George's Will's Great Detachment

 

Just add people

I've been broadening my "algorithm" to include more conservative voices.  I want to be able to see both sides of issues, to avoid living in a silo where I am right all the time and never learn anything but what my own brain tells me.  So, I read George Will a bit more often than I used to.  So far so good.  Sometimes I am shocked to find myself agreeing with him.  Sometimes, it's more like "hmm, I didn't think of it that way."  

Today's opinion piece in the New York Times  was in the realm of:  "Now hold on there, George!"  Here's the trigger:

When you look at these trends through a political lens, the power of the autonomy ethos becomes clearer. In general, conservatives believe in economic freedom (low taxes, fewer regulations) but social obligations (faith, family, flag). Progressives tend to favor economic obligations to reduce inequality but more social autonomy to live whatever lifestyle you choose.

Could be a case over-simplification, could be my own over-reaction, but I was reading his discussion of the trends toward this "great detachment" that we seem to be experiencing in the US and nodding my head right up until he put the progressive label on me and then completely got it wrong.

Well, he got me wrong.  And he got Ethical Culture wrong.  That's probably because Ethical Culture is so tiny-small and more than a little bit of a hairball these days.  So let me back up to the moment before my brain heard the sound of screeching brakes.

Will is arguing---along with Curt Collier and others who pay attention to the trends of the past half century or so---that social engagement is falling in the US and that that, to a large extent, is due to the emphasis on individualism and the elevation of efficiency and wealth as the two primary goals of life.  (Neither of them have particularly emphasized the efficiency part, but it's hiding in plain sight when they talk/write about this.)  These issues were factors in American society much before either of these guys---or most social scientists---quite figured it out.  

Felix Adler spoke repeatedly about the mistake of centering one's life goals on the accumulation of wealth.  He spoke of the duties that such accumulation created and the obligation to veer away from the hoarding mindset to one of sharing and investment in a better future.  He also reminded us that, while our supreme aim is to become better, more ethical human beings, we could never do that without engaging with other human beings in relationships founded on mutual respect and concern.  Efficiency and emphasis on individualism and the accumulation of wealth for its own sake were all factors that worked against us in becoming the ethical beings that we might want to be, and his whole platform was aimed toward overcoming those factors.

Or so it seems to me.  Now I have to go back and document each point that I raise in that last paragraph, since these are impressions, the sense of Adler's writing---and my overall understanding of Ethical Culture---that have been formed in recent years by reading (and editing) some of the many lectures by Adler (and others) that have never made it very far outside of the building at 2 W. 64th Street in Manhattan.  

When I do get that documentation accomplished, I should probably explain to George Will that it is not a political thing, but a worldview thing---a religious thing, if you will.  Will is careful to note---  

I want to reiterate something. These are averages. Be careful how you apply social science data to your individual life, because your life is filled with things social science can’t see: your unique circumstances, tastes, spirit.

---to which I reply "Well done, George!"  But more love and more marriage are not necessarily the answer to our "great detachment."  And neither of those things are political and should definitely not be turned into political positions.  Indeed, I would be more pleased to have the "progressive" label a little less liberally applied to anyone to the left of Attila the Hun.  

The Progressive Movement of the late 19th and early 20th century was assisted very strongly by the Ethical Culture Movement.  No matter whether EC was in the driver's seat or part of the team pulling the wagon, Adler and his philosophy was part of the impetus to improve the community, and the focus was on creating and maintaining relationships across all of the boundaries that human biology and thought sought to create.  That, I think, is why our great detachment has occurred: When we fail to see that social good based on ethics is, after all, social, we lose both the social and the good.  

Our great detachment is accompanied by great division, as we divide ourselves into groups (conservative vs progressive!) (male vs female) (white vs non-white) (Christian vs non-Christian) (American vs non-American) (etc.) (and so on) (endlessly).  When ethics is made central in our lives (and our thoughts), then every single thing that we do---drink water, eat food, wear clothes, breathe air, vote, buy a house, read a book (and so endlessly on)---connects us to other humans.  Our awareness of that fact is the beginning of acknowleging and engaging in a relationship that links us to where the water came from, how we use it, where it goes when we are through with it, even the systems that turn hydrogen and oxygen into water.  We are never alone when we take that sip of water.  

Similarly, we are not alone when we walk through the grocery store, pushing our cart.  Nor in our car driving to work.  And so endlessly on.  Will is emphasizing romance and love for a single other human as the significant factor in the great detachment, but the detachment is more fundamental.  When we fail to see the human faces around us as persons with whom we (already!) have a connection, we fail to allow ourselves to experience the connection that we need to remain human, and we deny ourselves the opportunity to become our better selves.  

 

How to Read Maya Angelou?!

Maya Angelou (public domain)

I have acquired some allergies.  They make me quite miserable--and I seem to be under some stress because of these miseries.  One night recently, I found myself flinching at every sudden noise, ready to cry or explode or both.  I decided to decamp to the bedroom and my reading chair, in hope of some relief.  I found it in reading Maya Angelou's Even the Stars Seem Lonesome.  That calmed me considerably.  I enjoyed her essays on sensuality, on aging, on art and poetry.  I appreciated her use of African proverbs and references to social organization and customs in Africa.  I wept at her description of a "rural museum" in Louisiana and her descriptions of the horrors of slavery.  

As I did so, I wondered at my reactions.  I read half of the volume that night as a means of relaxing.  I read the remainder the following morning with some puzzlement.  Both reading sessions were pleasurable on several levels.  Angelou's writing is smooth and flowing, and it's easy--and pleasurable--to go with her flow.  My puzzlement came from external sources that made me try to understand exactly how I am expected to read her writing.  

Maya Angelou was Black, writing as a Black woman.  She was famous.  She was wealthy.  She was so many things I am not that it is silly to try to list them all.  Nonetheless, her writing resonates with me on several levels.  Age.  Sex and gender.  Living in the South but not actually feeling part of the South.  Love of  words.  Short term residence in Africa.  It also resonates when she talks about slavery and the history that is largely unacknowledged in this country.  It resonates when our experiences and desires take different pathways.  I am not a mother, although I have done some mothering (I am a greater success as a stand-in grandmother), and I read her reflections on her mother and her son from the same (shared) standpoint--and feel that I understand what she is saying.

The puzzlement comes from an earlier reading session--All God's Children Need Dancing Shoes--a few weeks ago, just prior to joining a Zoom session intended to focus on white supremacy.  That session was intended to discuss Layla Saad's Me and White Supremacy, which I had, admittedly, mostly skimmed and only read in bits.  Just coming from a recent reading of Angelou's life experiences in Ghana and having my own experience well in mind from past years in Kenya and Tanzania, I had my own ideas about approaching the issues raised by Saad--including some questions about her perspective and experience.  To me, these ideas and questions are all part of inquiry and seeking understanding.  To the facilitator, they were an expression of my race and my racism.  

That kind of attitude took me aback.  The facilitator (who, by the way was also White) seemed to be taking a fairly dogmatic approach to a set of ideas that were actually the product of someone else's thought and experience--without much actual scientific research.  What has troubled me since then is the increasing sense that some of the approaches I am seeing to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (with or without the inclusion of Justice) seem more divisive that healing or binding.  Indeed, as I learn more about Ethical Culture, I am finding some of these discussions very much out of sync with respect for the inherent worth of the each individual, including respect for diversity of thought as well as diversity of identity.  I am seeing an emphasis on race (and sexual orientation) with disregard for age, disability, or other factors that combine to make us all unique individuals.  My concern is less with the content of the discussions than the manner, which sometimes belittles or demeans those who are being criticized for the results of systems not of their own creation or actions not of their own doing.

Perhaps I am being naive.  Perhaps this is a reflection of White privilege, White fragility, and White supremacy.  And perhaps I am diverting myself from my central concern:  How can/may a White woman read Maya Angelou?

Returning to that central concern, my response is that a White woman may indeed read Angelou.  She will bring her own experiences to the reading.  Some of them will parallel Angelou's own experiences and allow Angelou's writing to resonate deeply.  Some of them will not parallel Angelou's experiences.  There may be some additional learning needed to approach Angelou's writing--and, very clearly, some learning to be taken from it.  There may be points at which both writer and reader will miss each other.  In reading, Angelou, I am sometimes aware of our differences, but I am also completely drawn in to the universality of her emotions and relationships.  We have a number of social problems related to race in the US and much work to do to resolve them.  Losing sight of our connection to each other is not, I believe, the way to solve the problem.  Finding our commonality, seeing the threads that link us together, realizing how much we are the same is, I believe, a better way.