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Tag Archives: Virtue
2016: The Last Year of the Weimar Republic
In this new era of surrealism, it’s ironic that we can find prophetic wisdom in as unlikely a source as Hollywood scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin. In his 1995 masterpiece The American President, we find this exchange between President Andrew Shepherd and his domestic policy advisor, Lewis Rothschild:
Lewis Rothschild: People want leadership, Mr. President. And in the absence of genuine leadership they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership; they’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water they’ll drink the sand.
President Shepherd: Lewis, people don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty; they drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.
The truth is that both are right. Deprive people of authentic leadership for long enough and they will certainly lose the ability to tell the difference between reality and illusion.
When we reflect upon the contrast between the elegant ideals set forth by revolutionary leaders two and a half centuries ago and the cartoonish ranting of the avenger seeking coronation today, there is ample reason for anxiety that has nothing to do with Nazi genocide.
Spitting Image 2:3 — Unrandom Acts of Kindness
My neighbor was standing at the front desk of a high-end fitness center one morning when a man came through the door and approached the counter.
“I’ve been jogging,” he said, panting, “and I forgot to bring my water bottle with me. Could I please have a glass of water?”
“I’m sorry,” said the young woman behind the desk, “but this is a private club. There’s a gas station down the street that might be able to help you.”
The jogger looked at the receptionist, shrugged his shoulders, and left.
My neighbor watched in disbelief. “Excuse me,” she said. “You have a coffee machine with paper cups right next to you. You have a sink with a faucet. You could have poured the man a cup of water.”
The young woman looked back at her and replied, with evident remorse. “You’re right. I wish I had thought of that.”
The response is staggering. Not “I was just following the rules” or “I’m not allowed to leave my desk.” Those would have be the predictable, if disappointing answers.
But how is it possible that the thought of offering a cup of water to an overheated stranger could have been so far off the receptionist’s radar that it would not even enter her mind?
Never mind that the woman behind the counter was white and the jogger was black. That only makes it worse, since the jogger might reasonably have suspected racism and the motive behind the refusal.
But this was not about race. It was about how we have retreated so far into our worlds of isolation that offering a cup of water — the easiest, simplest, cheapest, most fundamental act of kindness possible for one human being to perform for another — has become something “we wish we had thought of.”
Those stories of disconnectedness — of two friends in school passing each other without noticing while they talk to each other on the phone, of a child calling her parents in the living room from her bedroom, of a husband and wife texting one another from opposite sides of the couch — have gone from being amusing anecdotes to being darkly disturbing. We’re well on our way to forgetting that other people are real. Which means we’re forgetting what it is to be human.
Like anything else, kindness takes practice. It has become popular to talk about doing random acts of kindness, and that’s wonderful. But it might benefit us more if we did disciplined acts of kindness, to develop the habit of kindness so that we don’t have to think about it.
It really isn’t so hard to drop a coin in a jar for charity every morning, to give a smile and a greeting to the strangers we pass on the sidewalk or to our co-workers in the office, to hold the door open for another as we go through the door ourselves, to offer help to someone whose hands are full, to call a colleague who doesn’t show up at work to ask if everything is okay.
With a little practice, we won’t have to remember to act kind because we will have become kind.
The Three Laws of Hitchhiking
Lessons learned on the road for off the road.
What would your grandmother say, Mr. Cheeseburger?
Does the benefit of pointing out outrageous behavior outweigh the cost of rewarding outrageous behavior by pointing it out? It’s hard to know anymore.
Nevertheless, the recent report of a man in Britain who changed his name to Bacon Double Cheeseburger demands brief mention — not only for its idiocy but for its insidious banality.
Oh, I know what you’re thinking: that this kind of no-news-news isn’t worth the time it takes to read about it. But trivial symptoms can offer an early warning to life-threatening conditions; and, with our culture already in dire need of life-support, the passive acceptance of every “new normal” may soon lead us into the category of DNR — Do Not Resuscitate.
So, yes, the obvious question is, “who cares”? People do all kinds of dopey things and, if they aren’t violating any laws or committing immoral acts, we might as well just shrug our collective shoulders and get on with our collective lives — especially when we can’t stop them in any case. Compared with multiple body piercings and blanket-tattoos, adopting a silly name seems downright pedestrian.
But it’s worth asking ourselves this: why did it never occur to our grandparents to alter their appearances or their appellations?
Caravan to Midnight with John B. Wells
Listen to my recent interview with John B. Wells on Caravan to Midnight:
Ancient wisdom for modern times (interview starts at about 1:40:00).
Spitting Image 2:2 — When sacrifice is for the birds
Would you sacrifice one of your children to save the other?
That was the unthinkable dilemma revealed at the climax of the Meryl Streep classic Sophie’s Choice, which left the heroine emotionally scarred for the rest of her life.
The poignancy of that final scene tears at the insides of anyone who’s ever seen it. Some things are too hideous even to contemplate, and we simultaneously rage against the evil of the Nazi tormentor and ache for the mother who had to choose and could never forgive herself for choosing.
But reality can be just as disturbing as fiction. A recent study by University of Florida scientists describes how herons, egrets, and storks living in the Everglades willingly sacrifice some of their young to alligators living below their nests so that the alligators will protect the remaining chicks from raccoon and possums.
The deal makes perfect sense for the alligators: they get a steady diet of baby birds falling from the sky almost straight into their mouths. And it makes perfect sense for the mothers as well: since birds typically have more young than they can care for, so giving up a few who wouldn’t survive anyway to protect the rest is practical, logical and, arguably, moral.
Except that it isn’t. What separates human beings from animals is conscience. When our moral compass is functioning as it should, simple pragmatism isn’t enough to govern our decision-making. And if the cost of cold, hard logic, no matter how sound, requires us to sacrifice our humanity, then it is our willingness to embrace the full measure of devotion to a higher moral standard that serves the greater good, even when no one else is watching and no one else will ever know.
Sacrifice of oneself for the benefit of others is the most noble quality of humankind. Sacrificing others for our own benefit shows us to be lower than the lowest animal. Because, unlike animals, we know better.
Or, at least, we should.
Frank Reagan for President
Highly principled, hard as nails, even-keeled, dedicated to higher values, devoted to the welfare of the people he serves, and fiercely loyal to those who serve under his command.
If he’s not available, I’d settle for Tom Selleck. Like Ronald Reagan, at least he would know how to act like a president.
Behind the Hero on the Screen
In the aftermath of this weekend’s Academy Awards Ceremony, I’m revisiting these thoughts from 2009. If you didn’t follow the link when I posted it a few weeks ago, now you have another chance.
Which of the following quotes does not belong with the others:
It is not what I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.
With great power comes great responsibility.
It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done before.
Literary mavens will quickly identify the third quote as different from the first two for several reasons. First, it was written in the 19th century, where the others were written in the 21st. Second, it is a line from novel, where the others are lines from motion pictures. And third, it is the only one of the three not spoken by a Marvel Comic superhero.
On a more substantive level, however, all three have very much in common.
The first of the three is spoken by Bruce Wayne in his guise as Batman, explaining away his public playboy persona as a device to conceal his secret identity. The second is spoken by Peter Parker, aka Spiderman, explaining why he is walking away from the woman he loves in order to protect her from the enemies that would try to strike at him through the people closest to him.
The third quote is the closing line of Charles Dickens’s classic A Tale of Two Cities, in which the heretofore-undistinguished Sydney Carton expresses his love for Lucie Darnay by taking the place of her husband, Charles, and suffering death by guillotine so that Charles might live.
All three quotes issue from heroes who not only do great things at personal risk, but who sacrifice life, love, and reputation for a higher ideal. From a brooding moralizer like Dickens, we expect nothing less. From Hollywood scriptwriters and producers, however, we expect anything else.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
As the Oscar season descends upon us, its worth reflecting that Hollywood is known as Tinsel Town for good reason. Glitz, superficiality, and immediate gratification have become synonymous with the land responsible for most of today’s entertainment industry. Revolving door marriages and divorces, infidelity, and recreational drugs are only the most obvious symptoms of a culture that glorifies the pursuit of pleasure and the deification of personal autonomy.
Predictably, the film industry can be counted on to turn out major motion pictures that are thinly veiled propaganda pieces. Such unmemorable productions as Brokeback Mountain, Lions for Lambs, and The Good Shepherd may have curried favor with Hollywood politicos eager to promote alternative lifestyles or government conspiracy theories, but the movie-going public has shown considerably more enthusiasm for traditional good versus-evil-stories in which good triumphs in the end. (For the record, haven’t seen either Brokeback Mountain or Lions for Lambs.)
If box office receipts are any indication, there can be no doubt that audiences will choose classic heroism every time. The musings of a couple of culturally conflicted cowboys on the open plain can hardly compete with such memorable moments as the President of the United States (played by Harrison Ford) throwing an international terrorist out the cargo hold of his plane in Air Force One or Kevin Kline’s presidential impersonator cutting government pork at a cabinet meeting to save funding for an orphanage in Dave.
That Hollywood did in fact release such movies as Batman Begins, Spiderman, and Air Force One, however, reveals an insight into Left Coast Culture that is at once obvious and surprising.
What is obvious is that money trumps ideology. When all is said and done, filmmakers would rather see increased revenues than the spread of counter-culture ideology. Fair enough. But what is truly remarkable is how well they understand the nobility, the selflessness, and the heroism of personal sacrifice that are so often at the heart of successful moviemaking.
MANKIND’S INNER HERO
Once upon a time, heroism in Hollywood was the norm. But we don’t have to go all the way back to Humphrey Bogart’s “the problems of three little people don’t add up to hill of beans” speech in Casablanca when he gives up Ingrid Bergman. When Helen Hunt refused to abandon her family for Tom Hanks in Cast Away, when Kelly McGillis refused to abandon her Amish community for Harrison Ford in Witness, when Robert Redford emptied out of his life’s savings to rescue Brad Pitt in Spy Games, the positive resolution of their inner conflicts provided some of the most powerful emotional climaxes in modern cinema. And let’s not forget this year’s biggest hit, The Dark Knight, in which Batman takes the blame for murder to allow Gotham City to keep its illusion of hope.
Perhaps the culture of make-believe that turns out movies of heroism is incapable of believing in either real heroism or the values that turn ordinary people into heroes. Why else would they persist in churning out so many ideological flops in between traditionalist blockbusters? One almost feels sorry for the creative geniuses that can portray such compelling drama on the screen but seem incapable of applying it to the reality of their lives.
The classical philosopher Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato describes the human condition thus:
And so [man] finds himself truly in the midst of a raging battle, in which all the matters of the material world, whether good or evil, serve as trials for man. Poverty confronts him on the one side and wealth on the other… comfort on the one side, and suffering on the other, until he faces a battlefront before him and behind. But if he will be valiant and prevail against his adversaries on every side, then he will become a Complete Man.
Movies can remind us of the moral battles we face constantly in our own lives between what we know and what we feel, between what is right and what is pleasing, between rising to each new challenge or abdicating struggle for the line of least resistance. We rejoice when silver screen heroes emerge triumphant from their inner struggles, for they remind us that we too can emerge triumphant. But we despair when they fail, for they remind us how easily we too can fall prey to our inner demons.
It’s ironic that Hollywood filmmakers can describe the human condition so vividly with so little understanding of it. Perhaps they should watch their own movies – the ones that audiences go to see.
Spitting Image 1:2 — The Soldier and the Soul
My son told me this morning that, as he was just beginning his training in the IDF special forces, he met a soldier who was just finishing his service in the same unit, the Gadsar Reconnaissance Division of the Nahal Brigade.
“I envy you, ” said the retiring warrior. “And I feel sorry for you. I envy you for the incredible experience you’re about to have. And I feel sorry for you because it will be harder than you can imagine.”
I immediately imagined two souls passing as one descends from on high to take its place inside a newborn child and the other departs this world on its way to receive its eternal reward.
“I envy you,” says the ascending soul to the one about to enter the material world. “And I feel sorry for you. I envy you for the joy you will find serving the Master of the Universe, a joy that I will never know again now that my time on earth is over. And I feel sorry for you, for you have no idea how difficult it will be for you to remember who you are and what your purpose is amidst so much pain and confusion.”
The more we seek to avoid pain, the more we deprive ourselves of the inner pleasure that is the source of true happiness. The more we rise to meet the obstacles and challenges that confront us, the more we find joy in this world and make ourselves deserving of the pleasure that awaits us once our time here has passed.
The Devil can’t make you do it
Hey, mom. Post-partum depression got you down? Thinking of leaving your husband? Don’t fight it; just let him go. After all, it’s not your fault.
It’s your hormones. That’s the latest from the world of science. According to psychologist Jennifer Bartz of McGill University, researchers have identified a link between new parents divorcing and low levels of oxytocin.
Whatever the explanation, there seems to be a familiar eagerness by researchers to impose a chemical, as opposed to a psychological, explanation upon human behavior. Scientists often appear to prefer a model that links our choices to biological and evolutionary causes, further disassociating human decision-making from that most obvious explanation — free will.
Yonason Goldson 