Church of the Blessed Life

It's all well and good to guilt people into a more sustainable lifestyle; and perhaps it is even inspiring to discuss a way of life that is fulfilling and integrated. However, the realityis that it is extraordinarily frustrating and taxing to attempt to swim against the current of U.S. consumerism; it feels impossible for one individual to do it--like swimming against the rapids. And, after all, what difference can one individual really make, in the long run? The reality is that we need community. We need local support and networks of people committed to living the blessed life.

How about the church?

It's an intriguing time in the life of the church. Most churches are having a hard time maintaining enthusiasm among the young, particularly singles. The numbers I have seen show that young folks are leaving the churches in a mass exodus, of sorts, although most still describe themselves as spiritual or religious in some way.

Hhhhmmm....what about the church....

Here's the positive thing. Churches are already set up as support groups for local individuals. This is particularly true of "neighborhood churches" that are located in densely populated areas (where people actually live!), allowing people to be within walking distance of the building.

Furthermore, if churches want to imitate their founding member (and subsequent disciples and apostles), which seems to be a common theme among churches, then they will already have an interest in creating a supportive community for living an alternative lifestyle--this could be lifestyle in alternative to the consumeristic matrix within which the greater Western world now participates.

Just imagine it, my friend. (Personally, I have a difficult time not feeling some surge of optimism in writing about the possibility.) Just think of the revolutionary possibilities if churches dedicated themselves to the path of anti-consumerism, to integrity, and to the blessed life. These churches could create new, local markets for goods, for everything from locally produced food to locally made clothes, furniture, cookware, and art. What kind of new employment opportunities might this open up? Might more people be able to quit their jobs on the assembly lines and behind desks and follow their talents and creativity? Working the soil or creating beautiful and useful products?

Such a shift would also create strong relational bonds within a faith community--striving and struggling together for a crucial mission at a critical time. It would be a shift from surviving the world to working together for a new vision. Consumeristic thinking necessarily leads to objectification. Those of us who "work jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need" end up feeling a little bit like we've sold our souls to the devil. And maybe we have, but it isn't too late to change. Such a transformation would be about the blessed life--approaching the world in a life-giving manner. This is a shift about the way we interpret ourselves, no longer as "consumers" or "human resources" but as relational and responsible human beings--with an emphasis on "being," on being dynamic and alive. This kind of life and this new relational energy could then be used to reach out a hand to those on the margins of the consumeristic society: the disabled, the poor, the addicts, prisoners, prostitutes, undocumented immigrants, and others who are considered a burden by the wider society--but those to whom that Jesus dude tended to gravitate.

Structurally the church is set up to be the catalyst for the blessed life, to turn our attention from thoughtless Walmart, fast food, and strip-mall consumers to becoming informed people of integrity. The system can be changed, we could become spiritually, relationally, and environmentally sustainable people via the church.

So, what's stopping us?

Structurally, the church is set up to be

Lake Michigan Sunsets

Only I a few days ago, I found myself sitting atop a sand dune, I was looking down onto the beach of Lake Michigan, then up and out at the horizon as the sun set. For some reason, the sun was pushing its orange glow upward, not down. Only ten minutes ago, however, the lake reflected the sun all the way across, like a laser beam.

I was wondering, as I sat watching the sun set: how do cultures develop in relation to the natural environment. I admire how the Native Americans, as a collective whole, developed a cultural philosophy and way of life that sought to live in harmony with nature. They respected the environment and lived as a part of it, as one species in the ecosystem, so to speak.

I suppose that one never knows how a sunset is going to go down. As the sun was sinking, the clouds hid the bottom half, leaving an orange half-circle visible.

In contrast to the Native Americans, Europeans who "settled" the Americas sought to dominate nature, to "subdue" her and extract as much of her resources as possible. With increasingly sophisticated and more powerful technology, it became possible to take more and more. We hunted with a religious fervor, with a fanatical energy. Each generation seeking to better the prior generation. Each new generation seeking to produce more, build more wealth, to become more prosperous, where "prosperity" is measured in terms of profitability.

I suppose that as a theologian, I'm tempted to say that ideas have consequences, then to trace the theological threads that hold together the fabric of a particular cultural zeitgeist. Usually this is my approach--it's the way I'm wired. But to hell with that for now. I think there is more to it, there certainly is; but I don't know how to describe it. (Perhaps that's why it's easier to stick with ideology.) Yet more and more I'm thinking in terms of a "spirit," a more general term that I think does more to capture the holistic sense in which a group of people "live and move and have their being."

What developments led the Native peoples to view their world as a dynamic, interconnected whole? what forces conspired such that the white man became obsessed with domination and control of the natural world? What is the inherited spirit of those who feel the innate drive to consume, whose identity is success-driven and defined within the marketplace? And perhaps we could discuss yet another group of peoples, the Tibetans, who dedicated their culture to spiritual pursuits, to understand the quiet mind, to grow peaceful and serene, to cultivate compassion.

What's the motion of it all? It's all a dynamic movement, because culture is always changing, evolving. I think that from the divine perspective, each cultural era must appear as diverse--and also as fleeting and ephemeral--as a sunset over Lake Michigan.

A Sunday "Amen"

“If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance…Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” -Wendell Berry

The Guiltys Innocence

Tamie and I teach a creative writing class each week at the Kosciusko County Jail. One is a men's class, the other is a women's class. Each week we try to read the writings of each of our students and type up a response to their writing (not a grade). The goal is to help them become expressive of themselves and alert to their experiences, their "world." We try to stir up creativity and imagination.

Through listening to the stories of these inmates, I have been shaped, in no small way. One starts to see patterns of how people react to lives of domination, exploitation, manipulation, and low expectations. I am forced to deal with the reality that some people simply are left behind in life, from the moment of their birth to the moment of their death. They suffer neglect and abuse as children, they turn to crime and drugs as teens and adults, and then they wind up doing time. What are the ramifications of this for my spirituality and my theology? It's an ongoing answer-less question. One thing is true, though: I am far more sensitive to the context from which a person emerges. We are so fragile.

Through this experience I also find myself with added energy in my contemplation of the system and the powers that run this system. Many people need help. They are addicts, or they are in need of education, self-reflection, spiritual attention, jobs, and a bit of grace. Deprived of some or all of these things, people sit in cages like animals for years on end. When they get released, many go back to the same life. Often they are more hardened than before, hardened by the brutality of their lives in prison or jail.

We have been accumulating a good deal of writings, and we have been posting many of them on a blog. I may have linked to the blog before, a few months back, but I thought I would call it to your attention again, so that you also may be able to hear their voices and listen to their stories.

The Guilty's Innocence

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

“They’s somepin worse’n the devil got hold a the country, an’ it ain’t gonna let go till it’s chopped loose.”

John Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath has helped to shape the perspective of an era. It is the story of exploited peoples; as a novel it uses the power of human story to stir something in the soul—an outcry against injustice. History, it is said, is written by the winners. While this may be true in a general sense, it is equally true that it only takes on powerful and passionate voice to humanize and dignify “the tears of the oppressed.” Steinbeck succeeds in this effort. He tells us the fictional story of the Jode family, and in doing so he speaks for hundreds of thousand, perhaps millions, of souls who were displaced by exploitation and the passivity of the U.S. government during and before the Great Depression.

Steinbeck wrote about the Jode family as they are driven off of their land in Oklahoma and seek work in California, only to find themselves homeless and near starvation, exploited by large land owners. California was Steinbeck’s home. Published in 1939, Steinbeck drew a good deal of opposition and backlash from many in his home state. However, Grapes of Wrath spoke for the dispossessed of its time, and the novel still to this day forces its reader to reflect on the state of the nation—both on its moral and ethical direction, but also on the wisdom of the system in its entirety: its economic sustainability, the justice of its laws, the shape of its politics, and its movement into the age of the machine. While it raises all of these issues, it is its story that is most compelling, the humanizing of a family struggling to survive.

The Machine Man

The first part of Steinbeck’s novel centers on the technological and economic shift in the U.S.: the small farm is obsolete. This is the age of the machine. A tractor can do the work of ten or twenty farm families. The Jode family is one such clan. They are working land during a drought. They can’t pay the bank, so they have been displaced. Their house is jus in the way now, and it’s time for the Jode’s to move on.

The novel does not accept this technological shift. The man driving the tractor can’t love the land, says Steinbeck. He’s just a “machine man.” He is cut off from the soil. The land is not a living and breathing entity to the machine man. For him, a crop is a matter of science: chemistry and land management. The land is an object, a job, a profit margin, a thing to be manipulated.

“But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understand only chemistry, and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself.”

This new technological age is now normative and unquestioned in the 21st century. Thomas Jefferson’s vision for the nation was small, local farms spread across the fruited plain. Technology has changed this. Technology combined with an obsession with mass production and wealth building. The Jeffersonian vision of life has been replaced by a nation of machine operators and an army of paper pushers living in offices and cubicles.

Why did technology not develop as a support to local farms and local communities? Was this a conscious choice? Or was it out of the hands of anyone? Perhaps it was a force and power with its own volition and will, operating without the resistance necessary to stop it.

Revolution of the Repressed

The Joes have to pack up as much of their belongings as they can inside of their truck. They are heading west! To California! They know there is work in California, because they have handbills that say so—printed handbills—handbills that say there is a need for workers: fruit pickers and farm hands. Why, a fella’ could work for a while, picking oranges and grapes, then buy himself a nice plot of land. Those handbills wouldn’t have been printed out if there were no jobs. That’d just be a waste of money.

So the Joes follow the handbills to California. It’s a difficult journey. Grandma and Grandpa die, and some desert the family when times get tough.

When they arrive in California, things go from bad to worse. There are no jobs in California. The land owners printed the handbills in order to flood the state with desperate, hungry workers. With a massive surplus of labor, land owners can hire workers to work for food, or in some cases for less than enough to feed a family. The plan works great for the land owners. The only problem is that there are now hundreds of thousands migrant workers hungry and virtually homeless. Oops. This could cause a public reaction—it will cause a reaction and public protest; and it is for this reason that the land owners must demonize the migrant workers. “Why, Jesus, they’re as dangerous as niggers in the South! If they ever get together there ain’t nothin’ that’ll stop ‘em.” So local cops burn down the migrant camps and harass the workers. The workers have to keep on the move, live in fear and shame.

Steinbeck consistently alludes to the power of repressed groups: “If they ever get together…” There is a power in the collective. This is a revolutionary tone that runs through the novel. It’s like the revolution is right there, waiting for leaders and organization. “The little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”

The novel ends with the young Tom Jode running from the law. He is a fugitive, having struck down a man who killed Casy the preacher, when Casy was trying to organize a worker strike. The suggestion is that Tom could lead the revolution. Meanwhile, the Jode family is without yet another member of their shrinking and starving family. Like a turtle in the wasted, dry land, they move slowly and hopelessly, always on the verge of another tragedy. The novel ends without resolve, like the lives of so many.

"One Big Soul"

Steinbeck’s portrait of free market capitalism is bleak: if each person works for their own immediate gain, everyone works against each other and against the common good. In a truly free market, what is to stop the wealthy from exploiting the poor? And what’s to stop the poor from rising up and overthrowing the rich? It’s like an endless cycle of violence, a form of economic Darwinism: survival of the fittest, might makes right. Grapes of Wrath never suggests that the government should intervene, it’s a bit more radical: the people should rise up and take the land back from their oppressors.

Also at play is the idea that economic individualism fails because it does not take into consideration the interconnectedness and interdependence of all people with each other. The people’s dependence on each other and their mutual dependence on natural resources. A system only works when it is a system that works for all. This is the theological conclusion, voiced by Casy the preacher: “‘Maybe all men got one big sould ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an all of a suddent—I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true.”

The novel also chides the failure of technology: “Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State.” Technology can create bigger fruits and bumper crops, but it all goes to waste without an economic system that distributes the produce. It is something intriguing that before and during the Great Depression, crops would be wasted and destroyed in some parts of the U.S., while in other parts people starved.

Then, As Now

The trajectory of the U.S. has changed little since the writing of Grapes of Wrath. The disconnect is complete. Technology and economical sophistication have helped to fix the system. People do not starve quite so much, and we have some checks and balances in place to prevent the kind of wide-scale worker exploitation (of U.S. citizens, but not all peoples) that occurred in California during the 1930s. But what have we really gained?

We are more cut off than ever from the basic, essential needs of our lives: we do not know who farmed the food we eat (or often who even prepared our food). We do not know the source of our clothing, much of it made by exploited workers overseas. We have a massive entertainment industry, but as such we find ourselves fairly disconnected from our neighbors. Our work is usually not something life-giving or truly meaningful. We are all either Steinbeck’s “machine man” or office paper pushers or fast food workers or cashiers. All that said, our lives, by and large, are good. We have food to eat, houses, cars, and entertainment. There may be a disconnect, but who really cares?

But someone has to pay. This is as true now as it was in Steinbeck’s day. We may not see the exploited laborer in Asia or India, who makes us a sweatshirt with our favorite team’s logo, but they are there. And illegal immigration from Mexico has created a heated national debate. These starving migrant workers are the result of our “success” in at least some very significant ways: our excessive use of the Colorado River has dried up Mexican farm land that depended on it; our government has subsidized corn (the corporate machine man now actually gets paid by the government), and this corn has been sold to Mexico putting more farmers out of work; and our taste for drugs has put big money into the hands of drug cartels, which has created a dangerous, violent nation, funded by our dollars. The Mexican migrant workers risk their lives, like the Joes, for the money to feed their families, and it shames us at a fundamental level. Is this part of the irrational hatred and fear of the Mexican immigrants? Is this why we are so eager to chase them out, to “crack down” on “illegals?

Why do we need drugs in the land of the free? For recreation, for entertainment, for pleasure, for boredom, and to heal the hole that apathy creates. We live in a system of individuals. There is no concept of “one big soul.” Loving our neighbor means writing a check or creating a new government program. We live with this deep disconnect and sense of fragmentation, a wound that we have not been able to heal. Our contemporary priests and Levites can’t be dirtied by the bloody bodies strewn along the Jericho Road. But the consequences of this turning from our neighbors is an inner vacuum that stubbornly refuses to go away, even in a culture that has invented the most sophisticated psychological and religious language to describe it.

Did anyone create this system? Does anyone control it? Does anyone defend it? Or is it ratified and energized by a mass of individuals with no capacity left for true imagination and creativity?

Steinbeck’s solution was to revolt. In Grapes of Wrath he envisions a collective revolution, but it must come from a movement of the poor as a whole. Isolated, they stand no chance, even in small groups they can be chased out of towns by angry town folks and deputies with guns. But if they were to rise up as a collective? If they were to speak as one voice? That would crush the system.

Freedom in the hopeless

"Losing all hope was freedom."

From Fight Club (film), 1999. After Jack cries for the first time in the testicular cancer recovery group. So, he starts to attend support groups every night. "Every evening I died, and every evening I was born again, resurrected."

God is Power

I want to continue blogging about this month's novel of the month. In this entry, I want to share a few thoughts and raise a few questions on how power relates to faith and our theology about God.

Big Brother is the symbol of absolute power in Orwell's novel 1984. In the story, all citizens are under constant watch by Big Brother. Big Brother sees all, knows all, is everywhere, and holds all power. The rule of Big Brother is, in fact, an exercise of power for power's sake. "God is power."

Love, on the other hand, empowers the other. Love sets free the lover; love risks being wounded by the one loved. Love is vulnerable and open, never coercive or controlling. Love "keeps no record of wrongs" and "always hopes," as it is put in 1 Corinthians 13.

So, what of God?

Theological conceptions of God are often mixed. God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (in all places). God is the enforcer of justice, in the sense of keeping score of humanities virtues and vices. But God is also love.

I find that our conception of God often contains theologies of God as both all-powerful and loving. In God, power and love are conflated. God may punish us, but it is only for our good, to bring us back to our senses.

But notice that this is also the approach of Big Brother. When Winston is being tortured, he is told it is to shake him out of his confusion and make him sane. From Winston's perspective, he just wants to be free. He hates living under the gaze of Big Brother. For Big Brother, on the other hand, "freedom is slavery," a slogan that has an eerie similarity to many religions and many versions of Christianity.

To me it seems that if love is to be love, then it must relinquish any hold it has on power. This seems to me to be one of the most fundamental meanings of the cross. And I'm not alone in thinking this way. Paul in his letter to the Philippians says that Jesus Christ did not consider "being equal to God" as something to be grasped. Instead, he humbled himself into the "form" (morphe) of a servant. The Greek here is interesting, and I think it carries over into most English translations. Christ was in the "form" (morphe) of God, but chose to take on the "form" (morphe) of a servitude. Theologically, Philippians 2 presents the doctrine of "kenosis," that Christ "emptied" himself. God, in the form of Jesus Christ, empties himself. This is, I think, an exchange of power in an act of love.

Although the scriptures and the Christian tradition present a God of weakness, they also contain references to the God of power. How does one interpret this theologically? How does one appropriate this in life and spiritual practice? For many in the States (and in the modern West in general) the God of power is the sexiest and most dynamic theology to appropriate. It also fits well into an imperialistic philosophy of conquest and strength that has been one of the defining characteristics of the modern world. Even in the last decade, we in the States have been told that it is our duty to use power to spread democracy to the world.

Is God a God of power? Or a God of weakness? Does God take on the strategies of Big Brother? Does God act toward people like Big Brother toward Winston: using his power to break us and force us into “sanity.”

Is it possible that we read our own desires for power into God and religion? That God/religion/ideology becomes a front for our need to dominate and control?

My Corporation. Your Big Brother.

We are continuing on in this month of BIGNESS. This, of course, in honor of Big Brother, George Orwell’s symbol of totalitarian domination in his novel 1984. In my review, I made a few societal comparisons between the world of Big Brother and our own, contemporary Western culture.

In the recent March-April issue of Orion, Christopher Ketcham writes about the “Bigness worship” in our culture. Here is his take:

“We prefer our Big Macs and our Whoppers, our food portions supersized, our big cars and sprawling cities, our enormous football players (growing bigger every year, the average offensive lineman now topping three hundred pounds), our big breasts and big penises and big houses (up from an average of 1,200 square feet in 1950 to 2,216 square feet today), our big armies with big reach, and, though we complain about it incessantly, big government that spends big money running up big debt (more now than at any other period in our history). That we allow corporations to grow to outrageous size is just another symptom of the disease. Bigness worship permeates every layer of the culture; it is racked into our brains with every turn of the advertising screw; it is a totalizing force.” (17, “The Curse of Bigness”)

I was intrigued to see that he uses the word “totalizing force” to describe our situation. Ketcham’s idea here is that worship of all things big, itself, turns into a totalizing force, one which does not seem dissimilar to Orwell’s Big Brother.

In 1984, those with creativity are continually suppressed by torture and execution. Even those who are loyal to the Party will disappear if they show too much of a creative impulse. The modern big corporation of the West operates on the same model, says Ketcham. It looks for an “Organization Man”:

“Creativity, in any case—the radical’s creativity, which is the only kind—is not what the corporation looks for. Rather, it pursues what William Whyte called ‘the fight against genius.’ It looks for Whyte’s ‘Organization Man,’ who seeks protection, safety, succor in bigness, who can be relied on to conform and submit. What it lacks in creativity, of course, the big corporation makes up for in coercion.” (19)

In point of fact, Ketcham says, small is better. Small is more efficient. Smaller groups are “more cohesive, effective, creative in getting things done.” He continues, “Hundreds of studies in factories and workplaces confirm that workers divided into small groups enjoy lower absenteeism, less sickness, higher productivity, greater social interaction, higher morale—most likely because the conditions allow them to engage what is best in being human, to share the meaning and fruits of their labor.” (22)

There seems to be a psychology of meaningfulness at work. When workers integrate themselves with their workers and their works in a way that does not reduce them to a number or to a title, then they have a healthier psyche, and this results in better results…..which everyone kind of already knows. It is also why every contemporary big corporation will make it their top HR priority to create a “meaningful” environment. While this is the stated purpose, it cannot ever truly be achieved, or at least it is rare. In the end, more human workers are still only a means to an end, with profitability and growth being the ultimate objectives.

In the old days, at least the corporations were a bit more straight-forward in their goals and objectives: you are a cog in the machine. Like it or get out. Today’s corporation undergoes a form of what Orwell calls “doublethink.” Doublethink is “to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them.” It is not only to say one thing and do another, but to psychologically learn to immediately forget that one is engaging in doublethink: “to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.” So, the HR person at a big corporation truly believes they are working for the good of the worker, while simultaneously working for the good (and drawing their paycheck from) the corporation.

Ketcham says that the result is “one of alienation, powerlessness, meaninglessness.”

“Large groups develop quickly into a committee structure, with an executive or leadership that directs and often dominates the decision-making process. Power, in other words, is centralized, hierarchies are built, authority is increasingly top-down, consent is gently coerced or it arrives by default, as members of the group simply stop participating—not speaking, or initiating, or deciding, or acting, their invisibility growing in proportion as the group grows in size. In short, the experience of most members of the big group could accurately be described as one of alienation, powerlessness, meaninglessness.” (22)

For the subjects of Big Brother, powerlessness is of course the primary reason for being. Big Brother exists solely and only for power. The subtle but serious point that needs to be made here, however, is that Big Brother is the only one with power. In reading 1984 it is clear that even those who are higher up in the Party must somehow shut down their humanness. There is madness in their eyes, even if they are far and away more intelligent than anyone else in the society. As such, there is the same alienation, powerlessness, and meaninglessness even among the most powerful. Those who abuse power, who impose de-humanization on the masses, cannot escape the same fate themselves.

The result of any Big Brother approach to society, culture, religion, family, or any other institution is that the power resides in the symbol. All others become de-humanized in various ways. This, I think, is part of the genius of Orwell’s 1984. He never really rests power in the hands of any one person or in any group of people. The power resides in the Party, or in the abstract Big Brother. The Party is immortal, because it is a symbol and an institution.

In our contemporary society, technology is crucial to the process of dehumanization. Ketcham cites Ghandi: “Every machine that helps every individual has a place, but there should be no place for machines [that] turn the masses into mere machine minders.” (23)

It is beyond dispute, of course, that our modern 20th century obsession with all things big has been aided by the machine. It is also beyond dispute that globally we divide ourselves, roughly, into two processes: slave labor from poor and banking and paper-pushing done in other nations. The white-skinned people, mostly, are the bankers and paper-pushers, those of brown skin from poor countries are the cheap labor force. The other important ingredient in this equation, of course, is the technology to pump cheap oil out of the ground.

Regardless of one’s place, we all are mostly expected to fill roles that contribute directly or indirectly to the growth of big institutions, which themselves fit into this new, global economy.

But there is hope. Orwell’s dystopian is bleak. In the end, the hero breaks down, the last man falls. Big Brother is immortal. But Ketcham’s point is that bigger is not better, by definition. Smaller is more efficient. There is creativity and imagination in smaller groups, something that is suppressed in Big Brother corporations. The use of power to trample creativity ultimately backfires; it exposes the weakness and vulnerability of Big Brother.

“The bigger and more complex our institutions become, the weaker and more vulnerable they really are.” (22)

Rebellion, then, must come through creativity. Apathy only contributes to Big Brother’s domination. This is what I always enjoy when I read or watch the novel/film Fight Club. The creativity of the displaced and malcontents ultimately can work underground to destroy the system.

What kind of creativity is necessary to bring human-ness back to Western society? What kind of imagination is needed to break the cycle?

How can we create a world that is decisively smaller? Less reliant on people feeling like cogs in the machine?

Does creativity become a spiritual force? Is creativity one of the most fundamental spiritual virtues? Is this spiritual creativity, in itself, a form of anarchy?

1984 by George Orwell

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake”

George Orwell’s 1984 is a novel exploring power. As literature, I found the writing good but not particularly compelling. The novel was clearly written to discuss political and philosophical points of view. From a purely literary perspective, one might object to such a practice. In the case of 1984, however, I find that Orwell’s imagination and creativity overcomes any objection to writing a novel for the sake of theoretical discussion. In actual practice, I do not think that it is possible to divide the message from the media, the content of writing from its language. The two are inseparable.

The genius of 1984 is Orwell’s ability to create a totalitarian world that explores power, politics, and the human subject. The Orwellian world of Oceania sets its characters in a context of absolute power and domination. The Party differs from the Fascist or Communist powers of the modern world in that they do not pretend to embody any humanistic ideals. Their objective is clear: “power entirely for its own sake.” The undoing of German Fascism or various Communist regimes is their ideological pretense. The Party recognizes that it must root all of its activities in terms of power, stated explicitly.

The symbol of The Party is Big Brother. Big Brother is a giant face that can be seen on posters, walls, and screens throughout Oceania; but Big Brother is also the representation of the power of the state, the symbol of its strength, the divine and eternal metaphor.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. Big Brother is omnipresent. Big Brother is ever-present, keeping watch to be sure that there is no one who will oppose the power of the Party. Through technology, Big Brother is able to monitor the masses and every individual. Everyone at every time knows that they are being watch.

Big Brother is given credit for his benevolence. If the economy grows, manufacturing forecasts are surpassed, or food rations increase (as they always do), this is due to the wisdom and foresight of Big Brother. Big Brother provides all that is needed.

Big Brother is omniscient, all-knowing. Big Brother demands that your speech be controlled by controlling language. The language is continually being reduced so that the fewest words may be used. As language is reduced, the capacity for consciousness, reflection, and critical thought decrease accordingly. Free thought is a vice. Big Brother can do all of the thinking necessary for the world. Big Brother knows all.

Big Brother is the one who is everywhere, monitoring your movements. Big Brother is the all-knowing one, controlling your speech and thought. In addition to these two exercises of power, there is a third method of domination: the power to crush any rebellion. Big Brother is the omnipotent, all-powerful one who can unleash a force that will bend any will. Big Brother can use violence to exterminate any act or expression of freedom. This is not just any independent act that threatens the Party; rather, Big Brother will destroy any act of a free self. Through violence, torture, and pure force, Big Brother will break the mind and will of any rebel. What is most shocking, however, is that Big Brother will even unleash such immense power as to force a person into loving Big Brother.

“Winston, you are no metaphysician”

Within this context of absolute power, there are two individuals who dare to assert themselves as human beings, each in a different way. Winston Smith is the primary character, the main protagonist. Winston is the everyman, and as such he is not a philosopher of surpassing intellectual powers. Nonetheless, he is no slouch, and his self-discovery is a theoretical and ideological one.

Winston works for the Party. His job is to rearrange the “facts” of the past so that Big Brother is always correct and always looks good. Winston changes history. It is through this that he begins to question the Party and desire to defy Big Brother.

Julia’s path is not ideological. Winston was born before the Party took power; Julia was not. All that she knows is the power of Big Brother. So she plays along with the whole thing as though it were a game, and she looks for opportunities to slip outside of the watchful eye of Big Brother and live her life as fully as she can. Her sensuality and lust for life are her way of rebelling and asserting herself as a self.

Together Winston and Julia seek to defy the Party by meeting in secret. They become lovers, friends, and co-conspirators.

Orwell’s world in 1984 is one in which technology advancement allows the government a level of god-like omniscience, monitoring the movements and speech of each person. Technology is also used to transmit a continuous stream of media propaganda, to keep all citizens aware of the power and glory of the Party. Controlling the language and speech of individuals is important to Big Brother. There is a word, “duckspeak” that is praised by the Party. It is not speech in the true sense; rather it is “noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.”

If Orwell’s world appears to be one in which technology has invaded the freedom of individuals, is the situation all that different in our contemporary, Western world. The Orwellian totalitarian future is one in which there is a centralized intelligence that controls the media stream and monitors the speech and actions of citizens. Our media world is perhaps much more random and chaotic. There is no centralized control of media, but does this mean there is more freedom?

The contemporary discussion usually presumes that because we can choose to shut of the television or log off of the internet that we are free. However, the fact remains, that most of us in the developed tech-savy West we are no less plugged in than the members of Orwell’s dystopian society. It begs the question of whether we are really more free. Are we more free because most of our populace can choose between Fox News or CNN? Or is this choice more a matter of illusion. Perhaps the point is not that we can choose between cable news or the internet, perhaps the greater point is that we are constantly plugging in to media, a media that always seeks to capitalize on ratings by selling advertising.

In a sense, our current climate is sort of a voluntary limiting of freedom, based on a perceived choice between which media we want to be our Big Brother for the day. While we often praise ourselves in the U.S. for being the land of the free, there is a disturbing parallel between Big Brother and the media.

Every society and culture has its mechanisms of control and manipulation. What perhaps is most disturbing about life in the States is that we seem to be under the naïve assumption that our perceived freedom of choice with regard to media means that we are less subject to manipulation. In reality, our nation has become polarized into two ideologies, both of which are often inconsistent and seemingly random. On any particular issue, we can be sure that the same people will line up on either side, and that the discussion will be less rational or fact-based, resembling more the quacking duckspeak of Orwell’s novel.

This all raises a very serious question of what it means to be free in an era of our eternal news-byte media. If the result of media submersion is the same in Orwell’s novel as it is in today’s Western society, a sort of “duckspeak,” then how much “freedom” do we truly have? When public discussion is more about “noise uttered in unconsciousness” than it is about creative and original thought, then what right do we have to say that our freedom (so-called) is really and truly all that superior to Big Brother. That we choose to submit our minds to hours a day of connectivity does not make us any more free. In fact, it is probably more the perception of choice, much as an alcoholic may have a momentary sense of freedom in choosing between spirits for his next drink.

“God is Power”

Reading 1984 is helpful to me because it states that the Party’s explicit aim is to power for its own sake. Our modern Western ideals center on democracy as a control measure for power. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So we assume in the United States that if we have appropriate checks and balances, then we can gain more freedom. Many in the U.S. are disturbed by any perceived expansion of government power. An expansion of governmental power means a loss of freedom. It is an equation that is a given in many circles of thought.

Friedrich Nietzsche believed strongly in the will to power. He criticized democracy. Democracy, Nietzsche believed, will limit the ability of great people to do great things. It will, in essence, make everyone mediocre and prohibit the rise of great creative people. Democracy, says Nietzsche, merely gives rise to a herd mentality.

Looking at the current state of political discourse in the U.S. today, with its tone of “duckspeak,” groupthink, and talking points, it is clear that there is a marked inability for individuals to cultivate their own unique perspectives. For me, this speaks in favor of Nietzsche’s critique of democracy.

While Big Brother pursues power for its own sake, in our democratic society the power plays are more subtle but no less real. The lesson of 1984 in light of our contemporary society is to understand that power is always at work. Power is no less controlling or manipulative in democratic societies as it is in Orwell’s totalitarian state. In democracy, the masses must simply perceive themselves as making their own choices. Because democracy requires the illusion of choice, the manipulation and control mechanisms cannot be overtly manipulative, as they are in 1984.

What seems to me to be the commonality between Big Brother and contemporary society is that both evidence a lack of rationality and love in public discourse. We tend to see the worst in our opponents, the various sides being convinced that other political parties are out to limit their freedoms or otherwise do harm to their fellowman. This intense fear and suspicion, ironically, makes one most vulnerable to manipulation by those who are presumably “on my side.” When one proceeds in public discourse with humility, reasoned arguments, and charity toward those who disagree, one is far less inclined to fall into duckspeak, and far more likely to create a society where members are far less naïve to the workings of power.

Power is always with us. Power is god, in the lower “g” sense.

“You must love Big Brother”

In the end, Winston and Julia are caught by the Party. They undergo torture to cleans their minds. By sheer force, Big Brother forces Winston to believe what they want him to believe.

But belief is not enough.

“To die hating them; that is freedom,” Winston thinks to himself. If he can retain this thought, this private, inner rebellion, then at his death he will have reserved for himself a moment of freedom and independence.

Big Brother knows this, and so it is not enough to merely bend the will and mind, Big Brother will use his power to force Winston to love him. And it works. In works because Big Brother breaks down his body and soul, forcing Winston to deny Julia, his only true love. After months of torture, Winston is completely broken. There is nothing left. He spends most of his days drinking. Everyone pities him. The Party no longer monitors him. There is no need, because Winston’s psyche has no power left in it to assert itself in anyway.

Striped of all power of the mind, will, and heart, Winston is sitting in a café, drinking some filthy gin. He hears a report of a military victory of Big Brother. He is genuinely cheered by the news. And finally, something clicks in Winston. He realizes the folly of his rebellion. He understands now. Everything is clear.

“Oh cruel, needless misunderstanding. Oh stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast…but it was all right…he had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

With this the novel closes. Winston loves Big Brother. Big Brother, of course, does not love Winston; but even if he did, the love was gained by force. Here, at the end of the novel, we find the correlation between love and freedom. We understand, at a fundamental level, that love gained by power, by brute force, is not love. Love without the freedom to choose love is still brutality. Love is only true when the lovers are free to reject or embrace the other.

On their own, these sayings can seem cliché. As such, it is the narrative of 1984 that brings to life phrases that have been overused. The story, the characters, the world that is created through fiction can bring us to really see love and freedom in real life. This brings me back to my first point in this review: that the form of writing and the content are inseparable. The ability for ideals to stir us through story is directly related to the ability of the writer to take us into the narrative and into the minds and hearts of the characters. There are certain things that we have to be shown, not merely told.

I believe 1984 to be an important novel. By carrying power to an extreme, we can reflect on the ways in which power is always working, in ways that are subtle but no less extreme. It would only be a superficial and shallow reading that would presume that the control and manipulation of Big Brother is no less present in all societies. This tends to give support to the idea that power itself is not the issue. Rather, power must be discusses in the context of a society whose modus operandi for public discourse is charity, humility, and rationality.

The indestructible soil

"The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses," the Federal Bureau of Soils proclaimed as the grasslands were transformed. "It is one resource that cannot be exhausted, that cannot be used."

The above quote is take from The Worst Hard Time, a historical narrative of the 1930's dust bowl that devastated the Great Plains of the U.S. I started reading this just yesterday, and I highly recommend the book to anyone who enjoys reading history or to those interested in the ecological history of the U.S. Timothy Egan doesn't just narrate history, he creatively weaves together the voices of common citizens and their communities to tell the story of the destruction of one of the richest eco-systems in the U.S. and the subsequent consequences.

The Comanche, Apache, and other natives were driven off the southern Plains by force and through the extermination of the buffalo. Investors and speculators saw all of the free grass in the southern Plains and tried to turn the land into mass cattle ranches. However, the extreme temperatures and other factors led to a poor return on the investment. The investors wanted some return on their money and the governmental powers that be had a vested interest in populating the land, so no fabricated tale was too tall: they advertised the land for sale as farm land. Not enough rain? No problem. The rains will follow the plough.

So people bought the land and moved there to farm. With the advent of farming machinery, they tore up massive amounts of land, transforming the entirety of the southern plains from grasslands into wheat fields in the space of only about a decade. And for awhile, people got rich. Rain fell and the money rolled in.

The land was the constant. The soil was the absolute. It was indestructible and immutable. We could never exhaust it. Hubris had found fertile ground.

But then the rain didn't come....and then the winds began to turn up dust into thick, black storms of dirt.....wheat prices crashed and crops piled up for years at a time with no buyers.....ironically, many in other parts of the nation were starving....

The Guilty's Innocence

He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free...

For those of you who do not know, Tamie and I teach a creative writing class at the local county jail. It has been a very enlightening experience for the both of us. The students we teach have an incredible range of humanity that challenges me every week to re-evaluate my life in the light of their humility and courage.

Tamie put together a short anthology, collecting the writings of our students. It is on sale for $5, with the proceeds going to purchase new books for the inmates. If you are able to purchase a copy, I am sure that you will appreciate their writing and unique perspectives. Go to Tamie's blog to read more:

http://owlrainfeathers.blogspot.com/2010/01/read-prisoners-writingsand-help-buy.html

Ben Bernanke

I thought you all might appreciate reading about Ben Bernanke, Time's Person of the Year.

Here are a few snippets:

The overriding story of 2009 was the economy — the lousiness of it, and the fact that it wasn't far lousier. It was a year of escalating layoffs, bankruptcies and foreclosures, the "new frugality" and the "new normal." It was also a year of green shoots, a rebounding Dow and a fragile sense that the worst is over. Even the big political stories of 2009 — the struggles of the Democrats; the tea-party takeover of the Republicans; the stimulus; the deficit; GM and Chrysler; the backlash over bailouts and bonuses; the furious debates over health care, energy and financial regulation; the constant drumbeat of jobs, jobs, jobs — were, at heart, stories about the economy. And it's Bernanke's economy.....

In 2009, Bernanke hurled unprecedented amounts of money into the banking system in unprecedented ways, while starting to lay the groundwork for the Fed's eventual return to normality. He helped oversee the financial stress tests that finally calmed the markets, while launching a groundbreaking public relations campaign to demystify the Fed. Now that Obama has decided to keep him in his job, he has become a lightning rod in an intense national debate over the Fed as it approaches its second century.
But the main reason Ben Shalom Bernanke is TIME's Person of the Year for 2009 is that he is the most important player guiding the world's most important economy. His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression, and he still wields unrivaled power over our money, our jobs, our savings and our national future. The decisions he has made, and those he has yet to make, will shape the path of our prosperity, the direction of our politics and our relationship to the world.


The Depression Buff
Bernanke says his first spark of interest in the Great Depression came as a boy listening to his mother's parents on their porch in Charlotte, N.C., where his grandfather was a kosher butcher. Their family had survived pogroms in Lithuania, but the story that captivated Bernanke involved a town full of shoe factories that closed during the Depression, leaving the community so poor that its children went barefoot. "I kept asking, Why didn't they just open the factories and make the kids shoes?' " he recalls. He would devote his career to questions like that.
Bernanke calls the Depression "the holy grail of macroeconomics," the ultimate intellectual challenge. To understand geology, he says, study earthquakes; to understand the economy, study the Depression. "I don't know why there aren't more Depression buffs," he wrote in a book of essays about the period. "The Depression was an incredibly dramatic episode — an era of stock-market crashes, breadlines, bank runs and wild currency speculation, with the storm clouds of war gathering ominously in the background ... For my money, few periods are so replete with human interest."

The first thing any Depression scholar comes to understand is that nothing — not hyperinflation, megadeficits or irked Chinese creditors — is as bad as a full-on Depression....

Depression scholars — including Bernanke — tend to see the Hoover Administration's approach of balancing budgets and tightening belts during the downturn as a tragic mistake. They embrace the Keynesian view that aggressive government action backed by government money is needed to reverse death spirals by restoring confidence and reviving demand. Get people money, and they can buy shoes for their barefoot kids, so shoe factories can reopen and rehire, which gets more people money. "People saw the Depression as a necessary thing — a chance to squeeze out the excesses, get back to Puritan morality," Bernanke says. "That just made things worse." In contrast, the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal stimulus and try-everything attitude made real, albeit uneven, progress against the downturn.....

Bernanke quickly emerged as a staunch defender of the Greenspan Fed and its loose monetary policies. He suggested that raising interest rates to deflate the dotcom bubble before it popped would have been like using a sledgehammer to perform brain surgery. He delivered a call to arms against deflation, proposing ways the Fed could keep juicing the economy even if rates fell to zero. When he took over the Fed in 2006, after an uneventful eight-month White House stint leading Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, he said his top priority would be continuing Greenspan's policies. "Ben and I have never had a serious disagreement," Greenspan says.
In fact, Bernanke did make subtle changes, pushing for more transparency and clarity, speaking last instead of first at rate-setting meetings to avoid imposing his views. And while Greenspan had been laissez-faire about the Fed's oversight responsibilities, Bernanke pushed through long-overdue subprime-lending reforms in 2007. Still, Bernanke was as clueless as Greenspan about the coming storm. He dismissed warnings of a housing bubble. He insisted that economic fundamentals remained strong. In March 2007, he assured Congress that "the problems in the subprime market seem likely to be contained." The day before the global crisis erupted with a run on a French bank, the Fed was still saying its primary concern was inflation. "Bernanke had no idea what was going on," a foreign central banker tells TIME. "Once he got it, he really got it, and he acted swiftly and decisively. But wow! It took a while.".....

"We were the most aggressive central bank in the history of the world," says Fed governor and Bernanke confidant Kevin Warsh. The Fed used its magic money to shovel out more than $1.6 trillion worth of unconventional loans and is now buying over $1.7 trillion worth of unconventional assets....

In June, Bernanke was savaged on Capitol Hill for supposedly pressuring Bank of America to buy Merrill; by December, Bank of America was healthy enough to repay its $45 billion in TARP aid. In fact, all but one of the 19 financial behemoths subjected to stress tests have received decent bills of health, and taxpayers are on track to profit from TARP's wildly unpopular bank bailouts. Bernanke says major financial crises generally cost nations 5% to 20% of their national output. This panic seems likely to cost the U.S. a fraction of 1%. "How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?" he asks. "I mean, this is a pretty good return on investment."

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html

The fires of industry

"The old world will burn in the fires of industry, the forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the machine of war with the sword and the spear...."
The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers (film, 2002)

Joel Salatin and the healing of the food industry

A few clips from the recent Sojourners interview with Joel Salatin. Joel Salatin was featured in the 2009 documentary Food, Inc., which critically examined the mass production of food in the U.S.

What's the vision behind Polyface farm?
Healing--healing in all dimensions. we want to develop emotionally, environmentally, and economically enhancing agricultural prototypes throughout the world....We want to heal the land, soil, air, water, and, ultimately, the food system....

So there is a disconnect between humans and the earth??
For the first time in civilization, you can actually move into an area, plug your microwave and appliances into energy and not know where it comes from, get food from places and not know where it comes from, hook your pipe up to get water and not know where it comes from, put an outlet pipe in to take your sewage to places you don't know about, and in effect never have a sense of the ecological umbilical cord that connects you to everything that's most important.

How can we revolutionize the food industry?
Wendell Berry says that what's wrong with us creates more gross national product then what's right with us....
If you want to dream out of the box for a minute, here's an idea: If every American for a week refused to eat at a fast-food joint, it would bring concentrated animal feeding operations to their knees...
We have a sick, evil system, and a healing system, and the question is, which one are you going to feed?

What would you say to Christians who believe it is their biblical mandate to have dominion over the earth?
"You're wrong." (laughing) The scriptures are full of admonitions about creation. God knows when every sparrow falls. The Pentateuch is filled with references. Further, in 1 Corinthians 10:31, Paul says that whatsoever you eat or drink, whatsoever you do, do it all for the glory of God...He [Paul] took the most mundane, necessary things in life--eating and drinking--as his examples of how much God desires to penetrate into our lives...to the believer, all life must be sacred.

You can hear extended audio here:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0912&article=audio-interview-with-joel-salatin

To Kill A Mockingbird

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. ~Scout, Chapter 23




Friends, this is the inaugural post of my Top 100 novel reviews: The Human Narrative Project. We are kicking off with a very special novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. I thoroughly enjoyed my reading--it was a joyful and deeply thoughtful read.

Haper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic in American literature. It was an instant classic when it was published in 1960. Lee began her project as a collection of stories loosely based on her childhood in Monroeville, Alabama in the 1930s. After devoting herself to writing for four years, her novel became both a charming story of southern life and also a complicated description of southern racism, classism, justice, and equality. Published in 1960, we are only months away from Mockingbird's 50th anniversary, making this a timely moment to review and reflect on the novel's significance.

Part 1 of the novel centers on the life of Jean Louise Finch, aka "Scout." Scout navigates through the world of Macomb, Alabama. She is a lively and rambunctious young girl who prefers fighting and wearing pants to serving tea and wearing dresses. Scout, her brother Jem, and neighbor Dill combine their energy and imaginations to embark on wonderful childhood adventures

We also get to know Scout's father, Atticus Finch. He is a quiet and principled man, gentle and gracious to all. Atticus is the moral hero of the novel; he is bookish and works as a lawyer in town. Atticus's primary motto is that everyone should try to understand each other, to walk around in the other person's skin for a while and understand things from their perspective. This is also one of the primary messages of the novel. In the context of a southern society that is stepped in racism and classism, Atticus believes that all people have dignity and honor, just because of who they are.

Part 1 of the novel sets the background for Part 2. In Part 1, we primarily sympathize with the town. The novel is fun, humorous, and very entertaining. The narrative is engaging and humorous; Harper Lee is a remarkable story teller. But the divides between the races and various classes of Macomb also emerge in Part 1, and in Part 2, we primarily grapple with injustice, irrational prejudice, and what it might mean to do the right thing in this context.

Part 2 focuses on the trial of Tom Robinson. Tom is a black man accused of rape by Mayella Ewell. Her father, Bob Ewell, claims that he arrived at the house in time to witness the rape. The narrative leads us to believe that the accusation is false: Mayella tried to seduce Tom, Tom tried to leave the scene, and Bob Ewell came to the house in time to view this cultural taboo. In a rage, Bob Ewell beats his daughter, and they together agree to accuse Tom of rape. Atticus does his best to defend Tom, planting seeds of doubt in the jury's mind by exposing holes in the testimonies of Mayella and Bob and presenting circumstantial evidence that makes it unlikely that Tom could have caused Mayella's injuries. Despite Atticus's reasonable and honorable defense, the jury does not acquit. Although Tom is as innocent as a Mockingbird, the jury finds him guilty. Atticus whispers to Tom, gathers his coat and hat, and takes his "lonely walk down the aisle."

The children (Scout, Jem, and Dill) watch the trial from the segregated black section of the courtroom. They take it very hard. Scout and Jem cannot understand why someone who is innocent could be convicted. Tom Robinson gives up. While in the prisonyard, he tries to escape and is shot.

The novel ends with a rather odd sequence of events. Bob Ewell swears revenge on Atticus for humiliating he and Mayella in the trial. One night, while Jem and Scout are walking home in the dark of night, he attacks them. Boo Radley, the reclusive neighbor, stabs and kills Bob Ewell. The Sheriff and Atticus discuss the matter. The Sheriff is adamant: It would be a sin to expose Boo Radley to public scrutiny. The conclusion is that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife.

What strikes me in a profound way about Mockingbird is the way we are forced to engage the tension between our ideals (the way things should be) and the reality of living in a broken system. How does one respond to a system that seems to refuse to budge? Atticus is "looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds." (Malcolm Gladwell, p. 28 of The New Yorker, August 10 & 17, 2009) Atticus appeals to the heart, he lives a life of grace. He refuses even to condemn those who are a part of this broken system. They have blind spots, but they are still people. Everyone is broken. Atticus still choses to live in Macomb, to live honorably and treat all people with dignity and respect. Atticus embodies the words of Ghandi: Be the change you wish to see in the world.

On the other hand, what happens when people reach a breaking point? When they just won't take injustice anymore, and they stand up and fight it to the death?

Or what of those who believe that passively living in Macomb, Alabama is itself a way of allowing the system of injustice and prejudice to continue?

This is a tension that the novel forces us to engage: Do we appeal to the heart? Or take up arms? In fighting injustice, it is often difficult to see whether progress is being made, and it seems almost impossible to understand in the present whether or not we have made the right decision in how we engage the struggle.

Yet for me, the very way in which this question is formed and the flow of the narrative all suggest that this is very much a white novel. The central characters are white. They have the power, they hold all the cards. The black characters are mostly static and helpless: they are at the mercy of whether the whites will do the right things. The narrative never really explores the hearts and minds of any of the black characters, not to the degree that it engages Atticus, Scout, and Jem. That this is a white novel is not really a fault of the novel, but in my opinion it is a crucial point. The Black Power movement (and others) of the 1960s questioned the notion that blacks must wait for whites to give them permission to be empowered. This notion itself is one of the most fundamental ideas that must change before equal power and rights can be assumed. As a novel and narrative, Mockingbird operates within the paradigm that the whites must empower the blacks. The positive side of this is to force whites to take responsibility for injustice.

There is a certain element of deconstruction at work here. By this, I mean that there is a certain paradox and contradiction at work. On the one hand, those in power must seek to empower those who are treated unjustly. On the other hand, the very idea that one can "empower" another human being is mistaken: we all are empowered and must take power. In the very act of empowering, we are assuming an inappropriate stance towards others who are in fact our equals.

Mockingbird also challenged me at a very fundamental level. It is a novel that hits us in the gut. In a broken system, there are no right answers. There are no "correct" solutions. There is not neat and tidy way to wrap things up. Systems of injustice and oppression grow over time, they dehumanize. They create superior classes and races: "us" and "them." As time goes on and on, this brokenness cannot be undone. There is no ideal that will fix things. Sometimes we are idealists, striving for the good. Mostly we are pragmatists, just doing the best we can.

So we keep striving. Something calls us to give ourselves. We try to "walk around in someone else's shoes." But mostly we stumble.

Gandhi

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"

"I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life."

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence."

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."

"You must be the change you want to see in the world."

suffrage, equality, and healthcare

I have been recently pondering the status of healthcare in conjunction with other historic struggles for equality. What brings to my mind the parallel is the issue of constitutionality. Many people believe that any form of universal healthcare would be unconstitutional and a violation of the intention of the founding fathers. But the fathers also did not grant women the right to vote, not did they provide for equal and civil rights for people of color.

As a nation, we the people of the United States of America should measure our society by a better moral standard than the constitution, and we should enact laws that are a reflection of what we know is good and right.

It is important to step back in the middle of these intense policy debates about healthcare and ask some basic moral questions. Do we believe that we should take care of each other? Should a person's physical care depend on their income? Should profit truly be the primary motivation for our healthcare system?

Robert Kennedy and GDP

"If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.

"And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

Remarks of Robert F. Kennedy at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968

The System, our food, and healthcare

From Getting Real about the High Cost of Food:

"Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009."

I recommend reading every itty bitty bit of Getting Real about the High Cost of Food.....this topic follows up a bit on our discussions about The System, the American way of living that denigrates life, treating everything around us as economic units that fit into a grand system aimed primarily at productivity and profit. It teaches us to objectify others and ourselves, cutting us off from understanding and developing a genuine and authentic self.

We've transformed the essential human profession — growing food — into an industry like any other. "We're hurting for job creation, and industrial food has pushed people off the farm," says Hahn Niman. "We need to make farming real employment, because if you do it right, it's enjoyable work."

Most of us don't question the food we eat, and yet it is one of the most basic and fundamental elements of being human. We buy what we are sold. We eat what we are told.

And yet we really are what we eat. But we don't have time to care about food.....we are usually too busy producing stuff, buying stuff, or being entertained.

And now..... drum roll please!......tying it all in to healthcare:

At a time when the nation is close to a civil war over health-care reform, obesity adds $147 billion a year to our doctor bills. "The way we farm now is destructive of the soil, the environment and us," says Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)."

And this excellent conclusion:

Whether that happens will ultimately come down to all of us, since we have the chance to choose better food three times a day (or more often, if we're particularly hungry). It's true that most of us would prefer not to think too much about where our food comes from or what it's doing to the planet....The industrial food system fills us up but leaves us empty — it's based on selective forgetting. But what we eat — how it's raised and how it gets to us — has consequences that can't be ignored any longer.

(FYI, we had a good discussion in the comments section of a prior post, The System and Food Inc..)

Get out of Jail Free Card

Tamie and I are teaching a writing class at the local community jail. Yesterday I taught the class by myself, because Tamie was not feeling well.

Here is the link to my experience yesterday:
http://owlrainfeathers.blogspot.com/2009/07/guest-post-from-jon-about-his-time-at.html

Tamie has been tracking the progress of our interesting experiences on her blog, and she asked me to write a guest post, to summarize the most recent episode.