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whitewashing

monday, 11/29/2004

Four day weekends are always nice, even when the weather isn't good enough to enjoy being outside. There were only five at this year's table for Thanksgiving; the two oldest kids had to cook for themselves out on the left coast this year. They should be in for Christmas though, so we'll cook another turkey then. Youngest daughter had to leave after we finished eating in order to be back at school for the football game Friday morning.

For the rest of the weekend M and I spent the time prepping and repainting most of the downstairs interior walls.  Twenty years of kids and their friends at play leave a few marks here and there.  A few of the dents in the sheetrock brought back memories of a wrestling match gone too far, or a chair tumping over.  And around every light switch was a halo of grey, left by little unwashed hands as they came in from playing in the woods out back. I almost hated to cover all that up with a new coat of ultra-white.

There is one wall we agreed would never be repainted.  That would be the one in the laundry room where pencil marks, initials, and dates record the growth of all three kids, along with an occasional random friend we haven't seen for years.  The marks for son didn't move as quickly as the girls. Way back then, our pediatrician, who was very tall himself, became concerned that medical intervention might be indicated to spur his growth, since being short would be a "devastating disability for a boy." (doctors have their prejudices too) Anyone who raises children knows that parenting requires making lots of decisions with limited data. In this case, we decided to leave nature and heredity in charge, and as I suspected, those marks on the wall kept creeping up long after the girls' marks had stopped moving. No devastation after all.

The walls look nice now, but I  think I'll miss the smudges and dents for awhile. 

back to the routine

monday, 11/22/2004

I've been working on a special project at work that had me driving for an hour each way for several weeks. We finally finished up last Thursday, and I wasted no time in heading home! A lot of people do commutes like that every day, particularly city folk, but I'd be looking for a new place to live if it was permanent.

I was scheduled to do the sermon for my old Unitarian group on Sunday, so I worked on it off and on last week, and as usual, finished it up Sunday morning early. There were too many things I wanted to cover to do at one time, so I'll have to save the rest for another installment.  The talk is called, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The attendance there at our little bastion of open-minded enquiry into the human prospect has been steadily rising, to the point that a new, larger building is being sought.  Who says only the fundamentalists can attract a following?

enlightenment's end ?

monday, 11/8/2004

I think many people may have felt as I did; relief like a burden being removed when the election was over, regardless of whom they supported.

Politics has always attracted the sorts of people for whom power over the lives of others is the ultimate high. The more I observe, the more I see that Nietzsche's characterization of the basic human drive, the Will to Power, seems to permeate everything in our culture. Whether it be business, or sports, or relationships, or any manner of human endeavor, winning is more and more the only thing. Ethics have become passé in these times - "victory at any cost", "whatever it takes", and similar battle cries are all the rage. It sometimes feels like the high-minded ideals of the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment, the philosophical underpinnings that spawned modern Republics, are in retreat.

It wasn't too much of a shock when I read of a young man from Georgia, just 25 years old, who was so distraught over the outcome of the election that he committed suicide on the World Trade Center site in NYC. Is the future really that bleak? He thought so.

While many on the losing side were wringing their hands in despair, former president Bill Clinton had sage advice for the losers, which comes down to: "Don't whine; work on your image." Clinton understood politics well enough to win two terms in spite of powerful and determined opponents, so he knows what he's talking about.

As the rhetoric of the campaigns assailed us from every angle, for those not hiding in caves somewhere, I kept thinking of the Mike Myers character, Dr. Evil, when I would see another brilliant tactical maneuver by Karl Rove, designed to spin the news and public attention away from an unfavorable issue for his side. Although I deplore his methods, the man is clearly in a league of his own.

A friend sent me a link to an excellent article in which these modern tactics of politics are clearly explained. It is entitled Frame Wars, from the Texas Observer. Read if you wish. The discussion in the article concerns the way successful political groups work to build mental images in the unsuspecting population. The author points out that Truth is unimportant in this battle for minds, an unfortunate circumstance for those of us naive enough to still  hope that "the Truth will set us free."

The article goes on to articulate the competing worldviews of those who consider themselves "conservatives" or "liberals" as follows:

Conservatives ... believe in a family led by a strict father who protects moral dependents, punishes moral inferiors, and aims to raise independent children to fend for themselves in a dangerous world. Liberals believe in the family led by a nurturing parent who encourages children’s inherent goodness so they will treat others with fairness and equality. All policies and positions shake out from these models and help predict what each side will do.

This is about as good a description as I've seen. It is explanatory without being condescending of either view, a rare thing. Apparently, most people tend to fall into one of these groups or the other, lock stock and barrel. Those like myself who can be conservative on one issue and liberal on another seem to be a bit more uncommon.

As I see the news on the war in Iraq every day, those competing worldviews are driven home. The hawkish course we are on is no different than every other empire builder has embarked upon. Historians universally speak glowingly of conquerors past, who forced other peoples into their way of life, at least temporarily. The way to becoming revered in posterity is abundantly clear.

For those of us who cling to the naive hope that humans can someday learn to live side by side without conflict, it seems we can never achieve more than a brief glimpse of Shangri-La. No, we have examples like Tibet to demonstrate that even a remote and isolated people cannot exist indefinitely in a totally peaceful state. The barbarian hordes will eventually come and ruin things.

Alas, you can run but you can't hide.

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