We Are Not Alone--My Classmate, Bart Giamatti

We Are Not Alone  -- Independence is Achieved through Broadening our Connections: Intellectual, Spiritual and Human

Bart Giamatti was a classmate of mine.  He served as President of Yale from 1977-86.  His convictions and eloquently expressed beliefs mirror my own.

This is an extract from his address to the entering class at Yale thirty years ago, in fall 1988:

At the heart of the American belief in individual initiatives, in solitary striving and common responsibility, in sacred individual and shared freedoms, in consent leading to liberty leading to a civil order that guarantees liberty build on consent, is the covenant of the family.  And while the idea and the reality of family may be exploited or made banal, while there is always a gap between the ideal of family and anyone’s actual familiar circumstances, nothing can finally lessen the power of the idea of the family or indeed lessen the sum of humanity’s wisdom that tells us the family provides an irreducible and yet splendidly elastic model for the coherence of freedom and order.

And thus by a circuit roundabout but relevant we come back to today.  You have—perhaps for the first time—now removed yourself from family at the beginning of your journey toward what I called at the outset a state of independence.  The University cannot and should not, and will not, displace your family.  Your family, in whatever shape it takes, is and always will be yours, the first seminary of values and affection and connection. But as you grow, the University will provide other versions of family, connections of intellect in common academic pursuits, connections of shared striving in athletic and artistic and social activities, connections of shared and pleasurable daily life in the manageable, intelligible life of a dormitory or residential college.  You will find, to say it all, that a state of independence is achieved by broadening your connections and affiliations, intellectual, spiritual, human.

The paradox into which one gradually grows, through education and throughout one’s life, is that independence is achieved through consenting to interdependence.  I believe we grow in individual liberty in this country when we recognize the human needs and rights of others.  I believe a state of independence comes when we decide through our intellect and spirit to forge human connections.  Without connections, there is no individual coherence. There is no independence to uprootedness, there is only drift and decay; there is no growth of the moral and mental powers of the self if the self alone is the ultimate goal of learning. Independence of an enduring kind, noble and practical, arrives only when one realizes what it means, in all its glory and responsibility, that one is not alone.  

In all I have said of family and a state of independence, I urge you to engage the paradox.  I believe we all come to live, that the individual begins to fulfill his or her potential and power through a deepening awareness of and contact with the differing needs and rights of other people.  I am urging you not to resolve that paradox but to use your opportunity for education fully to fulfill that paradox.  It takes work.  The human race or America or Yale or you in your relationships are not a family because someone says so.  The encouragement to individual strivings and the shared guardianship of freedoms does not occur because someone declares that the family lives. Labels do not make life no matter how assiduously or skillfully applied.  It takes work.

As we all have, you too may find difficult moments here as you grapple with how best to fit together individual initiative and community custom, how best to maintain tolerance while pressing disagreement, how to remember that the freedoms you assume must be maintained for everyone else too, or yours disappear.  Do not doubt for a moment, my friends, your capacities for living fully the paradox of independence and interdependence.  

Empathy: The Golden Coin

Our progress in understanding one another will only go so far as empathy takes us.

 

We can only have empathy if we walk in humility.

 

That can only happen through relationships.  We can fuel our anger and sense of righteousness by e-mails.  We often do.  But we don’t build relationships that way.  

 

Empathy requires presence, proximity, touch, sacrifice, “staying.”

 

To enter into the hurt and sorrow of another person guarantees that you’ll lose something, but you will come out more human on the other end.

  I believe it all has to start by recognizing that we are all created in the image of God.  Equal in dignity, value and worth. I believe it will be fueled by recognizing that we are all on the journey of life, of unknown but relatively short length, and if we are able to help one another along the way, that is a good thing. Empathy allows us do this. 

 

The Role Teachers Play in Building Our Expectations and Helping Us Become Who We Are

Almost thirty years ago, in May, 1989, I addressed a group of award winning K-12 teachers. 

I concluded my remarks saying that there is only one thing that I wouldn’t dream of leaving here without talking with you.  It is something that I have seen played out in my life and in other peoples’ lives again and again. 

I’m talking about the role of expectations and values…and the incredible role that teachers have played for me and my family in building our expectations and values—and hence our future.

My deep, deep conviction in the role teachers play in creating our future goes back to my earliest years.

While I was blessed with a good home and wonderful parents who were ready to make any sacrifice to help me get a good education—still I know I would not be the person I am today if it were not for a handful of teachers that I can vividly remember to this very day.  They influenced my life in a variety of ways.  The inculcated a love of learning and the thrill of discovering new concepts. And they provided a good dose of plain faith and discipline.

But above all,  they conveyed to me the belief that I could do well.  That was so important.  It is one thing—and a very important thing—to have your mother or father express confidence in you, but it is also an enormously important thing to have that confidence expressed by a teacher, particularly one you respect.

In preparing for this talk, I went back to my report cards which, believe it or not, I still have from high school—1952-56.

Some of them brought tears to my eyes as I more than ever recognized the influence of a particular teacher.  I would just like to read you a couple of excerpts from these report cards. While they may not be totally clear in their meaning, they will give you a sense of what this teacher did for me.

His name was Andrew Jenks. He was my homeroom teacher and my math teacher.  Here was his report after he had known me for about six months in my first year:

“John is a very able and likeable boy.  His overall record is a good one for his first term in the regular session—though I am sure it could be improved and I hope he will strive for such improvement.  Just as he is prone to a certain messiness and disorder about his desk, so I suspect he may often be rather distracting from the full excellence he might achieve.  He is quite quick and his thoughts may often get ahead of his writing with this effect.

Perhaps a little greater care would make the difference.  Both Mathematics and French would probably benefit from a more careful approach.  I trust he will work hard to make good his recent gains in Latin without letting any other subjects suffer.  For surely he is well able to do so.”

I think I’d better stop there. He got a little more critical after that.

That report was the tip of the iceberg.  Andrew Jenks talked to me daily.  He didn’t book any compromise.  He could be gruff. But I knew he respected me, I knew he cared for me and I knew he wanted the best for me.

Some years later in my final report, here’s what he said:  “John has an excellent record which he has built up steadily since he came—nor do I feel he has reached the peak of his performance.  I greatly appreciate his good influence in the school, not to mention his bearing with me even when that may have been trying. Frankly, I take this as a great compliment because John knows how important this was to me.”  Indeed I did.  Thirty-three years ago I did.  Today, I do even more.

This teacher was just one of several who gave me a positive understanding of myself…an understanding of what I might become.  He left me with the conviction that I ought to be a top achiever…indeed that I should settle for no less…that I had that responsibility.

And Andrew Jenks conveyed to me what in my life—in school and in all my years with Procter & Gamble, I have come to regard as the single most important principle of human development.  I call it the self-fulfilling prophesy…or the Pygmalion Theory.  It is something that I believe in so deeply and it is something your profession…the teaching profession influences more than any other.  

What I experienced in school has remained true in business.  Neither I nor anyone I know would be where he or she is at Procter & Gamble today if it were not for the confidence and values that associates or teachers brought to us over the years.

And that I have found comes out of only one thing—relationships…personal relationships of trust, of caring, and of high expectations.

Young people do not assimilate values by learning words or concepts of truth and justice and their definitions.  No—they learn attitudes and habits from intensely personal relationships with their families, their teachers and their close friends.  Young people don’t learn ethical principles so much as they learn to emulate ethical or unethical people.  And they learn from role models.

And teachers like you are often the most important role model for them.

Thank you for all you do.

Some Things Aren't As New As We Think: The Partisanship of the Press

In her magnificent new history of the United States, “These Truths,” Jill Lepore recounts the thinking of James Madison in 1791.  In an essay called “Public Opinion,” Madison identified a source of instability which he believed to be particular to a large Republic:  The people might be deceived.  “The larger a country, the less easy for its real opinion to be ascertained,” he explained.  That is, factions might not, in the end, be consistent, wise, knowledgeable, and reasonable men.  They might consist of passionate, ignorant, and irrational men, who had been led to hold ‘counterfeit’ opinions by persuasive men.”  (Madison was thinking of Hamilton and his ability to gain public support for his financial plan. We have our own individuals to think of today.)

Madison went on, “A circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people is equivalent to a contraction of territorial limits.”  The way out of the political maze which Madison had cited was, in his opinion, the newspaper.

It was an ingenious idea, Lepore writes.  It would be revisited by each passing generation of exasperated advocates of Republicanism. The newspaper would hold the Republic together; the telegraph would hold the Republic together; the radio would hold the Republic together; and the internet would hold the Republic together.  Each time, this assertion would be both rightand terribly wrong.

Lepore goes on to cite the evidence:  Newspapers in the early Republic weren’t incidentally or inadvertently partisan; they were entirely and enthusiastically partisan. They weren’t especially interested in establishing facts; they were interested in staging a battle of opinions.  “Professions of impartiality I shall make none” wrote a Federalist writer.  “They are always useless, and are besides perfect nonsense.”  Does that sound familiar?

Maligned by the early founders of our nation as destructive of public life, parties, driven by newspapers (as is the case today with cable TV and social media) became its machinery. “The engine,” said Jefferson, “is the press.”

So what we see today on MSNBC and Fox News and the plethora of partisan social media isn’t really as new as we think.

As always, we need to work very hard to sort fact from partisan misrepresentation. Seeking truth as best we can. Our responsibility. 

Have We Ever Had So Many Enemies?

I can't think of a time when we were choosing to have so many "enemies".

What a change from just 15-20 years ago!

Then we saw the opportunity to work with a Russia which had cast off communism and which we believed should see its future as part of a greater Europe.

Then we saw the opportunity to work with China, not as a competitor and threat but as a trading partner and a nation we could work with on matters like climate change to improve the world.

Then we saw Canada and Mexico as partners and good neighbors.

Then we viewed Western European countries as our closest friends and allies.

We did not agree on everything. We knew they had their own interests and that they would not mesh with ours in every case. We knew there were matters of trade we would need to argue through. But we believed we could do with an outcome that better served both nations.

The Trump Administration is picking so many needless fights.

We are facing a world divided. And much of it in my view is needless and more than that dangerous to our own and the world's interest.

Trump is explicitly turning his back on the idea of working together in a global world. I can think of few things more dangerous.

He is thumbing his nose at institutions and agreements built on mutual even if sometimes shaky trust which took years and in some cases generations to build: institutions and agreements like the WTO, NAFTA, Paris Climate Agreement, the United Nations itself.

As a result, we are losing our stature as an ideological leader in the world for the first time in my eighty-year life.

The sources of the rupture of trust between Russia and China and the United States are complex. There is enough blame to go around. Russia should not have taken possession of Crimea. But it has no intent of expanding its global presence as a nation a la the Soviet Union. To do so would be suicide. Putin and every thinking Russian know this.

China is indeed an economic competitor. Naturally. And they engage in some practices in the area for example of intellectual property that need to change. But that need not, it should not make them a geo-political competitor.

The issue of who controls theSouth China sea is real but has to be resolvable. Allowing this to lead to a geo-political clash of arms would be akin to allowing the Balkans lead us into World War I, which in fact is what happened. And the current use of draconian tariffs is a crude and I believe ineffective means to try to solve the intellectual property issue. We seem to have lost our belief in diplomacy. We look to economic and military pressure to get things our way.

More than a half-century ago, President Eisenhower in his farewell address warned the Nation against what he described as a "military-industrial" complex. It is alive and well. Not with nefarious intent. Not at all. It is espoused by well-meaning people dedicated to doing what they believe is right.

I attended a conference this week. I heard talks from two retired senior military officers and a former Secretary of the Navy. They made it clear that the objective of the U.S. was to ensure our military retained its position as the "dominant force." They talked of the "threat" of China as if it was committed to expand its control across Asia as Japan did leading up to WWII. They indicated we now had about 280 ships and were committed to 355, making this something of a numbers game.
The United States military budget already exceeds the next 5-6 countries combined.

The tragedy here is not just that we are spending money that could better be placed against other national imperatives and running up our national debt. Even more important is that it fuels and in some ways calls for the drive to find adversaries against which the weapons this money funds can be targeted and thus justified. That is the biggest risk of the "military-industrial" complex about which Eisenhower warned us.

Let me not be understood. I am not naive. We have people in the world who hold ideologies dramatically counter to are own and are out to bring down our value systems, our way of life. Terrorists, ISIS, some of the leaders in Iran. We need to have the military capability to thwart and defeat their attacks and we need allies, often including in my opinion Russia and China, to do so.

I served in the military.  I respect members of the military deeply. We need them. I am conscious and humbled by how they support our lives today. And have always done so, one family member to the next. A striking fact: members of the military constitute only about 1% of the population. Almost half of them come from military families.

We will always face threats in the world. We must be realistic. But we must recognize the need to work with others to combat these threats. There is nothing new in this. We have always depended on alliances and partnerships. We must treat other countries and their leaders  with respect. We must beware of allowing natural disagreements to lead to the rupture of trust and ability to work together for "win-win" solutions. We must be willing to view the world through they eyes of our partners and yes our "enemies" too.

A Perspective on the Debate about "Originalism"

COMPARING THE U.S. CONSTITUTION (1788) TO THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION (1781) – THE PERSPECTIVE IT OFFERS ON THE DEBATE ABOUT “ORIGINALISM”

We are reading a lot of discussion, triggered by the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, about the merits of “originalism”—that is, a doctrine which, as I understand it, calls for rulings based on the literal reading of the Constitution and the best understanding of what the Framers meant by that reading.

Walter Williams’ column of 9/16/18 raises a fundamental question, as it cites two different sections of the Constitution which can lead to different conclusions on which responsibilities should be assumed by the Federal Government and which by the States.

The first cites James Madison and Federalist Paper 45:  “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined” (dealing with external objects, such as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce), “the powers (delegated) to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people.”

The other section comes from the Constitution’s Article 1, Section 8 with the phrase calling for the Federal Government to “provide for the common Defense and General Welfareof the United States.”  

The question?  What constitutes General Welfare?

Williams notes that in 1817, Thomas Jefferson wrote “Congress had unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically innumerated.”

Since then there have, of course, been Constitutional Amendments (e.g., securing the vote for all; banning slavery) which resulted in the Federal Government’s assuming roles previously conferred to the states with inhumane consequences.

In addition to the Amendments, there has been legislation (often controversial) which has seen the Federal Government undertake programs for the general welfarenot specifically innumerated in the Constitution (e.g., Social Security, workers’ safety).

I don’t believe it would have been at all surprising to the Framers to see that learning experience have led to the adoption of Amendments and Federal legislation, conferring Federal authority on issues previously in the province of the states because they bear vitally on the general welfare.  

Why do I say they wouldn’t be surprised?  Importantly, they were vividly aware of the number of significant changes that had needed to be made in the Articles of Confederation in the seven short years between their adoption and the adoption of a new set of standards in our Constitution.

Here are just a few examples of the changes that occurred in that seven-year period.

1.    Establishment of new states.  Articles:  required agreement of nine states.  The Constitution required agreement of Congress.

2.    Congressional pay.  Articles:  paid by the states:  Constitution: paid by the federal government.

3.    Appointment of Members.  Articles:  all appointed by state legislatures, in the manner each legislature directed. Constitution: representatives elected by popular votes in the states, senators appointed by state legislators.

4.    Executive. Articles:  none.  Constitution:  president.

5.    Amendments to the Constitution.  Articles:  when agreed upon by all states.  Constitution: when agreed upon by ¾ of all states.

6.    Navy. Articles:  Congress authorized to build a navy; states authorized to equip war ships to counter piracy.  Constitution:  Congress authorized to build a Navy; states not allowed to keep ships of war.

7.    Power to mint money.  Articles: United States and the states. Constitution:  United States only.

My purpose in citing these differences is not to suggest that the Constitution isn’t the foundation document which must be greatly respected.  It is to suggest that recognizing that in seven short years the founders had changed their minds on what constituted the correct role between the states and the federal government, it should not be surprising that over the course of the following 230 years, there would be changes in what constitutes the proper role of federal and state governments to achieve a condition of general welfarefor the citizens of the United States that is most desirable.

It can be (and will be) argued that such changes should be embodied in amendments as they have in many cases. However, it is also appropriate that such changes be embodied in legislation.  The Supreme Court has the responsibility to review the correctness of this legislation in light of the Constitution but it should bear in mind that—just as was the case between the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution—we should be open, based on experience, where responsibility should be allocated between the federal government and state government. 

“Originalism,” if taken to the point that we can only do what Thomas Jefferson would have viewed as correct in 1817, would be a position that I feel certain Thomas Jefferson would have declared to be wrong.

Let me emphasize that I hew strongly to what would be described as a “conservative” (I’d prefer “liberal”) position on the importance of honoring State’s rights.  I do so for two reasons.  First, because states do differ in their history, experience and needs of their citizens.  Second, and in some ways more important, states have and can serve as laboratoriesfor new learning on how to resolve and best deliver services needed to advance the welfare of the nation’s citizens. To take only one example—allied closely to my own interests—it has been the experience of different states in advancing early childhood development and pre-school education that has shown not only their value but the best ways of achieving that value.

As other examples, while I believe access to affordable, quality health care is a right that should be available to all citizens (without good health, what chance does anyone have to achieve a fulfilling life?), I agree that giving states latitude in howto best achieve that objective makes great sense because we have much more to learn.  Interestingly (and rather ironically) on health care, it was the initiative of Republican Mitt Romney as Governor of Massachusetts which produced a template which was largely adopted by President Obama with the Affordable Care Act. (This, despite the fact that it has been vigorously attacked by Republicans.)

I believe the decision as to how much latitude states should have in enacting a federally mandated right will forever be a matter for legislative and judicial dispute.  Take voting.  The right of every person to vote is now constitutionally mandated through the 15 ^thand 19^thAmendments.  However, states still have significant latitude in how the right to vote is administered and enforced.  Some “methods of administration” amount to clear-cut “suppression”; for example, literacy tests, which are now banned.  Others are more subtle such as restricting the number of polling places or the days and hours of pre-election day voting.  They will undoubtedly be the subject of continued adjudication.  The guiding rule should be to take every reasonable step to allow every citizen to exercise his or her right to vote.

Personal Reflections on "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl

I am reposting this from 4 years ago. It just seemed  so timely.

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Few books have meant so much to me as Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.

Of course, I have quoted and thought about Viktor Frankl and his life many times.  His life in concentration camps, his reflections on what that had meant to him.  His so well-expressed belief that it is not one’s circumstances but one’s reaction to them which matters most.  His book, which has gone through countless printings, and sold over 123 million copies, is one that I had never read before.  It is short and utterly profound.  It is founded on the belief that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure or a quest for power, but it is a quest for meaning.  And Frankl finds that quest for meaning deriving from three sources:  an activity or act to which one commits himself; an experience, particularly an experience of love, but also the experiencing of nature; and the meaning that flows from the dignity with which one approaches suffering.

Frankl’s most enduring insight is that forces beyond our control can take away everything we possess except one thing, our freedom to choose how we will respond to a situation.  We cannot control what happens to us in life, but we can always control what we feel and do about it.  We are never left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond.  There are so many galvanizing perspectives here:

The advice that one should not aim for success, but rather realize that success like happiness must ensue and always does ensue as the unintended side effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the bi-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. 

I was captured by Frankl’s revealing of a thought which transfixed him in the concentration camp – that for the first time in his life he saw the truth that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.  Surely “the salvation of man is through love and in love.”  At these moments he thought of his wife.  He didn’t even know if she was still alive, but he knew that “love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.  It finds its deepest meanings in a spiritual being, his inner self.”  He said there was no need for him to know (if she was alive).  “Nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts and the image of my beloved.  Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying.”  Isn’t this how we can recall and do recall those whom we have loved who have passed away in death?

Frankl reflects on the choice that the concentration inmates faced.  And he does not suggest that many, let alone all, faced it successfully.  The choice revolved around whether the individual would struggle against the situation to save his self-respect, being an individual with a mind with inner freedom and personal value.  He had the choice of thinking of himself as only part of an enormous mass of people, his existence descended to the level of animal life.  He did not fault those who succumbed to this.  But he celebrated those who maintained their individual dignity, who recognized that finding meaning at that moment involved determining what they could do to make the most of every moment, to capture the view of a living tree or a sunrise, to do something for a fellow inmate. 

Others, “instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of inner strength, preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past.  Life for such people became meaningless … it is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future and this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.”

Frankl returns to the thought expressed above many times.  He turns to another thought later in the book which I think has equal merit and, in fact, seems to co-exist with his admonishment of looking to the future.  Here he points out that “instead of possibilities in the future, we can view realities of the past – the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized – and nothing, nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.”  He says eloquently that “people tend to see only the stubble in fields of transitory-ness, but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives; the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.”

This is a wonderful thought which I and all of us should take heart from.  We must remember our victories, our blessings, and draw strength from them even as we at the same time identify our purpose and the meaning of our lives as we go forward.  

There’s another aspect of this book which bears deep thought.  And that is the emphasis Frankl brings to the value of not only being what would be described as “useful,” but being valuable in the “sense of dignity” that one displays in living one’s life.  This certainly applies to how one handles setbacks and suffering.  It is important to note that Frankl insists that he’s talking about bearing with suffering which cannot be avoided.  If suffering can be avoided, the first command is to avoid it, but there is other suffering, such as an incurable illness, which cannot be avoided, and it is the dignity and courage with which one handles this, the amount that one still takes from every day, that not only represents living life as well as one can, but represents a model for others to emulate.

Frankl has perspective on “freedom” with which I agree entirely.  He regards freedom as only part of the story.  Freedom is a negative aspect of the whole phenomena within which responsible-ness is the positive aspect.  “In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrary-ness unless it is lived in terms of responsible-ness.” 

Frankl ended his book by noting that rather than talk about “saints,” why not just talk about “decent people.”  “It is true that they form a minority.  More than that, they will always remain a minority.”  Our challenge is to join the minority.  “For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”  Words to sign on to.

[Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life.  He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written.  One student surprised Frankl by saying “the meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.”    “That was it, exactly,” Frankl said.  “Those are the very words I had written.”]

I HAVE RAREY IF EVER READ WORDS THAT BETTER SUM UP MY PERSONAL MISSION IN LIFE. (JEP).

Again, this is a book of less than 170 pages.  It contains enormous wisdom.  I hope that I can internalize the best of it and live it.