Heinlein’s ‘This I Believe’ talk

yeearrrgh! I can’t find the second link. I’ll post it later, if I can find it.

I kept putting off commenting, hoping that I’d have something intelligent to say, but that that doesn’t seem to be happening yet. I’m a bear of very little brain right now.

Anyhow, I do appreciate all your feedback and encouragement and analysis.

I think part of the cognitive dissidence (thanks for that phrase, Sean!)I’ve been experiencing for some time flows from the fact that I live in one of the more monolithically conservative communities in Texas, and feel pretty alienated and isolated as a result.

My opinions, my lifestyle, and certainly my votes, are on the fringe here. But all of my co-workers, though mostly mainstream conservative and religious, are among the nicest, most decent, most generous people I’ve ever known.

I can’t resolve that personal experience with the demonization of the right that us lefties are prone to.

Except to surmise that they’re happy and well-adjusted within their own community and more relaxed about everything in general as a result. But they still are part of the monster machine that keeps the Other suppressed as much as possible.

I just can’t work out how they can cling to some of the social and political and economic beliefs that they do, when the real world, which even they experience pretty directly, is so obviously telling them to re-think.

I don’t know where to go with that these days, other than to start believing that there’s something really broken inside a much larger percentage of people than I previously thought. And that’s a bummer.

It’s been a tough, complex couple of months, and I haven’t been able to spend time in Austin the way I normally do, with my daughter and the Babies, and the Wild-Assed NeoPagans. And that’s probably at the root of a lot of my angst.

It has been privately suggested to me that a good antidote is to just refocus on spending more time and energy with the people that I love.

I can’t change the real world out there with these real people in it, however they may be, so that sounds like the smartest, sanest thing I can do.

Thanks for all your good wishes.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/22/DD5013G5AT.DTL

—
It took three years to get my sense of humor back,” he says. “I started taking everything seriously. I became the temporary poster boy for the First Amendment, freedom of speech. Twenty years later, there’s Howard Stern.”
…
He leaves and returns with a calligraphic print he and his wife sent out some years before as a Christmas card. It is a quote from Alistair Cooke that reads:

“In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly, that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.”
—

which is a bit more somber than the rest of the article, but it made me think of your post.

But! Despite the knowledge that I will almost certainly not be rewarded fiscally for my in-depth appreciation of absurdist drama or avid readership of psychology texts, I continue to do so. Even though approximately ninety eight percent of my fried-chicken-eating, NASCAR-cheering, McCain-supporting state sickens me, I have faith that there can be a revolution. Not one where we overthrow the oil aristocracy and bathe in their black blood, but one where the consumerist consciousness can finally be pushed to enough of an extreme that we may finally react for the better. Hoping that everyone will is just too optimistic. But maybe gas prices over four dollars a gallon would make someone realize that their Hummer is a little overkill for suburbia. Maybe rising food costs will make us re-think over buying and overeating. The collapse in the housing market is a reminder of what happens when we try to overstep our fiscal means. I know that these problems have many other, deeper issues as well. But I have to hope that the scarcity of what we value most will force us to re-evaluate what exactly we are spending so much money on. Maybe we will value something more than ourselves.

I do not, nor have I ever, I suppose, truly believe that humans are born good. (have you ever watched an unsupervised group of two year olds?) But I believe we can change where average falls. I think we can rise above. And while I know not everyone can be changed, I think we can slowly restructure the education system so that the next generation does not reach this point.

The future is coming regardless, and I think we can still stand in the sunshine for some small while yet. The election determines politics, but I think-I hope, that this year the break of an eight year reign of ideology is enough to finally get something changed.

Get thee to arms! Man the thought-battle stations! Realize what the invasion of CCTV means! Beware the suspension of Habus Corpus! And remember that to enjoy the sunshine all you need is it upon your face. No government or politico backwash can take that away.

Look at the FBI during the last part of Hoover’s career. Like now, the illicit surveillance of protesters and, at one point, allowing four innocent men to be sentenced for murder to protect one of their informants.

The whole crappy House Un-Ameriacn Activities Committee crap in the fifties.

Our history of lynching or otherwise mob murder of minorities, whether they be black or gay or whatever.

Keep in mind that in the history of the world, it wasn’t until the 20th century that the general consensus was that war was an abnormal state of affairs instead of the status quot.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we are making progress but it goes in cycles with dips back into the darkness.

(And yes, corporations and the rich have far too much control of the system. In England, you can’t spend more than the allowed amount to run for parliment. Period. They watch you like a hawk. I would love to see a system like that here, but then I would also like to see a system that allowed more than one party.)

But when I really look hard at the way people act it seems clear to me that yeah, there is a root level of selfishness and short-sightedness, but that is not all there is to people.

If you spend enough time around children you’ll start to notice that altruism is something that seems to spring from a fairly deep set of roots. When a child wants to help or wants to give it is clearly a powerful impulse that has little to do with socialization.

And recently I’ve found that my observations may well be accurate — take a look at this.

http://www.yale.edu/infantlab/socialevaluation/Helper-Hinderer.html

I’m of the opinion that if you see a type of human behavior occur throughout human history and across cultures there is very likely a biological basis for it.

This includes positive as well as negative behaviors. And I’m of the opinion that someone regarded as a ‘good’ person in one culture is very likely to elicit similar judgments in other cultures.

Look at the behavior of our close relatives. Do you believe that altruistic behavior in animals is the result of socialization? Heck, altruistic behavior isn’t even limited to animals of the same species.

The very fact that we judge behavior as good or bad shows that there is reality to what we regard as good. If we were born selfish and nothing but we never would institute social structures intended to foster what we think of as good behavior. It would never have occurred to us.

Listen, as I said my position when I began to examine this question my feeling was that humans are brutes worthy of extermination. Now? I think we’re actually kind of a cool species.

For someone who’s seriously invested in the idea of people as angels who are corrupted by the world the facts can be very hurtful. For me? It’s gone the other way.

After living my life for a number of decades, I’ve come to the conclusion that people are not inherently honest or caring. We are all born self-centered. I believe that integrity and empathy are learned behaviors. And it’s hard for parents to teach these behaviors if they themselves weren’t taught them very well. It’s not black and white; some people learn a little, and some learn a lot. And many people keep learning these things throughout their lives.

My personal definition of “civilized” is the ability to separate a feeling from acting on the feeling (essentially delayed gratification) plus the ability to imagine what it would be like to be in another person’s place. Clearly we all do these things imperfectly; it’s a matter of degree. These are things that are implemented in your “higher mind”. And under stress, more “lower mind” functions take priority, so we see people acting abominably precisely when we would like them to be acting civilized.

So people aren’t built well to not be assholes. It’s something that takes a lot of effort and constant attention. Some of us do it, and some don’t.

(With this tiny box to type in, I didn’t structure this very well and just rambled on. I apologize if I didn’t work out the thoughts very well.)

But your earlier beliefs are, equally, not to be scorned.

Listen. We’ve communicated with each other a bit. You’ve probably picked up on the fact that to a degree I’m a mean-spirited misanthropic bastard — but when you say that you want to believe that most people are deserving of respect and love all I can say…

… is that it’s true.

What we are facing does not change that. Every abomination and atrocity that people have committed is real – but none of them can change or alter in any way an act of love and kindness. Most people are willing to sacrifice for the people they care for. And in my book that’s enough to make them worthy. I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it — don’t let the accumulated mistakes of the species blind you to the fact that the most essential of the values we hold dear are hardwired into us. These values recur throughout history, all over the world. You know how you feel about those you care for. You know what you’d be willing to do for them.

And you are far from alone. Yes, the need to have a tribe and an enemy is basic to the human species. But so is the desire to help those in need.

Yes, there are bad people. And their desire for power and control are backed up by a willingness to do anything they can in order to achieve their desires. There is a potency in extremism that is an object of worship in current American culture.

But those people are pulling against each other. Every act of selfishness is by nature solitary. Yeah, they accumulate and bear down on the rest of us…

… but every act of humanity is part of something larger. Every time someone tries to make life better for someone else they are acting in concert with everyone else who has had the same desire.

Not to blow things out of proportion or grow maudlin but I think of you as a friend. Your communications with me have made me feel good. And that has helped me be a kinder person to those with whom I’m in more intimate contact. And that’s helped them to feel good about me. Which helps me to expand my humanity, to try and be more kind to more people.

The doom you are worried about is real. But it is particulate in nature; it’s an accumulation of individual atrocities. It is not a massed and deliberate force.

Decency is. The desire to see people fed and clothed and housed and most importantly loved is common to the vast majority of people – and every time that desire is acted upon it is in concert with every other expression of that impulse.

I believe there are hard times ahead for America and harder times ahead for the human species. I believe that ignorance, fear, and tribalism are the forces most actively working against us. I believe that there are aspects of human nature that act against our best interests with great effectiveness.

But I also feel that humanity matters. That decency counts. That showing each other kindness in the face of what is surely to come means more than any disaster we may suffer. And that resisting fear is very important. We cannot avoid fear; we can refuse to let it dictate our behavior.

The state of America is not the state of mankind; it is something that has been induced by specific conditions. And conditions change. And people can change conditions.

You alone cannot change the country or human nature to fit your desires. But you have control over what you do to those around you. You have the ability to put some force, however small, behind the values you hold dear. And that matters. That counts. And when you behave in a fashion that you find proper you act as an example to those around you.

Right now there are less deaths due to war than there have been in the past. The same with starvation and disease. Violent crime in America is on the decline. And worldwide there is a greater percentage of people who believe in judging an individual by their actions and person rather than their nationality or class or religion than there has ever been in human history. Progress has occurred.

This is in no way to deny that we are in a perilous situation. But there is real hope.

And as individuals we can help realize that hope through our behavior.

I know this is thin soup. I know this is not something that is going to miraculously reverse your emotional state. But the only thing you have control over is your own behavior; the only thing you can have faith in is your own goodwill.

Don’t give up. Don’t give in. The only way to know whether or not your state is a temporary one is to live through it until the end. Recognize and embrace those moments, few and fleeting though they may be, when you are able to rise above what you’re going through now. You do have those moments – what you have written about your daughter makes this plain. The flat dull pain of normality is not the significant part of your life – the spots and flashes of joy are what count. And the more you recognize that the more frequent those moments will be. Do not shun or denigrate or minamilize anything in your life that gives you real pleasure, no matter how trivial it may be.

And while you’re going through this pay attention to the way you conduct your life. I may be projecting here but one of my problems is that when I start feeling crummy I tend to stop taking care of myself – but when you don’t feel good it’s important to keep up with the little things. Flossing, greens, exercise, sunlight, socialization… Take care of yourself, man. Try to be as kind to yourself as you want to be to your friends or your daughter. When you’re miserable it doesn’t seem as though these things matter.

But you’ve seen enough to know that they do.

Life is an elephant on a plate. You know how you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

But you have to remember that people are astonishingly ignorant, and not by accident. The CIA and the NED and hundreds of greedy, greedy promoters of disinformation are out there confusing people so the rich can stay rich. It’s not folks’ fault they’re ignorant–though I do wish intelligent people weren’t so often determined to use their intelligence to rationalize what they’ve been taught rather than look at the world clearly.

Anyway, take a break. I’m thinking about doing it, too. Barring total disaster, Obama’s in. Start thinking now about how to push things after he’s elected, because electing him is only a tiny start.

Uh, sorry if talking about more work is depressing. If it is, just take a break now. Making new plans once Obama’s elected is also fine.