Outrage Directed by Compassion Can Save Us: How Do We Recognize and Call Out the Hate and Blindness that Others Carry Without Letting It Turn Us to Blindly Hate?

Sometimes lately, I worry I’m losing empathy, losing an ability to see myself in others. And this scares me. It can lead me to feel I’m losing the heart of who I am.

 

I was listening to a program on NPR hosted by Tonya Mosley. She was interviewing Jia Tolentino, a staff writer for the New Yorker, on an article she wrote called Our Plastic Surgery Nightmare. The program went into totally unanticipated topics that I previously thought had little to do with plastic surgery.

 

Or maybe I should say plastic surgery has had unanticipated consequences. The technology has become so precise as to be practically undetectable. So, what’s the problem? With such advances, it’s easy to feel even more pressure to work to maximize our appearance and make it conform to what we think other people consider beautiful. And when every face can be “optimized,” it becomes less a window into character and emotion, and more another field of artificiality. It becomes something to buy, not to live our way into. No longer will we see smile and tension lines, or other signs of character and the realities of a lived experience. A dimension of the face as a vehicle of communication will be lost. Instead, another vehicle to hide ourselves from others and from ourselves will be born.

 

What Tolentino found is that the images people are using to model their appearance on are AI generated. And these images are predominantly of people who are white, young, and based on one idea of what’s beautiful. They are also very much alike one another. The face is being separated from the person, the person from their humanity or soul.

 

The program then went on to talk about “Looks Maxxers,” a purported self-improvement or men’s rights movement I never heard of before and had trouble understanding. It largely began around 2010, during the “Me-too” movement and the Presidency of Barack Obama. It was a reaction against a perceived rise in prominence of feminism and maybe of African Americans, and diminution of strong white men. A large segment of this group blames women for their problems building romantic relationships. This perception tipped these young men into a reactive, hateful belief that women are less than men, more superficial, who do not deserve equal rights.

 

According to Tolentino, it’s also an attempt to discover and classify the bodily characteristics of successful men to imitate those characteristics. In the “manosphere,” an influencer named Braden Peters became famous for striking his jaw with a hammer, as well as using softer methods like work outs, peptides, supplements, etc. to make his body and face more rugged, more “masculine,” and in his eyes more attractive.

 

But all these efforts to be attractive are not for sex or even happiness. These men are purportedly heterosexual but show little or no desire to get closer to women. Their purpose is to attract women to display power and dominance over them, and to be seen by a virtual, disembodied audience. She called this “eroticized attention;” it’s also attention that could be used to make money from internet forums.

 

Tolentino’s article and my emotional response to it alerted me to how much I feel the human world is severely straining my ability to understand it and is close to spinning out of control. We might be facing an array of threats way beyond what was faced by any other generation I can think of. The philosopher Noam Chomsky warned that humanity is approaching [or is now in] the most dangerous and critical moment in history. We have a climate emergency, an economy that doesn’t serve most of the people, as well as too many unjustifiable, unbelievably destructive wars. We even have a fairly new technology, AI, that some reputable experts warn has at least a 10% chance of causing the extinction of all humans in the next decade.

 

And we have a president specializing in undermining every aspect of our lives as part of a human community. I hope I’m not pushing an analogy too far, but I think this administration is causing many of us to feel what’s been called moral injury. I first heard the term used in describing, along with PTSD, part of what many soldiers experience from serving in a war. According to the Moral Injury Project at Syracuse, University, the injury entails damage to one’s conscience from perpetuating, witnessing, or failing to prevent acts that violate one’s conscience. Many feel harmed by a betrayal of core values, of justice, fairness, and loyalty, by our leaders, by other members of our community, or by our own actions or inaction. We know that many of our leaders have failed not only to protect us but even care about us. We feel our very humanity is being threatened.

 

Even more than ever, and as much as we individually can, we can ask ourselves several questions. Maybe the most important is how can we hold compassion in the face of hate? Instead of sacrificing our empathy, as the “Looks Maxxers” seem to be doing, how do we instead protect and act in accord with it?

 

Does every generation of people feel an inability to understand or feel empathy for those born in different decades? It certainly seems true here, in the US. When I was a teenager, I felt my parent’s generation didn’t understand me. They couldn’t understand the reality of life for my cohorts and myself and kept wanting me to conform to their images of success and reality, not mine. Is my trouble feeling empathy for or understanding the “Looks Maxxers” anything like what my parents experienced with me?

 

And for those of us older people, what might it be like to be part of a generation that grew up with social media and the increasing climate and other previously mentioned threats dominating their world?…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Example of Minneapolis; Our Needs are Only One Line in a Song of Everyone’s Needs

The world, and not just the human world, looks so threatened right now. One thing that gives me hope when hope seems impossible or seems like more of a blindfold than a clear viewing, is the response of the people of Minneapolis to the violent attack on them by our own federal government.

 

Every day in this country, we experience the supposed leader of the “free world” causing new threats, new horrors and shocks. So many lives are being upended and destroyed. This is what DT brings to us. Yet, to change this and survive the assault, I think we must look to what’s happening in Minneapolis. There, in eye-scorching detail, is the affliction– and the cure.

 

The affliction: we see it daily. So many injured and arrested. Two innocent, caring people dead. The US government invading an American city, attacking its own citizens, and lying about what they’re doing and why. 3000 members of DT’s personal army roaming the city streets, obstructing the lives of people, not arresting supposed criminals but anyone brown, black, or anyone who gets in their way. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the US. ICE is ripping people from cars, schools, hospitals, places of work and worship. Acting as if the rule of law never existed or didn’t apply to them. These actions cannot be forgotten or excused just because the DT administration has finally announced they will soon end the ICE invasion in Minnesota.

 

The murders of ICU nurse for the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Alex Pretti, and poet and loving mother of 3, Renee Nicole Good, wake us up to the danger every one of us now faces. Every one of us. But reading about the response by the people of Minneapolis to such violence gives me hope and direction; it rescues me and could possibly rescue all of us from the fear and depression DT seems to purposefully instigate. This is the cure. The people of Minnesota are our neighbors. By nonviolently standing up, in a disciplined and caring manner, to oppose this government ordered violence and destruction, they are standing with all of us. But they aren’t just protesting in the streets.

 

A mother of a newborn baby and a 16 year old girl was picked up by ICE on her way to work, leaving 2 children at home, uncared for by any government agency. The 16 year old did her best, but her sibling was used to being breast fed. She called a neighbor, who was breast-feeding her own child, for assistance. The neighbor stepped in, helping the children with food and sharing her own breast milk with the baby.

 

Despite the raids by ICE interfering with business, ripping shop owners and workers from their stores and homes, several individuals and businesses have been doing what they can to help their neighbors. A family was seized by ICE and held in a facility in Texas. Upon their release, a Minnesota bookstore raised $6,000 to help the family return to their lives. A café in Minneapolis has been offering their neighbors free food until ICE is gone from the state. Doctors are making home visits to those needing medical assistance and who fear exposing themselves to ICE on the streets.

 

As the BBC points out, “Operation Metro Surge,” DT’s invasion of Minnesota began after his racist rant against Somali immigrants. He called them “garbage,” said their country is “no good for a reason.”  The political purpose of his comments and the invasion that followed are revealed by his vicious attacks on Somali Democrat and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, an outspoken critic of DT. DT divides and divides, setting one against another. No community can exist peacefully inside a wall of hate….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Once We Break the Bonds Committing Us to Truth, All the Beasts of the Human Mind Can Be Released: The Shot that Rang Out from the Golf Course

I was unnerved, so very disturbed by the shot that rang out yesterday (9/15) from a Florida golf course.

 

And it wasn’t only because the shooter seems to have intended to aim at, and kill a fellow human being, and a presidential candidate, but was thankfully thwarted by a Secret Service agent. That intention is despicable enough. But the whole context was shocking, the timing, the election. Just when a shift in people’s perception of DT was being reported, from the polls, and the debate⎼ just when so many more people had been coming to recognize the craziness he spreads to all of us, the threat, and then this happened.

 

And now, this newest example of intended gun violence is sharing the media news cycle with how DT would lie, say or do almost anything to get his way, no matter who he might hurt. How he used racist lies about Haitian immigrants to rile up his base, to shock and destabilize our nation and spread anger, hate, and the sense of continuous threat. And the result of his comments? Bomb threats and other violence are being aimed at those he maligned and hurt, and the city they live in. He and his VP were just beginning to be held accountable in many media sources when the Secret Service agent’s shot rang out.

 

But the mere attempt to kill a political leader in this country is shocking.

 

DT has continuously, from 2016 to today, viewed our nation through a dark lens, describing us as a crime-ridden, failed, “third world” country. He talks about not being able to go out for a loaf of bread without being raped, mugged, or shot at. Most of us go out every week without getting mugged or raped or shot at. Despite FBI statistics showing a historic 26.4 reduction in murders and similar reductions in rape, robberies, and crime overall in 2024, we might still fear violence due to the anger, hate, and sense of grievance DT stirs up. He helps create the division and violence he describes and attributes to others.

 

For example, his violent rhetoric has helped turn compromise into a dirty word, helped  turn people who have different viewpoints into enemies. He undermines political cooperation by turning discussion from a way to share viewpoints and create a greater understanding, to a way to destroy opposition. He thus undermines democracy itself.

 

In a specious manner, he makes claims that the violence he incited was caused by those who have revealed his role in said violence. For example, he said President Biden was trying to overthrow the United States by saying DT was a threat to democracy. Meanwhile, on Jan. 6 it was DT who actually tried to overthrow the constitution and the will of the American people (and then continued to lie about it ever since). His statements misrepresent the facts and the blame is his own.

 

His constant lying undermines not only the specific facts he distorts, but a general sense of truth, or reality. Once we break any commitment to truth, all the dark, imagined, feared beasts lying dormant in our minds can be released….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

An Illusion None of Us Can Afford: An Opportunity All of Us Can Embrace

We humans have many biases, but one that often asserts itself is the negativity bias, or a propensity to select, or attend to negative instead of positive information. We often expect the worst. We do this so the worst won’t happen, or so we can take steps to avoid it.

 

But often, the bias can do the opposite, and lead us to inaction. It can cause depression, or a sense of powerlessness. We can tell ourselves we can’t do anything to avoid whatever we fear will happen or to stop the dismal future we fear is inevitable⎼ even when the only thing making it inevitable is our inaction. We might hide from feeling the reality of the danger because we fear that even the thought is too much to bear; but the reality would be so much worse to face.

 

This is happening to our nation, and maybe our species, right now⎼ in the US, with the dangers of a DJT administration. We might know intellectually how awful he is but ignore what he’s telling us he will do if he wins, because we can’t believe it. Somewhere inside us, it feels impossible that such a destructive result could occur. We can’t, I can’t, believe that our world could change so drastically and get so much worse⎼ and not just the human world in the US but everywhere. But, of course, it can. If DJT somehow becomes president again, NATO would be undermined, and dictators would have even freer rein than they do now to undermine democratic nations.

 

DJT said he would invoke the Insurrection Act on day one of his imagined new administration, and use the military to make him a dictator. He’d suspend the constitution, suspend the rule of law, round up thousands, and initiate rule by him alone. It’s illegal, unconstitutional, but that has never stopped him before. We must stop him.

 

I’m not making this up. We know this. Read the 2025 Project. Listen to his speeches if you can stand it. He copies Hitler, Mussolini, etc. in his language and emotion, promises to “root out” all the “vermin,” imprison those who oppose him. He might end social freedoms, freedom of speech, voting rights, legal rights, abortion rights, workers’ rights, end legal concepts of gender, racial, and religious equality. He’d give ever more preference economically and otherwise to the rich and diminish or end government programs that serve and help most of us ⎼ he’d end Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, end protections in health care, end the Biden reductions in drug costs, end the EPA, privatize the US Post Office, possibly end public schools, etc. ⎼ and make the poorer 90% of us pay the costs of running his dictatorship.

 

Corruption would flourish. Incompetency. I remember when I was younger and traveling in other nations ruled by dictators. In such nations it was common for people to pay not only fees but bribes to officials to get anything done, to get a license to drive a car, to fish, to build a house, whatever. DJT has already shown a propensity for fraud and corruption. He promises to replace civil service workers, who must show competency for the position in order to get the job, with those whose only noteworthy attribute is being a blind follower of his campaign. Imagine the inefficiency of a whole government bureaucracy controlled and populated by people who’ve shown no competency in their jobs. If DJT somehow gets in office again, whatever restraints on him that were in place before would cease.

 

On Christmas, Rachel Maddow spoke with Chris Hayes about the threat posed by DJT Fascism ⎼ and the need for all of us to act, to vote, and help get out the vote ⎼ and speak to our neighbors. To speak not just to share information, but to get to know them. Create a connection, a community. Because this is our time. Not all generations are called upon to act so significantly….

 

*To read the whole post, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

A Primal Sort of Love, A Primal Sort of Prayer: When Our Eyes and Ears Become Heart-Shaped

We all know days when the world seems caught under a gray sky. When there’s no sun anywhere and the air itself feels like a light rain or snow. When so much feels at risk and wars rage. The world storms⎼ and then gets quiet. And aside from the sound of wind and the falling rain, all is silent.

 

And I realized that here, too, inside the house, in me, it’s gray. Not just the sky but the trees, the flowers, the furniture, the walls. Everything. The air around me and the air inside me speaks a gray language. And I stop dreading and almost welcome this new language. It becomes an “old friend.”

 

It’s too easy to forget these relationships amongst everything, this interconnection. But if we notice this, this gray outside meeting the gray inside, actually the possibility of joy increases. We better perceive what we give attention to. We open eyes, nose, ears, mouths, minds to whatever. By feeling presence, we can meet not just the world outside but inside. We care.

 

Just a few minutes after realizing this, I looked out the window at the sky. It was late afternoon, early evening. And there was some blue in the sky, just a hint, a bit of white and a space of blue emerging from behind gray clouds. Then lines of pink and the red sky of the end of day.

 

I turn and look in the room around me. A wooden chair, the oak flooring, a white lamp. On the wall is a piece of art. It’s a woodblock print we found years ago, by a Japanese artist named Kawase Hasui. The artwork is called Morning at Tsuchiura. It depicts an ancient wood boat tied to a tree on the shore of a river. And the color of water, which just a moment before looked, yes, grayish, is now more clearly and deeply several shades of blue. And the reflection of the boat in the water is so remarkable and alive. One minute gray. The next, blue. Maybe by looking and feeling so intently one moment, the next moment is deepened, too.

 

I notice this happens after concentrated exercise or meditation, as well as stopping and simply letting my gaze linger on something. The mind sharpens when we feed it with focused, mindful attention on our breath or what’s around us.

 

And something more. The patience to just look. When I’m angry, for example, or afraid, or anxious, and filled with dislike, it’s like my senses are too jumpy or too focused on some thought, or fear, worry to see the reality before me. The fear, anxiety, dislike push the physical world away to replace it with a world of thought.

 

But when we can take the time to pause, to feel⎼ when we’re not so consumed by the news or whatever, and we can possibly feel grief for the world without getting overwhelmed⎼ we can let our eyes and ears become heart shaped. And the colors, sounds, scents, the feel of everything comes closer and sharpens.

 

When we do this, when we listen to what comforts us, maybe it’s the geese calling, or the wind⎼ when we listen so deeply that we hear the movement of water, trees, grasses, and birds in it, and we hear cars and people and our own responses to all the movement in it, we have a new sensitivity….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to the Good Men Project.

Let Love Live, Revisited: Will We Act to Strengthen the Caring Relationship We Call a Community and Hope to See Actualized in Our Nation?

I’m sure you, too, are amazed at scenes like this: You’re watching your child at play, or a puppy running around the yard. Or you’re walking in the woods and see a fawn, or a kit, a baby fox, or a butterfly.

Or—I’m sitting in bed, a magazine on my lap. My wife is next to me, doing a puzzle. In between us, near our feet, are two cats, sleeping. I look at them, at all of us, and feel awe. Ok, the cats are simply sleeping, my wife, puzzling. But there is such trust on that bed. These beings want to be here, with me, with each other. They care. Or we care.

One of the cats, Miko, starts shaking, as if dreaming. He wraps his front paws around and over his head, as if to hide. I lean over and touch his back, and the shaking stops. He relaxes, releases his head, and turns over, showing me his belly. There is such vulnerability there, and tenderness. I give myself to you, and you give it back, enhanced.

When life is tough, we need to know such moments are possible, and even better, how to create a situation so they’re probable.

I’m reading an article in Lion’s Roar: Buddhist Wisdom for Our Time. The piece details a wonderful conversation between author and meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, and the educator, scholar and social activist Bell Hooks, about “The Power of Real Love.” Sharon talks of growing up and thinking that love is something given by others, but instead, it is an ability, a capacity, maybe even a responsibility we have in ourselves. Bell Hooks talks of love as residing in our actions, not just in our feelings.

In this day, in this threatening political climate, where fear and hate are so frequently in the news—How do we love? How do we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and care when the forces of domination and injustice seem to surround us?

Fear can be a message to wake up and observe more closely, or to turn away and flee. It’s built on opposition and is unstable and lasts only as long as we maintain a threat, an enemy, and a wall. Those outside the wall are rejected; those inside the wall are suspect. Such fear needs our compliance with it to succeed. Sometimes, we must or can’t help but act out of fear, but we pay an awful price when we allow fear to live too dominantly in us.

Love is built on mutuality, on approaching as close as possible to another being. It thrives on moments when there is little or no boundary or wall and, as the philosopher Ken Wilber put it, when our borders are not just points of demarcation but places where touching is possible….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

**And thank you to Bell Hooks and Sharon Salzberg (and Lion’s Roar) for the conversation and teachings.

***This is a revisiting of a blog from September, 2017.

 

The Most Important Lesson A Teacher Teaches

One of the most important lessons a good teacher teaches, beyond the subject matter, is how to live a moment or a year of moments. On the first day of classes, you teach how to meet new people, how to start an endeavor, how to be open to whatever comes. On the last day of classes, you model how to end something, how to say goodbye. You model how to face freaky spring weather in winter and winter weather in the spring. How to face a test, sickness or other challenge. To share insights, listen to the insights of others, think deeply about questions raised, and fears and joys expressed. How to face evil with insight, and violence with calm and clarity. And how to celebrate what you value and value what you celebrate.

 

In this way you model the …

 

This blog, with an embedded story, was published on Friday by OTV (Open Thought Vortex): A Literary Magazine for Open Hearts and Minds. Please click on this link to read the rest of the post.

 

 

The Most Important Lesson