times...I will, as many times as I need to, in the future...

As long as there are opportunities for freedom, I just can't live my life being a slave to someone else because they have decided that they should be able to control my efforts...and I don't care who that person or who those persons might be...I am noone's slave or servant...

I act and think freely or I will find somewhere I can...

I have never imagined myself a slave easily cowered by even the most vicious slaveowner...I will now and always aspire to be Frederick Douglas, risking everything, including recapture in Douglas' case, or death in the case of far too many slaves, to be free...

I take my freedom seriously...and if others don't who deal with me, then they will deal with whatever choices I make around our relationship...

I think I just figured out why so many adults look so weathered by time...it's not just grief, although that is certainly part of it, I'm sure...

It's living with the perpetual disappointment that their dreams of freedom as a kid are confronted with the reality of a world that is constantly twisting their arm and compelling their submission...

And I, for one, have just decided that I can't live as someone else's slave my whole life...I will be free, whethers others approve of that decision or not...

Love,
Ben

The consequences of too much pressure and too little thought and engagement on middle school math...

My kids are way behind a long and far too complicated curve...

I just want to go on record to say that the irony of people who don't take thought serious enough is that they generally end of making life far too complicated, when, if they had taken some time to think, up front, they likely would have found the best and simplest way, possible, without making life such a hassle for everyone...

This is one such story...

The curriculum that Kansas City, Kansas operates under is driven by scores on a District MAP test of basic skills and a Kansas State Assessment of skills like math, reading, social studies and science...

No matter what other kinds of learning may need to take place for kids or what would be constructive for their educations, these two test drive education in our district, right now...

And that is a problem...

It's not a problem because the skills on the test aren't valuable...they are valuable...and ones that I would love to cover in a math or reading or social studies or science class...and it's not a problem because we are teaching too low of skills...to the contrary, in my math class, we are teaching algebra and geometry and probability and all kinds of skills that were advanced skills when I was in middle school to every kid in the district...

The problem is the drive...

The problem is that we push so goddamn hard...

And my classes are where that problem show up most starkly...

The irony, I have discovered, as a math teacher, is that if I take the curriculum slowly and teach skills thoroughly and with a lot of review, most kids can get higher level math...it just takes a lot of patience and review and patience and review...our curriculum emphasizes creative application and exploration, so there is higher purpose to math, in particular, rather than just rote learning...

So those developments are all great...

The problem is the drive...that the tests push the kids (and the teachers) too goddamned hard...

As a consequence, the general attitude by many teachers is: we are not teaching for mastery, we must pace through the curriculum at the district-proscribed pace, and if kids get left behind, then so be it (ironic for a system driven by laws and philosophy that say no child left behind, huh?...yeah, if you're not used to reality not matching policy intentions, yet, just follow a few issues like this one to get a sense of it)...

You see...whether political leaders and representatives want to admit it or not...there is a reality outside of their intentions...so, no matter how strongly they may feel or how much they may push for a certain objective to be achieved, it can only be achieved at the pace and in the way that it will be achieved...and pushing the matter is often counterproductive...and this is a classic example...

The problem for me and my kids is that the kids I work with are the ones who regularly get left behind...most of my kids don't have formal, rigorously identified disabilities...they have makeshift labels for why they are failing and struggling in school and why there's nothing some teachers feel like we can do about it...except that we could (and I do) do a lot about it, it just takes veering, somewhat, from the mandates and getting focussed on how to achieve the goal, whether it is by the mandated path or not...schools are failing my kids -- out of a combination of a lot of factors, but legislation forcing measures on schools of teachers, administrators and parents who have not been consulted has a lot to do with the failure...though you would never find a politician or activist willing to take responsibility for their role in that failure, of course...

And this situation illustrates the problem...

Teachers get convinced that if they and the kids are going to make AYP -- adequate yearly progress -- then some kids just have to get left behind to match the ambitious drive of the tests that AYP is judged upon...

Ironic, isn't it?...yep, for me it's just another day in the policy field, where realities frequently -- and these days, more often than not -- fail to meet expectations...

And noone takes responsibility for that fact, of course...because generally they are driven by a self-righteous and self-centered sense of what MUST happen, with little regard for what CAN happen, at any given time...

The wonderful thing about being self-righteous is that when your efforts fail, they are never your fault...it's the nature of self-righteousness...the nature of self-righteousness is that when your efforts fail, you look to others and other variables to account for your failure, because admitting that you might be wrong is the farthest thing from your mind...admitting you're wrong makes you look weak and like, well, you're wrong, which most self-righteous people, really, just don't have the balls to do, frankly...

So instead of admitting that maybe what you're doing is not helping, you just advocate for more of the same because of course the reason why Communism failed because not enough motherfuckers followed the program, not because it's a bad system...the reason why self-righteous theocratic notions of religion fail to translate into a moral, self-governing citizenry is not because of a failure of theocratic notions, but because all of those goddamn liberals who keep letting everyone cheat on their wives and watch all that pornography with reckless abandon...

And, in this case, the reason why kids have to get left behind in math or reading or whatever skill we are dealing with...is not because mandating our way to student achievement is a bad path (though I do have to say that, to their credit, most teachers I talk with recognize that this is a bad path) but because some kids are just never going to get it...or because somehow we have to separate the wheat from the chaff...or because some people are meant to be trashmen and some people are meant to be President...or whatever million excuses that people have for why this stupid law mandating student achievement doesn't work and is counterproductive to the interests of the kids struggling the most, many of whom are in my special education resource room math class...

I do my best with the law...and the kids in my class will likely get a better education than kids in other classes since I teach a high level curriculum with lots of differentiation for different skill levels and lots of review and remediation and lots of reinforcement for the kids that they can do the math, given better opportunities to do so...so maybe they might learn to take advantage of opportunities down the line even if, as has forever been true, they are far from ideal in their offering...

Mandated achievement -- much like the use of force in a whole lot of situations where it is counterproductive, which is more situations than which it is useful -- is a compromise...people who advocate for the use of force to mandate a result always count on the fact that people will have to compromise with them...I just want to make clear, in this case and in many if not most cases, it is a compromise where the better direction is generally less force and less aggression...and no force and no aggression, when that is possible...

Because in this case, the means of mandated achievement -- namely standardized testing -- lead to all kinds of counterproductive results...hiding and fudging scores are one consequence...as is standardized achievement being substituted, legally or substantively, for creative, original thought (an issue that the Florida state legislature has problems with, lately, in their history "standards" -- they hardly become standards the more they veer from actual standards of historical scholarship -- largely because the people passing the laws have very little familiarity with creative, original thought, I am sure, which is all the more reason to humble themselves and to let the thinkers rather than the politicians guide the process)...stressing the fuck out of teachers and administrators and students with not nearly enough results to warrant it...but the most serious consequence is teachers getting convinced that certain students have to be left behind to make sure that the rest of them can make AYP, annual yearly progress...

It's like watching Stalin justify the slaughter of millions to defend an ideology based on the notion of caring for peoples' needs...or Ahmadinejad justify serious incursions on civil and human rights in the name of a more moral world-order...

It really makes no sense at all, really, when you look at it objectively...but when you're rooting for the philosophy or the law or the leader or the need to force the situation, involved, it's much harder to see the weakness because it means calling into question the premises of the endeavor...

The sad fact of the matter is that at Eisenhower Middle School in Kansas City, Kansas, the No Child Left Behind Act and all of the local and state mandates that have accompanied it or guaranteeing that many kids get left behind...because teachers are having their efforts driven -- meaning forced -- by testing that leave them afraid that making sure that all kids learn means that they and the rest of their kids will be left behind the curve...

It's foolish...we would all be better served by a more thoughtful and less forced process...a sequential and progressive curriculum that systematically reinforced math skills while teaching creative and exploratory and integrated math -- meaning geometry and algebra and probability and all sorts of stuff are taught together to solve real world math problems rather than by rote and in the abstract -- and which did so in a way that taught all kids similar work, while reinforcing basic skills along the way and gave all kids plenty of time to cover material and master concepts would serve everyone...

It would also make way too much sense compared the current policy...

And to do so would involve much more thought and much less force, which means that those involved would have to question their efforts in a way that I'm just not convinced that they have the courage to do...

I have to go home...I am pushed beyond my limit, today...

Have a great week, everyone...

Love,
Ben

The corrupting nature of power...

Watching the Mark Twain biography, tonight, it occurred to me the corrupting nature of power...

It is in our power to inflict tragedy and suffering on others to avoid tragedy and suffering ourselves...it is our cowardice cloaked in the clothing of courage...

Our capacity for vindictiveness and punishment (and this tendency of ours' to use power to avoid suffering ourselves) is captured well in Twain's Reflections on Religion (1909)...

http://www.totallyok.com/rel/marktwain

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless exactness. The portrait is substantially that of a man - if one can imagine a man charged and overcharged with evil impulses far beyond the human limit; a personage with whom no one perhaps, would desire to associate with now that Nero and Caligula are dead. In the old testament His acts expose His vindictive, unjust, ungenerous, pitiless and vengeful nature constantly. He is always punishing - punishing trifling misdeeds with thousandfold severity; punishing innocent children for the misdeeds of their parents; punishing unoffending populations for the misdeeds of their rulers; even descending to wreak bloody vengeance upon harmless calves and lambs and sheep and bullocks as punishment for inconsequential trespasses committed by their proprietors. It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast."

If you haven't seen the Ken Burns documentary, I highly recommend it...one of the best I have ever seen...

And one of the most powerful lessons I learned from the movie...that Twain was at his most brilliant when he was most fearless and courageous and compassionate in his tackling with humanity's plight...

Love,
Ben

The Bush Administration and its international partners showing their true colors...

It's so funny...the response by the Bush Administration and its international partners reflect just what they think about democracy, today, and what is so wrong in democratic countries, today...

Ahmadinejad challenges Bush to debate...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060829/pl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc

President Ahmadinejad challenges the President to the penultimate democratic tradition: a debate...and the President's spokeperson calls it "a diversion"...

Thought and engagement, the spokesman and his French counterpart, respond, is a diversion from our desire to keep Iran from getting access to nuclear weapons...

Is the Administration scared, do you think? They should be...because I think on this particular argument -- I don't trust Ahmadinejad, personally or as a world leader, but he happens to be right about his country's right to self-determined defense policy, I think -- the Iranian President has the stronger argument...

So the last thing you would want to do if you were wrong, I imagine the President reasoning, is have a debate and have your poorer argument revealed for all the world to see...

But...that's the great thing about argument...it will just keep going on until it gets resolved in the right direction...and even then it will be on-going...no matter what you try to force to the contrary...

It's a brilliant move on Ahmadinejad's part...and happens to be the right one, I think...

"Who's the democratic nation, now?" Ahmadinejad can brag to the Iranian people whose democratic freedoms he regularly tramples on...
Neither Iran nor America lives up, completely...but it's better to raise that democratic bar than the lower it...

And in this case...it is President Ahmadinejad who is raising the bar...and President Bush who is lowering it...

Bad form as an argument for democracy...

But something tells me that this debate will not go away just because President Bush nor his international partners want to engage the argument...

Love,
Ben

Trying to figure out who to look up to...

I had a day, today, that has me finally asking myself some hard questions...

A teacher, today, that is among the special education teachers in the building that I respect has been on a mission to kick a kid out of school...

She doesn't have any reason to think that he will be better served elsewhere...she's not even thinking of that, honestly...

What she's thinking is that he is a major pain in her ass and she wants him off her plate...

And it has me wondering why I do this work at all...and who in the world I have to look up to...

The answer to that question at this point in my life, sadly, is noone...I respect lots of folks...but I don't look at anyone's judgment, anymore, and trust it more than my own...because noone's earned it...

When I was a kid, I was pretty trusting, as it turns out...where others didn't trust their teachers and parents, I did...even when they probably didn't deserve it, as it turns out, as I spend more time with teachers and as I get to know my parents better as I get older...

I trusted my teachers...they were older than me...more world-wise than me...they were generally smarter than me...and I just generally trusted that they probably knew enough more stuff than me that I should probably listen to what they had to say...

I can't name a teacher I think that about, today...and I don't really know if I can name a teacher or scholar or moral leader and definitely not a political leader who I trust more than myself...

It's a very awkward feeling, I have to say...

Because it's not like I know what I'm doing half the time...

It's just that I trust my judgment better than most folks, now...not around the matters of expertise I lack...or around matters that are less important...

But around the stuff that really matters most in life...I trust my judgment most...

It's a strange feeling, really...and an uneasy one...because I'm not used to thinking/feeling like this...I'm used to consulting with others...a lot...and often trusting others more, if for no other reason than to try on their outlook...

But today...and the last 6 years...has me wondering who to look up to...

I just don't trust most folks like I used to...not because they're any worse than before...but just because I think most people have really underdeveloped consciences...even and especially the self-righteous among us who are so intent on uncovering the underdeveloped consciences of others...theirs is a form of voyerism and the less righteous and vindictive tendency to prove how right they were about how shitty people around them are...or to justify their fear and panic in a world full of flawed people...

And all the people I used to look up to more regularly...my parents...my professors...Brandi...they just haven't come through in the last 6 years or so...they're fine people...they're just not great people...certainly not as great as I gave them too much credit for in the past, I think...

And I'm not afraid of anyone anymore...

And I don't know what I want...

Some company, maybe...

I'd like to work with people who care more about others than about their own convenience...

I like being with people who can be honest...with me and with themselves...we all bullshit ourselves...but some people are just better about sorting out their own bullshit from a more honest assessment of their lives...

My colleague and most of my colleagues, really, are now, and regularly, bullshitting themselves...they think of themselves as smarter, more thoughtful, more worthy of kids' and peoples' respect than they really are...

Perhaps we all are...

But I respect people more who know that than people who pretend otherwise...or perhaps are too stupid or unwilling to challenge themselves to consider otherwise...

And one thing is for sure...I am damned tired of the intellectually and morally lazy of my colleagues acting like their rationalizations for their laziness are really the same as doing better than me...I am tired of being everything but the kind of shithead to kids that my colleagues would like me to be and having it held against me because they just can't take two seconds of their precious time to think harder about how we handle things...

I am tired of working so damned hard at taking my own conscience seriously and being condescended by those who never in their lives have tried to do so as seriously...

I feel very alone, these days, is how I really feel, when it comes down to it...

I think life, for an awful lot of folks, is a game where getting the most for yourself and covering your ass is the objective...and responsibility is to be avoided...even in your own heart...for fear of having to face what shitheads that makes us...

A lot of this is due to how harsh the consequences can be for taking responsibility...but most people won't take responsibility for this, either, so it's not like there's any way out of this thing without someone taking responsibility...a lot of people taking responsibility...
I think most people are like my kids...full of themselves for no good goddamned reason...

Kids can be an arrogant lot...they think they can do anything, no matter how little they know...and they're always convinced of their own righteousness...always...no matter how much in the wrong they are...

And most adults are the same, as it turns out...

And all I want is a little company...for people to face up to their shitheadedness just enough to consider, just maybe, being better...

I'm becoming concerned that that is asking too much of most people...who are more concerned with not feeling bad about themselves than with being better people...my general feeling about that sentiment is too fuckin' bad...

But maybe social conservatives are right...maybe people are just too shitty to face up to that, themselves, most of the time, and so they must have all of their impulses restrained...

And if that is the case, I really can't see what area of life should not be restrained...why not marital fidelity?...why not heterosexuality and homosexuality?...why not pornography?...why not oral or anal or non-missionary sex?...why not who you marry or who you have sex with, including race, ethnicity, and religion?...why not restricting goofy religions?...why not state control over the economy?...why not regulate speech or thought?...

If people really can't be trusted with these things, why would we keep our hands off?...

If we are to be trusted more than our neighbors with regulating his life, why would we need any limits at all on that capacity?...

The truth is that if we really believe that people need to be regulated to do the right thing, we're either too pussy to be theocrats or too pussy to be communists...either way, not too flattering...

Because, right now, my country...the world...is sounding suspiciously like the Palestinians...suspicious of and cynical about everything...never satisfied with enough autocracy and force to solve their problems...fucking up their own ambitions and never taking any responsibility for it...and all the while waiting for the right strongman to finally make everything right...

Come to think of it...it sounds like every society since the beginning of fuckin' time...

And, really...how can you respect people who act like that?...and more importantly, how can they respect themselves?

I won't be pressuring my colleague to change her mind...her conscience is more important than my need to be right about sticking by this kid...

But goddamnit it would be nice to work with people who take their consciences more seriously than they take their TV viewing...

Education is about challenging ourselves...and challenging each other, constructively...

But most people avoid it like the plague, even as they sing its praises, because they prefer the pander of television and music and movies to the challenge of education...

Like math, Barbie might say, education is hard...challenge is hard...and most people spend their whole lives trying to avoid both...

And days like this one I wonder why the fuck I take that challenge so seriously when most people could really give two shits...

That includes the student in this situation...and the teacher...

And I just don't understand why I give such a shit about the whole situation when the two people involved clearly don't themselves...

Love,
Ben

The failures and limits of power...

A very quick and brief reflection on the failures and limits of power...

I listened to a story on NPR coming into work, this morning, that I thought well illustrated the failures and limits of power and firm assertions of authority to solve problems that need collaboration...

The story (which I'm not finding on their webpage, this morning) detailed the power battle between a local Native tribe along the Canadian border and a Canadian corporation that does business north of the border and has likely polluted waters that have run downstream...

The Canadian company says that it wants to work in good faith to clean up the waters after they've studied the issue and has evaluated the risk involved...the tribe wants the EPA to assert authority over the Canadian company and force them to clean up the waters...

The problem is...the EPA doesn't likely have jurisdiction over the Canadian company...even as a Federal court and a Federal Appeals Court assert that they do...assert all you want, the Canadian company seems to have been saying to the tribe and to the courts...there is no jurisdiction...the pollution happens north of the border and the last time they and I looked, that was Canadian territory, not U.S. territory...

The company appears to be in good faith...and no assertions of authority have led to any clean-up...the EPA is doing the sensible thing, right now, which is negotiating and working with the company, where active collaboration will likely yield a far better result than any assertion of authority...

But the tribe just can't get off of it...

No matter how much their strategy has failed...

Jurisdictions are created to limit authority for just this reason, actually...because of the avarice of those who wield authority...

It's kind of funny to me just how so many people enamoured with the law and with power and authority seem to never respect its limits...once they have it, they want to wield it wherever they think they should get their way...

Lord Acton had a phrase for that kind of thing...

Power corrupts...and absolute power corrupts absolutely...

And the whole purpose of democratic authority and governance was to set limits on those who would wield it...

You wouldn't know that from democratic practice over the last 6 years, at least, or so...because everyone seems to think that democracy is a tool for their power-hunger more than principles to limit it...the Nazis thought that too and the Weimar democracy became their tool without a more mature idea of what democracy constitutes...

Thank God for democracy is my thinking over these last 6 miserable years...thank God that there are checks and balances in place for all parties to be accountable to...not because they resolve problems...they don't...but because they limit the ability of those who would wield authority to do so without limits and to persistently ignore how and when they don't solve problems...

It's amazing to me how many people seek out power and authority and ignore and refuse to take responsibility for its use and for its failures...ironic, because the whole point of authority to is promote responsible action...

All too human...and the most important reason to take democratic principles seriously, and not just as sidelines to our big ambitions...

I have work to do:):)...have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Maybe some final loving words about Brandi...

I've been feeling hurt, this week...so that's the context for everything I've written...

I'm dissappointed with how Brandi has handled things between us...I also have been fairly hurt, as it turns out...

It's not fair to say that I have lost all respect for Brandi...I've lost some respect for her because Brandi's loyalty to friendship was probably her most endearing quality...and because her commitment to being strong was more real than in many women I had met...meaning Brandi didn't equate strong with being a bitch...she was strong because of how big her heart was/is...and it clearly did make her more authentically strong...

I do think that, at some level, Brandi gave into the foolish notion that strength means being a dick or a bitch or giving into a world of cynicism...so many choices she's made in the last 5 years make me suspect that...which is unfortunate, an easy and common mistake to make, and all too human...

If strength was found in how shitty we treat people, Hitler and the Hutus and the Serbs would all qualify as our strongest people...I mean how much more shitty can you treat people than with genocide...

But strength is not found in how shitty we treat people...how tough we get with them, in a more aggressive way, unless it's absolutely necessary and still then as least possible as we can manage...

Strength is found in how well we treat people...and how high we set our ideals and our standards for ourselves and then live up to that example, as much as possible, and give others' room to live up to better examples themselves...

Strength is found in the most honest, most compassionate, smartest ways that we govern ourselves and then offer an example to others, with lots of room for failure and mistakes but with a commitment to always getting better...

Brandi was and is one of the best examples that I have ever met in my life...she was and is better than many of my best professors, and I've always regarded her is one of my finest teachers...

As long as I knew her (and I imagine still today, despite my hurt and disappointment with how she's dealt with me) Brandi has been one of the finest people I've ever met...she's got a heart of gold...for real...which is kind of rare, as it turns out...though all of us are working on it, I think...

Brandi has been the one person that when I wanted to live a life committed to high ideals (not a life of perfection, which doesn't and will never exist...my life has been full of hypocrisy, with a commitment on my part to overcome my weaknesses and take responsibility for my mistakes, as much as possible and reasonable...but my life is also committed to still aspiring for high ideals, even as I fall short...and I try to provide ample room for everyone else to do the same)...

Brandi has been the one person who has most supported me in those ideals...

My professors at KU were great, despite our conflicts and differences...as were most of my professors at WSU...and my current professors at Washburn...

But they just didn't have much on Brandi...because, untainted by a life of disappointment and cynicism, I suppose, she was just more genuinely committed to a life of high ideals of anyone I had met...

In grad school, Brandi and I, both, lived through much disappointment and cynicism...me, in particular, ironically...after the Clinton impeachment hearings, I was beginning to lose faith in the possibility of an American democracy driven around anything but power, and certainly around higher ideals or better ideas...and I'm sure I talked both my dreams of politics and political think-tanks and Brandi's dreams of being the first female Jewish President of the United States down with me...

But the wonderful thing that came out of that experience was that it became so much clearer to me how so many of the most important aspirations that we have for ourselves and one another come out of our personal and professional commitments in our own lives, rather than out of efforts by government and the political system...

I hadn't given up on high ideals...I just saw the playing field differently...I started to realize that it mattered more how each of us lives our lives than anything that government does or does not do...

And the real power of education is that it is a life of on-going reflection and experience and study and learning...that this is the reason why education is the most important foundation for a society...because it is the surest and most important means of self-governance in a free society...in a society that needs us to learn from our mistakes...because it is the learning that allows us to adapt to new and old realities and to improve the ways that we solve new and old problems...

As it concerns being better people, a friend of mine, recently, has helped me see that the key to self-reflection in this respect is that it allows us to see how we are or are not living up to our ideals or principles...how we are all hypocrits...which was Twain's genius...helping us all see that while keeping our emotional defenses low with a great sense of humor and a lot of compassion for our weaknesses, especially the weakness of self-righteous condemnation of our weaknesses...Brandi hasn't all of a sudden become a bad person when she's been one of the best I've known...

I've just been hurt and disappointed with how I've been cut out of her life...I genuinely love and care about Brandi...I genuinely want her to be happy...and I genuinely want to let her go so that she can be happy...no matter how hurt or disappointed I might get in the process...

It's just a bitch working through that shit...it hurts like all hell...and it's the hardest shit to do in life, of course...there is no harder...not in my experience...and it just takes a lot of me wading through my own weak and painful responses, I suppose, before I can get to stronger responses...

That's life, I suppose...that's how we grow...that's how we learn...and that is how the bulk of individual and cultural human evolution -- outside of biological evolution, which is more random and much less frequent, I think -- occurs...

That's why I'm so confident in higher ideals and better ideas...because they are the only things that get us out of the messes we face as long as we don't learn the bigger lessons...the big messes remain with us until the big lessons are learned...and those lessons become our higher ideals and better ideas...

As the Times On-Line, a brilliant conservative paper out of Great Britain, recently wrote...that is the challenge of the Middle East and Lebanon, right now...for the more mature democracies in the world to live up to their high ideals and put forth the logistical commitments, like troops for a U.N. peacekeeping force, to help resolve the current crisis in Lebanon and to develop a workable peace between Israel and her neighbors to the North and, as Kofi Annan has argued, to give breathing space for a political process in Lebanon to draw down long-term hostilities between Lebanon and Israel...

The great challenge of life on the highest ideals is living up to them, as much as is reasonably possible...there are many places in my life, and one in particular, where I have not lived up, generally because I'm not confident that its' reasonably possible...I may be wrong about that, but that's my judgment, as of now...

Perhaps Brandi feels the same way...but her dilemna seems weak to me because I already had to face it...I spent 5 years facing the very difficult pain that came with our break-up...as much as anything to maintain our friendship...and now Brandi has foregone the friendship so she wouldn't have to deal with the pain and the frustration and God knows what else...

If Brandi's choice is one of more determined weakness, then the sadder tragedy of her not wanting to be friends is that I would still want to be friends with her, even as I would respect her less, because I have a ton of friends that I love and care about, even as I don't respect all of their choices...We all do, I assume...But it's our love and support and belief in one another, no matter who we are or what beliefs we have or choices we make that makes us whole...that keeps us together in a larger human family rather than dividing us into our weaker enclaves of pettiness and hurtfulness...

Whose better...whose smarter...whose got the right religion...whose got the right gender...the right race...the right ethnicity... the right education...yada, yada, yada...

What I see now is that moderation, the political center is the holding ground for those who aspire for humanity to be better...to see itself as more universally similar than different and at odds in a million different ways...

And our truest center is in our commitment to one another...as people...as individuals...as members of our larger human family...

There is no religion or ideology or nationality or race or gender or ethnicity or elite status or anything that will somehow prove to be the best or the most omniscient or the most universalizing beyond its more exclusive domain...

And even higher ideals can be used to divide us if it means making people pretend like they do not harbor the weaknesses they harbor rather than accept their own weaker, less higher-minded natures even as we aspire to be better...

Humanity's fate, now and always, lies in its capacity to accept its', our, my humanity and the humanity of those around me...higher ideals...and lesser weaknesses...

To love ourselves and one another for our weaknesses, as much as for our strengths...genuinely...better over time...

Brandi needs and deserves my love, even as I am disappointed with her for giving into this weakness that has been so painful for me...so does her husband, Greg...and so does everyone I meet, as much as I can persistently muster...

When I think about it, that is the proudest thing I can say about this blog...that, as much as possible, this has been my opportunity to share my weaknesses as much my strengths...to share my humanity, more than just high ideals...to demonstrate how the aspiration to be a good or a great person does not involve a route of perfection or consistent high-mindedness...that it often involves weakness and failure and mistakes and crassness and low-mindedness...for everyone...our fears about sharing those less ideal qualities only make us mute about their reality...

We want our children to aspire to be better than us...and we're afraid to share with them our own failures and weaknesses...

As strong as she's been in her life, Brandi is a human being...she's weak just like everyone else...her weakness in this case, is very common, though a weakness, nonetheless...like all of my weaknesses, that shouldn't be an excuse for weakness...but giving into to weakness is fairly common, really...and my experience is that, generally, it's a good idea, ironically...so the taboo and the fear of the weakness wear off...

So maybe...as much is this hurts right now and has all week...

Maybe there is good to come out of this...I trust Brandi to take responsibility for all of this, at some point...

It's just hard amidst the pain and disappointment...And during a period when avoiding responsibility seems to be more common than taking it, so often, largely because we are so harsh and ugly with one another when we want to take responsibility...

I think Brandi is a good person...at times, she's been a great person...and I think we're just still getting worked out whatever we need to get worked out between us...sometimes together, sometimes apart...From bad to worse, as the Economist writes...sometimes our propensity to screw up takes us from bad to worse...until we can face up to our failures...

And the most important reason to have confidence that we will take responsibility and begin to see the light...is because we can't move forward until we do...

Love,
Ben

Disappointment...

I've got a million things to do, today...I'm still exhausted, even though I tried to get to sleep early last night to make up for lost sleep...I'll be playing catch up again this Saturday and then hopefully I can more regularly get sleep thereafter...

Last night I had a paper to work on...but I couldn't really get much done...just feeling disappointed with Brandi, right now...
It's one thing to screw up and to take responsibility for it...it's a whole other thing to take the weak/lame route, altogether, and to consistently avoid facing up...

Brandi's been taking the weak route for quite a while, now...I'm much clearer about that, now...yesterday was just the first time that she shared it so openly...

And I'm just feeling disappointed because I expected so much more out of her, I suppose...

We all have choices to make in our lives...sometimes we take the high road...sometimes we take the low...all of us...the trick is that with the important stuff, do we get in the habit of taking the low road and avoiding the challenge to be better...or do we face up to our weaker natures and become stronger from the experience...

Nothing wrong with taking the low road for awhile, even on the important things...as long as it's part of a journey that involves facing up to that and digging deep for strength...

The problem is when we start lying to ourselves...telling ourselves that we're doing better than we really are...or that people should listen to us or follow our example more than we really deserve because we just can't find it in ourselves to live a better example...

It's a common problem...it's also a serious one, at some point, around most of the most important issues that humanity faces...

In this situation, it just leaves me disappointed, right now...not really hurt...I think I've experienced plenty of that...just disappointed...that Brandi has so thoroughly taken up the lame route...

And that this particular lame route involves cutting me out so that she can maintain whatever weakness that drives her around it...

It's just a very different Brandi than my best friend in college aspired to be...it's like watching Mike Coupland leave his friends so he can go chase popularity...it doesn't offer him the happiness he was hoping for, of course...but it's sad losing friends as they chase illusive dreams...

I doubt the money or the seclusion will offer Brandi what she thinks it will...but it's her life to make choices with...

I'm just sad that a person who has been such quality for much of her life has chosen a weaker road...

And this morning I'm just dealing with the disappointment...

Love,
Ben

Closure...

I finally received an email back from Brandi, today...

She said she didn't want a friendship, anymore...she'd put it behind her...

I think I finally lost all respect for Ms. Fisher...her loyalty to friendship was her best quality...and without it, she just doesn't have that much to offer...

It doesn't even really hurt...it's just seriously disappointing...there's just not much to Brandi without loyalty to friendship...without it, everything else just seems kind of pointless...

You ever had a friend who left you for popularity or money or something else that they wanted?

I did...in 9th grade...you know why he eventually comes back and apologizes, I think?...because his life becomes such a mess that he wants some reassurance that there is one person in the world who loves him, no matter what...and I do...

Brandi will be back...when she returns, I've got some apologies due...

In the meantime, this is the best closure that I could have possibly have found...

Because there's not much to her friendship, at this point, to want to hold onto...not until she comes to terms with what a jerk she's been...

I think I lost all respect for Ms. Fisher, today...

And all of a sudden it's not such a bad thing to be have my life...

Because a life like the one Brandi's chosen just seems so completely bankrupt in every way that matters...

Love,
Ben

Commitments that I owe my teachers...

After an exhausting then exhilaratingly productive day...and after recognizing all the various commitments that my teachers made to me throughout the years...I decided on the way home that I have some commitments that I owe some of my teachers...

I'm leaning heavily in favor of a Ph.D. in policy, right now, given a couple of my commitments...

Mr. Perry, my junior year trigonometry teacher, gave me a 1-on-1 tutorial in trigonometry in what I can only imagine was his planning hour...I ended up dropping Calculus second semester my senior year, which is the reason why he gave me the tutorial...so I figure I owe it to Mr. Perry to finish at least one semester of Calculus and finish up the sucker...

Which will support very nicely my other very important reason to do a Ph.D. in policy, which is to seriously brush up on statistics (which, after a long and exciting conversation with two math students at a party Saturday night) to be much more prepared for more serious social scientific research and more serious interpretation of statistical data and prepare the strongest possible empirical research (and experiments, when appropriate)...

For my book, I think I'll need between now and writing that book I will need to do serious depth study in both international policy and counterterrorism, to prepare and deal with the strongest case against my ideas in international policy and counterterrorism, and criminology, to prepare and deal with the strongest case against my ideas in crime and domestic policy (I will need the help of Carson, Bond, Brian White, Brian, John, and that smart-as-shit debater from UNI and now Illinois State from the ISU camp, Chris Leland, and other folks to help me build the strongest countercases, and to test arguments in favor of limits on power, free will and morality discussions as a function of realist policy discussions, and my theoretical work around least possible necessary aggression, if they might help me out)...

So a Ph.D. in policy might come in handy:):)...

I plan on writing articles/chapters ahead of applying for Ph.D. programs so that I can guarantee entry into a program of my choice and to hopefully substantially beef up my preparedness for grad school...

I owe all of this and to finish my senior Honors' thesis from my undergrad at Wichita State -- as a publishable article in political history on the first Federal education legislation touching schools below the college-grade, the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 -- to Dr. David Ericson, my favorite prof from undergrad and someone who has been waiting to read a finished copy of that thesis for almost 10 years now (ok, I have a feeling it hasn't been keeping him up at nights:):)...

I also think that I owe Mr. Jestmore, my high school forensics, debate, and drama teacher, and EMU theater, here in Lawrence, to which I belong, to go ahead and work on the writing workshop next summer and to write (and maybe act in) at least one really quality publishable play/screenplay for production/filming...Mr. Jestmore always wanted me to be an actor and was really disappointed when I told him that I had decided to do forensics in college rather than drama, for which he secured me a scholarship when I was an undergrad...so I figure I owe him some substantial contribution to the theater world in return for his countless hours of devotion to my learning and growth and development as a young man and as an actor...

I also think I owe it, over the course of my lifetime, to write (and maybe sing) at least one really quality song to Mrs. Johns, my 7th and 8th grade music teacher who so thoroughly believed in my singing/musical abilities, and Doris Prater, my 9th grade music teacher, who turned our rag-tag, low-income Truesdell Junior High School choir into a powerhouse Worlds of Fun competition sensation and a hell of a stage choir...

Finally, I think I owe it to Tom and my education profs at KU, my teachers throughout my life, including and especially Conrad Jestmore -- whose commitment to libertarian/classical liberal virtues have had an indelible impact on my life -- and Dave Ericson, the smartest professor I've ever worked with, and to my principal Dr. Ogburn, my other favorite principal in my life, Keith Wilson, and all of the people who have dedicated time to helping me to become the outstanding teacher that I have become and am becoming to both write abundantly, for the rest of my life, about the significance of education in a liberal democracy in an authentically and classically liberal democratic tradition that I hope will rival my other favorite education scholar, John Dewey...and to teach in the most inclusive, open, free thinking, free expressing, and freedom-supporting university and department that I can find...where I can work with the broad range of students that I work with now and where, as much as possible, everything else always takes a back seat to the ever developing ideals of a free and democratic education...

And I owe it to Jim Henson, Roald Dahl, Mark Twain and the million of other great childrens' authors/film directors/entertainers to several brilliant stories and books for children, since this may be the legacy that counts the most, anyway...

I owe it to all my teachers to take full advantage to the quality education they afforded me for free and at affordable prices at all of the quality public schools and universities (and the private prep school I attended the first three years of my grammar school) to do only the biggest and best things with my education...with everything they dedicated to and sacraficed for my education...

And I owe it to myself...to take full advantage of all of the opportunities that they and life has afforded me...
So much for taking it easy as a teacher, huh?:):):)...

Yeah...setting the bar high for teachers -- as much as for thinkers or just average folks -- won't be a bad legacy to leave, either:):)...

I better get some sleep if any of these dreams are to become reality...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

A long day and a discussion about redemption...

It's been a really fuckin' long day...kids were out of control, today...teachers were already talking about kicking some kids out into more restrictive school settings...and I'm really exhausted by the whole thing...

Today was my most confrontational with students...I have one student, in particular, whose been testing all sorts of limits and I decided, today, that I was tired of the games and students playing like they didn't hear or they just don't understand how to do things like be quiet during a computerized district assessment or to follow instructions after the hundredth of time of mouthing off about nothing in particular except to prove that they don't have to do anything a teacher says...

So today, I was my most direct...

What do you need to do when I say be quiet? Be quiet...

What do you need to do when I give you an instruction? Do it...

And when kids couldn't follow those instructions, I made clear that they were not going to find their way back into my room until I am confident that they can accept that though I do everything in my power not to lord authority over kids...that if they can't accept my authority, then they won't get back into my class until they are clear about who's the boss, when push comes to shove...

And that if they can't make it in a room where they are given as much room as I give them -- which is a lot -- then they can go try to make it in other rooms, if teachers will let them in, which, in many of their cases, may not be possible...

I have three students, right now (I have a fourth in the wings, but who is laying low right now) who are all either going to get clear very soon that I am the boss and if they have a problem with that they are going to have a tough time in my class (I don't lord this over students, at all, but these three boys are all way out of control with their behavior and with their disrespect...of me and of other students)...

Actually, my more serious concern is that they figure out that they have pissed off every other teacher...two of them teachers are talking about shipping them off, somewhere, while I speak on behalf of their lame, no-responsibility-taking asses and as they perpetually take it and me and the rest of their teachers for granted...as it should be, to some degree...they are kids, after all...but they each need to wise up, quick, because I'm losing my patience with them...there is always a well from which I can perpetually draw from on patience...but that doesn't mean that we aren't going to have some confrontation, in the meantime...

As I told one kid, today...he better wise up quick...because I'm his best friend in the school, right now, and teachers often go against my advice to stick with kids...and he keeps taking my advocacy for him for granted, he's going to find himself in an after-school program, a self-contained situation, or a more restrictive school very quickly...and there's not much I'm going to be able to do for him...

I have nothing to do with those kinds of recommendations...I don't believe in them, as a general but very committed rule in my professional practice...shipping kids off means you failed...and I don't like to fail...so I keep them with me as much as possible, often as much because I know that I will stick by kids and by high expectations for them long after others will give up on them...

Why some kids are so goddamned stupid I will never know, sometimes...

But what this kid hasn't figured out, yet, is that there is only way forward...and if he can't take that way, then his world is going to be full of trouble, from me and from others, until he gets his shit together...

Today was me at my toughest and most direct...either you get straight that you're behavior's going to turn around in my room...or you may find yourself trying to make it with teachers or employers who are going to show you about a 1000th of the patience that I'm going to show for you...

But knowing what I know about the world outside of school...how often we fail to support and challenge such kids and parallel adults from changing their thinking and their behavior and what a major fuckin' pain in the ass this is for the world, at large...I just can't give up on kids very easily, knowing that I can have an important impact on them, now, that could do a lot to promote safer and more productive communities and people living in them later on...

I've been listening, a lot, to the discussions about punishment and redemption on NPR and other news channels and reading about it in other news media, lately...

And the whole time I keep thinking...

"Is anyone going to take responsibility for Martin Andersen's death?"

And when we get clearer about how all the talk about forcing behavior on people had everything to do with Martin's death...
What punishment would be appropriate for our society? How long should we hold out on redemption until we can take responsibility for our role in that 14-year-old kid's death?

My talk and my willingness to confront disrepectful behavior was all that was tough, today...and I'm completely clear that it is the only thing that has much of a chance of getting through with the kids I deal with...kids like Martin...except for the love and connection and genuine concern that undergirds that tough talk...

But it's pretty damned clear to me that the reason why the folks like Martin's boot-camp guards can't take responsibility for his death is because they are scared of the consequences...jail can keep us safe...but I'm pretty clear that jail as a form of retribution does very little to help anyone...and if you doubt that, I suggest you spend more time in the inner city where an awful lot of folks have been to jail, but very rarely do any of them report jail pricking their conscience which is what has to change if their behavior is going to change...

Most people just debate this issue too much in the abstract, with very little real reference point for how people related to jail and prison sentences and what actually changes behavior, I think...and God knows that if the inner city is not evidence that jail does not change behavior (it can be a source for pricking the conscience, but, more often than not, it just makes people defensive about taking responsibility...though jail is often necessary to protect people) then I do begin to wonder if and when people might ever reconsider whether this is the best path to social reform...

I have a feeling I'll be waiting a long time for an apology for Martin...

Because we are a society that is far better at preaching responsibility than taking it...

And that is the hard truth about us that is so hard for so many of us to face about ourselves...

So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that my students struggle with it...because so does the whole goddamned world, for goodness sakes...

So I guess I have a lot of work to do to help make that responsibility easier for everyone to take...

I'm working on it...

Love,
Ben

It's No Use...

I was wrong...

This was a failed experiment...

Trying to let Brandi go...

Not having Brandi around as a friend leaves me feeling raw and hurt, inside...

But trying to ignore those feelings doesn't leave me feeling any better...it just leaves me feeling more raw...

I cried about it to Melissa...

And I felt a million times better...

Life's gonna be ok...I hope Brandi's doing well...

Louis Armstrong, by the way, is a great balm for heartache...

Love, Ben

Letting go...

I've been listening to Keith Urban and You'll Think of Me all morning...

Letting go of Brandi as a friend has been almost as painful as letting go of her as a girlfriend...ideally, I'd love to say that losing her friendship was harder than letting go of the relationship, but the reality is that the break-up was just more painful...which is exactly what makes the whole situation so complicated, I'm fully aware...

But I'm just tired of the games...I'm tired of the pretending like things are better than they are...I'm tired of acting like Brandi is being more of a friend than she really is...

I have zero expectations for Brandi, anymore...I'm sure her life is just fine...and letting go of someone who has been your very best friend is no mean feat...but I just can't pretend, anymore, that she's really being a better friend than she is...at best, she's a casual acquaintance, at this point, that I just happen to have a lot of history with...

I've never let go of a friend like this before...I've never had reason to...I've never been as close as Brandi and I were, worked as hard at the relationship, and then abruptly had no contact...in the past, either I've had mutual falling outs, sometimes having others afraid that we had fallen out more than we actually had, and retouched base years later or I've worked hard and just decided to put the friendship aside until I could trust that the friends involved were in good faith with me...

When I lost my first best friend, Mike Coupland, to his insecurities about being popular and being as successful as me in speech, a fight where I got my ass kicked, and a two-year hiatus before we were debate partners my senior year of high school (Mike and I would lose touch at the end of debate season when he backed out of Regionals at the last minute until he called me from Alaska where he was stationed with the Air Force and when he returned to Wichita with a wife and a daughter when I was still at Wichita State University)...

When I lost my first closest friend...it was hard...

Mike and I spent all of our time together in junior high and high school...multiple sleep-overs, even on weeknights, our parents were so enamoured with our friendship...we got caught together my freshman year in Haysville joyriding in my dad's car...Mike got grounded...I got no punishment and one of best conversations I had with my dad during my teens...

Mike and I would stay up late making crass jokes about hairlips and wood-eyes, what everyone we knew must say when they woke up in the morning, eating potato chips and drinking milk, and just talk about everything under the sun that could possibly spark the curiosity of two 14-year-old boys...

Mike was the first person I ever developed that close a bond with...
And when we lost that, it hurt but I never felt anything like this...
I don't want to feel this...I don't want to feel like my happiness is so dependent on the choices of another person...

I've lived through enough pain and tears for one person to last a lifetime...

You would think it would serve as a deterrent to risking it again...
But that hasn't at all been the case...the irony is that this is the time in my life when I've had the most attention from the opposite sex...the time when I've been most open to love...but it's also been the time when I just haven't been able to find love...no matter how hard I've tried...

And I'm just holding out for something true...

I don't ask girls to date...because my figuring is that if I can't find a friend who I care about as much and more than Brandi and make a relationship with that person, then it really won't ever be love...it will always live in the shadow of what I had with Brandi, as every relationship I've had since that time has lived in my heart...
But that hasn't been because I dated Brandi...I've dated plenty of people and not felt the feelings of loss I've felt the last 5 years...
It's because Brandi's and my friendship was the closest connection I've ever felt with another person...

So letting go of that is hardly an easy thing...

But I just can't live like this anymore...

And I just have to come to terms with the fact that Brandi's choices, for better or for worse, are not only her own...but that she's just not interested in my friendship, anymore...she thought at one point that she could be friends no matter what happened, no matter who we ended up dating or marrying...and she just discovered that it wasn't a promise she felt like she could keep...

And that the only end to this road of constant pain and heartache is just letting go completely...

And hoping I never see her again...because the superficiality in that encounter, absent some kind of substantial resolution of the heartache between us, would just be one more painful reminder of just how little I matter in her life, anymore...

And no matter how painful that is to face...I just don't need that in my life, anymore...

Melissa just had a reporter from the University Daily Kansan call about the 10-minute play festival that we're doing with EMU here at the Lawrence Arts Center (my performances have sucked in a serious way, by the way:)...and she was so sweet...she was just like, "If she wants to call me back, that would be fine. And if she doesn't want to call me back, that would fine too."

And that's how I feel about Brandi...I'm tired of the superficial contact...and I'm heartbroken by no contact, at all...but I just don't need the heartache in my life, anymore...

It's just so true...if you love something, you've got to learn to let it go...
If you love someone and you can't let them go, they'll never be their own...

And I don't want to own anyone...ever...

Love,
Ben