20 years ago this week I was on the phone with a friend. He was in Plon, Germany. I was in North Canton, Ohio. He had lived with my family for nearly a year. He was a foreign exchange student, and we had been his host family. He had no idea that the Berlin Wall had fallen just the night before.
This is Morning Feature's Tuesday Morning Series, Things We Learned This Week. If you have learned something this week, or would like to, you came to the right place.
Two weekends ago, I sat in a room with intelligent, educated, people. Nearly 50 of them. Educators all, in fact. And someone had written the word, "birthers," on a sheet of paper hanging in that room. When we were given a chance to ask and answer questions about that sheet, the first question asked was, "What is a birther?"
My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me. - Benjamin Disraeli
A little different approach this morning. My TWLTW diaries have, so far, been theory pieces. Theories of assumptions, or discussions, or creative leadership, or whatever else I learned that week. This is what doctoral students do during the coursework phase, learn theories, so it makes some basic sense that these things are what I would have to share. I hope you have found, and continue to find, something useful or thought-provoking in them. Chances are, there will be more theory on Tuesday-mornings-future.
But, this morning, I'm about Tuesday-morning-present, and that means getting personal. Beware, anecdotes and opinions lie ahead...
What Is A Birther?
This question caught me totally by surprise. Ah, to be so innocent and carefree! We had been assigned the task of writing on sheets of paper our answers to the question, "What causes you to shut down, to turn off, to withdraw from discussion?" Someone wrote "Birthers" on their sheet.
That I was surprised may prompt certain, predictable, responses. Maybe these people weren't as educated as I thought them to be. Not everyone pays attention to politics, Crackpot! We all know that! "Low Information" voters and blahblahblah...
But, as is my nature, I instead asked what this person not knowing the word "birther" told me about me. Why do I care? Why do I pay attention? Why is it important to me to keep as informed as I can about what is going on in the world? What is my responsibility to my knowledge and opinions--Is it my responsibility to make sure that person knows what a birther is and what I think that means? Should I answer that question, and how should I answer it? Neutrally? With my opinion of why someone would have written that on their sheet? Why I think they should have had the opposite reaction, one of engagement, not of withdrawal? And the kicker, "How would a birther answer that question?"
What About The Wall?
This week also reminded me of a phone call I had a long time ago, or at least what now feels like a long time ago, after the NYT reminded me that it's been over 20 years and not 20 minutes. My God.
My exchange-brother, a German national who had lived with my family for a year after my return from a year in Merida, Mexico, had been locked up in his room for three days studying for exit exams. Exams that, in Germany, would very much determine not only what college he would attend but what career choices would be available to him as a result. We were both quite intense people back then, as you may or may not imagine, so this didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that his parents hadn't bothered to interrupt him to tell him the news. They may have been partying themselves, and just not bothered or even thought of it. Who knows?
But, when I called the next morning to ask him what he thought, he just asked me, "What about the wall?" like he wasn't even sure which wall I was talking about. He was in a study stupor.
My family had just returned from visiting him 6 weeks before. We drove to Berlin from the West. I will never, bar disease or head trauma, forget seeing sniper towers every few miles along the highway, and being pulled over for questioning by East German military as we crossed into Berlin. I'm convinced they recognized some of us were not German (I suspect at least one of us was gawking) and just wanted to give us a hard time, but it completely freaked out my parents who were in the car in front of ours. In those days there was no chance they could just pull over and wait to see what would happen. No cell phone, either. They had to pull away. They had to drive off, with us in the rearview surrounded by East German soldiers, and wonder.
I Wonder
I wonder about a lot of things. I wonder how that person in the conference didn't know what a birther was. I wonder why I feel so far removed from the joy and euphoria about world affairs I felt when the Berlin Wall fell. I wonder about birthers, and how some people can be so willfully divorced from fact and reason.
But, I remember, that in a democracy (as discussed last week) everyone gets to have an opinion. Even Glenn Beck and Joe Lieberman. Everyone has a position in society based on their personal experiences and those of others. So, how do I know that my opinion has anymore worth or validity than anyone else's?
Consequences
I asked this very question of a professor recently. I've been thinking about it ever since. His answer was, simply, "Consequences." Whereas Herr Marcuse simply answered that question with himself- he got to decide. But, that left me with an empty feeling in my philosophy, and so does the answer "consequences." They both are the same as "everybody gets to have an opinion." In other words, "everybody gets to have consequences."
If, for example, we're talking about the environment, I look at the consequences of climate change and nation-sized wads of shopping bags in the Pacific, and those consequences are unacceptable to me. My father-in-law looks at the possible increase in costs to businesses of cap-n-trade, or any other regulatory scheme, and he simply can't accept those consequences. So, whose consequences trump the other's?
When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice. - Otto von Bismarck
Values
Then it hit me. "Values" as a verb, not an adjective or a noun. Not "family values," as each family has its own set of values, but what consequences each family values would be my new standard. My criterion of worth, so it were. In health care, for example, I value the result of health care for all more than the result of being taxed less. The consequences for the person who needs cancer medication or kidney treatment are much greater for that person than are the consequences of my paying a few dollars more to the government to play a role in providing such resources. But that's just me.
I also have to ask, "Where are the consequences for Joe Lieberman?" For Stupak? For Baucus? For Michelle Bachmann? It may or may not be true that Baucus values his insurance company campaign contributions more than the better health of people who voted, or didn't vote, for him but the consequences of his legislative strategy are the same. In other words, it doesn't matter to me so much what argument is used to defend or justify the opinion or behavior, my newly proposed standard of judgment is how the consequences are valued.
Selwyn Raab
And what to do about answering the question, "What is a birther?" I refer to Selwyn Raab, writing in Friday's NYT about what it was like to resist the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950's. He had written a column condemning City College's sacking of several professors who refused to testify against themselves and their colleagues. He was suspended from the school paper for having written it. On Friday, he wrote,
No. 1: Never seek safe harbors to avoid contentious but important issues.
No. 2: Never sacrifice integrity or fundamental principles — especially if there is a clear distinction between right and wrong on vital questions.
I love this advice. I love the idea of sticking to what I know is important. The idea of showing my daughter what is important by the way I live my life when things are difficult, not just by what I tell her to think. What are the consequences of what I am teaching my daughter? What are the consequences of my beliefs, my actions; for myself, my family, my community, my world? I am responsible for teaching my daughter a way of life that acknowledges its own consequences for me, for her, and for anyone our decisions may influence or impact.
Hopefully, the result will be a better world, a better life, for my daughter (and all daughters--I dream big), whatever her eventual social or economic position in society. We can do better for our daughters, and that starts with me.
Wrapping It Up
I don't know if I will ever have cause or occasion to tell her my Berlin Wall story. About how weird it felt to know I had just been there a few weeks before the demolition party. The sense of pride I felt in a world that had reversed a great evil after having seen it firsthand. I don't know if I'll ever explain to her what a birther was, or how I made phone calls, wrote letters, and signed petitions in acts of political competition with them.
But, I do intend to prepare her for the events that will become her stories, her battles, her turning point moments. I do intend to encourage her to value certain consequences over others. To tolerate ambiguity. To have a growth mindset. To be ready and willing to adapt to new technology, new circumstances, and new ideas. To not be afraid to get involved. To never doubt that her voice is important, and that the responsibility to use it is great.
As always, thanks for stopping by. Please share something you've learned this week in the comments. After the "What is a birther?" moment, I fear the consequences of not doing so are too great to accept. What can we learn from each other?
TWLTW
- Wikipedia statistics:
Wikipedians are 80 percent male, more than 65 percent single, more than 85 percent without children, and around 70 percent of them are under the age of 30.
- Stephen Colbert is more manic in person than he is on television.
- Twix really are the best candy bars on earth.
- In a follow up to the Alexis de Bono diary, a scholar has compiled, translated, and published (this week) a set of hundreds of Alexis de Tocqueville's letters to his family and friends written during his tour of the early United States.
- "Livestock and poultry operations" in the United States produce not only cattle and chickens, but 500 million tons of organic waste (yes, that's manure) from those cows and chickens yearly. This is 3X that produced by the human beings who share this country with them.
- That poll question requiring a form of rational thought is back. At least I tried to put it in this diary. We'll see what happens when I push "Publish."
- You really shouldn't go to a taping of the Colbert Report, touch Stephen Colbert's desk, and brag about it afterward without a really impressive consolation gift for
Mrs. C your spouse who had to work instead and couldn't go. Especially when you live off her income and student loans. Really? What was I thinking?
What have you learned this week?