When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 many of the western European communist parties were forced to really rethink what it meant for them to be communist. In a very short time the French Communist Party lost more than half of its members. Naively I imagined their defection would mean real growth in the governing Socialist Party, the next one over from the left. Instead a majority joined the racist, populist National Front - at the furthest right end of the right-left spectrum! If this were a fancy dinner that would be like switching from your fish fork all the way over to the tiny espresso spoon.
This notion left me perplexed. What could possibly have motivated such a huge leap? Then it occurred to me: the one thing that connects both ends of the political rainbow is strong desire for change right now. Not in a year, not in a month. RIGHT NOW.
Recently on NPR, an American expert was commenting on China's unearthly capacity to expand the various infrastructural systems so quickly. He was talking with admiration about how rapidly they'd multiplied the miles of high speed train lines and quipped that we Americans can't possibly compete with or imagine such rapid growth. This echoed the comments of a young art dealer friend recently back from a trip to Shanghai: "The US is so screwed."
As a man who sold my services to French civil servants for many years, I was used to thinking of the US as one of those places on earth where things actually get done pretty quickly. It was strange for me to think of the US as a slow country - at least in this respect.
But the truth is it is easy to get things done quickly when leadership has no opposition and all other political parties are banned. Dictatorships and oligarchies will always be able to react more quickly than democracies because they simply have no or little need for discussion, no regard for people's rights, no time for a free press and little consideration for justice.
(Let's save for a later date the blog discussion about how ethical it was for us as a country to transfer the lion's share of our manufacturing base to just such a country while invading others in order to teach them democracy.)
One of the myths Americans like to tell themselves is that faster is always better. As a turbo-capitalist country we have grown accustomed to having many things quickly, without having to sit in that uncomfortable yearning zone of absence-of-gratification.
We don't like that.
We like to have democracy but we want the decision-making to go quickly. We wouldn't be without a judicial system but hate when it goes slowly and deprives us from acting on our urges for revenge. We love being protected from corporate malfeasance but can't stand that regulation slows down manufacturing and commerce. We enjoy having weekends and like our salaries to be higher than say China but have no patience for labor unions and their never-ending negotiations and picket lines.
It seems to me the closest we've ever come in my lifetime to that kind of oligarchy --in which commerce, manufacturing, military and legislators seem uncomfortably intimate-- was under George W. Bush and a Republican-dominated congress in which no legislation or policy seemed to meet the needs of the 50% of Americans who hadn't voted for them.
Interestingly, this need for "quick change now" corresponds nicely with the beliefs of what I call the Evangelizing Class: the 20 or so percent of Americans who believe that everyone should behave like them. They aren't really interested in the slow process of debate, negotiation, or discussion. They are not interested in listening, in meeting the other person right there where he or she is, and seeing how they can find some kind of common legislation.
No - the Evangelizers don't care who you are or what you think. What they know is that your way is wrong and theirs isn't. Their favorite mode of debate is the use of the Victim-Perpetrator game: insult and accuse, then say you are a victim when insulted back, rinse, repeat.
It's the opposite of discussion, antithetical to democratic debate and it's the perfect fodder for today's news media that's struggling to survive a slow economic death.
P.S. Another myth: We also like to think that we can have all of these perks --we call them freedoms-- without paying for them. How American of us to always be on the look out for a great deal - even on democracy!
December 01, 2009
May 18, 2009
The Courage to Trust International Collaboration
My personal take-away from the nearly-forgotten swine flu is that we Americans mostly have a really hard time dealing with anything that might be Bigger Than Us.
My first hunch was when Y2K hit and much to my surprise my otherwise rational neighbors began organizing to save water and stock food.
Then came 911 and Americans were running around dumbfounded that anyone would want to do this to us.
"Why do they hate us?" people wondered aloud somehow forgetting the fact that we've been manipulating smaller countries in unsavory ways for decades.
And of course the obvious bigger-than-us thing is the way we spend billions of dollars fleeing the grim reaper with facelifts, rejuvenation Ponzi schemes and fashions that are 30 years too young for us.
Perhaps I got used to living in a country which had been invaded by its nearest neighbor three times in under 75 years; a country where we all mechanically knew what to do when terrorist alerts were announced because we had been bombed before. There is after all something very humbling and challenging in recognizing that terrorists are on your very territory and could cause harm at any time.
Each time questions of porous borders, viruses, terrorism or invasive species come up we as a country have a VERY powerful fear reaction and start talking about fall-out shelters, military action, eradication schemes and quarantine islands.
I think the root cause is mostly historical - we are used to crossing the watery thresholds separating us from most of the world where we do things to others. We're not used to having things done to us on our own turf. We're impenetrable, that is, we do the penetrating thank you very much.
On a personal level the only way for me to overcome my own fears is to safely expose myself to whatever it is I'm frightened of - within reason of course.
I wondered what might be a safe, bigger-than-us thing America could expose itself to in order to get over her fear of anything bigger -- and the resulting paranoid illusion of needing to control everything.
It occurred to me we actually have a really good living example of how a country (actually several) decided to create something bigger than itself : the European Union.
I can already hear you chuckling: "Yea but they got their ass kicked in the war!" Of course. "They were dying empires living in a world dominated by the communist-capitalist spitting contest". Yes - I agree. "And it takes them forever to get anything done." Couldn't agree more.
But whatever their motivation, a group of sovereign countries really did willingly come together and create something they would all agree to pledge allegiance to. Unthinkable in North America. It hasn't been easy. And the outcome has been far from perfect but the process has been incredibly rewarding. (Imagine for just a moment trying to organize international elections to create a democratically elected body to oversee certain aspects of administering Canada, Mexico and the US).
Just recently the UK had to dump thousands of DNA records it had been calmly collecting on every person who'd ever been arrested in that country. The European Court of Human Rights, which they helped create, considered it unethical. Something similar happened for gay rights in otherwise homophobic Poland. Ireland wouldn't have had its economic boom if it hadn't been for the flow of European subsidies to help it build infrastructure (obviously the low corporate taxes helped a lot too).
We Americans have had our opportunity to act in similar ways. But here are just a few examples of how we have refused to submit ourselves to something bigger than us:
- when we don't like judicial decisions we discredit the judges by calling them "activists"
- we trash the Geneva Convention in a time of war
- we poo-poo the UN - created in San Francisco (and regularly default on paying the annual dues we've agreed to)
- we walk away from the global warming agreement
- we carefully offer some NAFTA privileges to Canada but not to Mexico
- we make treaties with sovereign nations then disregard them
- we support countries in organizing democratic elections then remotely organize a coup when we don't like the outcome.
Our Guantanamo Bay dilemma is just the most recent fumble: we believe in the rule of law yet don't organize proper trials on a proper sovereign soil for "outsiders".
The power of a system like the EU is that multiple partners actually help to keep one powermonger from serving him or herself an extra big piece of pie. Thus the bigger-than-us principles that become law mostly exclude corruption and hegemony and usually include such elements as parity, equality, social justice and heightened individual rights.
Of course this also means the participants willingly step into a system of which they are unsure of the outcome but instead learn to trust.
We're living in a world that is becoming more and more multi-polar with rising powerful economic players (Turkey, Brazil, China, India). At the same time we are realizing the cost of stretching our own monetary, scientific, military and humanitarian capacities beyond our capability.
I feel quite strongly that if we don't agree to step into those uncomfortable moments of relinquishing our illusion of control and agree to join Bigger Than Us systems, co-built on rigorous values, we will be left by the wayside by some and continue to be considered the Bastille that needs storming by others.
Erich Fromm said, "Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
Letting go of certainties is often a test of faith, surprisingly a notion this country was founded on and its people often tout.
My first hunch was when Y2K hit and much to my surprise my otherwise rational neighbors began organizing to save water and stock food.
Then came 911 and Americans were running around dumbfounded that anyone would want to do this to us.
"Why do they hate us?" people wondered aloud somehow forgetting the fact that we've been manipulating smaller countries in unsavory ways for decades.
And of course the obvious bigger-than-us thing is the way we spend billions of dollars fleeing the grim reaper with facelifts, rejuvenation Ponzi schemes and fashions that are 30 years too young for us.
Perhaps I got used to living in a country which had been invaded by its nearest neighbor three times in under 75 years; a country where we all mechanically knew what to do when terrorist alerts were announced because we had been bombed before. There is after all something very humbling and challenging in recognizing that terrorists are on your very territory and could cause harm at any time.
Each time questions of porous borders, viruses, terrorism or invasive species come up we as a country have a VERY powerful fear reaction and start talking about fall-out shelters, military action, eradication schemes and quarantine islands.
I think the root cause is mostly historical - we are used to crossing the watery thresholds separating us from most of the world where we do things to others. We're not used to having things done to us on our own turf. We're impenetrable, that is, we do the penetrating thank you very much.
On a personal level the only way for me to overcome my own fears is to safely expose myself to whatever it is I'm frightened of - within reason of course.
I wondered what might be a safe, bigger-than-us thing America could expose itself to in order to get over her fear of anything bigger -- and the resulting paranoid illusion of needing to control everything.
It occurred to me we actually have a really good living example of how a country (actually several) decided to create something bigger than itself : the European Union.
I can already hear you chuckling: "Yea but they got their ass kicked in the war!" Of course. "They were dying empires living in a world dominated by the communist-capitalist spitting contest". Yes - I agree. "And it takes them forever to get anything done." Couldn't agree more.
But whatever their motivation, a group of sovereign countries really did willingly come together and create something they would all agree to pledge allegiance to. Unthinkable in North America. It hasn't been easy. And the outcome has been far from perfect but the process has been incredibly rewarding. (Imagine for just a moment trying to organize international elections to create a democratically elected body to oversee certain aspects of administering Canada, Mexico and the US).
Just recently the UK had to dump thousands of DNA records it had been calmly collecting on every person who'd ever been arrested in that country. The European Court of Human Rights, which they helped create, considered it unethical. Something similar happened for gay rights in otherwise homophobic Poland. Ireland wouldn't have had its economic boom if it hadn't been for the flow of European subsidies to help it build infrastructure (obviously the low corporate taxes helped a lot too).
We Americans have had our opportunity to act in similar ways. But here are just a few examples of how we have refused to submit ourselves to something bigger than us:
- when we don't like judicial decisions we discredit the judges by calling them "activists"
- we trash the Geneva Convention in a time of war
- we poo-poo the UN - created in San Francisco (and regularly default on paying the annual dues we've agreed to)
- we walk away from the global warming agreement
- we carefully offer some NAFTA privileges to Canada but not to Mexico
- we make treaties with sovereign nations then disregard them
- we support countries in organizing democratic elections then remotely organize a coup when we don't like the outcome.
Our Guantanamo Bay dilemma is just the most recent fumble: we believe in the rule of law yet don't organize proper trials on a proper sovereign soil for "outsiders".
The power of a system like the EU is that multiple partners actually help to keep one powermonger from serving him or herself an extra big piece of pie. Thus the bigger-than-us principles that become law mostly exclude corruption and hegemony and usually include such elements as parity, equality, social justice and heightened individual rights.
Of course this also means the participants willingly step into a system of which they are unsure of the outcome but instead learn to trust.
We're living in a world that is becoming more and more multi-polar with rising powerful economic players (Turkey, Brazil, China, India). At the same time we are realizing the cost of stretching our own monetary, scientific, military and humanitarian capacities beyond our capability.
I feel quite strongly that if we don't agree to step into those uncomfortable moments of relinquishing our illusion of control and agree to join Bigger Than Us systems, co-built on rigorous values, we will be left by the wayside by some and continue to be considered the Bastille that needs storming by others.
Erich Fromm said, "Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
Letting go of certainties is often a test of faith, surprisingly a notion this country was founded on and its people often tout.
February 22, 2009
End of An Era?
When I first moved back to the US I remember riding around my rather upscale town, seeing big open derelict spaces left behind by dead industries and nearby direly poor districts inhabited mostly by people of color.
I said to myself, "The Bastards!! Of all the nerve!!"
I was used to the untarnished image of America as seen from abroad. It was the country touted as "Number One" in the world, and California, the seventh largest economy on the planet, was its crown jewel.
But the truth is I never saw urban decay or poverty to that extent in France where I was based.
Little by little here in the US I saw the devil in the details: mind-wrenching traffic jams because the highway systems don't keep up with the growing population, regular deaths from train accidents because no one invests in overpasses, beautiful urban green spaces that never get tended to, homeless people pissing on themselves next to high-rolling financial planners.
Then I got my first job and couldn't get a doctor to accept me despite my shiny new healthcare policy. After that I went to grad school where I painfully forked over $25K for a masters (gulp) - and that’s cheap, I discovered!
A few years ago France elected their first ever money-loving president, a man who avowedly hangs out with mega-rich businessmen and believes in the power of entrepreneurship. Quelle scandale!
France was tired of watching people in the US and the UK make huge salaries, buy lots of brand-name creature comforts and benefit from much faster national growth. They were fed up with selling their beautiful family farms to foreigners with higher incomes.
They realized they needed a leader who could deregulate, speak up to the unions, make hiring and firing easier, and break through some of the unusual relationships French have to money, government perks, entrepreneurship and vacation.
I imagine I am not the only one noticing that our wonderful laissez-faire capitalist system that the world envied us has just seriously tanked.
And most experts agree we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
Suddenly it's the cold shower after a long party and we're noticing that we haven't done a very good job at keeping our roads in good shape, our electrical grid up to speed, our schools and hospitals working and our prisoners locked up. Not to mention develop smart public transportation strategies and green energy. We're wondering why we don't have enough doctors per capita and we're starting to worry because we no longer have the top research schools in the world to attract the grey matter we once did.
I am by no means saying France is perfect - far from it. Having worked in government-run hospitals, to just mention those, I can cite dozens of ways to improve them.
However there is a fundamental difference that is noteworthy: France’s heavier taxes and regulation allowed it to have all of the above-mentioned things we need, plus everyone has the assurance that they’ll get healthcare and access to a higher education for a very low price (France actually has too many doctors and you can still get a house call for a reasonable price, imagine that!)
I have also spent plenty of time in poor countries: Morocco, Algeria, Palestine, Thailand, Eastern Europe.
I love dirt roads, mud houses and thatched roofs. I enjoy the sluggish speed of a crowd-filled bus or a rickety train. I enjoy having a huge service industry - because few people have a post secondary education. I fondly remember a three hour haircut/massage/shave in Thailand that cost me about 4 dollars and was a delicious part of my stay there.
In Morocco friends of mine returned to the shop of a wood worker who had built a door for their house. They wanted another one only this time they wanted it with the elaborate, hand-carved moucharabia design. When they asked the price of this second, much more labor-intensive door, the old woodworker looked at them perplexed. “Why would the price be different?” he replied, “It’s the same amount of wood.”
Labor laws are weak in these countries and people are regularly abused by employers. Weekends and vacations are not very clearly delineated. At the same time all of these countries also have a small minority of extremely wealthy individuals who navigate a parallel world that looks something like that of a 19th century colonial land-owner.
These are two different models on the continuum of how a country can be run and I’m not suggesting that we should become one or the other, though I do see aspects of both in this supposedly wealthy country of ours.
I think it is pretty obvious that we need to make some clear legislative decisions toward which way we want to go.
Do we want to keep defending our survival-of-the-fittest system where every man is free to create his or her own wealth and the infrastructures get kept up when the market demands it or do we want to pay the cost of enhancing quality of life for all levels of society at the risk of slower growth and less dynamism?
But before we really engage in that debate it seems to me there are two notions that many decision-makers don't want to embrace. In doing so they are hampering the efforts to decide on a solution.
1 - The trickle-down model just failed (or seriously floundered at least).
Highly sophisticated electronic tools, globalization, greatly increased distances between buyers and sellers, enamored blindness for profit-at-all-cost all skewed seriously skewed the game and turned it into something not very pretty. Giving huge sums of free money so that the same people can go back to business as usual isn't the answer.
2 - Running a modern democracy is expensive.
Even if we never espouse the idea practiced in all the other developed nations that we need to invest in the well-being of our citizens through cheaper health-care and low-cost education, its' imperative that we recognize that it costs a lot of money to keep up highways, dams, courts, antennas, buses, hospitals, law enforcement, prisons, food production, embassies, parks, coasts, government buildings, schools, museums, wars, military personnel and equipment.
How do we maintain these things if we are convinced that lowering taxes and smaller government are ALWAYS the answer?
To quote the pot-selling son of a retired Marine in the film American Beauty: “Never underestimate the power of denial.”
I said to myself, "The Bastards!! Of all the nerve!!"
I was used to the untarnished image of America as seen from abroad. It was the country touted as "Number One" in the world, and California, the seventh largest economy on the planet, was its crown jewel.
But the truth is I never saw urban decay or poverty to that extent in France where I was based.
Little by little here in the US I saw the devil in the details: mind-wrenching traffic jams because the highway systems don't keep up with the growing population, regular deaths from train accidents because no one invests in overpasses, beautiful urban green spaces that never get tended to, homeless people pissing on themselves next to high-rolling financial planners.
Then I got my first job and couldn't get a doctor to accept me despite my shiny new healthcare policy. After that I went to grad school where I painfully forked over $25K for a masters (gulp) - and that’s cheap, I discovered!
A few years ago France elected their first ever money-loving president, a man who avowedly hangs out with mega-rich businessmen and believes in the power of entrepreneurship. Quelle scandale!
France was tired of watching people in the US and the UK make huge salaries, buy lots of brand-name creature comforts and benefit from much faster national growth. They were fed up with selling their beautiful family farms to foreigners with higher incomes.
They realized they needed a leader who could deregulate, speak up to the unions, make hiring and firing easier, and break through some of the unusual relationships French have to money, government perks, entrepreneurship and vacation.
I imagine I am not the only one noticing that our wonderful laissez-faire capitalist system that the world envied us has just seriously tanked.
And most experts agree we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
Suddenly it's the cold shower after a long party and we're noticing that we haven't done a very good job at keeping our roads in good shape, our electrical grid up to speed, our schools and hospitals working and our prisoners locked up. Not to mention develop smart public transportation strategies and green energy. We're wondering why we don't have enough doctors per capita and we're starting to worry because we no longer have the top research schools in the world to attract the grey matter we once did.
I am by no means saying France is perfect - far from it. Having worked in government-run hospitals, to just mention those, I can cite dozens of ways to improve them.
However there is a fundamental difference that is noteworthy: France’s heavier taxes and regulation allowed it to have all of the above-mentioned things we need, plus everyone has the assurance that they’ll get healthcare and access to a higher education for a very low price (France actually has too many doctors and you can still get a house call for a reasonable price, imagine that!)
I have also spent plenty of time in poor countries: Morocco, Algeria, Palestine, Thailand, Eastern Europe.
I love dirt roads, mud houses and thatched roofs. I enjoy the sluggish speed of a crowd-filled bus or a rickety train. I enjoy having a huge service industry - because few people have a post secondary education. I fondly remember a three hour haircut/massage/shave in Thailand that cost me about 4 dollars and was a delicious part of my stay there.
In Morocco friends of mine returned to the shop of a wood worker who had built a door for their house. They wanted another one only this time they wanted it with the elaborate, hand-carved moucharabia design. When they asked the price of this second, much more labor-intensive door, the old woodworker looked at them perplexed. “Why would the price be different?” he replied, “It’s the same amount of wood.”
Labor laws are weak in these countries and people are regularly abused by employers. Weekends and vacations are not very clearly delineated. At the same time all of these countries also have a small minority of extremely wealthy individuals who navigate a parallel world that looks something like that of a 19th century colonial land-owner.
These are two different models on the continuum of how a country can be run and I’m not suggesting that we should become one or the other, though I do see aspects of both in this supposedly wealthy country of ours.
I think it is pretty obvious that we need to make some clear legislative decisions toward which way we want to go.
Do we want to keep defending our survival-of-the-fittest system where every man is free to create his or her own wealth and the infrastructures get kept up when the market demands it or do we want to pay the cost of enhancing quality of life for all levels of society at the risk of slower growth and less dynamism?
But before we really engage in that debate it seems to me there are two notions that many decision-makers don't want to embrace. In doing so they are hampering the efforts to decide on a solution.
1 - The trickle-down model just failed (or seriously floundered at least).
Highly sophisticated electronic tools, globalization, greatly increased distances between buyers and sellers, enamored blindness for profit-at-all-cost all skewed seriously skewed the game and turned it into something not very pretty. Giving huge sums of free money so that the same people can go back to business as usual isn't the answer.
2 - Running a modern democracy is expensive.
Even if we never espouse the idea practiced in all the other developed nations that we need to invest in the well-being of our citizens through cheaper health-care and low-cost education, its' imperative that we recognize that it costs a lot of money to keep up highways, dams, courts, antennas, buses, hospitals, law enforcement, prisons, food production, embassies, parks, coasts, government buildings, schools, museums, wars, military personnel and equipment.
How do we maintain these things if we are convinced that lowering taxes and smaller government are ALWAYS the answer?
To quote the pot-selling son of a retired Marine in the film American Beauty: “Never underestimate the power of denial.”
January 16, 2009
God and Incestual Behavior in America
Another holiday season has come and gone and I am still not sure I believe in God. To be more precise I am not sure whether God made us or we made God so I guess technically I believe in some form of godliness.
In an edition of the New York Times last week a lawmaker from Kentucky was describing all the ways he has illegally mixed church and state for decades claiming that without god: "America would be anchorless." A few pages away two economists gave a detailed description of how major players in the financial universe, both private and public, behaved unethically (and in some cases illegally) to slowly build up to our present-day financial and economic disaster.
When I was an adolescent proudly evangelizing in mid-western strip malls I truly believed that the only way to be a good person was to adhere to very narrow, specific tenets of one form of Christianity.
Young and naive, I understood little of the power of such human characteristics as loyalty, honesty, balanced actions, critical thought, empathy. Today, having traveled to many countries, seen more than my share of deaths, wealth and poverty, I would say my position has changed somewhat.
But I do wonder just where we learn to set aside ethical principles in order to, for instance, make absurd amounts of money (or if indeed we had them to begin with)? How does a man like Donald Rumsfeld, a self-avowed adherent to devout Christian principles, justify spending so much of his life backing initiatives that cause death and pain? How does a Madoff brazenly steal from Jewish philanthropic organizations? How does a Jewish state created after the atrocities of World War II fall into creating so much havoc in the lives of others?
One thing I have noticed about people who don't exhibit a strong personal ethic is a profound aptitude for what Erich Fromm called incestuous behavior. In the incestuous system these people cling to a group identity and lack any kind of critical thinking towards the actions of that group or that group's leadership, even behavior they would find abhorrent coming from another group's leader. These groups can be small such as a fraternity, a platoon or a football team or as large as having an address in the Hamptons, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention or resident of the state of California.
Studies show that the desire to be in relation to others actually trumps the desire to make good decisions. I believe this incestuous pull is the very mechanic that drove rich people to blindly sell unethical mortgages and poor people to somehow believe they could get something for nothing.
Fortunately I have seen that incredible acts of kindness or cruelty don't seem to have anything to do with whether one is a believer or a non-believer, educated or not. Clearly some people -both in and out of churches and schools- have chosen to live with a conscience and an attention to Life at certain moments of their existence. A rare few have chosen to devote their very lives to these endeavors.
Perhaps in the end God is nothing more than the call to be a good person and resist that incestuous pull. I feel fortunate enough to enjoy sufficient stability and serenity in my own life today to be able to notice it when I see it in front of me.
Dare I say, "Thank god!"?
In an edition of the New York Times last week a lawmaker from Kentucky was describing all the ways he has illegally mixed church and state for decades claiming that without god: "America would be anchorless." A few pages away two economists gave a detailed description of how major players in the financial universe, both private and public, behaved unethically (and in some cases illegally) to slowly build up to our present-day financial and economic disaster.
When I was an adolescent proudly evangelizing in mid-western strip malls I truly believed that the only way to be a good person was to adhere to very narrow, specific tenets of one form of Christianity.
Young and naive, I understood little of the power of such human characteristics as loyalty, honesty, balanced actions, critical thought, empathy. Today, having traveled to many countries, seen more than my share of deaths, wealth and poverty, I would say my position has changed somewhat.
But I do wonder just where we learn to set aside ethical principles in order to, for instance, make absurd amounts of money (or if indeed we had them to begin with)? How does a man like Donald Rumsfeld, a self-avowed adherent to devout Christian principles, justify spending so much of his life backing initiatives that cause death and pain? How does a Madoff brazenly steal from Jewish philanthropic organizations? How does a Jewish state created after the atrocities of World War II fall into creating so much havoc in the lives of others?
One thing I have noticed about people who don't exhibit a strong personal ethic is a profound aptitude for what Erich Fromm called incestuous behavior. In the incestuous system these people cling to a group identity and lack any kind of critical thinking towards the actions of that group or that group's leadership, even behavior they would find abhorrent coming from another group's leader. These groups can be small such as a fraternity, a platoon or a football team or as large as having an address in the Hamptons, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention or resident of the state of California.
Studies show that the desire to be in relation to others actually trumps the desire to make good decisions. I believe this incestuous pull is the very mechanic that drove rich people to blindly sell unethical mortgages and poor people to somehow believe they could get something for nothing.
Fortunately I have seen that incredible acts of kindness or cruelty don't seem to have anything to do with whether one is a believer or a non-believer, educated or not. Clearly some people -both in and out of churches and schools- have chosen to live with a conscience and an attention to Life at certain moments of their existence. A rare few have chosen to devote their very lives to these endeavors.
Perhaps in the end God is nothing more than the call to be a good person and resist that incestuous pull. I feel fortunate enough to enjoy sufficient stability and serenity in my own life today to be able to notice it when I see it in front of me.
Dare I say, "Thank god!"?
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