Mind and Spirit

Gratitude

POSTED NOVEMBER 25, 2024

Thanksgiving is just a few days away. It's an important holiday, a designated time assigned to encourage us to pause to be mindful of the blessings we have. Many of us get so caught up in our day-to-day routines that we fail to stop and acknowledge all that we should be grateful for.

In a marvelous TED talk from 2013, Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk and interfaith scholar, suggests that happiness is born from gratitude and that gratitude can change our world in immensely important ways.  He explains, "Because if you are grateful, you are not fearful and if you are not fearful, you are not violent. If you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people, and you are respectful to everybody, and that changes this power pyramid under which we live." 

Want to be happy? Be grateful. 2019.

From the musings of the ancient philosophers to the findings of 21st century psychologists, gratitude has been recognized as one of the most important traits we possess if we are to lead a fulfilling life.  

Why does the simple act of expressing gratitude make us happy and lead to a more fulfilling life?  There are both psychological and physical reasons for this.  Here are a few:

• Positive Mindset Shift.  When you focus on the things you're grateful for, your brain starts to highlight the positive aspects of your life. This can reduce the impact of negative thoughts and help you see the "glass as half full."

• Release of Feel-Good Chemicals.  Gratitude triggers the release of dopamine and serotonin. These neurotransmitters enhance your mood and overall sense of well-being.

• Improved Relationships.  Expressing gratitude can strengthen your relationships. When you show appreciation to others, it fosters trust and a deeper connection, making social interactions more fulfilling.

• Stress Reduction.  Gratitude can reduce stress by shifting your focus away from stressors and towards what you appreciate in life. This can lower cortisol levels, helping you feel more relaxed and at peace.

• Resilience.  People who regularly practice gratitude tend to be more resilient. They can better cope with challenges and bounce back from adversity because they have a habit of recognizing and valuing the positive aspects of their lives.  

We don't have to wait until Thanksgiving to be grateful.  There are ways to incorporate giving thanks, expressing gratitude, into our daily routines.  These practices include:

• Gratitude Journal.  Set aside a few minutes each day to write down things you're grateful for. It can be as simple as a warm cup of coffee in the morning or a kind gesture from a friend. Regularly noting these moments can help shift your focus toward the positive aspects of your life.

• Thank You Notes.  Write thank you notes to people who have made a difference in your life. It doesn't have to be elaborate—a simple, heartfelt message can go a long way in showing your appreciation and strengthening your relationships.

• Gratitude Meditation.  Incorporate gratitude into your meditation practice. Spend a few minutes in quiet reflection, focusing on the things you're thankful for. This can help foster a deeper sense of appreciation and peace.

•  Gratitude Walks.  Take a walk and actively notice and appreciate your surroundings. Whether it's the beauty of nature, a friendly neighbor, or simply the feeling of fresh air, acknowledging these small joys can enhance your sense of gratitude.

Which brings us to the related trait of wonder.  Our everyday experiences of beauty and wonder are wonderfully beneficial to mind and spirit.  The poet Mary Oliver wrote, “It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.” There is much beauty to see and wonder to be felt in the world that surrounds us in the here and now.  Be open to it and be grateful for it. 

I'll close with the some of my favorite lines of poetry.

"Thank you, life, for having been.

In the shooting gallery 

where the top score was ten

I tried to make a hundred

thank you for letting me make that mistake"

-  Andrei Vosnesenzky,  from "Autumn in Sigulda"

Happy Thanksgiving!

Explore further: Understanding and Practicing Gratitude | Psychology Today What is Gratitude and Why Is It So Important? [linked below]

Six iconic biblical texts that put the lie to "Christian" Nationalism (Part I)

POSTED OCTOBER 17, 2024

"Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Earlier this year, the Evangelical theologian Jim Wallis released his twelfth book.  Wallis is best known as the founder and editor of Sojourner magazine and for his advocacy of peace and social justice issues.  In 2021, he joined Georgetown University as the inaugural Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice. He also leads the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown.  With his emphasis on Christian social teaching and the role of religion and faith in achieving the common good, he puts into practice the words of St. James that "Faith without works is dead."

In The False White Gospel, Wallis lays bare just how far the beliefs of the so-called Christian nationalists are from the actual message of Christianity.  White Evangelicals are the biggest supporters of this actually un-Christian movement and comprise the largest voting group in MAGA-land. Unlike most white Evangelicals who are falling in line and spreading the word about their savior Donald Trump, the Reverend Jim Wallis gets it - it being the actual message of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  

Wallis understands that the Old Testament prophets were great advocates for social justice.  He understands that the message of the Gospels is one of  forgiveness, compassion, self-sacrifice, and concern for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable and the marginalized.  In The False White Gospel, he compares these six iconic Biblical texts to White Christian nationalist beliefs.  

Luke 10:25-37: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself...Who is my neighbor?

Genesis 1:26: Then God said, Let us make humankind in our own image, according to our likeness.

John 8:32: Then Jesus said..."If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

Matthew 25: 31-46: "As you have done to the least of these, you have done to me."

Matthew 5:9: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."

Galatians 3:28: "There is no longer Jew or Gentile, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ.

The question Wallis asks the Christian nationalists (and us) is: do we believe these fundamental moral teachings or not?  In this post, we hear what Wallis has to say about the first three of these texts as he relates the words in the Scriptures to today's political issues such as immigration, voting rights, the lies of fascism, and the Post-Truth era.  In the next Mind & Spirit post, we will cover the other three texts.

The "double-love" commandment, the Good Samaritan, and fear of the "Other" as a political strategy

Luke 10:25-37: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself...Who is my neighbor?

Wallis considers "Who is my neighbor?" the primary question for both the authenticity of our faith communities and the future of our democracy.  Wallis relates the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan in the chapter titled "Your neighbor doesn't live next door", reminding us that Jesus explicitly makes a Samaritan, one the Jews considered an enemy, the hero of the parable.  The key teaching is that your neighbors, as Jesus defines them, may not live in your neighborhood.  "Our neighbor is the one outside our comfort zone, the one we least expect, the one we didn't invite to dinner."  Politicians often use fear of the Other as a political strategy, Donald Trump being a primary example.  Trump has built his presidential campaigns by attacking immigrants as Others.  "They are coming to get us, harm us, rape us, bring drugs and crime and disease into our country...You don't have to love them.  In fact, you have permission to hate them.  And I will protect you from them."  Can anything be further from the parable of the Good Samaritan and the command to love our neighbor as ourself?

Made in God's image or not?

Genesis 1:26: Then God said, Let us make humankind in our own image, according to our likeness.

"Humankind" translated from the Hebrew means all of us - regardless of race, nation, culture, sexual orientation, or religion (or even no religion).  Wallis calls this Genesis text "the moral foundation for voting rights - and all the human rights that any of us have." He adds that "any strategy to make it harder for Black and brown people, low-income people, and young people to vote is...an assault on the imago dei (the image of God)."  I've posted often about the threats to voting rights from suppression to nullification, and it is notable that the ones who want to make voting more difficult, particularly for people of color, low-income persons and young people, are invariably on the right.  "Bad white Christian nationalist theology gets very practical and dangerous when it comes to voting rights," writes Wallis. "When white Christian nationalists claim an election was stolen, they are reflecting their belief that some votes don't or shouldn't count." Jim Wallis closes his chapter on this biblical text with the stirring words of Raphael Warnock on his victory in the Senate runoff election of 2022. Warnock thanks the people for rising and standing up against all odds "because you believe as I do, that democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea.  The notion that each of us has within the spark of the divine, that we were created in the image of God."

The truth will make you free

John 8:32: Then Jesus said..."If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

Jesus urges his followers to recognize that truth and freedom are indivisible.  And that the opposite is also true.  "Without truth," Wallis writes, "we are slaves to our own delusions.  Jesus makes clear that the opposite of truth is captivity, the loss of freedom."  In our post-truth era, lies have become a "hallmark of both political discourse and the way news is presented."  Wallis observes that today, more than at anytime in his lifetime, separating the truth from lies has never been harder for people.  Add to this the social media algorithms designed to feed the user news and evidence they prefer, and we create "a perfect storm of group polarization."  

Wallis opens his chapter "Lies That Demand Our Loyalty" with the statement that truth is core to both faith and democracy.  After describing the lies at the heart of fascism, how lies such as Great Replacement Theory and the Big Lie of the 2020 election lead to violence, and the whitewashing of history in schools, Wallis discusses the work of Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative.  Stevenson and his supporters placed a marker in every spot where a lynching had occurred.  Putting soil from every location into vases, they brought the vases to the National National Memorial for Peace and Justice and displayed them there.  Stevenson made clear that we first had to acknowledge the past before we can move to different and better future.  Wallis closes with the thought that "good religion leads us to deeper reflection" rather than easy certainties.  We need to seek out other opinions, and, I would add, learn and practice critical thinking.

Why critical thinking is important and three ways to improve it (Sep 2, 2020)

Part II - Conclusion

Jesus' final test of discipleship

Matthew 25: 31-46: "As you have done to the least of these, you have done to me."

Wallis calls The Judgement of Nations parable in Matthew 25 his "conversion text".  These are the words that brought him back to the faith.  The parable, sometimes called the parable of the sheep and the goats, is about the divine judgement of human life choices.  It relates how the sheep are separated from the goats at the Last Judgement based on how they treated the most vulnerable - whether they served them or ignored them.  The text is not just about individuals.  It also uses the word "nations".  Nations too will be judged by Jesus' words here.  "Jesus is usually not perceived as 'judgmental' in the way many religious people are; but he renders real judgment here. And the the ultimate judgment in this last teaching - just before he left for Jerusalem to be crucified and then resurrected - is about serving those in need."  Needless to say, white Christian nationalism has failed Jesus' final test of discipleship.  Movement leaders and their churches "almost never speak of the poor" or offer any "good news"* to them.  In fact, "white Christian nationalism literally turns Jesus' kingdom of God wrong side up...Their individualistic, nationalistic, and racial interpretation of religion...the prosperity gospel, the embracing of military power, the white ethnocentricity, and pride of nation all directly conflict with Jesus' teaching about the kingdom of God.

Jim Wallis' "On God's Side" (The Left Bank Cafe, Sep 17, 2013)

Peacemakers, not conflict  makers

Matthew 5:9: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."

Jesus was telling his disciples that this very special designation - children of God - was reserved for those who work to overcome conflict.  Jesus was advocating an active pursuit of peace.  Those who face conflict head on and bring healing in its stead.  Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement whom Jim Wallis calls "a beloved mentor of mine", believed that war was irreconcilable with the words of Matthew 25. "War does just the opposite," Dorothy said. "It makes my neighbor hungry, thirsty, homeless, a prisoner and sick...You just need to look at what the gospel asks and what war does."  Beyond the overwhelming tragedy of war, conflict arises on other levels and in other guises.  In his wide ranging chapter on peacemaking, Wallis also covers the injustice and inequities that lead to violence, racial profiling, police brutality, the criminal justice system, gun violence, and the White House-led Contra War in Nicaragua in the 1980s.  In the context of The False White Gospel, Wallis writes "Jesus calls us to peacemaking.  White Christian Nationalism calls us to conflict making.  And that is the choice we must offer to those who want to follow Jesus."

Our community is not a tribe

Galatians 3:28: "There is no longer Jew or Gentile; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

This verse from Paul's letter to the Galatians is one of Christianity's foundational texts.  For the early church it was an important part of  the baptismal rite and a reminder that "catholic" means "universal" (or, as the Irish author James Joyce quipped, "Here comes everybody.")  Jim Wallis writes, "The significance of this text being chosen as the baptismal formula cannot be overstated."  One condition for becoming a Christian, the early church was saying, was that you had to be all-inclusive in your acceptance of others.  The Church was committed to a radical inclusivity that overturned the traditional norms of society.  New Testament scholar Darius Jankiewicz has called this verse "the Magna Carta of the abolitionist movement," and in 1957, MLK called segregation "a blatant denial of the unity we have in Christ."  The spirit of King's comment is not exclusive to Black people.  His message and Paul's letter to the Galatians opened doors for a whole range of people - poor people, women, LQBTQ among them.  

How far the beliefs of white Christian nationalists are from this text!  And yet the Reverend Jim Wallis sees hope that at least some may be persuaded to a truly more Christian vision.  Reflecting that many in the white Christian nationalist camp and the MAGA cult got there because it gave them a sense of belonging, Wallis writes, "Imagine if faith communities were offering that sense of community that seeks to heal our fears, overcome our divisions, give us something to be for and not just against - and other people to live that vision with."  To get there we will need to reckon with the zero-sum world view at the heart of racism and our tendencies to dominate on the basis of class, gender, and race.  Quoting the author and policy advocate Heather McGhee, we will need "where we jettison this belief in to envision a world where we jettison this belief in a hierarchy of human value."  Conversations and education might be most successful among those who are "open enough to consider the possibility that there may be something to learn in terms of implicit and systemic racism." 

A Way Forward

Wallis ends his "call to action, a manifesto for a moment of crisis and opportunity," with a "modern-day public discipleship altar call".**  He lists ten "commitments" that might lead to a change in the hearts and minds and policies of the majority culture, including:

• Solidarity. People of color and those open enough to consider learning about implicit and systemic racism can reach out to each other as people they can trust and find solidarity with.  White people of more entrenched views must unlearn their need to control and learn solidarity and the sharing of leadership.

• Truth-telling.  All of us must actively oppose the selected erasure of our shared American history and culture.

• Show Up. Show up and be present at local gatherings, school boards, town meetings, and forums with candidates and elected officials to debate and decide fundamental issues of education and equity and safety for our children and our nation's future.

Notes:

*The word "Gospel" comes from the Greek words meaning "good news".

**An altar call is a summons to the altar at a Christian worship service to those wishing to show their commitment. 

Sources: Jim Wallis The False White Gospel, St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2024, Wikipedia, Oxford Languages

Epictetus, the freed slave who inspired Marcus Aurelius

POSTED SEPTEMBER 24, 2024

Notes

*No one knows the name given him by his parents.  The word epíktētos (ἐπίκτητος) in Greek simply means "gained" or "acquired", referring to his status as a slave.

**The word "Enchiridion" (Ancient Greek: ἐγχειρίδιον) is an adjective meaning "in the hand" or "ready to hand". Coupled with the word "book" (biblion, Greek: βιβλίον) it means a handy book or hand-book.

Sources: The Enchiridion (P.E. Matheson translation (1916) republished in Middletown DE in 2017), donaldrobertson, orionphilosophy.com-1, thecollector.com, Wikipedia, Orion Philosophy -2

We are stardust

POSTED SEPTEMBER 3, 2024

In this universe of two trillion stars, this average-sized planet circling this ordinary yellow star is the only place where life is known to have arisen. And for that to happen, the universe had to conspire to bring about an extraordinary number of favorable conditions.  

That the universe even exists is a cause for wonder.  The constants of nature - those quantities that always have the same value throughout the universe - are so precisely fixed that a miniscule change in any one of them would result in a world very different from what we have now or even no universe at all.  

What in the World? - The Anthropic Principle

That life arose on Earth is also the result of many fortunate occurrences.  In order for life to arise and survive, it must be found on a planet or moon within a star's habitable zone - specifically, the region around the star in which liquid water can form and remain liquid. 

So many contingent factors.  And yet, here we are.

We are stardust, "fearfully and wonderfully made." 

We are as much a part of the universe as the sun and the moon and the stars, the forests and the oceans and the mountains.  

We are, as wise men through the ages have told us, one with all the creatures and peoples of the earth.  

We belong here...

“Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place." - R. Buckminster Fuller

Images: space.com, Shutterstock

Sources: Book of Psalms 139, Las Cumbres Observatory

Some prayers that we all can say

POSTED AUGUST 15, 2024

The argument against placing the Ten Commandments in courts and legislative buildings seems a bit misplaced to me.  When one removes the threat of a state religion from what the commandments actually say, one can see they make for an ordered and just society.  Honor your parents, don't kill, don't take what belongs to others, don't lie...it's kind of a bare minimum for a community.

A secular interpretation of the "God commandments" - the first, second, and third - is also enlightening.  The First Commandment warning against false gods can be interpreted as not putting anything - material goods, fame, money - above what makes for your best and truest self; the Second Commandment admonition against taking the Lord's name in vain, good advice about controlling your anger.  As for the Third Commandment's request to keep holy the Lord's Day, it is likely the world's first labor law.  No one should have to work seven days a week.  We need both physical rest and some time out to consider and reflect on the important things of life.  Maria Popova calls prayer a language for interpreting our intentions and experiences, the "primary purpose of which is to clarify our hopes and fears."  

Here are some prayers that even non-believers might consider saying:

The first is from the Catholic liturgy.  There is a part during the Mass in which the participants bless each other with the words, “Peace be with you.”  I can't think of a kinder wish for any human being than to wish them peace, and these days we all could use some peace of mind and peace of spirit. 

Another is a Buddhism-inspired prayer of one of the characters in Richard Powers' Bewilderment.  "May all sentient beings be free from unnecessary suffering."  What an all-encompassing prayer that is!

Finally, the Franciscan friar and ecumenical teacher, Father Richard Rohr reminds us that Jesus requested his disciples to "follow me", not "worship me."  And so a third powerful way of praying is to follow the humble ways of Jesus - forgiveness, compassion, self-sacrifice, and concern for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable and the marginalized.

Richard Rohr's Meditations

POSTED MAY 28, 2024

Richard Rohr is a Franciscan friar and one of the most well-known and loved Christian contemplative* writers living today.  He founded the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1986.  In his writings, Rohr emphasizes "alternative orthodoxy", a term the Franciscan tradition has applied to itself.  It is a belief that lifestyle and practice ("orthopraxy") are much more important than mere adherence to "correct" beliefs  ("orthodoxy").  In a way, it's a modern, toned-down version of the "Faith without works is dead" from the Epistle of St. James.  According to Rohr's teachings, following Jesus is the "best shortcut" to salvation, and one does not necessarily have to practice formal Christianity. The key is to "fall in love with the divine presence, under whatever name."

To this end, Richard Rohr and faculty members of the Center for Action and Contemplation provide Daily Meditations, "reflecting on the wisdom and practices of the Christian contemplative tradition. We hope these meditations will help deepen prayer practice and strengthen compassionate engagement in the world."  

Here are several short passages from recent meditations with a link to the meditation.

Commanded to Love: Jesus taught that there were two great commandments- love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.  Rohr writes, "The only way I know how to teach anyone to love God, and how I myself seek to love God, is to love what God loves, which is everything and everyone."

"To love someone means to see him as God intended him." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

A Place of Belonging: One of the stories about Francis of Assisi is that his first sermon was to birds filling the branches of a tree.  Rohr writes, "For the rest of his life, Francis is in relationship with a variety of animals, birds, fish, trees, and flowers. He always tells these creatures, “Do you realize that by your very existence, you are inherently giving glory to God? So just be who you are. Every animal, every created being has a unique thing to do. Each of you, do your thing; and in that doing, you are giving glory to God!" This is a mutual mirroring and I think it allowed him to do his own thing. He realized that just by being Francis, in all his freedom and joy, he also was giving glory to God. 

“Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place."  - R. Buckminster Fuller

Welcome the Holy Spirit: At the end of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells his followers, “Stay in Jerusalem until you are covered by the power from on high”. The disciples remained there until the Spirit descended upon the gathered community on the feast of Pentecost.  In the scriptures, the Spirit is called the “wind,” the “breath,” and the “dwelling.” Theologian Marjorie Suchocki refers to these as God’s power, wisdom, and presence. Those three things are the heart of redemption, of experiencing the full life God intends for all.  

In one of his early books, Richard Rohr names the ability to love as the essential gift of the Holy Spirit that was bestowed on the Apostles two millennia ago.  In this meditation, he writes, "The gift of the Spirit is God’s own power to love unconditionally—and to transform the world by that power. This gift of knowing the Spirit, of being able to love as God does, is the same gift we need today...The Spirit is always a gratuitous gift. It’s always an unmerited favor. It’s always pure grace. Like wind, it cannot be seen. Like smoke, it cannot be controlled. The Spirit is elusive, blowing where it wills. Yet like fire, the Spirit can be felt. The Spirit is experienced as the warmth of God’s love."

"God as presence answers alienation and loneliness with love; God as wisdom answers the loss of time with trust; God as power answers injustice with empowering hope." - Margaret Suchocki

Note: *Contemplation is taking time to think deeply about something, to reflect thoughtfully on an idea, an experience, something we read, something we saw.  For more on the subject, see Soul Values: Contemplation.

 Sources: patheos.com, Wikipedia, Center for Action and Contemplation

Smile, laugh, change the world

POSTED MAY 1, 2024

From the 18th century playwright Nicolas Chamfort, who advised that "A day without laughter is a day wasted", to Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who reminded us of the transcendent value of a simple smile (“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing”), wise men and women have been telling us of the importance of smiling and laughing.  Today, psychologists and neuroscientists agree with the sages, and we are beginning to understand how these simple, common actions work on us and those around us to make a better world and a better us.

Soul Values: Knowledge

POSTED APRIL 11,2024

In his book Ageless Soul, psychotherapist Thomas Moore presents ten "soul values" - elements in our lives that lead to a more fulfilling and meaningful existence, a set of values of great importance to the "deeper soul."  Moore's ten soul values - Beauty, Contemplation, Deeply Felt Experiences, Meaningful Relationships, Knowledge, A Sense of Home, Art, Spiritual Peace, Community, and Relaxation and Comfort represent much of what makes life meaningful and our lives fulfilling...READ ON SOUL VALUES PAGE

Soul Values: Relaxation and Comfort

POSTED MARCH 18, 2024

We continue our exploration of Thomas Moore's soul values with a look at what Moore and others have to say about the importance of Relaxation and Comfort and the closely related balancing of productivity and presence, of work and play. READ AT THE SOUL VALUES PAGE 

Soul Values: Meaningful Relationships

POSTED MARCH 12, 2024

In his book Ageless Soul, Thomas Moore presents ten "soul values" - elements in our lives that lead to a more fulfilling and meaningful existence, a set of values of great importance to the "deeper soul."  To me, they represent much of what makes us human and much of what makes life most worth living.  We continue our exploration of Thomas Moore's soul values with a look at what Moore and others have to say about Meaningful Relationships.  READ AT THE SOUL VALUES PAGE

Soul Values: Deeply Felt Experiences

POSTED FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Thomas Moore is a psychotherapist, former Catholic monk, a lecturer and writer of popular spiritual books, including the best-selling Care of the Soul: a guide to cultivating depth and sacredness in everyday life.  In his book Ageless Soul, Moore presents ten "soul values" - elements in our lives that lead to a more fulfilling and meaningful existence, a set of values of great importance to the "deeper soul."  

In this post, we take a look at Deeply Felt Experiences.  Deeply felt experiences are one of the paths to personal growth, to becoming the true you.  Moore writes, "Deeply felt experiences are the ones that make a difference in our lives. They are the ones that shape us and give us direction. They are the ones that make us feel alive and connected to ourselves and others...READ AT THE SOUL VALUES PAGE

Gaining and maintaining "positive affect"

POSTED JANUARY 30, 2024

We all know a few of them - those unfailingly positive, upbeat people who are such a joy to be around.  They can light up a room with a smile, make you part of a contagious laughing bout, or just make you feel good by their presence.  These individuals are operating at the top end of the positive affectivity scale - exhibiting emotions such as cheerfulness, enthusiasm, energy, joy, and authentic* pride.

How do they do it? How do they maintain high, frequent positive affect?  Is it something they're born with? Something we can learn?  

For the better part of the century after Freud's work on psychoanalysis, the clinical emphasis was on treating mental disorders.  It wasn’t until the later years of the 20th century, as the field of positive psychology** developed, that researchers started showing significant interest in the concept of positive affect.  Among the findings from decades of research:

• Positive affectivity is related to a person’s “orientation to happiness.”

• Those who are high in positive affectivity are more likely to search for and find happiness through the experience of meaning and pleasure/enjoyment.

• Positive affect is positively correlated to extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. 

• The more open, friendly, responsible, and outgoing a person is, the more likely they are to experience high positive affect.

• The effects build upon each other.   The “Broaden-and-Build” Theory of positive emotions posits that this broadening allows us to build up our physical, psychological, and social resources, skills, and knowledge.  

• Positive affectivity can broaden an individual’s momentary thought–action repertoire; in other words, positive affect encourages people to be more open, engaged, and willing to be creative.  "Joy sparks the urge to play, interest sparks the urge to explore, contentment sparks the urge to savor and integrate, and love sparks a recurring cycle of each of these urges within safe, close relationships."

• Happy individuals are successful across multiple areas of life, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. The happiness-success link exists not only because success makes people happy, but also because positive affect engenders success and may be the cause of many of the desirable characteristics, resources, and successes correlated with happiness.

While some are predisposed, by genetics or upbringing, to positive affect, there are some things that one might do to help encourage frequent high positive affect:  

1. Maintain a gratitude journal: write about what you are grateful for and you will subsequently feel even more grateful and happy.  Brother David Steindl-Rast makes the all-important connection between happiness and gratitude in the TED talk below left.

2. Indulge in the good things in life: incorporate enjoyable and pleasurable experiences into your life.

3. Engage in hobbies you like: getting into the flow of your favorite hobbies can leave you with more positive emotions, less stress, and a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.

4. Practice loving-kindness meditation: this type of meditation is a great way to boost your joy and beat back stress. An example of a loving-kindness meditation is below right.

5. Exercise in a way you enjoy: we all know that being active is linked to health, but it’s important to make sure that the physical activity you engage in is something you enjoy.

6. Savor the positive: think back often on your positive memories and the good times you’ve experienced.  

For a more detailed discussion visit What Is Positive and Negative Affect? , which served as the main source for this post.  The author concludes the article with this wonderful take-away: "If you take only one thing away from this piece, let it be this: positive and negative affect are not necessarily linked, and it is possible to increase your level of positive affect. If you struggle with low positive affect or high negative affect that interrupts or intrudes on your life, there is hope!"

Notes

*Authentic pride is a positive emotion that occurs after a specific achievement and motivates us to continue to pursue our goals and improve ourselves.  It is distinguishable from the negative emotion of hubristic pride.

**The field of positive psychology developed about 30 years ago, building on the work of the humanist psychologists of the mid-twentieth century – including one of my personal favorite thinkers, Abraham Maslow.   Positive psychology deals primarily with happiness and fulfillment.  It is "the scientific study of what makes life most worth living... as concerned with making the lives of normal people fulfilling as with healing pathology. " (Christopher Peterson, Psychology Today, May 16, 2008) 

An artificial intelligence thought experiment: what to do when people are suffering and it seems out of our control

POSTED JANUARY 7, 2024

Most days it seems like nothing can stop the genocide underway in Gaza.  We do what we can, but the actors perpetrating the horrors there seem oblivious to international law and the sentiments of the vast majority of the world's peoples.  Each day brings assertions that the fighting will continue...no matter how many are killed and no matter how much suffering is inflicted.  It can all get to be pretty overwhelming.

I wondered what advice the great philosophers and religious teachers would give to one who was much troubled by such horror, and decided to conduct an experiment in artificial intelligence.  I posed this question to "Bing Chat with GPT-4":  

"I am deeply disturbed by the killing of people in Gaza.  What advice would ________ give me?"  

After an introductory expression of concern - describing the situation as "tragic" (Camus), "complex and painful " (Marcus Aurelius), "heartbreaking" (Jesus), "devastating" (Buddha), "horrific" (Martin Luther King), here is what the AI-powered browser said my "Council of Elders" would advise.

"Practice gratitude and moderation. Marcus Aurelius wrote, "When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…" He encouraged us to appreciate the simple and essential things in life, and to avoid excess and indulgence.

"Be kind and respectful to others. Marcus Aurelius wrote, "The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury." He taught us to avoid anger and resentment, and to treat others with dignity and compassion, even if they harm us.

"Practice mindfulness and meditation. Buddha said, "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." He taught us to be mindful of our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and to meditate regularly to calm our minds and gain insight into the nature of reality. He said, "Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom."

"Follow the noble eightfold path. Buddha said, "There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path." He taught us to follow the noble eightfold path, which consists of right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. This is the path that leads to the cessation of suffering and the attainment of nirvana."

The "Council of Elders" is not telling us to deaden our empathy or compassion or become numb to the pain of others.  What they are saying: focus on what you can control, do what you can to end the suffering, and seek happiness and peace within yourself and others.  What sage advice!  It's not only relevant to Gaza but to any situation in which people are suffering and which seems out of our control.  

I'll close with some additional advice from these wise men and a few links.  

Albert Camus: "In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners." 

Marcus Aurelius: "Even if you burst with indignation, they will carry on regardless.  Do not be upset...concentrate on the matter at hand and see it for what it is.  Remind yourself of your duty to be a good man and what nature demands: then do it straight and unswerving...Always, though, in kindness, integrity and sincerity." 

Jesus: "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me."

Buddha: "I teach but two things, suffering and the end of suffering."

Martin Luther King: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Marcus Aurelius and Albert Camus on courage and hope in troubling times

Stilling the Mind

How you can help the people of Gaza

The season of hope

POSTED DECEMBER 17, 2023

The Christmas season, celebrating the birth of the Christ child, coincides with the time of the winter solstice, the darkest time of year. Christmastime is a season of "goodness and light", a season of brotherhood and peace, and, perhaps most of all, a season of hope.  For what could be more hopeful than the birth of a child - which is, in the words of Carl Sandburg, "God's opinion that the world should go on"? What could be more hopeful than the Sun stopping its descent in its journey across the sky, bringing the promise of longer days?

Light in the Darkness (Dec 8, 2021)

With all the troubles in the world and daily life, how does one keep hope alive?  Is it just a matter of will? Or are there ways to foster it?

Albert Camus, the philosopher of hope, dug deep inside himself and "in the depth of winter...finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."  His Myth of Sisyphus is a remarkable statement of maintaining a positive attitude in spite of being in a seemingly hopeless and absurd situation.  In Sisyphus, he seems to be telling us "just do what you need to do" in spite of all, and happiness (or at least contentment) will come.  Camus's hope, I think, springs from his conviction in the inherent goodness of our species even in the most trying of circumstances:  "What we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise." 

Though they're related, there is a difference between optimism and hope.  Optimism is the belief that everything will turn out well in the end.  To be hopeful, in the words of writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, "means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.”  In other words, be open to change and to the possibility that circumstances will change.  

[Below center and right are links to essays on Albert Camus and Rebecca Solnit and more of their thoughts on hope.]

Not all of us have Camus's strength of will or Solnit's openness to the future.  For those who do not, there is the practice of what psychologists call "learned hopefulness." [link below left].  By studying "high hope" individuals, researchers have found common habits.  Starting from the premise that hope embodies agency and willpower , they found that when someone high in hope finds their way blocked, they proactively generate alternative paths.  In addition, high hope individuals  encourage and foster the high-hope choices of learned hopefulness, including:

• Seeing possibilities rather than remaining fixed and unchangeable

• Noticing the beauty, blessings, and benefits rather than focusing on negatives

• Cultivating positive feelings rather than settling on habitual negativity

• Focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses

• Creating goals that are challenging rather than unengaging

• Finding purpose rather than a lack of meaning

• Cherishing relationships rather than remaining isolated and self-interested

The extension of this is what we can do to bring others hope.  

One-on-one we can encourage our friends and family to practice the habits of "high hope" individuals: see possibilities, notice beauty, cultivate positive feelings, create challenging goals, focus on strengths, find purpose on life and build relationships.  

There are things we can also do in the world-at-large.  In a 2013 interview with the founder of the Italian daily La Repubblica, Pope Francis highlighted the importance of bringing hope to others and mentioned some ways we might do so: "We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace."  

OK, back to Christmas.  Today is Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent.  Gaudete is Latin for "Rejoice", and the liturgical theme today is the joy of anticipation at the approach of the Christmas celebration.  Gaudete Sunday is thus a day of hope.  One of the readings today in the Catholic liturgy was from the prophet Isaiah, renowned as the prophet of the coming of the Christ child, the future Messiah.  Writing nearly three millennia before Pope Francis's interview in La Repubblica, Isaiah expresses a similar sentiment about giving hope and comfort to others.   The Lord, writes Isaiah, "has sent me to bring good news to the afflicted, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners...to comfort all who mourn."  Good guidance for us not only at Christmastime, but all through the year.

Sources: Catholic World Report, Positive Psychology

A healthy mind (part I)

POSTED NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Having a healthy mind is key to your overall health and well-being. A healthy mind includes emotional, psychological and social well-being and affects how you think, feel and act.  [California Dept of Public Health]

For millennia, wise men have been telling us of the importance of a healthy mind to our overall well-being.  Near the end of the first century, the Roman poet Juvenal wrote "Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano" ("You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.")  A mainstay of introductory Latin courses, the phrase mens sana in corpore sano has made it into common English language usage like other Latin expressions such as ad hoc, alter ego, et cetera. 

Besides praying for a healthy mind in a healthy body, what else can we do to ensure this result?  In this "Mind & Spirit" post and the next, we look at advice over the ages on steps we can take to achieve a healthy mind.  

1. Reframe unhelpful thoughts and focus on what you can control.

• "Sometimes we develop patterns of thoughts or behaviours that are unhelpful so recognising them, and taking steps to think about things differently, can improve your mental health and wellbeing." [UK NHS - this link has a good video explaining the "Catch it, check it, change it" approach to dealing with unhelpful thoughts]

• "Make a list of all your stresses. Draw a line through those beyond your control and focus on the rest. Don’t expel energy on issues you cannot act on." [Centacare]

• “You have control over your own thoughts and actions, but not over the thoughts and actions of others.” - Epictetus

2. Be in the present.  

• “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.” - Lao Tzu

• "Be here now", the title of a 1971 book by the American spiritual teacher Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) has become something of a spiritual mantra.  A Reddit post succinctly summarizes the idea: "Be Here Now - rest in the present moment. Pay attention to what is happening. Feel the sensations of being. No need to add commentary to it - just BE. Smile and find the pleasure of existence. The joy in being. Sometimes you will have that commentary creeping in telling you that you have to do something or be something but just for a moment, let that go and be here now. Find the peace in the eternal present. That peace is always there for you - allow yourself to accept things as they are for a moment, and rest."

• The author and public speaker Alain de Botton [link below] considers attentiveness - the ability to "sieve, from thousands of stray, dramatic, disconcerting, or horrifying thoughts, those particular ideas and sensations that actively need to be entertained in order for us to direct our lives effectively" - to be a key quality of a healthy mind.    

3. Practice mindfulness.

• To be attentive means being aware of our environment, the people around us, and our own internal emotions.  Attentiveness in the sense of awareness is a necessary ingredient in many of Thomas Moore's soul values.  

• "To be mindful is to counterbalance the automatic pilot mode that inhabits our minds most of the time...Our minds take flight, we lose touch, and soon, we’re absorbed by obsessive thoughts and worries. And that makes us anxious.  If you’re...prone to suffer from anxiety, it’s important to cultivate a healthy mind by purposefully keeping your attention in the present moment." [Swanwick website]

• You can find several WITW posts on Mindfulness, including Mindfulness Made Simple and posts on Attentiveness, here.  

• You can find Mindfulness Exercises here (yes, it's a skill that you can develop.)

4. "Maintain a healthy lifestyle by including at least a 5-10 minute meditation practice every day. It will help you find peace, balance, serenity, and clarity." [Swanwick website]  Among the misconceptions about meditation are that it must be for long periods and done while sitting in a specific position.  There are many ways to meditate and you need only find what works for you.

• "If you choose to, you can attend special meditation centers or group classes led by trained instructors. But you can also practice meditation easily on your own."  Here are just three of the ways suggested by the [Mayo Clinic] that you can practice meditation on your own, whenever you choose: 

  • • Breathe deeply. This technique is good for beginners because breathing is a natural function. Focus all your attention on your breathing. Concentrate on feeling and listening as you inhale and exhale through your nostrils. Breathe deeply and slowly. When your attention wanders, gently return your focus to your breathing. 

    • Repeat a mantra. You can create your own mantra, whether it's religious or secular. Examples of religious mantras include the Jesus Prayer in the Christian tradition, the holy name of God in Judaism, or the om mantra of Hinduism, Buddhism and other Eastern religions.

    • Walk and meditate. Combining a walk with meditation is an efficient and healthy way to relax. You can use this technique anywhere you're walking, such as in a tranquil forest, on a city sidewalk or at the mall.  A link to a talk on "Walking Meditation" is below.

• WITW post Stilling the Mind from 2020 includes a meditation refresher and a link to a TED talk on a 10 minute meditation technique.

5. Get good sleep.

• "Good-quality sleep makes a big difference to how we feel mentally and physically, so it's important to get enough." [UK NHS - this link has a great 3 minute video packed with suggestions on how to get a good night's sleep.]

• "Adopting a good bed-time routine that maximizes your quality of sleep is one of the most effective healthy lifestyle tips. Have you noticed that you function better when you form habits and routines around your life? The same is true when we create a healthy bedtime routine to optimize our shut-eye. When you sleep better your whole life becomes better." [Swanwick website ] has a link to a post titled "10 Tips to Improve Your Sleep Hygiene" and also tells us that:  

  • "The blue light emitted from your digital screens and bedroom lights manipulate your brain into thinking it’s still daytime, suppressing melatonin production. A hormone that is responsible to help you fall asleep."

  • "Essential oils have been known to contain a multitude of medicinal properties that aid almost any physical ailment. The vaporizing action of an Aromatherapy Diffuser will interact with your brain and ultimately improve your mood, sleep, and your overall health."

  • "In order to fall asleep, we need melatonin, therefore we need darkness, otherwise, our bodies won’t produce enough of this much-needed hormone."

• As we age, it becomes more difficult to sleep straight through the night and get our 7 to 8 hours in one shot.   Once awake, if you're anything like me, thoughts pop into your head and sometimes make it difficult to fall back to sleep immediately. A technique that I have found effective is to repeat a two-syllable mantra while focusing on my breathing - first syllable on the in breath, second syllable on the out breath.  My particular mantra is one I picked up while learning transcendental meditation, but you can use any two-syllable phrase that calms you.

In the next "Mind & Spirit" post, we'll examine five more ways to achieve a healthy mind: 

• Connect with others.  Foster friendships. "Give back."

• Live a healthy life.  Watch your diet.  Exercise daily.

• Find enjoyment.

• Embrace the liberty that comes with wanting and needing less.

• Spend some time in focused thought, exploring new ideas every day.  

A healthy mind (part II)

POSTED NOVEMBER 30, 2023

In a previous post (above), we took a look at how to achieve and maintain a healthy mind by focusing on things we can control, being in the present, practicing mindfulness, meditating, and getting good sleep.  In this post we examine more ways to achieve a healthy mind.

6.  Connect with others.  Foster friendships. "Give back."  Our relationships with others are paramount in maintaining a healthy mind.  There's a wealth of evidence that keeping in close touch can help us feel happier and healthier whether it's with friends, family, neighbors, or people at work. (UK NHS)  Close friendships provide us with a trusted source of advice and experience.  Giving of our "time, talent, and treasure" - i.e., doing for others - satisfies our ingrained need to help and be of use.

• Spending quality time with friends or family, talking to someone about how we are feeling or finding ways to help other people can all help stop you from feeling lonely and improve your mental health and wellbeing. This can be online, by phone or seeing someone in person." (UK NHS)  

• "Friends are great buffers against stress. Find a go-to person to trust and confide in. Strong connections with people can help you overcome challenges and feelings of isolation." (Centacare)

• "Donate time to others. Volunteering and helping out friends can empower a strong sense of self-worth and satisfaction. Balance the time you give to others with time to yourself in order to avoid burnout." (Centacare)

• "It can be hard to connect with people sometimes especially when we're busy, stressed or feeling low." A three-minute video from UK NHS offers some simple tips for building better social connections into your life.  Among them: Make time to talk, set plans with people and stick to them. Connect every day.  Reach out and share your thoughts.

8.  Find enjoyment. Spending time on an activity that you enjoy can improve your mental health and wellbeing.  People with hobbies may be less likely to experience stress, low mood, and depression. Activities that get you out and about can make you feel happier and more relaxed. (Head to Health)

• "When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." - Marcus Aurelius

• Find something that makes you happy and allocate time to it each week. Having a regular hobby, activity or outing to look forward to can lift your spirits on a bad day.  (Centacare)

• “Do anything, but let it produce joy.” - Walt Whitman

9.  "Embrace the liberty that comes with wanting and needing less."  

• "I decided to embrace voluntary simplicity and live closer to nature a few years ago. Getting out of the city and de-cluttering my life was the most liberating thing I’ve ever done...One great thing about the digital age is that it allows you to work from anywhere. I have chosen to live closer to nature with visits to the city. I find that it is the perfect balance for optimal creativity and well-being." - Christopher Bergland, The Athlete's Way.  ("7 Habits for a Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body", Psychology Today link in sidebar above)

• “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” ― Epictetus 

10. Spend some time in focused thought, exploring new ideas every day.  The mind, like a muscle, needs to be exercised to grow and to keep from atrophying. Learning something new is especially helpful.  Medical experts now know that when we learn new information and take on new experiences, they can actually shape, mold and change the makeup of our brains. New information and experiences help to organize (and reorganize) our neural pathways in the brain. (Pathways)

• "Live as if you will die today; learn as if you will live forever." - Gandhi

• Creativity and intellectual curiosity are part of "humanity's DNA" and have been linked to human survival for millennia.  Homo sapiens, unlike the extinct  Neanderthals, were inclined to keep pushing into new areas, and inventing new technology. This is believed to be one reason that human lineage did not become extinct.  (Psychology Today)

• Setting goals and learning new skills can be a great way to meet people, build your self-esteem and feel a sense of achievement.  Learning something doesn't require formal classes and can be accomplished in numerous ways - visiting an art museum, learning to play a musical instrument, even reading a chapter in a book.   (UK NHS)

Personally, I've found that writing this blog is a great way to keep learning.  Many times, I know little about a given topic until I begin reading about it, trying to understand it, and then posting an article.  My hope is that by sharing these thoughts with you, they could perhaps help you learn something new too - something you may not have thought about or even something you never thought you would want to know.

Bucky Fuller, Spaceship Earth, and the "experiment to discover what one individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity"

POSTED OCTOBER 19, 2023

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity". He was awarded 28 United States patents and many honorary doctorates.  Not bad for a student expelled from Harvard after his freshman year.  His most famous invention, and the one to win him international recognition, was the geodesic dome, a lattice shell structure which has been used as parts of radar stations, civic buildings, environmental protest camps and exhibition attractions.  

"Bucky" Fuller was a hero to the young members of the American counterculture of the 1960s. Two of his books, Ideas and Integrities (1963) and Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969), became staples of "hippie" libraries across America. His lectures became magnets for the young, and his geodesic domes became the preferred housing of many rural communes. In 1968, his writings became the inspiration for the publication that has long been seen as the bible of the back-to-the-land movement and one of the most notable documents of the counterculture, The Whole Earth Catalog - a copy of which is still (hopefully) somewhere in my basement.

But it wasn't always so for one of the most influential inventors and thinkers of the 20th century.

In 1927, Buckminster Fuller found himself in financial ruin and personal turmoil. Five years earlier, his first child, Alexandra, has passed away aged four from spinal meningitis. Now his business had failed, leaving him broke with investors, his family and friends who invested in him, at a loss.  As he walked along Lake Michigan and contemplated suicide, thinking that his family would benefit from the life insurance payment, he experienced an epiphany: “You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.” 

After his epiphany, Fuller completely changed his life and embarked on "an experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity."  To this end, the visionary designer spent the next half century searching for "ways of doing more with less" so that all people could be fed and sheltered.  The grandson of a Unitarian minister and a Unitarian minister himself, Buckminster Fuller had much to say about the universal condition.  We'll look at some of those ideas now.

"Spaceship Earth"

Fuller popularized and explained the phrase in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969), in which he used the analogy of a spaceship floating in space to describe our plant.  He felt that all human beings were passengers on Spaceship Earth, and, like the crew of a large ship, people had to work together in order to keep the planet functioning properly.   In a later book, Bucky expressed his firm belief that, technologically, "humanity now has the opportunity, for the first time in its history, to operate our planet in such a manner as to support and accommodate all humanity at a substantially more advanced standard of living than any humans have ever experienced." He hoped that some day the resources of the planet would be equitably divided, and people all around the world would achieve a high standard of living with access to technologically-advanced housing and transportation.  He was after all, a technocrat, and in his speeches and lectures, Bucky tried to convince people to take the initiative to develop comprehensive design science thinking to begin to address global problems such as poverty, inadequate housing, and unequal distribution of resources.  

We are all unique individuals.  Without the need to be anything special, we can all do exceptional things

This thought is perfectly embodied in my favorite Bucky Fuller quote: “Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place."

We are here for all of humanity, not just for ourselves.

Fuller dedicated himself to provide solutions to all humanity's problems and to serve the interests through his work, of all human beings as opposed to traditional personal and business motivations which aim to serve self first and foremost.  

Educate oneself comprehensively. 

As Fuller embarked on his mission to serve all humanity, he sought to learn all that he could about "chemical elements, their weights, performance characteristics, relative abundances, geographical whereabouts, metallurgical alloys, chemical associabilities and disassociabilities," production tool capabilities, energy resources, and "all relevant" geological, meteorological, demographic, and economic data.  Translating that into our own lives: what do we need to know to be able to help humanity.  I think of this as a combination of Gandhi's advice to "learn as if you will live forever" and doing "what the world needs", an element of ikigai ("why you get up in the morning").

Do more with less

Fuller was  an early environmental activist, aware of Earth's finite resources, and promoted a principle he termed "ephemeralization". According to futurist, Fuller disciple, and publisher of The Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, this was defined as "doing more with less". Resources and waste from crude, inefficient products could be recycled into making more valuable products, thus increasing the efficiency of the entire process.  

Cooperation is the optimum survival strategy

He believed that sometime during the 1970s, humanity had attained an unprecedented state. He was convinced that the accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with the quantities of major recyclable resources that had already been extracted from the earth, had attained a critical level, such that competition for necessities had become unnecessary. Cooperation had become the optimum survival strategy. He declared: "selfishness is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable...War is obsolete."  

Linked below left is an article explaining how Bucky Fuller's most famous invention reflects his philosophy of life.  Linked below right is Carl Sagan's famous homage to Planet Earth.

Sources: A Technocrat for the Counterculture - Fred Turner | Arquitectura Viva, The 22 Self Disciplines of Buckminster Fuller - Larry G. Maguire (larrygmaguire.com), Buckminster Fuller's Self-Disciplines (cesc.net), What is Spaceship Earth? | R. Buckminster Fuller Collection - Spotlight at Stanford, R. Buckminster Fuller, About a Visionary Designer (thoughtco.com) , Wikipedia, Radical Curiosity: In the Orbit of Buckminster Fuller | ArtScience Museum | Marina Bay Sands 

Stoicism in the 21st Century: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Posted September 24 , 2023

If you've noticed a similarity between the teachings of the ancient Stoics and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), you are on the right track.  CBT, one of the most successful modern-day methods for treating emotional and psychological disorders, is heavily indebted to the Stoics.  

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Stoicism share an emphasis on using logic and reasoning to overcome emotional difficulties.  Both philosophies are based on the idea that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are closely connected, and with practice we can change them.  Both philosophies highlight the importance of recognizing one’s thought patterns, challenging irrational beliefs, and adopting healthier perspectives. 

Stoicism flourished in the Greco-Roman world  from 300 BC to 200 AD, but its therapeutic concepts and practices were largely forgotten until the 20th century.  Psychotherapists began to rediscover Stoicism from the 1950s onward through the writings of Albert Ellis, and what would become known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT).  As far back as his youth, before training as a psychotherapist, Ellis had “read the later Stoics, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius”, and throughout his writings, Ellis refers to the Stoics, particularly Epictetus.

Mainly through Ellis’ writings, Stoicism influenced Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy. Beck began his first book on cognitive therapy by describing how his new style of therapy was founded upon the newly emerging consensus among researchers that thoughts play a central role in determining our emotions.  He then added, "Nevertheless, the philosophical underpinnings go back thousands of years, certainly to the time of the Stoics, who considered man’s conceptions (or misconceptions) of events rather than the events themselves as the key to his emotional upsets."

Cognitive behavioral therapy has been found effective for a variety of different mental health disorders and emotional problems, including anxiety, depression, substance use disorders, grief and stress, trauma and PTSD.   While treatment by a trained psychotherapist is necessary for the more serious conditions, we can also apply CBT techniques and the wisdom of the Stoics to our daily lives.  

A key teaching of the Stoics is that the only one way to happiness is to cease worrying about things which are beyond our control. Linked below left are some lessons and advice from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.  

Focusing on what you can control is crucial for psychological well-being, particularly in today's connected world.  Linked below right is a Psychology Today article that provides 10 practical ways to improve your ability to focus on what you can control. Step 1 is to learn to differentiate between things you can control and can't. Focus your energy on the former and accept the latter.

Finally. you can find mindfulness-based CBT exercises for general well-being as well as for specific issues such as anxiety, fear, and negative thoughts at 19 Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Exercises [CBT] (thedailymeditation.com) 

Sources: medium.com, Psychology Today - 1, Psychology Today - 2, 

Marcus Aurelius  on how to live calmly, kindly, and at peace

POSTED AUGUST 29, 2023

When he was Emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man in the world, kept a self-improvement journal.  Although intended for his eyes only, the journal was preserved and handed down through the centuries by anonymous scribes copying and recopying his text. Their work was a gift to the Western world with the earliest surviving copy dating from the 11th century.  Later titled Meditations, the journal gives insight into the mind of one of the most remarkable persons ever to have lived.  

Marcus's writings reflect his Stoic beliefs.  In the last chapter of his journal, he presents, in several long rambling sentences, what he believes he must do to "live out the time remaining before your death calmly, kindly, and at peace with the god inside you."  His suggestions are a brief summary of his Stoic beliefs - a Marcus Aurelius "Four Agreements", if you will.*  

Paraphrasing the great philosopher-emperor:

• Free your mind, your true self, from all external events and concerns, from "all that others say and do, from all that your physical body and the world "bring on you without your choice",  from all "that is whirled round in the external vortex surrounding us"

• Live in the present.  Free yourself from "all that you have said or done" and from "all that troubles you for the future" 

• Do the right thing.  Do "what is just", say "what is true", "seek to perfect this life you are living in the present"

• Be true to yourself.  Do not be concerned "for what [your] neighbors will think of [you]."

While the last three Agreements have their parallels in many philosophical and religious traditions, the First Agreement is what separates Stoics from almost everyone else.  For Stoics, what causes emotional pain or anxiety or remorse (or, for that matter, any negative emotion) is not the external event itself, but our reaction to it.  They believe that the mind can override the "input" from the external world that is causing this distress.  The way we achieve this, the Stoic's key to a happy life, is by understanding what is within our control and what is not.  The writings of Stoics over the ages are filled with expressions of this concept of taking control of our lives and emotions:

"We have the power to control our own lives, to determine our own happiness and success.” - Seneca (d. 65 AD)

"It is not in our control to have everything turn out exactly as we want, but it is in our control to control how we respond to what happens.” - Epictetus (d. 135 AD)

“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” - Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180 AD)

This principle of understanding what is under our control and what is not can help us in the 21st century deal with grief, anger, rejection, loss, disappointment anxiety, and many other negative emotions.  

Tom Bissell, writing in the May issue of Harper's Magazine, relates how re-reading Meditations helped him in dealing with the grief he felt at the loss of his father.  Bissell writes that Stoicism became, "in an odd way [his] new father and anchor...It reminds you that even if something horrible has happened, you still have to work through the implications, and better to do that calmly than while panicking or or angry or weeping in a home office adjacent to your daughter's bedroom."   

Bissell also relates that he was so affected by his Stoic readings that his "nighttime panic attacks ceased altogether."  Especially helpful were these words of Marcus, what Bissell calls "A Prayer for the Fearful": 

Why, then, my imagination, are you doing what you do?  Go away, in the gods' name, the way you came.  I have no need of you.  You have come in your old habit.  I am not angry with you.  Only go away.

The "First Agreement", with its guiding principle of understanding what is and what is not under our control, could likewise serve as an excellent means of controlling anger.  As Marcus observes, “How much more harmful are the consequences of anger…than the circumstances that aroused them in us.”  There are many other passages on anger in Meditations, but the go-to Stoic on the subject is Seneca, who wrote a substantial work on anger after his brother asked him, “How anger may be soothed."  

As Seneca wrote in his essay on anger, “the best plan is to reject straightway the first incentives to anger, to resist its very beginnings, and to take care not to be betrayed into it."  A second tactic is to avoid angry people.  Anger, says Seneca, is a bad habit that people tend to pick up from those around them including, in their early years, their parents.  Anger is transmissible: if we are around angry people, it is hard not to lose our temper.  A third consideration goes back to the First Agreement.  We must stop wasting our time (or breath) getting angry at things that are indifferent to our feelings.  We must stop thinking that yelling at inanimate objects or situations or entities is going to change anything.  Every situation is made better by a cool head.  (You can find a more extensive list of Seneca’s recommendations to handle anger in the link below right.)

Living up to the "First Agreement" is a difficult task.  What can a person do to actually achieve such a state?  Noting that perfecting the practice of Stoicism is a lifelong journey, Sophia Merton lists numerous things we can do to develop a Stoic attitude towards life, among them [link below left] :

• Practice Self-Awareness

• Be Mindful of the Present Moment

• Learn What Is and Isn’t in Your Control

• Pay Attention to How You Spend Your Time

• Seek the Truth Above All Else and Accept the World As It Is

To which Psychology Today adds [link below right, ]:

• Learn how things work, rather than how you wish they would — then make your choices. 

• Accept uncertainty.

• Accept that very difficult problems may not be solved by your own actions

To which I add, read a couple of pages of Meditations every day.  As Tom Bissell writes: "You can skim Marcus or read him deeply.  You can jump around or read him straight through.  He rewards all approaches...No matter what, you'll get the sense, as you read him, that Marcus is here to help you."

Notes:

*The Four Agreements" is the title of a best-selling book by Don Miguel Ruiz.  In this book and others, he provides "practical guides to Toltec wisdom", employing the word Toltec to signify a long tradition of indigenous beliefs in Mexico.  In the introduction to "The Four Agreements", Ruiz describes Toltec knowledge "as a way of life, distinguished by the ready accessibility of happiness and love."  For more on the Toltec Four Agreements, see the post Toltec Wisdom: The Four Agreements

**Before he became emperor, Augustus Caesar (63 BC - 14 AD) was tutored by the Stoic philosopher Athenodorus.  In his old age, as he was taking leave of Augustus' service, Athenodorus reminded him, “Whenever you get angry, Caesar, do not say or do anything before repeating to yourself the twenty-four letters of the alphabet.” 

Sources: Stoic Simple, Psychology Today - 1, Psychology Today - 2, Daily Stoic, "Time is a Violent Stream" by Tom Bissell, Harper's Magazine May 2023, 

The philosophy of William Faulkner

POSTED JUNE 16, 2023

At the turn of the twentieth century, three American Nobel-Prize-winning authors were born.  Through their books, these writers - William Faulkner (1897-1962), Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) and John Steinbeck  (1902-1968) - would have a great influence on American culture and provide insight into both the human condition and America's national character.  Although the authors probably would have detested the term, the "philosophies" underlying their works would impact American society through much of the twentieth century. 

The philosophy of John Steinbeck - Jan 19, 2023 

The philosophy of Ernest Hemingway - Mar 24, 2023

While John Steinbeck wrote in a realistic style and Hemingway, in a simple and direct style, Faulkner was more experimental.  His writing features multiple narrators, stream-of-consciousness passages, long sentences and rich vocabulary.  While Hemingway set his stories all over the world and Steinbeck set his at various locales in the United States, Faulkner's stories are set in a fictional Mississippi county of Yoknapatawpha, where he explored themes of history, race, class, religion and violence in the American South.  

William Faulkner's philosophy is neither consistent nor easily defined.  In this post we'll look at two of his seemingly contradictory ideas - the absurdity of the human condition and the philosophy embodied in his famous quote: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail." 

Nowhere does Faulkner express more clearly the absurdity of the human condition than in the Benjy section of The Sound and the Fury, his 1929 novel about the decline of the once aristocratic Compson family in the Deep South.  The youngest child of the family and mentally disabled, Benjy is the narrator of the first section of the novel. 

Shakespeare's Macbeth rails against the human condition: "Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  Benjy's section expands on this theme.

Benjy's disjointed, chaotic narrative style reflects the absurdity of a world that lacks order, meaning, and coherence. Benjy is unable to distinguish between past and present, reality and memory, self and others, and he often shifts from one scene to another without any logical connection or transition.  Benjy’s section also suggests the absurdity of human attempts to find meaning and happiness in a chaotic and indifferent world. He is constantly searching for his sister Caddy, who represents his lost innocence and happiness, but he seldom finds her.  Benjy’s narrative portrays a world that offers no consolation or hope for human suffering.  In it, Faulkner conveys his absurdist view of the human condition as a state of confusion, alienation, and despair in a world that appears to have no inherent meaning or value.

Reflecting on Benjy in an interview, Faulkner replies, “The only emotion I have for Benjy is grief and pity for all mankind.”  But he was not content to leave us with an absurd world that offers no consolation for human suffering.  Although his later novels would make more explicit his belief in the power of the human spirit to prevail, The Sound and the Fury gives us Dilsey Gibson, the Negro cook of the Compson family,  a motherly figure to the Compson children, often seen taking care of those neglected or abused by their parents.    The only source of stability in the Compson household, she represents the moral center and the human spirit of the novel.  She endures the decline and decay of the Compsons, and is portrayed as a strong and resilient character who embodies qualities such as love, duty, sacrifice, honor, and faith — qualities that Faulkner views as essential for the salvation of the human race.

The last section of the novel, which is told by an omniscient third-person narrator, features Dilsey on Easter Sunday.  After rising early and doing what she can to set the Compson household in order, she takes Benjy to the Easter Sunday service at her church.  When Dilsey's daughter Frony says people are talking, Dilsey replies, "Den you send um to me...Tell um de good Lawd don't keer whether he be bright or not. Don't nobody but white trash keer dat."

The Easter sermon that Dilsey hears moves her deeply. It is a sermon about the great equalizing force of death and about the beginning and ending of things. Dilsey feels that she is now seeing the ending of the Compson family. She has been with them so long that she also feels that she was there toward the beginning.  Faulkner, in the introduction to one edition of The Sound and the Fury, wrote, “There was Dilsey to be the future, to stand above the fallen ruins of the family like a ruined chimney, gaunt patient and indomitable; and Benjy to be the past.”  Faulkner’s moral philosophy was ultimately rooted in his belief in the human spirit and its capacity to endure and overcome adversity.  No Faulkner character demonstrates this more than Dilsey.  She endured.

In 1949, twenty years after The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The prize was awarded to him “for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel.” In his acceptance speech, Faulkner says, “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” 

"A spirit of compassion and sacrifice and endurance" is much in the same vein as Albert Camus' most memorable characters - Sisyphus endlessly pushing his rock up the hill, Dr. Rieux and Joseph Grand staying in the city and doing all they can to fight the plague.  Like Faulkner, Camus believed that individuals are able to prevail in spite of the world's absurdity and meaninglessness.  

Marcus Aurelius and Albert Camus on courage and hope in troubling times - Feb 13, 2020

Sources: The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner, Norton Critical Edition (2nd Edition), W.M. Norton & Company, 1994, Cliffs Notes -1, Cliffs Notes - 2, Cliffs Notes - 3

What a sports G.O.A.T. can teach us about life, excellence, leadership and longevity

POSTED MAY 8, 2023

Sports Illustrated named Tom Brady as its 2021 "Sportsperson of the Year".  Earlier that year, the 43-year-old quarterback had led his team to a record seventh Super Bowl victory and in the process picked up his fifth Super Bowl MVP award.  Considering that the average retirement age for an NFL quarterback is between 30 and 35 years old and that his Super Bowl wins will likely never be exceeded, there is much that Brady's career might tell us about life, excellence, leadership and longevity.

In the SI cover article, after mentioning how professional athletes in many sports find inspiration in Brady's longevity and excellence, L. Jon Wertheim writes, "Brady readily admits that he holds no secrets; he, too, looks to others.  His wife. His parents.  Towering athletes...who came before him.  But he also turns to a sort of council of elders, who've lived well and lived long."

Learn from others

Now there's a thought - a council of elders.  We can learn so much from those who have "lived well and lived long", people in our own lives to whom we can turn for advice and wisdom.  But we need not limit our "council" to the elders in our  immediate circle.  We also can learn from the young - for example, the unconditional love and unquenchable curiosity of the very young, the optimistic faith in the future and the questioning of handed-down beliefs of older youth.  We also learn from the heroes of our youth - whether they be historic giants such as Martin Luther King or more immediate examples - parents, teachers, neighbors, friends.  And of course, there are the endless sources of wisdom from ages past in the works of the great thinkers and writers.

"Learn as if you will live forever" - Sep 13, 2022

As usual, Mahatma Gandhi gets it right in his advice to "learn as if you will live forever."  Learning is a lifelong process.  Education doesn't stop when we finish our formal schooling.  There is still so much that we don't know, so much that could help us live a more interesting, more fulfilling life.  Finding time to do so can be a challenge but ultimately rewarding.  One way to find the time is by practicing what's come to be known as the "5-hour rule."  The five-hour rule was inspired and perhaps even invented by Benjamin Franklin.  Throughout Franklin’s adult life, he consistently invested an hour a day in ‘deliberate’ learning.  Some even call this "Franklin’s" five hour rule: one hour a day on every weekday, and it's practiced by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and many others.  

The 5 hour rule - the value and beauty of constant learning - Sep 10, 2018

One of the people Wertheim interviewed for his Tom Brady article was one of the eldest of the "council of elders", 87 year-old Sam Reeves, who's been Brady's friend for 20 years.  Though Sam recently gave up body surfing, he still plays 150 rounds of golf a year.  Reeves has given great thought to what makes Tom Brady special and has come up with some thoughts: he makes people feel valued, he thrives on excellence for himself and those around him; he is a person of joy and is open to "adventures."

Make people feel valued

One who is constantly learning needs to be a good listener.  Reeves: He makes people feel valued. "That could mean really listening - he's an extraordinary listener - to a person he's meeting for the first time."  "Really listening" to others means being totally present for them, and our full presence is a sign that we value them.  While not all of us have the charisma that makes another person immediately feel welcomed and valued, we can make them feel so by being totally present for them.  

On listening - October 22, 2021

"Mattering": the healing power of making someone feel strong - August 3, 2019

Strive for excellence 

One of the Four Agreements of ancient Toltec wisdom is "Always do your best."  Reeves: He thrives on excellence, for himself and those around him. ""He wants you to have what he has.  He wants people to be the best they - [and] he'll help them get there."  Reeve's description succinctly defines what may be one of the most important aspects of leadership - the ability to inspire others and a propensity to help them excel.  Leadership and performance coach and consultant John Eades expands on this thought in the link below.

Be a person of joy

"We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” —Joseph Campbell

Reeves: He is a person of joy. "Pain is inevitable - certainly in football - but misery is optional, and Tom does not accept misery.  He runs to joy."   Being joyful is not only good for you, it can make those around you feel better. We all know someone whose presence or smile lights up a room, and we know how good that makes us feel. 

The poet Mary Oliver was known for the sheer joy she took in living every day.  Psychology Today's tribute to her says, in part: "Mary Oliver’s gift was her ability to marvel at the world with an unsentimental acceptance that it (and we) are temporary. She looked clear-eyed and with unflinching certainty at the impermanence of our existence. In it she found not despair but rather joy. She chose to live in the moment and to be dazzled by it."

Mary Oliver "chose to live life and be dazzled by it" - Jan 20, 2019

“It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.” ― Mary Oliver

Be open to "adventures"

Reeves: "Tom keeps his routines but he is open to adventures."  Brady's training and diet regimens are things of legend in the sports world.  Ross Andel, director of the School of Aging Studies at the University of South Florida, also quoted in the SI article, says, "His ability to stay disciplined is second to none...He holds onto his schedule.  There's such a resilience." Then Andel points to a contradictory instinct - a key, perhaps the key, to graceful aging: a willingness to adapt, a desire not to remain static.  In Andel's words, "never want to be fixed"; in Reeves', "open to adventures." 

Andel relates the results of a German study volunteers were taught to juggle.  While they were learning the skill, their brain patterns changed.  When the skill was no longer novel, brain patterns reverted to how they were previously.  Every time you learn a new skill, whether mental or physical, you change your brain. More specifically,  your brain forms new connections and neurons and makes existing neural pathways stronger or weaker.  This ability of the brain to change according to the challenges it faces is called neuroplasticity.  [link below]  

AARP has an entire section of their website devoted to keeping the brain sharp, called appropriately enough "Staying Sharp." This excerpt, from one of their articles notes that the more challenging the information or skill, the greater the benefit.

“Your brain is like a muscle,” says Daniel G. Amen, a psychiatrist based in Costa Mesa, Calif., and author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. “The more you use it, the more you can actually make new connections.” The brain works optimally when presented with new information and skills. And the more challenging the information is to master, the better. When University of Texas, Dallas researchers assigned adults to different activities in a November 2013 study, only those who learned a new skill, such as quilting or how to use the image-modifying computer software Photoshop, showed significant gains in memory function.

Sources: Sports Illustrated

On being perpetually curious

POSTED APRIL 18, 2023

There are few good human qualities that have gotten as bad a rap as curiosity.  From the biblical Eve's "Let's see what happens if we eat this apple" to the Shakespearean* adage "curiosity killed the cat" (still in vogue in mid-20th century elementary schools!), the mind-opening, life-enhancing virtue of curiosity has been undervalued and abused.

Curiosity plays a central role in our search for knowledge and truth and opens our eyes to wonder and awe.  It is the basis for a life-long love of learning and a necessary ingredient for new experiences.  

Curiosity's enemies include closed-minded dogmatism, intellectual laziness, and self-referencing certainty.  On the last, Maria Popova in a post about George Saunders' book of essays on Russian literature**, writes:

Nothing, not one thing, hurts us more — or causes us to hurt others more — than our certainties. The stories we tell ourselves about the world and the foregone conclusions with which we cork the fount of possibility are the supreme downfall of our consciousness. They are also the inevitable cost of survival, of navigating a vast and complex reality most of which remains forever beyond our control and comprehension. And yet in our effort to parse the world, we sever ourselves from the full range of its beauty, tensing against the tenderness of life.  How to love the world more by negotiating our hunger for certainty and our gift for story is what George Saunders explores [in his book]

Curiosity's enablers include humility, open-mindedness, courage and dedication to pursuing the truth.  Looking into the distant past, we see exemplars of passionate curiosity such as Socrates, Montaigne, and Galileo demonstrating each of these qualities to varying degrees.  

Montaigne (1533-1592) invented the essay, from the French essayer which means "to try".  He humbly, but confidently, followed his lines of inquiry to their conclusion, learning as he went.  Known more as a statesman than an author during his lifetime, Montaigne has come to be recognized as embodying the spirit of freely entertaining doubt that began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, ''Que sçay-je?" ("What do I know?", in Middle French; now rendered as "Que sais-je?" in modern French). 

“How To Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer” (Feb 20, 2018)

Socrates' most famous dictum "The unexamined life is not worth living" is perhaps the ultimate testament to open-mindedness.  Knowing oneself and following one's true nature are at the heart of personal growth.  The eponymous Socratic method is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions.  This open-mindedness and questioning attitude eventually led to his execution.  He refused to recant his beliefs and courageously accepted his sentence.  

Although the accusations against him were religious in nature ("impiety" ,"atheism"), there was an underlying political motive for executing Socrates: he was speaking truth to power, questioning the values of accumulating money, power, and status which dominated the class-based Athenian "democracy" of his time.  Determined by the interests of the aristocracy and an emerging wealthy business class, these dominant ideas considered the accumulation of money, power, and status to be morally good. In contrast, Socrates was teaching that only a life dedicated to the improvement of the soul via the cultivation of virtue can bring about genuine meaning to human life.  [link below]

Galileo's unrelenting pursuit of the truth also got him trouble with the authorities. Galileo’s great contribution to modern science was his systematic development of a scientific method predicated on evidence-based research. But, his historical impact and legacy is bound up in his astronomical observations, the conclusions he drew from these, and the reaction of Church authorities to the results.

The Online Education website says this about "The Galileo Affair":

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Galileo reached his revolutionary conclusion that the Sun, not the Earth, must be the center of the solar system...By most accounts, it was a cumulative process of discovery. His initial telescopic observations revealed the geographical features of the Moon. As he improved the magnification properties of his telescope, he was able to study the shadows that crossed the face of Venus, the moons in orbit around Jupiter, thousands of stars from distant galaxies that could not be seen by the naked eye, and distinct features of the Sun. He could then employ mathematical calculations to confirm what he would have already suspected regarding the true nature of the cosmos.

As with Socrates, the authorities persecuting him were wrong.  Unlike Socrates, Galileo recanted his work, although he famously muttered a defiant “Eppur si muove”(“And yet it moves)” to the inquisitors as if to say that they may have won this battle, but in the end, truth would win out.***  

Of course, the Renaissance era was not the end of the passionate curiosity embodied in these three great thinkers.  Britannica has a web page devoted to many such artists, inventors, explorers and scientists. [link below]  The Britannica Curiosity Compass available at the linkis a three minute questionnaire where you can "discover what drives your curiosity." 

The Sun Also Rises

During the First World War, Ernest Hemingway volunteered to serve in Italy as an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross. In June 1918, he was wounded by Austrian mortar fire. "Then there was a flash, as when a blast-furnace door is swung open, and a roar that started white and went red," he recalled in a letter home.  Despite his injuries, Hemingway carried a wounded Italian soldier to safety and was injured again by machine-gun fire. For his bravery, he received the Silver Medal of Valor from the Italian government. Hemingway spent six months in a Milan hospital recovering form his wounds before returning home.

In 1923 Hemingway returned to Europe after marrying his first wife, Hadley Richardson. Initially working as a correspondent for the Toronto Star, while living in Paris he grew into a novelist with the encouragement of such Left Bank notables as Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  And Paris is the setting where The Sun Also Rises begins.  

The narrator of Hemingway's novel is Jake Barnes, an American World War I veteran whose combat wounds have caused him to be impotent. Rather than return home, Barnes remains in Europe with compatriots in Paris and Spain.  Jake's wounds symbolize the lostness of postwar Europe.  They figuratively and literally prevents him from expressing his romantic love for Lady Brett Ashley in a conventional way.  

The anti-war Dadaists had reacted to the senseless slaughter of World War I with a unique artistic style - one that rejected reason, rationality, and order of the emerging capitalist society, and instead favored chaos, nonsense, and anti-bourgeois sentiment.  In a similar way, the post WWI modernist writers - such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Eliot, and others - rejected the excesses of Victorian prose and the cultural values that had led to the war.  Their style of writing is epitomized in Hemingway's spare unadorned prose, which some have noted is characterized as much by what is left out as what the words on the page do say.

Many regard The Sun Also Rises as Hemingway's portrait of  the so-called Lost Generation.  The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer relevant in the postwar world and because of its spiritual alienation from a United States that seemed to its members to be hopelessly provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren.  

Existentialists believe that we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives, without relying on external authorities.  World War I was perhaps the most senseless war of all time, the carnage that it created prepared the ground for just such a belief.  With traditional Western values in disrepute and affected by a generational existential angst, the characters of Hemingway's novel turn to "experience" as a way to live.   Early in the story, the writer Robert Cohn asks Jake, "Don't you ever get the feeling that your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived half the time you have to live already?"  Weary of drinking and carousing in Paris' cafes, the group of expatriates travel to the festival of the running of the bulls in Pamplona in Spain, an extreme experience by any standard.  

Besides this theme of the importance of direct experience, expressed to some degree by Hemingway's choice of the first-person perspective, the novel also stresses the importance of authenticity, another existentialist value.  Indeed, the American academic, poet, and folk singer H.R. Stoneback considered that the central question posed by the novel is one of authenticity: "Given our mortality, the evanescent transience of life, how do we live our lives authentically and passionately every day of the short time we have?”

When his friend Robert Cohn tries to convince Jake to go with him to South America, Jake realizes that Robert's desire to see "real South Americans" he knows that Cohn does not really want to go to South America to see the real South Americans. He wants to go there because he read about those “real” South Americans in a book, which has so influenced him that he would likely fail to see the real South Americans even if he took the trip to South America.  Jake is trying to make the point that Cohn does not have to go to South America to start living his life. He could do that right there in Paris.  

As a result of his wounds, Jake has developed a philosophical outlook that precludes the kind of romantic notions that Cohn entertains. That philosophical outlook has led him to aficion, a passionate devotion and deep understanding of bull-fighting.  Montoya, the inn-keeper in Pamplona, acknowledges the special nature of Jake's aficion.  Several times, in response to Jake's assertion that this friend Bill was also a real aficionado, Montoya says "But he's not aficionado like you are."

But Jake's aficion eventually extends beyond the bullring, and the term itself could be defined as a passionate devotion to the authentic.   Jake’s wound, the wound that makes him think, also makes him realize that there is such a thing as thinking too much. This helps him realize the importance of passion, or aficion, and leads to his recognition and appreciation of the authentic.

Sources: A Thematic Study of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea; National Archives, "Hemingway on War and its Aftermath"; Lost Generation | Definition, Writers, Characteristics, Books, & Facts | Britannica; Ernest Hemingway: 20th Century Modernist and Expatriate – PopMeC research blog (hypotheses.org); Lost Generation | Definition, Writers, Characteristics, Books, & Facts | Britannica https://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2011/ernest-hemingway-and-the-geography-of-memory/; Authenticity and love in "The Sun Also Rises" and "On the Road" - Nate Botsis University of Nevada, Las Vegas (2008, UNLV University Libraries)

Jesus Christ, the Radical

POSTED MARCH 1, 2023

The Chosen

On Christmas Eve 2017, the first episode of a new series about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, The Chosen,  aired.  The series is now in its third season and playing to rave reviews on Netflix.  

On Christmas Eve 2020, Peter Wehner wrote a New York Times op-ed, "The Forgotten Radicalism of Jesus Christ" [link below], referencing the show.  The radicalism that Wehner references is one of inclusiveness.  The hallmark of Jesus’s ministry was  "intimacy with and the inclusion of the unwanted and the outcast, men and women living in the shadow of society, more likely to be dismissed than noticed, more likely to be mocked than revered." 

For examples of this radicalism of inclusiveness, Wehner uses the calling of Matthew, a tax collector, to be an apostle, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. On the last, he writes: 

"This story is a striking example of Jesus’ rejection of conventional religious and cultural thinking — in this case because Jesus, a man, was talking earnestly to a woman in a world in which women were often demeaned and treated as second-class citizens; and because Jesus, a Jew, was talking to a Samaritan, who were despised by the Jews for reasons going back centuries."

Surrender

Published late last year, Bono's memoir Surrender caused a number of commentators to speak of Bono's Christian beliefs.  In an Atlantic article about Bono, U2's front man and lead singer, the cultural and political commentator David Brooks writes about the conversion of three of the band members to what Brooks calls a "radical" Christianity.  For both Brooks and Bono, the radical Christ was all about taking care of the vulnerable and marginalized. [link below]

"We've all inherited a certain culture-war narrative over the past 50 years.  Rock and roll is on one side, along with sex, drugs, and liberation.  Religion is on the other side, along with judgmentalism, sexual repression, and deference to authority.  But for Bono, Mullen, and Evans ["The Edge"] - the U2 members who became and remain Christians - punk rock and the radical Christ are on the same team...The three of them embraced a faith that simply bypassed 2,000 years of religious civilization and returned straight to Jesus: the helpless baby who was born on a bed of straw and shit; the wandering troubadour who put the poor, the marginalized, and the ailing at the center of his gaze; the rebel outsider who confronted the power structures of his society and took them all on at once."

"Putting the poor, the marginalized, and the ailing at the center of his gaze" is radical both in the sense of a return to the roots of Christ's message and in the radical nature of that message.  Anyone who has given the Gospels an honest reading can see the  message as clear as day.  Besides those noted by Wehner, numerous other passages testify to this element of Jesus' teachings.  Among the most radical of these teachings are those on forgiveness, on love of enemies, and on caring for the "least ones"

Forgiveness: "You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’  But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you."

Love of enemies: "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Caring for these "least ones":  Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’  He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’

Today many Christians appear to have forgotten the original message.  In Wehner's words, "First-century Christians weren’t prepared for what a truly radical and radically inclusive figure Jesus was, and neither are today’s Christians"; in Brooks', "This alternative form of Christianity is something, say, that American evangelicals could have adopted. But mostly they did not."

Bono is one who has not forgotten the original message.  He is the cofounder of of ONE, a global campaign and advocacy organization with more than 9 million members committed to taking action to end extreme poverty.  He is also the cofounder of (RED) which partners with the world’s most iconic brands to raise public awareness about and corporate contributions for the AIDS crisis.

As part of his work with ONE, Bono has lobbied heads of state and members of legislatures all around the world. This lobbying, combined with the work of ONE’s grassroots membership has helped to ensure the passage and funding of government policies and programs that have helped to save tens of millions of lives over the past 10 years.  To date, (RED) has generated more than $465 million for AIDS treatment and prevention in Africa through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

HuffPost's collection of some of Bono's words on his search for God are in the link below.

On God's Side

"Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The passage from Matthew 25 on caring for "these least ones"  is often referred to as "The Judgment of Nations,"  and I'll close with the comments of another radical Christian - Jim Wallis , an evangelical preacher, religious writer and social activist.  In his book On God's Side, Wallis discusses the Judgment of Nations, one of the few places where Jesus makes a point of saying who better be watching their backs at the Last Judgment. 

Wallis writes: 

"Jesus, unlike our religious institutions, continually speaks out against judgmentalism. But the only time Jesus is judgmental himself is on the subject of the poor." The condemned, the goats, are shocked by what Jesus will say to them at the Last Judgment. "When did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or without clothes, or a stranger, or sick, or in prison?" He will answer them, "Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me." 

Wallis then makes two particular points. The first is that nations, as well as individuals, are being judged. This is about collective as well as individual decisions about who or what is most important. The second is that "Christ's judgment here is not about having the wrong doctrine or theology; it's not about sexual misdeeds, or any other personal sin or failure. The everlasting judgment here is based on how we have treated the poorest and most vulnerable in our midst and in the world...[The] good or ill we have done to them [is]...the moral equivalent of how we have treated him."

The Religious Left (Sep 23, 2020)

Resistance

POSTED FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Resistance, especially political resistance, has been a continuing theme for those who value freedom and those who oppose oppression.  The eponymous French Resistance to the Nazi Occupation in World War II is one of the more well-known; the ongoing Palestinian resistance to the Israeli Occupation is one of the longest running; and Black Resistance is the theme for Black History Month 2023.  

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is hosting an array of events, programs and tours honoring Black Resistance, and writes, “By resisting, African Americans continue to mobilize resources and shape social movements to create a space for Black Americans to thrive. We invite everyone to join us in exploring the histories of Black freedom movements—from slavery and abolition to other ongoing struggles for civil and human rights." 

Resistance takes forms other than political - for example, resisting psychologically difficult circumstances or in appeals to our higher values: "resist hate", "resist temptation" to greed and selfishness, to do wrong or to harm others.  Resistance is standing up to authority when they are wrong.  Resistance is speaking truth to power.  Resistance is refusing to break under pressure.  Resistance is courage in action.

Sources: UShistory.org,  KSBY

The philosophy of John Steinbeck

POSTED JANUARY 19, 2023

As philosophy studies became more abstruse and abstract in the twentieth century, people absorbed, often subconsciously, the ideas of their countries' great writers, which were often brought to a wider audience in films based on their books.  At the turning of the twentieth century, three American Nobel-Prize-winning authors were born.  Through their books, these writers - William Faulkner (1897-1962), Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) and John Steinbeck  (1902-1968) - would have a great influence on American culture and provide insight into America's national character.  Although the authors probably would have detested the term, "the philosophies" underlying their works would impact American society through much of the twentieth century.

"The lies we tell about our duty and our purposes, the meaningless words of science and philosophy, are walls that topple before a bewildered little ‘why’." - John Steinbeck

Somewhat ironically, John Steinbeck is the most philosophical of the bunch.  Academic papers on the subject of Steinbeck's philosophy abound, and several books explore this subject, including The Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck (2005) and Reclaiming John Steinbeck: Writing for the Future of Humanity (2021).   In this post, we'll explore just a few of these ideas.

The Duty to Share: Empathy for the Dispossessed and the Migrant

Steinbeck is best known for his works set during the Great Depression, particularly those that focused on migrant workers. The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, two of his most well-known works, are set in this time period.  Both these novels showed the struggles of the most marginalized in a time of great hardship.  Both were made into films.

Of Mice and Men narrates the experiences of two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States.   Steinbeck won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath - his empathetic depictions of an Oklahoma family, driven off their farm by the poverty and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl. The family joins the westward migration to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression. 

In both books, Steinbeck celebrates "the modest aspirations of average men and women...[seeking] to win for themselves, by way of work and democratic participation, a decent life." But not just for themselves.  "Steinbeck repeatedly stresses that whenever ordinary folks satisfy their basic needs, their next impulse is to share their goods with their marginalized fellows."  

Today migrants still seek an escape from poverty and violence as they make their way to our southern borders, and there are almost 600,000 homeless people in the United States.  The misfortunes that drove them here are unknown and unacknowledged, for today's migrants and homeless have no John Steinbeck to bring attention to their dire situation.  

Although America has improved its social safety net and strengthened its banking regulations, much of what John Steinbeck taught us about the dispossessed and the migrant is still relevant today.  [link below]  And hopefully what he had to say about our duty to share will inspire those still reluctant to do so.

The Free-Thinking and Independent Individual

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about."  - John Steinbeck, East of Eden

John Steinbeck was filled with awe of the human spirit, the vast independence and will of a man or woman with a goal in mind - be it to find a home, support a family, or simply to survive - in the face of great obstacles.  The mid-twentieth century was notable not only for the Great Depression but also for the rise of modern totalitarian ideologies.  Fascism and Nazism were on the rise for much of Steinbeck's life, and, when their power had waned, Stalinist Russia was putting an authoritarian stamp on Marxist concepts.  

An apparent admirer of the ancient Skeptics, Steinbeck was an advocate for what we now call critical-thinking.  Although the term "critical thinking" has its roots in the mid-late 20th century, this is a concept that has been developing for the past 2,500 years.  

Why critical thinking is important and how to improve it (Sep 2, 2020)

A simple definition of critical thinking is that it is “deliberately and systematically processing information so that you can make better decisions and generally understand things better.” Critical thinking is the opposite of irrational thinking and will help overcome cognitive biases such as the zero-sum bias ("I win, you lose; you win/I lose”), catastrophic thinking (ruminating about irrational worst case outcomes), and confirmation bias (people are prone to believe what they want to believe).

In a Post-Truth era with misinformation spewing uncontrollably from social media, this is a vital skill for our times.  Asking questions, questioning assumptions and reasoning logically are three ways to improve our critical thinking.  For more on this important skill, see link below.

"It is what it is"

The most complex of John Steinbeck's ideas is what has been dubbed "is" thinking, or in the terminology of philosophers, non-teleological thinking. It is his refutation of the Western compulsion for teleological thinking — the tendency to explain things in terms of the purpose they serve, and his embrace of the Eastern notion of being: the idea that everything just is and any fragment of it, any one thing examined by itself, is simply because it is.  

Non-teleological thinking, "is" thinking, concerns itself primarily not with what should be, or could be, or might be, but rather with what actually "is"—attempting at most to answer the already sufficiently difficult questions what or how, instead of why.   Science - the art of observation without interpretation, of meeting reality on its own impartial terms - is the premier example of non-teleological thinking.  And it is in The Log from the Sea of Cortez, an account of his exploration of the ecosystem in the Gulf of California with marine biologist Ed Ricketts that Steinbeck expands on the concept.  

Although he speaks of parallels to Western philosophical ideas - "to the triangle, to the Christian ideas of trinity, to Hegel’s dialectic, and to Swedenborg’s metaphysic of divine love (feeling) and divine wisdom (thinking)" - I find this quote from The Log from the Sea of Cortez also suggestive of the yin and yang of Eastern philosophy:

"The non-teleological picture… goes beyond blame or cause. And the non-causal or non-blaming viewpoint… arises emergently from the union of two opposing viewpoints, such as those of physical and spiritual teleologies, especially if there is conflict as to causation between the two or within either. The new viewpoint very frequently sheds light over a larger picture, providing a key which may unlock levels not accessible to either of the teleological viewpoints." 

Among its many meanings, the yin yang symbol [link below] represents the interconnectedness of the world, particularly the natural world - a concept that John Steinbeck wholeheartedly subscribed to.

This is just a brief sampling of the philosophical concepts in John Steinbeck's works.  Among the others: utilitarianism (the greatest good and happiness for the greatest number),  the concept of the Phalanx (people act differently when in a group than they would as individuals), hope as an adaptive trait of the human species, and the recognition that we are all a "piece of a great big soul."

Sources: The Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck, Stephen K. George, ed., 2005, Scarecrow Press Inc.; Wikipedia; Steinbeck in the Schools;  College Info Geek, The Marginalian, 

Erich Fromm on Freedom

POSTED NOVEMBER 15, 2022

Erich Fromm: creating a sane society and the art of loving

POSTED DECEMBER 6, 2022

Erich Fromm is widely regarded as one of the most important psychoanalysts of the 20th century. He had a major influence on humanistic psychology, which emphasizes looking at the whole individual and stresses concepts such as free will, self-efficacy, and self-actualization.  

In an earlier post, we examined Fromm's observation that escaping from an essential part of our human nature (namely, our freedom) divorces us from our true nature and our true selves.  This, in turn, leads to alienation and an alienated society.  He presents his answer to man's existential dilemma in two of his greatest works, The Sane Society and The Art of Loving.

The Sane Society

In The Sane Society (1955), Fromm argues that modern man has become alienated and estranged from himself within consumer-oriented industrial society. He argues that Western societies, particularly the United States, had become wealthier than ever before, but this had not resulted in increased happiness: “In spite of increasing production and comfort, man loses more and more the sense of self, feels that his life is meaningless, even though such a feeling is largely unconscious."  Our particular escape from freedom was into an acquisitive consumerism, which made behaviors like greed and a desire for power and control seem normal.  Fromm believed our collective worship of more goods, produced at bigger volume, at faster rates to be a form of regimented mass insanity.   

Attempts at building a healthy* society have often failed because they emphasized just a single aspect of what is needed to the exclusion of the others.  Fromm gives several examples of great reform movements that failed to achieve the ideal society: 

Christianity has preached spiritual renewal , neglecting the changes in the social order without which spiritual renewal remains ineffective for the majority of people. The Age of Enlightenment has postulated as the highest norms independent judgment and reason [and preached political equality] without seeing that political equality could not lead [to a brotherhood of man unless] accompanied by a fundamental change in social-economic organization. Socialism, and especially Marxism, has stressed the necessity for social and economic changes, and neglected the inner change in human beings, without which economic change can never lead to the "good society."

Fromm concludes that, since the various aspects are interrelated, sanity and mental health and a "sane society" can be attained only by "simultaneous changes in the sphere of industrial and political organization, of spiritual and philosophical orientation, of character structure, and of cultural activities."

For Fromm, another necessary condition for building a sane society is to take into account the fundamental nature of mankind.  Specifically, man's self-awareness had torn him away from the primary union with nature, where instinct, not free will, ruled. Thus the "problem of human existence": 

"Having at the same time imagination and reason, he is aware of his aloneness and separateness; of his powerlessness and ignorance; of the accidentalness of his birth and of his death.  He could not face this state of being for a second if he could not find new ties with his fellow man which replaces the old ones, regulated by instincts...The necessity to unite with other living beings, to be related to them, is an imperative need on the fulfillment of which man's sanity depends.  This need is behind all phenomena which constitute the whole gamut of intimate human relations, of all passions which are called love in the broadest sense of the word."

In a foreshadowing of his The Art of Loving, Fromm talks about the human condition and writes:

There is only one passion which satisfies man's need to unite himself with the world, and to acquire at the same time a sense of integrity and individuality, and this is love.  Love is union with somebody, or something outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.  It is an experience of sharing, of communion, which permits the full unfolding of one's own inner activity.

On the level of society, Fromm’s answer was somewhat utopian: a sane society would come about when mass automated consumerist society devolved into small communities guided by what he called “humanistic communitarian socialism.”  Fromm's sane society thus would be oriented towards human beings - not to a powerful State or the Market; recognize our proper place in the cosmos - i.e., as part of the natural world not as its lord and master; organized in small, relatively self-sufficient, self-governing communities; and characterized not merely by the redistribution of wealth but by taking responsibility for the welfare of everyone else in your small community. 

Utopian as it sounds in 21st century America, we can still exercise our human freedom to put elements into practice in our daily lives by saying "no" to our absorption into a consumerist, market-driven culture and "no" to dehumanizing aspects of our work lives; by forming our own small communities of like-minded people; by taking responsibility for the welfare of everyone else in that small community as well as those outside it, and by acknowledging our proper place in the natural world - united with it and as its caretakers.

The Art of Loving

A year after The Sane Society, Erich Fromm provided his answer to what we must do on a personal level to move towards a sane society in his most famous work, The Art of Loving.  

What Fromm calls "automaton conformity" is a kind of "escape from freedom" particularly suited to our modern, Western societies.  Conformity is also a way of covering over the loneliness experienced by many.  In the Western world, people often use conformity to feel a sense of belonging. People have an urge to fit in with their peers and are afraid of being alone. They try to conform by dressing like other people, going along with popular ideas, and following cultural customs. The majority of the population doesn’t realize that they’re doing this because they don’t know why they do it in the first place; these behaviors seem natural to them.

The best way for modern man to overcome loneliness and anxiety is through love. People seek connections with others to make the uncertainty of the future more bearable. Love can be found in platonic, familial, or romantic relationships, and Fromm explores all these forms of love and more, including the concept of self-love.  According to Fromm, loving oneself is quite different from arrogance, conceit or egocentrism. Loving oneself means caring about oneself, taking responsibility for oneself, respecting oneself, and knowing oneself (e.g. being realistic and honest about one's strengths and weaknesses). In order to be able to truly love another person, one needs first to love oneself in this way.

Erich Fromm believed that the main, perhaps the only, way to solve the problem of the human existential dilemma was the love exhibited in interpersonal relationships.  He considered the union and the merging of a soul with a second soul the most intense aspiration of man, the most basic desire, and the power that binds the human race as a whole and in its various groups. As he states, "Without love humanity could not exist even one day."  The hallmarks of what Fromm true love are: caring, responsibility, respect, and knowing the object of love.  The engagement with the other in true love has no sadistic possessiveness or masochistic fusion, but a spontaneous approval of the other.  From this true love, the inner distress of the feeling of alienation and loneliness can be resolved.

As important as it is to society's and to an individual's well-being, this true love is not a natural occurrence; instead, it’s something that must be learned and practiced.  This is the key concept that Fromm presents in The Art of Loving.   

Fromm states that there "is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hope and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly as love." He contends that this is primarily due to two things: the attitude of many who see the "problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving", and the neglect of love as an art form.  To master love requires more than learning the theory and implementing the practice.  Indeed, "the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art".  Though most people crave love, their desire for success, prestige, money, and power in modern capitalist society relegates love to being of lesser importance and that this is why most people fail to truly love others.

In The Art of Loving, Fromm describes the characteristics necessary to improve the practical capacity of love.  A loving person needs discipline, concentration and sensitivity to himself and his body.**  He also needs to rise above narcissism, the state in which a person perceives the outside world as existing only as a tool for satisfying his needs and desires. This requires the ability to think objectively, to perceive things in the world as they really are, and humility, a person's recognition that he is not omnipotent and omniscient. Finally, this process requires faith, not in the sense of a religious belief, but a state of mind in which the person trusts the truths of the things he perceives. 

Erich Fromm's life's work explored the interaction between psychology and society.  He presented the view that an understanding of basic human needs was essential to the understanding of society and mankind itself, and he argued that social systems make it difficult or impossible to satisfy the different needs at one time, thus creating both individual psychological and wider societal conflicts.  On the individual level, he believed that the main, perhaps the only, way to solve the problem of the human existential dilemma was the love exhibited in interpersonal relationships.  

It's been more than 60 years since this titan of 20th century psychology put forward his thoughts on creating a healthy society and addressing the alienation and  loneliness in the industrialized world.  They are just as relevant today as then.

Notes

*The Latin root of the word sanity is sanitas (health) derived from sanus (healthy).

**One of the practices Fromm offers to improve these abilities is meditation. Some posts on the subject: Mindfulness Exercises, Mindfulness Made Simple, Walking to clear the mind and spirit, Stilling the Mind

Sources: The Sane Society (Erich Fromm, 1955), The Art of Loving (Erich Fromm, 1956), Britannica,  Cultural Studies Now, Counterpunch, Wikipedia, Allen Cheng, Very Well Mind

Maria Popova: 16 Life-Learnings

POSTED OCTOBER 25, 2022

Maria Popova is one of my favorite essayists.  For about a decade, I've been following her work in Brain Pickings which she recently (and most fortunately) renamed The Marginalian.  The 38-year-old Bulgarian-born writer has been blogging for 16 years, and she never disappoints.  

One of my early posts on What in the World? was Maria Popova: Ten Learnings, a listing of the core beliefs that inform her blog.  Sunday was the 16th anniversary of Brain Pickings/The Marginalian, and Maria Popova has added to her list of life-learnings, "reflections on keeping the soul* intact and alive and worthy of itself."  

In the article linked below, she offers a summarizing paragraph for each** as well as links to her favorite posts.  If you haven't yet discovered Maria Popova, it is a good introduction to her work.  

Here then are Maria's 16 Life-Learnings.  Her summary paragraphs are all superb but, just so I had something to do for this post, I've added a comment, quote, or link to a What in the World? post to each of her learnings.

1. Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind. 

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" - John Maynard Keynes

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change,  for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.” - Marcus Aurelius

2. Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone. 

Ikigai - "why you get up in the morning"

3. Be generous. 

Mattering: the healing power of making someone feel strong

“That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.” ― Simone de Beauvoir

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." - Simone Weil

4. Build pockets of stillness into your life. Most important, sleep. 

Walking to clear the mind and spirit

What to think about before you sleep

5. When people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them. 

"You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you." - Maria Popova

6. Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity. 

Our Awesome World: Recapturing a "Childlike Sense of Wonder"

7. Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time. 

“Good things take time, as they should. We shouldn’t expect good things to happen overnight. Actually, getting something too easily or too soon can cheapen the outcome.” — John Wooden 

8. Seek out what magnifies your spirit. 

Authors, artists, composers, ideas, books, paintings, musical pieces, untouched nature, cultivated gardens, the night sky, sunset, sunrise - when you find something that takes you out of your self, that can raise your spirits..."Find them, hold on to them, and visit them often."

Touching the Sublime - Beethoven's "Benedictus"

9. Don’t be afraid to be an idealist.

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one 

-  John Lennon, "Imagine"

“It is interesting that we call something good a “dream,” but being called a “dreamer” is somewhat of a putdown.  Without dreamers, no dream would ever be given reality, and we would live in a very small and shallow world.  If you are a secret dreamer, it’s your time to announce yourself.” - Vera Nazarian

10. Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively.

"Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes'.” - Stephen Colbert

11. Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality.

Why critical thinking is important and three ways to improve it

12. There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.

“Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place."  - R. Buckminster Fuller

13. In any bond of depth and significance, forgive, forgive, forgive. And then forgive again.

Soul Values: Peace of Mind and Spirit

14. Choose joy. 

Mary Oliver "chose to live life and be dazzled by it"

"We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” —Joseph Campbell

15. Outgrow yourself.

Soul Values: Contemplation

16. Unself. 

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." - Walt Whitman

"The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness...“Good is a transcendent reality” means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is." - Iris Murdoch 

*In another post, she describes "soul" simply as "as shorthand for the seismic core of personhood from which our beliefs, our values, and our actions radiate." 

**She follows this format for 14 of the 16 learnings. For the last two, she links to a post.   

Teilhard de Chardin and the evolution of the universe

POSTED OCTOBER 6, 2022

“The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.”

― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955) was a French priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher.  The author of several influential theological and philosophical books and a committed evolutionist, Teilhard often was in conflict with the institutional church of the early 20th century.   In 1962, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned several of Teilhard's works based on their alleged ambiguities and doctrinal errors.   Shortly thereafter, prominent clerics mounted a strong theological defense of Teilhard's works. Over the ensuing decades, theologians and prelates (including leading cardinals, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis) all wrote approvingly of Teilhard's ideas.

Teilhard was among the first to explore the future of human evolution. He advocates both biotechnologies and intelligence technologies. He discusses the emergence of a global computation - communication system (and is said by some to have been the first to have envisioned the Internet). He advocates the development of a global society. He is almost surely the first to discuss the acceleration of technological progress to a Singularity in which human intelligence will become super-intelligence. He discusses the spread of human intelligence into the universe and its amplification into a cosmic-intelligence. 

There is a striking similarity between Teilhard's evolutionary stages and those of the American futurist Ray Kurzweil's theory of the Singularity.  In 1947, Teilhard developed, with Soviet biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, the idea of the Noosphere, a sphere of thought enveloping the Earth.  The word comes from the Greek noos (mind) and sphaira (sphere).  The Noosphere is the third stage of Earth’s development, after the geosphere (think rocks, water, and air) and the biosphere (all living things).  The Noosphere can be seen as the rise of a planetary superorganism integrating all geological, biological, human, and technological activities into a new level of planetary functioning.  

Where Kurzweil saw information as the ordering principle for evolution, Teilhard saw consciousness, the mind, interpersonal relationships, and love as the drivers.  Where Kurzweil saw a Singularity achieved by thinking machines, Teilhard saw a humankind evolving beyond its current limitations.  Where Kurzweil saw the universe as having an "intelligent destiny", Teilhard saw everything in the universe spiraling toward a final point of unification, which he termed "the Omega Point".

The path to the Omega Point, like the path to the Singularity, is evolutionary in nature. In his masterwork, The Phenomenon of Man, a personal attempt to create a new Christianity in which science and theology coexist, Teilhard lays out his theory.  Written during the 1920's and 1930's, its publication was prohibited during his lifetime by the Jesuit order to which he belonged.  Finally published in 1955, The Phenomenon of Man has emerged as a significant influence on writers in the human potential and personal development fields because of its ideas about mental and spiritual evolution.

For Teilhard, the ever increasing complexity and order that mark evolution go beyond the physical. From the living cell to the sentient animal, the process of evolution leads to greater consciousness. In time, the emergence of Homo sapiens begins a new age, as the power acquired by consciousness to turn in upon itself raises mankind to a new sphere. Borrowing the English evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley's expression, Teilhard describes humankind as “evolution becoming conscious of itself.”

In Teilhard's conception of the evolution of our species, a collective identity begins to develop as trade and the transmission of ideas increases. Knowledge accumulates and is transmitted in increasing levels of depth and complexity. This leads to a further augmentation of consciousness and the emergence of a thinking layer that envelops the Earth, the "noosphere", the collective consciousness of humanity, the networks of thought and emotion in which all are immersed.

The development of science and technology causes an expansion of the human sphere of influence, allowing a person to be simultaneously present in every corner of the world. Teilhard argues that humanity has thus become cosmopolitan, stretching a single organized membrane over the Earth.

In Teilhard's view, evolution will culminate in the Omega Point, a sort of supreme consciousness. Layers of consciousness will converge in the Omega, fusing and consuming them in itself. The concentration of a conscious universe will reassemble in itself all consciousnesses as well as all that we are conscious of.  In his introduction to The Phenomenon of Man, Julian Huxley wrote that Teilhard implies that we should consider inter-thinking humanity as a new type of organism, whose destiny it is to realize new possibilities for evolving life on this planet.

Although he had his disputes with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, Teilhard never left the priesthood or the Church.  Teilhard's Omega Point Theory is thus deeply Christian as well as transhumanist*.  For Teilhard, the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is “God from God”, “Light from Light”, “True God from true God”, and “through him all things were made”. 

Note: 

*Transhumanism is the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.

Sources: Butler-Bowdon, PhilPapers, Wikipedia, Spiritual Life

"Learn as if you were to live forever"

POSTED SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

In his best-seller from the 1980's, All I Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum gets it half-right.  Parents and teachers have much to impart in our early years.  They guide us through the first four stages of Erikson's eight stages of human development, and the importance of their teaching and influence cannot be overstressed.  Fulghum's point was maybe not that we learn everything we need by age 5 or 6, but that we learn so much that is important by then...and that the world would be a better place if we remembered and acted on these lessons from childhood: share everything, play fair, don't hit...The complete list is in the link below. 

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." - Gandhi

As in most things, Gandhi gets it right.  Learning is a lifelong process.  Education doesn't stop when we graduate.  There is still so much that we don't know, so much that could help us live a more interesting, more fulfilling life.  Finding time to do so can be a challenge but ultimately rewarding.

At some point after leaving school, we need to embark on our own journey towards knowledge and, hopefully and eventually, wisdom.  This may involve developing new skills, delving more deeply into something we love, learning about something we would like to learn more about, or finding and practicing a creative activity.  If we have had the advantages of good parenting and good education, we may approach this journey with enthusiasm, finding that, as Plutarch said, "the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."

With our busy lives, we often feel that there is no time for anything else, let alone for learning something new.  But we all have at least a couple of hours a day to do what we want and how we spend that free time can make a difference.  Over the past few decades, a practice known as the "5-hour rule" has gained a lot of attention.

One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, is an extraordinary example of a lifelong learner.   At the age of 10, he left formal schooling to become an apprentice to his father. As a teenager, he showed no particular talent or aptitude aside from his love of books.  When he died a little over half a century later, he was America's most respected statesman, its most famous inventor, a prolific author, and a successful entrepreneur.  

What happened between those two points in time?  Throughout his adult life, Franklin would rise early to read and write, devoting an hour each day specifically to learning something new.  He had invented the so-called "5-hour rule".  Today, Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates all employ some version of the 5-hour rule. The idea is that devoting an hour of your day to learning exercises the mind, improves your skills, and develops a habit of discipline. 

So, how can you make the most out of the 5-hour rule?  Some tips from the experts:

1) Set aside time in your day for deliberate learning.

2) Plan your learning.  What is it that you want to learn?  Do you have a date by which you would like to accomplish this? Or is it more free form, taking you wherever knowledge leads.

3) Learn however you can.  In Franklin's time, there were books.  Today we have internet articles, YouTube videos, audio books, podcasts and still, of course,  books.  Reading has always been a great way to learn, but there are many other ways to learn now.

4) Experiment to find what time and methods work best for you.  Don't be afraid of "failure." In his book Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, Tim Harford says success means we “first, seek out new ideas and try new things; second, when trying something new, do it on a scale where failure is survivable; third, seek out feedback and learn from your mistakes as you go along.” 

5) Reflect on what you've learned.  There are many ways to reflect. For some, it might mean a diary, journal, or ten minutes spent simply thinking. For others, it could mean talking things over with someone else, or "unpacking*" the larger ideas so that they may be more easily understood.

Getting started with the 5-hour rule does not have to be a complicated process. It could be as simple as reading a book a week, like Bill Gates does.  In a 2016 New York Times interview, Gates said, "Reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding."  Looking for something to read? This post has some suggestions in the sidebar: 

Smarter, kinder, calmer: why we should read every day (May 12, 2021)

Note: *Unpacking is the process of systematically deconstructing a “big idea” into the set of smaller ideas needed to understand the core concept.

Sources: Why Constant Learners All Embrace the 5-Hour Rule | Inc.com , The 5-hour rule: How to turn a wasted day into a successful one - Big Think , Benjamin Franklin’s 5 hour rule | The Secret's in the Sauce (dikraniskenderian.blog) 

Ignacio Martín-Baró and Liberation Psychology

POSTED AUGUST 22, 2022

Convinced that traditional psychological approaches were inadequate for marginalized and oppressed people, Ignacio Martín-Baró launched the liberation psychology movement in the 1980's.   In contrast to mainstream psychology, liberation psychology challenges adjustment to an unjust societal status quo and  attempts to help demoralized people regain the energy necessary to change it for the better.

"Trauma must be understood in terms of the relationship between the individual and the society." - Ignacio Martín-Baró

Social psychology was a reaction to the psychoanalytic and behaviorist approaches that had dominated psychology in the 19th and the early 20th century.  While psychoanalysts and behaviorists explained human behavior by focusing on the individual, social psychologists such as Kurt Levin sought to understand human behavior in the context of the various influences at play both within the minds of the individuals and within their environment.  

Social psychologists research areas such as group behavior, social perception, leadership, nonverbal behavior, conformity, aggression, and prejudice.  "What shapes our attitudes?", "Why are some people such great leaders?", "How does prejudice develop, and how can we overcome it?"  are just a few of the questions of interest in social psychology. 

As their field developed through the mid-twentieth century, social psychologists realized that not only could their work aid individuals but also bring about positive change in societies.  One of those taking the findings of social psychology to the next level was the Spanish Salvadoran scholar, psychologist, philosopher and Jesuit priest, Ignacio Martín-Baró.  

Born in Spain in 1942, he joined the Jesuit order when he was 17.  After a decade of study in Spain and Latin America, he was ordained a priest in 1970.  Among the formative influences during his education and early years as a priest were his correspondence with the psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl* and his work as a clergyman in the dense jungles of El Choco with Afro-Colombian communities**.  

After ordination, he was sent to Central America where he continued to study philosophy, theology, and psychology, and eventually settled down in El Salvador.  At about the same time that Ignacio Martín-Baró was studying in Central America, liberation theology was gaining prominence across Catholic Latin America.  

The birth of the liberation theology movement is usually dated to the second Latin American Bishops’ Conference, which was held in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968. At this conference the attending bishops issued a document affirming the rights of the poor and asserting that industrialized nations enriched themselves at the expense of developing countries.  Because of their insistence that ministry should include involvement in the political struggle of the poor against wealthy elites, liberation theologians were often criticized by those elites as well as by political and religious conservatives. Perhaps no quote better sums up this reaction to liberation theology than that of Dom Hélder Câmara, a Brazilian Archbishop during the time of the dictatorship:

“When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist."

Father Martín-Baró was well aware of the liberation theology movement.  He was also a psychologist who was becoming convinced of the inadequacy of traditional psychology for oppressed and marginalized people.  After witnessing the social injustice and violence endemic to El Salvador in the 1980's, Ignacio Martín-Baró decided that psychologists needed to be more aware of of how living within a difficult context affects mental health, and that they should help the society that they are studying to transcend its history of oppression.  In the mid-1980's, he launched the branch of liberation psychology. 

Liberation psychologists believed that many traditional psychology studies, based as they were on artificial settings in high income countries, were inadequate and failed to offer practical solutions to social problems afflicting the disadvantaged and oppressed.  Traditional psychology tended to ignore qualities such as hope, courage and commitment, and seemed focused on maximizing pleasure rather than considering how to awaken and drive the desire for justice and freedom. 

In contrast to mainstream psychology, liberation psychology challenges adjustment to an unjust societal status quo and energizes oppressed people to resist injustices. It attempts to help subjugated and demoralized people regain the energy necessary to recover the power that they have handed over to illegitimate authorities.

Practitioners of liberation psychology use a variety of methods to achieve these goals. These include participatory action research*** and arts-based methods, as well as many tools from mainstream psychology with the results assessed and where necessary re-purposed or re-worked on the basis of the critique from those oppressed and excluded “others”.

Writings for a Liberation Psychology is a collection that captures several decades of Ignacio Martín-Baró's thoughts.  It addresses psychology as an instrument of war and political manipulation,  the role of religion in psychological warfare, and the impact of trauma and violence on mental health.  He studied areas where severe inequalities had led to relentless poverty and social exclusion, as well as the psychological effects of civil war, oppression and dictatorship.  This collection of Martín-Baró's thoughts and studies was published posthumously in 1994.

Posthumously because on November 16, 1989, in El Salvador, Ignacio Martin-Baró, together with five Jesuit colleagues, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter, were forced into a courtyard on the campus of Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas, where they were then murdered by the Salvadoran government’s elite Atlacatl Battalion, a “counter-insurgency unit” created at the US Army’s School of the Americas in 1980.  Truth Out's article on the 25th anniversary of Ignacio Martin-Baró's assassination is linked below.****

Our Awesome World: Recapturing a "Childlike Sense of Wonder"

POSTED APRIL 4, 2022

Back to Nature

POSTED MARCH 17, 2022