JOURNAL ENTRY 49
September 17, 2009
As I write this, the news media are caught up with the South Carolina congressman who screamed ‘You Lie’ at the President a few days ago. Athena Andreadis is an author and a teacher. She came to the United States 35 years ago to attend Harvard. And stayed. In her blog at http://www.starshipnivan.com/blog/?p=797 she comments on changes she’s seen during that time.
Her comments got me thinking about our unfortunate tendency to operate out of tribal instincts. And how much sheer stupidity there is out there. The unfortunate truth is that parents --and I’m one, so I plead guilty also-- don’t necessarily want the best for their kids. What we really want is that they should be like us. The same is true of teachers, clergy, and other authority figures. The result: Too many people simply accept what their peer group accepts. Easier that way: You don’t have to think about it. And the result is that you see people every day determined to fight their own best interests.
When we’re six years old, we trust what adults say. We buy in. Moreover, we want to belong. So we go along with the group, and we never stop. It doesn’t matter whether the group is a bunch of Atlanta Falcons fans, the local VFW, the Republicans, or, possibly, a lynch mob. We not only fail to think about what’s happening, but we are inclined by nature to go along. So we support actions the group takes that we would not consider doing ourselves. Should we bomb Baghdad? Okay. One thinks of German citizens turning in their Jewish neighbors to the Nazis.
I’d like very much to see us, as a society, concentrate on teaching kids how important it is for them to think for themselves. To challenge what they hear from the rest of us. I don’t recall who commented that the ’unexamined life is not worth living,’ but watching some of these people scream on my TV suggests a lot of them are sufering from exactly that malady.
On another national subject, our area made the network news last week when eight people were found murdered inside their home at a trailer park a short distance away. I’ve wrestled with capital punishment --am I for it or against it?-- for a long time, and I have to concede that the mere fact that innocent people have been convicted of capital crimes makes clear we should do away with it. But periodically, we see a crime so horrendous that we really want to see the maximum penalty imposed. The trailer murders. The murders of students recently at Yale and Wesleyan. The Va Tech murders. The sniper who was running around the D.C. area a few years ago.
Nonetheless, I’ve generally felt that capital punishment should be reserved, if it’s to be used at all, for those who kill law enforcement officers in the performance of their duty, or who kill kidnap victims.
I mentioned Steve Coll’s The Ghost Wars two weeks ago. I recommend it highly for anyone who’d like a comprehensive look behind the headlines. Am starting Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club. William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles S. Pierce, and John Dewey kick around the great ideas.
Maureen and I are off to Huntsville, AL, this weekend for Con*Stellation. If you are in the neighborhood, please come by and say hello.