Some of the most challenging moments in teaching teenagers is explaining horrifying events as they unfold. On September 11, 2001, I was in classes with dumbstruck students who expected their US History and Government teacher to be able to make sense of what had happened. Two years earlier I was in class on April 20, 1999 when Columbine High School was attacked, as I was four years before that on April 19, 1995 when the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. I’ve been there to talk to students about the sudden, unexpected deaths of two teachers, and the murder of a recent graduate. They are the times that try one’s soul.
There is a disassociation during these times. You try to find an equilibrium within yourself, a balance where you can be open enough to gather and process as much information as you can, all the while closing down in an act of self-preservation. Doing this with an audience, trying to be honest, caring, and supportive to young people while your vestibular sense has taken a walk is, as a friend of mine says, a whole ‘nother Oprah.
The students (and you) want answers - answers that allow them (and you) to move to the next step, whatever that is. And the truth is that those answers will be a long time in coming, if they ever do. But the students (and you) need something now, something to use too understand, and so instead of answers, you try to move toward compassion, toward appreciation of responsibility, toward community.
Usually we know that these are good things, but in those horrible, horrible times, when we feel the impact of their loss, we can sense the centrality of these intangibles in our lives. We know, for a short time, exactly where they fit in our hierarchy of needs, and whatever was essential and all-consuming just a few minutes before fades back for just a little while.
These are important things to remember. Because as soon as our balance is restored we begin to insist on answers, and if there are no good answers to our questions we’ll come up with new questions - questions which are likely less important, but for which we think we have answers. And the real questions are lost.
This week a young man murdered a dozen strangers, wounded scores more, and left an apartment laden with explosive and incendiary traps, apparently intending to kill police and residents when the apartment was opened. Really, we will never know why. The killer doesn’t really know why, though at some point we may hear his explanation for his actions. Personally, I’m not going to give much credence to the explanations of a person who came to the conclusion that killing and maiming strangers was best thing that he could do with his time and talents. Don’t really trust his process.
What we will then do, what we have already begun to do, is to ask that different set of questions. How could he get the weapons? Why did he choose that time and place? Why didn’t someone spot this and report it to someone? Essentially, how can we keep this from happening again? And we know, deep down, that we can’t.
Americans have a long list of ideas in which we believe. Justice. Equality. Cheap food. First in line, however, is freedom. We love it. Especially OUR freedom to do what we want. We’re not generally as worked up about freedom for people whom we don’t know to do things that we don’t like. Shooting guns. Smoking pot. Marrying matching genitalia. If it’s our thing, it is obviously an aspect of freedom. If it’s not, well... .
The problem is that freedom is sometimes really scarey, and sometimes really inconvenient, and sometimes it seems like there are obvious exceptions and limitations. Children should not be free to use alcohol or explosives. People should not be free to take other persons’ property. People should not be free to damage and belittle the helpless. These seem obvious, and we believe that all right thinking people would agree with us. And yet sometimes they don’t.
It is important to recognize that freedom implies vulnerability, and that we cannot have both freedom and protection from its exercise. People will sometimes do bad things. Sometimes these bad things will affect us deeply. And we must endure.
Soon we will be hearing more and more about the movie theater killer. Anybody who knew him will be asked about him. These questions will all be aimed at trying to determine what it was that we missed. In asking these questions we reveal an expectation that if someone had been paying attention, the murders could have been stopped.
Usually, in incidents like this, we find something, and then we try to find a way to not miss it again. This can be valuable, if it means being aware of the people around us, particularly if we have some specific responsibility for them. But the real issue, the thing that just stabs at us, is that these things happen, and that we know they will happen again. In the face of this, the only question that really needs answering is how will we let this change us.
I have taught teenagers for over twenty-five years, and I have to tell you, some of them are pretty strange. I love that about them, usually. Do I wonder if some of them might some day show up with a weapon? Of course. Have there been any specifically that I’ve been concerned about? Yes. Ones that were isolated, who had few friends and/or who were antagonized by other students. Have I talked with colleagues and the administration? Yes. Most of all, I’ve talked with the students. Talked to them, and listened to them. Have I been influential at all? I don’t know. Have I missed persons who needed more? I assume so. Have I ever thought I ought tell the police? Never.
These are kids who did not need another person in their lives telling them that they are inadequate, that they are different, that maybe we don't really want them around, and no matter how it is phrased, explained, or implemented, that is what they will hear.
I understand mandated reporting for child abuse. I have and will report any suspicions in a heartbeat. I am willing to risk being wrong about a parent or other adult in the interest of protecting the child. I am not willing to risk labeling a child as a threat in the interests of making us feel safer.
Freedom brings risks, and if we are really invested in freedom, then our safety lies not in examining our neighbors' indicators of possible deviance, but in being invested in those around us, not in labeling the “other” and isolating them, but in recognizing and respecting them. It will not be one hundred percent effective, but that is a risk I can live with.
So when you hear the reports of one person saying that the killer was this, and another saying that the killer was that, remember all the strange people that you have known, and perhaps even your own strangeness. Ask yourself if we want to create a society where the proper response to a person being different is to question, to fear, or to report as a threat. Decide if you want to decide to look at others for evidence or indicators of "otherness", or if you want to see them as people - as flawed and damaged as yourself - who are looking for ways to be safe, fulfilled, and at peace.
We’ve invested too much, bled too much, and sacrificed too much, to trade freedom for fear, or community for suspicion. I hope. Pax.
Thursday 26 July 2012
Saturday 21 July 2012
Professionalism, Part Two
To recap: professionalism and being expert has serious advantages, but sometimes we really get annoyed by them and need to compensate. Fair enough. But there is another side to this that I think is even more insidious: the tyranny of the professional.
Let’s start with sports. Not that long ago, kids played sports. Baseball, football, basketball, stickball, dodge ball, kick ball, soccer, kick the can, tag, hide-and-seek. The emphasis is on “play”, and it was just what they did. Kids at school or in the neighborhood would get together, get a ball or whatever else was needed, and play. Pretty much everybody played, whether they were any good or not. They might be the last picked, but they were usually picked. Rules and boundaries were agreed upon (that mailbox is a first down), and the rules were enforced by the players. They had to be. If the players couldn’t agree that a ball was foul, that a catch was made fairly, that a person was off-sides, then they couldn’t play. The game depended on cooperation and negotiation. My father did not like organized sports for children because of this. He thought that the skills learned in these negotiations, the recognition that the game was more important than any one call and the understanding that one must respect the game were more important than learning the fine points of technique. And I think he was right. Very few people will really need to spend hours perfecting their stance, their release, or their swing. Communication, negotiation, and respect for something other than oneself, however, are universal skills that many of us lack. Playing pick-up games, however, will not make us expert. It does not prepare us for being professionals. And the dirty little (not so) secret of youth sports is that many of the parents see it as a testing ground to see if, with expert help, their child might have a future as a professional.
Kids also sing and dance. Often before they can walk or even stand. Ask your parents if you don’t believe me. Music is powerful mojo. Not that long ago, most people played instruments, and nearly everybody sang. Now, I’ve not seen any research to indicate that people “back then” had significantly better voices than we do today, or that they were more coordinated or dexterous. Watch the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” sometime. I certainly wouldn’t take the movie as gospel, but it seems like the idea that people would all get together and unselfconsciously sing together while a kid played a piano was one that the audience could buy into. Maybe they themselves hadn’t done it, but their parents likely had, back before radio and phonographs. Those actors were not all good singers (cough, cough, Jimmy Stewart), but it really didn’t matter. If you wanted music, someone had to sing and someone had to play an instrument.
People rarely sing if front of people nowadays, but nearly everybody, I would bet, sings by themselves in the car or in the shower. A few people play instruments, I would wager that far more children play than do adults. Playing music is best if it is communal - with a band or with folks singing or dancing, and as people grow older they seem less likely to take the time to do this. It is somehow seen as indulgent, even escapist to play with a group after around twenty-five or so. Unless you are getting gigs.
Sports, singing, making music - things we all remember from childhood, have turned into something that we rarely do for ourselves anymore. We have professionals to do this for us. Even dance has gone this direction. I work with teenagers, and they love to dance, but what has happened since the advent of the music video is that the professional dancers show them how to dance to any particular song. At a dance, or on a dance floor with young adults, when a popular song is played, look around and you will see people copying the moves that they saw on the video.
Now none of this is bad. There are a lot of good musicians out there playing excellent music, and wonderful singers interpreting songs. Professional sports can be great fun. What concerns me is not that professionals do these things, but that we amateurs have largely stopped doing these things for ourselves, and experience them more and more vicariously through the work of professionals. Sports, music, singing, drawing, painting, sculpting, telling stories - all of these are creative expressions of our common humanity. All of these are a part of our experience, things that we have done and enjoyed and gotten lost in. These are things that humans do. And we seem to have stopped doing them, to a large extent, because we have professionals, experts who do it better.
I would love for us to take them back. There are some bright spots. Karaoke has potential, but it generally fails. It is often people imitating professionals, sometimes rather pathetically, and sometimes ironically. Several years ago, in Ireland, I was in pubs where people just started singing. Lots of them. No one was trying to be Madonna, Rihanna, Usher, or Sinatra - they were just singing. There have always been adult athletic teams, so for talented players there is still an outlet. And people continue to dance (even guys). Certainly blogging has created opportunities for the amateur writer, and people obviously crave it. Now if we can just relegate the professionals to the same level as the chefs on TV - interesting experts who give us ideas and which are fun to watch, but who bear little relation to the cooking we do every day (and which is just fine, and sometimes better, thank you very much) - I think we would all be happier, healthier, and more in-tune humans. Pax.
Let’s start with sports. Not that long ago, kids played sports. Baseball, football, basketball, stickball, dodge ball, kick ball, soccer, kick the can, tag, hide-and-seek. The emphasis is on “play”, and it was just what they did. Kids at school or in the neighborhood would get together, get a ball or whatever else was needed, and play. Pretty much everybody played, whether they were any good or not. They might be the last picked, but they were usually picked. Rules and boundaries were agreed upon (that mailbox is a first down), and the rules were enforced by the players. They had to be. If the players couldn’t agree that a ball was foul, that a catch was made fairly, that a person was off-sides, then they couldn’t play. The game depended on cooperation and negotiation. My father did not like organized sports for children because of this. He thought that the skills learned in these negotiations, the recognition that the game was more important than any one call and the understanding that one must respect the game were more important than learning the fine points of technique. And I think he was right. Very few people will really need to spend hours perfecting their stance, their release, or their swing. Communication, negotiation, and respect for something other than oneself, however, are universal skills that many of us lack. Playing pick-up games, however, will not make us expert. It does not prepare us for being professionals. And the dirty little (not so) secret of youth sports is that many of the parents see it as a testing ground to see if, with expert help, their child might have a future as a professional.
Kids also sing and dance. Often before they can walk or even stand. Ask your parents if you don’t believe me. Music is powerful mojo. Not that long ago, most people played instruments, and nearly everybody sang. Now, I’ve not seen any research to indicate that people “back then” had significantly better voices than we do today, or that they were more coordinated or dexterous. Watch the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” sometime. I certainly wouldn’t take the movie as gospel, but it seems like the idea that people would all get together and unselfconsciously sing together while a kid played a piano was one that the audience could buy into. Maybe they themselves hadn’t done it, but their parents likely had, back before radio and phonographs. Those actors were not all good singers (cough, cough, Jimmy Stewart), but it really didn’t matter. If you wanted music, someone had to sing and someone had to play an instrument.
People rarely sing if front of people nowadays, but nearly everybody, I would bet, sings by themselves in the car or in the shower. A few people play instruments, I would wager that far more children play than do adults. Playing music is best if it is communal - with a band or with folks singing or dancing, and as people grow older they seem less likely to take the time to do this. It is somehow seen as indulgent, even escapist to play with a group after around twenty-five or so. Unless you are getting gigs.
Sports, singing, making music - things we all remember from childhood, have turned into something that we rarely do for ourselves anymore. We have professionals to do this for us. Even dance has gone this direction. I work with teenagers, and they love to dance, but what has happened since the advent of the music video is that the professional dancers show them how to dance to any particular song. At a dance, or on a dance floor with young adults, when a popular song is played, look around and you will see people copying the moves that they saw on the video.
Now none of this is bad. There are a lot of good musicians out there playing excellent music, and wonderful singers interpreting songs. Professional sports can be great fun. What concerns me is not that professionals do these things, but that we amateurs have largely stopped doing these things for ourselves, and experience them more and more vicariously through the work of professionals. Sports, music, singing, drawing, painting, sculpting, telling stories - all of these are creative expressions of our common humanity. All of these are a part of our experience, things that we have done and enjoyed and gotten lost in. These are things that humans do. And we seem to have stopped doing them, to a large extent, because we have professionals, experts who do it better.
I would love for us to take them back. There are some bright spots. Karaoke has potential, but it generally fails. It is often people imitating professionals, sometimes rather pathetically, and sometimes ironically. Several years ago, in Ireland, I was in pubs where people just started singing. Lots of them. No one was trying to be Madonna, Rihanna, Usher, or Sinatra - they were just singing. There have always been adult athletic teams, so for talented players there is still an outlet. And people continue to dance (even guys). Certainly blogging has created opportunities for the amateur writer, and people obviously crave it. Now if we can just relegate the professionals to the same level as the chefs on TV - interesting experts who give us ideas and which are fun to watch, but who bear little relation to the cooking we do every day (and which is just fine, and sometimes better, thank you very much) - I think we would all be happier, healthier, and more in-tune humans. Pax.
Professionalism
Once upon a time, to be professional was much to be desired. Now it is a bit more ambivalent. Where I work, in education, "professionalism" and its various conjugates have mutated, and are now used as weapons. If an administrator does not like your attitude, decisions or dress, (s)he will question your professionalism. It rarely if ever has a positive connotation in actual usage. Professionalism is the concept by which we measure our inadequacies.
My guess is that this is not confined to the ream of the educator. We Americans have an energized ambivalence to “experts”, and “professional” edges right up to it. We want and expect the best. The best quality, the best value, the best deal, the best steak, the best doctor and the best mechanic. Experts tend to have a monopoly in the “best” category, but those “experts”, we think, probably think they’re better than us. Because they’re experts. If you want the best, you need to deal with people who think they’re better than you, and that’s not particularly comfortable. Actually, it sucks. So there you go.
There are several ways to deal with this. One is to acknowledge the expertise of the person you are dealing with, with the understanding that you are an expert in a different, and more important area. It works like this ( imagine a thought balloon, as hardly anybody would actually say this out loud): “You may be a neurosurgeon, but I’m the only one who really knows just how bad I feel, how quickly I will recover, and exactly what I want the outcome to be. Those are the things that really matter - your skills are simply a means to the end about which I am the expert.” Or “Yes, you are an architect, which I certainly could have become had I not (a) become a neurosurgeon (b) been busy raising these amazing children ( c) taken over the family business, and dealt with real world issues, like providing quality manicures (d) been high all the time. In any case, I and I alone know what I want, and that is what is important, so do what I say. Expertly.”
Another way to compensate for another’s competence is to imply that their field of expertise is, in and of itself, unimportant. I mean, anyone can paint a house. Anyone can tighten and loosen pipes. All those therapists do is talk, and anyone can do that. This is really effective, because it is often true - anyone can do those things. Just not expertly.
As a teacher, I get to deal with these attitudes regularly. Many parents believe that their occupation, profession, or job is definitely more important that teaching. Those that can, do - those that can’t teach. I mean, anyone could do that! And, of course, they are correct on the last point - anybody can teach. Just not expertly.
However gratifying pointing out the banal predictability of people who denigrate my profession may be, is not really what I want to get at. It’s something a bit more general. It is about our attitude about experts, and how it may be keeping ourselves from experiencing more of what it really can feel like to be a human - things that just a generation or two ago were part of normal human experience, but now are rarely experienced at all, and if they are it is often anemic, restricted, or (worst of all) ironic way. Coming soon. Pax.
My guess is that this is not confined to the ream of the educator. We Americans have an energized ambivalence to “experts”, and “professional” edges right up to it. We want and expect the best. The best quality, the best value, the best deal, the best steak, the best doctor and the best mechanic. Experts tend to have a monopoly in the “best” category, but those “experts”, we think, probably think they’re better than us. Because they’re experts. If you want the best, you need to deal with people who think they’re better than you, and that’s not particularly comfortable. Actually, it sucks. So there you go.
There are several ways to deal with this. One is to acknowledge the expertise of the person you are dealing with, with the understanding that you are an expert in a different, and more important area. It works like this ( imagine a thought balloon, as hardly anybody would actually say this out loud): “You may be a neurosurgeon, but I’m the only one who really knows just how bad I feel, how quickly I will recover, and exactly what I want the outcome to be. Those are the things that really matter - your skills are simply a means to the end about which I am the expert.” Or “Yes, you are an architect, which I certainly could have become had I not (a) become a neurosurgeon (b) been busy raising these amazing children ( c) taken over the family business, and dealt with real world issues, like providing quality manicures (d) been high all the time. In any case, I and I alone know what I want, and that is what is important, so do what I say. Expertly.”
Another way to compensate for another’s competence is to imply that their field of expertise is, in and of itself, unimportant. I mean, anyone can paint a house. Anyone can tighten and loosen pipes. All those therapists do is talk, and anyone can do that. This is really effective, because it is often true - anyone can do those things. Just not expertly.
As a teacher, I get to deal with these attitudes regularly. Many parents believe that their occupation, profession, or job is definitely more important that teaching. Those that can, do - those that can’t teach. I mean, anyone could do that! And, of course, they are correct on the last point - anybody can teach. Just not expertly.
However gratifying pointing out the banal predictability of people who denigrate my profession may be, is not really what I want to get at. It’s something a bit more general. It is about our attitude about experts, and how it may be keeping ourselves from experiencing more of what it really can feel like to be a human - things that just a generation or two ago were part of normal human experience, but now are rarely experienced at all, and if they are it is often anemic, restricted, or (worst of all) ironic way. Coming soon. Pax.
Tuesday 17 July 2012
The Mess
Once upon a time, when my grandmother was born, man had not yet achieved powered flight. By the time she died, ninety-odd years later, we had been to the moon and back, flown the space shuttle, and developed stealth bombers and fighters. One lifetime. When I tell this to my students, I don’t think that they get what I am really telling them - that the world at the end of their lives will be different in ways that are unimaginable now. Change and obsolescence come so quickly now - think pagers and PDAs - that I’m not sure that they see it in the same way that I do. It is simply a part of the environment, the air they breathe.
.
Long, long, ago, back in the sixties and seventies when I was growing up, change was happening too. I recall that older folks thought things were changing too quickly and not necessarily in good directions, but most of us youngin’s were OK with that. New was good, though with us it had less to do with new “stuff” than what we were sure were new “attitudes” and “perspectives”. And, to a large extent, I still tend to think those attitudes and much of what they produced were pretty cool . Organic foods and ecological consciousness have held up pretty well. Inclusion and empowerment of persons long considered inferior by our culture still seems like a good idea. Apologies to everybody on this week’s “Hot 100", but Jimi, Janice, the Beatles, Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Marvin Gaye, and Al Green could kick your asses collectively or one at a time. Just sayin’. But I digress.
The real point is that change happens, and sometimes we see it, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we expect it, and then don’t see it when it shows up looking differently than expected.
When I was young, nearly everyone I knew shared a belief in a God. My family was Catholic then, and many still are today. I had friends who were various flavors of Protestant, and friends who were Jewish. I didn’t know anybody being raised Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu back then, but the America I grew up in was pretty darn white, too. There was that one family I knew that didn’t go to church. There were three boys, two of whom were good friends of mine. I remember wondering and, at times, worrying about them. But they were and are good people, and it is a matter of pure speculation how they might have been different had they been “churchgoers”.
I think I am likely from the last American generation to have that experience. Of all of the changes that have taken place over my lifetime, the loss of a fundamental common understanding of morality may be the most significant. We did things that were good, and we did things that were bad - no shock there. People always have and people always will. I knew, just knew, that everybody could tell the difference, and if somebody couldn’t, well, there was something pretty wrong with that person. Not that they always DID the right thing, but that they could recognize it when they saw it.
We had been raised with a few common ideals - that there was right and wrong, that we had a responsibility to determine which was which, and that we would ultimately be accountable for our actions. All of these ideas, at least back then, stemmed from a believe in an active and ethical God. God liked some things, didn’t like others, there were reasons why they were good or bad, and there would be a final judgement and consequences for our actions and inaction. If this God is not present, or if God is either not ethical or disinterested in our choices, then the system collapses. If lying is not inherently bad, or stealing, or cruelty, then why would one not engage in them if one can calculate a better outcome? If one does not believe that there is a final accounting, then even if the actions are bad, so what?
Herein lies a problem. While a majority of people in the United States continue to profess a belief in a God, the nature of that God seems to have changed. The popular God today seems more interested in outcomes (lower taxes, more green space) than relationships, and certainly is more respectful of our arguments as to why we are justified in our actions. I recently read an article that places the blame for this in the exhalation of the individual that was a product of the 60s, and that may be right. I am told by some smart people that a fully functional social morality can exist without a transcendent entity that is ethical and involved. Perhaps this is true. I’ve not seen it, and if it does exist, I think it would take quite a bit of energy to construct. I think many people want to see it, but I’ve seen no actual evidence of its existence. An ethical unicorn. I am not saying that an atheist cannot act ethically - I know they can. I have seen it. My concern is that while individuals can act ethically without a shared understanding of morality, a social system, with many individual decision makers who rely on each other to act in what we used to call an “honorable” way, is another thing entirely. I tend to think that much of what is causing the incivility in society may be rooted in this phenomenon.
So there we are. Our politics is probably not less polarized than it was in times past - I remember Nixon - but the idea that we OUGHT try to get along seems to be fading. Yes, some people have always actively tried to work the system, to get as much for themselves while avoiding responsibility for people in need, but now there is virtually no shame in it. We seem to no longer have a shared sense of what is correct, and a belief that the final judgement of our behavior and attitudes lies outside of ourselves. We have substituted consistency for honor. Perhaps this new attitude is correct. Perhaps there is no right to be discerned and no incentive to do what is difficult without a personal payoff. But that would be sad. Pax.
.
Long, long, ago, back in the sixties and seventies when I was growing up, change was happening too. I recall that older folks thought things were changing too quickly and not necessarily in good directions, but most of us youngin’s were OK with that. New was good, though with us it had less to do with new “stuff” than what we were sure were new “attitudes” and “perspectives”. And, to a large extent, I still tend to think those attitudes and much of what they produced were pretty cool . Organic foods and ecological consciousness have held up pretty well. Inclusion and empowerment of persons long considered inferior by our culture still seems like a good idea. Apologies to everybody on this week’s “Hot 100", but Jimi, Janice, the Beatles, Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Marvin Gaye, and Al Green could kick your asses collectively or one at a time. Just sayin’. But I digress.
The real point is that change happens, and sometimes we see it, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we expect it, and then don’t see it when it shows up looking differently than expected.
When I was young, nearly everyone I knew shared a belief in a God. My family was Catholic then, and many still are today. I had friends who were various flavors of Protestant, and friends who were Jewish. I didn’t know anybody being raised Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu back then, but the America I grew up in was pretty darn white, too. There was that one family I knew that didn’t go to church. There were three boys, two of whom were good friends of mine. I remember wondering and, at times, worrying about them. But they were and are good people, and it is a matter of pure speculation how they might have been different had they been “churchgoers”.
I think I am likely from the last American generation to have that experience. Of all of the changes that have taken place over my lifetime, the loss of a fundamental common understanding of morality may be the most significant. We did things that were good, and we did things that were bad - no shock there. People always have and people always will. I knew, just knew, that everybody could tell the difference, and if somebody couldn’t, well, there was something pretty wrong with that person. Not that they always DID the right thing, but that they could recognize it when they saw it.
We had been raised with a few common ideals - that there was right and wrong, that we had a responsibility to determine which was which, and that we would ultimately be accountable for our actions. All of these ideas, at least back then, stemmed from a believe in an active and ethical God. God liked some things, didn’t like others, there were reasons why they were good or bad, and there would be a final judgement and consequences for our actions and inaction. If this God is not present, or if God is either not ethical or disinterested in our choices, then the system collapses. If lying is not inherently bad, or stealing, or cruelty, then why would one not engage in them if one can calculate a better outcome? If one does not believe that there is a final accounting, then even if the actions are bad, so what?
Herein lies a problem. While a majority of people in the United States continue to profess a belief in a God, the nature of that God seems to have changed. The popular God today seems more interested in outcomes (lower taxes, more green space) than relationships, and certainly is more respectful of our arguments as to why we are justified in our actions. I recently read an article that places the blame for this in the exhalation of the individual that was a product of the 60s, and that may be right. I am told by some smart people that a fully functional social morality can exist without a transcendent entity that is ethical and involved. Perhaps this is true. I’ve not seen it, and if it does exist, I think it would take quite a bit of energy to construct. I think many people want to see it, but I’ve seen no actual evidence of its existence. An ethical unicorn. I am not saying that an atheist cannot act ethically - I know they can. I have seen it. My concern is that while individuals can act ethically without a shared understanding of morality, a social system, with many individual decision makers who rely on each other to act in what we used to call an “honorable” way, is another thing entirely. I tend to think that much of what is causing the incivility in society may be rooted in this phenomenon.
So there we are. Our politics is probably not less polarized than it was in times past - I remember Nixon - but the idea that we OUGHT try to get along seems to be fading. Yes, some people have always actively tried to work the system, to get as much for themselves while avoiding responsibility for people in need, but now there is virtually no shame in it. We seem to no longer have a shared sense of what is correct, and a belief that the final judgement of our behavior and attitudes lies outside of ourselves. We have substituted consistency for honor. Perhaps this new attitude is correct. Perhaps there is no right to be discerned and no incentive to do what is difficult without a personal payoff. But that would be sad. Pax.
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