"Good Wars vs. Misbegotten Wars"

  

LOOKING FOR THE GOOD WAR:  AMERICAN AMNESIA AND THE VIOLENT PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS BY ELIZABETH D. SAMET

 

There is a great deal I like in this book, a great deal.  But as other reviewers have noted, for me it is flawed in drawing on too much detail and in a less than optimum, organized way, drawing on a huge array of not always relevant literary and film references.  Without a doubt, Ms. Samet’s research and her knowledge of Shakespeare, literary figures and film of the 20^th century and into this century are prodigious. 

 

I gained many new insights and much affirmation of what I knew and believed before:

 

1.      The sentimentalized memorialization of the Civil War aimed at bringing White people together, so well documented by David Blight.

 

2.      Fresh for me was how the myth of the Civil War was perpetuated by film in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly the Westerns.  They signaled moral equivalency for each side, failing to recognize that one side (the South) had undertaken war to preserve the enslavement of people. 

 

3.      Samet underscores the reality that all “war is hell.”  Soldiers enter it with a mixture of motives, many laudable but by no means all noble.  We have tended to glorify World War II, a necessary war if there ever was one,  through the work of Stephen Ambrose, Tom Brokaw and Steven Spielberg.  Yet, in drawing out this reality,  she undercuts the reality that there are some “good wars,” ones that are a necessity in the evil they seek to end. This is surely one of them.

 

I have long believed that there are wars of choice, wars that could have been avoided and some wars that could not.  World War II is a war that couldn’t have been avoided, not unless one goes back to the antecedents for Hitler and deny his existence.  I don’t think the Civil War could have been avoided either, not with the dichotomy of beliefs on slavery.  The Spanish-American War was, I believe, a war of choice.  So was Vietnam, in hindsight, misbegotten.  And the same is true of Iraq.

 

You can’t read this book without thinking about the war underway right now between Russia and Ukraine, supported by the U.S. and the European Union.  Was this war avoidable?  Historians will study and debate this forever.  I think it might have been avoided if one goes back to the different decisions that might have been made at the turn of the century.  While it was a narrow window, I believe there was the possibility that, with more foresight and courageous, imaginative leadership, a Pan-European security arrangement, including Russia, could have been put in place.  Whether it would have lasted forever no one can know.  But I think at that point in time, Putin was open to such an arrangement. 

 

By the time we reached 2014, however, with the expansion of NATO, including the prospective inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO and, importantly, the increasing paranoia of Putin that the West was out to surround him ( with enough circumstantial evidence to prove the case in his mind), the risk of war was high.  

Yet, individual agency still existed, in the person of Putin.  I suspect that many other Russian leaders would have reached the same decision he did, but I’m not sure all of them would have.   His belief that Ukraine was part of Russia, something he came to believe in more and more, might not have driven another leader as it drove him. 

 

“We are where we are,” as we tritely say.  But there is an enormous lesson to be learned in this for the future.  Boiled down, it amounts to doing one’s best to see the world as a potential adversary sees it.  We didn’t do that with Russia.  We failed to consider at the turn of the century what would be in the long-term interest of the U.S., Europe, Russia and the world.  We saw the world almost entirely through our lens. Now we confront the challenge of seeing the world as China (and much of the rest of the world outside the West) see it. 

 

Other insights: 

 

1.      Our quick 100-day victory in the first Gulf War allowed us to kick the Vietnam syndrome of having failed.  Positive confidence-affirming signals returned and a sense of hubris along with them.

 

2.      The attack of September 11, 2001 drew on analogies with Hitler which drove us to a flawed war on terrorism, which led us to the misbegotten decision to invade Iraq.

 

There is an aspect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that is especially tragic.  And that is that, even as the Ukrainians rightly view themselves as an independent nation, it is also a civil war in Ukraine.  Countless Russian soldiers are fighting, trying to kill men and women who are extensions of their own families.  There are human dimensions here that only time will reveal,  even as they are being carried out in blood as I write this. 

 

It’s hard to imagine the conflicted feelings—the horror—felt by a Russian soldier who thought he was going to Belarus for exercises and found himself invading Ukraine to kill someone who could be a friend or relative. 

 

Many of the Shakespearian plays which Samet cites were about civil wars in England.  The agony of those wars is being mirrored in Ukraine in ways that will eventually be written about in history and literature.

 

3.      Samet refers often to my favorite philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr.   He brought a cautionary reading to history.  Beware, “if virtue becomes vice through some hidden defect in the virtue; if strength becomes weakness because of the vanity to which strength may prompt the mighty man or nation; if security is transmuted into insecurity because too much reliance is placed upon it; if wisdom becomes folly because it does not know its limits.”

 

Niebuhr believed that this risk had poisoned the evolution of Communism in the 1950s.  And it’s fair to say it has affected us, too, in the United States in our own history.  In fact, it is endemic to human nature.  Moral complacency and superiority can come to easily justify doubtful means to achieve ostensibly virtuous ends. 

 

American innocence—the faith in the essential virtue of our society that makes any critique evidence of ill-will--is more than cautionary.  It’s a warning.  Yet, we must not allow this to bring us to a position of ultimate relativism.  We must recognize that there are truths to be honored, nowhere better summarized than in the words of our Declaration of Independence:  “All men are created equal.”

 

All of this is a reminder of what I’ve seen in the lives of everyone, including myself.  We are curious compounds of good and evil.  Stubborn idealism comes at a price:  namely, an intolerance of complexity, compromise and ambiguity.  Yet, again, we cannot allow this to leave us awash in the foggy no-man’s land of relativism.

 

4.      Robert McNamara’s The Fog of War is worthy of comment.  McNamara’s story illustrates “the slipperiness of beginnings and ends, the refusal of war to stand still long enough to be shaped into a coherent story; the ambient fog obscures causes and consequences as well as ends and means.”

5.      Today, Samet asserts, we celebrate the veteran of World War II as almost an archetype of stoic humility rather than a readily identifiable individual.  Samet castigates this in a way that I disagree with.  For there are values, even if not always present, even if simplified in terms of motivation, embedded in the best of what happened in World War II. For example, the focus on loyalty, of seeking freedom over tyranny.  Yes, a bit of simplification on these values is not all a bad thing so long as it doesn’t disguise the fact that all war is hell. 

 

6.      Sentimental memorialization of the Civil War, with its invidious impact on race relations, continued well into the 20^th century.  In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt unveiled a statue of Robert E. Lee.  His speech tapped into the popular interpretation of the Civil War and Lee.  It also acclaimed Lee as not only a “great leader of men and a great General,” but also as “one of the greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen.”  Roosevelt’s position may have been anchored in a genuine belief, but I doubt it.  It certainly was anchored in his need to get the Southern vote to win the presidency.

 

7.      Frederick Douglass foresaw in his 1875 speech what the reconciliation for the White race through the romantization of the Civil War meant as he plaintively asked:  “When this great White race has renewed its fallacy of patriotism and float back into its accustomed channels, the question for us:  In what position will this stupendous reconciliation leave the colored people?  What tendencies will spring out of it?”

 

Let me conclude as Samet concludes with timeless words from Lincoln.  She draws on his speech of 1838.  Lincoln was meditating on the theme of “the perpetuation of our political institutions.”  He did so, as he writes, with “a curious mixture of respect and impatience.”  The respect grew from his celebrating the importance and influence of the men who had created this country.  A few were still around.  They may have seemed to be “giant oaks,” but they were not giants, only men.  Heroes for their own time but not for all time.

“In his remarks, Lincoln respected the past without being paralyzed by it.  He understood the ways in which improvement must temper veneration and reason moderate passion. He recognized that only truth could conquer the dangerous distortions of myths,” Samet eloquently writes. 

 

And so Lincoln returns to what we find in the Declaration of Independence:   “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”  “That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

 

That is what we were fighting for in World War II and achieved.

  

That is what the Ukrainians are fighting for at this moment.  It is inspiring.  It is not to be forgotten, not ever, and I doubt if it ever will be.  However, I hope in time we will seek to understand what led to this war and what we can draw from this understanding that might allow us to avoid a similar war in the future.

Countering our Quest to be "Spectacular"

 

The pastor at St. Bart’s Episcopal Church in New York last week offered one of his biting sermons.  It drew on the Gospel which recorded the three temptations which the Devil had presented to Jesus while he was wandering in the wilderness.  He challenged Christ, if you really are the son of God then turn these stones into bread.  Rebuffed on that, the Devil went on to offer Christ the world below them (they were standing on a high mountain) if Jesus would bow down and worship him.  Again rebuffed, the Devil came with his third challenge, for Jesus to throw himself down from a great height.  Again, Jesus said, “No,” returning to the fundamental truth that what really matters is following the words of God.

 

The pastor went on to talk about his dogged determination to “be spectacular.”  He went through a bracing confession of things that he and St. Bart’s pursued that in essence boiled down to trying to be "spectacular". 

He recounted how he and St. Barts sought to outshine other nearby churches through better programming; a more inspiring choir; a larger endowment and stronger sermons.  Yet, these are not the things that matter most, he said.  What matters most  is to be humble, to do everything one can to follow in the steps of Jesus and help each other on that journey. 

 

I haven’t written this simply to record a sermon. No, I do it because it reminds me of things I do which truthfully boil down to trying to “be spectacular.”

I focus on how much I read, on hoping more people will read my blog, I check to see how many “likes” there are on a photo of one of my grandchildren, I  check the price of P&G stock price too often, I count the number of steps I walk each day.  

 I don’t know if you’d call these things “spectacular,” but they are ego-driven and they are diversions from the much simpler and basic task of trying to make a positive difference in other people’s lives, especially my family's.

Pleading Once Again for Responsible Gun Legislation

 I first posted this blog almost five years ago. I do so again today after the murder of three more people in another mass shooting at Michigan State University.  Can't we finally act now?

As many as 50 people—50 men, women and children—might still be alive today if the common-sense gun policies supported by 80% of the American public were in place.  

That’s right.  Fifty people today, 50 more tomorrow, 50 every day after that, might still be alive if  we were acting  on what we know to be true.  

For someone of my age, this fight for life through the adoption of responsible gun policies recalls other fights for life through common-sense regulations. Fights including automobiles and tobacco.

Take automobiles. Today, about 35,000 people die annually as a result of automobile-related accidents.  That’s tragic, but consider that if automobile fatalities per mile were occurring at the same rate today as they were in the year I was born, those 35,000 deaths would not be 50,000, not 100,000, not 200,000, and not even 300,000.  They would be closer to 400,000 people each year. 

Back then, seeing this carnage, nobody talked about banning cars.  But they did come to demand common-sense 

regulations. Seat belts became required; so did airbags.  You were required to pass a driver’s test.  (How, I ask, do you justify requiring a test to drive a car and not a test to shoot a gun?)  You have to get your license renewed every five years.  There are fines for traffic violations and sometimes suspension of your license. 

Make no mistake.  These common sensed regulations didn’t come easily.  Car manufacturers complained about the cost of some of the safety devices. Drivers complained about being "forced" to use seat belts.  But the evidence prevailed.  So did common sense. So did public will.  

  

Or  take tobacco.

What if people were smoking today  at the same rate as when I was a teenager in the mid-1950s?  Almost half the population  smoked then, compared to 15% smoking today.  If that rate of smoking still prevailed, and if the linkage of smoking to mortality remained about the same, up to one million more people might have died last year from smoke-related diseases.  Instead of what is still a tragedy of almost 500,000 people dying from smoke-related illnesses, the death toll could be closer to 1,500,000.  

Believe me, getting common-sense regulations for cigarette smoking was a decades-long battle.  If you think the NRA is a strong lobby today, you should have seen the tobacco lobby.  It supported politicians committed to the industry.  It supported medical conventions and encouraged doctors to recommend cigarettes; I’m serious.  It lobbied against research to establish the linkage of smoking and cancer.  But we kept getting more data linking smoking to cancer, just as we are today on the linkage of guns to gun-related deaths.  

As a result, warning labels were mandated on cigarette packages.  Age limits were imposed on the purchase of tobacco; advertising was regulated to shield children from its influence; excise taxes were increased. 

What drove these changes in automobile and tobacco regulation?  There was increasingly compelling data and research. Above all, this research showed that automobile and tobacco related fatalities werematters of public health.  

We came to recognize that whether a person smokes is not just a private issue.  It's a public health issue.We learned the damaging impact of secondhand smoke.  

We recognized that how a person drives a car is not just a private issue.  It affects others.  It can kill others.  So we insisted that you had to have a license  and demonstrate you were able to drive.

Just as with tobacco and automobiles, owning a gun is not only a private matter. It is also a matter of public health. Tragically, we witness that every day.  So just as with tobacco and automobiles, use of guns must be regulated responsibly.

Importantly, changes in behavior resulting from the regulation of tobacco and automobiles also changed the “culture.”  It is no longer “cool” to smoke.   When I joined Procter & Gamble, there was an ashtray in front of every board seat.   You would walk into a store or restaurant and it could be “cool” to be smoking.  Movie stars were portrayed smoking; men and women. No longer.

It’s no longer “cool” to drive without a seatbelt.  It’s stupid.  That’s what strong social movements can do.  

Culture changes impact everything.  Including business.  Businesses stepped up to forbid smoking on their premises and encourage safe driving habits. 

We’re seeing businesses step up on the gun issue.  Walmart has banned the sale of assault weapons and now has increased the age to 21 at which one might buy a rifle.  Dick’s has done the same thing.  Rental car companies and airlines like Delta have stopped giving preferred discounts to members of the NRA.  Kroger has banned the sale of large magazines. 

 Businesses are getting the message. 

I urge you support businesses which are adopting responsible gun policies.  Let them know that’s why you’re shopping there.  And let those which aren’t adopting similar policies know you’re going to support their competitors.

Focus on electing candidates who support responsible gun policies and rejecting those who don’t.  Nothing counts as much as your vote. Demand to know exactly where a candidate stands on universal background checks, keeping guns out of the hands of people who have been involved in domestic violence and banning assault weapons and large magazines. 

The wind is at our back on this, but it’s going to be a continuing battle.I’m inspired how young people are taking the field.  Let us be worthy of their commitment.   

As I said at the outset, as many as 50 men, women and children might still be alive today if we had adopted responsible gun regulations.  This estimate is not a matter of sheer speculation.  Nineteen state already require background checks for ALL gun sales. In these states,  we are seeing up to a 40-50% lower incidence of gun deaths linked to domestic abuse, suicide and involving law enforcement officers.

These facts don’t call for banning guns. They don't call into question the practices of millions of responsible gun owners.  They don’t deny any reasonably interpreted right conferred by the Second Amendment.  They do call  for common-sense regulations of the kind we have applied to automobiles  and tobacco. Regulations that recognize that having a gun today is not only a private matter; it is a matter of public health.  Let’s act on what we know to be true.  Let’s demand that legislators, business leaders, everyone do the same.  Let’s start saving lives. We can do this.

*This an edited transcript of a talk I gave to a rally of "Moms Demand Action" in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 25  2018

It Has to Be Everybody or Nobody--"A Perfect Metaphor for Who We Are and Should Act as Fellow Human Beings

 I posted this blog initially almost eight years ago. Sadly, we have become even more polarized, globally and nationally. Will we learn to see each other as fellow human beings pursuing in the main the same goals: peace, safety and a decent standard of living for ourselves and our families? There will always be competition and sometimes we will face existential threats. But the plague of the other, founded on a lack of understanding and empathy, threatens the well being of each and every one of us and our planet.

John Pepper==1/21/2023

“IT HAS TO BE EVERYBODY OR NOBODY” – “A PERFECT METAPHOR FOR WHO WE ARE AS HUMAN BEINGS”

I have written in several places about the “plague of the other”; how often, usually out of fear or suffering from a lack of self-confidence, we choose to see ourselves as separate from each other and as superior to “the other.”

In the book, “Everyday Bias,”* which develops the reality that we all possess implicit biases, I came across a metaphor by the author, Howard J. Ross, that I found extremely compelling in this regard. 

Here it is.

*****

Many of us have seen the magnificent forests full of aspen trees that grow in large “stands” throughout the northern areas of North America.  The trees are extraordinary, ramrod straight, and often standing nearly one hundred feet tall.  There can be thousands of them in just one stand.  Still, we look at each of these trees and see it in its solitary magnificence.

But there is something interesting under the surface of these forests.  These trees are not at all separate.  Underneath the soil, they are connected by a common root system, and that makes each of these clusters of trees among the largest organisms on Earth.  A new tree grows because the root sends out a runner that then grows into another tree.  The largest of these is called “Pando” (Latin for “I spread”), and is located in the Fishlake National Forest in south-central Utah.  Pando covers more than 106 acres and has been estimated to collectively weigh almost seven thousand tons, making it the heaviest organism in the world.  It also is thought to be more than eighty thousand years old, making it one of the world’s oldest known living organisms.

And yet we see it as a lot of single trees.

The trees brings us to a perfect metaphor for we who are as human beings.  We look at the “other” as if he or she is separate from us.  We see the other group as a threat.  And yet, we are all deeply connected.   We share a common destiny on this planet.  We all seek pleasure and do our best to avoid pain.  We want what is best for our children and grandchildren.  All of us are the products of that which we have seen before.  And we are all (for the most part) unconscious about the “programming” that runs our thoughts and our lives.

We can transcend.  We can, through discipline, practice and awareness, find a new way to relate that honors our differences, yet also build upon our similarities.  While the potential for mass destruction looms broadly in the world and our global community expands, we are more and more invited to recognize, as R. Buckminster Fuller said, that “we are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully, nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common.  It has to be everybody or nobody.” 

That is the path before us.  It is indeed the “road less traveled” when we look at our common history.  But it is a road that is worth paving clear.

What could be a greater journey?

*”Everyday Bias, Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in our Daily Lives”

Why I Love to Read

By the time one reaches my age, you have often been asked the question: "What is it that gives you the greatest joy?"  My immediate and first answer is "being wherever my wife, Francie, and my children and now grandchildren are.” But invariably following that, I call out my love of reading.

 

What accounts for this love of reading? The honest answer to that question when I was very young would have been that reading was a source of escape for me. In truth, I sought refuge in books. In words I wouldn't have chosen then but which ring true today, "Reading let me know I wasn't alone.”

 

Why was I seeking that refuge and escape? Why was I seeking the companionship which books brought me? 

 

For a couple of reasons. I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t a member of the “in” group. What’s more, my family life, as I experienced it, although lifted by the love and positive expectations of my parents, was troubled and unsettled by my father’s alcoholism.

 

So I immersed myself in books, every chance I could get. In the life of Robinson Crusoe, the adventures of the Hardy Boys or, a bit later, the story of Lincoln.  As I read, I felt a sense of peace and adventure and belonging and accomplishment. 

 

If my love of reading was initially a form of escape, before long it became a form of exploration and discovery. I found myself discovering worlds and ideas and people beyond those I knew. Even more, I found great books were teaching me about myself and shaping my vision of who I aspired to be.

 

As the years and decades have unfolded since then, reading great books has helped mold my life, shape my values and inspire me to be my best.

 

Reading has:

 

·           Illuminated for me the complex reality and tension of human motivations, fear, hopes and dreams, of frustration, hate and love.

 

·           Helped me understand the dual existence of the best and worst in human nature and has helped me strive to pursue what is best.

 

·           Afforded me the joyful experience of a writer's relentless probing for the truth through deep analysis and balanced interpretation.

 

·           Built my appreciation of the wonder and beauty of the perfectly chosen word, the eloquently turned phrase and the perfectly constructed sentence.

 

·           Treated me to an author's fresh and penetrating analysis of various factors—economic, political, social and individual—that have helped me understand certain outcomes in major events or trends.

 

·           Introduced me to a piece of writing that impacts me with such force that I think: "How could the writer ever say it that clearly or that beautifully?”  It’s akin to my reaction to a great painting or sculpture or film.

 

·           Helped me understand the root causes of events and the relative role of context, circumstance, sheer luck and individual agency.

 

·           Taught me that personal leadership makes things happen. That while there are trends that are inexorable, the difference that the individual makes in shaping these trends can be and often is decisive.

 

·           Has given me inspiration from the lives and character of great leaders and the recognition that it takes wisdom, courage and persistence to make a change in anything that is important. That has had everything to do with how I’ve tried to lead and encourage others to lead.

 

·           Has shaped my recognition that there is great goodness in the world, but also evil and that if good people don’t stand up courageously and persistently for the good, we’re going to suffer more evil.

 

·           Has fueled my deep respect and appreciation for different societies and cultures as I learned about their unique histories and belief systems, their unique features and accomplishments and the challenges they have and continue to face. This recognition has fired my determination at Procter & Gamble and later at The Walt Disney Company to respect national and regional identities as we operate globally.

 

·           Has made it crystal-clear that great achievements and change are never achieved without setbacks and the wisdom and courage to make course corrections to one’s original strategy. This has been of enormous help to me as I thought about how to pursue some of the biggest challenges of my career.

 

·           Has cemented my belief that in order for any institution to survive and grow--a matter that is in no way foreordained--its leaders must achieve that fine balance of preserving the most important core values fundamental to success while being prepared to take action to change everything else.

 

Summing it all up, reading has fired my love of learning, my curiosity, my desire to understand cause and effect, to seek truth, to understand the difference an individual can make, and that "everyone counts.”  Above all, it has helped me see and appreciate the importance of family and love and the beauty in people, in nature and in the world around us. This has inspired and challenged me to try to do my best in contributing to their betterment. 

                                                                                                           

Turning to God At a Time of Tragedy

The newspapers over the weekend very rightly featured photographs of the Buffalo Bills players, and the Bengals players, too, assembling in a circle, many with their hands on each other’s shoulders, all in prayer for their teammate Damar Hamlin, who had been carried off the field close to death.  Fortunately, he is recovering. 

 

This outpouring of faith across the nation in the face of this event is not unusual.  Some writers have attributed it especially to football’s close alliance with Christianity, particularly in part due to its popularity in the Bible belt.  I don’t know about that.  I think this tendency to reach out with prayer to God, as inchoate as our understanding of who or what God is, is a human instinct.  We search for faith, we search for hope, we search for support at a time when we need it.

 

I vividly recall praying on the occasions where I faced my greatest worry and challenge. The birth of each of our children, my cancer, now my wife, Francie’s cancer.  The birth of each of our children’s children. 

 

I pray in church each Sunday for peace in the world, for leaders who will be able to bridge animosity with understanding and love. 

 

My belief that there is a God personally intervening in our individual lives has waxed and waned over the years.  Today, I have to say I doubt whether God would intervene in each individual’s life in the manner in which I pray that He will.  But I don’t discount the possibility.  And whether he does or not, I know this.   Praying helps me cope with the fears and challenges I am facing.

I identify with Konstantin Levin, the protagonist in Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina". 

 

I was moved by Levin’s groping for a clear articulation of his faith in God and by his doubts about many portions of revelation. Yet I join him in his ultimately embracing Christ’s teachings and life as a code to live by.  Levin’s groping mirrors my groping, with all its doubts, questions and uncertainties. Yet,  ultimately I reach the same place Levin does with my belief in  a moral code which is reinforced by my belief in God. I know that whatever success I have had  in adhering to that code has been strengthened by my belief in the preaching of Jesus Christ.

 

“The question for him (Levin) consisted in the following:  ‘If I do not accept the answers that Christianity gives to the questions of my life, then which answers do I accept?’  And nowhere in the whole arsenal of his convictions was he able to find, not only any answers, but anything resembling an answer.”

 

Like me, Levin recognized  that while his wife was giving birth, an extraordinary thing had happened to him.  He, the unbeliever, had begun to pray, and in the moment of praying, he had believed.

 

Like Levin, I discovered, probably when I was in my late ‘20s or ‘30s, that my belief in some Catholic theologies had outlived their stay and no longer existed.   I had come to doubt (and I still doubt) many of the precepts with which I grew up:  the Virgin birth, even the bodily resurrection of Jesus. 

 

However, I come back to the most fundamental beliefs, that there is a superior power that calls on us to follow our best instincts to do what is right and to respect the dignity of every other human being. 

 

I recall the counsel of one of the priests at my prep school, Portsmouth Priory.  He warned me not be distracted from my basic faith in God by quibbling with individual church beliefs which I found contradicted reason.  It took me a long time to understand what he was saying and follow that counsel.  I’ve come to see, as Levin expresses in Anna Karenina, that there is “not a single belief of the Church that annihilated the main thing—faith in God, in good, as the sole purpose of man.  In place of each of the Church’s tenets, there could be put the belief in serving the good instead of one’s needs.  Each of them…was indispensable for the accomplishment of that chief miracle, constantly manifested on Earth, which consists in its being possible for each person, along with millions of the most diverse people, to understand one and the same thing with certainty and to compose that life of the soul which alone makes life worth living, and alone is what we value.”

"Reason and Faith--Only Together Will They Save Man"--Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

 

I read two opinion-pieces in the Wall Street Journal this weelk that came together for me in a surprising, sobering and meaningful way; likely in a way that the authors would not have expected.

 

The first opinion-piece, “America is a Sick Society—Literally” by William A. Galston lays out in graphic and sobering detail how sick the society in our country really is.  

 In life expectancy, we rank 29^th among the 38 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.  We trail Germany by 2.5 years; Canada by 3.2 years; and France by 4 years. 

 

The pandemic made things worse.  The U.S. suffered 332 deaths per 100,000 population, compared with 240 in France; 194 in Germany; and 128 in Canada.

 

Over the last 20 years, deaths from overdoses of drugs rose from about 17,000 Americans in the year 2000 to 92,000 by 2020.  Here again, we lead all other high-income countries.  In 2020, our death rates from overdoses of 277 per million compared with Canada at 171 per million; Germany only 19 per million; and France even lower at 7 per million.

 

The invidious comparisons continue.  On obesity.  On gun violence.  We lead the world on both. On the latter, the rate of firearm homicides per million adults in the U.S. stands at 41, compared with only 5 in Canada, 3 in France, 2 in Australia and 1 in Germany.

 

Experts, divided among many lines including political party, argue about the causes of these invidious comparisons.  For my money, they have not been adequately studied or, if they have, I haven’t seen that study.  But it shouts out for comprehensive, data based answers.

 

The second column, this one written by Daniel Henninger, is about the legacy of Pope Benedict, who passed away this past week at the age of 95.  Henninger talks about Benedict's beliefs in the context of the conflict of values between President Xi and Putin in China and Russia and the West.  

Putin is arguing, disingenuously to be sure, that Russia stands for “moral historical truth…there is no higher power than love for one’s family and friends, loyalty to friends and comrades in arms”, he says.  This, coming from the man who cruelly invaded Ukraine.  Yet, this is the argument he is making and, yes, persuading many that he is right.  Xi talks about China creating a new choice for achieving “modernization.”

 

Here is where Pope Benedict steps in with the conviction which I have shared for most of my adult life.  And that is the role of religion and faith.  Pope Benedict summarized his views as Pope in his 2009 Encyclical Letter, “Caritas In Veritate” (Love and Truth) in which he argues that secularism will fall without the ballast of religion or faith.

 

“Reason and faith can come to each other’s assistance", he wrote.   "Only together will they save man. Entranced by an exclusive reliance on technology, reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence.  Faith without reason risks being cut off from everyday life.”

 

For me, and I know this is a personal matter, this sums it up. 

 

Henninger writes that his personal solution to reducing the country’s problems is “go to church on the weekend.  To learn that, in fact, you’re not #1.  And not alone.” That captures what I feel in going to church.

 

I embrace Henninger’s closing thought.   “Perhaps the moment is right to revive Benedict’s argument for religion’s proper role in organizing a coherent, self-confident society, or nation.”

 

Yet, I have to confess that I am not optimistic of this actually happening in the near- or medium-term future.  The incidence of church-going, especially among the young, has been declining for years.  In a way I can’t define, I think religion needs to bring a new message to the public, with new messengers.  I have benefitted personally from having had close contact with a minister, Rev. Paula Jackson, for 30 years. She brought me, through her words and through her service, the recognition that my belief in God, as vague and changing as it has often been, and the teachings of Jesus Christ have been very important to my living the life I sought to live.