Who Says and Who Knows?

This column has reviewed several well-known and much respected and repeated sayings from very reliable sources and shown them to be terribly flawed.

There is the famous Declaration of Independence slogan “that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal....”  Thomas Jefferson and his associates did not believe that all men were created equal just that white, American men were.  Non-whites and women were not considered equal and could not enjoy the same benefits of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  (See “Are We All Created Equal?”)

Then there was the quotation most associated with Jesus - “Love thy neighbor as thy self.” As described in the column “Loving Thy Neighbor,” it is unlikely that that is what He said (remember this happened years before the Internet, television, tape recorders or even daily newspapers).  If he said “thy neighbor” instead of saying “everyone” then it would have meant only people who are very much alike in background.  Also we cannot tell ourselves to love everyone.  As Bonnie Raitt taught us “I can’t make you love me if you don’t and you can’t make yourself feel something that you don’t.”

I think that the saying was poorly translated from Aramaic.  What I think He must have meant was to treat each person as an end in himself.  That is how we treat people we love, especially ourselves.

There is a more secular version of this idea and that is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  I see many problems with this one. Now that we live in this wonderfully diversified country and world, we identify with vastly different cultural values.  We are not as alike as we used to be. By treating everyone the way I want to be treated suggests that they should see the world and react to it the way I do.  If they don’t, they might not respond the way I would like them to and they might not appreciate my behavior as much as I do.

I always say “please” and “thank you” when requesting or receiving favors.  I always say “hello” when first seeing someone and “good by” when leaving.  At least half the world’s population does not use these forms of interaction.  I am used to putting my hand out to shake with someone but again half the world’s population and people with obsessive compulsive issues might not appreciate this behavior. I like to always tell the truth but many more sophisticated people consider social lubrication more important than honesty.  Almost no major religion considers lying a sin, especially not if it makes the other person feel better. I might want to go up to every beautiful woman, kiss her and tell her that I can’t live without her, but they might not really appreciate it, though I’d love them to do that to me.

I think that this saying should be “Do onto others as they would have you do onto them as long as it does not violate your values.” If your friend does not want to hear the truth even though you want to always express it,  avoid saying the truth that he would mind.  If your friend is from Asia and prefers bowing or is a person who does not want germs, ever, don’t shake hands with him or her even though that is what you would want. and don't say "Thank G-d," "G-d bless you," or "Merry Christmas" to an atheist, for G-d sake, no matter how much you enjoy saying and hearing it.

Another way to phrase this is again to “treat everyone as an end in himself .”

Then there is the poem on the Statue of Liberty that includes the line “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.yearning to breathe free.....”  It was written by Emma Lazarus, who was coerced into writing it by some newspaper magnates.  The Statue was a gift from the French.

It is a poem.  It is not in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights.  It does not reflect American foreign or domestic policy.  It is not meant to be an open invitation by the citizenry of America to the billions of desperately impoverished in the world.

Perhaps, the President or Congress could authorize a new poem.  It would tell people that while we sympathize with the suffering that is endemic throughout the world, we are no longer accepting any more poor and huddled masses.  We have a $14 trillion budget deficit and we have 15 million American citizens without full employment. One out of every four or five of us lives below the poverty level.  There are more than 194 other countries. Maybe some of them need a larger underclass.  Or perhaps, you could stay in your own country and help make it better.  The Germans and Japanese have worked wonders with their countries in the past 60 years.  Look at Brazil how well they are doing now at long last.  And India and China are on the rise.  Your own country can do the same.  Don’t leave your beloved homeland. Change it. 

I don’t know how to say that in  verse, but I’m sure someone could.  Maybe we could replace the poem with a large sign saying "Closed for restructuring."

But I have saved the best one for last.  Students of Eastern mysticism all know this phrase and consider it the highest realization: “Those who speak do not know and those who know do not speak.” So if someone tells you that he knows why things are the way they are or what they might become, then he does not know.  And if someone knows something, he shouldn’t, wouldn’t and/or couldn’t say anything.

The first question I have is “Who said that?” According to this saying, whoever said it did not know.  So if he said but did not know, then what he said was not true. So those who speak do know.  Well, if that is true, then the one who said otherwise is correct and those who speak do not know.  But then he did not know.  And so it goes ad infinitum. (It’s like saying “I’m a liar.” If I’m a liar, then I’m not telling the truth. So that means that I am in truth not a liar but, if I’m not a liar, then I’m telling the truth and I am a liar, and on and on.)

What is the point of knowing if you can’t express it to others? Should we therefore disregard all thought and all religion? Do I see you nodding "yes?"

Having said all this, it is now incumbent on me to come up with some new phrases that everyone can accept without giving them a second thought.  Hey, that would be a great name for a column, but please don’t quote me on any of this.

Driven By, To, From and Around Distraction

There’s a great new television commercial featuring a man in a car as he is approached in a garage by a gentleman who warns him that he will be talking on his cell phone when he backs his own car up and might accidentally hit this man’s vehicle.  The same man in the car is later cautioned by a fellow driver that she will be doing her makeup while driving and might swerve into his lane.  Another person alerts the same driver that he will be eating while driving and so might side swipe his car by accident.

The man is being warned that the people around him are distracted and could pose a danger to him and his property.  Most of us don’t get that warning.  We might not realize that we ourselves are too distracted to be completely reliable, that we are driven by, to, from and around distraction.  We might be unaware of its effect on ourselves and others.  And most of all, we might know why distraction drives us so.

Two great Russian philosophers, Gurdjieff  and Ouspensky, believed that most of us are asleep and live our lives like machines. Their suggested remedy was to be ever conscious of who we are and what we are doing -  by remembering ourselves.

A modern version of this might be that we are terribly distracted and therefore find ourselves reacting to life rather than creating it.  We seem to always be a few seconds behind.  Life has become so complex and there are so many important things going on in our lives that we want to do as much as we can.  We don’t want to miss anything. But what is the remedy?

We have our cell phones that go everywhere with us.  When they make a noise of our choosing we are duty-bound to answer no matter where, no matter when.  Some of us also have our iPods, iPads, iMacs, our Walkman (where have you been?), FAX, blog, tweeter, and text messages demanding our immediate attention.   What are we to do?  The world beckons.

So why do we allow this to happen, if we really have a choice, and is it good or bad?

As always, I have a theory.

I think that there are several reasons why we have allowed ourselves to become so distracted.

First there is the genuine desire and need to do the best we can. Many of us of believe that in order to do our best we must be available to all the inputs or stimuli that we can.  If we network, we should have as wide a net as we can spread.  If we are serving clients, we want to be available to and for them and to all correspondence needed to assist them.  We want to be productive.

Then, I think that there is the need to feel connected. If it is a woman walking alone in an unfamiliar part of town or if it’s someone dining alone at a restaurant filled with happy couples, or just people wanting to make sure no one thinks that they are really alone or have nothing to do. Our electronic devices have become our friends and sidekicks.  Our devices are magical like the Captain Video ring or Dick Tracy’s wristwatch phone were to us 50 years ago.  We won’t go anywhere without them. Our connection with them and with all the interactions that they avail us is rooted, i believe, in our umbilical cord’s link to our mothers, our primary source of nutrition and love.

But I think that there is a deeper reason why we are so subject to and also eager for distraction.  I think that it is for the same reason people drink alcohol - to divert us from the weight and responsibility of the here and now.

How many of us have denied responsibility for some mindless or thoughtless act by saying that we were drunk and didn’t know what we were doing or failing to do at the time?  What is the purpose of college fraternity parties if not to get coeds so drunk that they won’t be or feel so morally responsible?

I see the same deniability every day in the dog park.  A couple are walking their dog but are distracted and never seem to notice that their dog is going to the bathroom and needs to be cleaned up after.  Sometimes it is because the people are in a deep conversation and can conduct it only by looking away from where their dog is.  Or maybe one is on a real important cell phone call that must be done while facing away from their canine charge. Or maybe they are busy with their beloved child and just do not notice.

How many people late for their appointments or unable to return calls were just too distracted?  How many cars go through red lights and stop signs because the driver is deeply involved in his cell phone call?  How many parents ignore signs of trouble for their children because they were just too involved in other things?  How many orders for goods or services go wrong because someone along the line was thinking about something else?

It may be just me but it seems that this problem has gone way beyond errors by government agencies and children spilling milk.  It has gotten to be a gamble whether the ultimate product will even approximate the original request.  If you order your burger medium rare, will it be?  Or was the waitress too distracted to get your complete request or was the chef busy text messaging his girlfriend who was in the middle of a brain surgery and was trying to find just the right part of the brain to drill in this life and death operation?

When you call customer service trying to resolve a serious issue, is the customer service representative so overwhelmed by the many calls that she accidentally disconnects you after you waited half an hour on the line to get her?  If you finally, after the third or fourth try, get to speak to the live person and the person promises to take a certain action on your behalf, will that person remember?  And if so, will the memory be correct or confused with another order?

I’ve noticed it driving lately. People don’t seem aware that the light has changed or that they can go ahead and make a right at the light or that the speed limit is well over the five miles per hour they are driving or that they don’t have to maintain eye contact with their passenger, if driving while conversing, especially if the passenger is in the back seat.  And these drivers aren’t even the ones on cell phones or eating and drinking their lunch or text messaging while on the move.

So is this good?  If distractions are driving us to accomplish more but poorly, is it good?  Is quantity more important than quality?  And if, as we are constantly reminded by columns like this one, the key to life is living in the here and now by doing everything as an end in itself as well as a means to an end, how can distractions help? If the key to success is the ability to focus completely on what we are doing, how does doing several things at the same time fit?

How many home runs did Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle or Barry Bonds hit while they were thinking about something else?  How many actors give their best performances with their minds on something else? Are great pianists or opera singers actually mentally involved in a different activity while they perform?

If these questions seems so easy to answer “no” to, then why do we continue to sacrifice our ability to perform at our best for the sake of performing at our most, shortchanging everything we do?

I think that as Shakespeare lamented “the world is too much with us.” It’s too much to take in one bite so we take parts of it at different times.  We don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket because what if it leaks? Instead of putting all our money on one horse to win, why not put money on three horses to at least show.  If you’re really lucky they might all come in in the top three.  If you’re really lucky, you might be able to have an intelligent cell phone conversation while driving at the appropriate speed and stopping at the right place for the right amount of time.  Sometimes, we are lucky and sometimes, we’re not.

I suggest that we test this theory.  Let us try to do one thing at a time giving it our full attention.  Let us do this not only as the means to some future end, which it always is, but also as an end in itself.  If we are vacuuming to keep our home clean, let us also do it for the pleasure of doing it.  When we eat, let us do it not only for nutrition, but also just for the pleasure of tasting different flavors.  If we drive to the store let us enjoy the ride.

If my theory is correct, we will perform more efficiently, effectively and enjoyably.  We will experience the beginner’s mind finding that whatever we do will feel like it’s the first time. We will know pleasure of childlike simplicity as in a constant meditation.

If my theory is incorrect, it will be because I have been very distracted trying to keep my laptop steady as I drive through the rain.  It’s not my fault. 

Who Are We and What Do We Want?

Being a native American born in our nation’s largest city of  immigrant parents, I always thought I had a clear idea of who we Americans are and therefore, what we wanted.

I knew that ours was an international country with many of the best qualities of other homelands.  Our people had a bit of the charm of the Irish, the warmth of the Italians, the hard work ethic of the Germans, the integrity of the Hungarians (I added this because my mother was Hungarian) and the childlike simplicity of a humble Latin American.  We were free and loved our freedom.  We were generous and shared our prosperity with the less fortunate.  We gave everyone a chance to be the best that they can be just like the slogan of our all-volunteer army.

In America a foreigner could enter our land legally, learn our language and culture, become a citizen after renouncing all others (kind of like a wedding vow) and be considered an American as would his or her children, born in this country as I was.

When our President campaigned for office, he told us that there is one America, not two or three, but just one.  There was no Blue America or Red America.  There was no Italian-American or Hungarian-American or Black-American.  We are all Americans. This idea, like so many in life, is both true and false.

Compared to people of other lands, we are all the same. We’re like the Bette Midler song “From A Distance.” From a distance we are all Americans, but the closer you get, the more different we seem.

We saw it in the past election.  A black candidate got more than 90% of the black vote but lost the white vote to his absurdly inferior rival in every age category except for that of our youngest voters.  If an American of Asian, Hispanic or Jewish heritage runs for office, he or she can be sure to get the vast majority of his or her group’s members’ votes. So much for our non-hyphenated equality.

We have somehow forgotten the notion that an American must renounce all other citizenships.  Some of us are trying to see how many passports we can qualify for.  Did your great grandmother come from Germany?  You can be a German. And if your grandmother was from France, you can also become French.  Wasn’t there a great-grand parent from Ireland? Let’s add that to your nationality shopping cart. 

So as our country of melting pot fame becomes one that strives for salad bowls with each difference among us taken to its greatest extremes, we seem to lose our cohesiveness, our national identity.

But in addition to these cultural divides, I think there is a deeper one, one becoming harder to bridge. The polarization of our political parties has created extremists on both sides - the Left and the Right.

The Left is for the underdog.  Our underdogs include the poor, most minority members, union workers, government employees, the disabled and best of all, illegal immigrants (referred here as document-free residents).  The document-free residents have everything a Left-leaner is looking for. They are usually less educated, unskilled, poor, living in the shadows and unable to fend for themselves.

Many in the Left have lost their faith and declare themselves to be atheists (or just claim to not believe in any of the controversial parts of their religion) primarily because the idea of absolute truth flies in the face of their quest to reduce causes of low self esteem that violators of objective laws (read “sinners”) might feel.  They do not believe in Adam and Eve as described in Genesis, but rather in Nature and its laws of natural selection via the survival of the fittest. But they don’t want even these laws applied to our least fit - our underdogs - their raison d’etre. They believe that a force greater than the individual, like the State (or G-d if He exists) should step in and help the helpless.  Food stamps should provide food for the hungry, welfare programs should provide for the living needs of the poor and disabled and the government should ensure that all Americans have health care coverage.  The underdogs cannot be allowed to fail no matter what Nature demands.

Many in the Right are devoutly religious.  The vast majority claim Christianity as their proud national religion whose main teaching is that the way we treat the most needy is the way we treat our Savior.  Jesus, Himself,  helped the lepers, the poor and the disenfranchised.  He demonstrated the ultimate example of noblesse oblige.

But the Right also believe in maintaining the supremacy of the top dog.  Their top dogs are the rich and powerful.  To the Right, the top dog is everything that America stands for.  The top dog works hard to win in whatever he attempts and is not inhibited by objective moral laws or agreed upon rules of conduct to successfully compete.  The Ten Commandments, whatever they actually say, are really important until and unless they stand in the way of coming out on top.  Ideas like thou shall not steal, lie (yes, the one about false witness is not only about court appearances), covet and most of all to have no gods before the One are no impediment to these folks.

And though the members of the Right are religious, they believe that Man’s future is most secure when natural selection (also known as the free market) is allowed to operate freely. That means that only the most fit survive.  There should be no intervention by a force greater than the individual like the State (or even the Creator who they say does exist). Do not extend unemployment benefits, do not bail out failed banks and auto companies and do not prevent foreclosures and bankruptcies, they say.  And, they add, do not give health care to those who can not get it at work or pay for it themselves.  They want tax cuts for the very richest among us, but don’t want to subsidize health care coverage for 30 million Americans without it. They want government to stop regulating the private sector, trusting in their basic integrity and the infallibility of the free market.

The Right also wants us to trust the intuitive wisdom of human nature.  Parents, no matter how uneducated, know what’s best for their kids to eat, no matter how obese.  We should also trust the intrinsic goodness of business leaders, the Right insists.  They don’t need a bunch of government regulations to make sure that their product and service are of the highest standard. Business is self regulating, they want us to believe, with thousands of class-action suits, the B.P. oil spill, the discrimination against its female employees by the country’s largest retail corporation, the manipulation of the energy market in California by large energy companies, the fraud and moral bankruptcy of Enron, Providian, MCI, Countrywide, Arthur Anderson, Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs et al notwithstanding.  These many examples of systemic failure have failed to dampen their world view.

And while members of the Left, no matter how successful in their own pursuits, still identify with those least able to excel, the members of the Right, no matter how unsuccessful and unlikely to ever be otherwise, identify with the top dogs. They want the rich to get tax breaks because they think that someday they too may join their privileged ranks, disregarding all signs to the contrary. These misguided believers will defend the very people who are exploiting them against the laws and government trying to protect them.

So what is the answer?  How do we unite a badly divided nation?

Plato and Aristotle had the answer.  I think that they called it the Golden Mean.  Buddha had the Middle Path.  President Obama has finding common ground.  I call it moderation.

We must stop looking for our top dogs or underdogs so that we can see all of our people and attend to their common needs and goals.  The rich are much too rich, even for their own good and the poor are too poor even for all their shortcomings.  We must have a tax code that is both simple and fair.  Our government must free itself of waste, corruption, inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Holes in our safety nets like Social Security and Medicare must be mended. We must stop subsidizing industries that are doing well on their own like agriculture and oil. American businesses, while continuing to work to increase profit, must also strive to make this a better country by treating their American workers and customers fairly. And, it would really help if we stayed out of the affairs of other countries by neither attacking them nor bribing them with foreign aid and military bases to protect them.  

And let’s go back to being 100 percent Americans and not also citizens of other lands.  We marry only one person at a time, why not be a citizen of one country at a time?

Then, perhaps we will truly be, up close as well as at a distance, one nation with a united, non-hyphenated people who know who we are and what we really want.