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Moving On

Like many of you, as much as I love my country, I need a break from an America that seems more unhinged every day. She’s like a spouse who’s suffering a mental collapse and has become unrecognizable—even scary—after years of marriage. And like investing in therapists to help an unstable spouse, eventually you have to move on to save what you can: yourself. In much the same manner, I feel I have written what I can in the moment to help my readers understand our country and have offered as many suggestions and remedies I can to promote change, or at least to allow us to cope—to hold our collective breath without turning blue, or worse. That said, I do not intend to wither on the vine and I hope you don’t either, even though somedays withering sounds masochistically inviting.

A tipping point when Americans have finally had enough of the greed and cruelty emanating from the White House may come sooner than we think. Most of the world has already written off  our dear leader as a charlatan and grifter. They know they only have to patronize him for a few more years, which in many cultures is like a long weekend. I have no doubt that Trump will go too far; his sociopathy is rabid. His administration has no stop button. Its insatiable appetite for power and money and vengeance is inherently unstable and will result in either implosion or explosion. The physics of the conditions are undeniable and unstoppable; the energy fields created by these behaviors produce so much dissonance as to inevitably cause spontaneous destruction, also known as a meltdown. As Sun Tzu, the sixth century BC Chinese military general would certainly agree, the best way to defeat an adversary is to enable them to defeat themselves—maybe even cheer them on. It appears that America’s adversaries, both old and new, understand this strategy well. Trump believes he is the king while other world powers view him as a mere pawn.

As resilient as our country has been thus far, its continued abuse is clearly unsustainable. How many more little girls must drown in flash floods before we realize that hundred year floods are now every year floods, and that weather forecasters and warning systems are essential in the world of climate change? If that deadly debacle in Texas doesn’t break your heart and slap the MAGA hat off of your head, what will? Regardless of these now frequent catastrophic events, if we don’t get off fossil fuels none of these events and our many other issues will matter anyway. Without long term thinking, eventually there is no short term. I take some morbid comfort in the notion that even if we can’t fix our mess with the tools of democracy, Nature will cleanse us of this dirge-worthy era. She always prevails.

Of course, such damage is potentially catastrophic to us all, regardless of our many and varied persuasions—political and otherwise. For the MAGA crowd, those red caps may become toxic fire starters someday soon. For America, it will not be a matter of recovering empire; rather, we will be forced to re-imagine an America as a lesser version of its former self, both domestically and (especially) internationally.

Ancient historians like Polybius would suggest mob rule (ochlocracy) is next. Such is the nature of the life cycle of empires. In spite of advances in technology and knowledge, human dispositions and predilections have proven stubbornly resistant throughout human history. Our weaknesses are—paradoxically—durable. In any event, I know it will remain possible to find a sense of tranquility through the many tools of transcendence I have outlined in my previous posts. I hope you consider them elements of inspiration and healing in your virtual emergency go-bag. If you would like to access those posts, go to ameritecture.com and click on the “Spiritual” collection.

As for moving on, my next project—a book—will be my fourth and likely my last, which means you won’t hear much from me for the foreseeable future; I expect your Sunday morning inbox will survive. I am stepping back from the moment to take a broader view at a higher altitude. This book should offer me an oar to paddle off into the sunset. A story that will hopefully provide essentials to consider in re-imagining a new America. As the great American documentarian, Ken Burns, recently suggested, the only thing that can change people’s point of view is a good story. “Good stories are a kind of benevolent Trojan horse. You let them in, and they add complication, allowing you to understand that sometimes a thing and its opposite are true at the same time.” Hopefully my book, tentatively titled, Atlas Flexed: Witness to Empire, will become such a benevolent Trojan horse.

The genre of this project is a mix of history and memoir that draws on a lifetime of struggle, triumph, and most of all, learning. I take inspiration for its “personal history” structure from Fintan O’Toole, a columnist for the Irish Times and professor at Princeton University whose book, We Don’t Know Ourselves: a Personal History of Modern Ireland (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2021) began as a memoir and morphed into a national history of Ireland covering the same time period I will address in America, from the 1950s to today.

Here is the set up:

The libertarian icon and author, Ayn Rand, was wrong. At least partly wrong at the time Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957. The American Atlas of her 1950s did not shrug, as a world power it had barely been born. It was too young to express indifference let alone withdraw from the society and government her character, John Galt, loathed. In hindsight, the decade of the 1950s was the most reason-based and objective of the seven that followed, so one might argue Rand was just being prophetic. The 1950s was when America began its rise and subsequently flexed its muscles as the most powerful empire in the history of the world. In the process, it became less rational and more radical in its idealism than at any time since its founding, eventually becoming tragically disconnected from its cherished democratic republic in the 2020s. Capitalism and its natural byproduct, wealth, does tend to foster idealism to precarious ends. Posthumously, perhaps Rand was as partly correct as she was partly wrong. As it is said of philosophers and prophets: eventually they will be right—somewhere at some time.

I had the great fortune to be born at the same time as America began its ascent as a superpower—to grow and stumble and flex alongside its majesty. America’s journey in the second half of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the twenty-first was the backdrop of my life.  Both America and I had great success interrupted occasionally and regrettably by stupid mistakes. How we each face our respective impending decline today is a matter of both conjecture and consternation. My decline matters to no one but me, whereas America’s matters to billions of people throughout the world. Alas, the arc of American empire and the arc of my life share a serendipitous synchronicity; we were Boomers together. I know her and she knows me.

My readers will certainly learn more about me in this book, but also hopefully reflect upon and learn more about what truly made America great, which is sure-as-hell not what is happening today. While I hold younger (under 50) Americans partly responsible for where the country is and more so where it is going, I also understand they did not live in a time where they could have known better. Their lives have been marinated in the comfort of abundance and technologies that have substantially compromised their agency. Their ignorance is understandable, but their indifference is inexcusable. At least John Galt’s indifferent shrug was principled.

I intend to inform and entertain, and maybe even inspire. In any event, the project will, as my late mother would have no doubt suggested, “keep me out of the pool halls.”

Until we meet again, cheers and stay safe.

By |2025-07-13T12:59:39+00:00July 13th, 2025|Current, General, Recent|0 Comments
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The Holy of It

To face the warmth of a rising sun

To hear songs in a meadow no human could sing

To catch the wafting scent of lavender on a summer breeze

To stalk a trout in the riffles of a stream

To savor cardamom and vanilla and lemon and chai

To share kindness with a stranger’s eyes

To see into a heart who loves yours too

To hold the hand of a child against a world of troubles

To know life with a sense of enduring grace

This is the holy of it

The “holy of it” is not for everybody, it is just for the rest of us. For Putin and Xi and Kim and Khamenei and Netanyahu and Trump, the holy of it conflicts with their quest for power; bloodlust finds no home in holy. For those who believe bullets and bombs make peace, may God have mercy upon your soul. To the innocents who fall victim to evil—especially the children—may your souls soar above all others.

In America, we are now facing another “Now what?” moment. “Now what?,” is the question we ask when we should have asked, “Then what?,” before we did what we did to prompt the question, “Now what?” Anyone who has been educated in the complexities of international relations and foreign policy knows that “Then what?” is the most important question asked in any strategic planning session along with questions like “So what?” and “Which means that … ?”. These questions tie actions to consequences while taking responsibility for outcomes. All must be considered against the standard of our national interest.

Questions like “Then what?” are so simple and yet so often ignored. (See the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq and Afghanistan.) Leaders who have big egos and big bombs easily get their countries in trouble—sometimes for decades to come (See George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin). Every branch and every leaf on the strategic tree must be considered. These questions are critical to avoiding the “Now what?” trap, which more often than not carries the preamble “Oh shit”; as in, “Oh shit, now what?” They require a keen intellect, relentless curiosity, and high humility. In these matters, one must always be willing to be wrong and to be extraordinarily nimble in demeanor and decision-discipline.

Just five months into his second presidency, I do not see any of theses disciplines or attributes in Donald Trump. It is not clear he asks any questions at all, let alone the correct questions. He does not strike me as a curious man. Bloated by conceit, he dithers in apparent blissful ignorance while he surrounds himself with profoundly incompetent people who are more focused on affixing their lips to his backside than they are in telling the truth. The war in Ukraine did not end “on day one,” nor have we seen ninety new trade deals “in ninety days,” and in spite of accounting trickery and treachery his “big beautiful bill” will explode the deficit beyond any hope of recovery rendering the dollar and American power a story for our history books, rather than an asset for our future.

As for Iran, Trump’s new deal on nukes (to replace the one he abrogated in 2018) didn’t happen either; the spotlight beckoned and he chose bombs instead of the uncelebrated drudgery of diplomacy. And notwithstanding bickering over Trump’s claims of “obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear capacity, for the moment it appears tensions in the Middle East are idling. Iran seems, however, eerily cool-headed—even cooperative—causing many intelligence observers to believe Iran had indeed moved their nine hundred pounds of enriched uranium to another location before the bombs fell. In any event, Iran retains its knowledge and industrial capacity to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and, as when any nation is attacked (See America post-9/11), the existing leadership and regime is emboldened by the natural reflex of reinvigorated nationalism.

In all of Trump’s claims and promises, whether dealmaking or warmaking, I find a troubling consistency: more vapor than substance, more theatrics than reality. It appears that in the light of truth the wannabe emperor stands buck-naked. All of which produces grave economic and security risks for America.

Israel/Iran is a heritable and perpetual conflict that more and bigger violence and death will not resolve—if anything could. “Lasting peace” is an oxymoron in the Middle East. George Kennan’s containment strategy was the correct course (which won the Cold War), but that didn’t serve the very personal interests of either Trump or Netanyahu. As the columnist Maureen Dowd recently suggested, “This is the moment when we find out just how mad a king Donald Trump is.” However, Trump deservedly believes he can get away with anything; his personal, business, and political lives offer much evidence to support his expectation of exculpation. His mugshot has become the poster-child depiction of impunity. Hopefully for us, he will get away with his recent spotlight-spasm in Iran. Unfortunately, his attention can now return to destroying American institutions and the rule of law.

And while Trump and his cruel brethren, from Israel to Iran to North Korea to China and Russia, should be held to account for their evil ways, there are 3.16 billion of us—their citizens—who allow them to remain in power. What are we doing to end the madness? Yes, there are and will always be mad men in the world, but there are millions more of us who understand the holy of it—who prefer to dwell in grace. In-grace includes in-reponsibility. The holy of it will not survive if we neglect its stewardship.

There are no constraints on truth; the power of truth knows no limits. Truth is the great clearing mechanism that assures our freedoms. Truth, and security, and liberty are like nested dolls; each protects the next. When one is violated all are compromised. And yet today, too often we seek to constrain the truth to bend reality to our preferences, which places our security and liberty in peril.  The Gulf of Tonkin (non) Incident in 1964 got us into the mess of Vietnam. Weapons of Mass destruction and al-Qaeda-in-Iraq was the Bush/Cheney ruse that caused that trillion-dollar quagmire. Inevitably, when we screw up these decisions we look like fools while many others suffer unspeakable cruelties. The blood and treasure lost is rarely justified by whatever victories we claim. When we violate the laws of Nature we deserve the consequences. In our country and world today, we have traveled so far beyond even simple truths it will be difficult to find our way back. The collapse draws near, not as an avalanche; rather, as one brick falling at a time until one day we look back and realize there is no structure that remains.

In Ayn Rand’s, Atlas Shrugged (1957), the innovative titans of the day withdrew from a society they found stifling to their ingenuity and industry. They gracefully denounced the government and its bureaucratic trolls and disappeared from society. They allowed their truth to speak with dispositive elegance. Like Rand’s titans, the aim of liberation with dignity pursued with energetic but peaceful resistance became the strategy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement in the 1960s. Perhaps therein lies a strategy for those of us who embrace the holy of it today. Our only choice may be to effectively starve those of power who deceive and cause so much suffering. Withdrawing our compliance and the spotlight of our attention may cause the Trumps of the world to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Land of Oz. Once vanquished, perhaps we can all click the heels of our ruby slippers and go home to the holy of it.

Beckoned by gestures both grand and humble

Redemption came without fanfare or pronouncement

The holy of it descended to soothe truth’s honor

The evil ones vanquished to the ash-heap of history

The good and true festooned by the epaulets of love

Integrity returned as the spine of character

To thrive again in the sanctity of mercy

To stride again from the rivers to the mountaintops

All glory to the innocent, the honest, and courageous

This is the holy of it

By |2025-07-13T12:54:55+00:00June 28th, 2025|General, Recent, Spiritual|0 Comments
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Vitapoise: Mastery of Being

In an age when our country seems dominated by petulant bumbling billionaires and their sycophants, it can be challenging to sort through the noise of animus and deceit to find a working compass with a steady needle. In America, staying on a course denominated in reason and virtue may never be harder than it is today. There seem to be two worlds colliding. An objective one based in truth and reality and a performative one based in illusion and delusion. Most of the rest of the world beyond America remains tethered to an objective model notwithstanding the occasional flourish of performative imitators like Bolsonaro in Brazil or Bukele in El Salvador who have attempted, or are attempting, to adopt the Trumpian formula of greed artfully wrapped in the illusion of public service. In the last twenty years or so, America’s exceptionalism has flipped from being an exemplar of liberalism and capitalism to a hollowed-out shell of illusion and delusion allowing the most vacuous and virtue-free among us to rise to power.

While the West has always measured its success by results, and the East by its intentions, both models are based in substance. Both have philosophically sound foundations. In the modern era, the shining star of the West—the United States of America—was the beacon of the objective world. And while performative actors like Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s, or George Wallace in the 1960s came and went, none gained durable traction in a society that clutched its founding values as articles of faith and devotion—well beyond just articles that comprise its Constitution.

In the last twenty years, that all changed. In an age of an extraordinary abundance of wealth and thoughtless un-edited messaging spewed through countless channels of communication, we became overwhelmed by shit that caused the needle on our compass to spin off of its axis. Unlike past performative clowns, Donald Trump controls the power of the presidency; the damage of deceit is likely to be much more extensive making recovery longer and less certain. However, in the meantime, there are practices that can support our well-being.

Let me acknowledge that life is hard, and knowing how to live it is harder. As the cynical person might claim, “life is hard and then you die.” But life is also beautiful. The half-glass full person embraces their gift of life as a destiny to be realized cradled by the hope of each day’s sunrise. In the cacophony of performative deceit that gets all the attention of our complicit and co-dependent media, we must learn how to tune out to (ironically) tune in; to ignore so we may focus. We must transcend the rabble of the sweaty suited bloviators and makeup-caked pundits to keep our bearing on true north.

How to be in this world—how to achieve a mastery of being—is captured in the practice of what I call vitapoise, which supports a balanced and centered life pursued with a fierce sense of grace that enables acceptance of life’s realities while meeting them with both love and resilience. Vitapoise includes both dispositional orientations and modalities of behavior that, if honored with a sense of diligence, produces a liberation allowing what I have called the “divinity within” to be actualized. It melds East and West—intention and results—into a sacred manner of being.

Below are five dispositions and five modalities that while not exhaustive are foundational to support the practice of vitapoise.

Vitapoise Dispositions:

  1. Always open. Always curious. Live every day and each moment with all five senses open and engaged with the world in front of you—to both the pleasant and the disturbing. Don’t resist the world, accept it. Moreover, what can you learn from this scene, issue, situation, or person? Regardless of how you feel about something, it is an opportunity to learn. And, as Socrates taught us, learning is the key to fulfillment in life.
  2. Lighten up. As the avuncular and satirical English writer, G.K. Chesterton observed, “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” This disposition is slow to accept and fast to shed burdens, including the burdens others may try to impose upon us, but most particularly the burdens we inflict upon ourselves through our own self-criticism. Get off your own back. Travel light.
  3. Honor virtues. Virtues are the signposts and guardrails that keep us on the path of the good and true. Honesty, courage, humility, and compassion are just a few. When exercised with integrity, virtues comprise the spine of our character—each virtue a vertebra. Virtues are a great barometer as well. When we feel good about ourselves chances are we are living in concert with our virtues, when we feel bad chances are one or more of our virtues has been compromised. We know right from wrong by the time we have completed kindergarten. It is in adulthood that our many desires or aversions get us crosswise with what we know is right.
  4. Opposites are good. Without heads there could be no tails. Without black, white isn’t possible. Without a buyer there can be no seller. In our world today that is full of certitude and righteousness, we forget that without the other side, our side would not exist; we would have no identity. Ironically, opposites are also the impetus to unity. This underscores the value of pluralism our founders thought was critical to a union. Further, while we often exhaust ourselves in defeating the “others,” without opposites we lose the value of best solutions that are almost always a combination of certain elements of opposites. Black and white are absolutes while gray offers many shades to consider—more and better options.
  5. Respect is the antidote to deception. Respect the facts, the truth, and reality. Honor others as you would/should yourself—above all else respect thyself. As the great American writer, Joan Didion, once wrote: “self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be trained, coaxed forth.” Respect is indifferent to the delusions that often accompany desires and aversions. It is foundational to reliable decision making. It is one of those dispositions that if conveyed to others will likely return in-kind.

Vitapoise Modalities:

  1. Mindful awareness. A calm and quiet mind is the most powerful asset one can have; much more so than a powerful body. It is essential to physical, mental, and spiritual health. It is the capability to take in the world without fear or trepidation. To observe what comes before you with respect while allowing all things to travel through and out of your mind without suffering. And, it ain’t easy. It is work. Mindfulness requires both the strength of acknowledgment and the discipline of passivity. Remember this one maxim: what you resist persists. While mindful awareness is best accomplished through breathing techniques and meditative practice, it is also supported by indulging in contemplation where time and space allow cognitive liberty and ingenuity. Mindful awareness is the Holy Grail of well-being.
  2. Nurture acuity. A sharp keen mind will assure almost any objective you attempt to achieve. This is not about IQ, although being intelligent certainly helps. Acuity is about seeing things as they are and, moreover, having the power of discernment that blocks your egoic preferences from intervening to alter reality. The distractions and deflections deployed by many of today’s politicians, which are designed to deceive, are thwarted by our acuity. Acuity is essential to tranquility. It is the elixir that eradicates many common sources of disturbance that upset our lives. Acuity is kryptonite to bullshit.
  3. Default to empathy. You don’t necessarily have to walk in someone else’s shoes, but we should at least have the capacity to understand how it might feel—to consider that our situation is not theirs and suspend our judgment as to how they arrived in their particular predicament. To feel-into the circumstances of others is a basic tenet of humanity that should be applied to our consideration of all beings, not just humans. Webster defines compassion as a noun, but as the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn argued that without action compassion can never be fully realized. We must treat compassion as a verb.
  4. Ego management. Our egos are a hoax carefully designed and crafted to deceive others, but mostly to deceive ourselves. That is not to say they have no value; they are critical to our bonding with others and to our differentiation from But egos are a double-edged sword that can both clear a path and cause us to bleed out. Classic Buddhist teachings are very focused on recognizing and avoiding the pitfalls of ego. Ego death is a common aim of psychedelic-enabled journeys. Many believe egos are the enemy of the soul which, as I (and others) believe, the soul is the vault of eternal wisdom that survives our physical life. My view is perhaps more practical as to the conflict between ego and soul. Through mindfulness, try to access the wisdom of your soul to moderate ego-driven actions. Ask them to work together.
  5. Self-care. Have empathy for yourself, too. Treat yourself like you love yourself! Whether an idea, or food, or drink, or medicines, or supplements take care about what goes into your mind and your body. Don’t just feed yourself, nourish yourself. Develop an awareness around what works for you; that is all that matters. In addition, treat your mind and body to exercise every day. Avoid our healthcare system as much as possible; in the last twenty years healthcare has become a travesty-of-care in America. Finally, learn to savor—to let awe land. Whether a double-rainbow, or doing the dishes, both should be addressed with a sense of awe. Practice mastery-in-the-moment, one moment at a time, and every moment will be awesome.

I am far from mastering vitapoise, but as with any practice it is the journey that counts. Its value is realized in the discipline of diligence. Eventually, modalities like mindful awareness can be achieved not just during meditation, but during a simple walk through town. A preternatural sense of calm sets in. If we do our job, the nutjobs streaming and screaming at us as if they are the kings of the world will pass by like an unpleasant odor in a stiff wind. Moreover, we can and should starve them of the attention they need to survive unless, of course, you wish to laugh at them. There is nothing a narcissist-wannabe-fascist likes less than being laughed at; being unmasked as the weak charlatans they are terrifies them.

Remember, it is our world, too. Be the one sitting on the park bench with the curious grin. Unperturbed and undeterred.

 

Note on “No Kings” day. Thousands jammed Central Park in my town of Boulder, Colorado yesterday for “No Kings” day. Quite a surprising turnout. A crowd that our CU football Coach Prime would have envied. Many very creative signs, my favorite (as an historian) was “King Free Since 1783” that recognized the Treaty at Paris where the British acknowledged America’s independence following the Revolutionary War.  Most impressive to me, however, were the number of American flags. I have long advocated for those who were against this president to embrace the flag; few have. But yesterday was—finally—different.

By |2025-06-28T21:35:09+00:00June 15th, 2025|General, Recent, Spiritual|0 Comments
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The Power of Sorrow

There is much sadness in the world today. Sometimes I wonder if God isn’t sad, too. Although, if He actually exists, and is as He has always been purported to be, I doubt He regards us as much more than the latest iteration of the fallen. We are certainly not the first bunch to disappoint. The great religious texts of all flavors are loaded with the lamentations of man before his many gods. The entire idea of salvation is predicated upon screwing up. There can be no rebirth without first falling apart. Sin, redemption, and salvation. Order, disorder, and reorder. Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Triptychs dominate our mythologies and lore of renewal.

This is, of course, the promise of devotion: that out of suffering and sorrow hope emerges. That beliefs and behaviors change. That the good rises up to conquer evil. That the weak become powerful. That humanity finds itself again. That out of our suffering—to which we finally and sincerely surrender—we are reborn.

Embracing suffering is much more difficult, however, in our modern era of abundance. The last generation that truly suffered was my parents’ so-called Greatest Generation. Since the last crisis—the Great Depression and World War II—our collective sense of entitlement has made our society weaker in each decade and generation that followed. Today, the only strength entitlement provides is a strength of defiant stubbornness. We easily default into our claims of victimhood when events don’t favor us, while we fervently deny our own culpability. “Woe is me” has weirdly become an American refrain of patriotism. Do we need any further evidence of a sick society? Of one that is on the edge of collapse?

Anger, fear, deceit, blame, and shame are the coin of the realm in today’s America. They are nourished in the peat of hate, minted and fomented within our failing character. The rest of the world—both allies and adversaries—look on confused and bemused. Contempt is fast becoming their common bond. Neighbor-allies like Canada and historical adversaries like Russia have found contempt for America as common ground. However, this too shall pass. Eventually, their contempt will give way to pity. The failure of empires is seldom graceful and never pretty. The blaze of glory that defined the greatest superpower in the history of the world will not be extinguished with a whimper; it will drown in tears before it can be resurrected into a far more humble shell of its former grandeur. While deeply disappointing (okay, depressing), this process is both inevitable and natural.

The path forward toward renewal will not begin until we shift away from the hate-based emotions of anger, fear, deceit, blame, and shame. Look no further for proof of this claim than the modern movements in America. They all incorporate hate-based emotions and have largely failed, or are failing. Occupy Wall Street! Me Too! Black Lives Matter! Reparations! Deport Immigrants! And, yes: Make America Great Again! There is not a shred of love in any of them. No compassion. No empathy. No embrace of shared suffering. Yes, they can make the advocates or accusers in the movement feel better as a form of self-exorcism of their own demons and pain, but such relief is seldom enduring and always unilateral. Unsurprisingly, none of these movements achieved their intended aims to affect durable change. To borrow an idea from Xochitl Gonzalez in The Atlantic, these are moments rather than movements. Blame ‘n shame manipulates, but does not persuade. People may offer performative compliance—especially when shamed from an altar or political podium—but no substantive or enduring change. Lots of noise and vitriol and guilt, but no meaningful progress.

For positive change, we must all feel the pain. We must suffer. This is an unfortunate reality of being human. While we can endlessly craft solutions to our many issues, we are incapable of mustering the will to execute them successfully without suffering first. I grieve as I concede this point, but I surrender. As the Franciscan friar, Richard Rohr, wrote recently, “Until a divine form of compassion enters the scene … we do not enjoy the deep alchemy that morphs human rage and judgment into holy sadness.”[1] At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln called for “a new birth of freedom” in the face of unspeakable loss of life during the Civil War. All we have to accomplish today is simple deliverance, principally from ourselves. Our problem is not “out there,” it is within.

The political-minded among us argue ceaselessly for more progressive or more conservative principles and policies. They are all wrong. The objective of politics is power. More specifically, the power to make change for the benefit of our society. Whether that is based in conservative or liberal philosophy is irrelevant. What matters is whether or not we can persuade each other to change in a manner consistent with our objectives. This is not a red or blue issue; rather, it is one based in a shared destiny. Shared destinies have never been, nor will ever be, formed in the rotting compost of hate-based emotions. Moreover, they are based in truth—in reality. They are formed in the peril of suffering; in the sharing of misery. Suffering becomes a springboard to liberation and renewal. Shared misery produces love-based emotions.

Empathy is a love-based emotion. It is not weakness; nor is it a pathology. From the Greek word empatheia, meaning in-feeling-with. Together, not divided. Surprisingly, perhaps, it is a relatively young word in contemporary human discourse. In the late 19th century, the Germans were the first to study and apply the promise of “einfühlung,” or empathy. The English translation and origin of empathy did not come into being until 1908 when its contemplation was reserved for ‘feeling into’ objects of art and nature. Later, empathy became as we consider it today: the understanding of others and each other in a compassionate manner. And while it is love-based, it is not a romantic love; rather, the love of being where we see each other, we hear each other, and we feel the same things. As Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote in his theological summary in 1274, “To love is to will the good of the other.” Love, not hate, is the essence of what it means to be human—particularly in an era of abundance. Engaging in, or promoting, or otherwise condoning cruelty is obviously inhumane. Yet, we tolerate it from our leaders until it is inflicted upon us. This practice makes us as guilty as those who directly perpetrate cruelty.

Ironically, perhaps, in the 2024 election Democrats deployed blame ’n shame, while Trump and MAGA used empathy even though it was deployed as a form of manipulation. In particular, young men flocked to Trump. While the Democrats were focused on women’s reproductive rights and MeToo!, etc., MAGA showed empathy towards young men. In attracting the emerging “manosphere” David French, columnist for the New York Times recently wrote, “The manosphere succeeded not by refusing to condemn men and not by avoiding a moralizing tone, but by choosing to love them and by choosing to help them.” They made young men feel good about being young men, again. As I wrote last November following the election, in “A Conceit of Contempt,” contempt “was at the core of the losing campaign by Harris and the Democrats.” Although Trump expressed his contempt for “virtues and laws,” the Democrats aimed their contempt at groups of voters. Either way, contempt is certainly not love-based. It is not empathy. It is blame ‘n shame that repels rather than attracts.

“See me/feel me/heal me.” The popular rock band, The Who, sang this in 1969, during another time of national suffering. These empathetic practices could and should undergird the new period of enlightenment that emerges from tomorrow’s rubble. Where power becomes referential rather than coercive; the referent being the act that enables the well-being of others and results in an accumulation of power in the hands of the beneficent. Unlike coercive power that manipulates rather than persuades, and which spends power rather than accumulating it, referential power is the basis of enlightened altruism. If my actions improve your life, you will not only vote for me, you will empower me. Moreover, the conversation of a shared destiny, and the policies to affect it, will be cooperative rather than contentious. How nice would that be?

But first, the pain; the suffering; the sorrow. We must fail and pay for our failures before we will change our ways. At some point, we will face the real choice of wallowing in our devastation, or finding the resolve to produce our liberation. This is when strength of character overwhelms the strength of entitlement. All of the great religions and philosophers have illustrated this for us over and over throughout the history of humankind. Yet, the cycle has never been interrupted. As the Stoics would say, it is as it is. Now, deal with it. Our response becomes the measure of our worth, both individually and collectively.

What makes a prophet a prophet? Seeing things as they are and lighting the path to liberation. The necessity of sorrow is how things are, and the light of love is the way out. Out of sorrow comes power. The prophecy is simple. It is in our tears that we are freed. The sooner we embrace this, the sooner the suffering will end, and the sooner we will be reborn as a resilient and healthy society. No more enemies, no more victims, just grace.

[1] Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage (New York: Convergent Books, 2025), p. 100.

By |2025-06-15T13:11:22+00:00June 1st, 2025|General, Recent, Spiritual, The New Realities|0 Comments
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Becoming

In my last post, “Believing and Belonging,” it begins with a narrative about another “B”: Becoming. I explained that becoming is that moment, somewhere splashed in our formative years, that “is as if a new sun has risen that reveals something we have never seen before. It is our whole self, mind and body and spirit as one unique offering—as a fully differentiated being. A self that is just us.” Further, becoming can either be cause for jubilation, or trepidation, depending on whether our self-confidence had been established, or not.  As Paul Murray described in his novel of an Irish family, The Bee Sting, “Whenever you think this is your life now your heart bangs against your chest like you’re on a rollercoaster.” Like that rollercoaster ride, for some becoming is thrilling and for others, terrifying.

I also explained the significance of becoming to the balance of our lives, which is something I realized the hard way in my own life with the challenges of dealing with a partner in a two-decade marriage who suffered from depression anchored in self-doubt that had been with her since her teens. I observed, “If we have not had our self-worth ticket punched in these early years, our destiny will be fraught with the pain of self-doubt resulting in a fragility of ego that becomes a trap of cyclic self-destruction and suffering; inevitably also visited upon those we purport to love.” Several readers commented as to how resonant the reality of becoming was to them; a turning point for better, or worse.

I won’t evangelize the point further other than to say far too little attention is placed on this moment of becoming in the parenting and general development of our young ones. If we understood both the multitude and magnitude of its effects, we might deal with a whole spectrum of mental issues much better than we do; issues that absent significant therapeutic intervention haunt many people until the ends of their lives. Some become chronically depressed while others keep chasing external solutions—constantly reinventing their lives—that often becomes a churn of one calamity after another. Among other things, when one doesn’t fundamentally like themselves it makes it impossible to form a secure and durable bond with anyone else.

This idea of becoming for me occurred in my own bucolic summers spent at my mother’s family’s farm and ranch operations in South Dakota. Becoming was indeed a jubilation that occurred in the crossings I would make from my family’s home in Seattle to the Dakotas on the Empire Builder of the Great Northern Railway in the late 1960s and early 1970s; a two-day trip of western wonder where my train friends were kindly black gentlemen porters and the occasional young man headed west to ship out to Viet Nam from Fort Lewis in Washington. I would arrive in Fargo, North Dakota with a bellyache after two days of eating whatever came out of the deep-fat fryer in the dining car to be met by my favorite uncle, C.T., and driven south to Bruce, South Dakota. Then, I would spend weeks in the alfalfa-bloom scented fields of Brookings County before returning for school a tanned fit boy with saddle sores that had toughened into the calloused lessons of hard work.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I toggle between narrative and poetry in my practice of writing to utilize form as a tool to broaden and deepen my perspective. In this case, the poem, “That Boy Grown Gray,” which I wrote in 2022, preceded its expression as narrative in the more recent “Believing and Belonging.” Hopefully, I have rendered it into Substack properly to get the varied line breaks correct, but if not, I expect you will get the idea. This post can also be accessed at ameritecture.com.

That Boy Grown Gray

In my youth, I roamed.

The sea, then woods, mountains, the prairie

and back again.

 

My eyes transfixed on the telephone wires,

undulating from pole to pole,

as the Empire Builder sped eastward

through tunnels burrowed in granite.

 

A clackity-click, then a clickity-clack;

my train rumbled on

from Seattle, to White Fish, to Fargo.

 

It mattered who I was, mostly just to me.

Few thought I was worth an obligation,

fewer yet a worthy dependency.

 

Ah, freedom.

 

Youth; penniless and pure.

Me just for me.

No one’s prospect, no one’s cure.

 

And now here I am, that boy grown gray.

Just one shadow to cast,

just one meal to make.

I carry my own fire again.

 

Slower in both breath and stride,

I pause more than hurry.

No cards held; none to be played.

Quiet mind, I now see with my soul.

 

Embraced by the wisdom of eternity.

The arc of our lives, from becoming to just being (the last “B”), is a journey of both triumph and failure that hopefully ends in a state of peace. As the world today is as perplexing as it has ever been, we must always take care to rise above all moments of immediacy—whether joyful or painful—to contemplate our higher selves as we cast humble eyes across the expanse of nature and humanity that, while confounding at times, remains our domain of responsibility—at least until our last ticket of departure gets punched when we are no longer “embraced by the wisdom of eternity”; rather, we are tendered to it.

By |2025-06-01T12:45:11+00:00May 18th, 2025|General, Recent|0 Comments
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Believing & Belonging

There is a moment in time in each of our lives when our oneness is realized. For most, it arrives in our late teens or early twenties. It is that moment when you realize that no one knows where you are or what you are doing; not your parents, or teachers, or siblings, or anyone. You are not just alone; you are on your own—at least in that moment. We spend our young life being with, and trying to be like, others. Then, it is as if a new sun has risen that reveals something we have never seen before. It is our whole self, mind and body and spirit as one unique offering—as a fully differentiated being. A self that is just us.

For many, it is a moment of awe when freedom seems real and present rather than being an abstract idea that the adults in our lives revered in a manner we couldn’t grasp. For others, it can be uncomfortable, disturbing, maybe even terrifying. Our response to this realization—feeling liberation or fear—defines a fork in the road that sets the course for our lives. Our subsequent success/failure, fulfillment/discontent, stability/instability depend to a great extent on how we feel being alone: liberated or terrified. As the French intellectual, Blaise Pascal, argued, our ability to “sit in a room alone” is critical to the well-being of humanity writ large. In our youth, we seldom have this opportunity. As we age, being alone with a self we must love above all others is fundamental to our flourishing. This is not selfish, it is self-ful.

If our parents have instilled us with a sense of self-worth, we usually embrace this moment with quiet jubilation. We are ready to launch our lives as a whole human being—to paint the world with our choice of colors. To try, to fail, and to try again. Before this moment of realization, our ego has been only lightly crafted, but now it becomes our raison d’être that will occupy our efforts for years to come. While we may strive to be like others as we did in our youth, we only do so to augment our self with particular attractive or fashionable aspects of others. Our specialness, assured by nature, is as unique as the prints at the tips of our fingers. If we have not had our self-worth ticket punched in these early years, our destiny will be fraught with the pain of self-doubt resulting in a fragility of ego that becomes a trap of cyclic self-destruction and suffering; inevitably also visited upon those we purport to love.

This self, this ego, enables us to both belong to groups with whom we share traits as well as provide us with points of differentiation that make us special. It becomes our identity that shapes how we interact with the world. It offers others handholds to grasp when describing us and placing us in their own particular taxonomy of humanity. Beyond our bodies and appearance, the more interesting thing is how our mind develops as a tool to process the world before us. How we accumulate knowledge and subscribe to beliefs together creates a box of filters through which we consider the hundreds of decisions—both substantive and insignificant—we make each day. Through research I conducted on presidential decision making in foreign policy, I developed what I termed the “cognetic system” that explores this box of filters through the developmental channels of socialization, indoctrination, education, and experience; the first two illustrate the origins of beliefs, and the second two the origins of knowledge. The cognetic system attempts to illustrate how our curated identity affects our decision making.

Today, there is new and fascinating scholarship on how ideas as elements of our ideologies guide our lives. The brilliant young neuroscientist, Leor Zmigrod, of Cambridge, Stanford, and Harvard has placed her scope on the realm of belief systems—ideologies—in her study The Ideological Brain: the Radical Science of Flexible Thinking that brings “together neuroscience and politics and philosophy to challenge our understanding of what it means to exist as human beings” in a world that seems more rife than ever with conflicts based in trenchant beliefs that often defy any semblance of reality. She attempts to pick up where George Orwell left us when he observed that “political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Zmigrod’s quest is to observe belief structures as they permeate our bodies at the neurological level. A brain engaged in rigid, dogmatic, habitual thinking shows a “pattern of neurons firing … [that] is different from the pattern of neural activity when we are making a deliberate goal-oriented action” that considers multiple perspectives and options. And while her findings are at times disturbing, she shines a bright light on a new understanding of how apparently reasonable but rigid people can become so profoundly unreasonable, and how the appeal of simplicity and certainty are both comforting and dangerous. She makes the case for plasticity-of-mind that for centuries supported the liberalism and pluralism that made Western Civilization flourish, and is now in grave danger from the ideological zealots at both ends of the political spectrum. As Zmigrod found, the most cognitively flexible people are “nonpartisans who lean left” while the “extreme left and extreme right are ultimately similar in their intolerance and rigidity.”

While I laud her contribution, I also fear her work and the work of so many other scientists, which we need now more than ever, will undoubtedly face the wrath of Trump’s vitriol for people smarter than he, or be the target of Elon Musk’s chainsaw of destruction. Sidelining and/or banishing our best and brightest is a dumb way to secure our future, but that is exactly what Trump and Musk are doing. As my good friend, Roger Cohen, and his colleague, Catherine Porter, reported recently from Paris in the New York Times, the European Union just announced more than half-a-billion dollars will be invested to “make Europe a magnet for researchers” from the United States due to what the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, called a “gigantic miscalculation.”

We might find hope, however, in the one notable weakness in Trump’s MAGA world that suggests his tenure as America’s president and commander of chaos and cruelty may end sooner rather than later: Trump has no coherent ideology to affect a durable bond with his followers.

The value of ideologies to authoritarian leaders and regimes is to provide people a handhold on a set of beliefs that allow them a sense of belonging to an in-group that will (hopefully) fortify and sustain their welfare. The most successful totalitarian regimes throughout history, including Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, possessed an organizing premise that justified their actions regardless of norms, laws, and even morality. As Zmigrod points out, “Nazi totalitarianism emerged from a fixation on life as a fight between races, and Stalinist totalitarianism was built on life as a fight between economic classes.” Our own wannabe fascist, Donald Trump, has, as his Achilles heel of vulnerability, no clear organizing principle to affect a secure attachment of people to his MAGA brigade. Red hats and a leader whose fundamental principle is serving himself is a malevolent cult, not a durable regime. Once the benefits of subscribing to his many promises and claims ring hollow to those who, like him, are loyal only to their expected rewards, his fall from political power may be sudden and swift. Cults always appear invincible until they suddenly collapse, with or without a final gulp of Kool-Aid.

Humans must be able to make decisions to conduct their lives and also to reconcile dissonance to keep themselves mentally and emotionally stable. Belief systems enable both. Whether my “cognetic system” or Zmigrod’s political neuroscience, or the many philosophers throughout human history who have wrestled with the role of ideas and beliefs on our lives, we must recognize this: we should take great care in what we allow to populate our systems of thought. They are, after all, the backbone of our personal operating systems that allow us the enjoyment of the oneness we discovered in our late teens and its inherent sense of freedom.

Regardless of the carefully curated egos and belief systems we serve and employ, above all else we should take care to express certainty judiciously, perhaps even infrequently. Certitude, especially when dispatched with righteousness, is a danger to both ourselves and others. Like simplicity, certainty shares the structural nature of narrowing rather than broadening the mind; both attractive, yet too often, limiting. As Zmigrod found, “Rituals performed in the service of an ideology are viewed as righteous regardless of how hurtful or ridiculous they may be.” Indeed, “the more passionately we repeat a ritual, the more radical we become.” Religion has understood this since the beginning of faith-based belief, and politics has adopted this practice in the contemporary era.

Curiosity—even doubt—should therefore be practiced with much greater energy than certitude. Curiosity opens us while certitude closes off alternatives that may prove much more effective and meaningful. As humans, we fail our way to success. We must widen the aperture of consciousness to serve the best interests of ourselves, our communities, and the many organizations and institutions upon which we rely to achieve our well-being.

We should subscribe to the credo that every person we meet knows something we do not know, and can do something better than we can do it. With deference to our founders, all men are not created equal, notwithstanding the aim of being treated as having equal rights under the law. Each of us has something someone else can benefit from; it is our inequality—our differences— that provides the strongest argument for both diversity and unity. Wisdom, therefore, finds its best host in those who find value, rather than disdain, in people unlike themselves. Wisdom thrives in love and dies in hatred.

By |2025-05-18T12:51:20+00:00May 11th, 2025|General, Recent|0 Comments
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Stop the Stupid

“Never again” happens over and over, again.

That is the sad state of humanity. We learn, then we forget.  We are painfully reminded, then we forget once again. Meanwhile, we admonish each other for bringing history to today’s table when we draw historical comparisons. How dare we compare what is happening today to Nazi Germany?! Those were different times! Indeed, they were. But were they different enough?

We are intoxicated by our specialness, of our arrogance that we are immune from the mistakes of history. Of course, we are smarter than our ancestors, except we are not smarter—not even close. Bigger, stronger, wealthier? Yes. But smarter, no. Our arrogance, addled further by our indifference, assures our stupidity. Our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, are screaming at us from their graves. Screaming at us to save what they built for us. To save America.

Our nation is in great peril. Weirdly, our president is the central threat to our country and our freedoms. He is the existential threat to our republic. He is destroying American power. He is the existential threat to the global economy and world order. He is working against America and for our historical adversaries. Most of all, he is working for himself and explicitly not for us. For those of you who believe I am catastrophizing, just take a moment and weigh the balance of Trump’s benevolence against his malevolence; that is, if you can even identify a scintilla of his actions that can be considered benevolent. He is a profoundly cruel, reckless, and narcissistic person. He is the epitome of the dark triad.

Further, if you are among those who believe he has some magical strategy that will somehow flip the many destructive consequences he has created in his first one hundred days to our sudden advantage, you are courting disaster. You should schedule your fitting for a jester’s costume soon. I will endeavor to remain kind to you—even compassionate—and honor your right to your own opinion, even while I find your naïveté profoundly disturbing. I will leave your conscience in your own hands. Mine is clear.

America is filled with wonderful people. But sadly today, most of us are bystanders. Many hope the nightmare of the current administration will somehow be resolved without our having to speak up, let alone stand up. That our institutions of norms and laws will somehow prevail without our active support. This comfortable convenient complacency is certainly not unprecedented. Many adopted the same behaviors before us. 1936 Germany: Maybe Hitler doesn’t mean what he says. 1994 Rwanda: Surely the Hutu extremists will not kill a million of their Tutsi rivals in just one hundred days. 1995 Bosnia: Genocide in Europe can’t happen again. Syria, Myanmar, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, the list goes on and on. For those who believe yes, but it can’t/won’t happen in America, please reflect on the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Kent State shootings, and the many mass murders we endure in the United States on a weekly basis. All of the victims thought they were smarter than their ancestors, too. They believed what in fact did happen would not happen to them, either. “Blindsided” is the characterization many survivors used, after the fact. Too often in history, “it can’t happen here” has been followed by “thoughts and prayers” and, eventually, “never again, never again.”

The things we can see happening in America today are, unfortunately, probably just the tip of the iceberg. Trump ignoring our courts and rule of law, destroying essential public goods and institutions, pouring tariff fuel on the inflation fire, wrecking critical relationships with allies while green-lighting the exploits of adversaries, will all imperil America and Americans for decades to come. Project 2025 has exceeded my worst fears. While this is all deeply troubling, however, my eye is on the president’s attempt to make our military his own.

Watch what is happening that is being largely ignored by the media. Former Fox News weekender and now Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is a useful idiot. He is useful as a sideshow—a shiny object—to distract our attention away from what is going on beneath him at the Pentagon. While the media is focused on Hegseth, Trump is replacing our military brass with sycophants designed to achieve complete fealty to himself, and it is nearly complete. His replacements will follow and enforce his orders without consideration of our Constitution and rule of law, let alone the many treaties the United States has throughout the world. For Trump’s bootlickers, he is the law; his orders are their commandments. His pursuit of a military parade to celebrate his birthday in June should not be easily dismissed as a point of egoic amusement. It, too, is a part of the authoritarian process.

Machiavelli would cheer Trump’s understanding of his principal thesis of power: command and control the tools of cruelty and violence. Routinely dispense cruelty with impunity to keep your boot gently but firmly on the neck of the American psyche. As Machiavelli instructed the prince, if you accomplish this, you may do as you wish, including, in Trump’s fantasy, becoming president for life.

I would like you to consider, however, that Trump may well be a gift from God. Certainly not as promoted by fraudulent-Christian White Christian Nationalists; rather, as the agent of destruction we need as a wayward empire to find our way back to the goodness of our basic humanity. Trump may be God’s way of telling us that we suck. Evil can be a gift if we address it with calm resolve in a relentless pursuit of rebirth. As the spiritual teacher Ekhart Tolle suggests, “suffering is a wonderful teacher.” We Americans have squandered the great gifts of our success by engaging the sins of greed, sloth, and pride; especially in the last twenty-five years. Of these charges, the evidence is overwhelming. Perhaps Trump is our way out—our evil savior.

Renewal and redemption—saving ourselves—is a process. I call it the path to hallelujah. It begins in fear and anger, then sadness, then compassion, then hope and, if we do the work, renewal and redemption. The path to hallelujah is the most human of our endeavors; we Americans love a redemption story. In America’s recent collapse from order to disorder, we are in the early stages of fear and anger. The faster we get past this, and then let our sadness dissipate, we can get back on track to a new world. I have no doubt our current administration has zero interest in allowing us to get past our fears, let alone anger. That is their trap in which they would like us to remain ensnared. They incite us daily to keep us disoriented, fearful, and angry. That doesn’t mean we can smile our way out of this mess, but neither does it mean that destructive anger or violence will emancipate us. I am not advocating for weak and woke, I am advocating for clever and whole-hearted.

In the centuries preceding Jesus Christ, Jewish prophets like Moses, Amos, and Ezekiel endeavored to keep society aware of the power of truth and the pitfalls of delusion. Truth is hard, while delusion is easy, which makes delusion much more popular. That reality is why so many prophets throughout human history met their end through exile and/or assassination. From Socrates, to Christ, to Martin Luther King, Jr. their otherwise peaceful and prophetic lives ended prematurely and tragically. As the Franciscan friar and ecumenical teacher, Richard Rohr, illustrates in his new book, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, “The prophet’s job was always spotting where the problem really lies: in the accusing ones themselves and in the delusions of the collective.” Like anger, righteousness is a trap as well. It provides an elaborate costume under which we may conceal our own many deceits and conceits while we rot from the inside, out.

My own prophetic charge is thus: it is time to wake up and, with attendant humility, restore the virtues that form a strong character based in both compassion and courage. We must respond wisely to God’s gift of Trump. We must view him as an unfortunate but necessary source of suffering around which to organize and affect our redemption and renewal. Standing idly by will only prolong our misery.

Thank you, God, and President Trump. Now, please Donald, go play lots of golf (if you can find any balls made in America).

By |2025-05-11T12:37:46+00:00April 27th, 2025|General, Recent|0 Comments
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Riding the Rainbow

Last summer, I shared two posts on resilience and reverence. The first, “Three Steps to Resilience” was a how-to narrative. Then, I re-wrote that piece as a poem in “Reverence for Me.” Over the last few years, I have used this technique as a challenge to improve my writing; prose to poem, or poem to prose. Unlike analytical narrative, which does not encourage interpretation, poetry demands it. This is poetry’s power: interpretation prompts engagement that creates a relationship between the writer and reader. It encourages discourse as opposed to the terminus of persuasion that is the aim of analytical narrative. Recently, I learned that this approach is not new, none other than Benjamin Franklin also used this process to improve his own writing. Following in his footsteps—even unwittingly—seems a good practice. It makes my mind do flips and cartwheels that, while challenging, always reveals new perspectives and insights while helping avoid the onset of intellectual sclerosis that seems to afflict many of my aging peers.

Today, I offer a poem that attempts to capture the life-process I outlined in “The Identity Trap: Suffering or Transcendence,” (August 2, 2022) that illustrates the four phases of life: preparation, achievement, actualization, and transcendence. Two stanzas are meant to reflect each phase, in order, for a total of eight, punctuated by a final line of deliverance. Toggling between the essay and the poem allows two forms of interrogation on these most important questions of identity and the meaning of a good life. The essay is 2,096 words while the poem is 110 words; in essence, the same message. I hope one or the other, or both, resonate with you.

The Arc of Life

Your life is yours

The lovely and gnarly

White space beckons

Inviting a masterpiece

 

Welcomed with joy

Stumbling, climbing

From abstract to real

Striving to shine

 

The pain of wounds

Bathed by pure light

Cleansing then healing

Scars become honor

 

Cheers and sneers

Certainty and chaos

Ardor conquers all

Vicissitudes vanish

 

Beliefs and knowledge

Give way to wisdom

Beatitudes cascading

A gift from the Mount

 

Ignoring fools

Left to goad others

Desires dwindle as

Calm becomes armor

 

The loud fall quiet

Disturbances wane

Silence blossoms

So the soul can speak

 

A whisper of goodbye

Gracefully now

From glory to peace

A sweet liberation

 

Tendered to eternity

By |2025-04-27T13:06:16+00:00April 13th, 2025|General, Recent, Spiritual|0 Comments
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Fear is NOT Us

The America I grew up in was strong, confident, and open-minded. Every new generation expected their lives would be better than the ones their parents had. It was what we set out to accomplish every day. Yes, we were far from perfect and committed our own range of transgressions, but at our core we believed in our country and ourselves. We were unafraid.

America today is afraid of the world, its neighbors, and each other. Fear is at the essence of everything our MAGA-infected leaders dispatch, from deportations to tariffs. Reagan’s shining city on a hill that opened its arms to the world is now a walled-off and crumbling empire at war with itself. The spirit of America—our greatest power—has been hollowed out and is facing collapse. Trump’s imbecilic tariffs will only accelerate the collapse. His thirst for destruction appears to be insatiable. The great tragedy is that all of this is entirely self-inflicted. The great hope is that we can self-correct.

The fears we have are false; they are manufactured by those who wish to control us. They are not founded whatsoever in credible threats either from outside or from within. The steady flow of what Kellyanne Conway described as Trump’s “alternative facts” deployed with Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” strategy are very much alive in Trump’s second term and are taking their toll; the constant gaslighting is acutely distorting reality. The Trump/MAGA mantra is, “Be afraid, be very afraid!” often followed by a claim that only he/they can save us.  All of it is an attempt to destroy our confidence and courage such that we will accept whatever Trump wants to do to us. It is all a con.

If we allow this to continue, the shame is on us.

Cowardice is not a strategy when dealing with the hyper-isolationist, illiberal, fascist Trump/MAGA agenda. As many of our elected Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer cower, together with universities, corporations, law firms, the Supreme Court, and government and non-government agencies, the things that made America truly great and the envy of the world like our capacity for creativity, invention and innovation, as well as our embrace of liberalism and pluralism are being squandered in favor of fear-based entropy. I give Senator Booker credit for not needing to go to the bathroom for twenty-five hours, but we will need much more courage from our opposition leaders than that.

If Alexis de Tocqueville were alive today, he would be appalled at what has become of us. The Americans he observed in the nineteenth century would never have behaved in the manner we do, today. Ironically, our founders would likely not be surprised; they were deeply concerned about the prospect of demagogues like Trump even while they had an idyllic leader in George Washington.

There is nothing patriotic about supporting those whose aim is to destroy our spirit and isolate us from the world. On the contrary, supporting this twisted and toxic plague of fear is about as un-American as one can be. If you are one of these MAGA lapdogs, slap yourself around in a cold shower and wake the f*ck up. You are not making America great again, you are destroying it. Trump, Vance, Musk, et al, are not patriots, they are scoundrels as in Samuel Johnson’s 1775 admonition, “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” aimed at those who use patriotism as a shield for their nefarious behaviors.

Fear is not healthy. It is a mental, emotional, and/or physical disturbance that generates dis-ease that manifests ultimately into disease. It its simple and primitive form it results in a fight or flight response that, while consistent with survival, is inconsistent with thriving. Fear’s most insidious effects are, however, an abdication of the self that produces complacency and complicity. In this manifestation, it produces a pessimistic ambivalence where life has no meaning, which we call nihilism. Moreover, it grants leaders the most destructive power of all: to define the truth without respect to objective reality—without regard for the facts.

Ironically, we can now observe that nihilism is a natural descendent of abundance. One might think abundance would provide a springboard to greater accomplishments, but what is happening today in America is just the opposite. As I wrote in a post last December, “America’s Arc of Moral Madness (and Hope),” “From humility to hubris to nihilism may be the signposts which tomorrow’s historians use to define America’s final descent.” That which humankind struggled to achieve for millennia—to move from a condition of scarcity to one of abundance—has now produced a meek and weak society that believes meaning is found in comfort rather than struggle and achievement. The shocking thing is how fast American society has lost its strength. What took more than two centuries to develop is being squandered in just two decades.

Nihilism is spreading throughout American society, but no more so than with young men. For the first time in our history, women outnumber men at our colleges and universities. In American universities, 42.7% of enrolled undergraduate students are male; 57.3% are female. For black men, the numbers are much worse. Just 19% of Howard University students are black men. While this is good for women, it is certainly not for men. A healthy society needs healthy enrollment, which should match the general population, roughly 50/50. Education has always been America’s secret sauce of success. Although our primary and secondary schools have languished in the past few decades, our institutions of higher learning remain the envy of the world—for now.

Fear of failure and displacement in society from their traditional dominant position in social order has left young men bereft and depressed. Seven out of ten preventable opioid overdose deaths in America are males. Their fear and depression have also left them susceptible to bro-casters like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson who stoke the anger of young men to fill their own pockets with wealth and promote a kind of misogynistic defiance similar to Trump’s ethos of “grab ‘em by the pussy.” In short, our young men’s fears are being exploited for financial and political gain that compromises a whole generation of Americans. The emerging bro-MAGA-sphere is highly unlikely to produce the kind of leaders our country needs in the future unless we desire a reptilian dystopia.

The nihilism that is afflicting young men in America is also affecting all of us to a lesser, but meaningful, extent.  It is the pre-condition to nihilism that we should focus on if we have any hope of correcting course. That pre-condition is the abdication of agency; of giving up on the idea that we can and should make our own decisions and take our own actions with confidence to affect our destiny. The maxim in William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus, “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul” has been lost in the fog of fear and deceit. We know what is true, in spite of the many lies being told by our leaders. We know what is right, which is a skill we learned in kindergarten. We must simply summon the courage to act appropriately, with respect to what is true and right.

Although it is an evident truth that in the long run we are all dead, making impermanence a noble truth, it does not suggest we should be indifferent while we are here. The circumstances of our lives are our responsibility. My fellow Americans, we need to get our act together, and fast. Get off the couch and get in the game. Realize that meaning comes not from the comfort of abundance, but from the struggle of scarcity. Stand up for what we know is right. Or, as Rosa Parks did, sit down for what is right. Defend and restore our heritage as the greatest nation in history; one that believes in the principles of liberty, equality, and inclusion. We must reactivate that old exemplar exceptionalism that aims to set the example for the world, rather than to be the world’s biggest threat. Neither cowardice nor abdication will serve us well. Our ancestors fought for freedom; our nearer ancestors—our parents and grandparents—fought for an abundance of wealth and opportunity. All that is being asked of us is that we fight for the objective truth.

In two weeks, on Easter Sunday, my Christian friends will proclaim, “He is Risen!” Perhaps we should take a page out of Christ’s resurrection playbook and rise as well, before both freedom and abundance are lost.

By |2025-04-13T12:43:44+00:00April 6th, 2025|American Identity, General, Recent|0 Comments
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The Sanctity of Dignity

The amniotic sac that protects a fetus in its most vulnerable state of being is very similar to dignity. Once we are born, dignity’s job is to provide a protective barrier that surrounds our character where the good stuff—our virtues and values—reside. Dignity is the guardian of the soul; it keeps us whole and uncompromised. It reminds us as often as necessary that we are worthy while communicating a sense of resilience to those who might wish us harm. Our dignity is hallowed ground upon which no one should be allowed to tread. Those who either willingly discard their dignity, or otherwise sacrifice it in the face of adversity, expose the essence of who they are—their character—to manipulation and destruction. Without a dignity-emboldened character, we become pawns to be used and abused by others.

As the journalist Adam Serwer argued, for Trump and his lickspittle lieutenants, “cruelty is the point” of everything they do. Rather than giving much credit to Trump, however, Serwer illustrates how this appetite for cruelty has ebbed and flowed through human history and the Trump era is just a modern manifestation of the cruel-tool’s application. Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532) illustrates the utility of cruelty well. Five-hundred years hence, in virtually every form of oppression, from racism to misogynism to religious persecution to all forms of bigotry, cruelty is used to bend and break people to the will of the tyrant, even those wannabe tyrants who veil themselves in patriotism and populism while claiming democratic virtues which, of course, is all a con.

I take Serwer’s point, but I believe he misses cruelty’s more fundamental objective: to strip people of their dignity so they succumb to feelings of worthlessness and submit to the tyrant’s wishes. In most, if not all, of Trump’s history, whether in business, personal, or political endeavors, his approach is the same: tear people down to wear them out and take advantage of them. Have you ever heard of Trump lifting someone up and empowering their life? Where are those testimonials? He strips people of their dignity by any means possible, rips their character out, and feasts on their souls. His admiration for Putin, Kim, Xi, and Netanyahu are all evidence of his desire to out-cruel the world’s most cruel actors. His life’s ambition appears to be to win the title of “World’s Biggest Bully.”

Trump’s infamous claim that he can just “grab ‘em by the pussy” seems somehow quaint today as he is now moving on to destroy the welfare and lives of everyone from federal workers and public servants to immigrants to scientists to professors and allies with complete disregard for the rule of law, let alone intelligence and basic common sense. Crush people’s spirits to do with them as he wishes. It is bizarre that he is the president of what once was the “land of the free and home of the brave.” While he bloviates, Lady Liberty weeps. It’s no wonder France has asked for her return.

If we believe Trump’s appetite will be sated by his immediate targets, like federal workers or federal judges, we are fools. If you are a woman, person of color, disabled, older, a veteran, or LBGTQ—which collectively is most of America—you are a potential target for his wrath. Someday soon, just writing this essay may subject me to being classified by Trump’s Department of Justice or State Department as a domestic terrorist; our First Amendment be damned. Trump is the biggest glutton for power to ever occupy our White House. He will stop at nothing to consume his many targets of vengeance and to feed his ego. This is not a cry of wokeism, it is simple realism.

Meanwhile, Democrats fiddle and diddle weeping over their victim’s soup like orphans in a Charles Dickens’ novel; hardly a source of inspiration or comfort. It may be too soon to invoke the post-Holocaust warning of the German pastor, Martin Niemöller, “then they came for me,” but we must also be clear-eyed about what is going on and realize we may slip into anarchy more easily than we can stop the slide.

What is very clear, having now watched Trump ignore the orders of our federal judges, is that there is no roadblock to stop him. He is doing as he wishes regardless of our laws, justice system, or our Constitution. Trump apologists and enablers beware: you are not immune either. Once your utility is gone, he will discard you, too. See: Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, John Kelly, Mike Pence, Mark Milley, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo, and many more. As Machiavelli might warn Trump’s current cadre of sycophants like Musk, Vance, Rubio, et al, watch your backs—your throw-away date may be sooner than you think. For Trump enthusiasts still cheering him on, enjoy it while it lasts; he cares as much for you as he does your next vote, which he no longer needs.

It is jarring to realize that preserving our dignity must now be our priority. For most of our history in America, dignity has been considered inviolable—a right of being that needed no proclamation or law. It could certainly be lost, but usually by our own abdication. It was ours to lose rather than someone else’s to take. We must embrace new perspectives and practices to safeguard this essential armor of our character. The sanctity of our dignity must not be compromised.

Our most fundamental perspective must be resolute, reinforced with a simple mantra: we are worthy. As worthy (if not more worthy) than Trump, Musk, and his MAGA zealots. We can further preserve ourselves by the following practices.

  1. See things as they are, not as you might wish them to be. Accepting things as they are is essential to our mental well-being. It also assures we don’t waste time and energy chasing false, or manufactured realities. We must suspend the many filters our ego places before our eyes to fool us into believing things are other than the way they are. In the case of Trump, our mistakes in the past have been disbelieving that he would actually do what he threatens, what some have called a “failure of imagination.” In his first term there were guardrails; now there are none. It is time we saw him for what he is and what he does rather than hoping it is not so. At this point, giving him the benefit of the doubt is not shame on him, it is shame on us.
  2. Be highly selective with your engagements. One of the great skills in life is knowing what not to pay attention to. The old 80/20 rule holds that 80% of what we tend to has no bearing whatsoever on those outcomes we desire to realize. Whether people, organizations, and especially the deluge of media we encounter, we must be stingy with our engagement. Ignore the clowns. The test I have used throughout my life to gauge my willingness to engage with anything or anyone is, does the thing (person, organization, investment opportunity, or whatever) respond to intelligence? If it doesn’t, discard and move on.
  3. Nurture the balance inherent in equanimity. Avoid the highs and lows. Live in a state of balance—of equilibrium. Being solid in your physical, mental, and emotional states produces a strength that is difficult to assail. Many years ago, during a wilderness skills course I attended through the National Outdoor Leadership School, I learned the value of the ABCs of backpacking. Your backpack must be packed with consideration of A for access, B for balance, and C for compression to affect a comfortable journey. In our current challenges, we should move through the world with a disposition of C for clarity, E for empathy, and F for fortitude with our shoulders back and our eyes on the horizon (or higher). Do not wallow or whine.
  4. Support, defend, and protect others as you would wish to be supported, defended, and protected by others. This is an extension of the Golden Rule and the lesson offered in Matthew 25 regarding doing for the “least of these” as an act of service to God. Christ’s lesson was that the truly worthy of blessings act to serve others as a fundamental responsibility of a life well lived. Kindness cost nothing; the return on that investment is infinite. Making eye contact with a smile on your face to offer your support may change that person’s day, week, or life. Being seen and appreciated is the most basic form of love.
  5. Focus on intent first, and results second (if at all). Although we may not be able to control outcomes, we can control our intentions, particularly with regard to the intention that guides our responses to outcomes. All we can do is to assure our intentions are pure and true. An elemental difference between western and eastern philosophy is that in the West we focus on results while in the East they focus on intentions. This difference is based in the importance in eastern philosophy of the present moment (as opposed to the future or past) where our intentions can be expressed with certainty. Of course, good intentions also often produce good outcomes, but what we do control—and should take care to form—is the intention with which we act.

If you happened to catch the show 60 Minutes last Sunday, March 16th, you would have seen the story about many young musicians of color who had been selected to come to Washington D.C. to play in an orchestra with members of the United States Marine Corp Band. It was organized by the non-profit organization Equity Arc in an effort to expose these young musicians to other master musicians to inspire them to continue their love of music and performing as they went on to graduate from high school. In Trump’s DEI hysteria, he cancelled the event since these students were of color. But Equity Arc and CBS decided to make it happen with Marine Corp Band alumni who were not prohibited from participating by Trump’s proclamation eliminating anything that smells of DEI. In the end, many came together to protect the dignity of the students and make the meeting happen even while our president did what he could to wound the students and destroy the event. Listening to the kids and the mentor-musicians is indeed inspiring. I recommend watching the segment here. This is what is meant by protecting the sanctity of dignity in the face of a wannabe tyrant’s wrath, which leads to my final, sixth, recommendation.

  1. Celebrate the victories. Like the story on 60 Minutes, we must all rally around those who, in the face of Trump’s wrath, defy his attempts to destroy our dignity. We must stand strong alone and together to get to the other side of this era of pointless cruelty. We must hold fast to what America was before the Age of Deceit that Trump has now fully co-opted as his own. We must prevail one day at a time and applaud those who rise above the madness. We must summon our best selves.

At this point, the only way out is through.

By |2025-04-06T13:04:47+00:00March 23rd, 2025|General, Recent|0 Comments
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