(credit: Simon Law, via Wikimedia Commons)

                                               A Hopeful Christmas

Good day. Thank you for dropping by. I have one small announcement: the chamber of commerce has asked me to remind you that there are only three shopping days left till Christmas. Just kidding. I enjoy Christmas shopping like I enjoy drinking bleach.        

          But it is the meaning of Christmas for moderns that I want to write about today. And I promise from here on to be more serious.

What conclusions do we come to if we apply a moral realist model to the cultural phenomenon called “Christmas”? What do I see in this man who probably lived from about 4 B.C. to about 30 A.D.? I think harder about this question at Christmas time, as most of us do. We get fed up with how commercial Christmas has become.

The ads sometimes start before Remembrance Day, and I find that very hard to take. The men and women who fought in the wars that the nations of the world have been drawn into in the last century or so deserve a special time that is set aside just for them. November 11 is supposed to be that day. The rest of us ought to be setting aside time for them and showing respect, gratitude. Greedy merchants crowding into that time by advertising their Christmas junk infuriate me. I make a quiet vow when I see Christmas ads anytime before November 12 to be sure that I do not buy whatever it is those ads are trying to sell – ever again.

What I don’t like about Christmas right off is commercialism. I add to that, gluttony and drunkenness. We eat so much food and drink so many kinds of alcohol that we don’t need or even like.

 Feast of the Bean King (credit: Jacob Jordaens, via Wikimedia Commons)

Can anything save me from total disillusionment during the Christmas season? Yes. I couldn’t have said that for many years, but I can today. Ten years ago, I figured something out.  

The way of humans on this world for the most part has been to take as much as they can as often as they can. In our era, the philosophy of greed has even begun to threaten what once was taken for granted, namely the ecosystem of this planet. Perhaps in what I have to say today, I can give some hope to those of you who are beginning to despair at the indifference of our leaders toward environmental issues. But my main focus will not be on environmental issues because they weren’t issues in Jesus’ time. His main gift to the human race was something else.

The worst consequence of human greed for many centuries of our history on this planet has been the biggest crime that we do to each other. War. When earthquakes or hurricanes hit an innocent town or country, we grieve for the people there, we send help, and we do what we can. But basically, we can handle natural disasters. The horrors that people do to each other are in a different category altogether. A child can tell you that we have more than enough resources on this planet to feed, clothe, and shelter everyone in comfort. Our leaders’ sending us to war is not about making sure that people have enough to live in reasonable dignity. Wars are about vain people gaining face. It is realizing that simple truth that makes us feel so disillusioned with our own species.  

And let me not mince words or be vague here. Historians estimate that of the horrors that have happened to people because of the aggression of other people, more than ninety percent have been caused by governments, not by criminals. Wars and concentration camps, mostly. Mafia thugs are disgusting human beings, but they are small fry compared to the Hitlers and Stalins of the world. And the Shaka Zulus, the Genghis Khans, the Caesars, the Alexanders, and the Joshuas.

                    Gulag prison camp in Stalinist era (public domain) 

Where, then, does Jesus fit in?

War had been ugly and pointless for centuries before Jesus ever came on the scene. Everything any war ever accomplished could have been accomplished without any bloodshed at all, if the people involved had agreed to debate the issues openly, negotiate, and compromise. He saw that. He also saw even in 26 A.D. that humanity was on a course of self-destruction.

The ways of greed, politics and war and the improvements in our killing technologies can be thought of as lines on a graph of time. As the two lines climb forward across the graph, we watch in horror. We know that inevitably one day they will touch. At that point, we will finally make a weapon capable of wiping out the human race at the same time as the sea of politics casts up a leader who will use it. There is a kind of paralyzing, mathematical certainty to this graph. The lines are converging. Jesus saw this two thousand years ago: we are doomed to someday destroy ourselves if we do not change our very nature.

But then he put into his world a new way of seeing ourselves. He left us this: love one another as I have loved you. If you remember nothing else that I told you, remember this: love one another as I have loved you. You can do this. You really can. Just love your neighbor. Then all the good you can imagine will follow.  

In the middle of the Roman Empire, Jesus’ time was a time when war and the way of life that it forced people into were considered natural. Almost every person in that empire would have thought debating the matter was childish. If you had begun to argue that war might not be necessary, they would have told you, “Oh, grow up!” Many would have looked at you like you had just grown donkey ears. The main thing they prayed to their gods for was victory in battle.

Every one of the conquered peoples in the Roman Empire was seething to get even with the Roman conquerors. And of all of them, this was true especially of the Jews, the people among whom Jesus had been born and grown to manhood. They had secret group after secret group plotting sabotage and assassination all the time.

In this social milieu of rage and hate, people paid to go to arenas all over the Empire and watch men kill each other, right there in front of their eyes. 

And then he came along and said: “It doesn’t have to be this way. If a man hits you on one cheek, turn the other to him. If he grabs your jacket, offer him your shirt. If he wants to force you to walk a mile with him, walk three.” And he lived his values, all the way to his death. Others had said similar things, but Jesus, by the actions of his life and by his dramatic death, caused people to listen and remember.

Since those times, heroes all through history, even modern ones like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, have borne out Jesus’ simple philosophy. They have shown that with enough courage, the way of non-violence really can work. The rest of humanity has been less sincere in observing Jesus’ simple rule, but we have still gotten gradually kinder every century since Roman times.   

At first, the Romans didn’t consider Jesus’ ideas important. They thought his ideas were just stupid. But well after he was gone, his cult – and a cult is what it was to the Romans – kept growing. There was something about it that caught human feelings. Worst of all, it began to steal some of the sons and daughters of the Romans right in Rome. Many converts were young people, even teenagers, fed-up with the materialism and emptiness of their parents’ way of life.

The Roman Empire is long gone, as are so many others too numerous to list; Jesus’ words are still here.           

Was he divine? Was he who the churches claim he was? No, not to me. Or, to be exact, I believe he simply had a lot more of a quality that all of us have, the spiritual quality that can’t be explained by material forces alone.

But whether he was divine just does not matter. How would you ever prove such a proposition anyway? What matters is that he put into the mix of ideas that are passed back and forth by the human race, the simple notion that we really can solve our differences without fighting one another. And to me, therefore, he injected a new variable into the equations of human history. We may – may – if we can learn to love our neighbors …we may make it through the era of greed and violence and finally grow up. Emerge as a new kind of species, a differently-programmed species that no longer needs to keep itself fit by being its own predator.

Before him, our destroying ourselves was a mathematical certainty. Now there is that tantalizing little maybe. Maybe ...we can learn to love our neighbors.

For me, just seeing the truth of that one big principle is more than enough to keep me from cynicism at Christmas time. And it's that that I celebrate. Love your neighbor as yourself. Christmas, for me, is the time of year when I celebrate the fact that this gentle man entered into the flow of human history in the most warlike society that had ever existed, and changed the way human societies move across time. 

In short, he changed – everything.




                                 Plenitude of a Winter Stroll 
            (credit: Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho, via Wikimedia Commons)

So what if the lying, greedy politicians won this round? My struggle against them will go on. They can’t stop that as long as there is breath in my body. We have free will, and we have a truth to live by. The rest is up to us.  

Let materialism and greed fill the shopping malls to the roof with junk. They can’t discourage me. I believe in something real that is beyond all of that. 

We keep trying; we win some and we lose some; the struggle goes on. But there’s hope now. Before one guy, as I see human history, anyway, there was none.

Merry Christmas, lads and lassies. Enjoy your family and friends.

Quote by Marianne Williamson, often attributed to Nelson Mandela:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant or talented? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the spiritual glory that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our very presence liberates others.

     
More that 3 weeks to write this post. 

Sorry, loyal followers, but it's a touchy topic. See what you think. 





                 

                                        Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein

                                    (credit: David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

                                    Candidate for the US Senate, Roy Moore 

                                   (credit: Getty Images, via the e-zine, heavy.)  

Articles about men who have made, and persisted in making, unwanted passes at women over whom they had authority are filling the internet these days. Some are even being accused of the more full-blown crimes: sexual assault and rape.  

There is so much to say. But let me try to get to the bottom line in a hurry.

Basically, the true answer to this whole issue is to say “no” should mean “no”. It’s just that this easy-in-theory answer gets tangled in practice.

The big majority of women who make the accusations that we are reading about aren’t complaining about a man who hugged them a little too long or who patted their bottom on an impulse that he never should have given into. These women are going after males who went radically over the line of impulse or poor judgement. They offended multiple times, with many women. Charges that get media coverage are usually brought by that minority of women who are brave enough to face the furore and counter-accusations that they know will follow. I really believe that.  

“No” should mean “no”. If she says that some words or touches are not welcome and that she is not interested in him as a partner, the man should just stop, and that should be the end of the matter. Leave her alone. You’re not her type.

So why is this problem so widespread, and where is it coming from? Are most men too stupid to understand plain English?

Well …they shouldn’t be, but sometimes, apparently, some are.

Why? For reasons that are not so simple.

Many men now, and many more in the last generation, were raised to believe that a man must pursue a woman if anything intimate/romantic is ever to happen between them. We were told that women are too shy or reticent to make the first move even if they find a man attractive. They expect men to take the initiative.

But, the really complicating factor comes in next.

There are millions of women who do implicitly expect to be the pursued, not the pursuers. The courted, not the courting. In short, there are millions of women who have absorbed the complementary myth about a woman’s role in the courtship dance. Get as pretty as you can, then display the wares and see who shows interest. But never make the first move.   

The “no means no” rule still ought to solve situations where a male’s attentions are not welcome. Or to be even plainer, she could say “Get lost. Leave me alone or I’ll report you.” That ought to end the matter. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn’t.

Do the problems lie in some men who have enormous egos? Who don’t recognize “no” when it’s said to them plainly. Yes. They’re out there.

But here’s the rub: some women are part of the problem too. 42% of all American women who voted in November of 2016 voted for Trump, apparently, in spite of his sexist talk. Tens of millions of them. There is something deep going on here.

My belief is that most of those women got taken in by Trump because deep down, they want to hold on to roles that they are familiar with. The new roles of the new women are parts in the social drama that these women don’t know how to play. The freedom they might find if they really bought into feminism seems to them not adequate compensation for the privileges they would have to give up, so they stick with the roles that they know.  

And now even more complicating factors begin to arrive.

A smaller percentage of women are sexually drawn to a man who “takes charge”. It is a myth, but it is a powerful one. The myths that most deeply drive our patterns of behavior always are.  

                        

                                                         actor Jamie Dornan 

                         (who played Christian Grey in the film "50 Shades of Grey") 

                         (credit: RanZag, via Wikimedia Commons)

How else do we explain the millions of copies sold of “50 Shades of Grey”? The millions who went to the silly film of the same name? To many men, this whole array of evidence drips female hypocrisy.  

But let me say here what I said to young men who were my students in my 33 year teaching career, usually while there were plenty of young women also in the room.

“No” means “no”. And if you find a female who really does seem to want you to push her boundaries, even physically, turn and run. She has unresolved, internal issues. She is being steered, in her behavior, by a dangerous myth. In short, if you stay with her, she will make you the same. Crazy.

Look for the girl with an open heart, one who is not afraid to let you know if she is attracted to you. Remember also that her showing interest in you doesn’t give you a right to use her as you please. The relationship is supposed to be one between two rational human beings, with respect and honesty on both sides. If she clearly is turned on by something else, young men, get out of there. This scenario will not end happily.

In defense of the women in my reading audience, I will also say that most of the fans of “50 Shades of Grey” are not looking to find Christian Grey, the billionaire hero who will spank them when they need it and then take over the running of their lives. They know better. He’s as real as the cowboy, knight, or prince about whom they dreamed when they were in elementary school. In short, only a fantasy.  

How many of you, men, once believed, or maybe still believe, you’re going to find a princess who is beautiful and pure and can’t sleep if there is a single chick pea bean hidden under twenty mattresses that she must lie down on (as in the old fairy tale "The Princess and the Pea")?

Your princess isn’t coming, anymore that Prince Charming is. By now, you should know that. Similarly, most women know that the myth they were taught as girls is just that - a myth, a fairy tale.

No hero is coming to take the fear out of life for them. “50 Shades …” is a fantasy and in the land of fantasy, the vast majority of women know, it should stay.

In fact, as long as we have come this far, we can be even more candid. You see it’s not the spankings or the “masterful” ways of Christian Grey that are the turn-on. The deep suggestion is that when a woman finds a man who is “masterful”, he will take over the running of her life, and she will cease to be afraid in this harsh, uncertain world. He will intervene between her and her fears. He will make it all okay. That is why, in today’s terms, he has to be a billionaire.  

But men, there are also plenty of you who want a woman who will organize your chaotic, drifting life and set it on a path to meaning again. Who is this woman but a “mama”? There are plenty of guilty secrets here to spread around.

Real men and women know better than to seek out someone who will make the world okay. They are responsible for their own weight, their own drinking, their own finances, etc. No one but you is going to fix the fears and delusions inside your head because no one else ever really knows them. Love is not the answer to those things; it is the reward won by those who have fought the dragons back into their caves on their own.

And by the way, none of us is ever going to kill the biggest of the dragons. We can drive him back into his cave and wall him in for years, but one day he will have to be dealt with again.

We all have to get old. We all have to die.

Adults stop looking for a magic love that will make reality nice again and, instead, set out to fix their lives themselves. Therefore, I believe that adult women and men who see how ugly rape is are going to have to learn to work together to deal with the problem as rationally as we can. Change the laws to protect victims better and change policies all over to make it harder and harder for anyone to assault women –  or men – to begin with.

That being said, to be as frank as possible, I should also say, my female friends, that I will not be held responsible for things I didn’t do, can’t change, and would like to put a stop to every bit as much as you would. About one third of all men are sexually assaulted at some time in their lives, too.

I won’t waste time on pointless demands and accusations aimed willy nilly at any “good men out there”. I will simply do what I can in my little corner of the world to decrease the likelihood of anyone doing or even planning violent or unwanted sexual interaction with anyone. We must re-program sexual morés on every side.  

“What pointless accusations?” you might ask. What do some - some, not all - women say that I find hard to take?

For example, do I believe all alleged rape victims? No. Not automatically in every case. I want to know what the evidence shows. I want to know whether there are others making similar allegations against this same alleged culprit. That is what a trial in a court of law is about. Physical evidence. Surveillance video. Testimony from corroborating witnesses and experts. 

There have been real rapists, more than one or two, who have walked away from the charges. I know that. But there have also been clever, manipulative, alleged victims who have been proven to be liars by evidence and some even by their own admission. Women who for their own reasons got angry and saw a way to wreck the life of someone they were mad at. 

          

                        Gian Gomeshi (credit: Penmachine, via Wikimedia Commons)

In Canada, Gian Gomeshi was accused by four women of sexual assault, the prime accuser being an actress named Lucy DeCouterre. Do I think he probably did the things she accused him of – choked her, pulled her hair, etc.? Yes, I think he likely did. The hard question is: Did she ask him to do those things because for her, those things were turn-ons? I think here again, the answer is probably “yes”.

It was a lawyer, who happens to be female, who calls herself a feminist, and who was on record as having defended feminist causes, that defended Gomeshi and took Lucy De Couterre’s testimony to pieces. Marie Henein.

There are notorious cases in the U.S. as well, as there likely are in all countries. The case of Brian Banks is a particularly galling one, but at least he was cleared of all charges as the young woman who lied and put him in prison for years, at last, came out and admitted that she had made the whole thing up.

How many other men now in prison never got that break?

On the other hand again, I know there are at least ten times as many women who tried to put a rapist behind bars and saw him walk away unscathed in the end as there are men who have been falsely accused. I know that females who become victims are facing a stacked deck if they try to bring charges against the men who assault them. I just don’t see an easy way to fix the justice system as it stands. It’s an imperfect system for an imperfect world. Whatever its faults, the rule of law has but one alternative: the rule of force. No one wants that. 

The whole point about the law with its "due process" is that it treats each case as an individual case, and does not assume anything except that you are innocent until proven guilty.

Are there measures that we could put in place to make rape charges and trials less harrowing for victims? I am certain that there are. Victims could, for example, be allowed to testify via closed circuit t.v. and thus not have to face their rapists in court. As long as the accused got to watch, from another location, the testimony given against him, it seems to me, this option would be fair. The judges and juries would get to watch both t.v. monitors, but the victim would not have to confront her rapist.

Taping victims’ testimony and perpetrators’ reactions would also make it possible for judges or juries later to watch all the footage over and over and fine tune their impressions of who was lying and who was not.

I'm sure there are many other measures we could bring in which would ease the victim’s lot in a rape trial. We just need to think and talk, openly, honestly. As men and women, not boys and girls. Adults. 

So let me close now with a few of the reactions I always experience when female friends get angry with me in a discussion of this touchy topic. When you get really strident, female friends, I can either acquiesce and shut up, or stand up and speak my mind. I know which role I prefer. 

So what do I say when the vague and strident blanket charges begin to be leveled at all men? Even me? 

What do you want me to do? Tell me in operational terms. No vagaries.

I didn’t do it. I never have. In fact, I get turned off at the thought of a woman being terrified and in pain. Not turned on. The whole idea of rape revolts and enrages me.

But I have no easy answers. I’ve been telling young men for decades “no” means “no” and if they meet a woman who is confused about what arouses her, then they should get away from her. If her teasing-blaming games persist, these signs should be warnings for men in the same way as a no-doesn’t-necessarily-mean-no-attitude ought to be a warning for women when they find it in certain kinds of men.

Our society’s centuries-old sexual programming was designed by trial and error over centuries to make population. Patriarchy reproduced itself better than its competitors and for a million years of our natural history, population made power. More soldiers, workers, and baby-makers every generation that passed. 

Male arousal and orgasm are necessary to our reproducing. Tilt your mores in favor of male confidence and aggression - even in sex - and in favor of female submissiveness and fidelity - so men feel confident about which kids are theirs - and your tribe will keep getting stronger. Not happier, especially for most females, but happiness and even justice were not what the survival game was about. 

So I'll say again: male arousal and orgasm are necessary to our reproducing. Female equivalents aren’t. 

But they are necessary for justice. And we don't need to keep making population. We've solved that one. Too well. There are too many of us now. Patriarchy, in other words, is overdue for an overhaul. Or maybe it is overdue to be rescinded altogether. We need a society in which every human being has human rights. Then, we will retain and engage so many more talented people. All races, all creeds, sexual preferences, and yes, millions more women. 

In a world where population is no longer the prime goal, but the developing of talent is, then a simple, coldly objective calculation of odds tells us that the fairer, more pluralistic, rights-based society is going to win. In this post-industrial era, where skills and brains are key, it will outrun its competition,  every time. 

Love really is stronger than hate.   

In this twenty-first century, making population has ceased to be a prime objective in any part of our world.  Maybe, we have all been programmed to make babies, not happiness or justice. But we can change those obsolete programs. The change will take time, and it will come when we discuss and cooperate, not when we fire off accusations at everything that moves. But it can be done.

Now let me be even more direct for a little while, here. The imperative that some women try to push onto me – Fix this. – seems to me to be deeply revealing. It’s like telling the decent men of the world to fix war. Do you think we haven’t tried?

What’s being revealed on the part of some of my female friends, I deeply fear, is that they want me to be Christian Grey. The guy who somehow, in some vaguely defined way, will make the ugly parts of the world go away. A guy who takes over society and solves rape. He has a castle. Guards. Money. Power, looks, skills, and millions of dollars. He could and should step up and take responsibility here.

It's a fantasy. I'm trying, but I have no quick answers. 

Do you want a partner and a friend? I’m here. I really am.

Do you want Prince Christian Grey Charming on a white horse? Maybe, he’ll show up one day. I don’t know. But I do know this. I am not that man.

So finally, let me close with the thought that, I believe, we always come around to in the end. We have to learn to work together. We are stuck with one another, men with all their flaws, women with theirs. But both with programmable natures. We can, by working together, fix this. Otherwise, it will not happen. 

Real people. Working together, patiently and creatively to re-write our culture’s morés. Better, fairer laws, especially. And educate the kids to respect human rights and value them down to the level of their breathing. 

We’re stuck with each other. We might as well talk.