Grief II

Our friendly neighbors (the ones on our left) just returned from New York where they attended the funeral of their younger son – he had an inoperable brain tumor for quite a while, somewhat like Senator John McCain’s. I want to commiserate with them, to tell them that we shouldn’t have to bury our children, but I can’t, so just handshakes (he doesn’t mind but she is more formal and seems to resist them or any contact right now).

I don’t think that grief can really be shared but has to be dealt with personally – knowing that friends are there for you is important but that’s the extent of it. I suspect Jenise isn’t so sure that’s right – she could be right about that. But I’m not made like that; I’m more of a passive helper than active. Fortunately there is Jenise and others like her in the world to do what some of us cannot handle.

So I grieve for Stan and Maureen, for their pain in having to bury their son. I do understand their pain, at least in the externals, but I cannot comprehend the full range of emotion they are undergoing. No “theory of mind” should attempt to bridge that gulf.

 

Grief: I

(Written in November 2018.)

Grief is intensely personal. You cannot define grief, compare grief, feel another’s grief. Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” is bullshit because he cannot do that, cannot feel the pain of loss by another. Grief counseling cannot remove the grief but can help accept it – or confuse it. Finding words to express any emotion is difficult but for grief, impossible.

Death of a loved one creates grief that cannot be removed. I will not again see my Dad, not in heaven or any other place. I will not again see my little sister running down the road to the barn again – she is older now and will not regress, but that very memory, enhanced by my photograph, will remain as my baby sister. She will not see me beyond death but she will have memories that will be me for her and they will be part of the grief – positive elements, I hope. And I will remember my Dad as he was at his best, at his worst, and as just my Dad, but I do grieve.

Grieving over a lost home, as in the fires that burn down forests and houses and towns, is very real and can be shared by empathy, by analogy, but not with the same feelings. The losses are not the same, the reactions to similar losses are not the same, and no one can remove the resulting feelings of loss.

Grief can be softened by time, by interaction with family and friends and counsellors, by artistic expression, but it remains as a kernel of emotion that affects the soul, our core essence.

Anecdotes can identify the sources of grief for me, but they cannot explain it. Stories and novels can evoke feelings that remind me of my own, but they do not explain them.

Group sessions might help me understand the scope of grief but will not remove my sense of loss or my unique reactions and understanding of those feelings.

Grief is frequently mimicked by other emotions, by remembering fondly a friend or relative, or even someone never known but seen or heard. Did I grieve when my friends at work died from cancer at an all-too-young age? Their spouses and families certainly did, but what I felt was sadness and empathy with those family members. On the other hand, did I grieve when a close friend, one of three or four ‘best friends’, passed recently? Yes, deeply; I think of him almost daily as I read and study and contemplate the issues on which we disagreed but nonetheless debated civilly and which each of us
acknowledged as influential.

Sensation, Perception, and Louis l’Amour

Louis l’Amour’s book “Ride the Dark Trail” has a number of perceptive lines. Here’s an excerpt and my overly wordy comment:

“… here and there just plain looking and seeing what you look at has taught me something. Also, whilst never much of a hand to go to the mat with a book, I’m a good listener.”

To me, this is a brilliant comment on sensation (looking, hearing) and perception (seeing what you look at, good listener) – about paying attention, somewhere between general alertness and zen-type focus. It is something learned or absorbed when spending time alone – sometimes forgotten but later remembered. True even for short periods, something nearly impossible (for me) in the city or near busy roads. Growing up where I did, paying attention, whether to what I was “supposed to” or to what I actually found more interesting, was just the point of being out there. For many of Louis l’Amour’s characters, certainly most if not all of the Sacketts from the mountains of Tennessee, it came naturally.

His novels are far deeper than a lot of people seem to recognize – good stories, pretty good moralizing for the times covered and for now, sure – but a whole lot about a way of living that is slip-sliding away but was and to some extent is still intensely important, vital to meaningful thought. Without connection to things as they are, thinking easily goes astray. It could easily be said (by me) that much of what we call ‘philosophy’ comes under that latter description.

Free Will and Decisions

Do we freely decide? Or are we playing out a script, completing a predetermined path?

My first confrontation with the concept of free will was in the context of fundamentalist Christianity.  It was then called “Free Will or Predestination”, the latter being a main doctrine of Calvinism, or Scottish Presbyterianism.  The question was whether or not God had determined the course of human history for each of us from the beginning, or whether we had some level of control over our actions.  It seemed like a slam-dunk to me, a strong-willed kid who never cared to be told what to do. In fact, the discussions I overheard in family and church circles were probably the first brick in my eventual wall between acceptance and rejection of an omniscient, omnipotent, all-caring God. Not much later, after suggesting that man could not reach the moon, since Satan had dominion over Earth and man would be beyond his reach there, thus giving man freedom from evil, I was greeted with silence and averted glances.  Perhaps I had gone too far, perhaps beliefs and reality were not necessarily related, even in the minds of believers, so another brick was set in place.

But free will is less a religious issue than a philosophical one.  Are we controlled by our own decisions or by external forces beyond our personal control?  That seems to me to be a meaningless question, a question arising from the notion of dualism of “Body and Soul” (notwithstanding the wonderful Coleman Hawkins rendition of that song) as posited by Plato and cemented in place by René Descartes in the 17th century.  I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people still adhere to that split – that we have a soul that is somehow related to the body but which is independent of it, leading to notions of eternal life, reincarnation, past lives.  Such belief makes it difficult to see how soul, or ‘mind’, can make the body perform, how a ‘decision’ can tell the body to move or otherwise function.

If soul and body are separate, a paradox does exist.  But they are not separate.  “Soul” as a separate “Mind” apart from the biological entity that is the “I” is a fallacy, like many beliefs established without evidence but based on pure thought, as with Plato and Descartes.  The former can be excused, the latter not so much: Descartes asserted “I think, therefore I am” (cogito, ergo sum) which already suggests the union of the two.  The belief, the fixation, continues into the modern scientific realm. Some neuroscientists assert that, because the brain begins its activity in decision making milliseconds before the person is aware she has made the decision, free will must not be real.  But of course, since all brain activity is one’s own activity, we see simply that a delay exists between the decision point and awareness of that decision point.  The brain, the person, acts as a unit in decision-making.  Awareness, as one of the functions of the brain, observes, and thus must lag the initial decision itself.  No mystery here – just the normal functioning of an incredibly complex multi-function compartmentalized associative and wildly interconnected organ called the brain – the “I” – not body-soul, or even the Christian trinity-inspired body-soul-spirit model.  We are one – each of us.

But for lovers everywhere, “I’m all for you, body and soul!” still rings true.

The Primal Progressive

I’ve been reading John Locke and Jeremy Bentham lately – Locke inspired Thomas Jefferson, especially in his writing of the Declaration of Independence. For example, the phrase “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” comes mostly from Locke, especially “endowed by their Creator with … rights”.  However, the “pursuit of Happiness” was an edit of his original “Property” and that new phrase came from Bentham. In his 1789 “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation”, Bentham equated “happiness” with “benefit, advantage, pleasure, good” and applied it both to individuals and to society as a whole.

Bentham was the original “progressive” and would still be considered a leader in that direction.  Here’s how one source (Alexander Guerrero, U. of Pennsylvania) describes him (emphasis mine):
“… a political radical for his era, arguing for the separation of church and state, for equal rights for women, for the right to divorce, for animal rights, for decriminalization of sexual acts between people of the same sex, and for the abolition of slavery, the death penalty, and various forms of physical punishment including upon children.” This was in the late 18th to early 19th centuries.  How much further have we progressed (gay rights, and then  … ??? ).

Rejection of “conservative” or “tory” views, throwbacks to an age before republican democracies, the views Bentham battled more than 200 years ago, is mandatory if this country, this world, is to approach that goal so beloved by Miss America contestants: world peace – but peace between all segments of all societies in ways that matter to everyone, not just peace between power-hungry governments with weapons.

Or so I believe.

Economic Growth – Can It Be Perpetual?

I have been taking a Coursera online course, “Understanding Economic Policymaking” taught by Gayle Allard, Professor of Economics at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Davis, and has been teaching in Spain since 1988. The final week of the course includes discussions of the nature of growth as a perpetual measure of economic health. I wrote this piece in the forum for that set of lectures. Comments are, as always, welcomed.
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As Professor Allard has suggested, perpetual growth by developed countries/regions is unlikely, improbable, even impossible. Imagining a no-growth economy in, for example, the US or UK, Germany or Japan, is difficult, since we build our plans, hopes, and dreams on growth, on savings and investments that produce real increases. It is easy to imagine many outcomes of a no-growth economy, from adoption of egalitarian principles to imposition of “those who have, deserve to keep” economic and financial distributions. Somewhere in the middle of that must be a balance that could be achieved, with some wiggle room, such as the “sufficiency” concept of Harry Frankfurt’s essay “On Inequality”, and/or adjustments to the market concepts we hold, recognizing the inequality of some markets and accepting the equalizing implications of markets in the absence of general economic growth. One thing, though, must be accepted – that business and commercial failure is an acceptable result of progress, that such ideas as “too big to fail” and other monopolistic concepts are obsolete, that anti-trust and pro-competition laws and regulations must be implemented and strongly enforced. This does imply the necessity of government intervention in the economy – something that Adam Smith foresaw and that too many “conservative” economists abhor. We the people, with deep consideration, must be able to control society, rather than give in to obsolete theoretic constructs that have failed to account for the reality of a developing and evolving world.

Presidential Promises

In an online Coursera course on the Constitution, the staff asked this:

The various presidential candidates each say, “If elected, I will …. ” build a wall, make college education free, whatever.

Is that really the way the Executive branch works today? Is that what the framers intended? Which way do you think it should work?

My reply:

When a candidate today says, “I will …” I read it as “I will use my bully pulpit and support from my Congressional caucuses to pass and enforce laws that will …”.
I’m not so sure that is different from the beginning, since those early Presidents were strong-minded men with attitudes about how best to proceed. I think in particular about Jefferson and Madison (and Hamilton had he survived), those strong leaders, who had differing views of how the country should progress and surely wished to use the Presidency as a tool for achieving that. The notion that the job stops with “enforce the laws” is and always has been naive.

When Trump says he will build a wall and is criticized for believing he can do that unilaterally, that is a wrong way to blast him – he (or his more informed staff) is aware that he would have to get approval and funding from Congress (and no, I don’t believe even he believes that Mexico would, in any sense, pay for it!). When Sanders and Clinton speak of free or affordable college tuition, they are fully aware that Congressional action could block them with no recourse.

Political promises at all levels need to be taken with a grain of salt, for sure, but also need to be translated into terms that the candidates are unwilling to state but which they know are the more accurate terms.  We, the voters, are as responsible for interpreting their speeches as are they for clarifying them.  If we believe “the wall” or “free tuition” are beyond both the power of the Presidency and the willingness of Congress to provide funding or other support, we can simply discard the promise as typical campaign hyperbole and look to other issues to make our choices.

“There’s No Free Lunch”
“Political Speech Has Its Own Language”
“First Pay Attention, then Vote.”

I’m Redcat, and I approved this message 🙂

A Constitutional conservative in the liberal tradition

The title is a major theme of mine, but its meaning might not be obvious.  I’ll be talking about it in future posts but here’s the “short” version.

The U.S. Constitution, as ratified and amended, is a marvelous prescription for organizing and operating a federal (collection of semi-sovereign states) government. With only a single exception (the 18th amendment), it holds together as a solid framework for an active citizen-based representative democracy.

The terms “conservative” and “liberal” here do not refer to current usage in political discourse, e.g. to partisan positions or popular beliefs.

I am conservative with respect to the Constitution in the sense that I accept and honor it as written within the times and under the circumstances it and its amendments were ratified.  Neither English common law nor the numerous letters and papers exchanged prior to ratification can substitute for the document as a whole, though they may shed some light on the meaning of words and phrases in common use at the time.  Not even Supreme Court rulings should be considered on a par with the document itself, since they can be (and frequently are) overturned or modified by later Courts without the stringent requirements imposed on formal amendments.

I am in the liberal tradition along the lines that inspired the founding fathers to part from Mother England and to establish a new form of government.  The roots are in the Enlightenment, in the writings of such men as Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, and Adam Smith. From WikiPedia: “The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and came to advance ideals such as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.” What is equally notable about those writings is their challenge to dogma, dictated values, and the status quo, and their desire to connect philosophy with the reality of people’s lives, to force governments to recognize the importance of what people cared about – in fact, to simply put forth individual liberty, both active and passive, as a prime mover in the affairs of all people.  It was a proactive movement, not static, not fixed in time, but forward-looking, progressive to the max.

Briefly: conservative as in “cautious, stable, value-based”, and “liberal” as in “individual identity, flexible, active involvement, value-based”.  That term “value” has many interpretations, which is another deep topic.

 

Welcome to my blog

I’m Redcat Kid, or just Redcat, but I’m neither cat nor kid.  In years gone by I raised and showed Abyssinian cats.  My true name is Larry L English.  I’m 76, married to Joyce Chang for 34 years, and living in Santa Clara County, California, since 1972. My formal education is in mathematics and my careers have included computer software development and college teaching, from which I retired at the end of 2015.

I will be posting thoughts and ideas on whatever topics interest me. As that first and perhaps greatest essayist Montaigne once said, “There is no subject so frivolous that does not merit a place in this rhapsody.”

I welcome comments.