Reflections on Steinbeck's critique of American culture

It has always seemed strange to me…The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. (John Steinbeck in Cannery Row)

In short, according to Steinbeck, Americans value achievements of human “doings” above relationships between and among human “beings”….evidence-based success trumps the abstractions of kindness, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling. What one accomplishes, as illustrated by what one has, irrespective of how it was achieved really matters. And this is a by-product of a culture born of the musket, reared on the battlefield, and sustained by the most elaborate military-industrial-intelligence complex in human history. It is not that individual acts of generosity are absent from the American culture. It is that they are not embedded in the cornerstone of the culture along with the symbols of achievement that are the jewels worthy of their place in that stone.

Admiration of human compassion and gentleness and generosity is never going to compete with a love of the produce of hurtful attitudes and actions. And Steinbeck is one of America’s most respected writers, so it is not that the American people are unwilling to reflect on their inherent imbalance of ideals and things.

And, the ironic truth of Steinbeck’s pithy observation has also moved some to attempt to change the system by making it more kind, generous, open, honest, understanding and empathic. By the same token, others, like the movie writers, producers and directors have also generated sizeable audiences and revenue from movies that celebrate the “success” of greed, egotism and self-interest. (Wall Street being top of mind.)

How does the American “system” fail in a cumulative sense to offer, support, encourage, foster and even incarnate the best of human traits? As a nation, the country’s premise of the pursuit of life, liberty, happiness and freedom, at its core, is a nexus of competition, unleashed individualism, and competition in the rough and tumble of business, politics, athletic and academic competition, and the achievement of significant and stereotypical symbols of status. Beginning with wins in primary school competitive ventures, science fairs, even pre-school-age beauty pageants, and even artistic competitions in dance, piano, instrumental and band competitions. The psychological premise underpinning all of these experiments in parenting is that my ‘child’ will have to compete to climb the economic/political/social/intellectual ladder and my legacy will have been to inculcate those attitudes, habits, disciplines and expectations that will lead to a successful live. Although there is, to be sure, growing evidence that humanitarian initiatives, like volunteering for a social justice project in elementary and secondary school, as an integral and requisite component of the resume and the application for university, there is still a very high premium placed by admission offices on the academic score on standardized testing instruments. Admittedly, there are rules and officials providing a “fair” context in which many of these high-end competitive encounters, and most of them expect and even require participants to comply with their fundamental rules and expectations.

Nevertheless, it is also true that a large socioeconomic slice of the population is excluded from many of these “opportunities” given their lack of or even total absence of the resources needed to purchase the equipment, eat the meals, get the sleep, find a suitable place to do homework, and even the pay for the transportation to participate. These road-blocks serve to increase the gap between those who participate and those who can’t, as well as to enhance the divisions and the concomitant resentments, jealousies, bitterness and hopelessness within communities. Pour into this disparity the differences in colour of the skin of the children in most towns and cities. Injustice abounds. And yet, as the street talk puts it, ‘tell me something I did not know.”

It is, in part, the failure of the political class and the community leadership to elevate the numbers of students who graduate, who serve and who volunteer and the enrolment figures in art classes, music classes, dance classes, in the public dialogue, over the numbers that are attached to the employed/unemployed, to the tax burden, to the consumer price index. It is also the failure of the schools, the churches, and the corporations to elevate and to respect and to reward the individuals in their circles who demonstrate compassion, understanding, respect, service and honesty that supports the tilt of the playing field in favour of the efforts to cut costs, to dodge legitimate safety and environmental testing, to schmooze those in power, as one of the many pathways to successfully climbing the various hierarchical ladders of power, status and responsibility in order to demonstrate their personal “success”.

No one would argue that egotism trumps collaboration, collegialism, and the development of sensitivity, as workplace cultural goals, and as primary traits for success. Of course, there is some evidence of exceptions to this pattern, highlighted for public relations and marketing purposes, in an effort to enhance profits, investment values and business growth. Yet even mainline churches have succumbed to the growth in numbers and dollars as evidence of their success, padding the resumes of their executives, at the expense of both individual spiritual growth and supportive community building.

And, from a macro-perspective, unless and until we admire humans more than success, humans will continue to serve a subservient role to the pursuit of the glory and the fame and the notoriety of success. And meanness, self-interest, and ego like a dangerous weed will continue to proliferate among the masses, empty as a life-goal and strategy, yet more than capable of infecting millions. Steinbeck addresses this dynamic in another pithy observation to the effect that if you are in trouble, need or hurt, only the poor people will help you. We all have experience to corroborate his cynical truth in that regard. The world is full of stories about people in some kind of need, calling on someone with whom they grew up, and upon whom they believed they could rely for help, only to hear, on the other end of the line, “There is nothing I can do for you” when they, and specifically they, were in a position to offer very specific help for a very specific need. And their cover, (if that is the right word) was something like, “I don’t want to interfere in your life, and I believe you got yourself into this position, so get yourself out!” And, since they have not been in a position similar to that of the person in need, they have no comprehension of the dimensions, nor the pain of the need.

One of the defining traits of successful people is that they value their success, and the methods by which they achieved it: and whatever it took, including hardness, acquisitiveness, aggression, self-interest, meanness, those were the values that helped them conquer the obstacles to their success and having deployed those values, they now owe considerable respect to them, and whether incidentally or overtly, they present as representatives of those values, to the people they meet.

The writing of cheques to charities, while it may be a frequent discipline of those who have succeeded is fundamentally detached from those persons “in need” unless a specific tragedy like a fire that demolishes a home, or a speeding driver who kills a very pregnant mother, or a headline depicting an obvious injustice. And then the “crowd-funding”  available on social  media is accessed, and the person/family in such desperate need is singled out for support. Yet, although I do not have the sociological data to prove this, there is reason to believe that even in those special circumstances, most of those hypothetical cheques are being written by those who have much less than those society considers “successful”.

The American cultural dominance of the importance of the individual, as a functioning component in the larger culture (including how the individual serves the larger process of how success is measured, defined and tabulated in all phases of the life of the individual) has so overwhelmed the value placed on the nation as a whole, the society, and the things required to build a culture of compassion, generosity, gentleness, honesty, openness and feeling has left the individual defined as his career, his accomplishments, his trophy case of awards.

And one of the qualities that drives a culture steeped in the need to “show me” your value, is a lack of trust, a lack of inherent value as the starting place of how one perceives the other, and, by inference, how one perceives and conceives one’s self. If we are repeatedly taught that “X” is good because of what “X” has accomplished, while the evidence of how “X” extended support, kindness, compassion, to another is considered merely an afterthought, then the world is “showing” and “telling” its children what really matters in their life. And children imitate what they see their parents and their teachers and their coaches do, at least as well or perhaps even better than they emulate what their mentors “say”.

Supporting this “productive” culture is a significant entertainment industry, in and through which many learn, rehearse and offer their talents and skills that are encased in dramas that illustrate the productive achievements of history, in all fields where accomplishment can be seen and measured.

It is the difficulty to measure the subjective and the abstract in empirical terms that leaves them lagging as mysteries in most conversations in America. The intimacy, gentleness, generosity, compassion of which Steinbeck writes seem to be confined to the private lives of marriage, intimate relationships, as if they do not belong in the public arena. I once heard a female executive tell her spouse that she put on her armour every morning to go out into the world, in order to survive in that world, and only when she returned home could she remove that armour. Unfortunately, even in her relationship, she persisted in directing and in dominating that same spouse in highly condescending ways…..“once a general, always a general.”

Another way in which this cultural anatomy functions is to put a price, a dollar price, on each and every encounter, reducing all encounters and exchanges to consumer/supplier for-profit meetings. “Time is money,” is a chant that echoes throughout the culture, demonstrating that unless it produces value (a relevant and appropriate compensation) it will not be taken. So humans learn very quickly that how they are to be compensated is at the core of each activity. Of course, there are volunteer opportunities, much vaulted in the culture, for which individuals are not paid; these are regarded as “pro bono” engagements, making them excellent entries on one’s resume, demonstrating the capacity to ‘give back’ as another way to ‘show’ one’s value in the culture. Ascribing 75% of the nation's economic health on consumer spending also illustrates the dependence on the acquisition of these consumables, and their cultural importance.

Naturally, at some point in such a wealthy culture, it is embarrassing not to demonstrate some generosity, especially when epidemics like AIDS, or ebola threaten thousands of lives. And from the public purse, there is evidence in President Bush’s (43) millions offered to Africa to combat the AIDs epidemic. There is also considerable evidence of philanthropy from billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates whose wealth has been generated from their investment portfolios and their ingenuity in their private for profit businesses. However, the society’s refusal to make access to quality health care universally available to all, regardless of pre-existing conditions or size of earnings or level of education is a critical example of the failure of the society to look after its own. Dubbing such a proposal “communism” is an overt attempt by the power brokers to ridicule it as demonic, evil and thereby easily dismissed. Underlying that charge, however, is merely the overt effort to protect, enshrine and perpetuate the capitalist system, for profit, which depends on the compliance of millions with a culture of “the end (profit) justifies the means” and the means includes whatever it takes to keep the corporation profitable.

It is, at its heart, the dominance of the for-profit corporation and the example of its modus operandi (originating in the military model) that has built and continues to sustain a culture in which Steinbeck’s prescience persists. Admiring the gentleness of individuals, while loving the things purchased by the other side of human nature’s traits is a kind of trap that has a deeply embedded support system, only occasionally and temporarily cracked by a “good news” story that shows the “light” of what might be possible.

Reflections on SENSITIVITY

Reflections on sensitivity

And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touch’d by the thorns. (Thomas Moore)

There is something tragic and dipped in pathos about this truth.

Sensitivity, that quality that carries a burden in a world so disparaging of its gifts, and so championing of its weakness, is so admired by women in gay men, and so despised in other men by straight men.

Sensitivity, that emotional radar, on whose screen fall the images of hurting, whether personal or merely visible in others; sensitivity, the sometimes too close to the surface (as in thin skin) frown, tear, wince or even scream….when others cannot even see or imagine what might be upsetting.

Social implications

Sensitivity, that quality that isolates one from so many others, who themselves are isolated from their emotions, their hearts and the intimate connection to their imagination. It brings the first touch, sight, scent, melody to the inner heart as gift magnified for closer reflection, musing and interpretation. Whether of a rose, or from the hand of a new love over a candlelight dinner, or from the strings of the violin playing in the far corner of the dining room, or from a petal in a summer garden, or from a neck resting on a shoulder, tossing hints of perfume through the darkness….these are just some of the poignant and memorable gifts of sensitivity.

And then there are the verbal nuances in tone and choice of word, and the unfinished thoughts left hanging, the lift of the eyebrows, the turning up of the nose, and the ever so slight wave of the hand, in a dismissive shrug of insouciance…each of these also comprise the language of relational meaning, understanding, connection or the breaking of that connection….And the sensitive man or woman either sender or receiver of any of thee gestures is fully conscious of their potential impact….rarely misinterpreted by another equally sensitive.

This stuff comprises a language for which a formal school curriculum has not been deigned or delivered. It is, however, the stuff of many failed attempts to connect and to stay connected to another. We are supposed to “pick it up” from our social contacts, our family, school, churches, or even from workplaces where human encounters prevail. However, imagine growing up in a home where sensitivity is debased, disparaged, disdained and denied. I recall a conversation, following a poetry-reading of some Robert Service poetry which evoked tears in an elderly man, in his eighties. It was some of the same poetry his father had read to him many decades before, and the memory simply overwhelmed him. When the story was recounted to the man’s spouse, her comment, after sixty years of marriage was “Well, everybody knows he has always been a cry-baby!” Sadly, the wife had lived a life devoid of and dismissive of the golden gifts of both poetry and sensitivity, and her husband had merely kept his sensitivity hidden, so risky would it have been to let it out of his locked heart.

And then there is the “other” side of the quality of sensitivity; it is also always the first to notice the thorn on the rose, and this can be quite disconcerting to those who have not yet witnessed the thorn, or whose imagination had not yet brought it into “view”. So, while sensitivity enriches its possessor through a significantly enhanced experience of so many stimuli, both physical and emotional, and, if and when shared those intimate details can and will also enrich others who may not have developed their own sensitivity, it can and will also irritate, annoy, and possibly even upset both the sensor and his or her friends.

Being the first to notice the thorn on the rose (as metaphor) can generate a reputation as a negative influence, someone who can and does exaggerate the ‘thorns’ in a culture in which flowers, smiles, happy thoughts and positive attitudes generate respect, personability, likeability, and even enhance one’s reputation. However, like the canary in the coal mine, the sensitive person is also a gift to those who depend on its highly specific and very early notice of whatever might be about to appear on the horizon of a personal situation, or even an organizational conundrum, before those charged with responsibility have become conscious of the danger.

Parenting

For parents, this sensitivity protects their children from the obvious poison ivies of the world, the bad parsnip weed, the literal odour of an intoxicated man, the danger of an oncoming car before a toddler wanders onto the roadway, the dog that is loose in the neighbourhood, and the unwelcome and unwanted danger in a parked suitcase in an airport or a train station.

Personal Relationship implications

When two sensitive persons mate both the rewards and the risks are elevated: the rewards come in so many situations, with both appreciating an orchestral performance, a complex movie or drama, a developing news story whose outcome holds significant impact for the local culture, and the immediate grasp of the other’s inattention, boredom, discomfort, and even the first hint of disappointment or anger. On he downside, should some of these signs be noticed and become the source of anxiety for either partner, the potential for conflict, both warranted and not so much, grows.

Sensitivity can exaggerate both a perception and an action or attitude; and so, like a fairly high-strung dog, often needs to be put into context, a shared context so that both partners can accept a common view of the signs emerging from under the emotional microscope.

And, as one learns to anticipate one’s own sensitivity, and to respect another’s sensitivity, one gains a deeper appreciation of this often maligned emotional perspicacity and emotional intelligence. Once born and established, it becomes an integral part of the hard wiring of the person.

Security and Intelligence implications

From a surveillance perspective, sensitivity is not only required; it is welcomed. And, should one anticipate entering the security and intelligence business, one’s aptitude for this quality will be tested, developed and deployed every moment of one’s engagement in this sector. Seeing, hearing, smelling, and noticing those specific indicators of behaviour that require and demand scrutiny, detention, investigation and potential legal process comprise the core of this sector.

And, then there is also the intersect of sensitivity dependent on empirical evidence and intuition when one suspects some malfeasance before the evidence emerges. And that kind of self-discipline is analogous to the early training of a downhill skier, learning to snow-plow and turn prior to descending the hill, in order to accomplish a full stop, prior to a fall or injury.

The ARTS

Here is where sensitivity is most admired and deployed. It is the artists eye, ear, nose and touch that bring into his conscious imagination the grist for his creative mill and the flour of his grinding…on the canvas, on the poetic manuscript, on the symphonic manuscript, and in the various three-dimension portraits in stone, wood, acrylic, and thread, as well as the highly symbolic dance moves of ballet, jazz, tap and modern. It is sensitivity to the world around the artist, and the imaginative re-interpretation, re-working, re-introducing those specific aspects of his world for his audience that keeps us walking through galleries, buying tickets for the symphony and the opera, frequenting concerts and art museums. And it is sensitivity that unites both artists and audience, in a harmony of shared and enhanced experience, parallels of which are inaccessible and often unavailable from other experiences of vocation, in fields like science, the law, medicine, politics, accounting and even journalism.

The poet’s eye (including all of his senses) both mirrors his universe and shines a new light on that universe, and depending on the period of history, expands and enhances the experience of his audience, in a way no other exposure can do.

Human civilization is so dependent on the sensitivity of the human capacity to perceive and to intuit, and the imagination to create new expressions of previously ordinary experiences that our spirit literally craves its fullest support and expression. And where the human spirit is repressed, locked up, under surveillance and even punished for its fullest and freest expression, the sensitivity of those in power is also repressed, locked up, under surveillance and facing potential punishment.

There are so many undiscovered artists and poets whose sensitivity has been smothered sometimes unconsciously by those urging them to find a real “job” and other times by those who are literally afraid of the human imagination to inspire, to enliven and even sometimes to frighten.

Suggesting to an executive that males could and should learn to accept and to name and to honour their emotional sensitivity in a rather challenging meeting, a few years back, evoked the largest cataract of male fear and anxiety I had ever seen in well over half a century. And the sad thing is, those men even today, are still likely making wide detours around their sensitivity, their imagination and the many gifts a direct route into and through those sensitivities would offer to them personally and to all of their families and colleagues. And they claimed to be operating in a spiritual context and culture.

Tragic….and yet repeated in every country and in most organizations around the world. And both the pharmacology and the cardiac businesses are reaping the fiscal plunder, while the shrinks are overwhelmed with work that the man who listened to the Robert Service poetry did not and would not need today. 

The mechanistic mind needs the balance of intuition, imagination, ambiguity and subjectivity

In his book, The Manufacture of Evil, Lionel Tiger explores the thesis that, with the rise of the industrial age, we introduced a way of conceiving of the universe that depends on human agency to "manufacture" what humans consider to be evil. The power of the machine was merely a transference of the power of the species to dominate the process of taking raw materials and transforming them into something else, cars, washing machines, televisions, a plethora of convenience devices and....by inference, underpinning the metaphysic, the very nature of the universe. Given the basic construct of how human power and agency operated in this new and innovative theatre of the factory, and the many "benefits" of that agency, how could a supernatural agent like God not also operate on the same principle of objectivity and empirical agency in the discerning and displaying of the differences between 'good' and 'evil'? Of course, the premise is replete with arrogance, pride and arguably mountains of evidence of human agency.
So intimate is the relationship between humans and machines, (not incidentally, a clearly masculine notion) and also so dependent are humans on our need for power, that when a machine produces something new, marvelous and shiny, human hubris almost immediately and inevitably believes in its own power to control the most important question of human existence: How to define and live the "good" life.
Tiger posits the natural as his benchmark for comparing "what man makes" with how nature works and finds a significant departure from 'nature' in order to satisfy the human appetite for dominance.
The mechanical universe can be found in millions of garages, backyards and car shows where humans (mostly males) re-build, restore, accessorize, and polish their chosen four-wheel vehicles. Some have airplane hangers full of these monsters (e.g. Jay Leno). Trophies to ego's, and to various skills that continue to offer opportunities for ego-massage, while participating in the restorations and while displaying these trophies at car shows under various banners: antique cars, sports cars, muscle cars, restored cars.....many of these "shows" serving as fund raising events for various charities.
The mechanical universe, by definition, also feeds and is fed by the human appetite to discover "how things work" and then, if they are not working, to "fix them" so that they do.
History records, in stacks of academic works stored in library stacks for the benefit of researchers who seek to unwrap various questions deploying the required empirical evidence that supports/refutes a thesis, the discovery, the first use of, the significance of human accomplishments like the first pen, the first printing press, the first toilet and sewer system, the first motor-powered land vehicle, the first motor-powered ship, the first human flight, the first Morse code, the first telephone, the first radio, the first television.....
It is not accidental or incidental that many of these "products" were originally developed by money dedicated to the production of defense materiel including weapons, intelligence, communication devices, visioning devices, masks to protect against poison gas, orientation devices to establish attack routes, escape routes, locks and surveillance devices....The military needs of a given society, as perceived by the leaders whose degree of paranoia played a role in the speed and the determination of the devices needed to sustain power, to grow empires and to defend against enemies.
In a broader context, these benchmarks also comprise integral parts of the cultures that produced each of them, signifying, for example, the degree of "progress" achieved by the people living where and when each accomplishment was developed. The establishment and the maintenance of power by leaders and governments continued to fund many, if not most, of the developments of technology for centuries.
The evolution of how war is waged is not only a theatre for new manufactured devices; it is also a theme considered by the intellectual community as a conventional method of discerning how humans produced evidence of our evolution in the emergence of our higher ethics, compassion, humaneness, and higher personal morality. A clear example follows the methods of execution of those considered criminals through history. From beheading, to public floggings and hangings, to electric chairs, to chemical poisonings those considered the most venal humans were subject to the current method of elimination, and those methods were considered benchmarks for the evolution of the culture, and thereby the political acceptance of the leaders who wrote and passed the laws on which the public acts were based and carried out.
Transference of our conception of power in manufacturing to how we manufactured "evil" would seem to be a seductive process enabling the even higher conception of human potential as beings growing in the capacity and the will to mercy. If we used more moderate and less viscious methods of punishment, and how we conducted our wars, then, the argument goes, we were individually and collectively moving in a more tolerant, more humane and more ethical and moral direction. The laws to abandon nerve gas, for example, were to illustrate how wars would never sink to such depths of depravity again. (The Assad regime's possession of chemical weapons, for example, evoked a global response forcing the dictator to dispose of at least most of them, if not all. And the threat of Saddam Hussein's potential use of chemical and biological weapons, and possibly even nuclear weapons, lies at the heart of what is now considered the worst foreign policy disaster in the history of the United States, even though the intelligence was so flawed as to be worthless and devoid of evidence.)
There is a kind of clarity in the manufacture of machines, in the clinical execution of wars and in the "leadership" quotient of those so engaged. Reporters can and must report the numbers, the dollar costs, and the benefits (all of them in empirical, measureable terms) as the narrative of the respective dramas.And there is also a kind of clarity and an absence of ambiguity in the hierarchies which operate both the manufacturing organizations and the war/political cultures. Clarity, especially of human 'right and wrong' seems to be a sine qua non on which the history of human civilization depends. And the people who 'fit' into the clarity of such definitions, particularly those enshrined in law, laws of towns and cities, provinces and states, nations and international agencies are considered more ethical and moral than those who resist those laws.
We tell stories in our public media, as well as in our dramatic theatre productions of those braving the boundaries of unjust laws, challenging the establishments who enforce unjust laws and unjust application of those laws, and those who wage public campaigns that expose the uncertainty, the ambiguity and the downsides of the reductionistic definitions of those laws.
And history is driven, in part, by the conflict and the collision of these two forces: the evil manufactured by establishments in order to attain, sustain, maintain and enhance order and civil society and the rare, and courageous if often considered radical and intemperate objectionists, the activists and the poets and prophets, like Lionel Tiger, whose academic discipline (anthropology in his case) and whose world view and whose faith orientations encourage and even require books such as the title mentioned above.
It is the collision and the conflict between the mechanical, mechanistic, objective, empirical definition and boundaries of the human imagination, and the human ethical imperatives integral to the subjective, the emotional/intuitive, the natural and the much more messy metaphysic of ambiguity, including the ambiguity of what is right and wrong that lies at the heart of many of the contemporary writings and conversations in our media, in our political discourse, and in our classrooms.
And, to the degree that both subjective and objective are aligned in relatively equally proportions, or are disproportionately out of balance that humans struggle to discern their own ethical and moral authenticity and validity. The commission of what is considered an act of deception by the rigorous extraction of statements out of context and out of proportion to the intent of the original writer or speaker seems to be a tide on which many political "surfers" are riding, for the sheer thrill of the ride.
Excitement, entertainment, especially of the extreme and instant-gratification kind (primarily driven by the profit demands of large communication companies....these are not the stuff of even a discussion of what is moral, ethical or supportive of the greater public good.
Issues of ethics and morality, both on the organizational/policy level and on the personal/private decision-making level cannot and must not be reduced to a kind of formulaic construct that can be communicated in a 140-character tweet, except for the most obvious and the most elementary decisions: killing, raping, robbing...the acts, once established as committed under motivations discerned as malignant merit a conventional interpretation as evil, depending on the ethical standard of the process of the investigation, the assessment of the evidence and the formal prosecution of the arguments for the state and the accused. And there are a plethora of manners, processes, actions and motivations of those empowered to act on behalf of the state that merit close scrutiny to establish and maintain the ethical standard of fair justice to which the state must be held.
However, the fine legal applications of the society's standards of 'good and evil' are hardly the only, or even the most important in the generation of the binding force of any culture. The engagement of humans with other humans depends on a mutual commitment to attitudes, behaviours including even facial responses that are open to and welcoming of authentic responses in both fact checks and in attitudinal approaches. Those known to us, through the experience of years of collaboration, if they are to remain respected in our circle, we expect to treat us in ways that would pass the "smell test" of moderate descriptions of civility: decency, openness, willingness to discuss and debate differences, and a commitment to work to resolve differences. These qualities, however, defy rigid constructs of definitions that can be applied in all circumstances. Indeed, without the openness to ambiguities and uncertainties, without a large dollop of uncertainty and modesty, and an accompanying openness to re-consider, to reflect and to re-enter the discussion of most of the issues facing individuals, in private cases, and organizations/political, corporate, academic in the broader ethical issues facing the wider culture.
Arguments, in the public media, dependent on micro-management of syllables and emphases and turns of phrase without the balance of the macro-perceptions, including the application of the oldest moral imperative in the books: "treat others in the way you would be treated", a filter that can serve to restrain much of the exaggerated psychological and emotional adrenalin that comprises too much of public discussion.
Ambiguity and uncertainty, so embedded in any analysis of all interpretations of reality, subjectivity and objectivity also mandatory in any balanced interpretation of reality...these larger inclusions exclude so many from the broad range of public issues, debates and discussions.
And without a universal commitment to inclusion of a more ambiguous and uncertain and reflective view of and expression of the world in which we live, there can and will be little if any meeting of minds, compromises in the design and delivery of public policy and legislation and in the significant reduction in the sale and deployment of those new instruments of war, the video games filled with virtual, if bloodless, violence, all of which demand the same rigor that we dedicate to the history of world wars, and bloody conflicts.
Yesterday, August 6, the world celebrated the dropping of the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, an act of infamy deeply bloodied and paradoxically honoured by some political leaders, seventy-one years after the event itself. The pounding of the waves of the mechanical objective perception of the universe onto the shores of the heart, the soul, the intuition and the imagination of another conception of the universe persistently eroding the shores of those touchstones, the existence of which prevents the complete drowning of the universe under the mechanistic wave.
And so long as this scribe breathes, this space will explore the collision of these forces, and give voice to the subjective, so under threat are its imperatives, and so ridiculed are its tenets, especially by those needing complete control, a need never to be realized, fortunately.

Democracy is not another television drama....it needs a vigorous, informed citizenry NOW!

Given the recent examples of major democratic voting, first in Great Britain on whether to leave the European Union (by a narrow margin, the people voted to leave) and second, both parties’ presidential primary process in the united States, there are lingering questions as to whether or not the process a) was fair and unencumbered by dis-and-mis-information, b) free from external and inappropriate tipping of the scales either in favour or in opposition to a particular position or candidate; c) whether the result was, is and will continue to be in the best interest of the people casting votes.

The Economist magazine’s front cover this week depicts a chasm in a canyon, illustrating the new “divide” about welcoming immigrants/refugees or keeping immigrants/refugees out. This burgeoning human drama, of epic proportions, compares with the Ruanda genocide. the Bosnian horrors, and other massacres in history. War, instability, unfettered dictatorship (Assad) supported by other unfettered dictator (Putin), forces like ISIS, the Taliban, and the rampant spread of terror, famine, hopelessness and disease, linked intimately to the failure of the world political bodies to design and to deliver measures that halt hostilities, while working like beavers at providing basic necessities like tents, food, and emergency medicine and health care….these factors all contribute to the rising tide of homeless refuges, and migrants willing to sacrifice their lives in pursuit of a glimmer of hope in another place.

Europe, especially France, Germany, Belgium are all trying to cope with a tide of new immigrants the integration of whom fully into the respective cultures seems to have barely begun. And all of the exaggerated fears of projected terrorists onto these migrants, most of whom are indeed Muslims, are now giving rise to voice of withdrawal, isolation, anger, including new political parties, barbed wire fences, opportunistic bandits charging thousands for sea crossings in crippled boats resulting in the drowning of some 3000 men, women and children.

President Obama late this afternoon credited the conflict in Syria for much of his crop of grey hair, told the press conference he does not trust Putin and Russia to make good on any agreement to co-ordinate military actions in Syria and told his audience there is not a single meeting that he attends on this file at the conclusion of which he does not ask, “Is there any other thing we could and should be doing to intervene in this very complex issue?”

 The campaign in Great Britain about leaving the EU was, according to most reports reaching north America, saturated with exaggerations, distortions and rhetoric based on appealing to and generating the fears of Britons that they were losing control of their country, their capacity to absorb and accommodate the tide of immigration and to make appropriate business deals with the rest of Europe. Today, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada, announced a cut of the bank’s interest rate, from .50% to .25% to attempt to prevent a deep recession, following the fallout from the vote.

Britain’s short and medium-term future prospects are looking somewhat bleak. And there are still many who believe that there ought to be a second and sober vote to overturn the original result. The anger and fear that undergirded the voting patterns were not, for them, adequate bases on which to make the national decision. Scotland, having barely rejected a vote to separate from Great Britain, and having voted solidly to remain in the EU is contemplating their next move which could mean a negotiation to remain within the EU, and who knows what that would mean for Great Britain.

Voting over the last several months in the United States too has produced results about which many are so queasy that they are leaving the Republican Party, fund raising for the Democratic candidate, and even still contemplating some method by which the Republican National Committee could overturn the results of the series of primaries, and replace their nominated candidate with someone else. In a historic move, Obama, the outgoing president, has publicly declared his opinion that the Republican candidate is “unfit” to hold the presidency. So the many days, weeks and months of campaigning, starting with some 17 candidates, has left both the Republican Party and the United States gaping in consternation, anxiety, and even downright contempt for the decision of a large slice of angry non-college-educated mostly male voters who, as the tail, are not only wagging the dog of the party, but have taken control of the race for the White House.*

For the last eight years, the world has watched as a series of votes has elected hundreds of Tea Party wing-nuts to the House of Representatives, determined to sabotage the presidency of Barrack Obama, especially after a Democratic-controlled Senate passed Obama Care, the Affordable Health Care Act providing health insurance for some previously uninsured 20 million Americans. Even today, following the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Obama’s nominee to replace him hangs in limbo following the Republican-controlled Senate’s refusal even to hold hearings and a vote to affirm the nominee. The Constitution is clear about the presidential responsibility to appoint a replacement in such circumstances and about the Senate’s responsibility to hold hearings and an up or down vote. The voting patterns of the last few elections have contributed significantly to this gridlock. Out in the hinterland, too, many states legislatures, under Republican control, have passed bills restricting the right to vote for minorities, (obviously that means Blacks, Latinos and the poor, and under-educated who lack the requisite identification cards demanded by the legislation. Once again, politicians, having seduced their electors to put them in office have abused their offices to ensure their own re-election and the decreasing possibility that minorities, who have historically voted Democrat, will be unable to vote.

Recently, there are glimmers of hope that some of these restrictive laws are being challenged and overturned, as blatantly racist-inspired. So the democratic vote in a highly advanced political culture is proving to be subject to manipulation by those in office and leading to a needed intervention by the legal system, a job it should not have to undertake, if the politicians were concentrating on the public good, and not their own narcissistic goals.

And then there is a debacle of the Democratic National Committee’s 20,000 emails dumped into the public domain that substantiate the charges of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders that the party establishment were actively engaged on behalf of Secretary Clinton in her campaign against Sanders in the Democratic primaries. The infrastructure of the political parties, both Democratic and Republican, are appearing to erode in terms of their efficacy and their fairness, adding to the already mounting distrust of the political establishment. So it could be argued that it is not democracy that is under threat, but only the current batch of practitioners. However, such an argument merely narrows the focus of the argument.

It is the wider element of the failure of democracy and the failure of the institutions which have been developed by those elected in democratic elections to grapple with the pressing issues of income inequality, global warming and climate change, civil wars and the challenges to national security that plague many developed and third world countries.

If there were ever a time when the democratic process of fair and open elections that have not been purchased by a few billionaires, and that have not been hijacked by demogogues like Trump, and that have not danced their way around the many pressing issues needing public debate, deep reflection and considered conversation, (way beyond the trite “we hate Trump but Clinton is so dishonest”), it is now.

The public, including the reporting class, has a right to ask penetrating questions about policy and direction their political candidates are proposing. They also have a right to demand to be heard, and to be offered a platform, as were the Khan’s at the Democratic convention, to express deeply held views, even if, or especially if they are highly critical of a candidate. Democracy can work only if the people, of whom for whom and by whom the process has been designed, play a highly active, informed and courageous role demanding that candidates release their tax returns, demanding that candidates come clean in their answers, and demanding of their neighbours that rather than leaving the process to a minority of 35-40% of elegible voters, they raise the national totals above 70%.

In an age when leaders can and do manipulate the public’s opinion of both them and their policies through the various sources of demographics and niche marketing by means of wedge issues, it is even more important for the ordinary  citizen to become armed with the information, rehearsed on its implications and articulate in its deployment in the political arena.

Democracy may well be under fire; and only the public can turn the process into one that serves the whole population. And in order for that to develop, candidates who can and will commit to compromise, to study, and to show up on the really tough and politically inconvenient issues, and not only those that serve their personal ambition.

Don’t look for these idealistic apparitions to morph into action in the next few months or years. It is going to take several Bernie Sanders’ to generate the democratic revolution for which the world yearns. And, as in all issues, the clock is not an ally.

*Whether Putin himself  has or will continue to interject his security and intelligence apparatus into the current presidential election in the United States hangs like another cloud over the transparency, the credibility and the trust of people watching around the world in the democratic process, to which he gives a mere superficial nod in his own "election".

Scratching the history of the tumour of male anger...

You demagogues are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing but if they stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it’s only in troublous times that you line your pockets. (Aristophanes, The Knights)

It is not an overstatement to say that the destiny of the entire human race depends on what is going on in America today. This is a staggering reality to the rest of the world; they must feel like passengers in a supersonic jetliner who are forced to watch helplessly while a passel of drunks, hypes freaks and madmen fight for the controls and the pilot’s seat. (Elridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, 1968)

How many people have each of us met, many of them American citizens, who say whenever the presidential election comes up, that while they detest Trump they also believe that Hillary is a liar, a cheat and a scoundrel. And then the conversation frequently turns to the question of how a country of 330 million people can come up with these two candidates for their highest office.

Well, these certainly are “troublous” times to say the least. And the troubles are somewhat analogous to the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, a few decades past. Violence based on religious differences, sectarian interpretations of similar documents, fought over the bodies and the blood of innocents on all sides. Troubles, too, are referred to by those whose feelings of control over their own lives, as once they did, when they lived behind a picket fence, drove a new American tank-type car, listened to Elvis Presley, used Brylcream on their locks, and smoked Marlboro’s and watched I Love Lucy on their new television. Andy Williams’s Christmas Show was a must see; and the Viet Nam war was not even a hint on their radar screens of the future.

Races, black and white, were fighting in the streets, and police officers were clubbing protesters for racial justice with impunity. Nevertheless, the world was not spinning apart as in a centrifuge over financial and economic inequality, the threat of a terror attack everywhere, the prospect of a planet heating to the point where cities are swamped by rising sea levels, and dictators in possession of cyber hard and soft ware can pry into places always out of reach previously.

Nixon was still a chapter waiting to be written, and all of the psycho-analysis of his paranoia was still hidden behind a mountain of denial and destroyed tapes. (Remember when we had tape recorders that whizzed right in front of our eyes sucking up white noise with ever syllable they recorded.) NATO was a newborn geopolitical infant; the United Nations was barely out of diapers, the Marshall Plan was still a neon beacon on the forehead of the United States, following both the victory in WWII and the compassionate and ethical reparations for Europe.

And men knew what their place in the universe was, so simply and one-dimensional was their (our) picture of how to make it, how to make out, and how to rise up the organizational ladder. There were voices like Arthur Miller’s (in Death of a Salesman) who, through Willy Loman, painted a picture of a hollow and empty existence bowing and scraping “to the mayor or Prividence” prior to taking his own life. And in winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama, Miller also oversaw the premature departure of man in his audiences, with tears streaming down their cheeks, so graphic and painful was the truth of Miller’s drama.

Millions of those men have left this ‘orb’ to another generation of men whose lives were, for the most part, even more affluent than their fathers’. The simplicity of the political discourse in both generations pales to a mere pallid yellow on the walls of our memories, especially when placed beside the cross currents, the multiple images leaping from the printers and the software, masquerading as “art” in galleries in the 21^st century. Some of us still choke on the mouthful that is “graphic art” so oxymoronic does the dichotomy seem.

Nevertheless, the anger and desperation of Willy Loman was not healed by his car crash, nor by all of the other suicides, martyr-cides, refug-cides, terror-cides nor even with the accelerating production of smart bombs and drones. It has been transferred through the thousands of wrestling and boxing rings, the boot camps, the proliferation of assault weapons and their deployment even on kindergarten children and their teachers and the  hundreds of lost lives and investment accounts that prompted another generation to jump from Wall Street towers, before 9/11. And then, the morning of the apocalypse, everything changed, and the soot, and the stench and the burned flesh and steel, and the broken lives and dreams continue to haunt not only the United States, where the event occurred, but around the world.

And even with the generation of a huge security apparatus in most countries, no one really feels truly safe, secure and free from the threat of another insurgent attack.

And add to these sources of anger and desperation, the loss of millions of homes, jobs and families, through bursts of booms and caves of busts, with only token sanctions on those who perpetrated the crimes against humanity, without having to worry about the International Criminal Court, given that no shots were fired.

And with the rise to prominence, if not pre-eminence of the political donation cheque, the sanitized and anonymous “activist” recipe, power was subsumed by those with both the pens and the accounts to write such bribes thereby negating the constitutional ideal: government of, for and by the people.

So troublous times faced the world long before the 2016 presidential race began. On the government front, seven-plus years of obstruction by manichean right-wing aardvarks, masking their demonic racism with sophistry that tried to demonstrate the worthlessness of anything and everything Obama suggested and sent up to Congress. Compromise was and is a swear word in Republican vocabularly so devoid is that vocabulary of substance, sophistication and national aspiration, buried as it is under the weigh of tons of personal career ambition for re-election.

And into this mix, self-thrusting his narcissistic ego and bulbous body, along with his bugle of self-promoting cash,  came Trump. He knows how dependent (both personally and politically) he is on turbulence, and on the fear that energizes such stormssycophany media that he merely parades one scene of chaos after another, sucking the sycophant media into his whirling Dyson vacuum.

He may denounce booze, but nevertheless, like a dry drunk, is more toxic than his drunk brothers. He may carry a miniature bible, pulling it out in front of the camera, as proof of his saran spirituality. He may even cast his children as acolytes in his liturgy, a liturgy that mocks every serious religious organization on the planet. He denies global warming and climate change as a hoax; once again throwing a projection of himself onto this ominous planetary oven.

And then not only is the demagogue pouring gas on an already flaming country, a generation of grey-beard rebels, and a watching world of both leaders and citizens whose lives he makes much more skittish than they were prior to his many ejaculations.

And who knows which of the many passengers riding in Cleaver’s jetliner will grab this monster by the neck and throw him to the floor of the cockpit of that plane, before bringing it into a safe landing, without the loss of human life or hope. 

Could there be a silver lining to this political chaos?

In his unique billionaire-to-billionaire put down of Trump, Warren Buffet says, “If a monkey has thrown a dart at the stock market, he would have realized a 150% mark-up,” the inference being that Trump is no hotshot businessman, as he claims.

In another piece of Trump-trashing, Bill Blum, writing in Truthdig.com today examines Trump’s psychopathology….digging into the DSM 5 definition of narcissism, and the Freudian concept of projection to paint Trump as unfit for the office of president. He also quotes Trump’s ghost writer Allan Schwartz, who openly and dangerously acknowledges that, should Trump get his fingers on the nuclear controls, we could well be facing the end of civilization as we know it.

Blum even exhorts his readers to face the prospect of doing nothing to stop the election of Trump, something all those who ma chose the option of staying home on November 8.

A sense of entitlement, a feeling that he is the only one qualified to solve the  many complex issues facing the world and the United States, and then, for the purpose of attempting to secure enough public support to be able to wield power, resorting to the pre-adolescent projection of all of those personal qualities he detests in himself on his opponents, now Hillary Clinton, formerly, the string of Republican sacrificial lambs.

If there might be a silver lining somewhere emerging out of this potential debacle, the elevation of the business model as the highest achievement of human endeavour could well topple just as the statue of Saddam Hussein toppled in Baghdad.  And with the fall of the business model that undergirds the unfettered capitalistic ideology, (unfettered is as important here as in John McCain’s rebuke of Trump’s unfettered licence to defame the families of fallen American soldiers), we could find business schools turning their gaze away from selling the acquisition of personal wealth as the highest achievement of their graduates and all of the fallout from such tutoring, mentoring and role modelling.

Personal wealth has never been the highest goal of humankind; the highest goal of humans has always been, and will continue to be, the individual and then the collective contribution to the public good that through the highest individual development, the culture can move toward greater inclusivity, greater tolerance and also enhanced appreciation of the voiceless, even to inclusion of their perspective in all public decisions. The individual’s intellectual, moral, psychological and especially spiritual growth and development underpins the acceptance and incarnation of the larger principle. And all deliberate and thoughtful consensus-based decisions to the end of full human development can and must outweigh the preponderance of the arguments for spending more billions on the military, even in a dangerous world. That beacon on the hill, so evocative of presidents Reagan’s terms, can better be attained through peace-focused attitudes, policies and budgets.

It was Richard Haas, Chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations, speaking on Charlie Rose last night, who reminded his listeners and host that foreign relations does not depend on opening “bids” or positions, as perhaps is the case in the business world in which Trump brags about his success. Foreign relations, just like much of the rest of human existence, depend on relationships, reliability, dependability and not, as Trump would seem to want it, based on whether the member states of NATO has paid their fair share. While there is an apparently irreversible tide toward transactional interactions (what have you done for me lately?) and a growing series of interventions of professionals into our lives none of whom know our personal history, nevertheless, it is longstanding tradition in politics, as well as in human relationships, that time spent with others will grow a level of trust, confidence and collegiality on which shared decisions can be based. And at the core of those decisions, especially in politics, is the art, not of the deal, but of the compromise.

So, if the Americans always do the right thing after they have tried all else, we could look forward to an enhanced elevation of the political discourse, out of the mud wrestling pit to which Trump has taken it, a boredom with the “reality television” version of public debate and political  competition including an abandonment of the “firing” and the “firing back” principles to which Trump is addicted, a shift from the “money is the only value that matters” ethos (it certainly cannot be dubbed an ‘ethic’) to a more humane, a more relational, a more long-range vision prospect, that is not jumping (as the media now does) with  the latest tweet.

The universe and the problems humans are inflicting on a delicate ecosystem is not going to survive and flourish with humans reverting to an exchange of tweets as the surrogate for substantive debate. At the heart of political will, (not in a dictatorship) is formal and concentrated study of the many factors contributing to a file, the many implications of the issue, and the many options, including but not restricted to short term dollar costs or even shorter term political narcissism of the politicians protecting their chance of re-election, and a thoughtful and relevant series of recommendations that only serious and committed and thoughtful and engaged men and women can implement.

And, of course, there is the other imperative to which we have to point, and in which we continue to have confidence: that politicians will agree to some ground rules of decorum, decency, honour and respect for the process, for their opponents and for the long-term health of both their constituents and the planet.

And not the least of our rose-coloured glasses expectations would be the elimination of politicans’ dissembling, distortion, mis-representing and outright lying as an integral component to their public life and identity. There are so many cameras, and so many cell phones and so many autonomous “reporters” who are listening, watching and recording the public statements that we now have an open and accessible public record to research and to dig up whenever it appears that another incidence of bullshit (and there really is no other worthy characterization for the act, both in the political and in the corporate arena) it will be found out, disclosed and hung around the neck of the perpetrator. And the media will have to find how and when to deploy their magnifying glass and when and how to retain their own trust and credibility in a wholly new political age.

None of these qualities/goals/attitudes are shared by the current Republican nominee, and President Obama, whose call for Republican leaders to reject his candidacy, while at the end of an obstructed and subverted two-term presidency, nevertheless, has both the public moral stature and the political high ground to condemn the Trump candidacy, as “unfit” to govern. Just perhaps, by dragging  the political process, the campaigning and the governing into the national sewer, Trump may be, one hundred years from now, rewarded posthumously, provided he never wins the keys to the White House. Let him remain, what he purports to be, a reality television personality, unfit to govern. Both he and the archetype will wear thin very quickly, and he will be forgotten just as his ‘show’ will be forgotten.

The world is watching and waiting to see if the American people, (not just the angry old white farts) will demand his replacement on the Republican ticket for the presidency.  

"I trust that you will never hurt me"...a recipe for enhancing threats?

What Do Fish Have to Do With Anything? 

“I took a deep breath. 'For you I've got something better than love.'
What's that?'
I...trust you.'
Why?'
You'll never hurt me.'
Thank you.'
But...'
But, what?'
I said, 'That means I'll hurt you.'
Why?'
'Cause, like I said, you'll never hurt me back.”
― Avi, What Do Fish Have to Do With Anything? (brainyquotes)

There is a deep resource here if the passage is looked at closely.

The trust that "You will never hurt me" is one that every normal person seeks. It offers a place of safety; if offers a place very opposite to the place offered by the world of strangers.

In fact, if one is able to utter those words, then one is immediately putting oneself in a superior position, one in which the conscious awareness of safety means that should the other offend, even in the most insignificant manner, then revenge, pay-back, character assassination, libel, (whatever attack seems appropriate) will not be answered. So the belief itself, offers a level of safety and security that makes retaliation not only feasible, but perhaps even desireable and required.

The world of diplomacy, including the world of geopolitics, operates on the very opposite principle: that should you show me offence, you can trust that there will be consequences. Similarly, the legal world of criminal law also says that, if and when you commit an offence against another person, then the state will exact punishment, hopefully commensurate with the original offence. 

In the parenting experience of many of our homes, if a child steals from his/mother or father, there is likely  to be a punishment. Otherwise, so goes the conventional wisdom, how will the child learn that such an act is unacceptable, and if our child does not learn such basics of life, we will be embarrassed and have even larger problems for having failed out family and our child in the original instance.

Of course we all know parents who are so insecure that they seek to be a "buddy" to the child, and consistently rationalize the misdeeds of the child as the consequence of someone else's offensive behaviour. 

And immediately, they likely find the child, knowing there will be excuses offered by such a parent, is free to behave in a most objectionable way.

In the adult world, if one fully believes that another will never hurt me, no matter what I do or say about them, the playing field appears empty of danger, empty of threat insofar as that person is concerned. The reputation of the person trusted as never going to hurt me, also, is inevitably categorized as a fool, naive, innocent and immature. Weakness, as depicted in the perception that 's/he will never hurt me, is also a sign of a benchmark so rare and so ideal that one is clearly cautious of fully believing its import and impact.

If a child lives with one parent who operates on the principle of his/her own pride of reputation and punishes the most insignificant act of misbehaviour, and another who operates on the principle that s/he will never punish the child, that child lives in a dichotomous world, a world divided between the world view of the insecurity of the threatening and punishing parent, and the world view of the parent who will never hurt him/her.

And such a division of world views, even if and when mitigated by the occasional deviance from the principle, (the threatening parent shows compassion, and the other parent demonstrates disappointment), the child swims in waters that, while appearing calm, nevertheless can and likely will unexpectedly erupt in a strong current that sucks him under.

Danger, even as an anticipation, seems to have a strong magnetic pull, when compared with empathy and safety, especially when the water cooler conversations, the television programs, the movies and especially the daily diet of news all beat a torrent of narratives of danger, punishment, revenge, and fear. Threats of retaliation accompany every statement, every offence, and every threat of enmity. In fact, there are those, some of them in positions of potential political power, like Trump, whose world view is dominated by a fundamental perception of danger, threat and offence. In order to incarnate such a belief and a perception, Trump is compelled to act in a manner that confronts the ubiquitous and persistent series of threats as he fully believes the world to present, first of all by painting pictures of more and more dangers, and then to offer himself as the protector against any and all dangers, threats and insecurities. He is painting a picture reinforced by his never-ending stories of dangers and threats, that is simply the sine qua non of his need to be the superman, super powerful superhero. And it is his chosen identity as superhero that forms the root of his world view, and not the reality of the threats, and the dangers. Every statement out of his mouth is merely an echo of his original "I alone can fix it!" statement.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is more measured with her pictures of the dangers: she acknowledges there are many, and she also speaks of specific steps she would envision taking should she become president to meet them. After all, national security has risen to the top of the totem pole of political issues for all countries in a world dominated by terror, economic and environmental insecurities and inequalities, She does not, however, see a threat under every headline, nor every hacking story, and occasionally even where there is evidence of danger in her own interpretation of the email drama she tries to minimize the political danger. This is especially evident in her attempt to 'spin' the evidence of the Director of the FBI that she "lied" about whether or not there were classified emails on her private server. She is so wrapped up in her political campaign of presenting a "sunny" picture of America, when compared with the dark and threatening picture offered by her opponent, that she has lost sight of the line she is crossing to win a political contest, the contest of her lifetime, in her deeply held belief that she is essential to the rising curve of female potential and power in the larger curve of history.

Ms Clinton does, however, depend on her own presentation of her willingness to use force if and when necessary to round out her portfolio as a reasonable, responsible and credible candidate for the White House. She has to promise to use force, punishment, in a world of geopolitics encompassed by stories of Putin's impending threats, even to invade the cyber space of Clinton and Democratic emails to benefit Trump, and ISIS, Al Shaabab, Al Nusra, and all other terrorist organizations. Occasionally, of course, she also has to deploy punishment in order to be perceived as fully engaged in the fight for the White House, in order for her supporters to believe in continuing to support the effort.

On a personal level, as  one whose life is marked by some pivotal incidents in which punishment, hurt, insult even infamy have occurred whether or not those incursions were warranted, (some were, some were not), I believe that, having been the target of mis-applied punishment, and exaggerated and unwarranted punches, both by peer thugs and by adult neurotics, I have, for decades, withdrawn from behaviour that engages in revenge, retaliation, and hurt, in situations in which such withdrawal left me vulnerable to attack especially by those from whom such attacks were least expected. Since they were able to trust that "I would not hurt back" they were more free to inflict whatever 'hurt' they wished. And, whether they knew it or not, I was an active participant in the conscious and the unconscious drama that ensued.

I alone am responsible for leaving my reputation as a social "peacenik" (to use a word reminiscent of the cold war) in social and political situations, and for withdrawing from a fight, when to have engaged in those fights would have grown the muscle necessary to be able to better discern when real danger required my warrior, and when those with whom I worked, could have benefited from my warrior, as could and would I have also benefited. Once, at a dinner at a neighbour's home, I was pushed by a question about whether or not I would resort to military force, if I were in a position of power and responsibility, in an overt attempt to illustrate my "peacenik" naivety. I reluctantly and hesitatingly responded that, if pushed to the extreme,  I would have to resort to military power. In another situation, in a grade ten class of "tech" boys, I was asked by one of the students if I would go to VietNam to fight against the communist enemy. I answered then, as I would today, "I would go, if required, only if I were permitted to teach!"

And there is a real danger to such a position, a position that assures those around that I would not openly, covertly, willingly and consciously hurt another. (Of course, I have hurt others, even when making choices that I believed were in pursuit of a life with oxygen and acceptance.) Even the scent of such resistance to punishment, to violence, to hurting another makes one vulnerable to others who see such "naivety" and innocence and immaturity and "purity" as projected especially by those whose world view, and whose personal backgrounds make them required to impose hurt, punishment revenge, and retaliation.

Striving for a safe space for oneself, a space that rejects retaliation, revenge, hurt, punishment is not a strategy or a tactic that endears one to others, especially when such a strategy is so open to attack. Striving for a safe space is also a strategy that requires withdrawal when the "masculine" thing (as conventionally depicted by our culture) is to never let a bully away with his bullying. Some would even say that returning the blow of the bully is the most mature response, in a world in which all of us have to learn to "defend" ourselves and in a world in which we will have to face bullies on a daily basis. 

Questions remain: 

Does the pursuit of  a safe place exacerbate the rise of bullies?

Does the pursuit of a safe place reduce or eliminate the seeker's potential to fit in to a culture of retaliation, revenge, recrimination and hurt?

Does the rejection of revenge, retaliation and hurt make the world more vulnerable to the terrorists and the Putin's and the Kim Jung Un's?

Does the rejection of revenge and retaliation render one irrelevant to the public discourse?

And the answers would seem to be "probably".