The Dilettante's Dilemma

Grants Pass (rhymes with Alas), Oregon

Posted on August 14, 2013 by hessd

For some time, I have been pitching a schema that relates society, economy, and polity. The goal of this device is to explore ways of keeping issues away from the polity, as small government advocates have been proposing.

In Grants Pass, Oregon, I may have found the limiting case. To the embarrassment of Oregonians who live up north in the Willamette Valley, this piece was published in the New York Times. I’d like to reflect on it a little. My plan is to look at the way it is being characterized by several participants, who are quoted in the story. Then, I would like to put it on the small government grid and see how it looks.

The story, in brief, is that Josephine County, Oregon has not taxed itself to provide what are often called “law and order services.” For our purposes, that’s a sheriff’s department, enough deputies to do the work, and a jail to put people who need to be put there. The recent levy would have raised Josephine County’s property taxes from $0.59 per $1000 of property value, Oregon’s lowest, to $1.48 per thousand for the next three years. It failed.

This brings the manpower of the Sheriff’s office to a total of one (1) and makes the jail unusable for most of the usual purposes. Some of the residents of the county like that just fine. Some others are troubled by it. It does sharply raise the question of what government is for and what the alternatives are.

Let’s start with Sam Nichols and Glenn Woodbury. They serve on “citizen crime patrols.” These are vigilante groups, I imagine, since they have no authority. The group they represent, Citizens Against Crime, says that the county’s financial troubles are having two distinct and beneficial effects. The first is that they are strengthening the community. I’d guess that means that the armed citizens who patrol the community feel very good about each other and it may mean that the people they protect feel good about them as well. The second is that this do it yourself law enforcement shows that, in fact, the job can get done without any increase in property taxes.

Except for the uneasiness I feel which led me to use the word vigilante, I’d have to say that these two claims sound good. Let’s look at some other perspectives.

Keith O. Heck, a county commissioner, said he fears that the county could break apart into balkanized camps of self-government, each on its own lookout, if a fix to the problem is not found soon.

This fear is completely compatible with the satisfaction of Citizens Against Crime. A county is an official unit of government. Within the county, the “balkanized camps” Heck is worried about are exactly the same as the “communities” Sam Nichols and Glenn Woodbury are serving. In this vision, every “community” arms some of its members and protects those members against other groups. By that means, the county is balkanized into groups that are not only self-governing, but fully armed.

The question arises, however, of what to do with people you catch in the middle of an attempted burglary. Do you shoot them? Do you wait until they try to escape and then shoot them? You can’t put them in jail because the jail is closed. And that’s just burglary. How about public order?

“We have homeless people sitting in the alleyway — they drink, urinate, defecate, fornicate — whatever they can get away with,” he said. And a ticket or citation from a police officer? They laugh and stay put. “They don’t care — they know there’s nowhere to put them,” he said.

That’s from Jack Ingvaldson, the owner of the Grants Pass Liquor Store. Presumably these activities are violations of public order. In Portland, they would be warned a couple of times and if it continued, they would wind up in jail. But then, we still have a jail in Portland

“I hold my breath, every day, for everything,” said Sheriff Gil Gilbertson in an interview in his office, where images of John Wayne lined the walls.

At grocery stores in Grants Pass, stopping and citing shoplifters — sometimes with whole carts of beer or food in tow — have become part of the daily law enforcement routine.

The one Sheriff’s deputy available for general calls in Josephine County might not be at every grocery store that is being robbed. They will not likely continue to watch as “whole carts of beer or food” leave their stores without having made the customary stop at the cash register. What’s next? Armed guards at the groceries? Shooting shoplifters? Remember that you can’t arrest them, because there’s no place to put them.

What to do? I have been using a model in which the social arrangements we make (the society is the blue oval), the economic arrangements we make (the economy is the green oval) and the political arrangements we make (the polity is the red rectangle) are shown together. The goal of small government fans is to keep issues successfully in the society and the economy. You keep them there by preventing anyone from appealing to “outside forces,” i.e., the polity.

As applied to the Grants Pass situation, it means that people who want these crime issues to remain in the non-governmental areas—that’s the society and the economy in this chart—need to find a way to prevent appeals to Sheriff’s Office. That means that people will need to prevent violations of community norms. No one will be hanging around the liquor store getting drunk, urinating, defecating, and fornicating because doing that would violate community standards of behavior. In every strong community, those internalized standards are the first line of defense. That hasn’t worked in Grants Pass according to Mr. Ingvaldson, so he just might appeal to the government to deal with the issue, particularly if potential customers are afraid to come to his store. So this problem is not contained within the society; it is appealed to the polity where there are laws and the necessary funding to enforce them.

No one will deny, I suppose that, the sale of groceries is a part of the economy. Economic problems like watered stock, noncompliance with contract demands and, of course, theft, could be dealt with by the merchants themselves. This is precisely how the saloons were run in ten thousand western dramas of which the Virgil Cole series by James Patterson are my current favorite. Virgil is hired by the owner of the saloon to keep order. When threats don’t work, Virgil shoots someone and they throw the body out into the street. And it doesn’t require any tax dollars. The saloon owner provides the means to protect his own space and his own profits.

If they can’t do that in Grants Pass, they will have to appeal to government to do it. This is, again, a loss for the small government proponents because the issue escapes from the economic sphere and gravitates to the polity, where authority resides and where tax dollars are spent.

Even a small government enthusiast might conclude that Josephine County has gone too far. While it is true, as these theorists always say, that things are better when they are handled closer to home—meaning the society, where standards of decency prevail, and the economy, where contracts are honored—even they will have to say that things are not being handled at all and the time for bigger government has arrived.

The idea is that people who want issues to remain in the non-governmental areas—that’s the society and the economy in this chart—need to find a way to prevent appeals to government. That means that people will need to prevent violations of community norms. No one will be hanging around the liquor store getting drunk, urinating, defecating, and fornicating because doing that would violate community standards of behavior. In every strong community, those internalized standards are the first line of defense. That hasn’t worked in Grants Pass according to Mr. Ingvaldson, so he just might appeal to the government to deal with the issue, particularly if potential customers are afraid to come to his store. So this problem is not contained within the society; it is appealed to the polity where there are laws and the necessary funding to enforce them.

Posted in Political Psychology, Politics, Sustainability | Tagged limited government, night watchman government, Oregon, vigilantee | Leave a comment

Secularism 2

Posted on August 12, 2013 by hessd

It came to my mind, as I was reflecting on “secularism”—my son, Doug, remarked in passing that he was a “secularist” and I got to thinking about how good a term that is—that it was an “extent of time” word, like “day” or “hour” or “age” or “era.” In Secularism-1, I said the crucial question was whether there was only one age—ours—or whether there is also another one. I called Doug and me both “secular” because both of us think “this age” is the only one there is.

Nothing I have noted so far has a religious connotation to it, but we have come to the trap door. If “this age” means “an era bounded by time” and is to be opposed to the notion of “eternity,” then we will have to ask what “eternity” means and that is going to get religious really fast. (I’m going to come back to touch on one good way to pose the “eternity” question at the end of this note, but only lightly.) If, on the other hand, “this age” is to be contrasted to “the age to come,” then we get religious even faster.

My view is that neither of those ways of putting the question presents us with the alternatives we need. I propose, instead, as the second question: “Is this age under the authority of a Being, who has constructed it, who rules it, and who will see to it that it comes out right?” Since I am writing within a Christian frame of reference myself, I need to say “…a Being who…” only once. Now I can say “God” and allow the other parameters to be handled by Christian traditions.[1]

If these are the right questions, then we may ask anyone (Question 1)whether there is one age (this age only) and expect yes, no, or “it depends” as the answers. Then we may ask anyone (Question 2) whether there is a Being, an Agent (“God,” after this) whose rightful authority extends to the governance of this age. Again, we may expect yes, no, or “it depends” as the answers.

Question 1 puts Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Doug and me in the same camp. This “age” is it. All of us are “secular” in this understanding of the word. Of those seven people, the first five never considered whether there was an age to come or did consider it and rejected it as pagan. Egyptians were big on “the age to come;” that is what all the pyramids were about. We Israelites don’t take that path. Doug and I have considered it and have our doubts. We are, then, “secularists” or “only one age-ers,” if that is the meaning we can all agree to give to Question 1.

Question 2 divides us differently. Those who are both theistic and secular will please form a line at the left. Of the named people, I am the only one in the line. The gospel writers are not in that line; the apostle Paul is not, post-Exilic Judaism is not, and, for other reasons, Doug is not.[2] I really do believe that there is a God who has brought this era into existence, who rightfully rules it, and who will, in the end, bring its story—the story of this age— to an appropriate conclusion. That makes me a theist and a secularist and makes Doug a non-theist and a secularist. I have been trying to build a set of pigeonholes that will accommodate Doug and me and this is my best try so far.

I promised that I would come back to touch on the “eternity” question before I finished. I don’t have anything philosophical to say about it. Physicists seem willing to talk about things that exist within the space/time continuum or outside it. I honor their efforts, but I don’t know enough to follow them. My approach will be a good deal simpler. I want to deal with “eternal life” as “the life of the ages.” The Greek is zoein aionion in John 3:16, its most famous location. The adjective aionion may be understood as an indefinite extension of time—“everlasting” is a way to represent that—or as a different kind of “time.” I take it as “of the ages” or “for the ages,” which is a perfectly legitimate translation, although it is not the only perfectly legitimate translation.

The contrast I want to make, and I believe the one Jesus had in mind in John’s account of the conversation with Nicodemus, is that there is a kind of life that is lived without meaning or consequence and also a kind that will be meaningful as long as the age lasts. The former is a life oriented toward transitory goods; toward “use it once and throw it away” goods. The life that is aionion –significant on the scale of the ages— or, more simply, the life God intends, is not like that. That life matters now and it matters enduringly. How enduringly? Well, all the way to the end of the age.[3]

Acting in a way that matters (that supports the story the Creator is trying to tell through us) all the way until this age is over seems a very attractive meaning of “eternal” to me. And I think that a lot of us secularists might feel that way.

[1] Needless to say, fobbing the other questions off on Christian tradition does not establish their truth or even they plausibility. It does clarify things, however, so I don’t have to do it here.

[2] The Jews seem to have brought a new interest in “a life after this life” home with them from exile in Babylon. I know that’s too simple, but this is a short piece and I think it is close enough for that.

[3] See Matthew 28 for Jesus’ use of that time scheme.

Posted in Biblical Studies, Living My Life, Words | Tagged eternity, heaven and hell, theism | 4 Comments

Secularism 1

Posted on August 10, 2013 by hessd

My son Doug has taken to calling himself a “secularist.” I think it is the perfect word for him, but he used it very casually in a conversation we were having about something else (the influence of Norman French on the English language, as I recall) and I got to thinking about what a good word it is. I had never heard it used the way he used it and I wondered if I had just not been paying attention.

The words I am more familiar with are atheist and agnostic. As I look at them, however, I see that both begin with negative prefixes. The question being raised is presented by the root—theos = God in the first case and gnosis = knowledge in the second. The position you might take, yourself, is presented not by the root, but by the prefix. These words offer the question, then: a) do you believe in God, or a god, or “the gods?” and b) do you believe we can know for sure about God, or a god, of “the gods?” Those are really good questions, but they are not the only good questions.

“A secularist is an adherent of secularism.” I don’t trust dictionaries for everything, but I am willing to go with the OED this far. Secularism (the OED again) is “the doctrine that morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life, to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from a belief in God or in a future state.” I like that definition because I like where it starts. Here is another; I don’t like this one as well. “…worldly spirit, views or the like; especially a system of the doctrines and practices that disregards or rejects any form of religious faith and worship.” I found that one in Webster’s New World Dictionary. Note the emphasis: secularism is a system that disregards something. Does that strike you as odd?

As you can see, given where I started, it seems odd to begin with what this view disregards. Let’s play with this idea by looking at some other words. If I believe that a husband and a wife should keep their promises to each other—all of them; not just THAT one—then I could say I believe in “marital fidelity.” But this view I hold could be represented by quite a collection of other words that do not take their salience from “fidelity,” but from other notions entirely. I could be said to be cowardly, the theory being that if I were brave, I would be mating with as many women as would have me. You could argue that coward is not a word about marriage, but then you would have to admit that fidelity is not a word about bravery.

The root of the word establishes what we are talking about. I could ask whether you are the kind of person who lives with his tail tucked between his legs (the picture that the etymology of coward gives us) or a person who lives adventurously. The question of whether I am being true to my marriage vows is not even referred to by this set of terms. The choice of these terms imagines that we are talking about something else entirely.

Or, to get the same destination by another route, you could say that what I call “faithful,” is just doing the same things with the same person over and over again. It is just “routine.” Or worse, it is a routine, a “regular, unvarying, or mechanical procedure, discharge of duties, etc.”— (Webster’s New World Dictionary ). I am just a dullard, an automaton, vulgar (lower class) or bourgeoisie (middle class), or having no discrimination at all. The discrimination charge implies that in staying with my original choice of a mate, I am displaying no interest at all in newer models or, worse, no ability to discriminate between my present mate and the set of potential mates.

The word we begin with, in other words, has a landscape of meanings in mind and treats alternative meanings unfavorably.[1] I may want to talk about how faithful I am to my wife; that brings infidelity onto the table as an alternative. You may want to talk about how risk averse I am (risk taking is a good thing) and brings risk avoidance onto the table as the unfavored alternative. Or about how mired I am in routine, unable to choose the good that is new or unable any longer to tell the difference.

So the root of the word chooses the topic and the prefix (usually) establishes a position with reference to that topic.[2] That is why I like “that morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life” and don’t like “a system of the doctrines and practices that disregards or rejects any form of religious faith and worship.” The first one says that secularism holds a certain view. The second one says that secularism disregards a certain view.

I myself would prefer to say that I value fidelity, rather than that I undervalue courage or that I can’t tell the difference between a lower quality mate and a higher quality potential mate. None of those distinctions has anything to do with what is true. All of them have to do with establishing just what we are talking about.

The idea that occurred to me as Doug and I were talking was that secular is a really good word for a relative emphasis on this world and its events and relationships without regard for the additional question of whether there are alternatives (other worlds, events, and relationships). Being a theist myself, I can’t think of the basis on which I would object to being called a “non-secularist.” Or an infrasecularist, if the question should be whether my views come up to the level of secularism or whether they stay below (infra- or hypo-) secularism.

Actually, I don’t want to be called a non-secularist. I just can’t think of how to go about complaining about it.

[1] This makes perfect sense historically, of course, but every history has its own beginning and its own preferences.

[2] Negative suffixes like –ard are sometimes used, as well as the -phobias and the -oseses.

Posted in Living My Life | Tagged secularism, theism, word roots | 3 Comments

Still Mine

Posted on August 5, 2013 by hessd

I am not honestly sure whether this is a really good time for movies about old people or whether I have just started to get interested in movies about old people. I think it’s just a good time. When Ron Howard gave us Cocoon, nearly 30 years ago, I was ready to invest myself in it.

In any case, Bette and I saw Still Mine this week and I’ve been thinking about it. You probably shouldn’t see it if you happen to be a building inspector. To the extent there are any bad guys at all (death and senile dementia are not bad guys), it is the building inspectors. On the other hand, if you are a libertarian, an old woman who is married, an old man who is married, the son or daughter of either of the above, a builder, or a neighbor, you are going to find something here to like.

I won’t bother you with the plot. Here it is: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2073086/

The first thing to like is the work of James Cromwell and Geneviève Bujold as Craig and Irene Morrison. They have been married for sixty years or so. He is watching his life start to flatline because nothing moves him to demand more of himself. She is losing touch with reality—little things, mostly, but they can’t continue to live in the big old house he built for them and their seven children.[1]

She needs to love him and trust him and she does, as she is able. He needs to love her and treasure her and he does, with a couple of exceptions. I like the exceptions. I don’t approve of them, but the fact that he is not endlessly patient and constructive helps me believe that he is actually a person and not just a moral mirage. Cromwell and Bujold need to be very very good because there isn’t much plot. The movie is about who they are, particularly who they are for each other.

I wanted more to be made of the way Craig and Irene had friends. They were particular friends with Chester and Margaret Jones. Chester and Craig mostly just rag on each other; it took me a little while to be sure that it was just their way of being friends. Margaret brings a casserole over after Irene falls and is taken to the hospital. Craig refuses until Margaret says, “If the roles were reversed, this is what Irene would have done. You know that.”[2] Craig does know that and accepts the casserole.

I wanted to see more of the way their relationship was lodged in their community because I suspect they could not have been who they were for each other had they not been those people to others in their town. We hear about things they have done for others, but we don’t get to see it so it doesn’t serve as the vivid context as it should.

I also wanted to see more because right in the middle of everything, Chester dies. We don’t know Chester well, but Craig does and Chester’s death reminds him of all the deaths to come—some not all that far off.

Just go see it if you fit into any of the categories I named. Bette and I came away thoughtful, but also hopeful.

[1] One of the tug of the heart scenes is Craig leaving the big family house for the last time and stopping to put his hand on the door frame they used to measure the height of their children as they grew. He could always pry it off and take it with him, but he knows it would be better if he left it.

[2] That’s almost right. I’ve only heard it once so far.

Posted in Movies | Tagged a castle doctrine, senile dementia, strong love | Leave a comment

What Pope Francis said

Posted on August 3, 2013 by hessd

How shall we understand the new pope, Pope Francis?

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using the English word “gay.”

That’s a clip from today’s New York Times, in a story written by Rachel Danadio. She is careful to point out that the Pope’s remarks came during a very long trans-Atlantic flight. Pope Francis was returning from a triumphant tour of Brazil and had every reason to feel good about what he had accomplished. So he wandered back to the press room on his plane and had a very long talk with reporters, of which this one comment has been, so far, the most prominent.

“Who am I to judge?” is an interesting question coming from the CEO of the Roman Catholic Church. To Protestants, it is apt to sound like the head of the Personnel Department asking whether he should have a view on whether hiring decisions are distorted by racial bias. “Yes, they might be,” he would be saying, in this example, “but who am I to judge?” In the personnel case, a good answer would be, “You are the one who is breaking the law if there is a racial bias in hiring decisions. Who are you? You are the one who is going to jail.”

That isn’t the most interesting part of what the pope said, but it is the easiest part of peel away, so I thought it was worth starting there. The Pope is also, according to Catholic dogma, “the vicar of Christ.” What is a “vicar?”

Well…Joe Biden is a vicar. The White House accepts a lot more meetings than the President can attend himself, so he sends the Vice President in his stead; as a substitute. “In his stead” and “substitute” point to the most common meanings of the Latin vice, which is why the office is called “Vice” President.[1]

It would be odd, everyone would think, if Vice President Biden announced at a gathering, “Well, I don’t know how the President feels about this, but I, myself, don’t feel competent to make a judgment.” It would be odd because Biden is the “vicar” of the President. Following the logic, what the Pope really needs to do is to pass along Christ’s judgment, not to make one of his own. And what is “Christ’s judgment?”

This is one of the many places where the argument turns nasty. Homosexuality is not a topic Jesus ever addressed in any text we know. He did talk about caring for the poor and inviting the outcast. In Luke’s version particularly, he said really awful things about rich people. He taught that compassion was the heart and the source of neighborliness. He didn’t say anything about homosexuality.[2]

This means, to revert briefly to the Joe Biden example, that the Vice President has no judgment to pass along. He is no one’s agent. He speaks only for himself and is perfectly free to say, “Who am I to judge?”

No one believes that the Pope is free to speak for himself on a matter that threatens to seriously divide his church. In the news coverage I saw, the reporters were very happy with Pope Francis’s “tone.” He seemed humble. No one imagined he was substituting his own personal judgment for the teachings of the church. He wasn’t and, frankly, he shouldn’t.

The church over which the Pope presides teaches that a homosexual orientation is “unnatural” and reflects a “distorted” personality.[3] Both of these are difficult charges. There is no shortage of same-sex behavior among animals generally, so if “occurring in nature” is what “natural” means, then homosexual behavior is natural—not unnatural. The argument that it is a distortion requires a judgment about what it is a distortion of. Following this line of thought, the Catholic Church would be on the hook to show what God’s preferred personality was and that homosexuality is not an acceptable “version” of this personality, but a distortion. Those are very hard things to show.[4]

The church over which the Pope presides is also divided between a more liberal northern hemisphere—particularly the United States—and a more conservative southern hemisphere. Making changes in Catholic dogma is going to make people unhappy. Seeming to be open to changes is going to make people unhappy. Changing the style of his pronouncements and leaving the substance alone is going to make people unhappy.

Those are the issues as I see them in the large context. What Pope Francis actually said man mean more in a small context. He may have said that homosexual behavior is entirely unacceptable in priests, but a homosexual orientation is not unacceptable. He would be saying, in other words, the same thing he says about heterosexual priests. And what look like conditions in his remark—provided that “he searches for the Lord and has good will”—are not conditions that would not apply to heterosexual priests as well. What priest should not search for the Lord and have good will? And if all priests are resolutely celibate, what difference does it make?

In other words, Pope Francis may have said nothing at all. On the other hand, seeming to have said something may have lit a fuse that is not as long as he thinks it is.

[1] “Vice” in the sense of “bad habit” derives separately from the Latin vitium, “fault.” Richard Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew managed to be a Vice President in both senses at the same time and he wasn’t the first one.

[2] He did say, in the Sermon on the Mount, that condemning other people is a very dicey thing to do and cited the principle that what goes around comes around. The word Matthew chose for that saying means “to condemn;” it does not mean “to make a judgment.”

[3] This might be the time to confess that I am no scholar of Catholic dogmatic theology. I got those two words—“unnatural” and “distorted”—from a site called “What Catholics Believe.”

[4] And following the biblical principle that teachings should be based on biblical texts that are about the same subject as the teaching—teachings about homosexuality, that is, should be based on biblical texts about homosexuality—runs into the difficulty that there are no New Testament texts about homosexuality—not even from the Apostle Paul, who is the go-to guy for Catholic interpretation.

Posted in Biblical Studies, Politics, Theology | Tagged distorted personality, gay priests, natural theology, Pope Francis | Leave a comment

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Posted on July 25, 2013 by hessd

I have heard it said that every story has an inner core of meaning—a structure of meaning. I might have said it myself. Yesterday.

In fact, every story has as many narrative structures as there are people who know the story. When I have seen a movie I like half a dozen times or so, I find that my mind has been turning the story this way and that, trying to find “the” structure of the story, meaning, I suppose, some inner coherence in the narrative that attracts and holds my attention. I have seen and enjoyed Lasse Hallström’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen for several months now and just today I realized[1] what it is really[2] about.

Here’s the plot. Dr. Frederick Jones (Ewen McGregor) is forced by office politics to hear a ridiculous scheme pitched by Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt). Harriet represents a Sheik (Amr Waked) who would like to introduce the sport of salmon fishing into his country. Fred fights as hard as he can to stay away from the project, but he is drawn in; then he gets interested in it; finally committed to it. The three of them—Fred, Harriet, and the Sheik—become a team with a common interest that transcends everything they would otherwise have thought to be more important.

Dr. Jones fights involvement the way some of the movie salmon fight being reeled in. When you know him better—and after watching the move half a dozen times, you do know him better—you wonder why. He has a really awful job. It doesn’t challenge him; it scarcely engages him. The project he is most ardent about at the beginning of the film is presented as so narrow that only a fishing geek could be interested in it at all. He has a really awful marriage. Dr. Jones and his wife have not shared anything important to them for a long time. Even the little we learn about their sex life is more than we want to know. Fred’s wife makes a major career change and forgets to mention it to him. There’s really nothing there.

Here are the two lines of dialogue that, in this understanding of the story, form the turning point from alienation to commitment.

Harriet: I mean, you know, it’s fishing. Who the hell cares?

Fred: Well…strangely enough, I do.

How and why did Dr. Frederick Jones arrive at that point? In one way, you would think Dr. Jones would welcome a daring new project. What does he have to lose? But he fights it in every way he can. The reasons he gives for judging the project to be impossible as well as a huge waste of money sound rational. They are factually wrong, because he has not taken the trouble to find out anything about the Yemen, but they sound good. For each of his objections, Ms. Chetwode-Talbot has a satisfactory answer. She is also unfazed by his manifest contempt for the project.

It’s when you understand that Dr. Jones’s life is a wasteland, that you begin to see the desperation in his rejection of the project. He is completely bored in his job. He has narrowed his focus further and further until choosing the right graphic for a very narrow article he is publishing is really the most important thing in his life. He has no more life outside his job than inside. He and his wife, Mary, exist in the same space, but have no warmth to share.

It is clear then, that Dr. Jones is not rejecting the project so he will be able to get back to a life that he finds challenging and nurturing. He is rejecting it so he will not be forced to notice that he is living a life in which nothing matters. Ms. Chetwode-Talbot moves him in the direction of noticing that. That is why she is such a threat. She is attractive, knowledgeable, competent. She meets every objection he can come up with: the infrastructure has already been completed, the Sheik’s commitment is strong, the money has already been allocated.

This is a project that ought to make a salmon fisherman’s soul leap with joy. Dr. Jones is an avid salmon fisherman, or used to be—back when his life allowed for joy. But experiencing his heart leaping for joy would be very frightening to Dr. Jones. It would call his attention to how long it had been since anything really mattered to him. He wants very much not to have to notice that; and then, to admit it; and then, to know it to be true.

That’s what is going on inside—in the movie I have learned to see after all these re-watchings—when all we see on the outside is injured pride and the verbal abuse it produces. For example:

Dr. Jones: Water, Ms. Chetwode-Talbot. H₂O. Fish require water. You are familiar with the concept?

Ms. Chetwode-Talbot: Yes. I am. Yes.

For reasons that have largely to do with British politics, Dr. Jones is forced to pretend to take the project seriously. Simple boorishness will no longer suffice. He demands a meeting with the engineering team from the Three Gorges Dam; a meeting with a British oxygen company; and two huge Russian cargo planes—one, he explains, to transport the fish and one to carry all the money they are wasting. He prices the project so high that he is sure it will be out of reach. Harriet simply notes the price and wants to know if the figure is in dollars or pounds.

At the end of that session, we learn that Dr. Jones will be continuingly involved with the project whether he likes it or not. Here are the lines that mark that transition.

Dr. Jones: I mean, this is a sort of joke.

Ms. Chetwode-Talbot: Well, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to joke about a 50-million-pound project, Dr. Jones. Not when you’re in charge of it.

Being in charge of the project finally begins to wear on Dr. Jones. The problems he now faces are practical problems—his kind of problem—and they are huge. His wife leaves for a job in Switzerland. He is forced to continue to deal with Harriet who, as I have already pointed out, is attractive and remarkably sweet-spirited. Then the word comes that Harriet’s new boyfriend, who was sent to Afghanistan, has been sent on a patrol from which, according to official reports, there were no survivors.

Harriet is distraught. It is she, now, who wishes there were no project to introduce salmon into the Yemen. She doesn’t care about the Yemen or anything else. But by now, Dr. Jones does care about the project. He has the beginnings of care for Harriet as well. He wasn’t sure how to relate to the competent confident administrator she was when he met her, but she is now a woman brought quite low by grief, and Dr. Jones knows quite a bit about grief. We have seen that he knows only how to deny it in his own life, but we learn, to our surprise, that in someone else’s life, he knows what to do about it.

That brings us back to the two lines with which we began.

Harriet: It’s just fishing. Who the hell cares?

Fred: Well…strangely enough, I do.

The story goes on. They build the project, but it is sabotaged. Harriet’s boyfriend returns from Afghanistan, but Harriet chooses the colleagueship of the project over romance with the boyfriend. The three of them—Fred, Harriet, and the sheik—recommit to the success of the project and we have reached the end of the story.

But the story that mattered to me was over when Fred said, “…I do.”[3] Isn’t it odd, I have thought since thinking about this movie, how very hard we will fight when the alternative is to notice that the life we are now living is not really worth it. Continuing not to realize that justifies alienation, anger, resentment, pride, contempt, and simple nastiness.

[1] I hope you notice the irony there.

[2] More irony

[3] Just playing. Fred and Harriet do wind up together—not only as colleagues but as intimate friends. Probably, well after the time of this movie’s story, husband and wife. But he did say, “I do,” earlier, I want you to notice.

Posted in Movies | Tagged colleagueship, intimacy, Meaningless life, salmon fishing | Leave a comment

“That includes me:” Obama talks about race

Posted on July 21, 2013 by hessd

On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated as our first black president. A lot of the early betting went against him as a candidate. No one seemed quite sure if Democrats were ready for a black nominee of their party; they were certainly ready for a woman nominee. But then, an odd thing happened. Over the course of the campaign, Obama didn’t seem all that black. “Black,” sure. His father, after all, was from Kenya.[1] But “black” didn’t seem to be any of the top four or five things about him.

That is what the gaffe-prone Senator Joe Biden was really trying to say when he said this: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”[2] He got hammered for including “clean” as one of the descriptors, but I thought when he said it that he meant “clean” as in “a clean record.” Biden meant that candidate Obama didn’t look like this. Very often. Also, Biden was campaigning against Obama at the time because Biden wanted to be the Democratic nominee and remarks like these are NOT how you campaign against someone. I’m sure Vice President Biden knows that now.

So “not all that black” Barack Obama was inaugurated in January and his Attorney-General, Eric Holder gave a speech at the Department of Justice on February 18, less than a month later. It quickly became known as his “nation of cowards” speech. If you follow this link, you will find that expression in seconds 18—20 of the speech. He didn’t waste any time getting to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fy2DnMFwZw

We are “cowards” he said because we do not talk with each other about race.

That was shocking for a lot of reasons. One is that Eric Holder looks more or less like Barack Obama. He is not a scary looking black man. Another is that President Obama was elected by moving discussions about race into the background. Every time the Republicans pointed out that the Democratic nominee was a black man, the Democrats changed the topic to something else; the rainbow nation, a post-partisan nation, the terrible economy. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn from the historians of that election that Obama lost more votes because of the myth that he was a Muslim than because of the fact that he was a black man. And finally, most of the people I had heard talking about race were using it as a way to talk about social justice. For these folks, it was inequality, not race, that needed to be focused on.

For whatever reason, we didn’t have the conversation about race that Eric Holder wanted us to have. And then George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. The jury who found George Zimmerman not guilty heard almost nothing about race during the trial and did not, according to the most vocal juror, take it into account in their deliberations. Since the trial, it seems that we have heard about very little else.

On July 19, President Obama walked, unscheduled, into the press briefing room because he had a few things he wanted to say. You can see the text here. There weren’t any teleprompters. Just the President talking about being a black man in America. He said some of the things Attorney General Holder said in 2009. I think he said them better, but they weren’t really different things. And then he said this:

There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.

And I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.

It wasn’t a speech. It wasn’t a conversation with friends over a beer. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it. He called it “expanding on my remarks.” I thought it was the most candid and personally revealing appearances I have seen a politician make.[3]

You should see this. Printed words just don’t do it. If you watch this video from the 3:12 second mark to the 4:19 second mark, you will see what I mean. Here’s the link.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2013/07/19/president-obama-speaks-trayvon-martin

Maybe this will change the conversation some. Maybe watching the President say, “That includes me,” when talking about the department store setting and the street setting and the elevator setting he used as instances.

It will be a long time before I forget seeing the President say that. “That includes me,” he said. I hope it is a very long time.

[1] I have never quite understood why President Obama is not called Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. His father’s name was Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. That ought to do it, shouldn’t it. Does anyone doubt that there was a Martin Luther King Sr.?

[2] Jesse Jackson said that although Biden’s remarks were “highly suggestive,” they were not “off-color.” Isn’t that just sweet?

[3] Ever. Unless you saw and believed Richard M. Nixon’s “Checkers Speech” in 1952.

Posted in Politics | Tagged Barack Obama, racial violence, Trayvon Martin | Leave a comment

Jesus and Rich People

Posted on July 19, 2013 by hessd

So how did Jesus feel about rich people? That doesn’t sound too hard to answer. I’ve got some proof texts right here. I hope they are the same as your proof texts.

We don’t have Jesus’s words to consider, of course. We have his teachings as they have been preserved in several traditions. We have, in other words, four different notions of how Jesus answered that question. Jesus has the most bitingly negative view of wealth in Luke’s gospel, so let’s look at that one as an example.

I’ve been listening to Raymond E. Brown’s lectures on the Gospel According to Luke. I’d have to say that I’m a fan.[1] Some day, I may come to disagree with how Brown goes about understanding the gospels, but for the moment, he is my standard for both accuracy and relevance. When I hear another view, the first thing I do is to check to see whether it is compatible with what Brown says.

I know that’s cheap. It’s a little like an intellectual infatuation—I am aware that the Latin fatuus, on which the word is based, means “foolish.”—but I have high hopes for it anyway. My hope is that as I continue to read other scholars, I will come to see that Brown is really good on this question, but not so good on that one. I have followed this same process in each new field of academic study and it has worked the same way each time. The person I choose first winds up as scaffolding and he finds a place for everyone, even his worst critics.

Here is what Brown says about Jesus and rich people. He points out that the Jesus of Luke’s gospel is really hard on rich people; much harder than the other gospel writers are. In this post, I would like to just pick one instance and play around with it a little.

Here is a parable Luke records (Chapter 12), but which does not appear in the other gospels.

¹⁶And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. ¹⁷He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

¹⁸“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. ¹⁹And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

²⁰“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

²¹“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

So here are two really good questions. What did this parable mean to Jesus? What does it mean to us?

To answer these questions, some notion of what an economy is must be filled in. Jesus and all of his contemporaries understood that there was a fixed amount of wealth. The world of economic transactions is, in other words, a zero sum proposition. What I have, I have because I took it from you; what I get, you lose.

Rather than picturing this narrative as a harvest, which can be stored and used over long periods of time, it might help us to picture it as a the body of a freshly killed animal. Because there is no refrigeration, whatever is not consumed immediately is going to rot. The rich man can have as large an appetite as he wants; he is not going to be able to eat the whole animal. His options are sharing it or wasting it. In this parable, he chooses to waste it.

That new setting provides a way for us to better appreciate Jesus’s scorn. Using the hunter imagery, it is easier to see that the man should have shared the kill with his neighbors. It also suggests that being “rich toward God” (v. 21) is one outcome and “sharing with your neighbors” is the other. God is a God of sharing with your neighbors. When you keep it all for yourself, therefore, you are not only denying your neighbors, but God as well.[2]

So what does this mean to us? We don’t share Jesus’s presuppositions about the economy. Capitalism has a way of making the market larger, under some circumstances, so it is possible for my wealth and your wealth to increase at the same time. As a result of the actions I take, I get richer and so do you. The metaphor of the economic “pie” is often used. If you can make the pie bigger—or “higher,” as George W. Bush used to say—then both of us can have more pie.

Imagine, for instance, that the point of the story about building a new barn was that this farmer employed a lot of workers in construction of the barn, that the delayed sale of the wheat brought increased revenues, and that the taxes on those revenues supported three new centers for transitional youth. This is a ferocious adulteration of a simple metaphor. Let me be the second to admit that (second only because you probably made that observation while I was finishing the sentence). On the other hand, my story, like Jesus’s story, has a point. It is that “sharing with the neighbors” can look very different in a society in which economic activity can benefit everyone (although not equally) and in which there is a government which has at least some redistributive functions.

So. Would the Jesus who condemned the greedy farmer condemn the keen-sighted entrepreneur? He might. I’m really not sure. But if he did, it would be on grounds other than those presumed in his story. And what about the farmer’s reception in the next world, where God relies on the judgments made by the poor to make up His mind about the rich? Certainly we can say it is more complex.

This is not the case of the hunter who, having killed more than he can eat, would rather see the excess rot than share it with his hungry neighbors. This farmer did what he did because of greed—it is the only motive capitalist theory recognizes—but by that greed, he benefitted many of his neighbors, who otherwise would have received very little benefit. Rather than giving out a dole of grain, he employed workers, made profits, and paid taxes. Presumably, those who benefitted would, when the farmer died that night, recommend to God that he be shown mercy.

On the other hand, one thing you can be sure about, if we are talking about capitalism, is that some will benefit and some will lose. Capitalism is a truly awful distribution mechanism and it would not be too much to say that it eats (some of) its children. Capitalism guarantees that many will be worse off. That is how the price of labor is set. What will those, the marginalized, say to God when the farmer dies and faces the judgment? And what will God do, faced with benevolence from some of the poor (the winners) and malevolence from others (the losers).[3]

Let’s go back to Luke. The set of questions with which I finished the paragraph above are really bad questions. They are bad because they impose some modern ways of understanding economic activity that are foreign to the world Jesus was talking about. They also impose the categories of economic actors—like proletariat and bourgeoisie— that would have been entirely foreign to the First Century. That means that “building a new barn” is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It is not like eating all the kill you can hold and allowing the rest to rot, which is always a bad thing.

Anyone who wants to be a learner from Jesus—and that is what “disciple” means—is going to have to figure out what Jesus would say to you on Facebook when he heard about the new barn. That’s actually what a learner would want to know.

[1] I got my introduction to Brown’s way of approaching scripture maybe twenty years ago. I got his book The Birth of the Messiah. There are two accounts of Jesus’ birth: Matthew and Luke. I opened up Brown’s book and saw that the whole book was divided into two parts. The first half was about Matthew; the second half about Luke. It was love at first sight.

[2] Luke tells some other stories which, according to Brown’s understanding, have the same point. The poor are going to be in heaven. When you get there, they will testify in your favor or against you and God will listen to what they have to say. The parable of the rich man and the beggar at his door makes this point. So, in its own odd way, does the parable of the sleazy steward. Both are in Luke 16.

[3] If you are following Mitt Romney’s dichotomy of “makers” and “takers,” the farmer represents the 53% who actually make the economy work and both kinds of workers are the 47% who are “takers.” Just so you know.

Posted in Biblical Studies | Tagged capitalism, jesus, peasant economics, sharing, wealth | Leave a comment

Too Pretty to Work Here

Posted on July 16, 2013 by hessd

It is hard to write seriously about the Iowa dental assistant who was fired. I am sure it is a serious matter for Melissa Nelson, the dental assistant. It is probably about to become serious for James and Jeanne Knight because they have set themselves up to be objects of ridicule.[1] Nevertheless, I will try. I will be serious. I will.

According to the news reports, Nelson was fired because the dentist found her too attractive. According to the opinion of the Supreme Court of Iowa, Nelson was fired because the dentist’s wife, Jeanne Knight, was concerned about the relationship between her husband and Nelson. Here is the case. See what you think.

http://www.iowacourts.gov/supreme_court/recent_opinions/20130712/

The question as the court construes it is this: “Can a male employer terminate a female employee because the employer’s wife…is concerned about the nature of the relationship between the employer and the employee?” Answer: Yes, he may.

The question as I have seen it treated—ordinarily, I would say “discussed,” but this case does not seem to lend itself to “discussion”—is whether the law offers Melissa Nelson any recourse, after having been fired by her employer. The answer is: No, it does not. Not, at least, in Iowa.

So here is Melissa Nelson. If I were going to take a picture of her as an innocent victim, I would put her in a loose-fitting gray sweater with a scarf around her neck and use a shelf or so of law books as the background. That’s what they have done here and I applaud their judgment. If you would like to see extravagantly worse judgment, you may google “Melissa Nelson, dental assistant” and see what has been done with the issue.

I would like to use this very small public forum of mine to look at this issue in three other ways. I want to consider the realistic options available to Mrs. Knight; then what a healing intervention by their pastor might have done; and finally, the very difficult legal argument the court was required to use in its decision. There will be a huge celebration of “the issue” in the online news sites, in the press, and on TV. It will be ridiculed by everyone. I think my approach is better.

My first reaction, when I read in the court’s decision, that James Knight acted at his wife’s urging, was to regard her as a bit player in a drama that was not about her. But if she values her marriage, maybe it is about her; there is, at least, a way of looking at the issue that takes her interests into account.

Jeanne Knight sees her marriage going away because she has failed to act to save it. The first question you run into, if you are willing to start there, is: Is my marriage in danger of dissolution? If you think it is, the next question would likely be: Is there anything I can do to help save it? I you think there is, you look at the elements of the problem. My husband, James Knight is more erotically attracted to his dental assistant than he wants to be. His employee, Melissa Nelson, is much more attractive to him than is compatible with my continuing to have a happy marriage.

Now picture these options.

Scenario 1: Jeanne has a sit-down talk with her husband and asks him to be less erotically attracted to Melissa than he is.

Scenario 2: Jeanne admits that there is no way for James to be less attracted to Melissa than he is, but urges him to be very careful about seeming, in any way, to act on his feelings.

Scenario 3: Jeanne tells her husband that there is room for one erotic attraction in his life, but not for two. It is time for him to make a choice.

I have to admit that Scenario 3 is the only one in which Jeanne, herself, can act on her behalf or on behalf of the marriage. By contrast, picture her asking James to feel differently than he does feel or to be continually aware that he needs to refrain from acting on his feelings. If you are reluctant to dismiss Scenario 2, I ask you to imagine yourself in the position of a patient undergoing root canal at the hands of a dentist whose mind is largely elsewhere.

So much for Jeanne Knight. Another way to look at this is from the standpoint of the church. Frank Hearn, a communitarian author and a favorite of mine, has a vocabulary that can help us here. Most important transactions, Hearn writes, really should be taking place in a community where people know and care for each other. Some issues that can be handled well only by a community are highjacked and sent off to be dealt with by the courts. He calls this process juridification. This question of sexual attraction in the workplace can best be handled by the people who actually know what is going on. It is a good deal too subtle for the courts to handle competently.

So let’s start with the religious community. Let’s imagine—I have nothing but the neighborhood church to go on and I am choosing it instead of inventing a church—that all four people are members of the same church. It would be the Faith Baptist Church of Fort Dodge, Iowa, which looks to be a block or so east of the Knight home. So Steve and Melissa Nelson would be members of this church and so would James and Jeanne Knight.

It would not be hard for the pastor of the church to recall St. Paul’s words about “taking a brother to court.” Paul’s advice is, “Don’t do it.” Here’s the text from 1 Corinthians 6.

Is one of you with a complaint against another so brazen as to seek judgment from sinners and not from God’s holy people? …when you have matters of this life to be judged, you bring them before those who are of no account in the Church![2] I say this to make you ashamed of yourselves. Can it really be that it is impossible to find in the community one sensible person capable of deciding questions between brothers, and that this is why brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?

Of course, Fort Dodge, Iowa and ancient Corinth are not similar places and we don’t categorize “the church” and “the world” that way anymore. Still, it is not hard to imagine a pastor who cares about saving relationships as well as people to think of the situation more broadly. Here is something he might have said.

“I’m glad the four of you were willing to sit down with me to talk about this. The media will have a field day with us all if this gets into the court system. All of you are going to be damaged if that happens and we don’t need to do that. Here’s what needs to happen. Melissa needs an apology. James and Jeanne, that’s your job. She is going to lose a job she likes and is going to become a figure to be ridiculed. If she is going to have to take another job, she needs a sincere apology, a letter of recommendation that sounds like it came from God, a guarantee of a new job without any loss of income.

Melissa, you and Steve and going to have to find some charity in your hearts for James and Jeanne. Jeanne is not crazy to be concerned about whether her marriage is going to be destroyed. Marriages get destroyed by workplace flirtations all the time. James has crossed the line that is supposed to separate employer conduct from sexual flirtation. That was wrong. On the other hand, he tried not to cross that line for a long time and under the circumstances, I think you can find it in your hearts to forgive him when he was not successful.”

Let me stop and remind you that most of that is made up. It isn’t implausible, however, and it does defeat the threat of juridification. Actual persons apologize and forgive. Actual persons have their financial well-being taken into account. I think it is a pretty good outcome. It does require that the pastor take a very broad look at the issue and a pretty aggressive approach to the two couples, but I have seen pastors do that.

And finally, what happens if the matter is not handled within the community. It goes to court. And Nelson’s attorney employs the “but-for” strategy. Nelson would not have been fired “but for” being a woman. Not so, says Dr. Knight’s attorney. It was the nature of the relationship and the threat to the marriage that are the issue. Absolutely, says Nelson’s attorney, and you are telling us that there would have been this threat to the marriage if Nelson were not a woman? That’s what you are telling us.

The Iowa Supreme Court wound up contrasting a “condition”—unjust treatment of an employee—with a “motive:” this was done to save the Knight’s marriage. That just seems like bad law to me. It doesn’t seem stable. And the only court in the land to which this case could be appealed is the U. S. Supreme Court and I would have no hope at all that the legal issues would be sorted out there.

[1] Ordinarily, I would have said “objects of ridicule by the liberal press,” but I saw a broadcast about the issue on ABC in which both Mr. and Mrs. Knight and the Iowa State Supreme Court were trashed. ABC is not any part of “the liberal media.”

[2] “Those who are of no account in the church”—which is not a pejorative expression in the context of the letter—would include the Supreme Court of Iowa and the 8^th and 11^th (federal) Circuit Courts of Appeals.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Modest Proposal about Paternalism

Posted on July 12, 2013 by hessd

Today is a rescue operation. I am going to try to rescue the term “paternalism.” Very likely, I won’t succeed, but I have learned a phrase from my wife that I now use a good deal: “How bad could it be?”

Once you know that paternalism is bad, you really don’t need to know what it means. In this, it parallels “racism” and “sexism.” To the best of my recollection, racism was once a way of ordering the several races in a hierarchy. It meant that “my race”—all of the members of my race, without regard to personal traits—is better than “your race,” with the same wall to wall erasing of personal distinctions. In that form, it is false. You can have any kind of grading system you like, provided that it grades individuals, and “racism” in that form can be shown to be empirically false.

Over time, the term came to mean the recognition of any racial differences at all. I think the operating theory must have been that if a fact is established, people of ill will can use it to the disadvantage of the targeted race. And since there is no way to prevent people of ill will from using facts in this manner, it is up to you to deny the existence of those facts. Or, if you are not willing to deny them, just ignore them. That will work just as well unless you are put on the spot.[1]

Sexism works the same way. One sex is better than another. That has meant that men are better than women. But it doesn’t work the way race does. You simply can’t say that every man is better at everything than any woman. You can get most of the heavy lifting done, however, if you denigrate the value of the things women are better at. I trust you will notice the pun.[2] So men are better “at the things that really matter” than women are. This runs into the factual problem, of course, just as racism did, and the options for people who know what the facts are are the same: deny the facts or shut up about them.

This brings us to paternalism. That ought to mean that fathers—not “men,” but “fathers”—are better at everything than mothers—not “women,” but “mothers”—are. No one thinks that. The fallback position would be that fathers are better at all the most important parts of parenting than the mothers are. Hardly anyone thinks that either, although there remains the question of just what “the most important” parts are.

This brings us to the text for today.

But paternalism, modestly construed as an expectation of achievement cushioned by a responsible willingness to provide guidance and support, has both a firm basis in male tradition and a present utility.[3] As with many of the important criteria of manhood, it expresses tension between judgment of performance and a loving association with the performer: one measures one’s son and tries to help him through the measurements.[4] (p. 194)

This from Peter N. Stearns, a social historian and long-time observer of the pattern of gender roles. In that whole description, I see only one weasel word, which I think is truly admirable. The word I see is the “modestly,” after “paternalism.” He gets to say what a “modestly construed paternalism” is and the men’s liberationists and feminists who have attacked him for this view (the book was first published in 1979) “just don’t understand” the kind of paternalism he has in mind.

I do, though. I had a mentor. My brother, Karl, was a pediatrician for most of his adult life. He saw a lot of family settings and a lot of whole and balanced kids and a lot of seriously messed up kids. He looked for two elements in the family setting. He said that if these two elements were there, nearly every kid, however varied the personalities, had a good foundation for all the later choices. The two elements were: love and firm rules.

That’s the way I remember it from all those years of conversation, but I called him last week to be sure I remembered it correctly and I discovered that he has clarified “love” a little. He said he counted that a little boy was “loved” if there was someone in the home who was willing to listen to him. Karl is a pediatrician, remember, not a child psychologist. What he needs is a rough and ready criterion for “home setting,” something that will help him judge whether a child’s health is supported or abraded by the conditions at home.

I’ve remembered those two criteria over the decades since I first heard him say it, and they were in my mind when I read Stearns’ account. In “loving association with the performer,” I see Karl’s insistence that the child is cared about and listened to. In “judgment of performance,” I see the firm and clear rules that Karl thought were so important.

I see two kinds of dilemmas that will need to be addressed if this “modestly construed paternalism” is to be developed. One has to do with the children; the other with the wife.

Stearns says that the decline of “traditional fathering” since the beginning of the industrial era has left men with a confusing situation.

“Now that men cannot train their sons for work, and work with them during an overlap of careers, it has been difficult to find an alternate style with will produce guidance and authority… Leisure activities, to which men now resort for so many of the satisfactions of manhood, have been the best surrogate, for they combine friendly association with training in skills and, where the father keeps up his own abilities, with the possibility of ongoing contact.” (pp. 192—193).

Being “buddies” with your children is often not what the child wants. Furthermore, if one chooses to be a buddy rather than a father, it is not likely to be what the child needs, either. The “judgment of performance” part of the father’s role is not really compatible with “being a buddy.” If you have been to highly organized sports for children, you have seen fathers trying some way to play both roles at the same time.[5]

Before the industrial revolution changed family life so drastically, the father was the master of a set of skills he could teach to his sons. This loaded the scale in favor of the judgment of performance criterion and against the “loving association with the performer” criterion. Or, in Karl’s terms, the scale was loaded in favor of the rules part and against the “loving and listening to” part. The Little League father is looking at a scale loaded the other way, even for the relatively minor part of essential family life that is played out in sports. There are difficulties both ways.

Then there are the difficulties the wife presents. Women have long borne the brunt of caring for the family. The idea that the husband is going to be at home more now and therefore available to help bear the burden of family life has been an idea long welcomed. On the other hand, when the women did all the work, they defined the job the way they wanted it and had no notion at all that it involved an exercise of power. When the men enter the family to a new extent, being freed from the workplace to an increasing extent, they see “caring for the family” in their own way. They don’t see themselves as apprentice mothers; they see themselves as fathers.

The family is, or should be, a field of male action in which men insist on defining a clear role for themselves, including a style of parenting. Women complain that despite important strides to mutuality, men actually remain dominant in more cases than not. This is doubtless true in many aspects of husband-wife relations. But it is less likely true in areas of family activity, including child rearing, over which women have long maintained a virtual monopoly.

Men who want to be fathers, in this sense, are going to have to find a way to make it OK with their wives. If the wives can’t find a way to assimilate a new adult at home, the children will be denied the “modest paternalism” that Stearns argues is the gift men have to give at home, or engage in protracted conflict about how to raise the children, particularly the boys.

I have no idea how these stresses are going to work themselves out. I am quite sure it will not happen in my lifetime. Stearn’s view is that the industrial revolution distorted gender patterns for several hundred years. It would be odd to imagine that men and women—fathers and mothers—would devise some new balance on the fly and apply it collegially to the new challenges. That is asking too much and I am not asking it.

What I am asking is that “paternalism” be removed from the listing of social pathologies it shares with sexism and racism. Some way needs to be found for men to be men and fathers and husbands at the same time under confusing post-industrial circumstances. I think this word can help us.

[1] In Ursula LeGuin’s marvelous novel, The Lathe of Heaven, her protagonist, George Orr, “solves” the race problem in a dream that changes the reality of the world. In this new world, everyone is gray.

[2] I don’t, of course. If I trusted that you would notice the pun based in denigrate, I wouldn’t have written this footnote.

[3] If you are like me and read a quotation beginning with “but…” you will want to know why it is there. The previous sentence is, “Not a patriarchal style: quite apart from the effective disappearance of the propertied weapons of the patriarch, there is no way to justify a return to this formal dominion.”

[4] Peter N. Stearns, Be a Man! Males in Modern Society. New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, Inc. 1979. I will give the page references along with the specific quotations.

[5] Not to go all nostalgic or anything, but the vast majority of my athletic experience took place in a vacant lot in our neighborhood, which was just fine with my parents who knew where we were and that we were safe, and cared nothing at all about whether we were learning to be wide receivers, shortstops, or power forwards.