Slaves to our System

Originally written in my journal, December 23, 2011.

 

I am so selfish.  I am so filthy rich, so disgustingly entitled, so blindly unaware of my advantaged status.

Why does Veronica live with four kids in a trailer park, while I live 3 miles up the mountain, past the factories, past the dirt, past the mid-size houses and into the neighborhood of elite?  Why does Veronica work at an insurance company that doesn’t pay enough to cover a single child’s Christmas gift, while rich donors are sending me to the world’s greatest school so that I can in turn make gobs of money and donate it back to another socioeconomically privileged snob?

You can’t tell me that our system is a meritocracy.  You can’t tell me that the people who work the hardest get the most.  You can’t tell me that this market, this invisible hand to which we outsource our morals is a fair way to distribute the worlds resources.

Our system is unfair and unequitable because we have made it so.  Because of greed.  Because of unfortunate circumstances outside of others control that we attribute to market forces and because of fortunate circumstances outside our own control that we attribute to our great skill.

Why do I have to spend my hours convincing people that business can do good and make maximum profits?  Isn’t doing good enough?  Isn’t giving Veronica hope, fulfillment, and a sufficient paycheck enough?  Do I also have to return the maximum amount of cash back into Investor A’s pocket so that he can donate more funds to send snobs like me to his alma mater?  Capitalism, market forces were not shoved upon us–we created them to distribute resources in our society.  We are not a slave to our system.  We don’t like it, we change it.

So let’s get to work and change our system.  For the sake of Veronica’s Christmas.  And for the sake of our souls.

The Realist (and realest) Idealism

For six years, I was politically dysfunctional.  Not in the sense that I was mistaken in my thinking or that I was pursuing a somehow abhorrent path, but rather that I was not following any path at all.  I did not have a wrong, unusual, or negative opinion–I had no opinion whatsoever.  While surrounding me in school, in the news, and in family discussions were opinions of right or left (mostly right), conservative or liberal (mostly conservative), private or public solutions (mostly private), I felt like I could not intelligently comment.  Not only that, but I was paralyzed in making significant decisions about my own life trajectory–what career should I pursue?  To what causes and organizations should I attach myself?

I somehow had the idea that all I had to do was figure out on which side I was stood, then magically I would be able to spar with the best of them about health care, welfare, and war.  All I had to do was figure out which political philosophy worked.  For six years, I tried to choose a side.  I tried to figure out which side I was on, which side reflected truth, which side was the way that the world should work.  For six years, I was completely stagnant–completely hung between ideas.  I was continually bothered, but unable to find the thorn.  How should the world work?

 

After six years of searching, of non-argument, of stagnation, I found my answer:

Neither.

 

Neither of our political parties, presented as philosophies of government and society, represented the clear and correct answer.  Both, in theory, had the same end goal–and both, in theory, would work.  How, then should I decide?

I was starting from the wrong place.  Rather than take the current political framework as a binary choice, I had to step back and ask a broader question.  The bigger picture.  And not even the bigger picture, but the vast, massive, huge, millennial picture of how the world works.  Not “what role should government play?”  But “what does an ideal society look like?”

 

But, challenged a friend, you are just being an idealist; the world does not work like that.  The world is how it is and we must function within its rules and must make choices within the realm of raw human nature.

Yes, I am being an idealist, I agreed.  I am also being completing real. I am being practical.  

I am being practical because I seek an idealism based in true principles.  I believe in a God who wants the best for the human race, His children.  He has promised us that “men are, that they might have joy” both in mortal life and in life after death (see 2 Nephi 2:25).  This belief gives me the sustaining hope of improved existence for all mankind.  And because my idealist belief is based in God, the most reliable source of knowledge, I can be certain of its truth.  Of its reality.

And that is why my idealism is the most real.  I am an idealist and a realist.  Because, in the case of our world and its potential, the idealist view is in fact the realest. 

 

What followed such an long-in-coming epiphany was (and is) a continuing exploration of three questions:

What should society look like?

What principles govern that society?

What we should do now to bring our current society closer to that ideal state?

Bearing Witness

Originally written as a personal essay to my family on March 3, 2011.

I don’t need someone to take my experience away.  I don’t need my load lifted, changed, or taken off.  But I have been through this experience.  I have been pushed continuously to my limits more than I thought was possible.  And I survived.  I have learned and am learning so much about who I am, how I fit into the world.  My mind is overburdened with thoughts and with insights that my brow is constantly furrowed.

I need someone to bear witness to my experience.  I need someone to listen, to acknowledge the fact that I have experienced this thing.

We are so tempted to be fixers.  To take away, change, lift, or carry.  But, in fact, we are not asked to do that.  We are simply asked to comfort.  To mourn alongside.  And by so doing to bear one another’s burdens.

How would the world be different if we would bear witness to each others experiences?  If we would bear witness to their trials, their lists, their burdens. We may make meals and we may pay tolls but do we bear witness to the experiences that we are having?  Do we acknowledge the lists of other people in a real way?  By so doing, we may see things differently.

For me, my experience was 12 months of unbelievable work.  I did this thing.  I did 17 hours in a day.  I did Saturdays.  I did building relationships.  I did failing.  I did hiring  and training three people.  I did running a process.  I did things that nobody around me knew how to do.

And I don’t need someone to tell me that I was great.  I don’t need someone to praise my work.  Neither do I need pity.  Neither do I need strategies for how to improve next time this comes along.  No, I just need acknowledgement of what I’ve been through.

Now, I am experiencing a rather intense period of personal learning, which I can hardly explain.  I am making connections across experiences that constantly fill my mind.  I need an outlet which to share those things.  I need this experience I am having to be acknowledged.  Otherwise, what is it for? Otherwise, did it happen?

I am a doer.  I see a problem and I want it fixed.  I see the world’s problems and I want to fix them, but I am almost immediately overwhelmed by the complexity and sheer size of such problems.  I cannot make a real dent.  I cannot actually solve world hunger, women’s rights, low-income education, prisoner’s re-entry, abuse, or war.  But I can bear witness.  I can acknowledge that these things are happening and come together with my fellow men to share their experiences and to bear their burdens.  To comfort.  To mourn.  To bear one another’s burdens.

In the performance of Theatre of War, we took place in community grieving.  We witnessed readings of Sophocles’ plays Ajax and Philoctetes.  When Sophocles, a general, wrote them, the plays were shown to 1,000s of greek citizen-soldiers in a community amphitheatre.  They depict the tragedy, atrocity, and failure of war.  Why?  Why show it?  Why show it to those who experience it daily?  Because the plays were an act of acknowledgement of what they had been through.  An act of community grieving.  To comfort the afflicted.  To afflict the comfortable.  The people couldn’t erase the war.  They couldn’t fix the pain they were experiencing.  But they could acknowledge the shared experience.

In the second play, a wounded solider was left for dead on an island.  But, in fact, his greatest wish was not to be healed, but to not be alone.  We could not heal him, but we could stand with him.  Do we leave others behind because we can’t stand their afflictions?  Because we don’t have the ability to fix them?

Our greatest wish as humans is not to lead a life without trials.  But to experience a life with others.

If we can see the goal as not to eliminate all trials, but rather to experience and love one another, I think we might approach relationships differently. I think we might approach solutions differently.

Much of what we do is a plea for acknowledgement.  Why do mom’s write blogs?  Why do both Laurel and Susan start writing blogs as soon as the kids are over at their houses?  Because they want excessive praise?  Because they want us to fly there and help them do what they do?  Neither, I would venture.  Because they seek acknowledgement for the experience they are having.

Why do we go to church?  Because others can physically take off some of the things on our lists?  Sometimes.  To realize that we are not alone? Perhaps.  But sometimes we are in fact alone.  Nobody at church or in our families can perfectly understand the place from which we are coming. Perhaps sometimes we go to church precisely because we are alone.  Because we need other people to bear witness to our life—our life that only we can understand.

Christ is the only being who actually can empathize with perfection.  Perhaps this is why he is the only one able to truly lift our burden:  because he can acknowledge—he  can bear witness—with perfect understanding the experiences we are having.  His acknowledgement helps us bear our burden.

If we are to truly bear one another’s burdens, we must be willing to bear witness to those burdens.  We must bear witness to one another because we can’t always fix.  We can’t always take away.  But we can always acknowledge.  We must bear witness to one another because Christ bears witness to us.  He is the only being who can understand with perfection.  He can fix.  He can take away.  And He can bear witness to our burdens.  And in so doing, heal our souls.

Reflections and Outlets

Originally written in my personal journal on July 7, 2011.

There’s something to reflection.  Something so game-changing, so minorly intrusive that I never take the minutes to do it.

My thriving off a sense of ridiculous accomplishment often overshadows my soul’s cry for learning and connecting.  When I am able to surmount the hump of intellectual laziness, however, the results are extraordinarily satisfying.

Two quick examples, followed by a slightly longer example:

- Upon completing an article in the Economist regarding an international treat to improve the rgulations for domestic workers, I immediately flipped the page in search of another article–I have limited time and a whole global economy to digest!  Pausing, however, I turned back the page to chew on what I had learned for another 100 seconds or so.  I thought about the actual effect of such a treat and whether the gongs and banners would actually improve the situation of Maria the Guatemalan housemaid.  It hought about self-gratifying poverty pmping.  I thought about tools versus solutions.

- Ten minutes ago, I decided to take a cruise back in time and read my journal from 2000.  The first entry–dated March 12–contained a quote by President Kimball, who stated that “…those who keep a personal journal are more likely to keep the Lord in remembrance in their daily lives.”  I immediately turned the page–I have 11 years of personal history to recall!  Pausing, I turned back to the quote and asked myself if that statement was true in my life.  Yes, I decided, and out popped this journal entry.

My third such experience is on a life-turn, rather than a page-turn level.

- During 2010, I was an unrelenting accomplisher.  And I rocked at it.  I hit an emotional brick wall when my to-do list was shortened, and I lost a bit of my identity.  Floundering, pacing back and forth in my apartment, I began to think.  Not just about the near-term or even about my future, but about the world and my place in it.  About interactions.  About connections.  And I felt burdened.  For 12 months, I had zero time to reflect on anything but evalution metrics and how thrilled I was for my head to hit the pillow.  Suddenly I was asking broader questions.  And it weighed on me.

The spirit spoke to my soul and out came my personal essay on “Bearing Witness.”  My reflections, a burden on their own, needed an outlet.

 

There’s something to having an outlet.  Something so stimulating, so alarmingly refreshing that I have to take the minutes to do it.

Without an outlet, reflections remain amorphous lines of thought-code, spinning in heavy circles.  When given an outlet, those same disjointed thoughts are forced into communicable, linear questions and ideas.  They become real.  They can be built upon.  They can be born witness to.

My previously-mentioned reflection break-through could not have happened without an outlet–in this case, via the written word and live conversations to follow.  I’ve found that these outlets–namely, my journal, spare pages in my work notebook, and friend with whom I connect with at a different level–have been the essential ingredient to my recent period of astonishing personal growth and learning.

 

Think about it.

And let me know what you think.