What’s wrong with the primary debates

At the presidential debate at Hofstra University three years ago, the packed arena was very quiet. No cheering, no booing, no standing ovations, not because the audience was bored but because of the strict rules that were laid down before the debate began. Anyone violating them would be whisked out. The same applied in every presidential debate and they will be enforced again this year, as laid down by the Commission of Presidential Debates.

The atmosphere in the Republican presidential debates is very different. Not governed by the CPD, these take on a more free-for-all atmosphere, where audiences express themselves with whistles and calls, responding to candidates’ winning lines with cheers and ovations. This is more like it—people expressing their unfettered opinions.

But is it really? The New York Times reports how before the South Carolina debate a CNN director pumped the audience. “Hello, Charleston,” he said. Hearing the tepid response, the program director then cajoled, “You can do better than that! Louder.”

Priming goes on in some churches, the preacher calling for more vigorous responses to prayers; it is common before college basketball games, with announcers egging on the crowd to get behind the home team.

This is a way of ginning the crowd, whipping up enthusiasm—for Jesus, for the Beavers. In the case of the primary debates, it isn’t to praise god enthusiastically or support the home team but to make the TV show more dynamic.

Clearly this makes for good for television. Live TV shows have hosts who warm up the audience before the broadcast and many also us overhead prompters telling the audience when the clap or laugh. The debates are no different, as far as TV executives are concerned. Television isn’t interested in good politics but in good shows. It isn’t interested in better citizens but in better profits.

The strictures governing the presidential debates, as I saw at Hofstra, are too rigid. They are stifling and make for boring TV. People should react and politics should be engaging. But it is another matter to manipulate reactions, particularly when the point is self-interested.

There is no reason why debate audiences can’t follow the same form as they for speeches before joint sessions of Congress. People clap with whatever enthusiasm they choose.

An audience to a presidential debate is more than merely a witness. The CPD should trust that people can be civil and that the debates need not degenerate into soccer stadium riot. Let them react as thoughtful adults normally do.

And on TV’s part, treat the audience as citizens, not customers to be used to boost ratings and profits.

 

Creativity

“Art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes it visible,” wrote Swiss/German painter Paul Klee.

You are different from everyone who has ever been or will ever be. You are not a reproduction nor are you cast in a mold, and no mold can be made from you.

At birth you are not fully formed. You cannot know what you will become since the self is the product of what is inherited, what is given and what is made of both. In this way we are the partial creators of ourselves.

There are tools you inherit and there is an audience for whom you create. In relation to others and to the world around you, you bring what is uniquely yours: your inherited self that is made visible through acts of your creative self.

Creativity is discovering that which is most important in your surroundings, then coaxing that reality into the visible through finding what is unique in you and in others. Art is in making, in doing, that is, it is in relating. There is music and dance, theater and painting, poetry and prose, cooking and gardening and a thousand other things. Creativity is also found in friendships and in work, in family and in communities-all contributors to the art of living.

All of us are creative; we all have the ability to see things fresh and new. To be creative is to be original and to be original is to find what is truly yours.

 

Here is a story from the Buddhist tradition: One day while in the country a thief descended upon Buddha. He threatened the teacher with death.

“Will you grant me a dying wish?” the teacher asked. The bandit agreed.

“Cut off a branch from that tree over there.”

With a flash of the sword it was done.

The perplexed thief asked, “What now?”

“Put the branch back on the tree,” Buddha replied.

“No one can do that,” the thief laughed. “You must be crazy.”

Buddha said. “It is you who are crazy to think that you are strong because you can wound and destroy. Children can do that. But it is only the mighty who know how to create and heal.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is drinking a moral question?

In many societies whether to drink alcohol is straightforward: it is forbidden. But it isn’t at all certain what to make of drinking here. For some it is a matter of free choice, while for others it is a social poison. Some view it as a social lubricant and for many teenagers it is a rite of passage.

The difficulty is deciding whether drinking should be condoned or condemned is, in part, because of the morally ambiguous environment in which we live.

Some turn to a single text for answers, a clear-cut, no-nonsense guide. But which book? After Socrates‘ death, two of his students took divergent paths. Plato and Aristotle disagreed about ethics, the former believing in eternal values and the latter in the need for judgment in particular situations. Jesus broke with the Jewish establishment of his time, placing the spirit of the law above a strict interpretation of it, emphasizing motive over consequence.

Of course there were people in traditional societies who were bothered by uncertainty and moral conflict. Abraham must choose between obeying God and the life of his son. Antigone must choose between the laws of state and the religious and familial duty to bury her brother. However, moral uncertainty is more urgent for so many today because so few customs exist to which everyone agrees .

Some matters are at bottom psychological, not moral. If someone asks, “Why am I addicted to alcohol?” she is raising a psycho-biological question that confronts motivation, cause and effect. If the person asks, “How do I stop from drinking?” she is raising a practical question. But if the person asks, “Ought I to stop drinking?” she is asking a moral question.

Ethical considerations arise when you try to evaluate actions in terms of right or wrong, good or bad?  What this the right thing to do? Was it a good thing to do? Once the ethical dimension is admitted, then there is the matter of taking into consideration the interests of others. Ethics implies a social connection and attempts to situate the individual in the proper social context.

In the drinking example, the question becomes ethical when the person wonders whether drinking is desirable. Certainly, the person desires to drink. The ethical question is whether what is desired is desirable. To answer this question, a series of other questions follows, such as: What effect does drinking have upon the person? How does it affect his health and character? What effect does it have upon others? Is this the best way to spend money? Is the activity simply solitary and private or is there a social dimension? Whose business is it, anyway, that the person chooses to drink?

The question, “Ought I to stop drinking?” is entangled in a web of other questions that become progressively philosophical and abstract. Yet the question remains embedded in a real situation and the answers demand particular choices having real consequences in the lives of real people. In a simpler society, the answer was easier to come by. But in the ever-changing, multi-cultural environment in which we live, the answers aren’t so readily at hand.

 

 

Wikipedia goes blank and we all lose

I like Wikipedia, despite the contrary opinion of many of my academic colleagues. They steer students away from it, claiming it is an unreliable source of information. I disagree and I encourage my undergraduates to begin their research there and move on to deeper sources.

One friend agrees with me and tested Wikipedia’s accuracy in his law school class where he had half the class use law journals and the other half use Wikipedia as their sources. The results: Wikipedia was as accurate as the scholarly journals.

This result is similar to that found a number of years ago when Wikipedia entries were compared to the Encyclopedia Britannica articles. Wikipedia stood up very well against the venerable institution.

But all this was called into question, as Wikipedia has gone blank for a day, protesting two bills before Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). For twenty-four Wikipedia isn’t accessible. What viewers found instead was The Internet Must Remain Free.

Wikipedia, and others, believe that the proposed bills will lead to censorship, anathema to the spirit of the Internet. The Motion Picture Association of America, the prime backer of the bills, says it is a matter of copyright protection.  It is an attempt to stop piracy, they say.

Who is right? While the mater of copyright protection is a serious matter (I have a vested interest in this as a published author who occasionally receives royalties), I land on the side of Wikipedia (and the Obama administration). The free flow of information on the Internet has been an incalculable boon.

While Wikipedia has the right to make its position known and its method of protest certainly attracts a great deal of attention, it doesn’t mean that they’ve done the right thing. The problem is that in taking sides in this important dispute it has moved from a neutral provider of information to advocacy. This move from neutral provider to partisan position threatens to undermine Wikipedia’s credibility.

Wikipedia would do well to return to its stated mission as found on its website. It says, “Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.” Wikipedia defines itself as a site that avoids advocacy and provides information instead of debating it.

I understand why Wikipedia has done what is has, but the loss of neutrality may have long-term consequences that won’t be good for Wikipedia or for those of those who support its endeavors and trust its objectivity.

Too bad Wikipedia traded in its principles.

On New Year’s Day, Remember the Dead

Soren Kierkegaard said, Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards. So it is that as we leave one year behind and embark upon yet another.

On this day we remember our dead, those who have gone before us, those who have helped mold our lives into who we are today. We honor them with our memory; we immortalize them in the way we lead our own lives.

Because we have been touched by them they are immortal. Now we extend that immortality as influence the lives of others. We are part of a chain of humanity reaching into the distant past and extending into the unknowable future.

All of us are touched by loss. We face tomorrow with hope made stronger by having learned lessons from what we no longer have. For in those losses were also loves and in the end love is stronger than death. Even though our loved ones are gone, they are with us still, moving us to live as, in their higher moments, they themselves wished to live. We remember them now; they live on in our deeds.

 

One of the lessons of loss is that the gift we have been given – life – is precious and fragile. We never know when what we love will no longer be with us. Our parents grow old and die, but all of us, whatever our age, can only be sure that we have this moment, this time, this now. Therefore, we must live our lives as though the present is all the time we have on this earth to share with our loved ones. So that if tomorrow are loved ones are gone, we will we have no regrets, there will be nothing left undone, unsaid.

This is a moment to reflect upon how we may live our lives so that there will be few regrets, missed moments. Now is the time to ask for forgiveness for the wrongs we have done; now is the time to express our gratitude.

 

 

Cowards can

Cowards can never be moral, said Mohandas Gandhi. Here is why:

People can know what is right and even want to do what is right but still not act rightly. Why? Because they are afraid. They lack the courage to support their convictions.

We need courage to face the unknown; we need courage to let go of irrational fears. We need courage to face our own death and courage to allow others to help us through difficult times. We need courage to let others in.

We need courage to be ourselves, to take responsibility for our actions, to overcome the fear of rejection and disapproval. It takes courage to openly listen to the voices of others, to admit mistakes and then do what must be done.

Courage frees us to find new and better ways of being— with others and with ourselves. The fear of letting go keeps us prisoners of our own making. The courage to face what is, to seek the truth in the reality of things, allows us to become free of groundless fear.

I like this anecdote about the philosopher and boxer:

A.J. Ayer achieved fame as an intellectual giant the field of academic philosophy. He became a celebrity of sorts, and, at 78 years old, he was invited to attend a party hosted by a well-known fashion designer. At the gathering, Ayer was talking with several of the models when a young woman ran by, crying that a friend was being assaulted in the next room.

Ayer rushed into the bedroom and found a man forcing himself upon a young woman.

Ayer ordered him to leave the woman alone.

The hulking man responded, “Do you know who I am? I’m Mike Tyson, the heavyweight champion of the world!”

Ayer quickly responded, “And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic.” He quickly added, “We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest we talk this over like rational men.”

As Tyson turned to engage Ayer, he forgot about the model, allowing her enough time to escape to the other room and safety.

 

The Love You Take Is Equal to the Love You Make

Modern conceptions of happiness are misleading because the focus is in the wrong place. In pre-modern and traditional societies, happiness came about because people were tied to something outside themselves. Connections to family, fellow citizens, and clan, actions performed and attitudes developed, and duties carried out were the constituent and necessary components of happiness.

In the pre-modern world there was no “self” or “personality” as we now conceive of it, an autonomous personality making self-referential decisions. A person was part of something else, not apart from it. There was a profound recognition that to be separated from others and the community was unsettling and inhuman. Short of death, nothing was worse than being shunned or sent into exile. Religious excommunication served the same purpose—people were removed from their religious moorings, being put outside the community and unable to partake in religious necessities. Even today the most severe punishment, short of torture or execution, is solitary confinement.

Humans are born into a community and from that community they are formed. In this sense, society is prior to the individual, both temporally and psychologically. Every human inherits a culture, with all its written and unwritten rules, and lives in a story written by predecessors. This isn’t to deny a common moral heritage by suggesting that humans are nothing more than creatures of socialization and historical circumstances (more about that in subsequent chapters), but it is to say that loneliness, isolation, and alienation are antithetical to happiness.

There have always been individuals, distinct persons, with desires and emotions all their own. Uniqueness isn’t a modern idea. My Kenyan friends are each different from one another. They have personal goals, individual experiences, and private thoughts. This has always been true and has been valued. The Talmud says that even one ear of corn is not exactly like another. But what is different between the world in which I live and the traditional one is the veneration of individual uniqueness, the privileged position of the single person, the sense of the self as fundamentally distinct and apart from others. In the older tradition, uniqueness was recognized, but it was to be experienced within the larger social context.

The contemporary idea of happiness is that it is a subjective and private feeling, an emotional state disengaged from its social moorings. Happiness is understood as a mood state rather than as a state of being. As humans have been redefined from social beings to mainly sentient creatures, happiness has been understood as the avoidance of pain and the increase of pleasure. Since everyone encounters frustration in social relations, you are discouraged from seeking happiness in your social surroundings and instead are encouraged to be self-reliant.

The theory is that each of us is out to fulfill our selfish desires and don’t really care about anyone else. The idea is summed up in the popular saying “you must love yourself before you can love others.” This misses the point that you love yourself because others have loved you and others love you because they have been loved by you. As the Beatles sang, “the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Love is interdependent and reciprocal. When self-centeredness replaces other-directedness, there is a downward spiral of disappointment.

 

Talk and be human

“The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man’s observation, not overturning it,” wrote Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Some things aren’t spoken about because they are secrets that need keeping; some people are quiet because they have nothing to say. Some are silent because there are times in which only silence allows us to hear the important things; some are never quiet and their voices rattle like pebbles in an empty can.

While silence may lead to the gate of self-reflection, speech opens the door of human relations. To be cut off from ordinary conversation is to be cut off from the pleasures and benefits of companionship. 
In true conversation there are no roles but there are rules of respect; in true conversation there is no domination, only equals talking. A conversation is a free and open exchange-of thoughts and feelings. It isn’t the building up of ideas that count as much as weaving the fabric of human intercourse.

To converse is to belong with others. True conversation is fitting into the heart of another and letting others into yours. Conversation lifts the veil of isolation. Without conversation we are disconnected from the human community; with conversation we find a place where we belong.

Here is a anecdote about Helen Keller, who was stricken blind and deaf at less than two years old and was plunged into isolation. So frustrated by not being able to communicate, she threw daily tantrums and became an angry child.

Her life changed dramatically when Annie Sullivan became her teacher. Sullivan taught Keller by finger spelling on her pupil’s palm. In her autobiography, Keller writes: “Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten-a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that ‘w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!

“Before my teacher came to me, I didn’t know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind impetus. I can remember all this, not because I knew that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It enables me to remember that I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation.”

Now Keller could converse and in that conversation become connected to others.

 

Why the news is misleading

Open a newspaper or watch the news and it is difficult not to despair. Scandal pile upon scandal, lie piles upon lie. Cheaters and criminals are everywhere. From business to politics to sports, it seems to be the same story. Ethics is nowhere to be seen.

It would be mistaken, however, to think that what you read is typical of the world that you inhabit. The news, by its very nature, is misleading. The definition of newsworthiness is the extent to which it is outside the norm. The ordinary doesn’t make the papers; the different, the scary, the exceptional does. But since this is what we see and hear in the media, we take it as being typical, which, of course, it isn’t.

The fact is that most people, most of the time are decent and trustworthy. They do (or at least try) to do the right thing. Why is ethical behavior the norm rather than the exception? As a number of psychologists and philosophers have noted, human beings are ethical animals. It is in our very nature to engage in ethics.

This doesn’t mean that all people are good or that people are good all the time. What it does mean is that because we are social creatures — we are born into groups, are raised by others, and live our lives in relation to others — we make certain claims upon each other.

All of us live in a society, rub up against other people, move in a physical space, have needs and develop wants. Inevitably, we admire or disdain others; we praise them or blame them; we want to be around them or we want them to stay far away from us. It is impossible to live without thinking that “this” is better than that, this person “is admirable,” or that person “is despicable.”

This is what ethics is about: deciding that some things are better or worse than others, judging some things good and others bad, making claims against others, thinking some things fair and others unfair. You have reasons—or feelings—why something is right or wrong and why some things ought to be done or avoided.

It is impossible to live without engaging in such evaluations. We inevitably engage in such judgments and construct relationships that attempt to promote the good things that we admire and want to discourage and avoid those things that we believe are destructive. Such is the nature of ethical judgments—sorting out the desirable from the undesirable, the good from the bad, the right from the wrong.

We make evaluations about how we want to live and how we want other people to live in relation to us. We evaluate the larger world around us and prefer to live in one kind of world rather than another. These evaluations express our preferences about how life ought to be and how one ought to lead his or her life. This is the ethical domain, the area of valuing and choosing, appraising and judging.

 

Contradictions and opposites

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door, wrote French philosopher Simone Weil.

 The world spins on opposites—the yin and yang of night and day, positive and negative electrical charges, gasses and solids. Chinese cuisine is built around bringing opposites together as each meal ideally contains sweet and sour, salty and bitter. Society requires both justice and mercy. These differences don’t cancel out each other but rather constitute wholeness.

Opposites can be viewed as contradictions, and sometimes they are. Life, though, would be poorer without the complement of opposites, if there was no mind to balance heart, no hard to balance soft. There would be no progress if there were no discordant notes in the harmony.

Not all opposites are valuable. Sometimes it is the mid-point between them that is sought. It is excess on the one side and deficiency on the other that is to be avoided. Neither foolhardiness nor cowardice are virtues; neither thirst nor drunkenness are desirable. There are opposites that need tempering and compromise, where finding the mean is desirable.

Life is full of contradictions. Some need embracing; some need letting go of. The universe is full of multitudes. Let in that which complements your deficiencies and reject those that cancel your uniqueness.