Love Your Enemy - Podcast Discussion - Instigator: Eric
I have put this entry out
here to facilitate the discussion...
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The Podcast Links...
https://anchor.fm/the-psychology-podcast/episodes/Arthur-Brooks--Love-Your-Enemies-e11vk8t
Okay Eric: Kick things off!
20 comments:
Ok, so this is the instigation for the discussion on the Psychology Podcast interview of author Arthur Brook about his book Love Your Enemy.
But first a little biography of Arthur Brooks from Wikipedia which I found helpful to learn who this guy is.
Arthur C. Brooks (born May 21, 1964) is an American social scientist, musician, and columnist for The Atlantic.[1] He was the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, for a decade. As of July 2019, he joined the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School.[2] Brooks has researched the junctions between culture, economics, and politics. He is the author of 12 books, including From Strength to Strength (Portfolio/Penguin, 2022), which debuted at #1 on the New York Times best seller list, and two New York Times best sellers: The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise (2012) and The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America (Broadside Books, 2015).[3] Politically, he is a center-right independent and a libertarian.
Now for the good stuff.
Early in the interview Brooks identifies two approaches to happiness that Psychologist typically fall into. 1) The psychoanalytic approach (think Freud) where the goal is to eliminate unhappiness, pain, suffering etc. etc. and 2) the theological/spiritual where unhappiness is consider part of happiness. Brooks states that he falls squarely in the theological/spiritual approach. He further elaborated on this approach by identifying three macro element of Happiness: Enjoyment, Satisfaction and Meaning/Purpose. He then digs down a little further stating that Meaning requires pain, suffering and challenge bringing us back to unhappiness being a part of happiness.
So Question #1. Do you think the having meaning/purpose in your life requires pain, suffering etc.?
He then goes on to have a long discussion on the role of dignity in happiness, which I’m not sure I grasped that well. He states that “Dignity is absent when you are a liability, when you are not needed.” He also comments that in America we treat people like assist and liabilities. For instance poor people are a liability that need to be managed. This idea affect how run our welfare system and schools. Brooks further states that in the west we have adopted the Judeo/Christian idea that all people are created in the image of God, which not all cultures agree with.
Question #2. Is dignity an inherent quality or does it require being an asset to others? If it is not inherent how do people who are not assets every become happy?
Question #3. What does it mean to be an asset to others?
Question #4 How do you think treating people as assets or liabilities affect how welfare or schools are run?
He also made a comment that we need to be an asset to others but at the same time be profoundly useless to them. And that we need to haver friends that are useless and friends that we are useless to.
Question #5. How can we be an asset and useless at the same time?
One last thought. Brooks comments that Fear, not hate, is the opposite of Love. And that fear is the most powerful emotion, as it should be because fear protects us from harm. All other negative emotions like hate, pride, envy, disgust emanate from fear. Here he quotes 1 Jn 4:18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
He also states that we as humans often reduce Love to an emotion, which is easy but real love is hard because it is an action that requires work. He makes the same comment that empathy is an emotion, which again is easy, compared to compassion which is more of an action.
Question #6. Is love an emotion and action or a combination of the two?
There you go. Thats all I’ve got.
Don't feel like you need to comment on all or any of these questions. These is just my thoughts. I would like to hear what yours are.
Have at it!
Eric
Thanks Eric. (This is John by the way.) That background was helpful. I'm going to jump in by tackling your first question. I think for the question: does "...meaning/purpose in your life require() pain, suffering etc.?" My answer has a couple facets to it. Facet 1: Suffering and Pain v. Striving and Overcoming. Facet 2: Is this answer consistent in the world we live in now as compared to any possible world we could live in?
Explicit caveat. I don’t claim to have thought this all completely through.
Ha (explicate in the sense of “overt” not “naughty.”) We need to keep things clean here. :-)
I think there is a distinction between suffering / pain and striving / overcoming. At work, sometimes, we have deadlines and I (like all of us) have to work very hard to meet them and that work can wear you out. I would call that striving. I would not call that suffering. Now, if I am forced to work under a high pressure situation where I always have these high pressure deadlines and no matter what it’s never enough and I can never get a sense of success or accomplishment, my activity might look the same on the outside but the second scenario might be more like suffering. Another, example, if I am riding up a hill on my bike and it is really hard and my muscles are burning and I’m getting out of breath, that is overcoming and striving. If I fall off my bike and break my arm or have a heart attack due to the exertion, that is suffering and pain.
This is still half-baked but perhaps striving is effort / action that is very hard but is truly constructive to our self and or our community. Then pain and suffering are things that in some ways look similar to striving but in the end truly damage me as a person or my community. That is, pain and suffering do not have a constructive element. I think you can experience true pain and suffering and come through it a better person. That is, you may benefit in some way from that experience. But in some way, after you have gone through it, even if you grow as a person, you have lost something permanent. Perhaps it is time. Perhaps it is a relationship. Perhaps it is your healt. But there is a true lose that occurs. That is pain and suffering.
I believe having a meaningful human life at a minimum requires striving and overcoming. You can’t even get out of infancy without striving to learn to crawl and walk, to talk and to understand the speech of others, and to control your bowls for that matter. Striving then, is necessary to become a mature human being and I believe continuing to strive toward something is important for a meaningful life all through adulthood. If we are not striving for something on some vector our entire life I do think our life descends into meaninglessness.
Now the second factor. I can imagine and actually hope for a world where we only have striving and overcoming but do not have pain and suffering. However, I don’t think we are in that world. The line between striving and suffering is crossed very easily for a number of reasons in our current world. So, given this is the world we have, I think if you don’t have some striving AND suffering, you can safely draw the conclusion that you are NOT leading a particularly meaningful life.
Striving is needed for meaning. In this world, at some point in your life, this will ultimately be more than just “healthy” striving but will also require overcoming cruelty, injustice, bad luck, natural disaster, etc. That is, dealing with true suffering. Working through all these things can make us better and expose our weaknesses where we need to be better.
I agree largely with Brooks. Our life is for more than just avoiding pain.
More to come from me in the upcoming days.
Regarding Eric’s 2nd set of questions. Is dignity an inherent quality or does it require being an asset to others? If it is not inherent how do people who are not assets ever become happy?
I feel like I have two thoughts on dignity. First I do believe that all people have dignity innately regardless of race, color, gender, capability and capacity, or even based on what they have done. For example there is a certain innate dignity even for Hitler as deplorable as he was. From observing nature and logic I think that one “might” be able to draw this conclusion. The conclusion that every human has innate dignity. But I also feel like it could be just as easy to conclude the humans are no more dignified or of value than any other thing (for example rocks, atoms, ducks, trees, bugs or amebas). That is, from logic / observation it might be easy to draw the conclusion that humans are not more dignified or special than anything else in nature. Or that some individual humans have dignity and others do not. Certainly throughout our history many cultures, as Brooks and Eric pointed out, felt that some people did not have dignity, or as much dignity as others.
So, I think it is unlikely for most people that this belief, the belief that all humans have dignity, is intuited or derived from nature or logic. It might be derived if we are truly open and thoughtful but most of us are not. I probably could not have discovered this on my own. For most people, something from outside us needs to nudge us to recognize each human’s inherent dignity. For us in the west and perhaps for anyone anywhere in the world today I believe that nudge has come, as Brooks suggests, from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. On the very first page of the Bible it imbues human’s with dignity by saying that we are created in the image of God.
So, the first thought on the question, do all humans have dignity? - the answer I think is yes and that belief is highly influenced by the Judaeo-Christian message and subsequent cultural influence. To go along with that perspective, all humans therefore should be viewed as assets no matter what.
My second thought on the perspective of human dignity is that while we each have innate dignity we can choose to not fulfill that nascent dignity with our actions. That is, in our actions we can fail to live up to the expectations inherent in being an innately dignified being. There is an obligation in being the one of the beings (humans) in the physical universe that has innate dignity. Being imbued with dignity brings with it a calling to live up to that nature. That obligation is to act in accordance with that calling and to treat others who have the same innate dignity with the respect and deference for which it calls.
To state this perspective in a way that fits Eric’s question a little better: Dignity is an inherent quality which should spur each of us on to conduct ourselves in such a way that we are assets; to ourselves, to those around us and for God.
Regarding the second part of Eric’s second question: If it is not inherent how do people who are not assets ever become happy?
I do think people have inherent value / dignity. So at one level I need not concern myself with this but perhaps even holding this other view point there might be something to say about the topic of becoming happy. I assume that all humans have inherent dignity and with that comes a calling to live out that dignity in our actions. That is the purpose of the human enterprise. If that is the purpose of the human enterprise, happiness is not really the goal. The goal is character. The goal is to express dignity in all of our actions. Happiness is a likely side effect of this enterprise but not the goal.
Looking at it from the other point of view. That dignity is not inherent: I suppose the way to move toward happiness is to take action that would make one an assets and earn some of that dignity.
Eric. How would you respond to either question 1 or 2?
Ok, I’m getting into the game a little late, but I have been thinking about the podcast and John and Eric’s comments quite a lot. I wrote up and extensive outline on just question 1 from Eric, but mercifully for you all, I won’t go that deep into it. First of the all, the podcast was very thought-provoking and conjured up lots of thoughts and tangents. Seconds of all, I’m trying to organize these thoughts while Taking care of two little boys who are found of interrupting me for any number of things. So we have that to suffer through. Haha!
Let me quote Eric here to give you reference and initiate my thoughts. Eric wrote: “Brooks further elaborated on this approach by identifying three macro elements of Happiness: Enjoyment, Satisfaction and Meaning/Purpose. He then digs down a little further stating that Meaning requires pain, suffering and challenge bringing us back to unhappiness being a part of happiness. So Question #1. Do you think the having meaning/purpose in your life requires pain, suffering etc.?”
To begin, I think it’s virtually impossible to live life without some kind of pain and suffering, both metal and physical. Pain can be defined as unpleasant feelings from disease or injury, and/or mental and emotional distress. While suffering has more to do the bearing of pain and distress, enduring pain, loss, injury over short-term or long-term. Imagine a life without any pain and suffering. As John mentioned, how would you even get through infancy and childhood? How would you love (romantically, fraternally, platonically, familial-ly) if losing that love didn’t cause pain and suffering? There are no consequences. Nothing is at stake. Also, to maintain those relationships often require some pain and suffering as disputes arise and feeling get hurt, yet we preserve because we care about that person and do not want to lose them. It matters. As John also mentioned, how would we achieve anything, because striving and overcoming involve some degree of suffering, whether mental, physical, or both.
So to answer Eric’s question more pointedly, I would say yes. Pain and suffering are to varying degrees required for happiness in the sense of meaning and purpose. I think happiness as a term is a bit misleading, and red herring. The real question should what gives life meaning? And meaning as Brooks says, doesn’t always mean you are happy in a pleasant sensation way as you are experiencing something.. Paul Bloom, who Brooks mentions has a book entitled. The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. Similar to what John said, Bloom said in an interview: “Purpose and meaning are inextricably tied to suffering and difficulty. If you tell me a pursuit that you view as meaningful and important, I can guarantee it won’t be easy. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be meaningful or important.”
One prominent example of this is childbirth and raising children. It is deeply meaningful and deeply difficult. Sometimes you are not too happy when you are stretched to your physical and mental limit with all the things required to deal with and raise children. You might be exhausted and distressed but also feeling a sense of satisfaction. All of this is not for nothing. And I’m suffering this for my family. Childbirth itself is something that alters a woman’s body and is painful and makes one feel sick and can be life-threatening. It involves months of pain and suffering. Why put ourselves through that. Wouldn’t we be happier avoiding such pain? In fact we would not. As Brooks says that unhappiness is part of what makes it meaningful, and in the end gives us life-happiness.
I meant to add a couple more sentences to jump off from my thoughts onto some comments about John's in regard to the two distinctions he made. And if I may be so bold as to add a third facet to John's two. I hopefully will get that tantalizing information out soon!
This is John. Well said Thomas. Agree with your perspective. I listened to an interview of Paul Bloom last year but don't remember much about it. Ha. It must have planted an idea in my mind about a connection between suffering and meaning.
Hello again. Happiness right now is coming from a large vanilla latte from Starbucks. I think Brooks would put that in the enjoyment category of happiness. Anyway, I’m going to continue to address Eric’s first question. I ended my last post with how childbirth and raising children can cause pain and suffering along the way but gives us a certain overall happiness in the form of meaning and purpose to our life. I want to use this as an example of the third category I would like add to john’s two categories. John said there are two kinds of pain and suffering. Just plain suffering and pain from injury or disease or the loss of a loved one or tragedy. Mental and emotional anguish. The key as johns says is that you have lost something, perhaps permanently. These incidents can give meaning but often times they just hurt and don’t add something meaningful.
The other category of John’s is pain and suffering from striving and overcoming something. We do this a lot even if we don’t realize it. We actually seek out things that we must suffer through. Not only childbirth and raising children, but running marathons, sports, eating spicy food, sitting in hot tubs, polar dips in icy water, getting an education, etc. These are all points of striving and overcoming obstacles and pain and distress in order to feel the pleasure and satisfaction of success or just the feel of bodies awash in sensations.
Adding to john’s two categories of pain/suffering, striving/overcoming, I would like to add a third one that is greater purpose/cause. Here is where we suffer not just for ourselves but for a greater cause, something beyond ourselves. And for me, anyway, this might be the area where true happiness occurs. It’s where the happiness of spiritual and religious endeavors reside. It’s why we root for the Hawkeyes, join clubs and communities, and hold fast to a group or national identity, and become activists in some cause. It’s where we are bigger than just ourselves and a part of a greater purpose, whether a god or gods or a book club. We inherently need to be part of something. We feel lost without it.
Getting back to our discussion of pain/suffering as necessary for meaningful happiness, I would say greater purpose/cause often involves suffering and sacrifice. In most religions there is a certain degree of suffering in the name of your religion, such as confessing sins, enduring prohibitions, enacting ritual pain, etc. All of these things are done in service to something greater. I think of the Tibetan monks who set themselves of fire in protest to the brutal oppression of their Chinese overlords. Matin Luther King in a Birmingham jail. John Lewis being beaten and bloodied for the cause of civil rights. Minutemen of the American revolution who at a minute’s notice would seek out hardship and pain and even death in defense of the cause of liberty. These are extraordinary examples, but I think you get the point. I also think childbirth and raising children fits here as you are doing things and suffering and making scarifies in the service of your child and family and even beyond as you are contributing to an ongoing society and toy are propagating the species homo sapiens. All things bigger and greater than just oneself. And something else to add to this is that all these things have in common the building and maintaining of relationships.
Brooks mentions something called the useless friend. And although I understand what he is saying, as in the friendship doesn’t make a quantifiable contribution to something tangible, I would argue that friendship and relationships are the most important ingredient to meaningful happiness, and the most useful to us in our survival as a species. It is these relationships and friendships and group-forming that gives us the greatest advantage over other primates and past hominids, like the neanderthal, to accomplish great things, or anything really. We cannot survive without others and working together with them.
So, to conclude, I argue that the greatest happiness comes from being part of something greater, family, friends, faith, etc. It’s all about relationships, connecting. Brooks also said happiness is love. And love, in all its forms, is not possible without looking and reaching beyond yourself to something bigger.
John’s Comments on the first of Thomas’ two above posts.
While I agree that a great deal of happiness comes with a Starbucks logo close at hand I prefer mine delivered just plan old black and hot.
I really like and agree with Thomas’ assessment / addition of a third kind of suffering which is suffering / taking on challenges in the name of a greater cause. 100% agree and believe these are the scenarios in which the most meaning comes for we humans. If we live our life and we never sacrifice, or give, or work, or suffer for something greater than ourselves it is difficult to think that that is a meaningful life. Even if we suffer and grow but that growth is just for ourselves and doesn’t ultimately advance a greater / Transcendent cause, what was the point? In such a case, if the human just grew and made their life the best it could be but it never connected to or advanced a transcendent purpose (knowingly or unknowingly), how is that different or how does it have more meaning than any single celled organism that splits off with its “new” strands of DNA, mechanically metabolizes a bunch of matter, splits out a few more DNA strands in a few more new cell membranes and then one day stops metabolizing and disintegrates it to its sub parts? My suggestion is that such a human life would be no more meaningful than any other randomly occurring “natural” event. I think Thomas’ category is a key, perhaps the key, to meaning for the human life. Connection to a cause greater than ourselves.
I'm going to reply to Eric's questions because I think they're really great and a great way to start. But I like those who have posted have lots of thoughts about these things. I wish that we were all together and can just talk about it.
1. Of course, biblically speaking and referring to the Christian faith, Jesus said that at it in this life we would have suffering. I think that it it really is beautiful how Arthur Brooks made a way to normalize it or at least to make us realize that "suffering is sacred. It means you are fully alive."
2. I believe dignity an inherent quality. We're all created in the image of God and in have inherent purpose and meaning. The problem is it is marred by a a fallen, imperfect society, sinful hearts and bad choices. I like his thoughts thoughts on our welfare system and how if we we were focused on the intrinsic value, intrinsic dignity of the underprivileged and taught them that they had something to offer the world, I think that we would have such a better society and help those on the fringes.
3. I believe to be an asset as a person is to be as Arthur Brooks said is to ne organically needed. But to stay consistent with thought and what I actually believe is that we all have things God-given Strengths and assets and if we were fully and truly living out our fait in community with Christ, those assets would be utilized more. It is difficult to see everyone as an asset though especially those who hurt hose who hurt others and children and It is difficult to see everyone as an asset though especially those who hurthose who hurt others and children and Destroy communities and live a life of debauchery and sin. Definitely this is a difficult topic isn't it. Hard to stay consistent hard to really know the answer.
4. Part 1. See above. Part 2. I'm not going be labor this point. I do feel like only a man would come up with this kind of thought. I have a whole paragraph or more that I wrote on this I won't share all of it here now. Maybe someday we will be able to get together and really discuss these things. Needless to say I will point out that that from the beginning of time women have bore the brunt of work in society. Bearing the children; feeding the children; stabilizing the home; cleaning the home; making the man happy; making the community happy; making everyone around them happy, that women have not had the opportunity to actually sit back and think about a lot of these philosophical and thoughtful ideas thoughtful ideas. I would stay just in the last last generation has this been something that women have been allowed to or allowed themselves to delve in too. So I didn't really like how he generalized and said women in their fifties and sixties make connections on emotions and and men, although he was lighthearted about it, said men have connections with things like sports/sports really can be replaced with the word ideas. Which most people think that having connections with ideas and thoughts is better than emotions and feelings. Just saying.
Good evening for now. I'll finish my answers and thoughts another time period
John’s Comments on Thomas’ post that begins “Getting back to our discussion…”
To summarize this post: Thomas, you posit a couple things here. Love / relationships in human experience is the greatest contributor to Homo Sapiens thriving as a species and is also the greatest contributor to individual human happiness. Well that is a very convenient and beneficial coincidence (or perhaps not such a coincidence.)
A couple thoughts. Regarding individual happiness. That is a bit of a squishy word and can mean a lot of things. We may have already hashed this out in earlier posts but I feel we are using the term to generally mean individual human flourishing. Humans are complicated and a lot of things can go into human flourishing / happiness. Another is a feeling of accomplishment or mastery. Another might be the joy of discovery. Another, the appreciation of beauty. For example, standing in an open meadow by yourself at night and taking in the vastness and beauty of the Universe. It is hard to believe that we don’t need all of these ingredients and probably others to be fulfilled or flourish. In support of Thomas’ thought. If you have all of the others but don’t have love / the contribution to and participation in meaningful relationships it is hard to believe you would feel or be truly happy / flourishing.
Second thought on that. You could think of love / relationships as, “Hey, I want to have the best life possible, so I’m going to fill my life with relationships so I can flourish.” It is kind of utilitarian or me focused. You can also look at it at as, “as a Human I am called to love others. It is the thing I ought to do. I don’t just love because of the utility it gives me but because it is the right thing to do.” In this case the endeavor starts to connect the person the “cause greater than myself” idea Thomas noted. I think the non-utilitarian approach seems more noble and flourishing and fulfilling than the utilitarian. It doesn’t even have to be explicitly thought. This kind of winds back around to friendships that are not based on utility.
Regarding our species Thomas said, “…I would argue that friendship and relationships are the most important ingredient … and the most useful to us in our survival as a species.” I have some thoughts on this but need to let them simmer a bit. More to come on that.
This is Mary if all don't see that :)
I also wish so much we could talk about this together and so maybe we can over Thanksgiving if we get the chance?
My thoughts:
Question #1. Do you think the having meaning/purpose in your life requires pain, suffering etc.?
Yes-I do believe this is true and you all have so far given great illustrations of this(infancy, parenting). And as (Verna?) pointed out it is a biblical concept and even James begins his letter with "Counting it joy when you experience various trials ....so you may be mature, complete, lacking nothing." To me-meaning we need these losses, pains, and suffering to be mature humans. However there can be so much pain in this world that sometimes it is so hard to find a purpose.
I also liked John's distinction between striving and suffering and found that to be a great point. I also think (John correct me) that you/John are saying that the striving must also come with fulfillment and not be empty, such as never reaching the goal or feeling satisfied in the striving. Ok full disclosure here-I accidentally started listening to the wrong podcast with Arthur Brooks (there are 2 on this podcast I believe--the other one about one of his other books) and in the other podcast, Arthur Brooks states this about striving and actually states we tend to have an "addiction to success":"Fulfillment cannot come when the present moment is little more than a struggle to bear in order to obtain the future, because that future is destined to become nothing more than the struggle of the new present and the glorious end state never arrives. The focus must be on the walk that is life with it's string of present moments." So I think John was alluding to this with "healthy striving" and I also like Brook's point that fulfillment needs to be in the "walk" and the "present moment" not necessarily in just reaching for the prize at the end.
I also want to respond to Thomas's point to quote: "I argue that the greatest happiness comes from being part of something greater, family, friends, faith, etc. It’s all about relationships, connecting. Brooks also said happiness is love. And love, in all its forms, is not possible without looking and reaching beyond yourself to something bigger". I think this is so on point and I could not agree more and I believe that was Brooks point about useless friends, as well. I think our "useless" friends are absolutely the best kind.
I hope I am pretty useless to you all ;)
And I have to agree with you, Verna, on your point on question 4 and the things that men and women connect on. I find that I connect with women in many ways; sometimes I connect on an emotional level or more or a spiritual level where I think I can sense the holy spirit at work and I know when another woman is a Christian and I feel that spiritual connection. But I would say that after that I connect also on our interests such as sports, books, hobbies, etc. in much the same way that men do. I kind of overlooked that because he was lighthearted but it was not a very accurate or thoughtful thing to say.
This is John again...
Regarding Verna’s topic number 2 “…I like his thoughts thoughts on our welfare system and how if we we were focused on the intrinsic value, intrinsic dignity of the underprivileged and taught them that they had something to offer the world, I think that we would have such a better society and help those on the fringes.” which in part touched on Eric’s 4 “How do you think treating people as assets or liabilities affect how welfare or schools are run?”
I felt when I listened to the podcast I kind of agreed with Brook’s point that our welfare system tends to treat people as liabilities to be managed rather than assets to be grown. But, that is about it. I didn’t think much beyond that but Eric’s question and Verna’s response kind of push the issue. So, I will dip my toe nervously in that water.
I tend to agree with Brook’s perspective noted above and Verna’s perspective which I think is in agreement with Brooks. Here is the problem I think. It is one thing to say our welfare / social safety net system does not treat people as assets. The issue is. How do you build one that does? I’m not sure that is easy.
Let’s start with this. Why do we feel our current system does NOT treat people like assets? I don’t think
Brooks took time to define terms and why he used the terms “asset” and “liability” but I think it revolves around this. We expect an asset to produce something someday. We don’t expect a liability to produce something ever. Brooks gave an example of treating his children like assets. They are not capable of much today but if I invest in them, some day they will be capable of doing great things! Part of that investment process is instilling in the children not just the capability of producing but also the expectation that someday they will produce something for society and for themselves. There is an expectation set.
I think Brooks’ concern is we have programs that “invest” in people by giving them money but that there is no expectation that they ever produce. The programs implicitly (and in some cases explicitly) communicate to the people involved, often called “recipients”, that not only do we not expect anything from them. We don’t even think they are capable of producing anything. So, we are not even going to bother with setting an expectation or provide assistance in cultivating the ability to produce / be an asset. I think the fear is that this just becomes a negatively reinforced cycle. People need help, they receive help, and in the process their belief that they can or should produce or should be an asset diminishes due to a lack of expectation and cultivation. Their motivation to believe they themselves are an asset and to act that way goes down resulting in more need for assistance and so forth down the cycle.
So, how do you create a system that helps people in need and at the same time encourages growth and develops each person as an asset? Yeah, it ain’t easy. WIC seems like a good program. Support for women, infants and children. You’re giving support to people who are doing something productive. Women raising infants and children. And you are basically helping them because they are doing something productive. Raising children. That seems to be valuing people as assets.
To be continued...
... continued from previous...
But what about people who are getting money that are not raising children. These programs just seem to give the money with very little strings attached.
It appears that there are a lot of people receiving disability checks for doing nothing.
Many are mentally ill. If we pulled their checks, would they suddenly find a way to make themselves less mentally ill and get a job and become an asset? Well, maybe some. But would we start seeing more people begging more aggressively? Would we start seeing people dying in the streets? Is that a better solution?
A lot of the folks are addicted. If they lost their source of income would the suddenly get sober and start develop as assets? Maybe some. Maybe for some of these folks there should be a work program and they get paid to do some helpful task on the days that they show up and do the task. However, that might be more expensive than just giving them money as now you have to hire more people to run the program, etc.
This was not the most well-articulated rant. I believe, in theory, that we could do better but we have rarely demonstrated that ability.
I’m a Christian / Bible guy and there are at least a couple programs for the less fortunate laid out in the bible.
In the Old Testament folks were not to glean their fields or harvest the corners so poor folks could just walk into the fields and pick what they could. They had to work a little bit at it but did it really develop them as assets? Don’t think so.
In the New Testament the widows were supposed to be taken care of. Obviously if they had children this would be affirming their value as assets similar to the WIC program. But if not, well they seem to be more like liabilities.
Of course the third option back in the day for an able bodied man or woman who found themselves in desperate financial straits might be to sell themselves (or perhaps more likely, be sold) into slavery. This would at least put you in a position of not starving to death and you would be viewed as an asset. But, of course the big problem here is you lose your freedom and we don’t want to have a society and economy based on slavery. The down sides are awful and deplorable.
The bottom line I think it is that is not easy to set up a social safety net that both meets the needs of the needy and also treats them like assets. But I do think we should continue to figure out how to make that happen.
Regarding Mary's first post. Yes, hopefully we can find time to chat about it in November. It is hard to collect all of ones thoughts and write them all down. I think your line is salient, "However there can be so much pain in this world that sometimes it is so hard to find a purpose..." I think many people struggle to find the hope side of suffering and understandably so. I think it is there but you can't always see it. I think this is what Jesus was getting at in the first Beatitude: "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." My understanding is the idea of "poor" here is that you are poor because you have had something taken from you. In this case your spirit. It might be more accurate to say blessed are the "bereft of spirit" or in modern lingo "blessed are those whose spirit has been crushed..." It is almost embarrassing for someone in my situation to opine on this. I have a good and fulfilling job. My wife and children are all with me and do well. So, who am I to speak on someone whose spirit has been crushed? to speak on someone's plight who is finding it hard to see hope in their suffering? But I think this is a big part of the Jesus message. It is the first lines of the Sermon on the mount. I think it gives hope even if that hope is never experienced in the kingdom of this age, it can / will be experienced in the Kingdom to come. The Kingdom of Heaven.
Mary has some more stuff I need to ponder further before responding. :-)
Mary I also started listening to the wrong Podcast. And had written tons of notes on it before realizing that I was listening to the wrong one. Both are very good and definitely worth a listen so not necessarily waste of time period
Regarding suffering and growing as a mature adult……. I like the way you said that Mary. There are days I want to be one of those people who don't think about suffering and growing and trying to be a better person. Going through life without really thinking about those kind of things. We met some people last night that. Those with the sort of worldview of live and let live and...yes they're productive people and have good occupations but it seems to end there. They don't seem to have any interest in anything that is going to make them think of outside their own little bubble. To believe they may be wrong about something; made wrong decisions. Make themselves, maybe better people. (I want to clarify; not necessarily about politics or whether you are a Republican or Democrat or really even some social issues. I know I have strong views about those things. And I struggle to be seeing others viewpoints. I'm talking about raising children, medical issues, spiritual thing, being a neighbor, business practices, just normal relationship things). I'm not sure if it's how we were raised? Is it hereditary/biological. Or is it just certain people that are laissez-faire in their worldview? They seem to be adverse to being self reflective. Is it just biological to them? And then there's me who is in a constant state of feeling guilty about something or as though I'm never doing anything right and has persistent anxiety about being a good example of Christ, or mom, wife, colleague, friend. Just saying 😌
John-I like your biblical examples regarding programs for the less fortunate and those specific examples worked in that culture. Obviously our culture has changed but we can take themes from them-like the people still had to earn their keep. It was not handed to them would be one theme. And I think doing it this way actually allows people to keep some of their self esteem and dignity. I think most people who have had to use programs like WIC are ashamed (hence the woman at the grocery embarrassed to be paying with vouchers) versus someone who went out and harvested their food to bring home to their family even if it was the leftovers. I don't have any answers to this complex problem except that we need grace, and each other, and Jesus.
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