william wendt wrote:

To whom it may concern:

These are six blogs I have just started in November 2006.

The first is about Chicago transportation issues. The title is a take-off on Moving Beyond Congestion, the project of the Chicago transit agencies to push a major funding bill through the legislature in 2007, which has its website under that name.

They want investment in the future, they say, but the general point here is that it is investment in the past.

http://beyondcongestionbetweenears.blogspot.com/

The second is about primordial human emotions that evolved in hunter-gatherer band over about two million years, but which still dominate our thinking, such as it is, today. Einstein said the bomb changed everything but the way we think. Indeed.

http://beyondmoralaggression.blogspot.com/

The third is about legal issues, the general point being that our vaunted protections of law are little but a Maginot Line easily by-pased through Belguim. It seeks to restore some semblance of legal legitimacy.

http://beyondstateofnature.blogspot.com/

The fourth is a non-Chicago transportation commentary. Shoving blind is pushing cars with no one on the point to signal a stop. It is a great way to cause a train wreck. "The one way to run a railroad" celebrated in Rush Loving, The Men Who Loved Railroads," is shoving blind in a larger context. This is for non-Chicago transportation topics.

http://beyondshovingblind.blogspot.com/

The fifth wonders if "pro-life" and "limited government" are merely cudgels in the cultural wars or have real and important meanings. Is sex subject to moral constraint but not war? Is criminal law or mere unremitting hostility the way to deal with drugs, abortion, and homosexuality?

http://beyondconservofascism.blogspot.com/

The sixth probes Jewish paranoia, certainly understandable in light of history, but a sort of cultural Tay-Sachs disease that creates its own enemies. If you're not paranoid, you're crazy, said Sherman Skolnick, that resolute son of the old sand.

http://beyondjewishparanoia.blogspot.com/

Stay tuned. Rome was not built in a day.

COGNITIVE INTRODUCTION: Unilateral or Interactive?

The human emotional and psychological make-up evolved over two million years in the food-sharing economy in hunter-gatherer bands of about two dozen. One part of the band would hunt meat, the other would gather plant foods, and both would take to proceeds back to camp to share.

Previously, animal eating had been almost entirely an individual affair. For food sharing to work, the members of the band had to develop sympathetic emotions to impel them to each other’s aid and aggressive emotions to deal with cheaters. Present-day hunter-gatherer bands erupt in unison against members caught in cheating and reduce the miscreants to tears.

See Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, People of the Lake: Mankind and Its Beginnings, in particular, index entries under "altruism, reciprocal."

Figure the sympathetic and aggressive emotions were collectivized into the fertility and warrior cults of primitive religion. The primitive hunter-gatherer band could be run by collective emotion and group fiat. Within its limited resources, it could practice the Communist ideal, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. And it could even keep track of inventory, contrary to socialism in the larger world. It seems no coincidence that Edmund Burke’s "small platoons," the groups in which we are most effective, are likewise about two dozen.

The primitive emotions have yet to cope, however, with wealth, time, people beyond the band, and the money economy. Hunter-gatherers only had the wealth they could carry, but agriculturalists had enough to fight over. It takes time for agriculture to produce crops, thus the capital needs for sustenance until harvest and seed to plant again. The far-flung money economy requires individual initiative far beyond that of the intimate hunter-gatherer band. F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, notes the common origins of the prejudices against Jews and money. The overseas Chinese are known as the Jews of southeast Asia and the Indians expelled by Idi Amin were the shopkeepers of the country. The Old Testament recorded the lament of the people who wanted a king, cited by Thomas Paine in Common Sense.

William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, revived the notion of "second nature," the man-created world, as opposed to "first nature," the God-created world. We presumed moderns are coping with "second nature" about the way our pre-scientific forebears coped with "first nature." In the past century or so primitive religion has secularized into the welfare and warfare states of today. We have forsaken the parental approach to social institutions that would "ordain and establish" a Constitution for a child-to-parent relationship of dependence and suggestibility.

Here we are, then, five or ten millenia into the Agricultural Revolution and three centuries into the Industrial Revolution, and still trying to run things by fiat, as if they were a primitive hunter-gatherer band. Presumably modern humans still try to reduce cheaters to tears. The Communist Manifesto bemoans the "icy, egotistical calculation" of the money economy. Figure the primitive emotions are the source of social creationism, the notion that society can be run by fiat, whether sympathetic or aggressive, as opposed to an evolutionary approach that takes others’ motivations into account. Gustave Le Bon wrote tellingly of the intolerance and closed-mindedness of crowds in his 1895 classic, The Crowd, also of the similar sentiments which motivated both the reactionary Inquisition and the revolutionary Terror.

Such mental habits are as old as the human race. And "modern" mass society seems more receptive to and unified by lowest common denominator aggression than by diffuse, dreamy sympathy, although sympathy is nevertheless extremely useful in cultivating dependence and suggestibility.

Einstein famously said the bomb changed everything except the way we think. Indeed. The unilateral, one-way primitive emotions intrude into the personal and private as well political and public. Figure they account for the legions of people just trying to get their own way, keeping the divorce courts busy and the workplaces acrimonious, besides keeping political discourse chaotic.

Genuine interaction is a rarity. What the lawyers call "narrowing the question" is likewise, as each petulant side tries to overwhelm others with its mountains of truth, oblivious to any real areas of agreement. What the psychologists call the "false consensus effect" is rampant, however, as is "confirmation bias."

We have to come to terms with them, going along with them when appropriate, rising above them when not. We cannot go from the pleasure principle of Freud’s id, i.e., primordial moral aggression, to the moral principle of the super-ego without filtering through the reality principle of the ego. Otherwise pleasure and morality are too easily confused. De gustibus non disputadum est, goes the old Roman saying; there is no disputing taste. The new Roman saying for this day and age might be, Gustibus maximus disputadum gustibus.

We have to deal with realities beyond the primitive emotions. Wish fulfillment, individual or collective, is no approach to reality. We need a "good novel" approach to life that acknowledges the characters reshaping the plot to meet their needs, as opposed to the "bad novel" approach that bends and twists the characters to the needs of the plot. We need to acknowledge the separation of internal thought and external reality, the basis of science, according to Alan Cromer, Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science. We must acknowledge the difficulties creationists have with evolution, per Paul Bloom, Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human, but not merely religious creationists; there are untold secular varieties too.

Primordial moral aggression is a frame of reference unto itself. It approaches anything outside its orb like a sumo wrestler trying to push his opponent out of the ring, as opposed to a judo practitioner using his opponent’s strength against him, It reduces controversies, large and small, to the blind men arguing whether the elephant is like a tree, wall, rope, snake, etc. Then its practitioners constantly wail the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Overcoming it will be a multi-front struggle:

from the unilateral to the interactive,

from the extractive to the cultivational,

from the self-referentially "correct" to the other-addressing credible,

from the presumptuous to the exploratory,

from social creationism to social evolution,

from wish fulfillment (individual or collective) to consequentiality,

from monomania to integrative intelligence (below),

from first person to third person orientation (per Robert Fritz, Creating),

from eisegesis, reading pre-absorbed notions into a text, to exegesis, trying to discern the writer’s intent, both broadly considered, not restricted to Scripture or even writing.

In pagan, polytheistic, pre-Genesis Mestopotamia there was "no correlation between right conduct and individual or national well-being," according to Rabbi Nahum Sarna’s exquisite essay on the "original intent" of Genesis (quoted at length below).

Ancient Mespotamia? How about here? And now?

A more deliberate and effective frame of reference is the Abrahamic or monotheistic ethic, which proclaims belief in human dignity and free will, in turn, a belief in an orderly, rational universe. It distinguishes between "vertical" religion, dealing with God, and "horizontal" religion, dealing with our fellow man, citing Jewish and Christian scriptures on the necessity, even primacy, of "horizontal," or "natural," religion. See Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (an American immigrant), What’s Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West. Unlike private and personal "vertical" religion, "horizontal" religion describes duties we all owe each other and which necessarily have to be discussed and enforced in public. Without using the same language, Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything, can be taken as "horizontal" Christianity. Both are compatible with the better grades of secularism. Both are incompatible with primordial wish fulfillment.

We might even try to explain the sudden inexplicable wave of sanity on election night, and after all the attack ads, when defeated candidates concede and wish the victors well, instead of breaking out the ammunition.



The sign of a high intelligence is the ability to dissociate ideas which are traditionally bound together and to separate truths from the emotions they become wrapped up in over the years. Our tragic incapacity to make this dissociation is responsible for almost all the wars and social catastrophes of mankind.

Sydney J. Harris, Strictly Personal, p219



Appendix I

If the shoe fits, wear it. A marvelously reflective exploration of "original intent" in the Book of Genesis shows it was written as a rebuttal to chaotic pagan creation myths, showing the universe was created by a pre-existing God in an orderly fashion. In one of the most beautiful things yours truly has ever read, Rabbi Nahum Sarna wrote,

"It is not to be wondered at that Mesopotamian society suffered from a malaise which scholars have characterized as ‘overtones of anxiety.’ The nature of the gods could give no feeling of certainty and security in the cosmos. To make matters worse there were also environmental factors that had to be taken into account. Man always found himself confronted by the tremendous forces of nature, and nature, especially in Mesopotamia, showed itself to be cruel, indiscriminate, unpredictable. Since the gods were immanent in nature, they too shared these same harsh attributes. To aggravate the situation still further, there was always that inscrutable, primordial power beyond the realm of the gods to which man and gods were both subject.

"Evil, then, was a permanent necessity and there was nothing good in the pagan universe. In such circumstances there could be no correlation between right conduct and individual or national well-being. The universe was purposeless and the deities could offer their votaries no guarantee that life had meaning and direction, no assurance that the end of human strivings was anything but vanity. History and time were but a repeating cycle of events in which man played a passive role, carried along relentlessly by the stream of existence to his ineluctable fate." Nahum Sarna, "Understanding Creation in Genesis," Roland Mushat Frye, ed., Is God a Creationist?; Sarna, Understanding Genesis.

After three millenia of Judiasm, two of Christianity, and one and a half of Islam, what have we really accomplished? Isn’t this a marvelous description of the mentalities underlying both the welfare and warfare states?



Appendix II

Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate`, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, describe a supreme act of exegesis, one important key to a larger frame of reference:

"Students need an integrative intelligence for the kind of learning that is more than rote memory and regurgitation. To solve problems, a student needs to process more than one-dimensionally. Beyond mere facts he needs to discover themes, discern deeper meanings, understand metaphor, uncover underlying principle. A student has to know how to distill a body of material to the essence or to put the pieces together into a harmonious whole. Anything more than concrete thinking requires an integrative mind. Just as depth perception requires two eyes, depth learning requires the ability to see things from at least two points of view. If the mind’s eye is singular, there is no depth or perspective, no synthesis or distillation, no penetration to deeper meaning and truth. Context is not taken into consideration, figure and background lack differentiation."










 

Toward a Proper Appreciation of the Impersonal

Primitive peoples unexposed to, say, motor vehicles or DVDs, would explain them as spirits doing this and that, not in our impersonal terms. We appreciate certain impersonal basics of fire and electricity, for all the specialized expertise needed to produce engines or electronic devices. Properly observed, they let us enjoy immeasurable benefits in near complete safety. When fire or electricity do destroy, maim, or kill, it is usually because some numbnuck did not observe them.

We even have a common household expression, "Playing with fire." You don’t hit the accelerator when you want the brake or vice-versa, or put pennies in the fusebox. There is nothing personal about it, just cut-and-dried cause and effect.

How do we do in politics? Politics has always been and always will be intensely personal, not what you know, but who you know. As early Tammany figure George Washington Plunkitt said to a cousin, "‘Tommy, I’m goin’ to be a politician and I want to get a followin’; can I count on you?’ He said: ‘Sure, George.’ That’s how I started in business. I got a marketable commodity- one vote." (Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall)

Political problems are seen in personal terms, in two general varieties. Either the greedy, stingy powers-that-be will not share the wealth or the lily-livered powers-that-won’t-be are letting off crooks on technicalities or fighting no-win wars.

Making everything personal and ignoring the impersonal creates its own problems. Then politics is little but a contest of personalities, a cauldron of competing wills, whose benefits go to the grossest, most agile opportunists. Then the general public throws up its hands in despair and confusion and says they’re all crooked.

A completely personal politics is just an insiders’ game, who you know, indeed. Plunkitt also said, "I seen my opportunities, and I took ‘em." It precludes genuine public involvement or benefit, anything beyond inside manipulation and ever more cynicism and disconnection.

We do know what the road to hell is paved with, do we not? Good intentions, for those who do not. If politics is purely personal then all the public can do is vote for the politician with the purest intentions, at least before the election.

There is more to genuine solutions than generating political will or getting the right people elected or hired or getting the proper benefits passed out. A completely personal approach removes any objective, understandable criteria by which political initiatives can be evaluated, from the inside or outside. It precludes government as a public trust and due process to limit arbitrary power. It still has to operate through impersonal bureaucracy.

Social issues are far from completely personal. Largely impersonal factors determine whether political activity accomplishes anything of general public benefit or benefits anyone beyond the gross opportunists. Any worthwhile politics has to properly consider the consequences of action whether anyone intends or even understands them.

Completely personal politics do not distin-guish between internal thoughts and external reality, contrary to both science and mental health. Even ordinary personal consideration needs recognition of the extra-personal, something beyond self-absorbtion.

Cause and effect in social issues is not cut-and-dried or easily understood or precisely calculated. It is there, but it takes mental effort, a scarce com-modity in this heedless age. Consider how "right" intentions fail to produce good results:

1) If punishment deters crime, does more punishment deter more crime? No, not if it is inflicted on the innocent. Protection of the innocent is no idle, idealistic luxury. If the innocent are not protected, then excessive, indiscriminate punish-ment creates its own prospective criminal class, figuring, "Get it if I do, get it if I don’t." Then all the blood and treasure expended on deterrence is down the drain. Meat-axe prohibitions of drink, drugs and guns embroil law enforcement in much innocent activity and historically cause more crime and trouble than they save.

2) Does more war make us more secure? No, not if it is not properly addressing a real threat, not if it is making enemies faster than it is killing them. Nazi Germany would have been considerably more secure with considerably less war. See Federalist No. 6 on ulterior motivations for war and effects of unnecessary war. War, however, is its own justifi-cation in many minds, judging by continuing support for the Iraq war after its original pretexts collapsed. See Federalist No. 8 on that one.

3) The famous Supreme Court opinion said of pornography, "I know it when I see it." Education is just as subjective. Marva Collins establishes a relationship with the student, the basis of her success, in twenty-five words or less. Can such a personal, subjective accomplishment come from impersonal marching orders to students, teachers, and administrators? The most personal politics still has to has to operate through impersonal bureaucracy, bureaucracy that can only operate on lowest common denominators. What is the perpet-ual lament of "school reform"? Teaching to test.

4) Can the personal approach restore the ability to support a family with just one job, not two? It wails like King Canute commanding back the tides, but the impersonal approach would make the moon go some other way. It sees a market process hampered and distorted in countless ways, largely by all sorts of ways to get rich off government, notably excessive spending. Then parents have to work countless hours to pay taxes and keep up with inflation. They do not have the proper time for children. Then the "free" impersonal schools blame them for the problems. But Mary Eberstadt, Home Alone America, traces the problems of today’s youth to absent parents.

5) If some people get rich off politics, can everybody? Can it spread even modest wealth? Can everyone win at the casino? Unfortunately, for the completely personal approach, wealth beyond the bounty of nature is the product of an impersonal market process. Somewhat beyond the completely personal approach is the notion that government can only take from some and give to others; it produces nothing on its own.

6) The personal approach obviously creates jobs. As Plunkitt put it, "It’s a grand idea, the city ownin’ the railroads, the gas works, and all that. Just see how many thousands of new places there would be for the workers in Tammany!" A bit too obviously; a bit of impersonal analysis shows each make-work job destroys several real jobs. Figure a) taxes come out of future, capital expenditures, not present consumption, and b) the investment the expenses of a make-work job would support. Creating real jobs is an impersonal matter.

7) Has a clearance sale ever charged more, not less? Has a store ever tried to move merchandise by charging more? There us much too much unsold labor, the source of many other problems. Rightly or wrongly, prospective employers do not expect much from it. Is charging more any way to get its foot in the door? The impersonal function of a market price is to match buyers and sellers. More buyers raise prices, more sellers lower them. Dictating prices disrupts the equalizing and proportioning function; it creates artificial shortages here and artificial surpluses there. Thus the hampered but still impersonal market process cannot produce as much of what people willingly pay for, raises the cost of living, and hurts the poor most of all.

8) Does a minimum wage upgrade Chevy jobs into Cadillac jobs? Or does it produce Cadillac jobs for some and Yugo jobs, if any, for everyone else? If it actually raises wages on the lower end, how about the higher end, say, a minimum wage of $20/hr? or $50? Why, think of the money the capitalists would make off all that increased demand! Or would it just put anyone who cannot make that kind of money out of work?

9) Gentrification is another tide the personal approach can only command back. The impersonal approach, however, sees a nanny state for upscale housing, government loans, tax deductions, urban renewal projects. It also sees one Samuel Eberly Gross a century ago who built thousands of homes for common, ordinary working people as a straight commercial deal, without government programs.

The overly impersonal approach is no solution either, as libertarians and conservatives prove all the time. For all their tributes to the "invisible hand," they forget Adam Smith also said "address others’ self-love." That is, except for arousing resentment, itself overly personal. An overly impersonal approach is playing with fire too.

The personal approach is hard-wired into us. Our emotional and psychological make-ups evolved over two million years in food-sharing bands of about two dozen. Sympathetic emotions impelled members of the band to each other’s aid; aggressive emotions dealt with cheaters. Members caught in cheating can be reduced to tears by moral aggression, according to Leakey and Lewin, People of the Lake. That works fine in homogenous bands of two dozen, where "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need" is a work-able ideal, at least for those limited resources.

In the diverse, far-flung money economy, however, the impersonal approach demands the "icy, egotistical calculation" so bewailed by the Communist Manifesto, but routinely applied to fire and electricity. It is high time indeed to make some drastic adjustments in political affairs.

What if we shopped for groceries like politics? Every two or four years we would pick a package deal with a lot of stuff we do not want. If more than two packages are running, we might pick the one we like best (Nader, say) and wind up with the one we like least (Bush, for example).

The impersonal approach, on the other hand, would not use government for anything more than absolutely necessary, for things of their nature that cannot be done privately. It seems cold at first to the completely personal approach, but figure you could shop around so much more.

That is not too impersonal, is it? Who knows, a common understanding of objective criteria might be the basis of countless personal relationships.

WHOLE ELEPHANT QUARTERLY

William F. Wendt, Jr. Editor and Publisher $5 per copy 10 for $35 hard currency accepted

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Copyright 2006 by William F. Wendt, Jr. permission granted to reproduce and distribute in whole this two page advertising supplement
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The Disagreement to End All Disagreement?
Ever run into an agreeable libertarian? Don’t you
non-libertartarians feel too bad; they’re always
disagreeing with each other too. So figure that is
why they have elected maybe a whole dozen local
officials and state representatives since their party
was founded in 1972, and that amidst widespread
discrediting of government.
Rather precious few of them even get as far as the
lament of the Epistle, the good I wish to do, I do
not. Their basic idea is to replace a society of
coercion with one based on agreement. But how do you
get a society of agreement when its advocates disagree
with everyone and everything?
Unfortunately, for libertarians and everyone they
disagree with, agreement is pretty much taken for
granted. Agreements are routine in daily life. You go
into a store, select your items, and pay on the way
out. Or a restaurant, get your order, and pay on the
way out. No one really thinks about it, but these are
agreements. Once in a while it does not work, the rare
exception, actually. And if you disagree, you rarely
need to make a scene; you merely take your business
elsewhere.
Agreement in politics is routine too, to a certain
extent. There is even a "false consensus effect," per
Oxford dictionary of pychology, the assumption of
agreement beyond what actually exists. Politics is
ridden with the false consensus effect. Welfare and
warfare statists both have common if not fully
articulated understandings. They spout their political
lines and blithely expect the world to beat a path to
their door, whether they build a better mousetrap or
not. At least they have their own small gaggles of
active sympathy and blithe, passive assent beyond.
Disagreements are just as routine, for three reasons.
First, the common, prevailing idea of government is to
do things without seeking everyone’s agreement in
advance, in other words, to use force, however genteel
and institutional. Second, government is a monopoly on
the use of force; you cannot just take your business
elsewhere, unless you go elsewhere altogether. Third,
there are numerous approaches to government, largely,
as it turns out, over who gets the bennies.
And if you blithely disagr ee, you and your smaller
gaggle wind up disagreeing with every-thing. So, the
disagreement to end all disagree-ment, and really
passive assent beyond, but with the false consensus
effect still in full effect.
Is this hard-wired into human nature? See Leakey and
Lewin, People of the Lake: Mankind and Its Beginnings,
on the evolution of the human emotional and
psychological make-up over some two million years, in
bands of about two dozen.
To make food sharing work, there had to be
sympathetic emotions to impel mutual aid and
aggressive emotions to deal with cheaters, who are
reduced to tears by the band’s moral aggres-sion
(index entries under "altruism, reciprocal")
Figure primitive religion is largely fertility and
warrior cults, or collective sympathetic and
aggressive emotion. Figure, too, today’s welfare and
warfare states are essentially these same primitive
impulses in modern secular guise.
So, then, we supposed moderns are trying to run
diverse, far-flung institutions by group fiat, as if
they were close-knit hunter-gatherer bands of about
two dozen. And one little gaggle would undo this by
disagreeing with everything, trying to reduce the rest
of the world to tears with the same primitive moral
aggression that impels the mess in the first place.
For all the capitalism it espouses, it is oblivious to
the old business adage, "Win an argument and lose a
sale." Einstein said the bomb changed everything
except the way we think, libertarians too.
More’s the pity, too, since it is selling short its
own explicit philosophy, a society of contract between
willing parties, not of status, of willing party over
unwilling party. It is the non-initiation of force, to
use force only in self-defense.
It even has an extensive literature, that a society
of contract is more just and practical than a society
of status, on willing relationships being incomparably
superior to unwilling relationships.
One classic is Frederic Bastiat, The Law, that
redistribution of wealth fosters perpetual strife over
the bennies, a cconcept betrayed by perpetual
libertarian strife.
Is it like belling the cat, then, to put this into
concrete practice? Is there any way to rise above the
present impasse? Or can mere moral aggression undo
moral aggression?
Is there any way to cultivate agreement itself,
something beyond mere disagreement with coercion, or
with everyone and everything?
What sane, decent person really wants to coerce
others, anyway? Push welfare or warfare statists and
they proclaim force an unfortunate necessity, the only
way to get anything done and keep society on an even
keel. Only the purple people want coercion for its own
sake.
Agreement does not just happen, however, beyond the
false consensus effect. It is nowhere as spontaneous
as libertarians think, or take for granted.
Non-routine agreements take much work, much more than
spouting some political line and expecting
sympathisizers to come out of the wood-work. Not only
do you have to build a better mousetrap, but you have
to market it properly.
It means actively searching for areas of agreement,
in turn, understanding what is on other peoples’
minds. And, indeed, what is on one’s own, well enough
to redefine it and express it in other terms when
necessary. It means dealing with contrary opinions and
people with contrary opinions, not just preaching to
the choir. It takes "integratve intelligence," as
Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate`, Hold On to Your Kids:
Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, calls it:
"... A student has to know how to distill a body of
material to the essence or to put the pieces together
into a harmonious whole. Anything more than concrete
thinking requires an integrative mind. Just as depth
perception requires two eyes, depth learning requires
the ability to see things from at least two points of
view...." (p166)
Agreement is much more difficult when long habitual
practice is challenged. Unlearning is much more
difficult than learning and unteaching more difficult
yet. It is hard work indeed when common understanding
is lacking. It is not done by a mere process of
elimination, howevermuch has to be eliminated. And, of
course, it is certainly not done by mere petulant,
dead-end disagreement.
Not, to be sure, that it will ever be possible to
agree with everything. No one can possibly agree with
all the conflicting propositions out there.
Disagreement, however, cannot be a resting place or a
final destination, as it is for precious, peevish
political activists. It has to be a springboard or
steppingstone to something better, to the fullest
possible exploration of possibilities.
An agreement is a meeting of minds. How do we get a
meeting of minds when everyone in political life is
just trying to get his own way, whether by the usual
coercive, fraudulent government institutions, or by
mere abstract, disembodied moral aggression? To wit,
that libertarian classic, "Get your laws off my body!"

Do libertarians, or, for that matter, everyone they
disagree with, really, consciously think the rest of
the world is trying to make them happy or has some
obligation to beat a path to their door, whether they
have sold their better mousetrap or not? Or is this
just implicitly assumed, the proper way to spell
assume being a-s-s-u-and-me?
Or is it this just a hard-wired proclivity for social
fiat, whether forcible or not?
How many libertarians does it take to change a light
bulb? It doesn’t take any; the market will take care
of it. But the "market" is not some amorphous,
over-arching, impersonal power like the welfare and
warfare states are taken to be, impelling society on
their own extra-personal, super-human power. The
"market" is individual human beings seeking agreement
of some sort.
We need a new approach to human nature. Your fellow
human being is not some mere sap to be browbeaten into
coming out of the woodwork. His motivation is
something more than the rodeo steer that the cowboy
bulldogs. He is, instead, someone to be coaxed,
sometimes bluntly, into agreement. He is, in
capitalistic terms, a potential customer.
What does it take to cultivate him? As the judge told
the rapist, the difference between rape and rapture is
salesmanship. Rapture to one faction is rape to
another. Yet the professed goals of each are largely
worthy. How to reconcile them? That is the monumental
challenge .
People are constantly trying to get what they want,
to substitute the more preferable for the less
preferable, according to the central premise of
libertarian economics. Preferable to whom?
To political activists, libertarian or not?
Get what they want, but how? Hard-wired moral
aggression? People learn from experience, says a
theorem of the Austrian School, but it can take a
while, at least for political activists.
Maybe we have to start young. Child labor in the
family store is a superb way to instill the art of
agreement, a wonderful formative experience, per Shuli
Eshol and Roger Schatz, Jewish Maxwell Street Stories.
As for not knowing how good the water is until the
well runs dry, see Judith Wallerstein, et. al., The
Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, and Elizabeth Marquardt,
Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of
Divorce. We learn to relate to others, or not, by
seeing our parents relate to each other, or not.
There is much more to it than simply getting elected.
Meeting of the minds has to be a way of life. Cast
your whole vote, wrote Thoreau, not a strip of paper
merely. A minority is helpless when it conforms to the
majority, but is irrestable when in clings with its
whole weight.
While you have the psychology dictionary out, look up
"confirmation bias," the tendency to believe what one
already believes. Also see
"egocentrism,""individuation," and "deindivid-uation."
How do rugged individualist but morally aggressing
libertarians stack up on those?
Agreement is indeed work, but indeed incom-parably
superior to all the others. We need a new term and
concept to practice it: contractarian.
WHOLE ELEPHANT QUARTERLY
William F. Wendt, Jr. Editor and Publisher $5 per
copy 10 for $35 hard currency accepted
wholelephant@yahoo.com
Copyright 2006 by William F. Wendt, Jr. permission
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Schwertglauben - The German Compound Word for It
The Germans have a compound word for it.
Zeitgeist, literally, time-spirit, or spirit of times. Weltschmerz, literally, world-pain, or pain of the world. Schadenfreude, literally, misfortune-joy, or joy in someone’s misfortune.
Let’s add another, Schwertglauben,, literally, sword-belief, or belief in the sword, per Wolfram Witte, The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality
The Germans have had a bit too much belief in the sword in their turbulent past, haven’t they?
Are they the only ones? Consider a political cartoon of the mid-1960s, showing the signs:
1965- Get out of Vietnam
1975- Get out of the Phillipines
1985- Get out of Hawaii
1995- Get out of California
Schwertglauben can do that to you. It seems so logical, so beyond dispute. It poses as the great inexorable reality, but, as a reality check, it leaves a lot, much too much, to be desired.
The Vietnam War was a classic case of Schwertglauben. All that napalm, plastic shrapnel (not detectable by X-rays), B-52 carpet bombing, twice the bomb tonnage as dropped in WWII, search-and-destroy missions, herbi-cides,”destroy it in order to save it,” etc., somehow could not stop those pajama clad rice farmers from taking over the world, or at least Vietnam.
And still there is much residual Viernam Schwertglauben, even after three decades, a bit too reminiscent of the stab-in-the-back resentments that set the stage for Nazism.
How is Schwertglauben doing today?
Wunderbar! It oozes from every pore of, “Stay the course,” and, “Don’t cut and run!” Ever since “Misson accomplished!” it has survived the failure to find WMDs, the failure to connect Saddam and Osama (as likely as Gloria Steinem and Jerry Falwell), and the Project for a New American Century’s plans to invade Iraq needing a “Pearl Harbor incident” to mobilize the public.
It even survived Andy Rooney’s dramatic reading on “60 Minutes” of, by guess who, not to mention the original printing,
“I firmly believed that we should not march into Baghdad. Our stated mission, as codified in UN resolutions, was a simple one- end the aggression, knock Iraq’s forces out of Kuwait, and restore Kuwait’s leaders. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us, and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. It would have taken us way beyond the imprimatur of international law bestowed by the resolutions of the Security Council, assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into greater instability and destroy the credibility we were working so hard to reestablish.” George H.W. Bush, A World Transformed, 1998, p464
If Schwertglauben, can survive such blatant clobbering over the head, the following will be much too subtle, but that just goes to show its resilience as a belief system, as a first assumption. “Know your enemy,” goes the old military proverb, but Schwertglauben.is satisfied with anything that can be put on a boot camp poster. Anything is to show “they only understand force” is quite all right, however, as if Schwertglauben understands anything more than that, as if that were not a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fazwa Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why JIHAD Went Global, might not be the final, definitive account of jihad, apparently compiled without electronic sureveillance, but it just might prove the Dick Tuck saying that the best way to apy on a political campaign is to get on the mailing lest. Not only did he read jihadi writings, but he actually interviewed dozens of them. Not that it jibes with Schwertglauben , but it seems al Qaeda was largely discredited in the Muslim world prior to the Iraq invasion. That did for jihad about what the Russian invasion of Afghanistan did.
Chamberlain-style “appeasement” of Islamo-fascists is another recent staple of Schwertglau-ben, however, never mind the WWI reparations demands on Germany that sparked the horrendous inflation and paved the way for Hitler. That should be a lesson in fooling around with someone else’s country, even to Schwertglauben..
Schwertglauben’s close ideological cousins raise the specter of international government and blue-bereted “peacekeepers” putting down insurgency here. If that ever happens, however, there will be the common observation, here and elsewhere, “Taste of your own medicine!”
One definition of military victory is breaking the enemy’s will. Schwertglauben , with its insular, overbearing, pre-conceived notions has no idea if it is breaking the enemy’s will or inflaming it. If that will can only be expressed through tank columns or fleets of ships or planes, it has a fighting chance. If sapper attacks or suicide bombers can express it, Schwertglauben is only an Elmer Fudd chasing the wascally wabbit. Of course it can always complain about no-win wars.
This country was not founded on Schwertglau-ben. See the first few Federalist Papers as to why the Union was formed in the first place. If you have yet to be patriotic enough to read No. 6, let us partially correct that deficiency now:
"The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion- the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed though an equally operative influence within their spheres. Such are the rivalships and competitions between commercial nations. And there are others, not less numerous than either of the former, which take their origins entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class, whether the favorites of a king or of a people, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquility to personal advantage or personal gratification.
"The celebrated Pericles, in compliance with the resentments of a prostitute, at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the Samnians. The same man, stimulated by private pique against the Megarensians, another nation of Greece, or to avoid a prosecution with which he was threatened as an accomplice in a supposed theft of the statuary of Phidias, or to get rid of the accusations prepared to be brought against him for dissipating the funds of the state in the purchase of popularity, or trom a combination of all these causes, was the primitive author of that famous and fatal war, distinguished in the Grecian annals by the name of the Peloponnesian war; which, after various vicissitudes, intermis-sions, and renewals, terminated in the ruin of the Athenian Commonwealth."
Thucydides, “The Melian Dialogues,;” the victorious Athenians do what they can; the defeated Melians do what they must, would be
a giddy trip to Schwertglauben today. But we have just seen what happened to the Athenians, at least if Schwertglauben does not get in the way. How far have we fallen? A timeless commen-tary on human nature, Federalist No. 8 shows why we have tolerated so much Schwertglauben :
"... The perpetual menacings of danger oblige the government to be always prepared to repel it; its armies must be numerous enough for instant defense. The continual necessity for their services enhances the importance of the soldier, and proportionably degrades the condition of the citizen. The military state becomes elevated over the civil. The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subjected to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights; and by degrees the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors but as their superiors. The transition from this disposition to that of considering them masters is neither remote nor difficult; but it is very difficult to prevail upon a people under such impressions to make a bold or effectual resistance to usurpations supported by the military power."
As Douglas MacArthur updated that in 1957:
“Our swollen budgets constantly have been misrepresented to the public. Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor- with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”
In the interests of ideological balance, liberal tax and spend is a Schwertglauben on taxpayers. Unions have their Schwertglauben toward bosses and scabs, And see Galbraith, The Age of Uncer-tainty, on Hitler being the first Keynesian.
Das Schwert will be an unfortunate necessity for the forseeable future, but let us not make a belief system out of it. Let us take one of its more cogent lessons of recent decades, that ot precision- guided munitions. The closer a warhead lands to the target, the less explosive is needed to destroy it. Precision guidance is exactly what das Schwert needs in the larger context, evenn if it means opposing (!) the President. And not merely abroad, but protection of the innocent at home as well.
What if there was a vocal German movement about 1935 or so, pushing the notion, “Hey, Hitler, this Jew-stuff and war-stuff is blinking, blanking nuts. Cut it out, immediately if not sooner!”
That would have saved a lot of trouble, even if it encouraged Germany’s “enemies,” nicht wahr?
Or do we learn from history that we do not learn from history?
“For it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the hands of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.” Federalist 25
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Sailing Beyond the Sight of Eisegesis
As the blind men argue whether the elephant is a tree, wall, rope, or snake, they go into politics, as we see in the first two issues of this publication. Then they cannot fathom why this perverse, misguided world does not just tune in on their “visions” and beat a path to their doors, whether the mousetrap is better or not. Everything would be so grand if their intentions were properly extended. What else is there to life, anyway?
Try to tell them there is no necessary connection between intentions and results. They will take it as an insult to their intelligence. The absurdity of some other faction’s exercise in generating political will is too painfully obvious, even laughable, of course, whether it is trying to create new socialist man or old conservative woman. Then it busily, obliviously, reverts to generating its own. Try to extend their frame of reference and consider yourself fortunate indeed if you do not get some peevish, precious blow-off. Some might even call you a relativist, if you suggest their perceptions are less than absolute.
You do not have to be an activist to do this in your personal life, but figure this sort of thing keeps the divorce courts busy and workplaces acrimonious. Figure this sort of thing, too, is why so many are disconnected from politics altogether.
What to do about it? Actually, dear reader, if you are that far along, there is hope for the world. Try the definitions in a psychological dictionary for such concepts as egocentrism, false consensus effect, individuation, deindividuation, animism, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, pleasure principle, projection, and reality testing.
Look up index entries for egocentrism, Piaget, and science in Alan Cromer, Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science, the point being that the ability to separate internal thoughts and external reality is the basis of science.
Likewise, look up artificialists, creationism, evolution vs. argument from design, and Piaget in Paul Bloom, Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human, that evolutionary concepts are difficult to comprehend. Belief in creation by fiat is so much more automatic or reflexive or “natural,” whether in physical “first nature” or social “second nature.” (Which is a fancy, perhaps diplomatic, way of describing those who have to have their own way in matters large and small.)
Likewise, Robert Fritz, Creating, the chapter on first vs. third person orientation
Good luck, but figure it will take a religious approach, even among the irreligious. Actually, everyone is religious in the sense of having a frame of reference that is not easily expanded. There is a very bad religious practice, in any event, eisegesis, about which not much is written. Usually applied to interpretation of Scripture through pre-conceived notions, it applies to life in general. In common language it comes out, “Don’t bother me with the facts; my mind is made up.”
What else is there? A beginning computer programming course had one of the few college lectures yours truly got anything out of, and a good decade before “user-friendly” became a household word. You think the computer is a very smart machine but it is not. You would not tell it, get me a glass of milk. No, you would tell it, take two steps forward, two steps to the left, two steps to the right, find the refrigerator, find the door, find the handle, pull the handle, find the milk, etc.
In other words, the computer does not tune in on your giddy trips. No, you have to climb out of yours and deal with it on its own terms.
Too bad so many people have such difficulty doing this with other people, in private or public, whether face-to-face or through public policy.
In pagan, polytheistic, pre-Genesis Mesotopo-tamia there was “no correlation between right conduct and individual or national well-being,” by Rabbi Nahum Sarna’s exquisite exegesis of Genesis, in particular one paragraph likely to be reproduced in every issue of this publication.
Ancient Mesopotamia? How about here? And now? Exegesis, probing the “original intent” of Scripture or whatever, as opposed to sloppy, infantile, disconnected, self-defeating eisegesis?
Is there any "correlation between right conduct and individual or national well-being”? If not, then life is just a big crapshoot, an orgy of impulse gratification. Maybe it is, judging by the way so many people go through life, in matters great and small, in stations high and low. Such is eisegesis as a way of life, the source of the world’s anti-social and self-destructive conduct.
What if there are “correlationn(s) between right conduct and individual or national well-being” If so, and we realize it, then we can no longer tell the world, “Get me a glass of milk.” The world is then a computer to be programmed. If we want results, it is no longer a matter of being louder than thou or more obstreperous or peevish or precious. It is a different game altogether, or exegesis, life beyond the legends in your own mind.
And we have to remember that primeval law of all computers, Garbage In, Garbage Out.
In other words, there is no necessary connection between intentions and results. Intentions have to be translated first, losing something of course in this less than ideal world but that beats leaving them untranslated altogether.
There is more to life than social chemistry, that is, generating proper intentions in others. There is social physics, the “correlations” between intentions and results, or the “program(s)” by which the world works, or the “falling dominoes” by which actions produce consequences, quite independently of the intentions or expectations with which they were taken.
Social engineering has gotten a bad name because, heretofore, it has been almost entirely an exercise in social chemistry, or eisegesis of some sort. With a proper application of social physics it will gain a whole new respectability. Perhaps we should call it “social gardening,” since it does not have the precise calculations by which space probes are directed to outer planets or cheapo DVDs are produced for the store shelves.
Exegesis in social physics would find some constructive parallel in chaos theory, which views the paths of particular particles as indeterminate, but still uses Newtonian calculations to predict overall system behavior.
But beware “intuitive social physics.” At least one psychological dictionary (Oxford) describes “intuitive physics” as pre-Newtonian notions such as heavy bodies falling faster than lighter ones or moving bodies stopping when they are no longer moved. This is eisegesis in physics. Since Galileo and Newton did exegesis in physics centuries ago, we know that heavy and light bodies fall at the same rate and that bodies in motion stay in motion unless acted upon.
Ayn Rand’s followers might supplement her generally useful notions of objectivity with exegesis of other points of view. Otherwise such “objectivity” turns into just more “whim worship.” Especially if their “intuitive social physics” is oblivious to government garbage in the market and takes objections to current corporate, development and transportation practices as “interference with the free market.” Embroiled in “principled” if truncated argument, they forget that old business adage, win an argument and lose a sale.
Showing such respect and appreciation for others’ views and motivations, libertarians might not be taken as such loose cannons by the rest of the world. Libertarian loose cannons? How about all the other political eisegetes? That is how they generally inpress each other and even the rare political exegete. They are loose cannons because they have no frame reference beyond their own perceptions and intentions and are oblivious, often militantly, to those of others.
Political exegetes will not be taken as loose cannons, at least if the eisegetes can comprehend anything beyond themselves. Exegetes will not be obliviously “shoving blind,” the railroad term for a locomotive shoving cars with no one on the end to signal a stop, a pretty good way to cause a train wreck. As the method in their madness sinks in, the restraints of objective reality upon their own perceptions and intentions will become more and more apparent, however slowly at first. True political exegetes will be savvy enough to offer reassurance they are considering what is on other peoples’ minds, whether they agree with it on not. As the judge told the rapist, the difference between rape and rapture is salesmanship.
Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate`, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, describe a supreme act of exegesis, one important key to a larger frame of reference:
“... A student has to know how to distill a body of material to the essence or to put the pieces together into a harmonious whole. Anything more than concrete thinking requires an integrative mind. Just as depth perception requires two eyes, depth learning requires the ability to see things from at least two points of view....” (p166)
Truth be told, it is not easy for a blind man do do exegesis on the elephant. Nor is it instantane-ous; it takes at least a walk-around, more likely, reaching over the top from a ladder. Then he has to put it all together, a project that is never really finished. When the method in this madness is finally recognized, however, political exegetes will not be seen as loose cannons.
Menwhile the eisegetes will be impatient with all this foolishness. They will likely call him names, maybe even question his loyalty or sanity. They might become impatient enough to push on the elephant, uttering such a battle cry as “direct action” or such. They might even be sumo wrestlers and, who knows, they might even push in the same direction. It is laughable, to say the least, at least if no one gets stomped.
Several thousand years ago, however, some brilliant exegetes came across the elephant’s “program.” Thus they turned the elephant into a heavy-duty beast of burden under their control, just the thing for dragging logs and such. Even a blind man can use such techniques, as long as he does not ride into some low-hanging limb.
Activist, tune thyself first.
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Unilateral or Interactive?
He died of diabetes late winter 2006 after being hospitalized since summer 2005. It seemed at first the problem was vasculitis, a strange infla-mation of blood vessels around his ankles leaving a reddish band looking like a bad bruise. He had been grossly obese since childhood because of a glandular disorder. In his last few years he used a small children’s bicycle as a walker of sorts, until his hospitalization. Then he was bedridden. He had a raging sweet tooth until the end, craving soda pop and candy bars, those without nuts, since his teeth were gone. His typical load of groceries before hospitalization included 24 can cases of generic cola. He denied to his uncle not long before the end that he had diabetes. The last time yours truly saw him, another uncle and an aunt tried to get him to take an insulin shot. He complained piteously about being hospitalized, but was not phased by the retort that he was not in jail; he could get dressed and walk out anytime he was well enough to do so. He refused to eat pork, citing British-Israel notions about Europeans being the ten lost tribes of Israel, thus the real Jews, and spouting something about pork having the wrong electrolytes. Sugar, somehow, did not have that problem. He and his father once had a nice six-flat building. They had their troubles with the neighbors and city inspectors after renting to a prostitute. The building did need some work, but not that much. Taking a truculent, defiant attitude toward everyone and everything, they lost the building altogether before long. Over a decade later, not long before his hospi-talization, the matter came up in conversation. He blamed the whole fiasco on the prostitute even at that late date. He was not amenable to the sugges-tion that landlords often rent to objectionable tenants without losing their buildings, nor to any suggestion he might have handed the situation differently. He also complained about his humble apartment and that he was just not "living," which could be taken more than one way. Of course he got into other pointless arguments too. He often spouted super-alienated, off-the-wall legal theories as if anyone else should take them seriously. He would occasionally mutter about corporations and one day cited an early U.S. Supreme Court decision about them. After yours truly copied it up for him, he finally realized it was merely about artificial persons, without which no legal system can function. His objection to "corporations" stemmed merely from the City styling itself "a municipal corporation" in the caption of legal papers in housing court. Figure he could easily be still alive had he controlled his sugar craving and that he could be living in one of the flats and living comfortably off the other five, had the complaints been handled is a more normal manner. Quite a unilateral approach to life, wasn’t it? Why even bother with such an eccentric, isolated, ineffectual hermit? Because his idiosyncracies show up so often in much more normal and socially acceptable form, creating so much trouble. At least he accepted correction about corporations. Consider his public, left-wing counterpart, former WLS host Mike Malloy, subbing for Jerry Springer, Air America, 10/19/06. A caller asked if he were aware he was hurting the Democratic cause. Malloy asked if anything he said about the Republican thugs ruining the country was untrue. The caller stammered something and Malloy repeated his query, asking how that hurt the Democrats and there is no point going back and forth with Republican thugs. After more stammer-ing from the caller and proclaiming his espousal of the truth, Malloy cut him off. The next day he proclaimed it is not a matter of Democratic truth or Republican truth or liberal truth but THE TRUTH. His last caller mentioned troops resorting to homosexuality in cramped circumstances and maybe this would be a way to get to the right-wingers. Malloy said we are all on a sliding scale between heterosexuality and homosexuality and homosexuality under extreme circumstances does not bother him, without mentioning right-wingers. This sort of thing goes on all the time, in mat-ters public and private, political and personal. Figure it keeps the divorce courts busy, workplaces acrimonious, and public discussion in chaos. If any-thing it is more common and more virulent among high minded, public spirited, if self-righteous, people pushing a cause. At least the deliberate con artists know enough to tell the sucker what he wants to hear. As the Gospel says, the children of this world are more diligent than those of the next. What to do about it? If nothing, then why go through another pitiful monologue, more howling at the moon? But, dear reader, perhaps you recog-nize a bit of yourself in these two examples, extreme as they are. We all do this to some extent. If so, you have taken the crucial first step. But you cannot stop there. It takes some follow-up. The next task is to slow down a bit. You are not going to have everything wrapped up tight. Get used to loose ends. You cannot do it all at once in this world, whatever it is, including this. It is like walking in the dark after being in bright light. In this case the "bright light" is an illusion, your illusion. But get used to something else. Have you ever purged yourself of unrealistic expectations? Or even tried to? No one does completely, but figure so much of the troubles in this world are caused by unrealistic expectations, including yours, at least in your world. In partic-ular, that things can ever be wrapped up tight. Figure the two approaches to interpreting Scripture apply to life itself, our fellow human beings in particular. One is eisegesis (ice-e-gee-sis), or reading one’s preconceived, no, pre-absor-bed, notions into the text. Ever doeisegesis on your fellow human beings? Sure you have. It is just a fancy word for prejudice, or prejudging, and we all do it one way or another. It does not have to be racial, religious, sexual, or whatever. The other is exegesis, or trying to discern what the writer intends to say. That requires putting yourself in the writer’s place, as best you can, in other words, understanding the writer’s context. Two outstanding examples of recent scriptural exegesis are Nahum Sarna, "Understanding Creation in Genesis," Roland Mushat Frye, ed., Is God a Creationist?; Sarna, Understanding Genesis, and Bruce McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Every-thing. By Sarna, Genesis is not a rebuttal to Dar-win but to pagan creation myths of its time. By McLaren, mainstream Christianity is easily seen as faith taken out of its original Jewish context. Eisegesis is necessarily a unilateral affair; one need only be a legend in one’s own mind. And it is quick; it does not take any fumbling around in the dark, at least what the eisegete takes as dark. Exegesis is necessarily an interactive affair. It requires a constant going back and forth, even with "Republican thugs," as unilateral as their foreign policy is, or whoever else the bad guys might be. And it is forever nuanced, forever unfinished, a perpetual feeling one’s way in dim light. "Let me not judge a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins," goes the American Indian proverb. The flip side is from Robert Burns, "O, would the giftie gie us/To see ourselves as others see us." Not that anyone ever completely under-stands another’s point of view. There are always loose ends. It is never wrapped up tight. Inevitable limitations aside, appreciation of others’ views is simply part of growing up, of establishing a healthy individual identity. Otherwise one is trapped in egocentricity and narcissism and wish fulfillment. One great misfortune in this world, however, is the sheer quantity of chronological adults going through life oblivious to others’ perceptions. There is a standard test in child psychology, in which a two or three year old sees a puppet show. The first puppet hides something under one of three covers. Another puppet takes it from that cover and hides it under another. Then the first puppet returns and the child is asked where he will look for it. Two year olds generally answer where the second puppet hid it, not being aware of another’s perceptions. Three year olds generally answer where the first puppet hid it, being that aware of a separate perception. The political activists are legion, spouting some self-referential, inbred correctness. Precious few try to establish credibility with opposing camps, to show at least an awareness of their con-cerns. Then they take each other as loose cannons and perpetually wonder why this perverse, mis-guided world is going to hell in a handbasket. What the world desperately needs is that supreme act of exegesis, one described by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate`, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers: "... A student has to know how to distill a body of material to the essence or to put the pieces together into a harmonious whole. Anything more than concrete thinking requires an integrative mind. Just as depth perception requires two eyes, depth learning requires the ability to see things from at least two points of view...." (p166) The navy had a video at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry about projecting American power anywhere in the world, well before the Iraq controversy. If life, public or private, is merely a matter of projecting power, no wonder we have so much chaos and so many drop-outs. Only a very precious few can ever win in such a game. We can all be winners, however, if we go back and forth with each other. Not that everyone’s view will prevail, but the better views will have a much better chance, not merely of winning but of convincing the other side. The prevailing notions today are like a bratty little kid whose parents are not talking to each other and he is playing one against the other, getting away with murder. The unilateral approach is easy as falling off a log, but its consequences can be very hard to live with, even hard to trace. The interactive ap-proach is much more difficult at first. It requires climbing out of infantile wish fulfillment and cop-ing a world beyond one’s wishes and perceptions. Its consequences are much easier to live with. Let’s not have a requiem when someone dies as an eisegete and rises again as an exegete. And let’s start with Number One.
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permission granted to reproduce and distribute in whole this two page advertising supplement