As part of my holiday readings, I read this lecture by Charles Eisenstein on building a peaceful view of the world, instead of one infused by a war narrative. It’s one of those articles where I get something out of it, where there’s a bunch of sentences I highlight in Instapaper, but not enough to warrant subjecting you all to a 30-minute hashtaggoodlongread because boy do I dislike some parts of it.
It boils down to a critique of a Manichaean view of the world, countered with a holistic, system, almost hippie-like view. We tend to reduce the other to enemies, we call them names and thereby signal that we’re the good guys. We ignore our similarities and the complexity of someone else’s situation in favor of tribalism and dehumanization. We fight, not because there’s no other way, but because it’s the default action when you're the other tribe is the baddie that needs to be eradicated.
It’s funny, at first I misread his name as Charles Einstein, so I assumed he must have been related or at the very least have some of that halo rub of on him. So I think I’ve read his arguments a bit more favorable than I usually would for what turned out to be a long winded Ted talk advocating for compassion.
- “If you can look at the person that you call an enemy and see in them that actually, on a deep level, they want what you want and what all people want – to contribute their gifts to a more beautiful world, to be generous, to belong, to know and to be known, love and be loved, and to serve a purpose beyond themselves – if you can see that, you’ll be able to speak to that, and you’ll be able to create an invitation to that.”
I have a love-hate relationship with this article, as I also have a love-hate relationship with most forms of what I think I can call "holistic thinking". The kind of thinking that extends compassion and love to everyone and everything. I love it on paper, but it's just not that easy in practice, and that part is usually conveniently stepped over.
Or ignored entirely. Another piece of reading was Steve Jobs' biography. In my teens, I became mesmerized with Apple and Jobs and what it stood for - the best of technology and human creativity fused together and polished until perfection. I remember being over the moon as a teenager when we got an iMac as our home computer. It's no surprise then that Jobs became one of my heroes.
Despite that I never really read much about him as a person, other than that he was a polarizing figure and a bit new age-y. I vastly underestimated the degree to which Jobs was both. For someone who was so good at connecting to people with his visions and words, he was also a broken man who lied, cheated, cried and bullied people when he didn't get what he want. He went to India for spiritual enlightenment, but also abandoned his first daughter and then named a computer after her.
It's not that I want to be judgemental of him here, but the juxtaposition of all his spiritual pursuits with anecdotes where he's being a bit of a manipulative jerk most of the time got me thinking. He's an example of precisely the aspect of the whole hippie / holistic thinking that I don't like - you can search enlightenment and embrace the universe & each other all you want, but if it's not actually making you a kinder and better person then what's the point really? What do you have to show for? Do you just feel better or are you actually doing better things because of that perspective?
Maybe that's what I like most about the essay - at least he's asking the reader honestly what it could mean for them to actually be a compassionate person. Because it required you to step down from your high horses. To hesitate before you judge and carefully ponder the circumstances.
I don't do that nearly as often as I think I should. Maybe I hold myself to a too high standard, but I feel like it's a standard worth pursuing.
I dunno, man, Eisenstein is a name to conjure with, too. AND...SCENE We study science and taxonomy and classification and normal curves and probability distributions and key characteristics and ICD10 codes and DSMV codes and then we get REALLY REALLY UPSET whenever someone applies a stereotype. It's the stupidest fucking thing in the world that the sum total of our learning is arranged around grouping objects, thoughts, behaviors and concepts based on similarities and then act like only the most horrible people will characterize "all republicans" or "all NRA members" or "all religious people" or "all women" or "all African Americans" as having any fucking thing in common with any other because only racists, chauvinists and other -ists do horrible, callous shit like that. Better yet, the enlightened among us know that the proper woke process is to accept that you, the worm in the majority, can make no generalizations about any tribe but your own. We also know that there is a sliding scale of oppression whereby the more poorly your own tribe is represented, the more generalizations you can make about other tribes. Openness towards others is a necessary component of larger society. If you want anything other than a monoculture, you must not just accept but encourage minorities wherever you see them. Yet the prevailing treatment for difference is a thoughtcrime witchhunt. MInorities may celebrate difference while the majority may only profess inferiority. And for the enlightened upper-class white male? Doesn't fuckin' matter. We'll hire away your kindergarten teachers to tutor our kids through the pandemic. "Food insecurity" is Doordash running late. It means something else to these people. In these United States you either succeed beyond your wildest expectations or your life is one of moral and intellectual failure. If you aren't featured on MTV's Cribs it's because you aren't working as hard as the people who are. The Kardashians? Bootstrapping entrepreneurs, every last one of them. I'm doing really goddamn well. I'm sitting here hatewatching poverty documentaries while carving casting wax at an ex-Rolex repair bench to cast up in shibuichi in my garage while waiting for my airbrush to show up so I can get started enameling on fine silver to teach myself cloisonne. I'm the kind of asshole who can say "faberge" when someone asks "how do you like your eggs." 30 years ago I'd be comfortably middle class but now? Now I employ women in their late '30s with graduate degrees who live with fucking roommates. The Gini coefficient has a steep goddamn slope and I'm scrabbling up it as best as I fucking can. But sometimes I look back at where I came from and who I grew up with and those mutherfuckers have been abandoned. And they're being told it's their fault. And you know what? Happiness is graded on a curve. Their lives are only going to get worse and they know it on a gut level so if they want any happiness the best thing they can do is make it worse for other people. The Republicans are fully a troll party at this point. Their whole thing is "owning the libs." To "the libs" this means doing stupid pyrrhic self-harm things that make the world a worse place in pursuit of irritating people they've never met. What they're doing? Is they're dragging us to hell with them. Ask them. They'll tell you. If you're trying to understand others, and you're asking me to compare post-war globalist foreign policy with fucking TIAMAT? You need to shut the fuck up. Seriously. You are so far up your own goddamn navel that the only people you're reaching are the ones who grew beards specifically so they would look less ridiculous stroking their chins. out here in the world? It's pretty goddamn simple. I will stereotype Group A so I don't have to think about Group A and if I meet someone from Group A and interact with him he will cease to be a member of Group A and become a friend. And the whole pursuit of the Internet, of society, of media, of culture, of government for the past 40 years has been about making it harder for me to interact with anyone from Group A. That's it. That's the story. That's the whole enchilada. Holy fucking strawman, batman. The whole fight is "why should I/shouldn't I care about Guatemalans enough to compete with them for jobs." There will be othering. Peaceful view/War view is like Aldo fucking Leopold arguing that shovels are good and axes are evil. We can all be as compassionate as we want; so long as there's a large media organization hell-bent on turning the world into cartoons, someone else will cheerfully murder you for being in a stereotype on their bad side. i recognize that it's one of the Liberal Stations of the Cross to turn inward and blame myself for the redneck racists of the Q Klux Klan but I'm fucking over it. I can give as much of a shit about the poor locksmith who made it out of prison but at the end of the day if I voted for Hilary it's because I want to eat babies.He said, I will destroy Tiamat, our mother, on condition that all you brothers and sisters make me the supreme ruler of the universe. (I'll leave it to your imagination to draw parallels to the US after World War Two.)
Consider the following as a general principle: in any fight – and more and more of our political discourse has become a fight – the resolution lies in the things that are hidden by the fight, the things that both sides agree on without even knowing it and the questions that neither side is asking. So for example in the fight over immigration, one side says, “Immigration is harming us, they are breaking our laws, let's keep them out.” The other side says, “You horrible bigoted, intolerant people, this nation was built from immigrants. It is inhumane to run detention systems and separate families. We should welcome the unfortunate masses from the world.” Nobody, at least in the mainstream media, is asking why are there so many immigrants to begin with. What has made life in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and so forth, so unbearable that people are willing to risk their lives and their children’s lives, willing to leave their homes and families. for a totally uncertain future? What would it take for you to do that?
I did warn ya, man. I particularly hated the part where he's like "Entropy? Fuck that! We have...checks notes... biology!" The answer I think I'm looking for, is this: given that there will be othering, that there are large forces amplifying it in society, what can we as individuals do? I don't think giving up is the answer.because boy do I dislike some parts of it.
And had you praised it I would have been a lot less savage in my assessment. Given that there will be othering, we must all do everything we can to diminish the impact on others. Sure, "change begins within" but it doesn't end there. You can open your heart all you want to the cops of Kenosha but until you make police violence a routinely-punished felony the Jacob Blakes of the world will continue to get shot seven times in front of their kids. The real problem with essays such as this is they're a call to inaction for people whose hearts are already in the right place. You need to do something about the people whose hearts are in the wrong place to make sure that they can't make it worse for everyone. This is where the language of warfare comes from - mobilization is a prerequisite for change.
Ugh. I hate this kind of "I'm an imperfect Leftie" type of self-flagellation. The hippies learned you can put flowers in the barrel of a gun, but the bullet they shoot you with is gonna shred that flower - and your sternum - just as if the flower wasn't there at all. And then the news cycle will flip to the next thing. Republicans know this, and have weaponized it. Being soft, and considerate, and empathetic, and a listener also requires you to surrender some of your power, in the hopes the other person will do the same. If the other person is an American Republican, they won't. They'll just kill you and move on.
I get that hippies are associated with the Left? But your post is a perfect example of how nearly everything within the realm of intellectual debate in the US gets politicized (and, usually, polarized). I had no intention to make this about politics. You have to agree it's at least a bit of a stretch to go from 'what does it take to be a compassionate person' to 'Republicans will kill you and move on', right?
It's the power imbalance that comes from two sides entering into a battle without adhering to the same rules or belief system. That shows most starkly in the American Democrat/Republican divide today, but there are other examples, too. (The American Revolutionary War is another good example. The Americans fought a guerrilla campaign of stealth and firing from cover, while the British stood in neat rows in bright red jackets out in the open, like "honorable" soldiers did.) Any time you have sides with beliefs to "Do the right thing" vs "Win at any cost" there can only be one result: The first is going to emotionally win, but physically lose, and the second is going to win and drown that empty hollow feeling in the pit of their stomach with $5k/bottle champagne. Last night at the Republican National Convention, a speaker actually brought up Trump's impeachment as a win. Three speakers violated the Hatch Act, including the Secretary of State. The Attorney General has consistently made rulings and judgments that are not supported in any way by any law. And Republican policies and programs are already killing Americans today. Leaving their response to the Coronavirus aside, they have defunded women's healthcare which results in botched abortions and dead women. They have eliminated protections from the greatest environmental poisons in our air and water, which in the 1970's lead to the deaths of entire cities. They have removed medical and social protections for trans and gay people, who were killed without remorse even as recently as 1998 when Matthew Shepherd was killed. You may think it hyperbolic, but Republicans are actually at fault for more American deaths than the North Vietnamese, Koreans, Afghans, and Iraqis combined. Getting back to the article... this is one of my triggers, and I admit it; lefties are so busy canceling other lefties for not being pure enough, and meanwhile Republicans are quickly approaching a quarter million dead Americans. What POSSIBLE value does this article hold, in that reality? What world does this author live in, that they don't get the dire state of our union today, and the real-world price paid by 1,400 actually dead Americans every single day?!? There is absolutely a time to debate the finer details of policy... and this ain't it. This guy is living it up in Vichy France, and doesn't have a clue what is happening outside his bubble. Sorry. I'm a little irritated, veen. You know this has nothing to do with you... I'm just venting...
Understanding the importance of compassion and the desire to embrace existence in a compassionate manner, does not erase our flaws. We still get tired, angry, confused, selfish, and continue to be otherwise just plain old humans. That's part of the point though, to see and understand and forgive ourselves for our flaws, so we can work through them and improve ourselves as human beings. In doing so, we can see and understand and forgive the flaws of others, and in doing so, through compassion and love and friendship, help them work through theirs. Sometimes we have to focus more on ourselves than others though and that's okay. Sometimes we have to know that someone or the situation another is in is beyond us too and that sucks, but we can only do so much. And sometimes, people just don't want to be helped, and that also sucks, but when that's the case, there's no helping until they're ready. If you don't act on what you believe, how can you know you really believe it? If you do act on what you believe, but only when it's easy or convenient, how can you know you really believe it? If you do act on what you believe, even when it's hard, even if you fail and chastise yourself for it, well that's taking steps in the right direction. Either way, actions mean more than. What we do, as individuals, shows more about us than our words ever will, both to ourselves and to the world watching us. Maybe we all oughta talk a whole lot less and do a whole lot more, and in the process, find that when we act with an intent for compassion, it just has a way of bringing itself out.I have a love-hate relationship with this article, as I also have a love-hate relationship with most forms of what I think I can call "holistic thinking". The kind of thinking that extends compassion and love to everyone and everything. I love it on paper, but it's just not that easy in practice, and that part is usually conveniently stepped over.
You can search enlightenment and embrace the universe & each other all you want, but if it's not actually making you a kinder and better person then what's the point really? What do you have to show for? Do you just feel better or are you actually doing better things because of that perspective?
Exactly. It's posited as something simple to achieve, but since we're complex multitude-containing creatures we make mistakes and misjudgements all around. I think it's up to each and everyone of us to be careful with our intentions and the resulting actions. Nobody is perfect, but if there's no room for errors, making amends and forgivement then there's no room for humanity.
The hippie movement collapsed because it was fundamentally about self-fulfillment. In the '60s it was I-Me-Mine against the sense of honor and duty and service and community that helped us win WWII. Tony Judt made the point that the 'boomers were the first generation of teenagers in the history of the world: functionally mature adults who were required to shelter with their parents rather than joining adulthood. Over time, the background of service and community had been demolished (see: Vietnam) thus the selfishness set its lower bound at nihilism - Days of Rage, Altamont, etc. The archetypal protest move of the '60s was a love-in because it pissed your parents off. The archetypal protest move of the '70s was setting off a bomb at a bank because your parents were inured to love-ins. The '80s brought low interest rates and tax cuts and made acquisitiveness easy. Plus, it pissed off your parents. Now? Now you can piss off your kids by voting Trump. 'boomers are fundamentally selfish trolls.
I found this podcast about empathy : https://www.npr.org/2019/04/11/712276022/the-end-of-empathy Very original on its take on the subject.. and it echoes your views: Empathy is bad. Plus it sound like a crime podcast
I had a whole post here about Rutger Bregman making a similar point in his book Humankind, until I realized that I've caught him stealing from Invisibilia twice before and...yup, that's exactly the podcast he got it from. He even borrows the torchlight metaphor directly. In my generation, we thought of empathy as the big, warm sun lighting the path to peace for us all. Now it operates like a torch. You shine it on your friends and use it to burn your enemies. How long do you want to keep this up, this putting people outside the bounds of empathy? Like, how long do you want to do that because eventually - what? Like, what's the endgame of excluding some people from the possibility of empathy? Like, where do you end up? He did point me to this Paul Bloom book that I've had on my reading list since. If empathy is whimsical emotional attachment, compassion is its rational level-headed cousin. It's not "I feel you", it's "I understand your circumstances". Which is exactly why I didn't use empathy at all earlier. Personally, I stopped listening to Invisibilia a while ago after they jumped the shark somewhere around that episode.A terrorist facing a huge powerful army draws on another powerful weapon, empathy - but only for people like her. This is why Fritz called his book "The Dark Sides Of Empathy" - because there's a point at which empathy doesn't look anything like the universal ideal we had in our heads in the '60s. It starts to look more like tribalism, a way to reinforce your own point of view and keep blocking out all the others.