Bob Herbert on Howard Zinn

“Our tendency is to give these true American heroes short shrift, just as we gave Howard Zinn short shrift. In the nitwit era that we’re living through now, it’s fashionable, for example, to bad-mouth labor unions and feminists even as workers throughout the land are treated like so much trash and the culture is so riddled with sexism that most people don’t even notice it. (There’s a restaurant chain called “Hooters,” for crying out loud.)”

“I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?”

– Bob Herbert on Howard Zinn

Zinn had so much energy and he was doing so much for people, even into his late 80s. 

On a side note, I’m getting to like this guy, Herbert.  He’s one of the few professional commentators or pundits who has something to say that’s valuable apart from whatever value it has as entertainment.

Collapse

I’m about to start Jared Diamond’s Collapse.  Has anyone read that?  If so, what did you think of it?

The Terrible Terrys and Racism

I was five years old when my maternal grandmother passed away.  She’d been born in 1875, and my best memories of her are of her in a rocking chair, her hands sewing, while she sits in a sunbeam streaming through the big southern window in my bedroom.  I play at her feet.  And sometimes she reads to me. 

She would have been in her mid-to-late eighties then, and my mom tells me she was frail in old age.   She taught me to sew, and I — with my sharper sight — threaded needles for her.

That’s about as much of my grandmother as I remember, but mom quite recently told me a bit more.   It seems grandmother had, for her time and place, slightly peculiar ideas about race.

For instance, in the community grandmother lived in most of her adult life, it was commonplace for Whites to use racial slurs when referring to Blacks.  Even some of the community leaders did so.  Grandmother was among a minority of  White people in her neighborhood who seemed disturbed by those slurs and who refused to call Blacks anything other than “Negroes” (The word, “Black”, having not yet come into general usage).

From what I gather, there might have been a couple sources of encouragement for grandmother’s somewhat peculiar ideas about race.   In the first place, grandmother’s side of the family was from New England and had included among it’s members some staunch abolitionists.  Not that abolitionists were always respectful of Black folks, but I’m guessing that her’s might have been.

In the second place, grandmother was one of those women — rare in her time – who had a college education.   Not that one can be sure, but grandmother might have picked up some her strange ideas about race while attending college.

So whether by family tradition or by education, or by some other source, my grandmother somehow came to the notion that Black folk were to be respected as equals — and she did so in a time and place when, according to my mother, she would not likely have gotten that notion from the community in which she lived.

Her husband, my grandfather, had a farm and he hired men to work it.   When mom was growing up, one of the hands was a Black man she called “Uncle Albert”.   Uncle Albert’s wife, whom mom recalls was a rather beautiful woman, she called “Aunt Martha.”  

My mother was taught to call adult friends ”uncle” and “aunt” because it was thought disrespectful for a child to call an adult friend by their first name. 

Since there were not many Blacks in the neighborhood at the time, Aunt Martha’s circle of friends was small and comprised mostly of White women.  And the prevailing custom was for a White woman to receive her White friends in her parlor or living room, but to receive her Black friends, if she had any, in her kitchen.  No doubt never being invited beyond the kitchen was originally conceived of as a way to send a message of some sort.

As mom recalls, grandmother ignored the prevailing custom and always received Aunt Martha in her living room, the same as she received everyone else. 

Of course, nothing in the ways grandmother treated Aunt Martha — or even treated Blacks in general – was momentous, earthshaking or even sufficient grounds for erecting a statue of her, but her ways seem to me to have possessed a simple decency.

What makes grandmother’s behavior puzzling to me is that, from everything mom has told me about her, grandmother was one of those people who — quite far from ever wanting to risk stirring up trouble – habitually avoided any kind of social or personal conflict.  That is, she wasn’t exactly someone to routinely go against customs and conventions.  Yet, it appears that on a handful of issues — issues she felt strongly about — she would quietly stand her ground without making a show of it. 

People are a strange maze of contradictions and complexities. 

Thinking about all this, I would bet half the women who kept Aunt Martha in their kitchens did so simply because it was custom, because it was what their mothers taught them to do, and they never meant any cruelty by it.  People can be barbaric in their thoughtlessness.  They can be ugly in their carelessness and unquestioning obedience to custom. 

My grandmother’s married name was “Terry”.  In part because of her somewhat strange ideas about race, which she communicated to her daughters, and in part for a small handful of other reasons, the women in her family eventually came to be nicknamed by some in their neighborhood, ”The Terrible Terrys”.   I think that must surely have displeased her, given how little she liked controversy.

Minimum Wages Now and Then

I was talking with mom a few days ago when the conversation turned to the minimum wage.  Soon enough, the two of us were trying to figure out how today’s minimum wage compared with the compensation people earned back when she was a child. 

Mom was born in 1918.  Her father employed men to work his farm. 

According to mom, my grandfather compensated his farmhands at the rate of one dollar a day, plus benefits.   The benefits comprised the use of a riding horse, the use of a milk cow, the use of a house, the use of a garden plot, and a hog each year for slaughter.

The government did not mandate that compensation.   My grandfather paid the going rate for farmhands in his day.

Mom says some of her father’s farmhands were able to save up enough money to purchase their own farm while working for him at a dollar a day.

The two of us concluded that the “minimum wage” for a farmhand 90 years ago was rather good when compared to the minimum wage of today, which is around seven dollars an hour now.

“Clothes, food, shelter: Satisfy these first, then teach people to be human.”

Some years ago, my second wife and I enjoyed reading Chinese literature together.  Actually, she did all the reading because she was the only one of us who could translate Classical Chinese.  My job was merely to listen to her.

Tomoko had a fine library of classical Chinese literature that she had acquired while growing up in Japan.  Some of “her” authors were famous in the West.  Others were unknowns who had not been translated into English.

 Our hobby was to take a book or two with us whenever we went out to eat at a restaurant in the evening.  With no food to prepare and no dishes to clean, we could afford to round our meal with her translations.

“Clothes, food, shelter: Satisfy these first, then teach people to be human.”  This morning, I found a slip of paper from back in those days when I would sometimes copy down a passage of a book that Tomoko was reading to me.  The author of that line lived circa 575 B.C.E., and I think he was one of the authors who has not yet been translated into English, but I might be wrong about that.

His advice is both obvious and timeless.

It can be argued that polite manners, arts, music, stimulating conversations, and many similar things go a long ways towards making us fully human. Yet, when people are struggling for clothing, food, and shelter, they are seldom inclined to devote much energy to such things.  I suppose those look ridiculous to a man desperate with hunger.

Despite that the author’s advice to politicians is obvious, the world has certainly seen a great many lords and ladies who failed to spend as much time thinking of their subject’s basic needs than they spent thinking of their own horses and hunting hounds.  It’s sad the author’s advice has been just as needed — and ignored — as it is obvious.

Back when I copied down that line on a slip of scrap paper, I ran a business employing 13 people.  I probably copied it down because it agreed in some way with how I ran my business.  Maybe I found it encouraging.

I wasn’t a good capitalist.  I had somehow gotten it into my head — without really thinking much about it — that the main purpose of a business was to provide a living — not necessarily to the shareholders — but certainly to the workers.   I suppose a good capitalist would have done it the other way around.

I wonder now which way the author of that ancient Chinese text would have done it?

Transparency

Yesterday, someone reminded me that I have a birthday coming up in January.  I will be 53 then.  That seems like a lot of years to me until I remember that my mother is well over 91. 

She still lives alone, and in her own home, although she nowadays has a couple women who come each morning to do the chores.  My brothers have from time to time asked her to come live with them, but she won’t have it.  She’s too independently minded for that.

Despite that she relies on others to take care of the chores, she’s active and gets out of the house each day.   Her routine is to go to the post office and then eat lunch at her favorite restaurant, where she often meets up with a friend or two.  She’s not much for cooking these days.

I wonder how transparent I am to her?  How transparent any 53 year old is to someone of her age?

I know that people much younger than 50 are for the most part pretty transparent to us 50 year olds.  We often see right through them.  Just as an 18 year old can see right through a child of six.  So, I wonder if that’s still true at 90?  Do 90 year olds see through us 50 year olds just as readily as a young adult sees through a child?

I would bet my mom can see right through me.  Which means, that in some ways, nothing has changed.  She always could see right through me.

Upton Sinclair on Intellectual Integrity

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

– Upton Sinclair

A Change of Styles?

“Single Ladies ( put a ring on it)” — a very popular video by Beyoncé.   There’s a lot that can be said about the video.  But one thing that strikes me is the bodies of the dancers — including Beyoncé.  They are not anorexic.  And who could suppose that women who were not anorexic would sell a video to 77 million viewers?

The Song in Their Heart

“To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart, and to sing it to them when they have forgotten.”

 – Anonymous

The Sky is Grey

The sky is grey.  The snow’s come.  Flakes of it falling on yellow leaves.  The first real snow of the season.

Funny how you might want some comfort food at a time like this.

Krishnamurti and the Sensitive Mind

“Do not think about doing it, but actually do it now. That is, be aware of the trees, the palm tree, the sky; hear the crows cawing; see the light on the leaf, the colour of the sari, the face; then move inwardly. You can observe, you can be aware choicelessly of outward things. It is very easy. But to move inwardly and to be aware without condemnation, without justification, without comparison is more difficult. Just be aware of what is taking place inside you—your beliefs, your fears, your dogmas, your hopes, your frustrations, your ambitions, and all the rest of the things. Then the unfolding of the conscious and the unconscious begins. You have not to do a thing.”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you were to spend some time — say a month — away from the city, up among the Colorado mountains, in the high forests there, then you might eventually notice that your senses had become sharper, more sensitive.  That they were now acutely alert to subtleties in your environment which you had entirely failed to notice before you came to the mountains.  But much more likely, you would not really notice how sharp your senses had become until you came back down from the mountains and returned to the city.

It’s a story I’ve heard on several occasions from people here in Colorado.   Someone goes off to live in the wilderness for a few weeks or a month.  Afterwards, they return to the city only to find the city changed when they were gone.  Now, the city lights are much too bright; the city noises are too loud; the rhythm of events is senseless and abrupt; the smells are poignant and ugly.  Of course, what’s really happened here is not that their city has changed — instead, their senses have become sharper, more sensitive. 

I was thinking about that earlier this morning in connection with understanding the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti.

In my experience, it seems much easier to understand Krishnamurti — to the extent he can be understood — when something has made us more sensitive, sharpened us.   Not primarily sharpened our senses, but rather sharpened our mind.  I suspect this is true not just of Krishnamurti’s writings, but also of much other wisdom literature.

Perhaps it sounds strange at first, but Krishnamurti should be read when one is in love.  I think love makes us more sensitive to what he is saying.  Love tunes both our inner and outer awareness more or less like a month in the wilderness tunes our senses.  Suddenly, one not only sees something of what Krishnamurti is talking about, but his message might even become urgent.

If you really want to understand certain aspects of the city, you would do well to experience the city with sharpened senses — with senses that have not been dulled down by too recent an overexposure to the brash, melodramatic sights, sounds, and smells of the city.   And if you really want to understand certain aspects of Krishnamurti’s writings, then you will do well to experience his writings with a mind that is as sensitive as possible — that has, perhaps, been made as sensitive as love can make a mind.  Otherwise, it seems very difficult to understand Krishnamurti.

What Determines Church Attendance?

Why are some societies more religious than other societies?

The traditional explanation has been that the less educated people in the society are, the more likely they are to be religious.  But now there’s a new theory — one based on a study of 60 nations — that says education is not the most powerful predictor of religiosity.   Instead, economic security is.

According to this new study, the more economically secure people in a society are, the less likely they are to be religious.  And the less economically secure people in a society are, the more likely they are to be religious.

It will be interesting if it holds up to scrutiny.  Check the theory out here.

Some Snippets of Krishnamurti on Meditation

“Have done a great deal of meditation and has been good. I hope you are doing it too – begin by being aware of every thought- feeling – all day, the nerves and the brain – then become quiet, still – this is what cannot be done through control – then really begins meditation. Do it with thoroughness.”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti in a letter to Nandini Mehta

…

“Meditation is not something different from daily life; do not go off into the corner of a room and meditate for ten minutes, then come out of it and be a butcher-both metaphorically and actually. Meditation is part of life, not something different from life.”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti, Meditations, page 10.

…

“Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life-perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy-if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.”

“So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of birds or looking at the face of your wife or child.”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti, Meditations, page 2.

…

Q. You seem to object even to our sitting quietly everyday to observe the movement of thought. Is this, by your definition, a practice, a method and therefore without value?

K: Now the questioner asks. What is wrong with sitting quietly every morning for twenty minutes, in the afternoon another twenty minutes and perhaps another twenty minutes in the evening or longer – what is wrong with it? By sitting quietly you can relax, you can observe your thinking, your reactions, your responses and your reflexes. What is the motive of those who sit quietly by themselves, or together in a group? What is the motive behind the desire to sit quietly for half an hour every day? Is it not important to find out why you want to do this? Is it because somebody has told you that if you sit quietly you will have para-psychological experiences, that you will attain some kind of peace, some kind of understanding, some kind of enlightenment, or some kind of power?…

So it is important – before we plunge into all this- to find out what is your motive, what it is that you want. But you do not do that. You are so eager and gullible; somebody promises something and you want it. If you examine the motive, you see that it is a desire to achieve something – like a businessman’s desire to earn a lot of money. That is his urge. Here the psychological urge is to have something that a guru, or an instructor, promises.You do not question what he promises, you do not doubt what he promises…

Is it true? Who are you to tell me what to do? then you will find that sitting quietly, without understanding your motive, leads to all kinds of illusory psychological trouble. If that is the intention of sitting quietly, then it is not worth it. But if while sitting quietly without any motive, or walking quietly by yourself or with somebody, you watch the trees, the birds, the rivers and the sunshine on the leaves, in that very watching you are also watching yourself. You are not striving, not making tremendous efforts to achieve something …

Is it not possible to be quiet, naturally – to look at a person, or to listen to a song, or to listen to what somebody is saying quietly, without resistance, without saying, “I must change, I must do this, I must do that”. Just to be quiet? Is it possible to sit, or stand, or walk quietly, without any promptings from another, without any reward or desire for extraordinary super-physical sensory experiences? Begin at the most rational level; then one can go very far.

– Jiddu Krishnamurti, Saanen, July 1980.

The “Sick Puppies” of the Right

George H.W. Bush is the former president who once declared, “…I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”

His remark was so out of line that several on the Right felt obligated to deny he made it.  (But believing what the Right says — without independent evidence in support of it — takes a remarkable  leap of faith these days; and, so far as I know, Bush himself has not denied he made the remark.)

Given his track record, it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that Bush seems to think Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are on the same level as various Right wing pundits.  That is, he recently referred to Maddow and Olbermann as “sick puppies” — just as if the two were the liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

To be sure, Maddow and Olbermann are editorial journalists who not only report facts but also give their opinions about the facts they report.  Limbaugh and Beck would love to be considered on the same level as them, for it would increase their credibility.  But neither Limbaugh nor Beck take nearly the same care with the facts as do Maddow and Olbermann.  The two sides might be equally opinionated, but one side usually checks its facts much more honestly than the other.

When people like George Bush imply or state that there is an equivalence between Left and Right in this country, they are living in the past.  What they say might once have been true.  But with the rise of such cynics as Rush Limbaugh, and such cynical organizations as WorldNetDaily and FOX News, the current Right has become quantitatively less reliable as a source of fact than the current Left.

At least that’s how I see it.  Someday, the pendulum will swing again and it will be the Left who is the least trustworthy.  But for now, I believe anyone who thinks, like George Bush,  that Rachel Maddow is as unreliable as Glenn Beck has not been paying attention.  Certainly not been paying attention.

The Dalai Lama on Science

“If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.”

– Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Krishnamurti on Belief in God

“Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.”

– Jiddu Krishnamurti

The full quote and context can be found by clicking on the above link.