Let Care, Reliable Facts, and Compassion Be Our Guide, Not Just Fear and Anger: History Can Help Us Understand that an Opposing Viewpoint Can Be a Lesson to Be Understood, Not an Evil to be Destroyed

Do you ever listen to Travel With Rick Steves on NPR? I love the program. It usually focuses on places to visit in different areas of the world. But this time, the focus was on how 3 countries in Europe were dealing with autocracy. Steves interviewed tour guides from each country. They talked about the reality of life in a dictatorship; and how countries that were once dictatorships and now democracies are learning what it is to live with freedom⎼ to live with the power to make political decisions that could greatly change their lives. The program was reassuring and provided clarity to my thoughts and emotions regarding the election.

 

A few countries in Europe had democratically elected leaders who were trying to end democracy. One from the more distant past was Hitler. Another, more recently, is Victor Orban, in Hungary. Both were elected on a platform to stop political instability or stop a perceived immigration crisis. They elected leaders who claimed, “Only I can fix it.”

 

We in the US have lived in a democracy since 1776. People all over the world envy the political power we citizens have. Yet not so long ago many of us were saying, “why should I vote?” Or “there’s not a nickel’s worth of difference between the two parties.” Today, the differences between parties are dramatic.

 

Steves’ program gave me a broader perspective on our own country and the threats we now face from DT and his Christian, white nationalist and/or fascist agenda. It taught me how a country can recover from a dictator or would-be dictator and the hate he can incite. I realized all sorts of changes are possible; change can take away our freedom or increase it. It can undermine our concern for other people or strengthen it.

 

The fear of a loss of our rights, or anger against the threat from a would-be DT dictatorship, is not the only reason to vote, or to do whatever we can to get out the vote.

 

Tomasz Klimek took us to Poland which is now a democratic country. But they had to fight Communism to get their freedom and only succeeded fairly recently. It’s a country that, even since achieving democracy, saw voters swing both right and left in their choices. But the swings were not extreme, more slightly one way or slightly another. Because they had to fight for freedom recently, people vote in large numbers.

 

They don’t tend to treat opponents as enemies, as the GOP in the US are now doing.

 

Klimek said autocrats focus on one enemy, like immigrants, to demonize. But modern Poland united to help the Ukrainian people. They united out of concern for a neighbor.

 

Andrea Makkay, from Hungry, talked about how people elected a leader who then took away many of their freedoms. They had had a history of turmoil, from Mongol invaders to Soviet Communist dictatorship, and so didn’t, and still don’t, know what it is to live democratically. They don’t feel their power or think they can make a change. They are only learning the hard way….

 

 

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

Beliefs, Synchronicity, and Mindfulness: Looking For Beauty Can Replace an Expectation of Ugliness

One morning last week, I was driving to my old school to help lead, with a former student, two workshops for teenagers on mindfulness and wellness, and I turned on NPR. They were playing an interview by Shankar Vedantam of psychologist Jer Clifton, from an episode of their program The Hidden Brain. The subject was How Your Beliefs Shape Reality, and how we can use this knowledge to live a happier and more harmonious life.

 

But it can be very difficult to change our core beliefs. For example, we might believe that if we’re depressed, the depression causes us to see the world as a dismal place, or as dull, frightening, and lacking in meaning. But as Aaron Beck, a founder of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and others discovered, it’s the other way around. Believing the world is dangerous, dull, or mechanical can cause us to feel depressed. If we believe the world is frightening, we carry around inside us a frightening world.

 

For example, two people listen to a forecast of rainy weather. Depending on how much rain there’s been lately, and if they think the world a scary place or a safe one, one will take the information positively, think about how the rain helps the trees or feeds flowers and the reservoir; the other will think about how dark the sky will become, or that there might be flooding. How we respond to the news will be greatly influenced by our core beliefs.

 

At one point in his life, Jer realized he believed that life was dull. So, he developed an exercise to shift this mindset. It involved going to a park or forest, finding an oak or other tree full of leaves, and examining one leaf from that tree. Each was so complex, highly patterned, and beautiful.

 

And then he got another leaf and examined it. There might be thousands, maybe 250,000 leaves in one oak tree. And every year, even more leaves. There have been oak trees though thousands of years of history. But just like the two they examined, they are all beautiful, and different. The stories they tell are engaging and unique. Each of these leaves, Jer said, was a work of art, yet we walk on them because they’re so ubiquitous. Then he began to journal and record beautiful things in his life.

 

In my school in the past, we used pinecones instead of leaves. Pinecones are amazing. Their bottoms are like a mandala or could inspire one. Mandala means ‘circle.’ They are intricate, geometrically patterned, concentration or meditation aids and works of art.

 

Jer’s program was so synchronistic, in that it provided a new dimension to my already planned mindfulness workshop. It gave me another story to tell and another exercise to share with students about how to let go of thoughts or beliefs that plague us. To look for beauty can replace the expectation of ugliness, depression, and pain. Students liked this new perspective.

 

Mindfulness can be defined in many ways…

 

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

The GOP Are Not Just Trying to Suppress the Vote. They Are Trying to Control the Count.

When DT took office in 2017, the novel 1984 by George Orwell became a popular read. With DT in the White House, the fictional portrait of our future was moving closer to becoming reality. The GOP are, today, trying to keep that movement alive.

 

As journalist George Packer wrote in The Atlantic in 2019: “The week of DT’s inauguration, when the president’s adviser Kellyanne Conway justified his false crowd estimate by using the phrase alternative facts, the novel returned to the best-seller lists. A theatrical adaptation was rushed to Broadway. The vocabulary of Newspeak went viral. An authoritarian president who stood the term fake news on its head, who once said, ‘What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,’ has given 1984 a whole new life.”

 

And it is so blatant. The GOP are not a political party as we have known such for most of our history. They are more like a camp of oligarchic terrorists, employing techniques used by Fascists and other authoritarian regimes, and excoriated in 1984, to attempt a slow-moving coup, whose aim is the destruction of voting rights and constitutional democracy, and the creation of a one-party state.

 

In the novel, the threat of invasion by other nations was used to maintain a state of permanent emergency, create a totalitarian regime, and control all aspects of life, even people’s thoughts. In our nation, for four plus years DT tried to keep us in constant shock, not through lies about invasions by other countries but lies about almost everything, for example, about invasions of immigrants, even children of color. They used doublethink, and newspeak to portray what could reveal truths or save lives, like masks, and turn them into assaults on community and freedom.

 

Many GOP claim to value freedom, but the only freedom they value is to agree with them. They attack, try to frighten, basically try to unperson those who oppose them (Liz Cheney, Jay Raffensperger, Marie Yovanovitch, and Democrats) or who they want to hide, deny and show no empathy for their suffering (thousands who died from COVID-19). And then there’s DT’s Big Brother DOJ illegally seizing emails of Democrats and their staff.

 

Political strategist David Plouffe said on MSNBC last week, “They`re not hiding what they`re doing. …they`re not only trying to make it harder to register to vote, they want to change …who gets to decide who wins elections….” “[T]his is existential. If you think that this Republican won`t go to the …furthest extremes to hold on to power, to steal power, to deny voters their franchise, I don`t know what you`re watching.”

 

The New York Times reports that, for example, the GOP in Georgia are eliminating people of color, especially Democrats of color, from local election boards. In Arizona, not only did they create an audit of the 2020 vote based on a false narrative; they also introduced a bill to strip the Democratic Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, of her authority over election lawsuits, for her term in office only.

 

The aim of the GOP is to control not only the teaching of history but how each moment is remembered. They continue the “Big Lie,” to divide the nation and falsely claim DT was the winner of the 2020 election despite losing by 7 million plus votes, despite having no evidence and losing in any court where they tried to fraudulently claim the election was fraudulent. Doublespeak. They try to steal an election by claiming democrats are trying to steal it.

 

Many GOP are still denying the reality of the Jan. 6 attempt to steal the election, even though millions saw it happen on live tv. GOP Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said federal law enforcement was “harassing peaceful patriots.” And Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., added: “It was Trump supporters who lost their lives that day, not Trump supporters who were taking the lives of others.”

 

But we know about the lies. We know the GOP are trying to create their own version of a Ministry of Truth so we the people cannot get accurate information, and not only about January 6.  During the DT administration, they hid information on the coronavirus, which led to possibly thousands of deaths, and on global warming, which threatens all our lives.

 

Historian Kellie Carter Jackson wrote in the Atlantic that, as of last Thursday, Juneteenth is now a national holiday, which honors the “history and memory of emancipation, liberation, and advancement” of Black People in this country. Yet the GOP in control of the legislatures of many states are trying to hide the history of slavery while banning the teaching of critical race theory, despite the fact that no public schools now teach it, and ban curricula focused on the lasting effects of slavery and racism.

 

On June 16, NPR had a wonderful program on the Alamo, revealing not only that Texas was born out of a movement to protect slavery. But even today, the Governor wants to make sure no one knows it.

 

The aim of the GOP is to make daily life so burdensome to most Americans that we go along just to survive. They have shifted the tax burden, for example, so the rich now pay such a small percentage of their earnings in taxes. When the rich and corporations pay less, the cost to the rest of us goes up⎼ the costs for education, health insurance, electricity, bridges, roads, water, protection from pandemics, etc. will all rise.

 

Once we lose the vote, and constitutional protections, the right to speak out, and protest, the right to a fair trial, can be eliminated. The GOP could also more freely sell off or mis-use our natural resources, land, air, water to sate their greed, ignore the effects of such use on the health of citizens, and ignore increasing natural disasters from climate change.

 

Now, with a Democratic administration, we have the opportunity to pressure Congress to protect the vote. Let’s take it. Speak out. Join about 70 groups and hundreds of activists working to get a voting rights bill like the For the People Act made into law. The GOP won’t even allow the bill to be debated in the Senate and will use the filibuster to stop it from being passed. Call Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Urge them to honor their oath to protect the constitution, get rid of the filibuster, and stop the GOP attempt at a coup to end democracy⎼ stop them from making their fiction our reality.

 

*You can also read this post on The Good Men Project, which syndicated it.

 

The President is Sick

Reports tell us DT is sick with COVID-19. After he disdained and lied about it for 10 months, it is not surprising that he now has to face those lies. I don’t know when (or if) he will recover or how he will try to spin his illness, or even if or how badly he is sick.

 

But if he or his followers try to use the illness to feed some narrative of martyrdom, we must remember it will be a martyrdom that he executed on himself. Or if he continues to claim the virus is no big deal, “Don’t be afraid of Covid,” or that, due to his sickness, “I get it”– we need to remember who he is and that he does not get it.

 

If any of us have forgotten, he:

 

Saturday morning, I was listening to Scott Simon on NPR’s Weekend Edition. He said it beautifully:

 

“There is so much suffering in America now. More than 200,000 people have died in this pandemic, tens of millions of people are out of work, and lines of people waiting for food stretch across this famously abundant country. Millions struggle just to keep going, as the list of aides and admirers who have been close to the President recently and tested positive grows almost hourly.

Maybe President Trump’s diagnosis, and that of so many around him, can remind Americans, in a way his denial has not, that the coronavirus is real. It won’t just disappear. We have reported on the lives of so many people who have died in this pandemic, and each time you grieve for a good life lost, and the hole they leave in so many hearts.

The president will get the best care possible. The American people deserve the same.”

 

We do deserve the same. We also deserve the truth. We deserve a President who cares for the people of this nation and cares for the democracy that he took an oath to protect. But DT is not that person.

 

Although his illness has captured media attention and distracted many of us from his disastrous debate performance with Joe Biden, his failure to pay income taxes, etc. polls have so far shown that a majority of the American people recognize the threat DT poses to us all. He has been losing in the polls since the beginning of the campaign, but the debate put him further behind. And polls taken since his illness have shown that a people tired of and angry at his malignant myopia are not so willing to give him the sympathy he expects.

 

In a now infamous quote, in 2016 DT claimed he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue [in New York City] and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters.” He was that confident in the support of his base, and crass and uncaring enough to brag about it. Well, now he is responsible for thousands of deaths, through his malignant refusal to listen to scientists, to care about others, and to act responsibly to fight the pandemic. I hope the American people care enough to hold him responsible.

 

Reports say he is sick, and I am sorry if he has the illness, but he has been sacrificing people to his own greed, and contributing greatly to making the nation physically, psychologically and politically sick for years. As I wish for his recovery from the coronavirus, I also fervently wish for the nation itself to recover from him⎼ and overwhelmingly vote him out of office.

 

Are We All in this Together? Sketches of A Future Drawn in the Present

I wish I had at least a vague idea of what the future could look like in a year, or even a month, but I don’t. When the world is threatened, the urge to know can become overwhelming. Usually, we at least know what the usual is. But now, for many of us, aside from what the inside of our homes looks like, we don’t even know that. Too many changes.

 

Every 10 days or so I drive into town. The roads and buildings are the same as before the pandemic, and I imagine once this crisis is over, we can simply return to our “normal” lives.

 

But then I notice all the restaurants and stores with closed signs. I hear on the radio that news outlets have been losing so many workers (except Fox) they can barely function. Accurate news reporting could be threatened. Or, on the positive side, NPR reported that pharmacy companies, previously known for putting CEO and shareholder profits above everything else, are joining together to find vaccines and treatments for the virus.

 

One prediction I can make is that more people in the future will want to become doctors, nurses and other first responders, the heroes of this time.

 

What I mainly have are questions. On the tv and radio, in advertisements and public service announcements, the meme “we are all in this together” keeps getting repeated. It is a sentiment I agree with and one that has become a powerful force for creating pressure to improve our overall health care system and for legislation to protect most Americans, not just the rich and corporations, from the harmful consequences of the pandemic.

 

It expresses a dynamic truth. With an illness that is so destructive, that can be deadly and spread so easily, with many people infected but showing no symptoms ⎼ anyone can get it, even the powerful, rich, and famous. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Britain, got the illness and wound up in the ICU. Many celebrities, athletes, politicians have been infected. Too many have died. Over 158,000 people worldwide have died so far from it.

 

So if anyone can get it, we are all in this together.

 

But some are more likely than others. The poor more than the rich. The people who work in the fields or production plants and can’t stop working, either because their job is too essential or they can’t afford to stop. For example, one of the Smithfield food processing plants was closed only after the mayor of Sioux Falls forced them to. 350 of its workers had tested positive for the virus. The pandemic is exposing social inequities that have existed for years and have been getting worse. The racism. The poverty. These have always threatened people’s lives and they are doing so now….

 

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

 

For the New Year, Imagine A True Democracy and a President We Can Respect

What are your resolutions for the New Year? Before I discuss one of mine, let me give the  context.

 

Last week, did you read DT’s letter to Nancy Pelosi about his impeachment? Or listen to the impeachment hearings? Many of us talk about the constant lies by DT and how the GOP has become his army of deception. Or we joke about it because the deceptions are just so blatant and outrageous that it’s too incredible to believe that he said what he did, or we don’t want to believe it. But it’s true. We are witnessing the GOP defining truth as whatever DT says it is as they attempt to create a dictatorship right before our eyes.

 

DT’s letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi is so full of lies and distortions stated so forcefully and blatantly that I cringed reading it. The GOP during the hearings were so off base in most of their comments that it appeared to many news commentators that we were witnessing an alternative reality.

 

We’re facing the possibility that anyone who opposes DT will get investigated or arrested as a traitor. DT called any GOP who oppose him, as well as FBI officials who investigate Russian interference in our election, “human scum.” He has accused Democrats of treason for opposing or impeaching him, a label he earlier applied to the New York Times.

 

His Attorney General, William Barr, has been acting as the President’s agent, appointing US attorney John Durham to investigate former CIA Director John Brennan for his stated views on the investigations of DT’s Russian connections. Barr’s DOJ also opened a criminal investigation into the origins of the Mueller probe of Russian Interference in the 2016 election.

 

We’re facing the possibility of our public schools being further undermined by the GOP and replaced with private, yet publicly funded, Charter and Christian schools where education quality is formally tied to economic class and/or race and critical thinking is limited and controlled through standardized testing. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has worked for years to end public education and build “God’s Kingdom” here in the US.

 

Back in 2016, Diane Rehms had three guests (Moises Naim, Alina Polyakova, Yascha Mounk) on her NPR radio show who discussed their analysis that many Americans had been taking democracy for granted. Yascha Mounk said that when Americans born in the 1930s were asked how important it was to live in a democracy, over two thirds said it was of top importance, ten on a one-to-ten scale. When, for example, Millennials in the US were asked the same question prior to 2016, less than one third thought democracy important.

 

Maybe some Millennials did not understand then what they understand now, namely how it would be like to live in a dictatorship, Fascist state or an oligarchy, where the majority of citizens of a nation had no institutionalized power. They never fought a Fascist government, for example. They did not understand that democracy in a large and diverse nation meant compromise and required effort and were focused only on the negative side of US politics. They did not understand that once the institutions of a democracy were undermined, it would be extremely difficult to build them back. Now, 2 years later, I think more of them, and us, recognize the value of democracy ⎼ as we see it murdered before our eyes. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of millennials who voted nearly doubled from 2014 to 2018 and outvoted the older generations of Americans.

 

Even though 49.3% of eligible voters voted in 2018, the highest percentage since 1914 to vote in a midterm election according to the United States Election Project, the number of Americans who do not vote is astounding. In 2014, the turnout was 36.7%, the lowest in 72 years. In the Presidential election of 2012, it was 58.6%. In 2016, it was 60.1%. This means about 40% of Americans didn’t vote. Why?

 

The Pew Research Center says 4% of voters did not vote in the past due to “registration problems,” like being expunged from the voter rolls or due to having a criminal history, and the problem is getting worse. The Brennan Center found 4 million were purged between 2014 and 2016 and more are being purged in GOP controlled states right now. In fact, one of DT’s advisers said on tape that voter suppression was the key to the GOP’s efforts in 2020. Other people are apathetic, too busy, think the system is corrupt or they lack information. Some argue that the vote is meaningless, the Dems are just as bad as Republicans, or the vote doesn’t affect their daily life.

 

Imagine everything that you think is wrong or falling apart now getting worse ⎼ police attacks on people of color, or the court system being biased, or more children of immigrants being separated from parents, or public schooling destroyed, or roads, water supply, and electric becoming even more undependable or unsafe. Imagine being jailed for speaking out against a politician’s corruption. Imagine tanks…

 

Or imagine the opposite future. Imagine education being considered as important as military defense and schools being designed to promote the well-being and expand the critical thinking capacity of each individual student. Imagine higher education and vocational training easily affordable by everyone.

 

Imagine health care that is comprehensive and affordable. In France, for example, health care is much less expensive and open to everyone. Two of my cousins live in France part of the year and have described to me how easy it is to see a doctor and how much less it costs. Doctors have even made house calls for them.

 

Imagine the costs of phones and phone service (which is much higher in the US than Europe, for example⎼ DT’s FCC, headed by Ajit Pai, has worked to decrease controls on providers and increase costs to consumers) and the quality, speed and cost of internet service improving. Imagine alternative energy being cheaply available to everyone.

 

Imagine scientific research into medicine, alternative energy, and simply a better understanding of our universe being applied to political policy and admired alongside emotional intelligence, diversity, and compassion. Imagine friends and neighbors getting together in groups to advise politicians. And imagine voting is encouraged so much that it is a national holiday. Imagine a President we can respect, who knows the facts and will speak truthfully (even most of the time) about the state of the world.

 

This is why we vote. The difference between one future and the other is largely up to all of us, up to our votes, and up to how much political action we take. And it might be up to how willing we are to talk with anyone who claims voting and politics don’t matter.

 

So, if this is how you feel, this is the year to act.

 

This post has been syndicated by the Good Men Project.

Is It Possible to Cross the Divide? Protecting Ourselves from the Malware of Hate

Is it possible to reach across the enormous political divide that we now experience in this country? And if so, how?

 

The holidays are a perfect time to ask this question. People want and need hope, that people of different viewpoints can at least listen to each other and a divided nation can be healed.

 

One reason for the divide is the divider-in-chief, Mr. T. A president carries enormous political and archetypal power. I wrote a piece a few months ago about how he infects all of us in ways that mirror an attack of malware on a computer. Except malware bytes do not protect us from him. Both those who agree and those who disagree with him are infected. We might feel a wrongness at the center, and wary, that our level of trust has been assaulted. Many of us feel tremendous anger; many are anxious and worried. And, of course, there are good, rational reasons to be worried.

 

Programs to reach across the divide have been created and shown results. When people become familiar, on a basic, human level, with those they are supposed to hate, the walls come tumbling down.

 

Two friends enlightened me about an NPR Here & Now program. It told the story of how a group of people in Massachusetts reached out across the political divide to a coal-country town in Kentucky, and a meeting was planned. Much preparation preceded the meeting, skype, emails and phone calls. The people in Kentucky had to find out that they would be heard and accepted. They feared the people from the northeast would be angry at them for voting for T. Both groups thought they would be stereotyped by the other group….

**To read the entire post, please click on this link to the Good Men Project, which published it.

An Inhumane and Abusive Policy: Please Speak Up Now

According to the New York Times and several other news sources, since April 19 the U. S. government has separated 1995 children from the parents of asylum seekers, migrants, as well as immigrants illegally trying to cross our southern border. These children, as young as toddlers, have been placed in hastily established shelters, in prison-like conditions.  Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley said many of the children are being held in what amounts to dog cages. The facilities already in use are getting too full, so the administration is planning to erect a tent city in Tornillo, Texas to hold newly seized children —young children kept in tents in the hot Texas summer sun.

 

Imagine a one year old kept in a cage. Imagine a child being taken from her breast-feeding Mom. Imagine the irreparable harm being done to children. If it continues, imagine a generation traumatized by our government, hating our nation, and what might happen in the future. Hate sows hate.

 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to defend the policy by saying the bible tells us to obey the law. He did not speak about the verses telling people to be kind, compassionate, or loving to one another. Earlier, he said the policy was part of a “zero tolerance policy” with lawbreakers. John Kelly said the policy is meant as a deterrent to keep immigrants away from our borders. Mr. T tried to somehow blame Democrats: “Separating families at the border is the fault of bad legislation passed by Democrats.”  T is upset that Dems have not passed laws giving him what he wants, like a border wall.

 

The Washington Post fact checked T’s claim: there is no “Democrats’ law” necessitating that children be separated from their parents at the border. This was a policy created by this administration.

 

Meanwhile, the UN has condemned the policy, calling it illegal, and urged the US to end the policy. According to an article in the NYT, the UN said the practice “amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child.”

 

The GOP claim their legislation proposed recently would stop the inhumane separation of child from parent but, according an article in VOX, this is not true.

 

We need to do what we can to stop this inhumanity. If they get away with this, what’s next? We can call Congresspeople, especially Republicans, every day. Twice, three times a day if possible. Demand that they speak up and pass emergency legislation to stop it. Call your state and local representatives so that all levels of government act to stop it. Speak up in what ways you think appropriate. Share this post, copy it or write your own. This has to stop.

 

Here is a link from the NYT that I just saw, shared by Elaine Mansfield, of other things to do to oppose the policy.

 

 

HERE ARE A FEW NUMBERS:

GOP SENATORS:

Collins (R-ME) (202) 224-2523

Capito (R-WV) (202) 224-6472
Cassidy (R-LA) (202) 224-5824

Corker: 202 224 3344 [901683 1910] Flake (R-AZ) (202) 224-4521
Gardner (R-CO) (202) 224-5941
Portman (R-OH) (202) 224-3353

 

NY DEMOCRATIC SENATORS:

Gillibrand: 202 224 4451    [NYC office: 212 688 6262

Schumer: 202 224 6542     [NYC office: 212 486 4430]

 

GOP HOUSE:

Tom Reed: 202 225 3161

Paul Ryan: 202 225 0600

The Theories We Hold About Who We Are Influence How We Act: The Milgram Experiments

My high school students often asked: If it’s true that humans are (or can be) compassionate, why is there so much human-caused suffering and hurt in the world?

 

One scientific experiment greatly influenced, for decades, how many people thought about this question. This is the “obedience experiment” carried out by Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s, just after the beginning of the Eichmann trial. In that experiment, a volunteer was asked to play a teacher to help educate another person, the “student,” learn word pairs. Each time the “student” replied with the wrong word, the “teacher” would give him negative feedback in the form of an electric shock. The voltage of the shock was increased with each wrong answer.

 

The “teacher” sat in one room before an electronic control panel and could see through a window into another room where the “student” sat hooked up to wires. A white-coated experimenter stood in the room with the “teacher” encouraging and instructing with comments like, ”Continue using the 450 volt switch for each wrong answer. Continue, please.” The experimenter repeated these instructions even as the “student” began to scream and later drop over, silent. The “teacher” raised objections at times; but as the instructions continued, the “teacher” continued with the shocks. The student was, in fact, an actor; the shocks to the “student” were not real. However, the effect on the “teacher” was real.

 

It was initially reported by Milgram that 65% of the “teachers” actually continued to shock their students even to a lethal level. But, according to author and researcher Gina Perry, that statistic was only true with one of the 24 versions of the experiment. There were over 700 people involved in the experiments, and the 65% represents only 26 people. There were some variations of the experiment where no one obeyed the authority. If she is correct, this drastically changes how we might understand the experiment.

 

The philosopher Jacob Needleman studied the visual recordings of the experiment and commented on the facial expression and speech of one of the “teachers.” When questioned just after the experiment was over, the “teacher” said, “I don’t like that one bit. I mean, he [the “student”] wanted to get out and we just keep throwing 450 volts…” The teacher was dazed, and under further questioning couldn’t let himself comprehend what he had done. He couldn’t comprehend his own feelings let alone allow himself to feel what the “student” might have felt.

 

A startling parallel to Milgram was a series of experiments by Daniel Batson who tested whether people would act compassionately to save others from suffering.  In one experiment, volunteer subjects, like Milgram’s teachers, watched people receive shocks when they incorrectly answered a memory task. The volunteer was told the person they were watching had suffered trauma as a child. They were then given the choice to leave the experiment or receive the shock intended for the supposed trauma victim. Many subjects felt such compassion for the other person they volunteered to take on their pain.

 

What is the message of these experiments? The first is often considered a revelation of the potential for evil in all of us. It is argued that the evil arises from our propensity to obey authority despite clear evidence of the wrongness of the act.

 

I would question or refine that interpretation. The psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, talks about the “fundamental attribution error” which is a failure to recognize just how much other people and the context influence our behavior. He says that we tend to overestimate the role played by people’s disposition or personality and underestimate the power of the environment or context. It is not just the authority figure that people follow but the whole situation.

 

Our understanding of who we are and what is real and possible is formed in tandem with our understanding of our situation with others. If other people, in this case the experimenter, act as if the only important factor in the situation is whether the “student” answers correctly and not their physical well being, then it is less likely that the “teacher” would act compassionately. The second experiment demonstrates that even one biographical detail, one thought about the subjective experience of another person, can allow us to identify with them and act compassionately toward them.

 

Maybe one conclusion from these experiments, as well as one answer to the student’s original question, is that we are such social beings that how we feel about ourselves is tied to how we feel about others. Our very sense of self is inextricably tied to how others relate to us. What we think is right is tied to the situation we are in. Thus, compassion is natural to us and can be developed and strengthened—or undermined—by the way our social situation (including school community) is structured. What we define as humane or appropriate behavior differs greatly by how we define what is human.

 

And whatever propensity for evil we experience is related to our theories of who we are and who others are. For example, when we are taught to believe we are a totally distinct self, independent and isolated from others and our world, with a personality that persists from situation to situation, we perpetuate a distorted view of who we are. We make possible a distorted and hurtful way of acting in the world, a way that makes all sorts of horrors possible.

 

**Also, you might be interested in a recent NPR, Invisibilia, program called “The Personality Myth,” which added another and very interesting perspective to the questions raised in this post.

Sitting In Silence

Can you sit still for 15 minutes and just think, without getting up or turning to a distraction, a phone, a book, a pen, music—or something shocking? A study recently reported by NPR says that most of us can’t. Besides asking people to just sit, alone, the study included a little twist. It allowed people who felt bored or incapable of just sitting to deliver a physical shock to themselves. The result: 70% of men and 20% of women could not sit for 15 minutes without shocking themselves, some repeatedly, despite the pain of the shocks. With the women subjects who didn’t shock themselves, researchers were not clear if the women were better at sitting still or better at not shocking themselves (or both? something else?).

 

Why is this? The study could only make conjectures about that. How do we want to understand this information? Does it mean that we are so dependent on media or on distractions that when we try to be without them, we can’t take it? Are we habituated to our media? Or is this evidence that most of us are not comfortable with ourselves? Maybe there are too many shadows lying in wait in the mind that people feel they can’t or don’t want to face? Or are we just uneducated about how to live in our own heads, or of the role of the mind in creating our sense of the world?

 

In our world today, not only are we bombarded with messages and pressures to keep up with the latest technology, we feel that doing so makes us appear more important. The busier we look, the more important we feel. Being constantly connected means people value you. The ping of the cell phone is an affirmation. So, especially for young people who grow up with digital media, being disconnected can mean being less valuable.

 

I think this experiment, as the authors themselves indicate, invites us to study our own thinking and experiencing. Other people’s answers won’t really help us. And we don’t need only ideas of why this might be true but a truth tested in our lives and feelings. If we can’t be with ourselves, who can we be with? Schools need to join in this self-study. Do we want to raise a generation of people who need an Ap or GPS to find themselves? With increased awareness, we feel less driven. Media becomes the car, not the driver.

 

Think of a time that you could do nothing but wait. Waiting is not the same as just sitting by yourself for 15 minutes, but in both you might start counting moments. When you wait in line to buy something, for example, you have this idea: “I have to buy this new ipod. When I get it, I will be thrilled, happy.“ Or: “I just want the movie tickets already. I just want to get her in the theatre, so we can sit and…” Or you’re waiting for news or for the next text. In any of these situations, you feel suspended in time. You have an image or idea of a future you, when you have whatever it is you are waiting for. And there is this other you, defined by what you’re not, by what you don’t have or what you lack. In fact, you are suspended not in time but between two ideas. You are taken out of time into a mere idea of time. Or maybe not suspended but enclosed in a box constructed of ideas taped shut with emotion. This is suffering.

 

So study or deconstruct what you think and feel when your cell phone pings or calls to you. You might think that these feelings come with the phone, but they come with you. You are the being who feels and thinks. And notice how your culture speaks of the value of media. Notice each ad on television, each time a phone appears in a movie. Notice if there are messages about being alone. And then notice the indifference of a tree or the breeze. Does the tree need to send a text to be noticed? When you focus on the feel of a gentle breeze on your face, do you still think about your phone? What is deepest about your phone is your collection of ideas and feelings about it.

 

Or you might think, ah, a 15 minute respite. I have nothing I have to do. Great. And if you interpret the situation as a moment of freedom from work or whatever, a moment to just relax, then yes, that’s wonderful. But is that what actually occurs when you put away your phone?

 

So, just sit. Pick someplace where it is easy to sit without slouching and you can be mentally awake. Maybe close your eyes so you can better notice your thoughts, emotions, sensations, and images. What comes up for you as you just sit? All you have to do is notice. You don’t need to add anything to the noticing. There’s no need to judge the quality or value of any of the thoughts or feelings, or judge yourself for letting them pass through your mind. Just witness what’s there for you and be open to yourself, kind. If you are open, the thoughts and feelings will arise and pass more clearly. Witness even the judgments as you watch clouds passing by. And notice, also, the sun when the clouds are gone, when there are no thoughts. By notice, I don’t mean note, like write a note with your mind, or bother to remember. Just be aware. Notice the stillness when the sky is vast, blue and cloudless. Patiently, calmly, notice whatever arises, as if your mind was that vast blue space. What is important is your patient interest, your awareness of your life unfolding. Now, just sit with that calm, still awareness

 

When you sit alone, just notice the thoughts or sensations. Let them be just the clouds in the vast sky, or the universe noticing what is arising in itself. The thoughts will then wink out, and what will be left is a universe of awareness silently enjoying itself.