Wednesday, August 20, 2014

The Mendaciousness of the Responsibility Game

We are brought up in this society to think that we have control over our lives.  That if we do this or do that, if we work hard enough, if we go to college, etc., that the desired results will materialize for us.  And if things don’t work out, it is our fault.  In its crudest form, this has been expressed in recent years by Republicans in Congress who have stated bluntly that if you are poor, if you haven’t made it up the financial ladder, it’s your fault; you’re lazy.

This perspective on life is totally an illusion, a lie.  While we do have control over whether we work hard, whether we study hard, how we treat other people, whether we get married, etc., we have absolutely no control over whether those actions bear the desired fruits, which for most people are security, success, money, and as a result ... so we are taught ... happiness.

In truth, all we have control over is the way we relate to ourselves and to others, to the world around us.  Whether our actions bring about the desired result lies in the control of others  or is just a matter of good fortune, happenstance.  

Everyone will understand when I speak of the control of others.  But what about happenstance.  In common parlance, the phrase, “being in the right place at the right time,” is an example of that.  So many of the breaks that people receive in life, while often in part the result of careful planning, are really a result of everything falling into place, which is a function of happenstance.  

For example, let’s say you set up a meeting with several people and you learned of a great job opportunity and made a great contact.  Had the meeting taken place two days later, the discussion could have produced nothing, either because one person didn’t show or because an opportunity that was present on one day wasn’t there anymore two days later.  This is part of the vicissitudes of life.

Unfortunately, people who have “made it” tend not to be aware of how they have been blessed by circumstance.  Their ego tells them that it was all because of their hard work; luck or fortune had nothing to do with it.  And so they lack any compassion for those who haven’t made it, whether they are poor or struggling middle class or a lower level executive who isn’t going anywhere.  They’re not aware of the saying, “They’re but for good fortune (or the grace of God) go I.”  A preeminent example of this, perhaps, is Justice Clarence Thomas.

And so those who haven’t made it are made to feel by our culture that they are at fault.  They haven’t tried hard enough.  This internalized self-blame is very demoralizing.  People may often blame a particular individual for some opportunity not materializing or a venture failing, but they rarely get the larger point that the whole concept of control is an illusion.

Most of the frustration and pain we experience from trying and not succeeding comes from this illusion of control.  The lesson we as individuals need to take from being aware of the illusion of control is to let the idea of control go, to accept that all one can do is the best one can, but ultimately the result depends on many factors outside your control.  To have any peace, one must have the attitude, “If it works, great.  If it doesn’t work, that’s OK too.”

For those who are in government, the lesson is to understand that what our society deems “failure” is most often not a matter of someone not having tried.  It’s a result of growing up in an environment over which one has no control, whether it’s being born in poverty, having addicted parents, going to a school that doesn’t teach, growing up in an atmosphere of drugs and violence, the list goes on and on.  This is not an excuse; it is a fact of life; it is reality.

Or alternatively, it’s a function of all of a sudden the floor dropping out from under a successful life, often because a job has gone abroad or because of  major illness that leads to bankruptcy, which can start a cycle of long term unemployment, loss of house, and even homelessness.

Everyone who as a public servant is sworn to uphold the constitution needs to remember that the purpose of government, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, is “to secure these rights” ... namely, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This places several responsibilities on government.

The first is to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve those goals.  And equal opportunity isn’t just a matter of ensuring that there is no discrimination in employment, housing, etc.  Real equal opportunity means that the playing field is leveled by ensuring that all children have access to the same level of quality education, something that is definitely not the case in this country.

The other major government responsibility stemming from this task is providing a safety net for those who are in need.  Whether someone is homeless or living in poverty or disabled, or at risk because they are old or unemployed, government needs to have programs that help people in need and provide them an opportunity to lift themselves up.

That this essential function of government has been so trashed by the Republican Right makes a travesty of our democracy and of their claim to be the defenders of the Constitution.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Our Culture Is the Serpent in the Garden of Eden

As told in Genesis, in the paradise that God created, man and woman were naked, but they were not embarrassed by their nakedness and they were one with all things.  The only thing forbidden to them was to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.   They lived in a world where there was no knowledge of right or wrong, good or bad.  Interestingly, the paradise of Genesis is virtually identical with the Buddhist Nirvana.

But once they ate the fruit of the tree, they became aware of and were embarrassed by their nakedness.  They now had knowledge of value judgments; they were no longer innocent.  They lost God’s favor and were forced out of the garden into a world full of the frustrations of cravings, fear, and strife.

The Abrahamic faiths’ take on this story is that man is a sinner because he violated God’s commandment.  And that women are the causal source of sin because it was Eve who listened to the serpent and tempted Adam to eat the fruit; it is thus also a cautionary tale regarding sexual temptation.  Man can only be saved by obeying God, which is to obey the multilayered moral and ritual strictures of His religion (take your pick as to which one).  

But if one looks at the story with fresh eyes, without all the layers of religious interpretation by rabbis, monks, imams, and others, a different lesson takes shape.

The real lesson here is that the world of God is the world of innocence, where there is no good and evil.  There is no evil because there is no desire for what one does not have.  There is no good because man does not compare himself to others.  There is no good or evil because man is one with himself and all things.  This is the world of freedom from the known.  The point is not so much that God’s commandment was broken, but that because it was broken, mankind lost its innocence and the world was never the same.

Speed forward several millennia to the current age.  The world is filled with serpents, those who seek to entrap mankind with the knowledge of good and evil, of beauty versus ugliness, of every duality one can create.

The consumer culture on which our capitalist economy depends is based on people being manipulated by marketing into wanting more of what the masters of the world want them to crave and into thinking that a product will in some way give them entry to a better life by satisfying that craving.  We have all been taught that happiness comes from having what we don’t have and thus we have become creatures controlled by craving.

The political culture is based not on bringing people together but by dividing them into opposing camps.  Often fomenting ill will and at times even hatred towards those “others,” thus again manipulating the populace.  Political rhetoric today, such as it is, appeals mostly to the emotions, even when it is put in a form which sounds rational.

Even the prevailing religious cultures provide no refuge.  Religion, which theoretically should be the main advocate for peace on earth and goodwill towards all, instead has over the millennia been perhaps the major source of strife among mankind.  It has been, together and in concert with nationalism, the greatest divider and thus the greatest source of conflict.  And how convenient to fight others, exploit others, dominate others in the name of promoting God’s law, when in truth it is always about promoting the power of nations and individual men.  And to the extent that the fight was against “savages,” ironically those who were being “saved” often lived a life and had a culture much closer to the garden of eden than the warriors of religion.

Towards its own, religion has never really been a force to bring mankind back to the state of grace that existed in the garden of eden.  Instead, it has created a system of fear, using its own concept of good and evil to control its flock and build power and influence.  

In truth, though, none of this should be surprising.  Religion is after all, despite its protestations to the contrary, a product of man, not of God.  If it were the latter, why would there be so many different religions, all at odds with each other?  

Is there then no force in the world to help mankind return to a state of innocence, which is its birthright, and live in peace?  The only force I know is found in the teachings of the Buddha.  His teachings seek to enable man to perceive that all his suffering is caused by what he has learned from family and culture and that all this learned experience is empty of any intrinsic existence and has no inherent value.  When he perceives these truths, man becomes one with all people and things, has unconditional loving kindness and compassion for all, and experiences all things without the intervention of thought ... he is once more free of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  And when he reaches that state, all suffering and doubt cease.  (I must acknowledge that I am a practicing Buddhist.)

The Buddha was a historical person.  Why did this man do what other holy men have not?  Because he did not see his role as saving mankind by bringing him back into God’s grace through a renunciation of his sinning.  The Buddha saw his role as relieving mankind’s suffering by putting him back in touch with his true pure nature, thus ending his craving and bringing him peace.

But even here, the teachings of the Buddha are one thing ... Buddhism as an organized religion can at times be something quite different, witness the Buddhist mobs doing harm to Muslims in Myanmar, or even at times vying groups of Buddhist monks fighting with each other.  These are cases of men being Buddhists in name only.  They have strayed far from the teachings of the Buddha.

Indeed all religions ... including Judaism, Christianity, Islam ... have at their core the basic moral teaching of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you and most sought in their own way to bring mankind back to a state of grace because they are all based on the teachings of truly holy men.  But the basic teachings of most religions also created an us v them culture, and in the hands of less holy men the religious establishment has turned this aspect into the dominant theme of our world.

If we want to free ourselves from having tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, if we want to experience peace and happiness, there is only one way, and that is to turn our back to the dominant culture and follow the simple truths of the teachings of the Buddha and the other religions, but disavowing any teaching that your religion is the only path to God.

One final note ... Eden was a place here on Earth, not a paradise one accessed in heaven upon death.  While there is no way, given the dominant forces and the conditioning of mankind, to ever achieve that state of innocence again here on Earth, we can each in our own small way create waves of Eden that spread out from each of us.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

The Damaging Impact of a Lack of Community on Children and Our Society

When Hilary Clinton wrote her book, It Takes a Village to Raise a Child, there were many, especially on the right, who ridiculed her for making this statement.  Bob Dole in his 1996 presidential nomination acceptance speech said that it doesn’t take a village, it takes a family to raise a child.

But this ancient African proverb is as true today as it was when it originated in the village-based societies of Africa.  Of course it takes a family to raise a child.  The influence of the immediate family, for better or worse, has a dominant impact on a child’s  development, emotionally and otherwise.  

Children, however, do not live in an isolated world bounded by borders of their family home.  From an early age they come into contact with many other influences ... mass media, peers, teachers, strangers.  Unfortunately, in our culture, most of these influencers, even teachers, have very little interest in the healthy development of the child.  Each has their own interest that prevails.  

Media wants to influence the child to do what its bidders want the child to do.  They want to manipulate the child.  

Other children are often quite selfish and can be very cruel.  They deal with their own insecurities by acting out against others who are weaker in any way than they are.  

Teachers ... and of course there are many exceptions ... are so burdened by the number of children they must deal with and the often chaotic condition of the school and classroom that they are overwhelmed.  They go through the motions of teaching, rather than really teach.  

And strangers, except for the occasional good samaritan, have no interest in the child and will act on their own interests and needs.

What I’ve described is the antithesis of growing up in a village, at least the communal villages of primitive societies.  Even before the industrial revolution, the village in western cultures, while a self-contained society, was not communal in nature.  The impact of individualism, while so much more pronounced now, was present even in those nostalgic days.  And so the child came into contact with many people who had little or no concern for its wellbeing and development.  And its insecurities were deepened.

In the communal villages of primitive societies, the attitude towards children was very different.  Every child was in many ways everyone’s child, not just the parents’.  Everyone in the village had a concern for a child’s wellbeing and development.  That was the culture.  The strength of people lay in the combined strength of the village, not in their individual attainments.  You of course had individuals who excelled in various areas, but their work was dedicated to the good of the whole, not themselves as individuals.  A child brought up in this atmosphere felt secure and wanted, a part of a larger whole.

It is this absence of community in our society that has resulted in the prevalence of gangs and other antisocial organizations, and more recently of growing ultra-religious groups, that provide the feeling of community that everyone yearns for but at the cost of the larger society’s cohesion.  It is the absence of community that results in a heightened insecurity and an attitude that the only thing that’s important is me, and perhaps my immediate family.  We live in a dog eat dog culture because of the absence of a feeling of shared community and responsibility for each other.

I don’t know how we revive a sense of community in our country.  We are farther from that ideal now then ever, I fear.  And there appears to be precious little interest in turning back from the polarized state we are in.  It does not bode well for the future of our country.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Schools As the Educator of Citizens

What is the function of a public school system?  Generally people would say that the function of a school is to teach children the practical skills they will need in order to maximize their opportunities in their work lives ... as one used to say, the three “R’s”: reading, riting, and rithmetic.

And while that remains a critically important function, one in which many schools, especially inner city schools, fail terribly, there is another equally important function on which the future of our democracy depends: preparing students to be good citizens.  

What does it mean to be a good citizen?  It means to be committed to the American social contract ... that with the benefits of citizenship comes a shared responsibility for the welfare of the nation and of our fellow citizens, each according to his means.  We meet that responsibility in many ways, one of which is paying taxes to support the government in its work to protect the public good and work towards ensuring equality of opportunity for all, as promised in the Declaration of Independence.  This is not a conservative or liberal statement, it is the essence of the American view of citizenship, democracy, and the role of government.

There have always been differences between Republicans and Democrats on how government should perform this role and how large a part government should take.  But there has never before in modern times been disagreement between the parties in the essence of the American social contract and the role of government.  The social contract is apolitical.  It has been supported by all administrations since President Teddy Roosevelt.

But that changed with the election of Ronald Reagan and the Republicans who have followed him, first by turning the government more into an enabler of the rich rather than a protector of the public good and most recently by an almost complete renunciation of the role of government in ensuring equal opportunity.  As Republicans have said, “If you fail, it’s your own fault.”  Period.

The issues of citizenship and the social contract do not, however, just apply to people with  means. The poor as well have responsibilities.  One responsibility that applies to both the poor and those with means is to obey the law, to not abuse or injure their fellow citizens.  Whether it's the poor drug-addict who steals, even from his family, to support his habit, or the investment banker who acts in conscious disregard of the impact of his actions on his fellow citizens to support his "money habit," both actions are equally unethical and contrary to the social contract.

Schools need to address the issue of citizenship, and obviously in an apolitical way.  Schools should teach courtesy, respect, ethics, and shared responsibility, while pointing out how conservatives and liberals have often disagreed on how these values should be implemented.

If we want the future of America to be strong, then the people, the body politic, and the economy of the United States must be strong.  And it will only remain strong if its citizens are committed to their country and their fellow citizens, and if we have, not just a thriving elite class, but a thriving middle class and a diminishing number of poor.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

When Legislators Flout the Law

First a question.  Do you think that part of the oath that a legislator (federal or state) takes upon being sworn into office includes “upholding the law?”  The answer, shockingly, is no.  Congressmen, for example, swear to uphold the constitution, but there’s nothing about upholding the law.  Neither is upholding the law part of their defined responsibilities.

I guess the reason is that all citizens are supposed to obey and uphold the law, even if they disagree with it.  So legislators have no heightened responsibility to uphold the law.

Let’s go further with this.  Should legislators be expected to uphold the spirit of the law ... that is, not act in such a way that clearly flouts the intent of the law?  The average citizen certainly does not have this responsibility.  If there’s a way around the law, it’s a citizen’s time-honored right to take it.

I would argue, however, that it is a legislator’s heightened responsibility not just to uphold the law ... the letter of it ... but to uphold the spirit of the law.  Let me discuss two recent examples of what happens when they don’t.

In 2007, after a scandal involving junkets payed for by lobbyists, Congress passed a law prohibiting lobbyists from giving Congressmen gifts of just about any value.  The offending junkets were taken by Congressmen, typically to resort locations, where they would play and talk with the sponsoring lobbyists, obviously with the intent of influencing the Congressmen with regard to legislation or regulation that affected the interests of the lobbyists.

So what did lobbyists and their Congressional friends do?  They came up with a way to achieve the same end but not violate the letter of the law.  Junkets are now funded by PACs controlled by the Congressmen which are in turn funded by money collected from lobbyists or the corporations they represent.  Since the lobbyists are not paying for the junkets directly, there is no violation of the law!

A recent article in The New York Times documents how Congressmen, mostly but not all Republican, flout the intent of this law.   Should Congressmen be able to legally do this?  Should they at least be subject to an ethics violation?  When there is knowing violation of the intent of the law, I think the answer to both should be, yes, but certainly at least to the latter.

The other instance involves the response of various states to a series of recent decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that limit the use of life sentences without parole for juveniles.  The underlying reason for these decisions is that children, even those who commit murder, are often less culpable than adults and deserve a chance at redemption.  

But states including Florida, Louisiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania have gotten around the spirit and intent of these decisions either by piling on sentences that amount to life without parole or refusing to apply the ruling retroactively to juveniles who are currently serving life without parole.  Even when some states have responded with rehearings on sentencing, the new sentences imposed have been harsh (in the Florida example cited, 50 years or more) and against the spirit of the decisions. 

It is a sad statement regarding the rule of law in our democracy that those elected to pass and, one would assume, uphold the laws flout their intent so brazenly.  

Ironically, the proponents of harsh treatment of juvenile criminals are typically conservative Republicans.  They are adamant that criminals must pay the price and that they should not be coddled, regardless their age.  And yet when it comes to their own activities, they have no problem in flouting the intent of the law while obeying the letter of the law.

It may be the American way, but it is a bad way.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Prisons As Monastery Not Dungeon

In my previous post, “Rethinking Criminal Justice in a Civilized Society,” I argued that if a crime does not warrant the death penalty, then rehabilitation should be the predominant motivator in sentencing and its execution, not retribution, not punishment.

Prisons today are merely modern-day dungeons with a prettier face.  No longer do inmates have to fight off rats in dank, dark cells.  They receive decent meals, are provided beds (assuming the prison is not overcrowded), are allowed visitors, get some minimum of exercise and daylight, etc.  Some education is often available.

But the dominant policy is still punishment.  Prisons are a spiritual dead zone.  Except for insuring order, inmates are left pretty much to their own devices; they are provided no direction in changing their lives.  And so despite the fact that they are confined and watched, criminal conduct and gangs flourish in prisons.  They are a breeding ground for a more committed, smarter, criminal.  As a result, more than two-thirds of released inmates commit new crimes, often more serious and violent, within three years of leaving prison.

Is this really what our society expects from our criminal justice system?   There are two reasons why people support the punishment model.  First, it feels right ... the old “eye for eye” perspective.  But I think most people support it to improve safety.  They understand that most prisoners return to their communities within a few years, and people believe that punishment reduces the likelihood that they will commit more crimes after being released from prison.  Also, the theory is that it will deter others from committing crimes to begin with.  But our experience shows that our current prison philosophy secures neither end.

Our society’s answer to this problem has been to increase the severity of prison sentences, even for the most minor of crimes.  But that hasn’t worked either.  All it has done is create even more hardened criminals at an incredible cost to society (both regarding the cost of housing inmates as well as the cost of a continuing career of crime).

No , the answer lies elsewhere ... in the concept of rehabilitation.  Unfortunately, the concept of rehabilitation has been pretty much discredited because it’s just been given lip service, it has never really been given an opportunity to work.  Rehabilitation has to be the guiding principle; it can’t be a side effort in the midst of a brutalizing environment.  And then you have the rants of the right wing who argue against “coddling” criminals.  

In a series of pieces arguing for more emphasis on rehabilitation in The New York Times, the case was made for providing all the therapy needed and all the education desired, preferably within a “locked, safe and secure home-like residential community.”  

While I agree on the need for and the benefit of more therapy of all types and education, I believe that for most inmates, certainly for the more hardened ones, given the nature of their environmental backgrounds, a far more structured environment is necessary in order to ingrain in them new patterns of thought and behavior.  And so I would advocate a setting more patterned after the monastic experience, replete with both a regimented daily schedule and spiritual lessons and meditation.  A repurposing of our existing prison structures.

Why?  For much the same reason that boot camp is necessary to turn recruits into soldiers.  Most inmates, like most individuals, have grown up in very undisciplined circumstances. Although life does not require the discipline of the military or a monastery, discipline in the face of all the temptations and assaults of our society would be very helpful in enabling released inmates to resist falling back into familiar behaviors.

And because most inmates, like most individuals, have grown up in an atmosphere that has created a feeling of insecurity and a negative sense of self, a non-denominational spiritual program including meditation would be very helpful.  Inmates need to develop a new way of relating to themselves and to those around them, both family and the larger society.  

Above all they need to develop faith in themselves, and that can only come from a more robust spiritual life, together with education and various forms of therapy.  As a Buddhist, I would advocate a program based on Buddhist teaching as it is non-denominational and has been shown in numerous prison settings to be very effective in helping inmates (granted that in those cases the inmates self-selected the program).

The question needs to be put to the public:  “Is your primary concern regarding the functioning of the criminal justice system one of increasing personal safety?”   If the answer is overwhelmingly yes, then the future direction of prison/sentencing policy should be clear.  Rehabilitation needs to be the dominant goal of prison policy.

We’ve built all these prisons; we confine all these people; let’s make better use of that opportunity for the benefit of the public as well as the inmates.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Rethinking Criminal Justice in a Civilized Society

When someone is convicted of a crime in our society, the operative focus in sentencing is typically punishment/retribution and that focus is carried out within the prison setting.  The one slight exception to this regards the death penalty.  Many states no longer impose the death penalty regardless of the severity of the crime,

In a recent New Yorker piece, Jeffrey Toobin ends by declaring the death penalty  "an absurdity in a civilized society." That "no technology can render that process any less grotesque."  And thus he argues for the abolition of the death penalty.

While I am a card-carrying, certified Liberal, I beg to differ with Mr. Toobin and those who follow his thinking.  I believe that in any society, even the most civilized (and I question whether ours qualifies as that, but that's another matter), there is a proper place for the death penalty, carefully deliberated and administered as humanely as possible.

There are some acts that are so cruel, so inhumane, done with such total disregard for the value of human life, that there is no appropriate penalty other than the death penalty.  Not as a deterrent to such acts in the future, but because society needs to say that some acts are so beyond the pale that they deserve the ultimate penalty, death.  That is part of what makes a society civilized.  

While much attention is placed on the issue of the death penalty in our civilized society, very little attention is given to the nature of prison time served by a typical convict and how that meshes with the concept of a civilized society.  The typical prison is a dead zone where people languish in boredom and where the disposition to commit crime is actually increased with the result that we have a very high rate of recidivism, with the released person often committing even more serious crimes.

If the proper context for the debate on punishment is a civilized society, and I think that is the correct context, then I would argue that if a crime does not warrant the death penalty, then rehabilitation should be the predominant motivator, not retribution, not punishment.  That is another part of what defines a society as civilized, and we are clearly totally lacking in that.  

Our society should want to make the criminal whole in every sense of the word so that he or she not only does not commit crime when he is released but becomes a benefit to his immediate family and society.  We are all, after all, God’s children; if someone goes astray it is not because there is something inherently within him or her that is bad, but because he has been damaged growing up by the contact, the experiences, he has had with the larger culture and often even his immediate family.  This does not absolve someone of responsibility, but it should inform how the system, how a civilized society, interacts with someone who has committed a crime.

Our current system harms the individual and harms society.  It is a lose-lose situation.  The goal of rehabilitation is not only civilized, but it is in society’s best interest.  And it is possible.