An opportunity likely to be wasted

Sunday, June 26, 2022

6:15 a.m. I have the persistent urge to discuss the opportunity – that almost certainly will be squandered – presented to people by the overthrow of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. But all it will do is make people mad at me. Is it worthwhile, for the sake of the one or two people who may (in theory!) understand what I’m saying in the sense that I’m saying it? I leave it to you.

Where do you suppose the urge, and the reenforcing of the urge, and the repetition of the urge, is coming from?

Well, I just hope you have something to say that will make the friction worthwhile.

Bear in mind, in anticipating people’s reactions, you are doing quite a bit of mind-reading. How do you know who will respond to what? It is a prime value of someone saying unpopular things, that it brings forth others who think the same way, and it activates threads in the way plucking a guitar string sends vibrations out into the world.

Well, here goes. (Interesting, how hard it is to actually start, though!)

[Pause]

No, I’m not going to do it. Let’s go back to working on plotting the novel.

We can’t force you.

No, you can’t. and in this case, you couldn’t quite convince, me, either.

 

6:55. a.m. Well, since plotting doesn’t seem to be advancing very well, let’s see if in fact I can say what I am feeling about our politics.

Just put it out. You an always edit until it suits you, and for that matter you can leave it unpublished.

True. Well, the thing that strikes me re the abortion issue – as in so many issues people are passionate about – is that so few seem to recognize that it is perfectly possible for rational people with different values to passionately believe that they are right and you are doing wrong.

To put it more plainly – doesn’t anybody see, any more, that there’s more than one side to any argument? That binary thinking is tempting but terribly inadequate? That “we” are not always on the side of the angels when seen from other – equally valid – value systems?

In law school they have a course called Conflict of Laws. I don’t have any idea what they teach, or how such cases are approached, but I do wish people could remember that there are such things as Conflict of Values. Not “the good” v. “the evil,” but “this good” v. “that good.” People used to have enough common sense to know that there can’t be an argument with only one side, any more than there can be a rebellion or a civil war with only one side.

Anything you’d care to add, your turn.

You used to quote someone’s statement that “in politics there are no final victories.” That is true for most things in life, not merely politics. Thinking you are “Standing at Armageddon, battling for the Lord,” as Theodore Roosevelt once claimed to be doing, implicitly casts your adversaries into the role of evil-doers. How convenient! But one side-effect of assuming this posture is that you accumulate an ever-growing pile of memories, thoughts, awarenesses, that you dare not acknowledge, lest they show you the tarnish on your armor. These unconscious elements warp your thinking, and the effects get only worse, never better, unless and until you admit them into consciousness. Do you really want to be like the Nazis and Communists of the 1930s? That’s where moral self-righteousness combined with refusal to consider the merits of opposing conditions leads.

But – you may say – what is the alternative? To go back and forth? To dither ineffectually? To hold no position lest you fall into one-sided-ness? In short, are we advocating a stance that guarantees ineffectual, hand-wringing, neutrality?

No, I know you aren’t doing that. Say on.

You cannot understand our position until you temporarily move your viewpoint from 3D to non-3D. a thought-experiment, if you would:

From our point of view, we see all these 3D beings, living their lives together and separately; their psychological makeup is mostly invisible to them, and their attention is mostly confined to more or less the present moment. (We don’t mean, they are living, “here, now,” as we advocate. We mean they are living in isolation from their past and future. You can – and most do – live in isolation without at the same time being intensely aware of just where you are.)

Each of you is perpetually deciding who and what you are, and therefore what values you uphold, and therefore more or less what “side” you are on when various issues arise.

The difficulty – we have mentioned this many times – is that you tend to judge yourself by your motivation, and others by their actions. This is the ultimate double-standard, guaranteed to weight the scales in your favor.

So, Roe v. Wade overturns centuries of law that had declared abortion illegal like infanticide. Some see this as a victory of enlightenment, freeing women to make their own decisions about their own bodies. Others see it as a defeat for civilized values such as protection of the unborn. Both sides see implications for society, no less than (indeed, greater than) any individual cases involved. Fifty years later, Roe v. Wade is overthrown by the same institution that made it into law. Now the tables are turned, and those who had been outraged are satisfied; those who had been satisfied are outraged.

From our point of view, all these reactions are natural, even inevitable, starting from people’s values, which means starting from who and what they are, who and what they wish to be.

From our point of view, the contention of values is one thing, and nothing wrong with it; but the demonization of “them” is quite another, and there is everything wrong with it.

You cannot fix anything by condemnation, only by understanding. If you allow your understanding to be dependent upon “their” acting or reacting in a certain way, you are giving up your real power and are adopting a pretense. Worse, you are naming them as villains (hence, yourself as a hero) and are thus systematically removing any possibility of the two “sides” living with each other.

Roe v. Wade is only one example of this. You can see it on every side, it is what it tearing up your country. But you should ask yourself – you, anyone reading this – “Am I part of the problem, or part of the solution?” We tell you flatly, to the extent that you settle for condemnation, for painting yourself as the unstained guy in the white hat, you are part of the problem no matter what you do or desist from doing. To the extent that you say, “I don’t agree with them, but I can see why they think that way,” (and we don’t mean some dismissive cartoonish caricature of their views or their values), you are part of the solution, again, no matter what you do or desist from doing.

Now let’s look at it not in terms of society but in terms of you, yourself, a society of one. For this is always our primary concern. You, as an individual, are real. Society, as an abstraction, is not real in the sense that you are. Do you suppose that “America in 1916” went on to an independent life? That moment continues to exist, but an abstraction does not live in the same way that a self-propelled being does. You might as well expect a rubber tire to evolve, as to expect a society per se to live in the same way you do.

Society has it turned upside-down, you see. It is not you as individuals who are irrelevant or at least unimportant. It is you who are real, and society an abstraction that affects you as a scrim affects the actors on stage.

Your existence centers on choice. “How will I decide on this or that? What do I want to be? How do I want to be? What values are important to me?” All well and good, and it is easy to jump to thinking that your social activism is an important expression of who and what you uphold. Well, it can be, or it can be a serious obstacle to self-awareness, depending upon how you live it.

Sure, I can see that. An army in the field has to kill its enemies or get killed. That doesn’t mean they have to hate them; that’s optional.

People will think you are jesting, or are naïve, but what you said is right. The same action performed in different spirit is not the same action, when judged from a non-3D viewpoint What killing an enemy does to you will depend very largely upon the spirit in which you did it. Your enemy is just as dead, either way, but did that killing leave you unharmed? Ask Arjuna.

Yes, that’s what I meant. The invisible motivation is actually more important, almost more real, than the act.

But not everyone will be able to see it. So, we repeat, don’t let your actions or motivations be captive to what others think or do. It is your life; these are your values, your action or inaction. It’s nobody else’s fault, and it helps or harms nobody else but you.

I suppose you feel better, having gotten that out. I admit, parts of it made connections I hadn’t thought of. So what’s today’s theme, “Roe v. Wade”?

More like, “An opportunity likely to be wasted.”

True enough. I may go with that. Our thanks as always.