Needing to relax...

I've been really stressed, lately...so many things that people want done...so little time to do them...

And I think I've been a little edgy with the kids...

Friday, progress reports went out...and I informed the kids, yesterday, that the largest proportion of kids in both classes got F's...

Why?

Because they sat and stared at me or socialized with their neighbors and didn't do or turn in any work...

And by last Friday, I was sick of it...so I let them hang on their F's until something changes...

It gets really annoying working your ass off all of the time, listening to complaints from parents, administrators (though they've been fairly good, this year) and the public (though terrorism has really overshadowed the very complex and difficult policy discussion around public education) about how you're never doing enough...

And, in class, watch students persistently stare at you or their neighbor...and do no work...

This is one of the little intangibles about pressuring for results that so many people don't account for when they decide that their desire to get stuff from other people is more important than their own welfare or their own sense of their lives...

The frenzy for it, these days, is so strong that quite a while ago -- 4 or 5 years ago -- I finally decided that I wasn't playing ball...

Once it becomes clear to you that people who are ordering you around or who are pressuring you for results are not really terribly interested in your welfare...

You learn to blow them off...

I'm sure that's how many kids feel about their teachers...and administrators...and many about their parents, sadly...

And I'm afraid that, lately, though my frustrations have plenty of validity...

That I've become one of those people...

So...

Today, I'm working on a permission slip...to see if maybe we can watch a movie, together, on Friday...

Ever since I saw Glory Road, this summer, I've wanted to show it to the kids...

It's a great movie, if you haven't seen it, about the 1963 Texas Western Miners winning the NCAA championship with the first college basketball team to start 5 black players, many of whom never planned on going to college, who not only defy all of the odds to win the tournament, but who earn college educations to go and contribute much more to their community than they had probably ever planned before graduating college...

We're going to watch the movie or do something to relax together, and not just be all work and no play...

Because I'm tired of being a grumpy teacher always complaining to the kids and to Melissa about how the kids won't do any work...

Before the last 6 years, there were plenty of people that I looked up to for guidance on how to work and live my life...

Now there are very few...

And all I know is right now, this is what I and the kids need, I think...

Have a great week, everyone:)...

Love,
Ben

Expecting better from our leaders...

E.J. Dionne writes about all the ways that politicians will try to get your votes these next elections other than by having better ideas...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401416.html

Why do people makes themselves such easy targets for this bullshit?

Why would we spend all of our time trying to avoid thinking about the kind of world we want and have politicians be accountable to those better ideas than we would allow ourselves election after election to be propagandized and pandered to by manipulative lameasses?

Why would we so settle for such bad policy, such stupid and foolish consequences, such blatant bullshit in our elections processes...

Rather than just expect better?

Do we have no self-respect at all?

Surely we do...

You know what I expect out of this election?

Politicians who have better ideas to solve problems...I don't want slogans...I don't want the same old line of bullshit that didn't solve the problem the last time...I don't want stupid catch phrases meant to get me heated rather than to shed light on situations...

I want thought...I want serious thought...and I want political leaders who will challenge and inspire me and everyone else to think bigger, rather than pander to our smaller instincts...I want political leaders who hold high ideals, rather than those who will reinforce our baser impulses...I want politicians who seem like they genuinely care about people, rather than weasels who keep making excuses for what such fuckin' pricks they are...I want politicians who will take responsibility, the best they can (and, as importantly, the best that we will let them) rather than always looking to exploit peoples' anguish over problems to unseat their opponents...

I want leaders who inspire me to be a better person...not a perfect person...perfect people don't exist...

I want leaders who inspire me to be better...

Because they care more, themselves, about being better people than they do about getting elected...

That's a tall order, I'm aware...

But I don't give a shit...

Either step up, I say, or step down...

This year...I want political leaders, journalists, policy thinkers, advisors, consultants, diplomats, bureaucrats and other civic leaders who step up their humanity and their leadership...

And if they can't, they need to step down until they can...

I don't expect people to be perfect...but I do expect people to be better...and to know the difference, in their hearts, between leadership and trying to bend a populace to their will...

If you think leadership is forcing people to do your bidding...

You need another line of work...

And if you can't learn to let go of that bad idea...

You need to find another job than elected office...

And my goal this election is to elect as many people who respect freedom more this election...who will respect freedom more than this election...or any election...and to have those who don't respect freedom to sit out an elected seat until they can...

The only antidote to the propaganda that E.J. is profiling in this article is to expect leaders to think more and more seriously...

And they will either do so for my vote...or they will be held to the highest intellectual standards, by my lights, until they do so...

An election where politicians compete to demonstrate how thoughtful they are...now that would be a democracy to be proud of...

This election, my goal is to persuade citizens, average people, to expect better of their politicians...to expect them to think...to have one new idea...just one...at least...to demonstrate how much better they understand how to navigate the world rather than to pretend like somehow any dumbfuck can do the job...

I don't want politicians who appeal to our vanity, any more...

I want citizens who have the courage and honesty to face themselves and say, "I expect politicians who understand the world better than me and expect me to do the same"...

Because that is the only place where we will find real solutions to our problems and not more of the same bullshit...

By expecting better...

Of our leaders...

And more importantly...

Of ourselves...

Love,
Ben

Evidence of a world gone mad...

Caroline Glick writes a column in today's Jersusalem Post that reflects clearly a world gone mad with power...

Our World: Politically correct perfidy...Jerusalem Post, September 13, 2006...

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1157913606853&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Caroline is a right-wing Israeli who essentially argues simultaneously against breaches of free speech for those who she favors and for breaches of free speech of those she opposes...when people Caroline disagrees with exercise their free speech they are "silencing" debate...when people Caroline agrees with are indicted -- wrongly, of course...I have a consistent standard...free speech for everyone -- they are subject to corrupt hypocrisy...

Carolyn's convoluted logic illustrates why free speech and freedom should be consistently defended for everyone...

But more serious is Carolyn's desire to see Iran confronted millitarily, economically, and any other way that Israel and her allies can force Iran to do their bidding...

But her objection to Harvard University hosting Iran's former more moderate/liberal President Mohammad Khatami for a discussion as an endorsement of his views...

Has the world gone completely mad?

Are we now, all of us, so completely convinced of our righteousness that we no longer see a need to engage one another and only to find the best way to force ourselves upon one another?

Are we all so lost in our arrogant assertions of self-righteousness that we must seek power instead of engagement?

As Caroline writes:

"Many argue that the only way to stop the Left's subversion and so win the war of ideas, is to attempt to co-opt its agenda from the inside. By this logic, champions of free speech, democracy and liberty should eagerly seek opportunities to speak at Harvard, or be the token "fascists" on panel discussions at Hebrew University.

Unfortunately, this view is wrong. Accepting the legitimacy of leftist institutions prolongs their power, expands their undeserved legitimacy and erodes the power of the message of those who defend liberty, free speech and democracy.

Rather than supporting the Left, those concerned about the protection of liberal values should work to expose the corruption of these institutions and build alternative institutions that can replace them."

Are we all so lost in our power-hunger and failures of conscience to listen and engage and learn from one another that we think that we have or ever will somehow reach an end-point where engagement will not longer be necessary? Where power can or ever will replace thought?

Have we all so thoroughly lost our minds with hostility and blame and dark fantasies of a world that always does our bidding or always agrees with us?

Most importantly, Caroline's argument makes so clear to me that either we accept her dark dystopia as our future...

Or we begin to take freedom far more seriously...

I can't think of anything more ugly than an assertion of self-righteous deservingness of power without any accountability to engaged thought...

Surely we have not gone so mad...

The only way out of the problems that democratic peoples face, right now, is taking freedom and democracy and thoughtful engagement far more seriously...

The idea that people can be led by power in lieu of thought is the most arrogant idea that humanity has ever devised...and the fact that it would find an audience at the start of the 20th Century, the new dawn after a century of force and power being the leading ideological thrust of such thoroughly evil regimes at Nazism, Fascism, Communism, and a million other autocratic rationalizations, is almost unfathomable to me given what a bloody, destructive, power-mad history that it has...

It just became eminently clear to me how important it is to stand for a world of honest, genuine, authentic respect for free and democratic thought and engagement...

Love,
Ben

This is why I love international policy scholars...

"Five years after the worst terrorist attacks ever on American soil, most members of a panel at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum suggested Monday evening (Sept. 11) that major strides in securing the nation against future terrorist attacks are being undermined by an aggressive foreign policy that has alienated many in the Muslim world. "

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/09.14/99-911panel.html

"Power said she remembered thinking on Sept. 11, 2001, that the attacks could push the nation in one of two opposite directions: toward greater empathy with the world or into a destructive cycle of fear and defensiveness. Five years later, she said, it's clear to her America has taken the latter path.

Oelstrom, who argued against immediately pulling American troops out of Iraq, said the country must do a better job of promoting its democratic credentials around the world.

"We need to figure out how to get our message out without forcing it out," the retired general said.

Moderator Joseph Nye Jr., a Kennedy School professor and former assistant secretary of defense for international security in the Clinton administration, rejected the notion that America is in the throes of an epic clash of civilizations with Islamic radicals.

"There's nothing Osama bin Laden and his colleagues would like more than to turn it into a clash of civilizations," Nye said, adding, "We cannot win unless the mainstream realm of Islam wins."

This is why they are the best. Because they can see things that others can't.

I couldn't concur more strongly.

Love, Ben

What it all boils down to...

The larger philosophies and theologies and ideologies and ideas about life, amongst people, at least, boil down to this question, I think...

Given that people can be kind of shitheads, sometimes or much of the time...

What kind of people are we going to be in the face of that?

Are we going to make excuses for why we should be able to be whatever kind of shithead we want to be?

Are we going to spend our lives condemning ourselves and one another for what shitheads we are or have been?

Or are we going to reach deep and be better and forgive the fact that we can be such shitheads, much of the time? And work constructively to change ourselves and prompt thinking in others to change, as well?

Most of us both lie between the two extremes of rationalizing our worst behavior or condemning ourselves and one another into perpetuity for it and simultaneously entertain those extremes...

You know what makes childhood such a special time, I think?

Because it's the time in our lives when we, no matter what shitheads we often are...people so regularly forgive us our shitheadedness...

It's in adulthood when people start holding our mistakes over our heads that we stop believing in humanity as much, I think...our cynicism is fed by the cynicism of others, as they deal with us as spoiled goods rather than as flawed human beings...

The truth is that what we need for life is what we offer to children...

More commitment to more authentically forgiving and loving ourselves and one another...

The petty among us will demand different, I'm quite sure...that's what makes them petty, after all...

But humanity would be a lot better off if we all weren't so petty...if we faced ourselves more honestly, rather than perpetually avoiding the more challenging realities in our lives...

And we face ourselves more readily with more genuine forgiveness, love and compassion is my more than ample experience on this one...

Forgiving myself, when I've needed it, has been the most confusing experience I've ever had in my life, I think...

Forgiving Brandi has been about as difficult...until recently, I wasn't completely sure I had to...but I'm more confident that she needs -- and deserves -- the forgiveness...

Most pain does...

And its forgiveness that, as I give to myself, I want and need to give freely and generously...

No matter how you cut it, it's harder to forgive others than it is to forgive yourself...because you instantly know that you need forgiveness...but while you may know someone else needs forgiveness, your heart just feels pain...

But I want to give forgiveness freely to Brandi and anyone like I would for myself...this is the hardest experience I've ever had with the stuff...but I know life is better on the other side...

What it all boils down to is are we going to rationalize or condemn our weakness...or are we going to embrace our more genuine strength by forgiving our weakness...

That's the only true strength there is in this world, I'm convinced...other forms are necessary, too, of course...physical and intellectual, of course...

But the genuine moral strength that comes from forgiveness and love and compassion is the only true strength that offers any real hope in the world...everything else is momentary and illusory...

What life comes down to is are we going to aspire in that direction? Or not?

It is a choice with the most profound and serious consequence...and it is the choice that makes all the difference in the world, I am convinced...

And it is a choice that only we can make, no matter what laws people passed or encoded into tradition to make it so...

It is the most profound question of conscience...and it is a question of conscience that I have scarcely questioned since I was a very little boy...or rather I have, but everything I know tells me and my conscience only ever gives me one answer to that question...

To forgive...

The only question I have as an adult is why do people resist this matter of conscience so strongly? How does it serve them? How does it serve us? And how does it get so interwoven with almost all of the most serious matters of uplifting good that is done in the world and its absence so conspicuous in all of the most serious evil done in the world?

But what it all boils down to is are we going to get lost in the darkness?

Or are we going to search and fumble for the light?

I nor anyone can be drug into the light, as Plato suggested in his Allegory of the Cave...

But we can find our way out of the cave, if we seek out light from shadows...

And that light comes with a clear heart, I think...

Hopefully, today is a day of clarity for me...God knows I need it:):)...

Love,
Ben

Finding strength over the horizon...

After reflecting about 9/11 on my friend Carson's blog...

http://content-writer.blogspot.com/2006/09/it-is-nice-for-you-to-help-people911.html

It occurs to me as I consider both wanting to both honor and to not live in the past as it concerns that terrible tragedy 5 years ago...

That something else is on my heart, today...

That my friendship with Brandi is now, officially, I think, in the past...

As much as I have genuinely wanted friendship with my ex-girlfriend and once best friend, that
we're at a point where I need/want to see over the horizon...

Brandi was a good friend, as long as I knew her...she was a great girlfriend, despite our inexperience and red hot love...

She was one of the stronger people I knew...not strong enough for us to have a friendship or a relationship, it turns out....but stronger than your average bear...and I assume she's got more strength than she is betraying for me, these days...

I'm a pretty strong person, really...so it never really occurred to me that others would be weaker, when the chips were down, before they were in ways that have had more serious consequence in my life...Brandi deciding that she's not strong enough for friendship is only one of those ways...my relationships with my professors in grad school were the first situation to really surprise me...my relationship with my parents in adulthood is the other relatioship that has seriously disappointed me...

Strength involves a lot of work...it involves a lot of responsibility...it involves looking at realities squarely -- about ourselves, primarily -- and facing them honestly...

And the last 5 or 6 years has demonstrated, for me, at least, that it is something that most people struggle with or lack in serious ways...

The trouble is that weakness can't really lead us anywhere...it just has us putting off the more serious work that makes us stronger...strength does not mean and has never meant for me to never give into weakness...to the contrary, we often recognize strength from our failures, is my experience...and the experience I see in others too often to really assume differently...one of the worst forms of weakness is self-righteousness, because it is the weakness that is most afraid of looking at ourselves most honestly and challenging ourselves to be better...self-righteousness is borne of fear and insecurity, rather than more genuine strength and wisdom, which, like the tree amidst a storm, bends without breaking...

Conscience is our guide through that experience...no government, no teacher, no boss, no leader can protect us from our weakness...

Conscience is our most powerful guide through that experience...

I am disappointed, obviously, that Brandi seems to have perpetually decided to take the weak path...the path of her fears rather than the path of her hopes (or what I can only assume is the path of her fears, since she is too afraid to let me see anything different)...

But I need to see over the horizon of our past...

It's funny, isn't it?

Brandi and I broke up a little more than a month before September 11th...around the 5th or 6th of August, 2001...she signed a lease on a new apartment, and I moved her into her new place...

And despite the clear and consequential tragedy that was 9/11 in my life as much as in the lives of all Americans and people all over the world...despite my own serious reactions to that day...a serious consideration of military service only dissuaded by my Grandma Sutherland, the grandmother most committed to the armed services in my family...scared calls to Brandi about whether we needed to get gas masks or other protective equipment...fear for our friend, Wendy, who was heading to Bangladesh amidst a time of serious antagonism between Muslims and Westerners...

Despite all of my serious reactions at that time...

The strongest reaction I have today is that I miss Brandi, my best friend from my late college years and the closest friend I ever had in my life...before she decided that she couldn't handle a friendship...

For some reason, that minor tragedy in my own life outweighs, in my heart, the tragedy of my fellow Americans...I don't know why...I just know where my heart is at, today...

It occurs to me, today, that when most people say "Forgive but don't forget" what they really mean, often, is "I'm not forgiving"...and that a lot of the "Never forget" discussion around 9/11 and even the Holocaust and so many tragedies in human history are code for "I'm not willing to forgive"

That has consequence in life, I think...terrible consequences, generally...for individuals as well as for all of us...

I need to forgive Brandi because I don't want to grow old at 33...I don't want to live my life in the past, as so many people my age and older do without always being completely honest with themselves and others about that fact...

I don't want to have all that grief on my heart...I want to leave it behind and to look at the world with fresh eyes...like I did when I was 18 (bitter with my father, and mother, as it turned out, still, but looking at the world with more freedom and more future and opportunity than I ever had in my life)...

I didn't admire and love Brandi for her good looks or her money or her background...

I loved her and admired her for her strength...for the overwhelmingly loving person that she was...for the really remarkable person that she was...

I'm sad to have that taken away from me for reasons that make no sense to me, at all...

But I want to live my life looking forward to more strength like that, and stronger, obviously, in my life, rather than looking back at a lifelong friendship that could have been...a friendship that Brandi decided that, no matter how much stronger than most folks she was, that she just wasn't strong enough to handle...

The last 5 years have me feeling like Job more than any other in my life...

And this is the overcast that most responsible for that feeling...

I need strength, right now, to look beyond the horizon...I'll spend tonight and as long as I need to find it...

Love,
Ben

The Annie soundtrack...

Melissa and I have been listening to the Annie soundtrack all day while we've cleaned, she's done homework, and I've graded math work...

Brandi kind of spoiled the Annie soundtrack, somewhat, and a whole slew of movies and music for me for now...after listening to the Annie soundtrack for the umpteenth time, today, I'm starting to be able to appreciate it independent of Ms. Fisher (the reason why she got me excited about the album is now far too sadly ironic to really let me think about her, too much, while I'm listening to the soundtrack)...

It's kind of dulled my sense of wonder with the world...having Brandi abandon our friendship...

I've lived through a lot...I've studied humanity at its worst for enough time, now, to know how ugly the world can be...still, it's when someone let's us down, personally, that really gets to us, isn't it?...I'm sure many people must feel this way with me, often, so I can't really hold it against Brandi...

When I was a kid, that song...Tomorrow...would just fill me full of wonder and hope and faith in the world...

I'm working up to hope and faith, these days...with everyone, really...it's not just Brandi...it's just that Brandi has been the biggest disappointment...not because she's been such a shitty friend...people fuck up...but because she just can't find it in her to say, "I'm sorry"...

People are kind of shitty lot, often, obviously...but when you have someone who represents something better, it does something for the soul...

And when those people give up on that, even for awhile, the dissappointment is deeper, for me at least...

I have that kind of disappointment with America, right now...I love her...but she's really in bad shape, right now...and she's pretending that she's doing better than she really is...and it's just kind of letting everyone down, right now, I think...

I feel the same about Brandi...

I love this album...but I can't listen to it in any other way but half-hearted anymore these days...and I'm a pretty hopeful guy, much of the time...

It just reminds me that I can't do it alone, if I wanted to...others have got to pitch in, too...and Brandi was someone who for a good long while was someone I could always count on pitching in...

Sadly...I don't really count on her for much of anything, these days...except as a source of persistent disappointment and heartache...

So I try to listen to Annie independent of Ms. Fisher the best I can and hope that I'll encounter a friend, soon enough, who makes Brandi feel like a distant, unreliable, but forgiveable friend who hasn't really earned the place in my heart that she has, out of my generosity rather than because she's really merited it...

I know the conventional wisdom by cynics is that generosity is taken advantage of because people can...

But I just kind of think that's one long excuse for what shitheads people are who somehow want to blame my decency for their shitheadedness...including the cynics...

And my decency is responsible for noone's shitheadedness...it's the lifeline they have for imagining themselves being something better, should they choose to be better people...

That includes Brandi...

And that's what I love about Annie...it's a tribute to how all of us can be better people even amidst the cruelties that life has to dish out...

"Just thinking about tomorrow clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow, till there's none...when I'm stuck with a day that's gray and lonely...I just stick out my chin and grin and say, 'Oh...the sun will come out tomorrow...so you gotta hang on till tomorrow...come what may'...Tomorrow, tomorrow...I love ya, tomorrow...you're only a day away"...

Till tomorrow...

Love, Ben

Between relativism and fundamentalism...

Peter Berger has what looks like the beginnings (I'll have to get ahold of his entire article to get a better picture of his thinking) of a brilliant analysis of the interrelated problems between relativism and fundamentalism in dealing with serious moral and political problems in the most recent American Interest...

http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=157&MId=5

As he writes:

"For reasons that may not be immediately obvious, relativism and fundamentalism as cultural forces are closely interlinked. This is not only because one can morph and, more often than may be appreciated, does morph into the other: In every relativist there is a fundamentalist about to be born, and in every fundamentalist there is a relativist waiting to be liberated. More basically, it is because both relativism and fundamentalism are products of the same process of modernization; indeed, both are intrinsically modern phenomena of going to extremes. What follows is an attempt, by means of a sociological analysis, to show how the two phenomena are related."

So true, so true...and perhaps the most important thing they both have in common is being organized by reaction rather than more rigorous thought...

Linda Lovelace and Jim Bakker embody Berger's notion that "In every relativist there is a fundamentalist about to be born, and in every fundamentalist there is a relativist waiting to be liberated" to a tee...

But the truth is that there is at least a little relativist and fundamentalist in all of us, I think...I know I learn more each day about my own extremes...

Looking forward to reading this article...

Love,
Ben

Finally some sanity on North Korea and Iran...

Two excellent op-eds in the Washington Post, today, that point us in a better direction for both North Korea and Iran...

Donald Gregg, the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, and Don Oberdorfer, chairman of the U.S. Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, write brilliantly about the central problem in dealings with North Korea (and with Iran): recognizing the obvious failure of the current policy...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501144.html

"Why, at such a time, choose sanctions, a policy option whose historical record is overwhelmingly one of failure? One possible reason is that sanctions give vent to the visceral hostility that senior Bush administration officials feel toward North Korea. Another is that sanctions could be a defense, however inadequate, against political charges that the administration has done little or nothing to slow North Korea's nuclear programs. But a sanctions-based policy ignores the damage it would do to those in North Korea seeking transformational change and greater openness. Some longtime foreign observers believe such trends are gathering force.

Some high in the Bush administration have argued that dangerous actions by North Korea are likely whether or not the United States undertakes new sanctions against Pyongyang. Perhaps so, but they are much more likely if, instead of carrot-and-stick negotiations, the administration withdraws all previous carrots and multiplies the sticks. In this case a U.S. administration will have to share the blame with North Korea if a new international crisis erupts."

I disagree with the notions that negotiations of carrots and sticks are the best negotiation...they can have impact, carrots especially...but the best policy would be a policy of engagement where Bush Administration and U.S. leadership makes an honest and convincing case of the threat of nuclear proliferation and of hostility between the U.S. and North Korea to the interests of the North Korean and the American people (which is the most honest and obvious reason to end nuclear proliferation)...

As these two very astute authors note, more sticks will get more of the same problem we have currently...and communication and negotation are the only way out of this mess...

But more than communication, what needs to change is the motivation for the U.S. government and any other governments in approaching these talks...they need to happen for the good of both the American and the North Korean people, and both governments need to be working toward that end...the Bush Administration and any Administration cannot work toward that end until they genuinely believe that end...so they must face, honestly, their more selfish impulses, and be led by a more honest concern for the North Korean people as well as for the American people...absent that, the North Korean government and the North Korean people will always feel manipulated by the machinations of the American government and the American people, and no sustainable resolution to the proliferation issue can result...it will always be contigent on carrots and sticks because we never worked for something better...so if we want something better, then we need to expect better from ourselves and then lead in that direction rather than leading down the more self-centered path that we have taken in international policy for the last 6 years...

Post columnist David Ignatius writes a similar, less strategic, but still more constructive article than most of what is written about or said and done with the Iranian government from any of the parties involved, right now, which is looking for common ground and trying to understand the Iranian position...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501134.html

As Gregg and Oberdorfer describe for North Korea, threats of military action, sanctions, and other approaches that have clearly failed demonstrate, such actions only threaten these two far from trustworthy regimes and make them more likely to pursue weapons as an act of defiance, but I would add as a perceived need for self-defense...if a government links three governments as an Axis of Evil, invades one, and then orders the others to give up weapons regarded by themselves as needed for self-defense, it makes it all the more likely that those governments will act both defiantly -- since they don't recognize the Western Powers or the United Nations as legitimate authorities, rightly or wrongly -- and act on behalf of their self-defense when they have reason to believe they might be attacked, which every threat of military action or ever time that military action is mentioned as not being off the table clearly gives them rational reason to believe that they need to pursue...

We point a gun at Iran and North Korea and tell them to do what we say or be shot...they're first thought, get a gun...

So that's what they're doing...and we are so stupid and arrogant in our swagger that it doesn't even occur to us, "Oh, yeah...if I had a gun pointed at me, my first thought would be to get a gun..."

"...unless...unless I trusted the person with the gun"...which they clearly don't...and we want them to trust us, then we need to earn that trust...

And if we don't earn that trust, then we can expect that we will get both defiance and a very logical sense of a need for self-defense...we've made threats about invading their countries...what did we expect?

Arrogantly, we expected nothing...because we aren't concerned with the Iranian and North Korean people genuinely enough...because we are far more self-involved and self-concerned than we would like to admit...

And self-absorption and self-centeredness has consequences...

And understanding others and their motivations has consequences, as well...which is exactly the point of these authors...understanding, and building understanding through communication and engagement, has better consequences than does threats and force, as a general rule...threats and force can have short term favorable consequences, which desolve over time, since the threat dilutes itself the more it is used...

Thought, engagement, communication and mutual understanding are far more effective and do far less harm...to others and to their sense of safety in a world that is far too dangerous, as it is, notwithstanding our constant threatening, bullying, and forceful efforts...

You want to see how dysfunctional a forceful environment can be, go to Palestine or Iran or North Korea or Cuba or a million more autocratic places in the world where force is proscribed -- as it has by the long trend of humanity's history, unsuccessfully, which is why humanity gives it up to make movements forward, meaning to more authentically progress -- and where fear and threat are more the norm in the world...

It's an awful way to live...and the sad, sad tragedy of the whole thing is that is doesn't do a lick of real good...it just suppresses problems and leaves them in hiding, rather than dealing with them more honestly...

Ever wonder why so many awful things like murder (in the case of Abraham of his son Isaac) or incest (in the case of Lot with his two daughters) are rationalized by the Bible as if they are better than they really are?

I don't...because awful realities have been rationalized from the beginning of time to account for our terrible inability to face our failures...not just our moral or personal or political failures...but our failures as people to teach limits effectively...

Aggression typically surpresses social realities, it does not make them go away...people have always done bad...they just did it more undercover in the past...and the more we try to repress peoples' need for freedom and to make choices, as in the case of alcohol or drug prohibition, the more we likely we make it that they will identify with those who make even the most dangerous choices, like murder or rape, and the more we create underground cultures that subvert our highest values...

The highest murder rates in the United States have occurred when alcohol prohibition was at its height, in 1933, and when the drug war was at its height, in the early 1980's through the early 1990's...

The reason...because prohibition created an underground and popular illegal trade that was then, because it was illegal, enforced by the illegal vendors in that trade...organized crime and the mafia with alcohol at the beginning of the 20th century...and organized crime and gangs at the end of the 20th century...

And like the Iranian and North Korean leaders, the more we threaten those involved in that trade, rather than deal with force only when real physical threats present themselves and make appeals to conscience with them and with those involved with genuine leadership that is genuinely concerned with their well-being, the less they will play ball and the more they will be defiant...

Threats and force only work in the short term...and they have costs when they are used for more self-centered ends and ends less genuinely concerned with others...

And one of the most important costs is that they generally and often make our goal harder, not easier, to achieve...

It's a lesson to be learned from Iran and North Korea...

And these two articles (as well as David Broder's Washington Post column on Karl Rove, today) are two good signs that some people are starting to learn the lesson...

Love,
Ben

Trouble in paradise...

The teachers are slowing showing signs of war with administration...

In meetings and situations with administrators...they bicker, they villify, and they're showing serious signs of being pissed about having decisions forced upon them...

These are the same teachers, by the way, who begged to have decisions imposed school-wide, district-wide, some of them statewide and federal-wide (though federal impositions are being opposed more and more, thankfully, by teachers)...and definitely imposing all kinds of stuff on kids...

It's not even particular issues...it's just being bossed around all of the time...

Which is natural...if people would get honest about this whole foolish, romantic political period they would realize that noone likes to be bossed around...so imposing on people will quite naturally result in all kinds of foolish conflict and soiled relationships...

But what do I know?:)...I'm just a second year special education teacher:)...

Tensions are running high in meetings...so high that I can't navigate them with humor and cooling people off anymore...and the failure of teachers, in particular, and administrators, secondarily, to face the failure of the logic of all of their advocacy of imposition and force is kind of baffling, sometimes, as I persistently watch them buck the very impositions that they so romanticize in the abstract...

Very bizarre behavior, indeed:):)...

In the meantime...it's making life uncomfortable, these days...and it means that teachers and administrators both follow the failed and foolish logic on this, which just escalates the tensions and conflicts...and that they all persistently engage these discussions failing to be sensitive to the position of one another...to listen to one another...and to resolve conflict, rather than just trying, foolishly, to win them all the time...

The best hope is that, paradoxically, it is administrators who are typically much more on the ball about this issue...and are learning, at times, to navigate conflicts much more easily...
And the other hope is that you just can't keep being foolish forever...eventually you got to face up...or at least most people have to face up...and if you can't...things will just keep getting worse...

I have to say that I am amazed to what lengths most people will go to not have to face up to their failures of logic or just failures, period...

And these are dark days for honest acknowledgement of responsibility, I have to say...

Kind of ironic, huh? That this is supposed to be a period pushing for responsibility...and yet so few people will take responsibility for the clear failures of policy and logic and action, these days?

Can you remember the last time you heard someone say, "I was wrong" or "I'm sorry" for something important in the world?

I can't...

Responsibility is for the weak, apparently, is the logic of those who would strong-arm to get their way rather than face the failure of their thinking...it gives the impression to the other side that maybe you don't know what you're doing...

And here's the real kicker...

Maybe folks don't know what they're doing...

Maybe the reason why the Administration does not want to face the failures of these last 6 years in international policy circles is because they really don't know what they're doing...maybe that is the reason why social conservatives don't want to admit that it is likely the culture war that has so dramatically lowered the standards of the culture, as of late...that a culture war was declared, and that social conservatives have clearly lost that war, if the cultural indicators mean anything...if anyone would just take a moment to look around at the baseness of the dominant pop culture in America and the world, right now...

Maybe the reason why Democrats claim the "high ground," as I just heard Senator Charles Schumer from New York claim today without ever having earned it to my mind (what are Chuck's ideas for improved international policy? I haven't hear them...though I've heard him talk plenty during this period) is because it is easier to make a claim on higher ground than to actually earn it...maybe Democrats have confused criticizing a position with developing a better one...maybe Democrats just don't know how to come out with it and say, "I don't know how to improve international policy over the current Administration...because I've been too busy trying to figure out win power and haven't spent even a fraction of that time trying to figure out how to develop more constructive policy"...and maybe that will be kind of embarrassing for us if we do win power, because we won't know what to do with it once we have it...and we will find ourselves subject to similar criticisms that we make as a part of the opposition"

Yeah...some people just don't have the guts to admit when they may not know what they're doing...when they may be wrong...

Most people really...

But we can't just keep fucking up forever...eventually you have to face the failure...or just keep experiencing failure...

What a sad, arrogant period we are going through, right now...

What a sad failure of conscience and honesty we are experiencing, right now...

If we just don't admit how scared we are that we don't know what we're doing...maybe we just won't have to face that fear, we reason...

All the while...failing to resolve problems...many times over...
If I were a kid in America or the world, right now...who would be my hero? Who would I look up to? Who would inspire me?
Democrats? Republicans? Liberals? Conservatives? Teachers? Administrators? Parents?

Maybe that kid who has the guts to admit that he doesn't know how to read and but who gives his honest effort to learn rather than persistently act as if it doesn't matter...

Maybe that's who Hillary Clinton and George Bush and Republicans and Democrats should look to for inspiration, these days...

The kid who can admit that he doesn't know what he's doing...so that he can study and learn...

And who can admit that is matters to know what you're doing...even if you've studied it...but your efforts are failing anyway...

My experience is that people who have studied something are often the ones who have the easiest time admitting when they're wrong...

Because they didn't study to fail all of the time...they studied to find a better way to succeed...and once one path has run itself dry...

Eventually...you have to find a better way...

Love,
Ben

Finding a hero...

At the risk of sounding sentimental, I've decided to tell you about someone who became something of a hero for me, tonight...

I have a student that I just discovered, tonight, may be dying...

He's got a rare disease which the majority of kids who suffer with it don't make it to adulthood...I looked up the disease, tonight, but I don't want to name it out of respect for this kid and his privacy...but the bottom-line is that according to his mom, who tells me this without self-pity, he may or not make it into adulthood...

He's a really great kid...he's one of my favorite kids, actually...

He's goth...he's got a band...he loves the guitar and dreams of being a rock star...

He struggles with reading and is on my special education caseload...

But I really like this kid a lot...he's tries really hard and is really respectful with adults...he's just a really great kid...

And he may die before he reaches 18...

And I spent about a half hour, tonight, just talking with his mom about it...she's such a sweety...and I just can't even imagine being in her shoes...knowing that your son could be gone at any moment...

Up till now, the biggest tragedy in my life has been losing Brandi...but I can't quite imagine what it would be like to lose a child and I can't even imagine how tragic this kid's life might be (I've been balling just trying to comprehend the unfairness of this situation for this kid)...

And you know what the crazy thing is?

Most of my kids (and most adults) totally take their lives for granted...

So few of them have any serious dreams or plans for their future...and so many adults have so many opportunities to pursue dreams that they never pursue...

And here is this kid, who knows that the odds are against him making it to adulthood, still dreams of being a rock star...

Most people give up on dreams and most kids I work with never really formulate them seriously...

And this kid who doesn't know how long he's going to be with us talks with me about music he writes, how his band is trying to learn a beat, and I talk with him about bands to listen for to learn to keep a beat...bands that are percussion driven, like AC/DC and White Stripes...and today I was telling him about David Byrne's version of Don't Fence Me In on the Red, Hot and Blue album I was listening to this weekend with all this incredible diversity of creative percussion...

I really like this kid a lot...he's a really good kid and he's really laid back and the fact that he's not the smartest kid doesn't even really occur to me because we spend all of our time talking about music...

And then I just found out tonight that he may die...

I don't want to sound like a total sap...but I can't stop balling, tonight...it's just so sad that a kid this young and this decent may not make it...but that he's just decided that he's gonna be a rock star anyway...it's too goddamn sweet...

And if you saw this kid in his goth gear and his anagrams and his love for Slipknot...you just wouldn't normally think, "Sweet kid"...but he is...and I know a lot of teachers may be put off by all the gear...but I just remember a million friends from school who dressed, looked, acted the same...and, generally, they just wanted to be loved and accepted for who they are...

It's so sweet to watch this kid and his girlfriend hug in the hallways between class...you can tell that they're just kids...they're just kids...and no matter what the gear, they're just kids like I was at that age...fairly innocent, I imagine...and just wanting to be loved and accepted for who they are...

And I just feel, in a really mentor-like way, like this kid is my kid...and I just can't imagine what it must be like for his mom...everything they've gone through on this...his mom having to come to terms with the fact that her son may die before he reaches adulthood...and this kid having to deal with the fact of death as well a kid ever could...

I had two friends die in junior high...but it never occured to me just how sad their deaths must have been for their parents who looked forward to long lives and seeing their kids off and having them pursue big dreams and having all of that fall apart...one of my friends, like this friend, was a really sweet kid, too...he was really well liked by all of our friends in junior high...and as kids you just can't quite fathom how tragic it must be for parents who lose a child...

This kid and I, as far as I'm concerned, at least, will not be acting like he's going to die, even though his mom says that the odds are against him (you can tell she doesn't live like that, either, to her credit)...

But I'm also realistic...

So...my plan is to see if maybe we can get him some kind of rock concert before he's 18...I've built a relationship with the instrumental music teacher...and we've even talked about this kid, together...and I'm his advocate...and the kid is sweet to me...so I plan on being super-advocate for this kid...

I want to see if we can get him an opportunity to play his guitar in a public performance -- see if we can give him the opportunity to be a rock star for a day, if he's interested -- at a point at which he might feel comfortable or be interested in something like that...maybe there are groups that might sponsor a kid like this, too, that might help with something like this...he says he's written a couple of instrumental numbers...and I think he ought to get a chance to put on a concert before he's 18...

It's amazing to me that so many of my kids...that so many people...have these amazing opportunities that they totally take for granted to live the lives of their dreams...who don't face terminal diseases...for whom the odds are much more in their favor...and yet who pass up all of those opportunities and give into their fears rather than living into their hopes and dreams...

And then you have this kid...this middle school age kid...who knows that he may not live past adolescence...

And he still has a dream anyway...because you know what...fuck the odds...that's why...

And I'm proud as hell of this kid for giving the finger to the odds and deciding he's going to be a rock star anyway...

I can only hope that all my students learn from that simple but fairly profound example from a middle school student...

The whole thing kind of blows me away, really...

I think I just found my new hero...

Love,
Ben

The common denominator of progress...

Do you know what is the common denominator of all of the most successful people and situations that support creativity and originality and success that I have encountered? Of the people who promote and create the most real progress in the culture?

It's not ideology, that's for sure...plenty of liberals, conservatives, radicals, theocrats, Communists, anarchists, libertarians, and all the like who contribute very little to the culture, at large, and who are small, petty and vindictive...

It's not even smart in a clever or fact-accumulating kind of way, since there are tons of very smart people -- David Horowitz or Charles Krauthammer or Christopher Hitchens or James Carville come to mind, here -- who are clever by half and whose arrogance undermines their ability to contribute most meaningfully to the culture...

The common denominator of folks like Joe Nye and Amartya Sen and Gordon Wood and Abraham Maslow and John Dewey and Mary Wolstencraft and John Stuart Mill and Francis Fukuyama and Milton Friedman and E.O. Wilson and Frederich Hayek...and of folks like Harper Lee, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edna St. Vincent Millay (and I've just been mentioning American authors, here...I haven't even included, yet, authors like J.M. Coatzee or Roald Dahl or V.S. Naipaul or Pablo Freire or Desmond Tutu or Arundhati Roy) is that they are all more forgiving and they all take freeedom -- their own and others' -- more seriously than do most people...and out of that freedom and ability to see beyond the past toward the future, they contribute the ideas and work that most meaningfully moves the culture ahead...

The more freedom and forgiveness they offer for mistakes -- freedom and forgiveness allowing us to think, make mistakes, reflect, and learn -- the more learning that takes place...and the more success they promote...

Human beings may be the only animal species that explicitly studies its own history to learn about its achievements and its failures and then persistently ignores the bigger lessons in bizarre mental gymnastics -- that it regards as serious endeavor rather than as sport -- to try to prove that they are right about matters where the writing is so clearly on the wall that they are wrong...

Twain might have said that humans are the only animals that make excuses or that need to make excuses, because humans are the only species that can try to talk themselves out of their own failures...

The bigger lesson of history that the entire world seems to missing, right now, is that cultures and leaders that embrace greater freedom and more forgiving, broader, compassionate attitudes clearly make more progress than cultures that don't...

And do you know the reason why this is true?

Because we are persistently, as the rule rather than the exception, doing things that require forgiveness...

And just as persistently, acting as if we are not...

I have to say that one thing that seems to be a common element for many social conservatives is that they are persistently acting like they never do anything wrong or that social conservativism has protected us from sin -- which every sex and other scandal by conservative preachers in the 1980's and 90's should have disabused us of -- and that they persistently talk about history as if it is a place where people did no wrong...and they did no wrong because they had the fear of God in them-- either from God, directly, or his business managers here on earth -- to prevent all the sinning that we see today (and always, since the beginning of time)...

Radicals, too often, on the other hand, seem to see no right in our history...as if history was an inexorable march toward their clearly superior leadership...so clear that they need to not demonstrate the power of their ideas (as Marxists go on forever defending the clearly failed leadership and ideas from that bitter, nasty man) and only need to compel the submission of those who disagree with them...

The truth is that our behavior has clearly always been worse in the past...including with regard to more conventional sin, I am convinced...

Slavery, oppression of women and minorities, anti-semitism, repression of religious expression and of everyone by religious zealotry, debtors prisons and involuntary servitude, imperialism, warfare for political and personal gain, repression of speech and thought...

But the deeper truth is that it is freedom and more forgiving attitudes that have made things better, rather than some arrogant notion that our ability to beat our sins from our past made the real difference... it's so clear to me that it really is a fairly bizarre notion that either people did not sin or make serious mistakes in the past -- or that they did so less than we do today -- or that less freedom or a less forgiving attitude would somehow help us make progress that it has so clearly failed to deliver for most of the history of humanity...since the clear trend of history favors greater freedom and greater forgiveness, humanity, generosity, decency, compassion, and all of our highest values...

Our fears otherwise are borne of our pettiness, I think...and our inability to face more honestly our failures because of that pettiness...

The fear that we are soft is borne of the hard hearts of political and religious zealots -- on both the left and the right -- who both just can't face up to their failures and the failures of their ideas and who can't face up to the clear fact that their hard hearts are the best evidence for their own moral failures and failures as people that we could ever conjure up...meaning that the reason why they feel so compelled to compel others to do their bidding is because they have examples too poor to inspire leadership...

And that is all the more reason for them to not have power...

Far, far too little wisdom and compassion and forgiveness is what plagues us today...not too much, by a very, very long shot...

And we will not move forward and things will continue to get worse as long as we will not face up to that fact of life...

Love,
Ben

Homo sapiens...

A species of intelligent primates that thrives on 6 of 7 continents despite a perpetual surplus of swagger and bluster and a running shortage of wisdom and good humor.

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