Culture/society/politics

Humanitarian Aid to U.S. Education

December 21, 2010 — 9 Comments

We got our World Vision gift catalog in the mail recently. Paging through the overwhelming list of giving opportunities (clean water, school tuition, clothes, food, etc. for poor people around the world), I was jarred to see an opportunity to provide school supplies for U.S. school children.

I’m not about to say anything new here, but we U.S. citizens seem a little too comfortable with this state of affairs, so I think it’s worth mentioning again: our nation easily spends billions of dollars on wars we never budgeted for, destroying people and property in other places, while cutting funding for educating our children, citing the deficit, the recession, hard times, whatever.

In an interview with Michael Moore for his documentary Sicko, former British cabinet minister Tony Benn said that his government, coming out of World War II, decided that if they could afford to kill people, they could afford to help them, and subsequently built a nationalized health care system (or “nationalised” as they would spell it).

I’m all for nationalized health care here too. But I’d also love to see proper funding of our schools. And to do that, I’m thinking we should stop funding these despicable wars. But I realized recently that the world powers (including our own nation) really don’t want world peace. Peace would mean that everyone would have enough, that no one would hold too much control. Peace for the poor among us would be a great gain. But peace for the wealthy and powerful would be a painful loss.

So, let’s just talk about world peace, especially at this time of year, and let’s feel good about giving to causes that our government lets fall by the wayside. We get the warm fuzzies, and they can keep blasting people in other places.

One problem, though – our government is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Why do we speak of it as “them”?

(I realize this post is raw and far from highly reasoned. We can hash things out in comments if you’d like. Let’s have a conversation!)

Your Own Personal Times Mirror

October 27, 2010 — 1 Comment

My local credit union provides an added service to its members. While we are waiting in line, inside or in the drive-up lanes, the latest news headlines flash on colorful screens to keep us informed. I guess.

This morning, the first headline I saw told me about a “skeletal body” found in a “rusty barrel” on the living premises of a paroled convict in Texas. The next was about nineteen people missing because their Chinese tour bus was wrecked in the typhoon in Taiwan. My short-term memory apparently overloaded because I can’t remember the details of the third one, something about a catastrophe that stranded a large group of people, maybe factory workers, somewhere else in the world.

After these helpful headlines, the screen flicked to sports scores.

Is this progress? Technology has made it possible for me in my car or house or clinic waiting room to look into another person’s car or house or waiting room practically anywhere else in the world. If my media sources deemed it important, they could show or tell me about a soft-skinned newborn baby peacefully nursing in her mother’s arms in Afghanistan; or a young student from Minneapolis who spent a summer in Nepal and saw the world open up to him in numerous ways; or an autumn afternoon bicycle ride and picnic that was the highlight of a disabled French woman’s year.

Situations like these are not news, precisely because they happen every day, everywhere. And just as certainly, people get hurt in small ways, every day, everywhere. These stories may not be “news,” but they are often little stops on the path to some “big” news story.

“Everything matters if anything matters at all,” wrote Pierce Pettis. What led up to the sensational story about the skeletal body in the rusty barrel? A million “small” details, I’m thinking. A cruel joke on a school playground . . . a child’s choice to reject a friendship . . . a growing volume of hateful voices inside a teenager’s head . . . a thousand little cruelties that grew into the habitual and hateful behavior of the self-loathing now-paroled convict.

Or not. I know that sometimes people do things for no observable reason; there is no painful childhood, no discernable pattern of small details leading up to the scene of the crime. I’ve given up the search for a handy universal explanation of everything. But I wonder if more of us paid attention to the smaller details of our own lives and the lives of those around us – our compulsive behaviors (why, I might ask myself, do I always laugh nervously when someone mentions “x”), the look of pain or numbness in the eyes of a coworker when she speaks (if I take the time to look her in the eyes) – maybe then we could work for change on the level where change most often happens – the embryonic one.

These days, news, like most things, feels like a product to be consumed. It is there to entertain us, to add to our intellectual stores of knowledge, to warn us against danger (and according to the news, danger is lurking everywhere, everywhere, dammit!), to show us something pretty and tender and sweet now and then to preserve our hope in the human spirit (so, yes, now and then we do hear about the French woman’s bike ride and such).

It’s still possible, though, to use news as a tool for information-gathering – not for the sake of simply storing that information and then yanking it out to write up a nifty blog post (hey, why am I laughing nervously right now?); but to ponder that information and its influence on the issues that affect me and my community – and then to act – responsibly – on that information. Reflection on the news can inspire people to live more wisely and compassionately as family members, friends, coworkers, and citizens of communities both local and global.

Am I suggesting everyone seek out solitude as much as I do? Nah. But now and then, it probably wouldn’t hurt to turn off the Blackberry, the TV, the radio, the computer; set aside the paper (or the iPad), and reflect on whatever new information you just took in (you do remember what it was, don’t you?).

Further Thoughts on Redemption

September 22, 2010 — 15 Comments

Commenting on my last post, Nnox sees no grounds for a redemptive view of things. I said that redemption is not my observation of the way things (usually) work, but my hope. I wanted to add that this doesn’t make me a helpful optimist and Nnox a harmful pessimist. On the contrary, it has been mentioned by others with good reason that many people who believe in “happily ever after” tend to trivialize life (“so heavenly-minded that they’re no earthly-good”), while some who don’t believe or even hope in a happy ending to the cosmos are deeply-committed humanitarians and joyous lovers of life. In their perspective (as I understand it), birth to death is all we have, so we may as well enjoy it and do our best to help others enjoy their lives too.

But it’s painful to know that many – maybe most? – of the men, women, and children who live and have lived and will live on this planet have not, do not, will not enjoy a life like the one I was born to. I expect to eat whatever I want, go wherever I want, live wherever I want and with whomever I choose, have uncensored access to information, stay warm and dry, receive proper health care should I need it, and above all that, find my calling in life and live it out in a fulfilling way. It’s difficult even to make a list like this because all these “basic needs” are met without my really even thinking about it. It could be a book-length list. (When was the last time I felt grateful for the well-maintained streets in my town?)

So why do I get this, and a woman in Haiti does not? It regularly breaks my heart to gaze at my beautiful children, so safe and healthy, well-fed, well-dressed; and see in my mind’s eye pictures of another woman’s children starving.

Do I hope in redemption because it is a good excuse for me to get on with my beautiful life? Otherwise, how can I justify these discrepancies between my life and most other people’s lives? And yet, suffering seems hardwired into existence. If I live long enough, I will inevitably lose someone I love, become terminally ill or injured, or simply experience the pain of aging and the unknown cliff-edge of death as it looms ever nearer. If I don’t live that long, then I will have died young and tragically missed out on living a long, full life.

In earlier years of my life, awareness of the pain and loss and seeming futility of existence would drive me to tears, moodiness, some winter evenings even to what felt like the brink of sanity.

Then I had children, and after the predictable (for me) post-partum blues with my first child, the dark and heaviness lifted. Why was that? Is it a typical survival instinct, something to ensure I bring up nurtured and well-adjusted children – who will at some point learn enough about history and current world affairs to question me about my beautiful life and insensitivity to the suffering of others?

My ready response is, “I am not God. Even if I devoted all of my energy and resources to lifting others out of suffering, it wouldn’t be enough. So I’ll live with the painful awareness of worldwide suffering, and make lifestyle choices with that in mind. I won’t try to shield my children from the truth. And I’ll hope in redemption, because to be aware of so much senseless violence and global inequity, and not to trust in a final remembrance and making-right of all this wrong, will either desensitize me or drive me to insanity.”

And so, perhaps I am a good illustration for those who hold that God is an invention of the human psyche. Maybe this is just the best coping mechanism we as a species have yet come up with. It is certainly a persistent one.

Some people say that God speaks to them often. What do I know about that? I have no grounds for disagreement. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard God speak, but there are three distinct times when I thought it might have been God – and these are the words I heard:

“They don’t own me. And neither do you.”

“Take your time.”

“Don’t be scared.” (yes, “scared” is what I heard, not “afraid;” let the reader decide whether this could possibly be the language of a proper God!)

No tidy conclusion here. Further thoughts tend to lead to further questions, and this post is a prime example.

The Good, the Bad, and the Younglings

September 16, 2010 — 12 Comments

Danny DeVito made a movie in 1996 called Matilda, based on a book of the same name by Roald Dahl. A copy of this movie wound up in the bargain bin at a local video store, where my mother was browsing for something to entertain her grandkids so we adults could spend an evening in conversation which included complete sentences. My six-year-old daughter Luthien told me later about the movie and how much she liked it. Her favorite parts, which she described repeatedly, sounded lame to my adult sensibilities.

Typical kids’ story, I thought. Poor little child misunderstood by her parents (at least not orphaned like so much of children’s literature). People are either mean or nice, and she has some sort of magical powers to help her through her ordeals.

A week later when we took the kids to my parents’ house for a movie night, and Luthien asked to see Matilda again, I groaned and asked if we could please see something everyone would enjoy, not just the kids. But, poor misunderstood-by-my-parents me*, I was outvoted. On with the show.

Maybe it helped to have my enthusiastic fresh-faced daughter at my side, and her excessively giggly little brother primed to let loose at all the silly parts. I’m sure Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman playing the outlandish parents helped too. Whatever it was, it turned out to be a fun movie to watch together with my kids. I gave my grown-up critic the night off and joined with my kids in relieved laughter when the victorious school children chased away their mean principal once and for all, hurling the contents of their lunch bags like a G-rated mob.

Later, when the grown-up critic came back from her night out and the kids were asleep, Nathan and I had a conversation (which included complete sentences).

“That movie bothered me,” Nathan began. “All those flat characters – the perfectly mean principal, the perfectly good teacher, named Miss Honey even?! Where’s the redemptive value in a story like that?”

Both of us having only in adulthood discovered subtlety (I love Jodi’s post about this), Nathan and I appreciate stories that humanize people. We remind ourselves and our children almost daily that there are no “bad” people and no “good” people – that every person is a complex being marbled with good and evil.

Classic children’s literature, however, does not often concur. Many of these stories tell about good people (who are usually underdogs and often children) winning by destroying bad people. We see it often in today’s movies for kids too. Up, which was a fun story idea and colorful and interesting to watch, disappointed us for the same reason. The bad guy, apparently, had to go.

Not all children’s stories conform to this standard, but in those that take the conflict of good versus evil as their theme, good and evil are often personified and therefore become polarized characters. Therefore the good character must destroy the bad character for good to triumph over evil. In a more complex story, the good character may do bad things (like Edmund in the Narnia chronicles), but ultimately that character will exhibit his/her inherent goodness through repentance. If there is character development, it will most likely be the good characters who get developed, and not the bad.

At least, that is the explanation I came up with when Nathan and I had this conversation and I tried to understand why children’s stories are not often redemptive.

No expert on childhood psychology (of which, as the parent of small children, I am more painfully aware than ever), I’m pretty sure I’ve heard somewhere that children are concrete thinkers; and I think this means that subtlety just isn’t something they get. So, maybe these stories help to cement into their concrete thinking the persistent human belief that no matter the odds, good will overcome evil in the end.

And maybe subtlety is something to be gained through maturity, interacting with the world, listening and observing others. Maybe the understanding that every person – and every situation – is complex and has something beautiful as well as something ugly or dangerous or evil in it can only come through experience, cannot be transferred through external teaching.

Taking this viewpoint, I think that Avatar should be classified as a children’s story (a highly interesting, predictably violent and visually stunning one) while Star Wars is for mature viewers.

Then again, even in Star Wars, the bad guy known as the Emperor never gets redemption. And maybe Darth Vader would just be classified as a good guy doing excessively bad things for an excessive amount of time until he repents and gets to be immortalized as good.

I dunno. It just feels deeply right and true to me when, as the Doctor triumphantly said in one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes, “Just this once, everybody lives!”

*Uh, Mom . . . Dad . . . my tongue is firmly in my cheek here. (Can’t afford to lose my biggest fans!)