Slowing Down

I'm edging my way back into social media. But it's kind of like edging your way back into the path of a fire hydrant: You can't get just a little wet — you're going to get soaked on contact.

Anyway, here's the mantra I'm trying to live by right now:

You don't have to express your opinion about everything.
You don't have to express your opinion about everything.
You don't have to express your opinion about everything.

It's possible, in fact, that the more opinion I put into the world, the less valuable any one opinion might be. So. Trying to control myself.

(Pauses.)

If I were to have an opinion about shit that doesn't matter much, though, it would be this:

Gov. Pence shouted to his wife, Karen, his closest adviser, at the other end of the table.

"Mother, Mother, who prepared our meal this evening?"

The legislators looked at one another, speaking with their eyes: He just called his wife "Mother."

Maybe it was a joke, the legislator reasoned. But a few minutes later, Pence shouted again.

"Mother, Mother, whose china are we eating on?"

Mother Pence went on a long discourse about where the china was from. A little later, the legislators stumbled out, wondering what was weirder: Pence's inability to make conversation, or calling his wife "Mother" in the second decade of the 21stcentury.

Mike Pence has a lot of ideas I find objectionable. If he chooses to address his wife in the manner of a 1930s innkeeper featured in a Frank Capra movie, so be it. Move on.

Yoga

I've been making some life changes lately — trying to use the time I have, now that I'm back in Kansas, to improve my health and lifestyle. Among the changes: More exercise. 30 minutes a day on the treadmill. Doesn't sound like a lot, but some is more than none, and I know from experience that getting overambitious early leads to failure. So. Thirty minutes a day.

One other thing: Yoga, a couple of times a week. It's nothing huge — a 15-minute flexibility routine downloaded from an iPhone app. But I've noticed that I'm increasingly limber.

Tonight, friends, I noticed a piece of trash on the floor. I bent over at the waist and picked it up, and threw it away.

Then I wept. I literally could not remember the last time I'd tried to pick something off the floor without grunting and bracing myself. I just did it.

Small victories, people. Small victories.

Hey David Brooks, Here's Why a Diverse Media Should Matter

David Brooks this morning:

But now progressives seem intent on doubling down on exactly what has doomed them so often. Lilla pointed out that identity politics isolates progressives from the wider country: “The fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.”

There's a contradiction in the Lilla-via-Brooks complaint.

How diverse is the press? Not very.  It's pretty white. So. Diversifying the press is one way of producing people more aware of the conditions of "Americans in every walk of life." I'd hanker to say the same thing is true in the education arena, too.

Somehow, though, I don't think that's what Brooks or Douthat mean.

Quote of the Day: Philip Roth

New Yorker

“I was born in 1933,” he continued, “the year that F.D.R. was inaugurated. He was President until I was twelve years old. I’ve been a Roosevelt Democrat ever since. I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”

Social media break....

I'm two days into a break from Twitter and Facebook. I'm not doing anything so foolish as to say I'm "quitting" this time — I know myself too well, so I only intend to be gone a week. (Basically, this seems like a good time to slow my roll a bit.) There's been a little bit of withdrawal: The Trump Administration's penchant for "alternative facts" seems to require a response.

But it's getting one without me. Probably telling.

Other than that, it's been a fantastic weekend for reading and thinking without the need to spread word of my thoughts immediately. Some highlights:

• The New Yorker's article about El Salvadorans who've been deported back to their home country is infuriating, increasingly so at every new revelation along the way. Basically: Young people who are Americans for all intents and purposes — having come here too young to remember their home country — are deported back, where they end up serving as the cheap workforce for a company that handles phone-based customer service for American companies. It gets worse.

• It's interesting to read the New Yorker's article about the effectiveness of primary care physicians in combination with today's NYT piece about "The Conversation Placebo."

NYer:

Yet, somehow, having a primary-care clinician as your main source of care is better for you. 

Asaf tried to explain. “It’s no one thing we do. It’s all of it,” he said. I found this unsatisfying. I pushed everyone I met at the clinic. How could seeing one of them for my—insert problem here—be better than going straight to a specialist? Invariably, the clinicians would circle around to the same conclusion. 

“It’s the relationship,” they’d say. I began to understand only after I noticed that the doctors, the nurses, and the front-desk staff knew by name almost every patient who came through the door. Often, they had known the patient for years and would know him for years to come. In a single, isolated moment of care for, say, a man who came in with abdominal pain, Asaf looked like nothing special. But once I took in the fact that patient and doctor really knew each other—that the man had visited three months earlier, for back pain, and six months before that, for a flu—I started to realize the significance of their familiarity.

NYT:

This is a finding that should give all medical professionals pause: Communication alone was more effective than treatment alone. The patients who got electrical stimulation from engaged physical therapists were the clear winners, with a 77 percent reduction in pain. 

This type of study provides hard evidence for what shamans, witch doctors and assorted mystics have known for millenniums: A substantial portion of “healing” comes from the communication and connection with the patient.

This kind of confirms an instinct I had in coming back to Lawrence. I was treated by some of the best doctors in the world in Philadelphia. With one exception, though, my communication with them was shitty. That was unavoidable: They see so many patients that you end up on a conveyor belt. Lawrence may not have the best doctors in the world, but the ones I've seen so far take time to listen and communicate. I know that's better for me.

• Also, please read this piece from WaPo about "Americans have been lying to themselves about the economy for way too long."

A new study out of Harvard shows how Alger’s legacy continues to steer our perceptions of the economy. Unlike Europeans, Americans vastly overestimate the likelihood of moving up the economic ladder, according to economists Alberto Alesina, Stefanie Stantcheva and Edoardo Teso.

“We find that this idea of the American Dream, going from rags to riches, is really salient in people’s minds,” Stantcheva said. “In the U.S., people are too optimistic about intergenerational mobility, particularly about the chances of making it from the very bottom to the very top.” Such perceptions — or misperceptions, as the case may be — are important because they may influence how we think about government programs such as the social safety net or public education.

It's especially important to know this if you're reading David French's essay at National Review about the moral inferiority of the poor. It's behind a paywall, but in essence, it comes down to: "If only the poor made better choices — like getting married — they wouldn't be poor! If only they would make choices for long-term gain instead of short-term satisfaction!"

It's standard conservative boilerplate. But even leaving the WaPo study behind, it's infuriating. Why? Because studies show that it's so exhausting to be poor in the first place that making good decisions, or decisions with an eye on the long-term is actually more difficult for poor people. French's essay reduces poverty to a morality play, and certainly some people are able to  make good choices that enable them to climb out of poverty. But any piece that focuses totally on the choices of poor people without dealing with the relevant scientific literature isn't worth taking seriously. It's just posturing.

Remembering Obama's Inauguration Day: Philadelphia 2009

It was my good fortune that, after a lifetime in Kansas, I found myself living in Philadelphia during the summer of 2008 — as it happens, working in an office one floor down from Barack Obama's campaign headquarters in the city. And one day late in the election, I rode the press bus as it joined the then-Senator on a whirlwind four-stop campaign swing through the city — culminating with a final rally in fabled West Philadelphia.

Obama himself wasn't too memorable. He gave the same speech, told the same jokes at every stop, the message modified slightly for each audience. ("Don't let them give you the okey doke," he warned the largely black audiences.)

What I remember about the West Philadelphia stop: It was the most black people I'd ever seen in one place at one time — probably the most I'll ever see again. And the mood, it bordered on religious. Not that these folks worshipped Obama, no. It's just at this point in the campaign, so much hope was vested in him — the maybe, through him, they were finally being welcomed into full citizenship in America.

I'm so lucky to have been there, to have seen it with my own eyes.

On Election Night, I walked home through Center City Philadelphia with the sounds of celebration emanating from every location on my path.

And on Inauguration Day, I went to work as usual. One of my coworkers went down to Independence Hall to watch the inauguration the big screen. You can see her in this video made by friend Jim MacMillan. She'd been through Jim Crow, lived it, told me about it as she discussed her happiness at Obama's election. So the joy you see on her face this moment — it's real. It's one of the most real things I've ever known.

I don't know what's coming. I'm scared. But this is a good memory. It is history. And it was my privilege to witness it.

On Being Humane in Inhumane Times

At noon Friday, Donald Trump becomes the president of the United States.

It’s a prospect that I can barely wrap my head around. At times, it enrages me. Many of my liberal friends have spent the last couple of months giving voice to that rage, breaking off relationships with Trump-voting family and friends. I’ve sought to resist that path, which at times has seemed to incur further rage from my liberal friends. But I understand the temptation to offer a hearty “fuck you” to some people that, in all other cases, I have cared dearly about for years or even decades.

So far, I’ve been able to resist the temptation. I’ve had to remind myself of a truth that I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten older: Almost everybody I’ve ever thought of as my “enemy” – and there have been exceptions — has, over time, also showed me grace I never expected from them. The people I disagree with are not devils. They have their own sets of fears and hopes. They are human, with all the complexity that involves.

This may even be true of Donald Trump.

So. How to be humane in seemingly inhumane times?

To answer the question, let me first express what the goal isn’t: I’m not interested in political surrender, or in coddling people who have “deplorable” beliefs and motives. Justice must be the foundation and object of everything we do. But I do want to leave open the door to reconciliation with people who don’t conform to my sense of justice.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Center has “Six Steps of Nonviolent Social Change” on its website. Here’s Step Six:

“Nonviolence seeks friendship and understanding with the opponent. Nonviolence does not seek to defeat the opponent. Nonviolence is directed against evil systems, forces, oppressive policies, unjust acts, but not against persons. Through reasoned compromise, both sides resolve the injustice with a plan of action. Each act of reconciliation is one step close to the 'Beloved Community.’”

And this is part of Step Four: “Do not seek to humiliate the opponent but to call forth the good in the opponent. “

Reconciliation isn’t the opposite of justice, in other words. It’s an essential component of arriving at justice. I’m pretty sure most of my friends —most of whom laud MLK — don’t have much interest or belief in “calling forth the good” in our opponents. (This assumes there is some good to be called forth; I think that’s generally the case — the real Hitlers in our society are few and far between, I’m convinced. But perhaps this is wishful thinking.)

So. How to be humane in seemingly inhumane times?

These are the answers I have today. I hope that this list will evolve over time. For now….

RESTRICT MY SOCIAL MEDIA ACCESS: I’ve written before how Facebook saved me from total despair and loneliness while I was in the hospital. I don’t believe social media is totally a bad thing. But when attended to obsessively — and here I plead guilty — it shortens my attention span and puts me in the mind of responding to news and opinions glibly, quickly, and with a minimum of actual contemplation. Right now, I’m going to try to limit my Twitter access to 20 minutes a day. That should be more than enough to dip my toes in the currents, right? It helps that I’ve got browser settings that limit my online access to the site; my phone is programmed to deny me access entirely.

I NEED TO KEEP BREAKING OUT OF MY BUBBLE: My relationships with non-liberal friends have grown brittle in recent months. I don’t think that’s entirely my fault, but: I need to keep listening to them. Moreover, I need to stay in touch with outlooks that are going to make me scream in anger regularly. Sites like The Federalist, National Review and others can drive me batty sometimes, making me long for the soft warm bath of like-mindedness. But that bubble isn’t real — or, at least, isn’t the whole picture. Frustrating as it may be, I think being humane includes not allowing myself the convenience of caricaturing those I disagree with, or dismissing them out of hand. Even though I really, really want to sometimes. 

ART, ART, ART: “Beautiful, or subversive.” A wise suggestion from a friend. The most amazing moment I had at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — and I had more than a few — was during a visit where I found works by Langston Hughes, Gordon Parks, and Aaron Douglas placed together. All black men, all Kansans who had fled the state for the Harlem Renaissance. I don’t know if the curator placed those works together with that connection in mind; seeing them together made me weep. At its best, art puts us in touch with our most humane selves. 

TRY TO LISTEN MORE INSTEAD OF WINNING ARGUMENTS: Winning arguments is easy, or at least convincing yourself that you’ve won the argument is easy. It’s not necessarily a path to truth, justice, or reconciliation. As Ta-Nehisi Coates once wrote, in a quote that has been memeified in the years since: “If your chief goal, as a thinking person, is to find a path to making yourself right, you may never amount to much of a thinking person, but you can never be disappointed." I need to try to win arguments less often. 

VOLUNTEER: I’ve not done a good job contributing to my community in ways that stretch me beyond the office or church. That needs to change. I’ll update you on my efforts soon, I hope. 

AGAIN, ALWAYS, AIM FOR HUMILITY: The trick is being firm and confident in one’s beliefs while balancing that with A) acknowledging that there’s a possibility you’re wrong and B) being open to changing our minds when the evidence calls for it. Humans aren’t really good at this; I’ll not claim to be any better. And yet: It’s a hedge against the kind of self-righteousness that leads to the kind of inhumanity I want to avoid. What’s more: There really is a possibility of being wrong.

Your mileage may vary on these ideas. You may even think the aim is incorrect — that resistance, resistance, resistance should be the name of the game now. And it should be! But that resistance should be in the service of ideas that are truer, better, and more humane. That means the practice of being humane is needed, by me at least, more than ever.