A Memoir That Speaks to Me on Many Levels--"Free" by Lea Ypi

    

Free is a great memoir.  It takes its place for me next to those of my other two favorites: James Reston's "Deadline" and Katherine Graham's "Personal History". Each of these memoirs tells a unique  human story in unforgettable, candid prose. But each does something else: they cause me to reflect on aspects of my own life.

Lea Ypi's horrific portrayal of the civil war going on in Albania in 1997 feeds in a macabre horrific all -too human  way to the humanitarian disaster going on now in Ukraine,  the cataclysmic turn to the past in Russia, and the infernal continuing deadly repression of the Palestinians quest for independence by Israel.

 

The author writes:  “Nobody understands anything.  It’s like a whole country committing suicide.  Just when it looked like things were getting better, it all went downhill.  Now that we are all falling from a precipice, there is no way back.  It’s so much worse than 1990.  At least there was hope and democracy then.  Now there is nothing, just a curse.”

 

Yet Ypi does not leave us off the hook. She goes on to recall  what she tells her students teaching Marxism at the London School of Economics.  It is, she describes, “a theory of human freedom, of how to think about progress and history, of how we adapt to circumstances but also try to rise above them.  Freedom is not sacrificed only when others tell us what to say, where to go, how to behave.  A society that claims to enable people to realize their potential but fails to change the structures that prevent everyone from flourishing is also oppressive.  And yet, despite all the constraints, we never lose our inner freedom:  the freedom to do what is right.”

A call to the ultimate duty: trying to do what is right. Giving all people the opportunity to succeed as best we can.

She talks to friends at school about her growing up in Albania, first a communist, then a socialist country.  They reject the socialism which she had.  It wasn’t real.  “There was only one thing to do,” they said.  “Forget it.”  She was reluctant to forget it, not out of nostalgia, not because the concepts she had grown up with were so deeply rooted that it was impossible to disentangle herself but because, “If there was one history, if there was one lesson to be taken from the history of my family, and of my country, it was that people never make history under circumstances they choose.  It is easy to say ‘what you had was not the real thing,’ applying that to both socialism and liberalism, to any complex hybrid of ideas and reality.  It releases us from the burden of responsibility.  We are no longer complicit in moral tragedies created in the name of great ideas, and we don’t have to reflect, apologize and learn.”

 

So it is with the circumstances in which I have lived we all live.  Life is not perfect; it’s never been perfect; it never will be perfect.  We just have to make the most out of it that we can.  I return as I often have to what I hope my grandchildren will be able to say about me and my wife, Francie.  “They did the best they could under the circumstances.”  To be clear, I’m not sure we always do; sometimes we’re too ready to give up, feel sorry for ourselves, retreat into gloom.  But usually we do pull back, try to see our better selves and follow our better instincts. 

 

In the book’s Epilogue, the author turns very personal.  She reveals that her mother wondered, even if silently, how she (Lea) could be teaching socialism and Marxism.  Only once did she draw attention to a cousin’s remark that my grandfather did not spend 15 years locked up in prison so that I would leave Albania to defend socialism.  “I knew this is what she thought.  I always wanted to clarify, didn’t know where to start.  I thought it would take a book to answer.  This is that book.  

 

At first, it was going to be a philosophical book about the overlapping ideas of freedom and the Liberal and Socialist traditions, but when I started writing, ideas turned into people—the people who made me who I am.  They loved and fought each other; they had different conceptions of themselves, and of their obligations.  They were, as Marx writes, the product of social relations for which they were not responsible.  Still, they tried to rise above them.  They thought they had succeeded, but when their aspirations became reality, their dreams turned into my disillusionment.”

 

“My family equated socialism with denial:  the denial of who they wanted to be, the right to make mistakes and learn from them, to explore the world on one’s own terms.  I equated liberalism with broken promises, the destruction of solidarity, the right to inherit privilege, selfish enrichment, cultivating illusions or turning a blind eye toward justice.  In some ways, I have gone full circle.  When you see a system change once, you start believing that it can change again.  Fighting cynicism and political apathy turns into what some might call a moral duty; to me it is more of a debt that I feel I owe to all people of the past who sacrificed everything because they were not apathetic, they were not cynical, they did not believe that things fall into place if you just let them take their course.  If I do nothing, their efforts will have been wasted, their lives will have been meaningless.”

 

 

Lea writes with deep feeling. “My world is as far from freedom as the one my parents tried to escape.  Both fall short of that ideal.  But their failures took distinctive forms, and without being able to understand them, we will remain divided.  I wrote my story to explain, to reconcile and to continue the struggle.”

Yes, continue the struggle. That is our responsibility. That is our opportunity.

 

I would conclude these excerpts and perspectives  with a short endorsement for this luminous memoir another writer offered and which I echo: “A lyrical memoir of deep and affecting power, the sweet smell of humanity mingled with flesh, blood and hope.”

---

Geo-Political Hopes Dashed--Family Relationships Keep Hope Alive

  

Geo-Political Hopes Dashed – Family Relationships Keep Hope Alive

 

As I reflect here today, Monday, November 20, with the world aflame around me in so many places, I lament the crushing of two of my greatest geo-political hopes of the last 30+ years:  the recovery and rise of Russia integrated and at peace with the West and the continued growth and rise of China as a member of the world community with underlying positive, if sometimes competitive, relations with the U.S. and West.

 

I hardly need say that those visions have been dashed.  I’m not going to take the time to rehearse the underlying irresistible historical and cultural elements that have led to this, nor the errors of human agency on all sides which contributed to it.  All I can say is that if we have been surprised by these turn of events, we can be surprised again and probably will be as a result of changing circumstances and changed leadership, hopefully for the better, closer to my original vision, which I believe is essential for the peace and safety of China and Russia and the entire world.

 

If my hopes have been dashed on the geo-political front, they have been lifted and nurtured by the growth and wonder of my family:  my children, their spouses and ten grandchildren.  And I’ve been lifted, too, by the courage and aspiration of countless other individuals whom I’ve known, most recently nursing aides who have helped me through the night as I recovered from my knee surgery.

 

There is so much kindness in this world. My wife, Francie and I experienced it recently in the airport as people helped us trundle along in our two wheelchairs, looking after us personally, always with a caring smile.

 

There is much good in this world.  It was manifested in a beautiful sermon I heard yesterday from Christ Church’s Owen Thompson.  All any of us can do, what I can do, is make the most of every situation by trying to do  something helpful for those around us. In short, to be kind.

 

I return to what I hope my grandchildren will say of Francie and me:  they tried to do their best. They tried to make the most of what they had and do good for others.

 

What Means the Most to Our Nation and to Our Lives -Reflections on Ben Rhodes' "After the Fall"

 I finished reading Ben Rhodes’ After the Fall, with increased respect for the author and for the insights he offers.  Let me capture these overall perspectives:

 

1.      Rhodes is extraordinarily honest in assessing his own perceptions of the role of the faults and some of the strengths of America.  He is deeply introspective and transparent. 

 

However, I believe that he looks at the failures to live up to the founding principles of the country (freedom, liberty, opportunity for all) without adequatley recognizing that the outages he cites have been common to our history and, indeed, to every nation’s history.  He says it well when he writes, “There was nothing inherent in America that made us immune to the viruses that had consumed all manners of societies in the past, and that we were capable of spreading those viruses to other countries.”  He refers here to the seeking of unbridled wealth, a grandiose sense of superiority and exceptionalism, taking strength from comparison to some inferior “other.” 

 

I believe he’s right, though it’s risky territory in saying that, “You have to look squarely at the darkest aspects of what America is in order to fully, truly love what America is supposed to be.”  The challenge here is to make sure that we not lose sight of the many times and in many ways we have achieved new dimensions of “what America is supposed to be.”

 

2.      I believe this:  “Even if flawed, America still offers the world a unique opportunity, an example of citizens of now a multi-ethnic, multi-racial democracy can change things for the better.”  At our best, we have done that many times, often drifting, but more often than not—and may this be one of those times—reorienting our course and doubling down on doing our best.

 

3.      What is it in the end that makes “America special,” even if not uniquely privileged?

 

Personally, I believe it is our diversity.  Our openness to innovation, our curiosity, our founding principles which, even if not achieved, provide a constant compass as to where we should head and where we need to improve. 

 

Our central challenge lies in giving everyone a greater chance for the opportunity to participate in the dynamics and life of the country, through the foundations of good health, education and the eradication of prejudice, including, but not solely, racism.  These are what can stand in the way of an individual being all they can be. 

 

4.      We face a constant challenge of assessing how much weight should be given to addressing our failure to provide equal opportunity in the past to African-Americans and Native Americans, as a rationale for taking action to provide equal opportunity today. I believe that weight is a large one.

 

5.      Rhodes identifies a central challenge we face today and that is the denial of what are true facts.  People have always lived in separate realities but today, due to social media in particular I believe, and to fragmented media, it is greater than ever.  Rhodes says it well:  “Once people choose to exist in an entirely separate reality, it is no easy task to bring them back, especially when every turn of national events can be framed as a validation of their grievances.  We will be living with the residue of the radicalization for a long time.” 

 

Still, we must be sober about this.  It’s not the first time we’ve faced this.  The country lived for decades with very different understandings of what the Civil War was all about, states’ rights or the protection of slavery.  We lived for a long time with different beliefs in the extent to which Communists had penetrated our government.  Senator Joe McCarthy carried that flag. 

 

What’s the answer here:  Stay at it, recognize that progress takes time and overcome reversals along the way.  Be as sure as we can that the education which young people receive reflects the truth as we can best define it.  We have a challenge on that front right now in the battle going on over how we teach the history of this country.

 

6.      Rhodes recounts a conversation with Obama.  Obama observes that he has recently been asking his close friends a simple question:  “What gives you a sense of joy and meaning in life and at what moments do you feel that?”  Here is a truly and profoundly important question.  The answer is one which I believe will have a great deal in common between the men and women in every country on earth.

 

When I think of that question, here is what comes to my mind:

 

·         Being with my wife Francie or one or more of our children and their children in some quiet and beautiful place.  On the deck of the cottage at Pointe au Baril, Canada. Or in a forest in North Carolina with my daaughter, Susan.   Or talking to my son,. David at his farm.  Or walking with my son, Douglas at Fort Funston or with him and his family at Half Moon Bay, California. 

·         Walking the beach in the early morning at Vero Beach, Florida with my son, John. Sitting on a chair at home, looking at the expanse of our backyard, trees in full bloom, leaves rustling in the breeze.

·         Sitting together with Francie, just the two of us, at our favorite table on the patio at Murphin Ridge Inn outside Cincinnati, with the breeze blowing, and birds chirping, surrounded by members of the staff who have become like family.

Yes, the simple things with our family are the most meaningful just as they are the most memorable.

The Uphill But Essential Continued Battle for Rational Gun Regualation--The Story of the AR-15

 I found McWhirter's and Elinson's "American Gun: The Trues Story of the AR-15" to be a gripping, informing and mind-opening, mind-chilling study of the development of this killing machine in this country.  It is enlivened by the authors’ embedding the statistics and facts of the many massacres (Sandy Hook; Parkland; Las Vegas casino; etc., etc.) in personal stories.

The authors provide meaningful international context for the out-of-bounds growth of guns and particularly the AR-15 in our country.  It tracks the futile legislative efforts to control the damage being done.

Many new insights emerged:

·       Every time there was even the threat of gun legislation being passed, sales of the AR-15 catapulted.

·       The 1994 gun control legislation, which had been so strongly fought for, was supposed to stop all manufacture and sales of the AR-15s in the United States.  Nineteen different guns were identified and magazines of over ten shells prohibited.  It didn’t work.  It was easy to get around the definition that had been provided of automatic weapons.  The definition had been characterized by military features which manufacturers quickly changed.  Instead of controlling gun sales, it created a sustained unprecedented demand for civilian versions of the rifle which had never caught on with the buying public before.  More than 62,000 AR-15s were built for sale in the U.S. in 1993, double the previous year, and in the next year, that number climbed to 103,000. 

·       The sales of the AR-15 took another jump forward as private equity moved in,  bought up a lot of manufacturers and figured out how to market it.  They created a “Buckmaster Man Card.”  Advertised it in Maxim, a very popular magazine for young males 18-34.  This came at a time when the male physique had been deteriorating.  The average weight of the male in 1960 was 166 lbs.  By 2010, it had increased to 196 lbs.  The “Mancard" became a badge of masculinity.  They cynically described the AR-15 as a “modern sporting rifle.” 

·       The Parkland shootings did result in meaningful state legislation, thanks to aggressive work by young people and organizations like "Moms Against Guns".  Twenty-four states across the country enacted new gun control laws.  Many passed red-flag laws.  New Jersey and Vermont passed restrictions on high-capacity magazines. 

·       Research conducted by several reputed professors have found two policies in particular showed promise.  First, laws requiring a permit to purchase or possess a gun could reduce the number of mass shootings.  The second policy that showed promise was restricting large-capacity magazines.  That didn’t reduce the number of mass shootings, but it reduced the number of people killed. 

 

There are obvious solutions to this continued carnage that sadly won’t be touched with a ten-foot pole.  For example, regulations for years have required anyone acquiring a machine gun to register it, be fingerprinted, etc.  There have been no mass shootings with machine guns.  In Japan, anyone getting a gun must have a doctor certificate and register it.  Similar controls are in place in Australia and New Zealand.  They acted at the same time as we were passing the ineffectual gun control legislation in the mid-1990s. 

 

There is no question we are a country of guns.  It is estimated that there are now close to 25 million AR-15's in circulation. We have to be practical in seeking control and there are practical answers.  Fingerprints to activate the gun only primed by the owner (just like a cell phone).  Registration of all automatic weapons.  Limit to magazine sizes.  Full background checks, including gun shows.  The majority of American people would agree to all of these provisions.  What’s lacking is the political will to make them happen.  Those organizations like Moms against Guns must keep up the fight.  And they will.  We’re not going to limit the disasters that exist simply because of the already omni-presence of guns.  But we can limit the disaster for the future for our grandchildren and their grandchildren if we act on what is right and we know to be true. That is our responsibility. 

The Depths of Unvarnished Prejudice Against Blacks by Educated Northerners On the Verge of the Civil War

A chilling, eye-opening reminder:

 The speech of Francis P. Blair, Jr. (a congressman and Senator of the United States and graduate of Princeton and Yale) to the Mercantile Library in Missouri in January 1859, presents a telling picture of the attitude of many well-educated men and women of the time toward African-Americans.

 

His lengthy talk boiled down to the strong pronouncement that the enslaved people should be set free and re-located to a tropical climate suited to their nature.  His opposition to slavery rested in part in the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that all men are created equal, but also on the belief that slavery threatened the expansion of free White labor, an expansion which Blair felt essential to the health of this still developing country.

 

His position was based on an uncompromising conviction that the White race was superior to all other races, including Native American and African.  He writes that, “The White man is stronger in endurance than the African.  Our country is in the temperate, not the torrid, zone; and we find that, even in…Texas, the emigrant Germans produced the best and highest-priced cotton, and more of it to the acre, than unslaved plantations.  When the cloud (of slavery) passes over Virginia, and its renovation is proscribed in the adjoining Carolinas, it will pass, too, from their worn-out lands and White freeholders will renew them, and make more cotton from their 100-acre fields than will be obtained from plantations of 1,000 devastated by slave culture.”

 

He concludes, “How grandly our nation would loom up, in the eyes of the world, if abandoning the policy which makes it the taskmaster of slaves, it should lay its hands to the work, not only of our freedom to the race which has so long and so faithfully served us and our fathers, but to recompense them for their long servitude, by giving them all homes in regions congenial to their natures, and guaranteeing to them a free government of their own in which, without ceasing to be a part of this country, they should be to themselves and escape the presence of that social subordination and inferiority inseparable from the contact of different races in the same community.  The moral power and grandeur of the act would challenge the admiration of the world, and make our later fame surpass the glory of the great struggle which gives us a place among nations.”

 

I find it surprising that a man as well-educated as Blair, and so well-connected politically, could in 1859 harbor the notion that Blacks could be “exported” to a tropical land.  This had been pursued by the American Colonization Society for decades.  It had been resisted, vociferously, by Black leaders and, from my perspective, had lost traction with political leadership.

 

The overriding conviction by Blair that there were qualities of the African-American race that led them to forever be inferior to Whites is, sadly, a sentiment that still exists among too many 150 years after Blair recorded this unvarnished  conviction. 

 

 

The Role of Human Agency--The Difference Individuals Can Make

 

During a conversation during a recent P&G Alumni Reunion, I was asked for my perspective on the developments that have occurred in Russia and China over the past three decades.

 

My answer was that my reaction was one of great disappointment.  I had never expected Russia to mirror  Western culture or way of life.  It was equally clear that this would not happen in China, though I did believe that as China continued to open up economically, it would gravitate to a more open society with more individual rights to choose. How wrong I was.

The two most surprising geo-political events in my lifetime have both involved Russia:

 

1.     The peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989-90, and

2.     The reversion of Russia to a position of outright antagonism to the West, once again feeling surrounded, now proclaiming its own way of life, radically different from what President Putin cites as the corrosive evolution of  Western culture.

 

In the cases of both Russia and China, it’s clear to me looking back, I underestimated the determinative impact of history, culture, political dynamics,  geography, and economic development.

 

Over the course of history, there have been on-going debates among historians, social scientists and philosophers about the relative importance of individual action compared to structural forces, cultural factors and other determinative factors in shaping the course of human history. 

 

Some have argued for what is called be the “Great Man Theory.”-- that history is driven significantly by influential leaders and  thinkers who shape events and drive historical progress. 

 

Other schools fostering a historical perspective driven by“determinism” argue that human history is primarily shaped by external forces and by history.  They believe that individuals have limited agency and that it is broader structural forces  which drive change.

 

Going back to my reflections on Russia and China, there is no doubt that the deterministic factors of history,  environment and culture have provided a defined scope with which individuals can operate.  But there is also no doubt in my mind that individual agency has been massively at play in the development of the history of those two countries over the course of the last half-century.

 

I would argue that the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire never would have happened if it were not for the vision, courage and determination of Mikhail Gorbachev.  And his vision and determination were enabled and amplified on an individual basis by the wisdom of George H.W. Bush and James Baker. 

 

I would go on to argue that, while it was certain that Russia was going to redefine its place in the world as a major power, having been brought to its knees in the 1990s, the turn it has taken has been highly influenced by the person of Vladimir Putin.  And also by the complex of political decisions that contributed to the current divide,  most importantly in my view the decision to expand NATO to the borders of Russia. 

That, too, was a function of human agency. 

 

In China’s case, the  speed and direction of the evolution of China was greatly  influenced by the person of Deng Xiaoping and Zhu Rongji, with whom I worked personally.  They had a distinct vision of working together with the West,  albeit certainly with the goal of maximizing China’s economic development and the strength that would come from it.

 

President Xi comes from a different school. He has set out to establish China as a unique power in the world. He would claim China is only seeking coexistence with the United States , but clearly China today is laying claim to be the the dominant power in Southeast Asia, much as they see the United States having done in the Caribbean. This has produced a conflict with the United States which has led to our increasing viewing each other as existential enemies, which we need not and should not be.

 

*****

 

This question of human agency goes beyond geo-political issues.  The role of human agency comes down to the relationships within our families; it comes down to the impact we have on those organizations we are part of.  Organizations, too, are affected by structural and cultural forces that will shape their future. However,  within that determined framework, the individual can and does make an enormous difference.  To be sure, it’s often an  individual working with other individuals.  But the individual makes the difference. 

 

How else do you explain that some companies, a very few like Procter & Gamble, can exist and succeed for over 180 years while maintaining leadership, while others, once leaders, fall by the wayside.  There were common forces affecting all these companies.  Some made it through successfully.  Some didn’t.  Individual agency at different point of history made the difference.

 

Closer to home, there is the role of individual agency in one’s family.  The impact one has in ones family is also influenced  by certain constraints, historical roots, the economic exigencies of the moment  But they still leave all life-determining room for the agency of a parent. 

Take my own life.  My  mother made an irrepaceable difference in my life.  Her belief in me, the confidence she bred in me, her willingness to make every personal sacrifice for my success, had everything to do with my success.  It was not inevitable that I’d have a parent like my mother, not at all.  

 

And when I read about the success stories of individuals who have risen from challenging circumstances to achieve success, there is always the influence provided by individual agency. 

 

For me, this reality provides enormous encouragement to do our best in positively impacting the lives of other people whom we meet and taking proactive steps to meet more people whose lives we can in some way benefit. And it also gives me hope that the brutal and  seemingly hopeless situations currently prevailing in Russia and Ukraine and in Israel and Palestine will some day turn for the better as a result of wise and courageous human agency. We have seen it happen before.

 

When you reach the age of 85, as I have, you realize even more that we have been placed on this earth for a very small amount of time.  The scope of our opportunities will be more or less limited.  But  whatever they are, each of us has the opportunity to play a role of positive human agency in contributing to the lives of others. I will continue to try to make the most of it.