The Power Of Names

The day of dread has passed, but I am still unsure what I should call him now that he is President. I don’t like Mr. Deceiver or Mr. Misogynist or any of those other names that easily come to mind. There are so many choices; and he is, unfortunately, not the only person who might fit the labels. Names are important. In the Book of Genesis (2:19), Adam names all living creatures “and [for ever after] that was the name thereof.” Language works by creating distinctions. By creating distinctions, we define what exists. The word ‘exist’ combines the roots ‘ex’ (out) and ‘sistere’ (stand) to mean ‘stand out.’ What is alive or dead, good or bad, human or other? Thus, naming is very powerful.

 

During the campaign, the mainstream and social media kept repeating his name, and the outrageous comments he made or actions he took. They, we forgot the power of language. Everyday, all we heard was his name. He constantly complained about being mistreated by the media but the news outlets kept giving him what he wanted most—attention. He became foremost in our ears and eyes and is now foremost in the power our government awards him. I don’t want to give him such attention and power. I recognize he is President, but I don’t want to say his name and give him what he wants.

 

Should I be like the characters in the Harry Potter stories who won’t repeat, won’t name, the evil one? The result of that was to enshrine fear in their speech and in their silence.

 

Should I try to call him out on his direct and unabashed lies, manipulations, sexist, racist and other biased statements? Of course. Should I spit out his name, spell it with anger and disgust? I fully understand such anger. Anger will be needed to fuel the fire of defiance in the next year or more. Anger can motivate me to join others in pushing against barricades of hate and the greedy grasping for power and prestige that he represents. But it can hurt, hurt everyone I meet and relate to. It can take me over, be unthinking and unsubtle. It needs a tempering force. It needs a fierce concern for the quality of my relationships with others, for the quality of each moment of life. It needs subtlety and depth of thought.

 

And this is, I think, what all humans want and need, a caring, loving quality of life and a depth of thought and meaning. But what Mr. T and other Republican leaders stand for can steal this quality of life from us and replace it with a one-dimensional and overarching fear of what he might do, so we can be easily manipulated. Maybe he fears the world and so wants to remake us in his image. He wants to rule not just in the media and the political realm, but in our thoughts. And we can’t give him that.

 

Or should I find some humorous way to speak of him, so every time he raises the specter of fear he is met with bouts of laughter?

 

I will try to respect his humanity even as I oppose his words and deeds. To see him as non-human or as evil-incarnate is to blind my own perceptions and give him too much power. Self and other are two complimentary, interrelated ideas. How I think and speak of him creates how I think of myself. So, I will find some way to speak of him, and hope you can, too—one that empowers all of us who oppose his greed and hate while highlighting our shared humanity. We need to demonstrate to him, as  people will do tomorrow, in the US and throughout the world, that the words he uses matter by making our words matter. Words can wink into existence realities of hurt that no one, even him, would want to unleash, if he thought about it.

 

It is raining now. There are deer in the yard, chicadees, crows, and cardinals. The rain falls at an easy pace, darkening the brown and grey bark of the apple trees.

 

**Update: George Lakoff, in a recent post, discussed the election and why you might want to name him “Mr. Minority” or “The Minority President”.

Those Who Lie to Create Fear vs Those Who Face Even Death to Reveal the Lie.

As the inauguration nears, or as any feared event draws near, what do you do? If you’re a teacher and your students are anxious and fearful, maybe it’s due to a test or a presentation, or a difficult situation in the world, what do you do? Do you go on, and basically ignore the situation, or do you acknowledge and face it? How do you face it? How do you allow yourself to notice and understand what hurts and oppresses you so you can take action to end it?

 

Take a moment. Too often people rush through life and miss the simple things, simple pleasures. Without knowing yourself and the feeling, emotion, the anticipation in your body and mind, all that you do can be compromised. So, begin with the simplest thing. Close your eyes and put attention on your breath. Simply breathe. Breathe in. Breathe out. You do it every second of every day. It can be your lifeline, your awakening. Breathe in and be aware of breathing in. Breathe out and be aware of breathing out. Breathe in and notice what you do. Notice the sensations of taking in air, taking in the world. Breathe out and notice letting go, pushing out, settling down, focusing. It’s ok to take a moment for yourself. 

 

Notice any place of discomfort as you breathe in. Just notice its feel and placement. And breathe out and move on. Notice any thoughts or images that arise. Simply notice with your in-breath, and let go with the out-breath.

 

As you breathe in, allow to come to mind a time that you helped another person, or stood up for a principle, stood up for what was right. What images come to mind when you think of helping others or helping one other person? Have you ever witnessed one person helping another, or imagined doing so yourself? What happened or what did you imagine? It doesn’t have to be dramatic, like in the movies. It can be something simple, like sticking up for someone or speaking out—or putting yourself at some risk.

 

If you imagined someone else taking action, what do you think this person felt afterwards? Or if you saw yourself doing such an act, what did it feel like for you to do this? Imagine the feeling, when you’re home, safe, knowing you could do what you did. Would you do it again? Was it the right thing to do? Sit for a moment with the feeling of knowing you could imagine and take action to help others or do the right thing.

 

All through history people have been helping others, facing adversity, taking risks. Study history. You are not alone. This struggle needs to be awakened, refought and refined, improving it, strengthening your self, as it is needed. When have your parents helped others or faced fearsome events? When have you? When were people in the past as afraid for the future as many people are now? When were people of this nation afraid of the government or people in the government?

 

Think of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his version of the Witch-Trials. He “rose suddenly to national fame in February, 1950 when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of ‘members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring’ who were employed in the State Department.” It was a lie. He stoked the fears of communist takeover during the Cold War and went after writers and actors as well as people in the government and gay men and others, accusing them of disloyalty or being communist sympathizers or committing sex crimes, when for most the only crime they committed was being different from or opposing him. He destroyed the lives of many good people all to fuel his own selfish desire for power. Many times in history, the fear of an external threat was distorted into a fear of our own neighbors, all to fuel the hunger for power by a few.

 

McCarthy was eventually censured by the Senate and the lies of the man who was once popular and feared were revealed. He died a despised man. That can happen again. When did people in the US and other nations fight such oppressive leaders or fight to change the government or social institutions? Think of the Women’s Suffrage movement, for example, or the anti-slavery or Civil Rights movement. Think of people who faced even death to do what was right and awaken the “conscience of a nation,” Martin Luther King Jr., for example.

 

We are here, now, in a new moment. I hope we all learn from history the importance and power of facing fear and injustice.

 

When you’re anxious and afraid, you can feel brittle. You can hold onto the fear as if it was your identity and fear letting it go. But it is fear itself that is brittle. Fear serves a purpose. It is telling you to wake up. Beyond that, it no longer serves you. It is telling you to beware and turn away from some person or event, but it is too easy to interpret it as telling you to turn away from this moment that you feel it. As little children, we learned to turn away from many uncomfortable feelings. But when you notice and simply study it; notice “I know that biting sensation in my stomach, that trembling in my knees.” And you take a deep breath anyway and move on. The fear dissolves. You think more clearly. Your life takes on more meaning. You come back to this very moment, this very breath, now. That’s a powerful place to be.

 

 

 

Lazy Or Miraculous? Both?

How do you talk about the human brain? I just read a very interesting and timely article by David Ropiek called “The Problem of the Lazy Brain: The first step in confronting the ‘post-truth’ era is recognizing that we are all susceptible to lapses in critical thinking and motivated reasoning.” The author talks about how different people can take in the same raw information, like the color of someone’s dress, and perceive it differently. Or someone, like Mr. Trump, can assert something demonstrably false, yet people who follow him accept what he says as truth and surrender to him their power to think critically. How does this happen so easily? To combat the problem, Ropiek says, we must first understand it.

 

He goes on to say that “the brain is lazy. It instinctively works no harder than necessary…” Thinking critically takes more glucose and more effort. It is easier to accept uncritically than to critique. We reason only about things we are motivated to think about, for example about our own survival. Since we rely on a group to survive, we are most highly motivated to think in ways that reinforce our group’s social cohesion. We don’t accept information that counters our group’s beliefs. Thus, you can’t throw information, “facts,” at people who disagree with you in order to persuade them to change their viewpoint.

 

I agree with most of this but not the part about using the adjective ‘lazy’ to describe the brain. To say “the brain is lazy” is using a metaphor or conceptual framework that can undermine my own power. Brains are not lazy; people are. If I say the brain is lazy, I am saying I am lazy. To speak about “the brain” is to speak about this very mind, this very being writing and reading this essay. I am by profession a teacher, although mostly retired. If any teacher in my school called some student lazy, my ears would perk up to watch for some form of bias.

 

Saying “the brain is lazy” distorts the nature of the brain. In contrast, I think the brain is miraculous and powerful. Right now, my brain is hardly lazy. It is working on, engaged in thousands, maybe millions of tasks and processes. It is keeping me sitting up, awake, focused on my ideas, helping digest food, be warm, sense, breathe, etc. And add to that the amazing feat of somehow creating language, abstract ideas, and being involved in conscious awareness itself.

 

If I’m lazy by nature, then won’t I be lazy about everything I do, even trying to change? How can I change the world or change how I think if I’m lazy?

 

Each human being is both all human beings and totally unique. We all have characteristics developed through evolution, and characteristics developed through personal experience. We are all more alike than different. It is extremely helpful to know what these human characteristics are and how our own mind works. Ropiek’s discussion can be helpful in that regard, as in his discussion about the influence of motivation in perception. Human attention is limited, and thus selective. This enables us to focus. An illustration of this is “inattentional blindness,” where we miss something happening right in front of us because our attention is on a different stimulus. We are especially motivated to search the world for what might be dangerous or might threaten our understanding of the world, or what might cause pain—or bring pleasure. We pay particular attention to what’s new and unanticipated. Our default mode is to spend a good deal of thought time imagining, speaking to ourselves about the social world we are moment-by-moment constructing. We consciously consider one construct at a time, so it behooves all of us to do all we can to increase our ability to monitor and evaluate what we think about.

 

Our capacity for thought and imagination is actually so powerful that it can help or destroy us, cause immense joy or terrifying pain. Our brain constantly changes and learns. What we learn, or what we make of what we experience, the theories and beliefs we construct, affect our very perceptions, and how much we will learn in the future. That is how miraculous the brain and mind is; it certainly is not lazy. So we need to consider how we talk about ourselves so we can better hear what we, and the world, has to say.

 

**Photo is from Crete, of possibly the first paved road, in Europe, the world?

Happy New Year! And May the New Year Bring A Renewal of Democracy.

I was listening to the Diane Rehms show this morning and once again it inspired me. The show was on whether Liberal Democracy is now a stable form of government, and the movements in Europe and the US that are threats to democracy. I recommend this program and, if you’re a secondary school teacher, suggest you share it with your students. Many people think this threat is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump, and that his election represents a failure of democracy. Certainly, I think it represents a failure of our institutions and parties as they are now constituted, but I don’t think it represents a failure of democracy. I think it represents a failure of people to understand their personal role in a democracy, and a failure to understand just how far some people will go for power.

 

The speakers on the Diane Rehms Show (Moises Naim, Alina Polyakova, Yascha Mounk) discussed how many Americans have begun to take democracy for granted. Yascha Mounk said that, when asked how important it is to live in a democracy, more than two thirds of Americans born in the 1930s said it was of top importance, ten on a one-to-ten scale. Fewer than one third of Millennials (born since 1980), in the US, think it important to live in a democracy. They probably do not understand what most alternatives to democracy might be like— what it would be like to live under a dictatorship or an oligarchy, where the “people,” the majority of citizens of a nation, you and I, have no recognized or institutionalized source of power. They never fought a Fascist government, for example. They do not understand that democracy in a large, diverse nation, means compromise, and are focused only on the negative side of modern US democracy. They do not understand that once the institutions of a democracy are undermined, it is extremely difficult to build them back.

 

What is happening in the US and elsewhere has been building for years. I have written about how corporate interests have been undermining public education, and the whole idea that a public institution can often work more consciously and efficiently for the common good than a private one. Many Republicans have been working for years to undermine the idea of the Commons (resources and institutions reserved for the common good), voting rights, Congress and the value of the Federal government. In the last election, they took it further. They didn’t aim just to win votes. They aimed to end democracy. North Carolina illustrated this just a few days ago as the Republican state legislature passed bills to take away much of the power of the newly elected Democratic governor.

 

Imagine what politicians would do if there were no checks on their power. If the opinions of the mass of people were no longer considered relevant. If political and social freedoms, and human rights, ceased to exist. Many of us thought that was the state of affairs before Trump. Well, I think we have realized we weren’t thinking clearly enough. Trump’s cabinet choices give us a better idea of what the end of American democracy might be like.

 

It is not democracy, not the concept that the people of a nation have to take part in ruling themselves that is not viable. It is that the world is complex and not everyone wants to face that. It is too easy to favor security, favor material stability over the mental, emotional, and spiritual development that a true democracy requires. I know I would sometimes prefer to have nothing much to do other than eat, play, sleep, be with friends and family. But then I wake up and want to act, to notice and create beauty in the world, to do something meaningful for others, or learn something I’ve never known before.

 

To be a citizen in a democracy requires a commitment to taking responsibility for knowing not just who or what to vote for, but when to take more action. It requires knowing and feeling that one’s life and well-being can never be separated from the well-being of other people and the world around us.

 

It requires a commitment to an education that is not only about how to learn and think critically, but how to be informed, engaged citizens. We need schools that engage students in being democratic, not just studying democracy. Only then can we have a democracy.

 

**If you’re a secondary school teacher, this program by Diane Rehms, or segments of the program, can stimulate wonderful discussions in your social studies classes on government, American culture, or an English class on contemporary literature, for example, or a class on how humans relate to each other. So many essential questions wait there for you and your students to uncover. You could ask them to sit, maybe close their eyes, focus on their breath for a second. Then let the word ‘democracy’ come to mind. What thoughts, images come to mind? Or let them free write on the subject. Then share and discuss their responses.

 

**What does ‘democracy’ mean to you? How did the speakers define democracy—and do you agree with their definition? What is a ‘liberal democracy’? Do you think democracy is threatened today? If so, by what? Do you take democracy for granted? Your friends? Why would Millennials possibly value democracy less than those who were born before World War II? What are other forms of government besides democracy? Does our government work well for you? For most Americans? For the rest of the world? What, if anything, is valuable about democracy that should be preserved at all costs? What is needed for democracy to work? Do the speakers imply that there are no forms of government that are possibly better, for the majority of citizens, than democracy? Do you agree?

 

A few good quotes for the New Year:

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
― Elie Wiesel

 

“We did not hesitate to call our movement an army. But it was a special army, with no supplies but its sincerity, no uniform but its determination, no arsenal except its faith, no currency but its conscience.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait

 

“We’ve got to make change our national pastime and hold protests more regularly than weekend parties.”
― Rivera Sun, Steam Drills, Treadmills and Shooting Stars – a story of our times –

 

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

–Arundhati Roy, War Talk

 

“But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is… to tell the truth.”
― Howard Zinn, Marx in Soho: A Play on History

 

“The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.”
― G.K. Chesterton

Happy Holidays!

As you know, the holidays are traditionally a time to get together with family and friends. It is a time to relax, have a good time, share gifts and stories with others. But that’s not all.

 

Humans have celebrated the winter holidays possibly forever. The time is obviously near the solstice and the longest reign of night, at least in the Northern hemisphere. For us northerners, it is the darkest and coldest time. It was traditionally a time to engage in rituals to assure that the sun will come again, that spring will follow winter, renewal follow hibernation, warmth follow cold.

 

Many holidays have this sacred dimension or shadow that connects us to a depth of history. This history is not just about days of religious significance. These holidays provide workers a break from intense labor. They signify recognition of shared humanity, however dim that recognition often was in the past and might be so today. Every one of us needs time to renew, rest, and connect with others. Every one of us needs time to step back, contemplate why we are here on this earth, to renew our selves and relationships with fellow humans and the earth that sustains us. The fact that we have days of rest is beyond a right; it is a sacred necessity. Humans fought for a five-day work week, for example, against other humans who would oppress them, and were successful.

 

So this year, everything is both normal, like always, and yet totally different from any other time. Never have Americans had a President-elect who brings with him such frightening unknowns. Yet, day follows night. You wake from sleep. Many things continue as they have. Much is changing; much is staying relatively the same. It is time to determine exactly what, on the level of your daily life, might benefit from a change. It is not just the President or his cabinet that might need opposing and changing. It might be something in our daily lives that needs changing. This time of ritually facing the darkest time of year might remind us that in some ways, this is what nature calls to us to do, to face the darkness so the light will come again.

 

Have a great holiday. Renew, enjoy, and celebrate with friends and family. It is something you need and deserve, and a reminder that what you need can be fought for and won.

Come Together, Right Now, Over All of Us

I felt the need to write a quick and short blog in response to all those people of conscience who say “be thankful for our new President, for he is waking us up to the reality of America’s ‘sickness’ of racism, inequity and such.” Or those who blame the DNC or Hillary or Bernie supporters or Jill Stein or the Russians for our new situation.

 

I agree that we need to wake up to what is happening in America and the whole world, and I agree that an analysis is needed of the forces and conditions that created this situation. But anything that interferes with united action has just got to go. Diversity in perspectives is helpful. Antipathy toward your possible supporters and colleagues is not.

 

This situation, like any situation, can help me grow. It is important to learn that I don’t have to turn away when life gets uncomfortable or difficult and that I can turn discomfort into engaged and meaningful, even joyful, action. But remember that to say “don’t be afraid” can make you more afraid. To say “don’t think of an elephant” leads me to think of an elephant. Sickness can be healing, but it can also kill you. Fear may wake me up, but it interferes with clarity of thought and compassion for others, and it is compassion that will most help all of us right now.

 

Compassion is not exactly the same as empathy; it is not just recognizing or feeling what another person feels. It is feeling care, kindness in recognizing, feeling that the people around you feel, think, ache like you do. You feel their life, not necessarily their pain, and so you are willing and ready to act to reduce that pain. You do it naturally, because it is the right thing, the natural thing, to do.

 

So I will never be thankful that another person is in pain, even those who oppose me. In our situation now, it is the most vulnerable that might suffer the most, so how can a compassionate person welcome that? It is the earth itself that might soon cry out in pain, that might no longer be able to sustain human or any complex life, so how can I welcome that?

 

(I don’t care, however, if you partly blame Comey, or Republican efforts to undermine voting rights and destroy democracy. But please, don’t blame anyone who might care for and support you in opposing the hate, greed, and destruction that just might soon get worse. We need to, and I hope will succeed in, turning the recognition of the consequences of hate and denial into the necessity for love and kindness.)

Do You Want A New Chief of Education Whose Aim Is to Dismantle Public Schools?

Betsy DeVos is Mr. Trump’s choice to be the Secretary of Education. She is in favor of “choice,” meaning she favors vouchers and charter schools. A voucher system means public funds are used to pay for students to attend religious or possibly private or charter schools instead of public ones. This means we might soon have a chief of education who wants to dismantle public education. I oppose this nomination.

 

Why is it a bad idea to privatize public education? Is this nomination a culmination of recent moves made by wealthy private interests to undermine public schools? If you’d like a short historical review and analysis from earlier blogs, read on.

 

For the last 30 years or more there have been waves of attacks on public schools in the US. These attacks go along with a larger war on the concept and institutions of democracy. How? One of the functions of public schools is to educate all students to be able to understand and meaningfully participate in a democratic government. It is to “level the playing field” so people who put in the effort can create a good life. Are we now purposely creating “separate and (certainly not) equal?”

 

Diane Ravitch argues in her book Reign of Error that different corporations, working with political institutions and individual politicians, have been leading an effort to undermine public schools by undermining teachers and teacher unions. They have been attacking the very concept that a public institution working for the general good, instead of a for-profit corporation, can successfully manage and direct an educational system (or a water, health, or other system).

 

The strategy calls for publicizing often inaccurate and deceptive information to create a sense of a crisis in education so corporations can step in and save the day. For example, A Nation At Risk, a report issued by the Reagan administration in 1983, claimed public education and teachers were responsible for everything from a declining college graduation rate to the loss of manufacturing jobs. It said, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” It said graduation rates, SAT scores, etc. were decreasing—all later proved untrue. Academic achievement from 1975 to 1988 was actually improving, and not only for middle class white Americans. The divide in academic achievement between rich and poor, white and people of color, was diminishing. The A Nation At Risk report was just the beginning.

 

With the fomenting of decreasing trust in teachers and public schools, there was also increasing pressure to turn to private companies to create assessments, curriculum, and even to decide who would be allowed to teach our children. In 2001, President Bush supported and signed the No Child Left Behind legislation. This was a “noteworthy” achievement. It increased the number of standardized tests that our students had to take which made us the most tested nation in the world. Then came President Obama’s Race To The Top legislation in 2009. Amongst other things, this set the stage for the Common Core, and mandated that test scores be used in teacher evaluations, and encouraged the closing of public schools whose students “underperform” on test scores. The result was that some of those dire claims about the education of our children began to come true.

 

Once most of the country was fooled into thinking of public education as facing a large scale crisis, there were increasing calls to privatize schools and create privately run, publicly funded, charter schools, and vouchers. From 2003-4 to 2013-14, for example, the number of students enrolled in charter schools rose from 1,6 million to 2.5 million. This number continues to rise. With charter schools, public money is transferred from teachers and administrators, who are mostly in the middle or lower class, to corporate investors. In the case of cities like NYC, hedge fund managers, whose primary goal is fast profits, have taken over several charter schools.

 

Secondly, these schools, as Diane Ravitch points out, “…are deregulated and free from most state laws… This freedom allows charter schools to establish their own disciplinary policies and their own admission rules.” Unlike public schools, which must take any and every student who comes to their door, charter schools can screen for the most advantaged students. Despite this screening, charter schools are no more successful then public schools. And, when adjusted for the economic situation of students, statistics show they often do worse. Charter and other privately run schools can hire uncertified teachers who are not unionized, not as well trained, and who can be paid less. The public sector can now be drained of funds and left to educate the most disadvantaged students with fewer resources.

 

Public schools were further undermined over this same time period by federal, state, and local cuts to educational budgets, including cuts in teaching staff. In 35 states, for example, the funding in 2012-2013 was below 2008 levels. At the same time, there was an increase in spending on standardized testing. I don’t think it’s smart to try to increase the performance of schools by decreasing the number of teachers teaching. During this time, however, there were increasing outcries against the common core tests. From 2013 until today, more and more parents have helped their children opt out of standardized tests, and the resistance to teacher evaluations based on those tests has expanded. And soon, we will have new policies by Betsy DeVos that we might want to oppose.

 

Proponents of “choice” argue their policies will benefit all students and increase equity by forcing competition in the education market. However, this approach treats our children as commodities, sources of money, (as exemplified by speaking of “value-added” to students by schools) and conceptualizes the purpose of education as meeting the needs of employers, not meeting the needs and dreams of students.

 

If our society truly wanted to create an equitable educational system it would begin by investing more money in schools where the need was greatest. It would treat teachers with the respect they deserve and need in order to creatively and compassionately meet the educational needs of students. It would do a better job of treating students as whole people with emotional, social, and health needs as well as intellectual ones. It would do any of these things before it would spend one nickel on corporate created standardized tests, charter schools or vouchers. So, is the corporate “reform” agenda part of a larger move in our country to undermine not only public education, but the power of the public in general? I hope not. But, I think, that is the result.

 

**A few links  and resources:

For a chart on vouchers and school choice, provided by Steve Singer, BadAss Teachers:

To sign a petition against Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary, go to this link. For information on her connection to the religious right, read this article by Jeff Bryant.

Diane Ravitch blog.

Do You Agree “There Are No Such Things As Facts?”

A week ago, on the NPR Diane Rehms Show, I heard a beautiful example of a self-refuting statement spoken live on the radio. I didn’t realize what I was hearing right away, although the quote certainly caught my attention. The show was a panel discussion answering the question, “How are journalists rethinking their role under a Trump presidency?” The guests included 5 professional news editors, columnists, and reporters including James Fallows (The Atlantic), and Scottie Nell Hughes (RightAlerts.com & former D. Trump surrogate).

 

During the program, James Fallows said a lie was when you knew the truth, yet repeated a falsehood for a personal motive. He said there was clear evidence the apparent President-elect lied on several occasions. Scottie Nell Hughes, a Trump “booster,” was asked for her response to this. Her reply was “There are no such things as facts.” She used Mr. Trump’s claim that millions of people voted illegally in the last election to explain her viewpoint. She says, [I edited the text to make it more comprehensible] “And so Mr. Trump’s tweet [about illegal voters, was taken] … [by] a certain crowd, a large part of the population, …[as the] truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, …his supporters, … believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say [his statements] are lies, and there’s no facts to back …up his claims.”

 

Think about this statement. And ask everyone you know, your students and friends, to think about this statement. Discuss it in your classroom or place of work. What could she possibly mean by this? It is of immense importance. Is she saying that because a large part of the population believes what Mr. Trump says and supports him, therefore his statements are true? And, therefore, there are no lies for him to be called to account for?

 

I think it is true those who believe in Mr. Trump take his words as truth. But is a truth or a fact decided by a popularity contest or vote count? Certainly popularity will influence whether or how well a truth will be perceived, and there is a social dimension to any truth. But how does her way of speaking of ‘facts’ make any sense—and how would a fact differ from an opinion? Or is everything somehow an opinion?

 

Mr. Fallows’ point that a truth is opposite a lie provides one way to answer these questions. If Scottie Hughes thinks there are no facts, she must think there are no truths and no lies. How do you know what’s a lie if there is no truth? A fact is by definition something known to be true, something based on evidence that you could demonstrate repeatedly. Likewise, ‘truth’ is from a root meaning ‘faithfulness’ (treowth), as in faithful to reality. It is real. If there are no truths, there are also no accurate or faithful definitions of words. You would never know if the sound you heard in your mind or uttered by another person is a word, nor what it meant. Nor would you know what you wanted to say. Therefore, you could never speak. When you opened your mouth, just noise would emerge.

 

To say “there are no facts” is equivalent to saying, “it is a fact that there are no facts.” By speaking these words you nullify the “fact” that you spoke. Therefore, can anything you say be other than meaningless gibberish? Or is Scottie Nell Hughes really saying that only what is in opposition to her statements is meaningless gibberish?

 

*P. S. Scottie Hughes’ viewpoint did not arise out of a vacuum and is not entirely new, only new in the blatant way it has been applied to the electoral process. It is part of a battle over the nature of the human mind, or what it means to be human, that has been waged for over a hundred years and maybe forever. A few years ago, students in one of my classes argued, “there is no such thing as truth.” When asked what they meant by truth, they responded with: “A truth is permanent, unchanging, absolute, like ‘God’s truth.’“ And: “Since I can know truth only through my own experience, and we all have different experiences, how can there be one truth?” This and other discussions on the topic showed me how important it is to discuss with students the meanings of words like truth, fact, and opinion, not just to voice diverse viewpoints but to analyze and question them.

 

It is easy for people to think that truth should exist in isolation from the minds of all those who perceive and understand it, like they might think the objects of the world exist in isolation from other objects. But isn’t a truth, like a fact, like a word, interdependent with the situation, context and mind—with the universe in which the perceiver of truth appears? To borrow an example from the philosopher Ken Wilber, the word ‘bark’ depends on the the context of the sentence and the ability of the speaker and listener to speak the language. (“The dog barks every morning,” versus “the bark of the tree.”) Physicist and author Jeremy Hayward calls perception itself a “creative dance.” “[A]s we move through the world, we… experience a mutual creation between what is there and the ideas and emotions that seem fitting at the time.” He thinks the world you see is inextricably tied to who you are. You and your world are not two, and never separate. If he is correct, meaning his reasoning is logical, comprehensive, and based on demonstrably accurate information, then each mind influences the way a world is perceived, yet there are still truthful and not truthful statements, and facts.

 

**Terry Gross recorded a Fresh Air episode relevant to this topic on 12/7, interviewing Dean Baquet, executive editor of the NY Times. You might find it interesting.

Teaching Yourself and Others How to Learn From Fear, Not Fear It

What are you feeling now? Just ask yourself (or your children, students, friends) the question and listen to and feel what comes up. It’s almost four weeks after the election. Have your feelings changed? How? Promise yourself to be gentle and listen not just to the words but the feelings and sensations that shadow and anchor every word you utter. Listen not just to what appears but how you respond to what appears. Feel your jaw and shoulders, your chest and belly. Where do you feel any tension? What is the quality of it, sharp, heavy, like pins and needles, hot or cold? Notice how your body expands with the inbreath, and lets go, settles down with the outbreath. Notice the sense of calm and quiet that can emerge when you step back and be aware of thoughts, sensations or your surroundings. Then breathe into the area and move on to notice another sensation.

 

This is one way to begin your day. When you act with the totality of your being, you are in harmony. Most fear arises from sensing a need to defend your self from an inner not an outer threat. You might be fighting your own inner battle or maybe you try to end any confusion you have over what is “the right way” by eliminating anyone who adds to the confusion or the complexity. When you do need to fight an actual external threat, study yourself and the situation and know the others involved. You can’t fight what you can’t see.

 

Many of us are feeling anxious and afraid. Many have pointed out that this election is different from any other. When there is so much that is unknown, fear is normal. Fear can be both a friend and an enemy, depending on how you treat it. It is an enemy if you turn away from it and fear it. It is a friend if it energizes you to wake up, notice, and learn from a threatening situation. When you turn away, you feel isolated and jittery. When you reach out to others, you more easily calm your thinking and step outside the dominion of fear.

 

Anxiety takes fear a step further. You add to a fear of the future a sense that you might not be able to face it. You feel inadequate, or fear being exposed as inadequate. You think the situation will mark you and turn others away, so your future might be ripped away. You feel like building a wall around yourself. But if you take action, you feel more open and powerful. If you join with others in taking action, you let go of fear and anxiety, isolation and powerlessness.

 

How you act also depends on how you think about discomfort. If you think it is wrong or abnormal to feel discomfort or stress, you will greet such sensations with fear and anxiety, and turn away from them. Only if you recognize that discomfort can be helpful can you allow yourself to be aware of it. If you notice the sensations of fear and anxiety before they get too strong, and recognize them for what they are, you can act in ways that utilize their energy without them dominating you. You learn from them and let them go.

 

This time of anxiety and uncertainty can also provide the opportunity to learn more about compassion. Compassion is the motivation, the energy to act to reduce suffering wherever you encounter it. When you do this, you might not even think you are being compassionate. You act because the action comes from a deep sense of who you are, in this moment; it is the only thing you can honestly do. You sense what and who is there with you, what feels right, uplifting—or harmful. Boundaries drop away along with fear and anxiety. You are basically selfless in that there is no intermediary between the sense of another’s pain (or your own) and the motivation to reduce it.

 

You can never know all the results or consequences of your actions, so please don’t act solely for some future political or social goal. As many say, you can’t focus only on the ends and forget the means. Such actions are divisive. But you can study your intentions. You can aim to do the best you can, in the way that fits you. Your actions come from your sense of rightness, not from being bullied into doing it.

 

Likewise, you can recognize the limitations and humanity of others, including anyone who would be a leader. Especially when you’re afraid, it is easy to project onto others mythical qualities, an intelligence, ability or moral quality, positive or negative, that is supposedly greater than your own, and thus let leaders make the decisions for you. You know this, so recognize it when it happens and let it go with laughter. To see what is in others you must know it in yourself. And if you feel called to be a leader, recognize that your wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of the vast mass of others. A diversity of other people needs to live in your heart as your guide.

 

A good friend and I were in a bookstore the day after Thanksgiving. He was reading me a funny passage from a book on Hillary Clinton’s childhood, and we were laughing. A woman standing next to us looked up, a bit startled, with some fear in her face, and said, “How can you be laughing at such a moment? I am too terrified to laugh.” I told her I understood. But that I deal with the terror better if I laugh. If I can laugh, I don’t get stuck on any thought or concern and can think more clearly about what to do. She smiled slightly, unsure. We all talked for another moment, and then went our separate ways.

 

So, I am trying to be gentle and kind to myself in these complex and difficult moments, and I wish you the same. And remember, when you are with others, they might be feeling the same way you do, but in their own way. So be kind to them, too. It might help all of us figure out how to best resist a future of hate and fear.

 

Michael Moore’s “Where To Invade Next”

I have been watching Michael Moore’s Where to Invade Next. I watched it after the third debate. I watched it in-between reading news stories of demonstrations on the streets and the police abuses at the North Dakota pipeline. I watched it for relief from post-election news. I realize that the countries Moore talks about as examples of good policies also have awful policies and aren’t utopias. However, there are scenes that stick in my mind and make me ache for what could be:

 

In the movie, the father of a boy killed by a terrorist in Norway insists that it would be a violation of human dignity for his country to kill the crazed man who murdered his son. I can hear the outrage from many of my fellow Americans, but I just marvel at him.

 

Moore shows us wall-less prisons in Norway where murderers and rapists are housed, and are actually reformed, by being treated well, with dignity, and by eliminating personal conflict in their lives. And the result is a greatly reduced recidivism rate, one ridiculously lower than ours. (One fact check shows this policy and reduction in recidivism began in 1995 with a new policy focusing on rehabilitation and in 2007 with the opening of one of the prisons depicted in the film.)

 

Women’s rights are recognized not only in terms of equal treatment in the law, as it is here, but in terms of personal control over one’s own body and health, including abortion—a right most Americans recognize but too many politicians, including our possibly new President, rail against.

 

Police in Portugal advise the US that if we want a more peaceful society, we have to do away with the death penalty, as a start. Drug use (but not sales) was decriminalized leading not to chaos but a decrease in serious drug use and drug-related crime. And in Iceland, the bankers responsible for the severe recession were actually tried and sent to prison.

 

So many of us struggle to earn enough to support our families with comfort and dignity, and work in dreary jobs or dreary factories with no windows, or go to schools that look like factories, while in Germany and much of Europe, it is considered just good economic sense that workers and students should be treated well. This means workers are given health care, made part of the management and design teams, are given enough paid time off each week and each year so they can live good lives and have good relationships outside the workplace. (According to Moore, the average workweek for full time workers in most of Europe is less than in the US. Germany is 26 hours, Sweden 30. See this ABC news report to fact check his figures.) And students go to school for fewer hours, are better educated, are fed better food and not given unreasonable numbers of tests. And in Slovenia, a college education is free.

 

In the US, too many of us get caught up in retribution and revenge, and it’s too easy to lose a sense of mutual respect. We too easily lose awareness of how others are as valuable, as human, as we are. Why is that? Is it because of a Calvinist type of ideology, that if you’re rich, you must be favored by the Divine? So the rich are to be admired, and their privileges protected, even more than the loss of power, freedom, and income of most of us is deplored? Is it from our history of class divide and slavery warring with a dream of equity and democracy?

 

Is it from our country being so rich and powerful that we are too covetous, too afraid of what we might lose so we don’t see what we have already given up? Are we too shackled by the idea of capitalism and competition that we don’t see how such competition can turn everyone not on “our team” into an enemy, and everyone on our team into some thing to be valued only in proportion to what we earn or what we contribute to a “winning” record?

 

How can we understand the film now, after the election? As a wake-up call? As a reminder of what we once thought could be possible so we don’t normalize fear and oppression? Or as propaganda? I am not sure. What I am sure of is that it’s time for a revolution of mutual caring and a deep examination of how what we think we want affects our ability to get what we need.