Spelling God With Two O's

That's the name of a slender book of essays, written by Arthur Dobrin, who first began having colloquies as a form of meeting for ethical societies.  How helpful to have found a free download of the book.  I found it on one of my meandering wanders through the internet that had one purpose but ended up some place else. In this case, the "landing" was a serendipitous encounter with something I will probably make a morning ritual.  OK, I don't actually have a morning ritual, but I want one, and it could become much more interesting than what's going on right now.

Dobrin's book is a collection of essays on values and essential concepts.  He names the value, provides an inspirational quote from another writer or thinker (including but certainly not limited to Felix Adler), and then explores the idea from several perspectives.  For example, tolerance:

Since we all have our preferences and savor life in different ways and are certain that our ways are natural and right, it is impossible to like or to approve of everyone and everything they do. Still it is possible be tolerant of them. You may never want to meet them but you grant them the right to live as they choose. You don’t envy them and may dislike them but you allow them to live as they want. Not every way is worthy of appreciation but everyone has the right to bad taste.

Dobrin notes that not everything should be tolerated--deliberately causing pain, harming innocents, etc.--but that tolerance is a (minor) virtue that makes living in a diverse society better for all of us.

I think I will be reading this book as soon as I can get it onto one of my reading devices.  If I fail with the morning routine thing (pretty much a given), I can at least read one of these brief essays whenever I find myself waiting or dining alone or just needing to spend a little time working on my life.

Black Lives Matter . . . to Me

That's the inaugural "Compassionate Pen Writing Prompt" for the New York Society for Ethical Culture's Ethics for Teen Leaders "invitation to express."  Teens are asked to use that writing prompt to express what the Black Lives Matter movement or concept means in their own lives.  The expression may be an essay, a poem, a short personal letter, a short story, or a graphic.

Audrey Kindred, children's program director at NYSEC, explains the invitation in these terms:

"Black Lives Matter"  is a modern civil rights call of a kind, over half a century after Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech.  This call at this time indicates that we might need to be ever more attentive of unmet needs, caring of continued inequalities and vigilant about outstanding harms occurring within the very "American Dream" Americans have been creating since King.  

Her words caught my attention, especially:  unmet needs, continued inequalities, outstanding harms.  And then I found this music.


The album came from the fortuitous meetings of Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou and Jay-Marie Hill at Black Lives Matter protest in Cleveland.  Once they decided to collaborate musically, they wrote 11 songs in 6 days.  This is both "movement music" and "healing music" that deals with issues of equality for gender, sexuality, and race.  It also raises unmet needs, continued inequalities, and outstanding harms.

Worth a listen.  Worth a thought--what is there in our everyday lives that contributes to unmet needs, continued inequalities, and outstanding harms? How should we address these issues in our everyday lives?

The Ethics of Eating: Meatless Monday

I'm a Texas girl (senior variety).  I love cow.  Well, not the ones on four feet, unless they are at some distance from my person.  I have been up close and personal with one or two (milking is much harder than it looks; also gross). When the cow becomes a steak, I, as I said, love cow.  Chicken fried.  Medium rare. Even the poorer cuts become wonderful with some fajita seasoning or slow cooked with a little bbq sauce and a goodly amount of smoke.  Hamburgers? Yum.  Meatloaf?  That's a happy meal for some of us. (Me! Me!)

I do come by this love naturally.  Texas, as I said.  My father was also an influence.  During World War II, there was a foxhole moment I dare not even imagine when he swore:  "If I get out of this alive, I'm eating steak every day." He pretty much did, and so I also developed a taste for it.  In his case, the vow came from the semi-starvation of some grueling and, well, I can't even bear to think about it.  I just know that he wanted cow at most every meal, and he ate his dessert first.  That, too, was combat-related.  If any shooting started, the one part of whatever pitiful meal was available that you did not want to miss, he said, was dessert.

I will never be a vegetarian, but lately I've been trying to reduce my consumption of meat.  This for environmental and health reasons.  The damage to the planet of raising large food animals is said to be out of hand, but it's also said to be mitigable with improved practices.  We Americans have been said to eat more protein than any other nation, to the detriment of our health, but there is clinical evidence that says otherwise.  Meh.  Every health and environmental concern that has been raised has always faced push back from interested parties.  That's not all bad when methods and data need some stricter attention nor when practices improve and change the scope of the problem.  In the meantime, however, those of us trying to figure out what the right thing to do (or eat) might be are left trying to sift through the mixture of messages to find the truth--or a reasonable facsimile thereof.  For me, that truth says I can reduce my meat consumption by making Mondays meatless.

Doing so is easier said than done.  So far, I'm at only 50% compliance.  I have been trying to observe Meatless Mondays for the past six weeks (more, if you count the times I forgot to start).  In that time, I've nearly starved, spent a fortune, and struck out by accident when I woke up and grabbed some leftovers to stop the hunger pain in my stomach.  Oops!  Wrong leftovers for Meatless Monday. Yesterday, I had to eat a hamburger, knew that I was about to lose another chance to observe Meatless Monday, and decided that I would just have to try to deal with it on Tuesday.  (So far so good.)

Even so, I am committed.  I think it's a good idea for my personal health to start making an effort to get more plant-based food in my diet.  Just as important, I think it's an ethical choice on many levels to decrease the amount of meat in my diet.  The reasons include, among other things that I care about, antibiotic resistance, animal welfare, animal waste, land use, water pollution, and more. Keeping the commitment after a lifetime of loving a really good steak is going to be a challenge.  Here's what I'm thinking:

• Choice takes advance planning.  I can't wait until Monday to try to figure out what I can eat.  I need to buy the foods that I will eat well in advance. Prepare the snacks, even some "leftovers," for quick bites when I need something to nibble on or just something fast to tide me over until the next meal.  (Try not to think about the madness of hunger to a diabetic.  We just try to survive it.)
• Choice needs to be sustainable.  I can't keep buying prepared and packaged foods at this rate.  My food budget tells me so, and I know that home cooked meals are better for me.  I can manage the carbohydrate and sodium content for my body's needs much better than any corporation.  So I need to know that Mondays need extra time for food prep, giving, I suppose, an added benefit of slowing down the all too hectic pace of my life lately.
• No meat does not mean no protein.  I can't sustain my health by turning Mondays into a day for all starch-based foods (although I did do that one Monday).  I need to learn more about alternate sources of protein.  The spirit of Meatless Mondays precludes fish, but not (so far) eggs and dairy.  I should broaden my palate and learn to cook with tofu and other vegetable proteins.
• Making an ethical choice helps eliminate the perception of deprivation.  That's a personal thing.  At first, I just tried to make it through 24 hours without meat.  I even watched the clock and made a ham sammich at midnight, so deprived did I feel.  Now, despite my frequent failures at observing the day, I am more unhappy, dissatisfied when I do fail, because I think that this is an important and valuable activity for me.  What I am discovering is that--even as I struggle to overcome years of habit and the memories of my mama's excellent chicken fried steak--I want to do this.  I want to reduce my impact on the planet, however minute the reduction, with this choice.  I also want the satisfaction of making an ethical decision to do what feels like the right thing.  That means that I don't feel so deprived by this choice any more and don't have to rush for some meat at midnight.

Meatless Monday is not a choice that everyone can--or will want to--make.  It's a personal decision that I am trying to make work and slowly getting better at. Still, how and what we eat can have an effect on the planet, on our community, on our fellow humans.  Whether we all make the same choices is less important than that we do make a considered choice--that we are mindful of how we live--because it matters. The choices we make are, after all, ethical choices regardless of which way we decide an issue, because they are choices that balance our values and beliefs against each other and reflect our ethics in the balance.

Your thoughts?

The Ethics of Driving*

OK, maybe this should be revealed up front as a recitation of some of my pet peeves, but, really, people, enough is enough.  I've been doing a lot of driving lately.  Trips back and forth to see the great grandbaby.  Hauling a dear friend's relatives around when she can't be in two places at once.  The occasional road trip to visit a friend.  Those weekly drives north of the river to attend ESOA meetings.  I thought I had seen some really nasty driving habits in Houston, but Central Texas seems to be picking up some bad behaviors of its own.

There was a time in Texas when we saw many reminders to "Drive Friendly."  Texas is, after all, advertised as "The Friendly State," so it fit very well with our supposed character to have that motto painted on various highway signs.  As I recall, it did seem to do its job as a reminder to drivers to drive courteously and lend a hand when needed.  Then we got the motto "Don't Mess With Texas."  Despite what folks outside of Texas might think, that was really an anti-litter campaign.  As in don't mess up the house, kids.  The motto replaced "Drive Friendly" on signs and, despite all intentions, morphed into some macho crapdoodle that was used far too often to mean "leave this big bad dude alone"--or some such nonsense. Nothing to do with driving anyway.

Nowadays, I'm starting to see some of those electronic signs that tell us about missing children or elders also tell us to "Share the road."  It's about time!

I rant.  Perhaps to step back a little and think about what sharing the road might mean.  Perhaps even to think in terms of the ethics of driving.  What might one do to make driving a social event--that is, an event for members of a civil society--rather than a venue for rage, reckless endangerment, death?

• Here's a simple one.  Use those headlights judiciously.  Not so hard.  Turn them on when driving at night, in the rain or other conditions where visibility is limited, or all day long--just to be helpful to other drivers who also happen to hold your life in their hands.  Dim them unless you are way the hell out in West Texas and nobody else** is on the road!  Bright lights inside the city limits or outside the city limits can be deadly.  Blind the oncoming driver, and you become responsible for the consequences, whether the injury is to him or to you.  That's how I see it anyway.  If I could see at all with your bleeping bright lights in my eyes.  You may think that the headlights are there for your sole use and benefit--but, no.  They are indeed intended to help you see the road, but they are also intended to help others see you so they can try not to hit you.  
• Another no brainer.  Use the turn signal like it means something.  Once upon a time, cars didn't come with built in turn signals.  You had to stick your arm out the window (if there was a window) and hold it straight out to signal that you were turning left or bend it at the elbow and point your hand to the sky if you were turning right.  Cars also lacked brake lights, so you needed to stick your arm out that window again and hold it straight out at a midpoint between your shoulder and your hip.  That let the folks behind you know that you were slowing down.  If you wanted to be creative, you could waggle it up and down a little just to make sure they didn't miss the signal. Lots of folks did miss those hand signals, of course; hence the need for signal lights (and tail lights).  Even so, way too many drivers nowadays seem to forget both the existence of turn signals in their vehicle and the basic need to let other drivers know their intentions.  I'm supposed to know when you want to change lanes just because your SUV is bigger than my car and you think that allows you to move it over into my lane without a signal?  Sorry, honey, all I can tell from that maneuver is that you grew up in a barn and probably have more money than sense.  As an (evolving) ethical driver, I want to help you get to where you are going--safely--just let me know when you are going to make a move into the space where my car is headed so that I can slow down to let you in rather than having to slam on my brakes, watch my belongings crash into the floorboard, and feel the bruising effect of a locked seat belt.  Use that turn signal, already!  When making a turn.  When changing lanes.  Whether on a public road or in a parking lot or other private area.  It's plain common sense, its courtesy, and, if you care, it's ethical.  In turn, I will respect the signal, not only knowing what you plan to do now that you have shown me, but allowing you to do it by giving you room to get into my lane or waiting for you to make your turn.  Even in a parking lot.
• But here's the real thing about sharing the road:  You have to do it anyway. Unless it's your private road and no one else is driving or walking or cycling on it--you don't have a choice.  You have to share the space.  At high speeds. Trying to control a heavy machine that can become a deadly weapon at any second.  Why drive as if there were no one else on the road when there are clearly dozens of other vehicles all around you?  Why drive as if those vehicles did not include other human beings whose needs and wants are just as important as yours?  You're late?  Join the club.  You want to get home soon?  Club.  You forgot that you had to stop at the store so you need to make a sudden left turn?  Signal, for garden seed.

Sure I sound grumpy here, but this is not a wish for the "good old days."  It's all an opening for me to say that this is an area where I think that ethics does have a role to play.  Above and beyond the legal requirements for safe driving, I'm thinking that we might recognize that, even though we have just gotten into our car--alone--and will have no face-to-face interaction with others while we are driving, we are still about to interact with other people.  Driving--how we drive--is an ethical activity.  Ethical in that we make choices as we drive; we affect others positively or negatively by those choices; we affect ourselves as caring, compassionate (or not) human beings by those choices.  We may be the only person in our car, no one we know may see us, but we ourselves know the choices we make.   If we are going to try to bring out the best in others, maybe we could give a thought to how we treat them on the road. 

Your thoughts? 

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*Hat tip to Adam Gravois for making me more conscious of this as an issue. 

**Why, yes, I do think that is an important point.