MAKING VICTIMS, DESTROYING SOULS

 My New Found Victimhood

Recently I received an email from the university from which I retired and where I still mentor and teach students.  The email was seeking to “gather a list of First Gen faculty” who could be called upon to mentor “First Gen” students.

Being unfamiliar with the term “First Gen”, I did some research and learned that the U.S. Dept. of Education defines a First Gen or First Generation student as:

An individual, neither of whose parents completed a baccalaureate degree;

or

An individual who, prior to the age of 18, regularly resided with and received support from only one parent and whose supporting parent did not complete a baccalaureate degree.

or

An individual who, prior to the age of 18, did not regularly reside with or receive support from a natural or adoptive parent.

If your parent(s) and/or guardian(s) attended college but do not have a bachelor’s degree (i.e., did not graduate), you are considered to be first-generation.

This is the basic definition used by most colleges and universities, although some further explain that it does not matter about your siblings or any other family members.  That is, one only looks to the parent to determine if someone is First Gen.  Additionally, some schools expand their definition to include individuals whose parents, while having a degree, received that degree from an institution outside the United States.  The Dept. of Education tends to group its discussions of First Generation students with low income or otherwise disadvantaged students.

Think about this.  You could have highly successful parents who, for whatever reason, do not have a college degree, you might be a graduate of an outstanding prep school, have older siblings who are students or graduates of the finest colleges in the country and yet still qualify as a First Gen student and thus be qualified to receive whatever special benefits your college chooses to provide.

When I went to college, I did not consider myself disadvantaged.  I had parents who, though lacking college degrees, were well educated and encouraged education.  I went to good public schools with a high rate of graduates attending college.  My older siblings went to college before me.  Yet, lo and behold, I now discover that I had the disadvantage of being able to label myself as a First Generation student.  Wow.  I too can be a victim.  Actually, I found this thought quite offensive.

Realizing how ridiculous this is, I replied to the email and related my discovery that I am a First Gen.  I further explained that nonetheless, I would not be volunteering for the First Gen mentorship program.  Specifically, I stated, “In my humble opinion, such labels hurt rather than help individual initiative and success.  Obviously, I will not be volunteering as a First Gen mentor though, as you are well aware, I am always ready to help our students as individuals, regardless of whatever label our Woke world might want to place on them.”

I expected to get no response or simply a “thank you for your input” email.  But what I got was an email the total substance of which read “Was that really necessary?” to which I responded with one word:  Yes.   This interchange is not really relevant to the point of this essay, but it does serve to point out that those who are onboard with the Woke practice of labeling and creating political victimhoods are not inclined to want to have a discussion with someone of differing views; indeed, they don’t even want those views to be voiced.

Creating One’s Victimhood “narrative”

On the same day that the above took place I read an article revealing that Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has fabricated his story of growing up poor, then becoming a successful entrepreneur.  He tells the story that he “didn’t grow up in money” and yet was able to create multimillion dollar companies out of nothing.  It turns out, however, that his parents both held graduate degrees and were highly successful professionals.  Vivek went to an elite prep school and had his own stock portfolio created for him by his parents that was “bringing in hundreds of dollars in dividends before he graduated high school and thousands by the time he attended Harvard, according to his 2002-2004 tax returns.”  Moreover, he accepted a scholarship “he previously said he needed in order to pay for law school.” The year he accepted a $90,000 award for law school, “Ramaswamy reported $2,252,209 in total income, according to his tax returns. He reported a total of $1,173,690 in income in the three years prior.”  You can read the full article here:  Vivek’s Background 

Why would someone as successful and seemingly intelligent as Vivek Ramaswamy create this false rags-to-riches narrative?  Why would he or anyone think that in order to be truly successful, to be “approved” by our culture that they need to first be a victim?  Why would anyone choosing to go into the public arena think that his deceptions would not be found out?  And, on a moral level, why would someone choose to deny who his parents really were and the positive help that they provided as they supported their son in his educational and career journey?  Is that not a slap in the face to his family?

The Consequences of Victim Labeling

Our Woke culture, our world of identity groups/politics, demands that we all be either victim or victimizer.  (I have fun wondering how my new-found victim status due to being a defined First Gen fits with my defined – due to my being White - status as victimizer.  Perhaps I should fall into some schizophrenic fugue.)

But seriously, we are all more than one label.  Each of us is an individual, not a two-dimensional cardboard cutout that can be labeled and then either applauded, condemned, or ignored.  We are all multi-dimensional and those dimensions include both positives and negatives, but all are uniquely ours.  They are what make us the INDIVIDUALS that we are.

If we are nothing more than the labels that some group has decided to place upon us then we lose our individual identity.  Not only who we are, but whom we may become is predetermined for us by someone else who may or more likely may not have our individual best interests in mind. 

If all we can be is what the label says we are, then why have any initiative?  And personal responsibility becomes meaningless because our actions are simply the result of our label.  If we are a victim, then we have our victimhood to blame for anything that goes wrong in our life.  After a fall we need not go through any self-examination or attempt to learn lessons for the future; we need not pull ourselves back up and try to do better or improve things for next time.  Rather, we can simply blame our victimhood and those labeled as our victimizers. 

Labeling is nothing more than a way to control us. People have always to some extent labeled others, and probably always will.  But today we have a political power movement that uses Wokeness to label and divide us and as a result take power over us.   You fit this label so you belong in this box.  No need to try to get out – to improve yourself or to go after your individual vision.  We have decided that this is you and therefore this is whom and what you will be.   And too many simply accept such labeling (or mislabeling) without question or, worse yet, seek it out.

Candidate Ramaswamy fell for the Woke labeling and believed that in order to be “successful candidate” he needed to have an appropriate backstory.  He chose the “rags to riches” narrative.  He became something he is not but that which fits within a particular label.  I chose to question my new label and was chastised for such questioning. 

Sadly, labels, and their subsequent import of victim or victimizer, are a part of our culture today.  We seek out and apply labels to both ourselves and others, and in so doing we diminish our humanity.  Accepting societal labeling grants power over us to those who create the labels and apply them.

The question is, are we playing victim, or is the need for victimhood playing us?  Because in the end, we are nothing but our own victimizers if the need to label, to be a victim, destroys us.  As Sophocles wrote in Antigone, "Who is the Slayer? Who is the Victim? Speak."

We need to answer this question for us, for today, for our civilization and our lives.  But we cannot truly answer it without shedding our need for labels, taking back the power over our being that we have granted to others, and becoming each our own unique individual.

Turns Out, I Wasn’t Buying It Even Then

In my last post I included Solzhenitsyn’s criticisms of the idea of situation ethics or relative morality.  When writing that post I was put in mind of my having read Joeseph Fletcher’s book “Situation Ethics: The New Morality” for a sociology class.  That would have been in the late 60s (the copyright date is 1966).  My memories were that I was swayed by the arguments in that book to look at my views of morality differently.  Turns out I actually still have my original copy (price on cover: $1.95) with my notes from the time.

My notes throughout the book reveal that I seem to have open mindedly considered as well as questioned the arguments and theses of the book, but that in the end I wasn’t sold.  Indeed, I seem to have at least intuited the criticisms spoken by Solzhenitsyn 5 or 10 years later.  The inside cover includes my handwritten comment that reads as follows:

whole book, & idea appears as just a way of rationalizing your sins, and “is trying to get out of it.”

makes us all out to be gods, who can choose to take a life for example, but we aren’t and we can’t.

Seems very slanted.  Only uses a very few Biblical examples over and over.

I don’t recall myself as being that perceptive.  But maybe it takes one looking back with later experience and history to see what one actually knew in the past.  The fact that my memory was that I had a fairly positive and transformative reaction to the book when I studied it is telling as to how the book and this new philosophy of relativism must have taken hold within our culture. 

Now, looking back with what I know and what I see around me today, I find the book truly frightening.  I see how right Solzhenitsyn was when he noted that the Communist ideology of relative (or class and identity) morality was a successful tool in its (and today’s Leftist Progressive ideology) anti-humanity crusade to gain power only for itself and gain the ability to fully manipulate the rest of us.

THE LURE OF SITUATIONAL MORALITY

The back of my copy of Situation Ethics touts it as “a manifesto of individual freedom and individual responsibility, elaborated within an ethic of love, which extricates modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes.”

That was the 60s.  Think how enlightened that sounded.  “Individual freedom and individual responsibility”: isn’t that what people of the 60s were discovering – their ability to be themselves, to not conform and be like everyone else?  “Elaborated within an ethic of love”:  love one another was a sound and phrase of the times, how could that be bad?  And with these positive slogans we will “extricate modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes”:  those would be the absolutes, the good and evil that served us well since civilized time began, the absolutes whose removal, Solzhenitsyn notes, leave us with nothing but the manipulation of one by another.

On page 56 of the book one finds a summary of the six propositions on which its philosophy of situation ethics rests: “The first one pins down the nature of value.  The second reduces all values to love.   The third equates love and justice.  The fourth frees love from sentimentality.  The fifth states the relation between means and ends.  The sixth authenticates every decision within its own content.” 

According to the author, “The new morality, situation ethics, declares that anything and everything is right or wrong, according to the situation.”  The author declares this new morality is not new, but is Bible-based and, like so many false prophets before and after him, he takes selected quotes from the Bible out of context to justify his philosophy that essentially comes down to:  do what feels good for you – if it feels good, it’s OK.

WHERE DID IT LEAD US

I think that in the 60s most who considered it didn’t notice the possible consequences of what embracing situational or relative morality might mean.  It is, I believe, a part of the lives of most of us today, and the Left has fully embraced it.

I think most everyone today will ignore otherwise rigid rules in at least some situations.  And probably people have always done this to some extent (is there anyone who has never told “a little white lie”?). 

But when there are absolute rules of right and wrong, good and evil, the breaking of these rules is less prevalent and is accompanied by some sort of guilt and understanding of one’s own wrongdoing.  When those “rigid” rules are gone one is ultimately left to do whatever one wants, regardless of what may be right or wrong for others.

Today, beyond more prevalent acceptance of excusing rule breaking in some circumstances, there are those who seem to believe that there really are no rules – they truly believe that a situation itself is the governing body in all circumstances. 

How else would we find people justifying theft and robbery (because they are just taking what they need), justifying the killing of police (because they are allegedly systemically racist), justifying violent riots called protests when they claim to serve a popular cause, even when they hurt or kill innocent bystanders, businesses, and government buildings (BLM riots after Floyd killing) but demanding severe punishment, even death to those whose protests violated the perimeter of the Capital building for a cause out of favor with the Left?

How else would we find people justifying the silencing of opposing viewpoints that they find uncomfortable, the disinviting of conservative speakers to college campuses because their views are offensive to Left-leaning students and faculty, the justification of harassing, namecalling, and sometimes physically attacking individuals who speak out in opposition to Leftist causes (most recently those who oppose CRT)? 

How else would we find the entertainment business and the elite and progressive individuals who profit from it justifying a daily diet of “entertainment” that sexualizes women and children while then acting as if they are horrified when someone whose politics are contrary to theirs commits even the slightest “MeToo” violation?

How else would we find the Left asserting its support for women’s rights and equal opportunity, then undermining those assertions when a biological male wants to compete as a female?   

How else would we find people believing that they can claim to be a devout follower of Catholicism yet be pro-abortion (a mortal sin in that faith) and demand they still be allowed to participate in the holy eucharist which requires adherence to the Catholic liturgy?

How else would we have a President requesting that social media censor and ban any posting that does not speak the truth, yet giving no criteria for what is “truth” or who will decide if a posting meets it, resulting, for example, in the idea that any suggestion that the Wuhan Virus came from the Wuhan lab should have been banned as untruthful, even though that now is the prevalent scientific theory?  How can science and humanity progress if no one is allowed to question or to present alternate ideas and theories?

THE RESULT OF EMBRACING RELATIVE MORALITY IS NOT PRETTY AND IT IS ANTI-HUMANITY

The above list could go on and on.  It includes just some of the examples of situation ethics in action that immediately come to mind.  I am sure every reader of this blog can think of many others.

We are destroying ourselves while believing that we have raised ourselves to some higher level of love.  Self-love seems to be the guiding principle – open any lifestyle magazine, any Sunday supplement, any self-help blog, any TV morning-show type supplement and you will hear about the importance of “self-care.”    That is where situational morality has taken us – to place the self as a god and the center of one’s universe. 

That’s fine if you live alone on some mountain top, but when two or more people come together who believe the situation and their feelings govern all even to the extent of justifying murder of the other, someone is going to have to determine whose self-love is superior. 

Once people have been manipulated into giving up absolute moral values, they need someone in power to decide what is OK in this or that situation.  That is where the progressive Leftist philosophy comes in.  They believe they can and should decide for each and every one of us, not because they know or care what is best, but because their philosophy requires and entitles them to do so.  They will take away humanity and replace it with manipulation and indifference.  As Solzhenitsyn so aptly noted, their goal is to destroy our social order.  The back cover of the Situation Ethics book essentially admits that as its intent.

My 1960s notes on Situation Ethics were more accurate than I understood at the time. I didn’t buy into it then, even though I thought I had.  Perhaps you didn’t buy into Situation Ethics either when you were first introduced.  But when there is what Solzhenitsyn calls a “constant dinning” and what we would today call propaganda with a daily barrage of one viewpoint taught from almost birth, it is easy to lose what one knows to be true and to buy into what we inherently know to be a mistake.   

We are not gods and relative morality, no matter how honorable and humane and even holy it may sound, is nothing more than a way to destroy the human essence and individuality and replace it with an ugly and oppressive power wielded by an elite and selfish few.  Each one of us who has let this destructive situation ethics into our lives needs to exorcise it immediately.

Equity Destroys Humanity As We Know It

Equity is just another way of saying dumbing down.  Like the many other politically correct euphemisms (integration vs. assimilation; containment unit vs. cage; etc.) it may not have the negative connotation of the original, but that does not change the reality of what it refers to.

Supposedly in the new lexicon of the Left, equity means uniformity:  everyone ends up with exactly the same thing.  That is, distribution of both the tangible and intangible is not equal but based on some external factor such as group identity or circumstance.   That unequal distribution intends to create a uniform result for everyone.  The problem is that such vision of equity, of uniformity, does not take into account the uniqueness and diversity of human nature.

Equity may sound nice, but let’s look at the reality.  One example comes from Virginia where schools are removing advanced degrees and eliminating advanced math classes.  The reason is that there are more of certain ethnic groups (primarily Asian and White) than other ethnic groups (primarily Black) in the advanced courses.  This, screams the Left, is not equity. 

Other schools remove the requirement of correct answers in math class because some groups find this standard more difficult.  Therefore, the Left’s equity demands that we must eliminate that which some students strive for or may have more talent for in order that all will be equal.  Essentially the students whose talents may lie with the advanced academics are now punished for having that innate talent or interest. 

Other examples come from hiring requirements that mandate a certain number of people with identifying factors be included in employment roles for specific jobs.  When current hiring criteria do not create that “equity” those criteria are often changed, removing certain competency factors in favor of other “equity” factors. 

So, the best pilot may not be chosen to fly your plane if equity determines factors other than competence to be more important.  For example, United Airlines has announced that 50% of the 5000 new pilots it plans to train in the next decade must be people of color.  What does that do for the aspirations of those with talent and qualifications who are not persons of color?  They can not be fully the person they were perhaps created to be but must dumb themselves down to fit within the equity codes.

The professionals who serve you may have been admitted to their medical or law or engineering or business schools to ensure equity of the class to the detriment of others with perhaps equal or more talent.  Your symphony orchestra may not include the most talented musicians if it has an equity code.  Your plumber or car mechanic, your children’s teachers, anywhere you look you will see “equity” but perhaps not the best and brightest that could be.

Equity is also discriminatory.  When President Biden announced he would select a woman of color for his VP he immediately excluded all men and all women not of color from any consideration.  Apparently, he and the Left determined it was OK to leave those people out of any equity distribution, even though many may have been highly skilled and competent, perhaps even more competent than any of those considered. 

That is, equity denies equality of treatment.  It does not equally consider each individual but rather treatment is based on some identity criteria that awards more or less favorable treatment to certain groups.  That is not the same as the equality that is promised and aspired to in America as she has existed for over 200 years.

Martin Luther King Jr. asked that we look at the quality of one’s character rather than the color of one’s skin – that is equality.  Today in the name of equity we do just the reverse.  We place people into identity groups based on skin color or other superficial characteristics and then we use things like Critical Race Theory, the 1619 project, equity training, etc., to discriminate.

Equity is also demeaning to those it allegedly intends to help.  It assumes that certain categories of people cannot achieve certain things unless they get special advantages.  This implies that without such special treatment they are individually incapable of succeeding.  Equity does not even consider that different individuals may have different interests and aspirations. 

Equity does not believe in the individual.  It would rather bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator at which everyone can function with equal result.  I like to sing but I cannot carry a tune. I don’t expect to be in a choir but what if I wanted to and equity said I could have a place, taking the place of someone who actually has a voice to sing?  Not only is that plainly not fair, but would you really want to listen to that choir?  And if the real singer is left out because we want choirs to only be at the level that all can achieve, then doesn’t that punish the real singer for having a good voice?

I can write a coherent sentence.  Should I stop doing so because some others cannot?  Should Mark Twain or Frederick Douglass or Maya Angelou or Rudolf Anaya have stopped writing because not everyone could write the sentences they could? The answer is NO.  For if they had stopped excelling at what they could and did excel at just so that there would be equity among them and other less gifted thinkers or writers, we would all have been left without their wisdom from which we continue to learn.

What equity does is demand that no one excel, no one can be too good.  It may protect from failure, but it also guarantees that many individuals will not achieve their full potential. 

Americans used to be able to dream of soaring to and maybe even achieving the greatest heights.  The flight of that soaring eagle that we each could imagine was unique to each of us.  And while some of us dreamed and aspired, and did great things along the way, some even actually achieved their entire dream.  But equity does not allow such dreams or their reality.

Rather, equity demands uniformity.  Instead of letting us soar to heights that only we each can imagine, it forces us all to the ground, like chickens in a coop just waiting for their next meal, all living the same existence but having nowhere to soar.

One of the great promises of America is opportunity – opportunity to be oneself and to aspire to and perhaps achieve one’s dream.  It is the promise to soar (or to choose not to soar) as our spirit takes us.  Its promise is equality – of opportunity but not necessarily of result.

Equity would make us all the same.  It dumbs us all down so that no one shines above the others.  There will be no role models to aspire to.  There will be no point in following one’s unique dreams or talents.  Equity will define us.  We will all have exactly the same and will then be exactly the same.

Equality on the other hand demands that each person will be recognized as an individual entitled to equality of treatment and understanding.  It refers to the uniform distribution to everyone of the tangible and intangible. In other words, each person receives the same amount of whatever is being distributed, rather than having such distribution be based on group identity or circumstance.

Equality does recognize that each individual’s circumstances, both innate and external, are unique and requires individual responses.  But it believes that everyone should get the same opportunity, not more or less of some tangible or intangible distribution based on one’s external identity.  It also recognizes the right of the individual to do as he or she chooses with whatever is being distributed.

Equality acknowledges that every individual has his or her own talents, strengths, and weaknesses and that sometimes these may be amplified or diminished by individual circumstances.  Equal treatment rewards the strengths and perhaps helps to correct the weaknesses.  But it does not try to remake humanity by abolishing the individual in the name of equity.

What equity does is dumb us all down; it demands mediocrity.  It destroys American excellence along with its equality.    In the end, equity joins the Left’s euphemism words of inclusion and diversity; the three together actually mean discrimination, exclusion and conformity. 

Equity is a nice sounding word, but it supports actions that destroy our humanity.  That should not surprise us since destruction of the individual is necessary for the “great new world” that the Left seeks to create. 

 

Please, not the dreaded DIALOG

As the riots continue to persist, while hopefully dying out, we begin to see calls for “dialog” about race. Letters in the paper: “we need dialog.”  Social media postings: “to move forward there must be an accounting for the past”: “this group needs to accept responsibility for the pain of that group.”   Joe Biden: “I will lead the conversation” (this after he has told us that if you don’t vote for him then you aren’t really Black).  I believe that former President Obama led a few “conversations on race.”

I have been seeing this call for conversation since the 60s.  I spent my young adulthood in Detroit in the late 60s and early 70s.  This was a turbulent time that included the Detroit riots/rebellion.  When it subsided, there were “conversations.”  Back then they were called “consciousness raising.”  They then became “teach ins” that then became “dialogue” which gave rise to “documentaries” and these things continue to become slicker and more political. 

What these conversations have in common is that they focus on the identity of one or more groups rather than individuals who may have that group trait as one of their many own traits.  They put group identity first, individual identity second.  That is, well-intentioned as they are, they will tell us something about the “Black experience” as if every person who is Black experiences the world in the very same way.  This by necessity denies the individuality of individual Black persons.  It in a way makes them less than human.

In a similar way such “conversations” may focus on “White complicity” in injuries to people of color.  Again, while some Whites may be very complicit, others somewhat so, and others not at all, to group all as having an equal and identical history simply because of their Whiteness puts their membership in that identity group above their individuality, again making them less human.

When one focuses on hurt, whether physical or emotional, that hurt and its accompanying pain grows and eventually becomes all encompassing.  People deal with pain in many ways, one way being to hate the cause of the pain.  When we continually place all people with one color identity in one group and continually tell them how a different color identity group has caused them pain, we are certainly likely to create discord if not hate between the two groups.

Is it any wonder that after 50+ years of simplistically defining one group as suffering because of another group that our racial tensions have grown worse rather than better?

Our identity politics have grown far more divisive in the last 10 years or so.  When one is nothing more than a representative of one group or another simply because of their color, what happens is that the individual becomes dehumanized.  It is far easier to hurt a dehumanized being than it is to hurt a three-dimensional human being who shares humanity with you.

Identity politics grows hate.  I realize that many who now begin advocating that we look back and discuss Black pain historically – what it was, who caused it, its repercussions today – have good intentions of helping us to move forward.  But the reality is that this does not help.  Moreover, the product of these good intentions is often co-opted by those who have political ambitions that are furthered by building hatred between groups.

One traditional tool of socialism is to build hatred between the working class and the bosses.  It may allow the socialists to gain power, but that power and that socialism is always destructive, hurting most those whom it promised to help.  It the same way, there are those in this country who use identity politics to build hatred between racial identity groups.  It is simply a tool to their power, to their desire to reform if not totally change our governmental structure.  Like socialism, though it claims to have the best interests of its chosen group at its core, it is likely that group that will end up suffering the most.

The socialists today tell us that this time they will get it right.  Similarly, those who urge dialogs on race assert that this time they will get it right.  They won’t.

If one keeps focusing on a wound it will never heal and the one who is injured will never be able to move forward.  We have been pushing people to see only the bad, focusing on racial wounds in one way or another since the 60s if not before.  And, the recent days show us where that 50+ year focus has gotten us.  It is time to turn around, see every person as an individual first rather than simply a member of one or another identity group.  It is time to face forward and move on.

Talking one on one with your brother – an individual – with his own history, understanding him as an individual, what are his current feelings, beliefs, his goals for the future, and letting him know and understand you – that leads us much further towards a shared humanity than the “lectures” that try to change us by playing with our emotions by presenting us the history or emotions not of an individual but characterized for an entire identity group. 

We will not move forward unless and until we begin seeing a group as only one part of a person’s full identity.  We must stop seeing persons as members of a group first and then as individual second if at all.  Only when we understand that we each one of us has our own separate and very different identity, not only from those who look different but also from those who look the same as us, only then will we truly be able to move forward.

Standing in the way of that forward movement is a constant litany of hurt caused by one group against another.  That group-think, that identity politics, dehumanizes us all.  It pushes us to hate, to demand revenge and retribution.  It puts us in a time warp that not only keeps returning us to the mid-twentieth century, but, even worse, it destroys our individual humanity.

So please, let’s NOT have another conversation.  Not the dreaded dialog.  Let us not fester in festering wounds.  Let us all say that we are more than those wounds whether victim or perpetrator or neither.  Let’s stop the identity politics along with those who would use it only for their own gain.  Let us instead reach for Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream where we see each other not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.  Then, and only then, will we end the cycle that I have seen repeated over and over.  Let us understand one another’s individual pain but rather than stall within that pain let us look up and move on.

How Socialism Slithers In

While Socialism sometimes takes over a country by violence (e.g. the Russian revolution), at other times it is voted in (e.g. Spain in the 1930s and Venezuela upon the election of Hugo Chavez).  It is much harder to cause the end to Socialism without violence (e.g. Venezuela today) and sometimes the violence leads to something worse (e.g. Franco took power by overthrowing the socialist government that preceded him). 

This is one reason why it is important to be careful when we read statements that suggest where a politician’s policies will lead us.  Socialism sounds very enticing on the surface.  We all (I hope) know to be wary of promises that Socialism will give us all a living wage along with everything else we want, regardless of our desire or ability to work and contribute.  But the real enticements of socialism can be far subtler.

Take for example the following statement made by the Governor of New Mexico in support of creating an Early Childhood Care Department (NM Sen. Bill 22).   After stating that “a child’s early years of life are formative,” the Governor goes on to state that with the new department and with our “collective” responsibility, we can ensure that New Mexico children “will receive a continuum of care from birth to age 5 and enable the State to lay the groundwork for a successful future that encompasses our values as New Mexicans.” See Albuquerque Journal, 2/21/2019. LINK 

Now, on the surface this sounds lovely.  It sounds like the Governor cares about us and our children.  But, let’s reread and see what it really says.  It tells us that the State will take over the formative years of our children’s lives.  It tells us that the State would like to take control of our children from birth forward.  It tells us that the State feels it is more qualified than the family to “lay the groundwork” for the child’s future.  And, it tells us that the State, not the family should be the one to instill basic values in the child.  (It does not tell us what those values will be!).

To me, the thinking behind the lovely statement seems far too much like Socialism or Communism.  The State will raise the children and teach them how and what to think so that they will be useful cogs in the State machine.  It will replace the love and guidance that parents provide in a child’s formative years with State sponsored indoctrination.  Is this what people really want?

Example number two comes from a mandatory directive from an appointed head of a state agency to the employees within that agency.  The directive is addressed to “Family.”  Now, I don’t know about you, but I use the word “family” to address my actual family (parents, siblings, in laws, cousins, etc.).  When I address correspondence to those with whom I work I address them as “colleagues” or “co-workers” or perhaps in an appropriate instance as “friends.”  They are not my family (nor is the State - at least not yet).

But, more importantly, this directive asks employees to share their thoughts about their work environment in a way that would help to bring more employees into state government.   The request does not provide for anonymous answers (that would have been easy enough to do by setting up a Survey Monkey or anonymous Google share or other similar means).  Without such opportunity for anonymous reflections on less than positive aspects of the job there is no real interest in learning what the employee actually thinks or in understanding ways that the working environment might be improved.  Rather, it provides only one avenue:  to praise the State as employer.  And, it asks the employees to spend work time on this, rather than doing the actual work that the taxpayers are paying them to do.

And yet there is more.  The mandatory request concludes by stating that the sender wants to know “what you think/feel/believe and why.” What sounds, perhaps on the surface as a department head having some interest in supervised employees goes far beyond that.  It seeks to delve into their private and personal beings.  Only a State that has some interest in directing every behavior of individuals in a way that likely removes their individuality would demand to know what every employee believes and why.

These are just two examples of the sort of subtle maneuvering that causes people to support socialist-like agenda without even realizing they are doing so.  They add up.  And before one realizes it they are supporting and voting for a full Socialist agenda. 

I titled this post “How Socialism Slithers In.”  The use of the word slither was an intentional reference to a snake.  Whether you read it as fictional, as a Biblical fact, or as something else, the story of Adam and Eve and the Snake clearly presents evil disguised as offeror of a lovely option (in the form of beautiful fruit) which, if taken, has devastating consequences.  Socialism does the same: it offers what sounds like a lovely utopia, but it always has devastating consequences. 

The Socialism Snake beckons to us more and more zealously these days.  It is subtle and quiet as it slithers into our lives.  We need to be vigilant and see the snake for what it is.   The utopia it offers is nothing more than smoke and mirrors hiding a life without freedom and likely filled with misery.

It’s All About Feeling Good

Taking cans out to the mailbox today to be picked up by the mail carrier for the local food bank, I kept thinking how foolish this is:  it would be much smarter, more efficient, and better for those in need, if instead of providing a few cans I and others were instead giving that cash to the food bank.  The few dollars spent by each of us for the few cans would go far further if the plain cash were combined and used by the food band to buy in bulk.  Mother Nature Network on 11/18/17 estimated that food banks pay about 10 cents a pound for the same food that costs shoppers about $2 per pound.  According to an NPR Talk of the Nation piece in 2011, for the same amount of money spent on buying cans for a food drive, donors can feed 20 times more families by providing cash as opposed to cans. That would create a far greater stock of food for those in need. 

So, why are we asked to donate cans and not money and why do we do it?  I think in large part because the tangible act of holding the cans and handing them over makes people feel good, like they are doing something.  It’s easy – maybe you have some old cans of beans in the back of the cupboard – pull them out, put them in the bag, and feel good as you get rid of them.  And look:  everyone can see your bag of cans by your mailbox – your neighbors will see you are doing good.  All public, positive, and immediate reinforcement – much more so than writing a check and mailing it off where no one sees your good deed and any benefits to you in the form of tax deductions will not be seen for months.   The bottom line is we donate the cans – to the mail carrier, to the bring a canned good to the ballpark day, to the school drive, etc. – because it makes us feel good.  Yes, it also benefits those in need, but this particular act of charity seems to be more focused on making the donor feel good than on providing for the recipients.

Nothing wrong with feeling good, unless it becomes the primary and driving force of all our actions.   And isn’t that exactly what seems to have happened in our society.  We do things because they make us feel good.  And part of that feeling good seems to be a sort of sophomoric popularity that goes along with defining the feel-good acts to be done.   Hence, we had those in the entertainment world doing more and more outrageous acts that felt good and in those circles made them more and more popular, until recently when the tables turned, and they have begun to be called out for their acts, acts which are no longer approved by the populace.  Now we have the “me too” crowd purging their hurt or hatred while being applauded for stating “me too.”  But, while this may make everyone feel good as they pat themselves and others on the backs for simply coming forward, just as giving a can is less effective than giving a dollar, saying “me too” or asserting a stand against all the accused is not really very effective beyond a momentary good feeling.

Looking at the “me too” movement, I see very little good in it.  And I ask myself what is it teaching our daughters, and our sons?  We  should be teaching that when people are aggrieved, rather than simply posting their grievance on some social platform,  they should take their grievance to a proper authority who must listen without judgment, assume that the aggrieved is not lying, will investigate further, and take appropriate action.  The aggrieved must also understand that they very likely will not get immediate gratification, but that in most cases in the end they will see justice.  And, we all should be taught that because each and every one of us perceives facts differently that all people involved in any incident need to be heard.  We also need to know that sometimes we absolutely believe something to be true, even though that does not match the factual reality.  That does not make a person a liar, but it also may mean that they will not get the particular relief for which they hoped.   And, when it comes to sexual harassment and assault, just as with most other wrongful behaviors, there are different forms and levels and all are not equal.  A lewd glance or remark is not the same as a momentary unwanted touch, and neither approach the level of actual rape. 

What “me too” teaches is that if you claim to have been a victim you will feel good.  Regardless of the severity of your harm, people will applaud you, giving you loving attention. You will be a welcomed member of the “me too” victimhood group.   You may feel good for calling out the one who affronted you in the way that revenge makes one feel good.  What does that teach?  Simply that victimhood and revenge are good.  It does not teach anything that might stop the cause of the victimhood.  And, it leaves out the important concept of justice.  Some may think that because the accused is immediately and publicly shamed that will stop others from behaving in the same way.  I doubt that.  Capital punishment has not yet stopped the sorts of heinous crimes for which it is a punishment.  And, to continue the analogy, innocent people are sometimes put to death, just as I suspect that public conviction upon a mere assertion of “me too” will result is some innocent people being wrongfully shamed.

But, back to feeling good.  There will be little permanence in a society that uses that as its guiding force, especially when it is defined by the values and mores of the day.  That is, feeling good as a response to external factors is a superficial way to find meaning in life.  And, as with anything superficial (that is, of the surface), it can easily be washed away.  If one chooses to be led by feeling good, let that feeling be guided by internal forces and values of goodness.  Yet, here is the problem:  as a society we seem to have lost those internal and constant values that used to guide us.  The superficial feeling has replaced those deeper internal beliefs. 

This need for and elevation of superficial gratification, especially gratification without difficulty and with public affirmation, would seem to lead to a selfish and often hateful populace.   A populace in which feelings eclipse all else:  facts, historic and religious values, respect for others, education, thinking, self-fulfillment, independence, justice. Let’s just look at a few of these.  Grade inflation makes students feel good as does passing a child forward whether they are competent in their grade level or not.  Tests, homework, hard work are not fun/do not make the students feel good, so we will dismiss them even if it means our students do not learn as much or do not learn to think deeply.   Facts can get in the way of feelings, so we will just ignore the facts we don’t like or alter them to our liking.  Hence we have competing “factual” accounts of most everything in the news – even whether the president properly fed the fish in Japan.  If one’s own feelings are most important, then they will outweigh feelings of others and this leads to disrespect for the others and their views.  Independence and the freedom to speak one’s views have become less important than conformance with the asserted group-think, and with that comes a government that is more and more intrusive into people's lives and hence their independence and ability to be who they are as individuals rather than a cog in the wheel of a power structure that may or may not have their best interests in mind.

Feeling good.  It can be momentarily pleasant, even helpful.  But it is far from the best guiding principle with which to lead one’s life or one’s country and society.