1.
When I was a wanton boy, using insects for my sport, I obtained one of my first insights into life's cruelty--which, in this case, my wantonness had brought about. I was playing outside my uncle's bungalow in southern New Jersey; the year was 1952 and I was almost seven years old. We lived in northern New Jersey; I had no friends to play cowboys and Indians with that day, so I decided to stage a war of my own. I had noticed two anthills about six feet apart. One was inhabited by rather ferocious red ants--one stung me and I felt it--the other by smaller and seemingly more placid black ants. Exhibiting what could perhaps be called formican racism, I projected the source of my difficulties--I came from a dysfunctional family--onto the black ants. I might have been little, but inside I was a ferocious red ant that would one day make those cruel black ants pay. That day was now! I crumpled up a few black ants--just enough to daze them--and dropped them, one by one, down the mouth of the red ants' fortress. Immediately, red ants rose from the hole and attacked the black ants mercilessly. In short order, they were killed. I was horrified! I was just playing! I didn't mean it! I realized, perhaps for the first time, that acting out one's inner anger could cause harm to others that had nothing to do with the source of one's rage.
Too bad not everybody learns this lesson at an early age! One can't blame the red ants; they are merely carrying out survival mechanisms dictated by their genes. But humans are not composed of red and black ants. In our case, designating other human beings as, well, "others," is a social construct; considering others categorically different from ourselves is based on imagination, not on reality.
We tend to believe that our convictions are based on truth--and some moral principles indeed are--and forget the tremendous influence our environment has on us. This is especially true regarding religion, which speaks a symbolic language; when taken literally, those that deny the "facts of faith" become "others," viewed at best as misguided and at worst as evil non-believers.
Striking examples of this prejudice are Christians who think Christ is the only ticket to salvation, and Muslims who divide humanity into believers and infidels. I begin with a truly ludicrous page from a booklet used in the indoctrination of children, transforming them into little ants for Christ:
The text is "Here is a man of India/He is praying to his god./His god cannot help him./This man must know about Jesus./Can you think of ways to help him?"
What idiocy! First of all, the man depicted is a Brahmin, a Hindu (you can tell by his dhoti and his top-knot (kuduma). He is worshiping Buddha! Buddhism died out in India centuries ago; there are many more Buddhists in America today then there are in India. And, of course, the idea that Jesus helps and Buddha doesn't is merely a thought, a fantasy. (I think one of the sources of traditional Christian antisemitism is the anger--and panic--that results when one realizes that a group can get along just fine--morally and culturally--without Jesus Christ. No, no, no, that can't be true!, these Christians tell themselves. So they demonize non-Christians, which helps them validate their parochial views )
Instead of a wanton seven-year-old, I am now a mellow (almost) seventy-year-old. The following illustrations of the folly of cultural vanities entail thought experiments and do not involve, thanks to my mellowness, the maceration of any of God's little critters.
Let us carry out this thought experiment on Jew-baiting Imam X and Muslim-hating rabbi Y. Let's go back in time when both were fetuses. Let's remove fetal rabbi Y from the womb of a West Bank settler and place him in the womb of a telenovela star in Columbia. Similarly, let's remove fetal imam X from a womb in Teheran and put him into the womb of the best female auto mechanic in Kalamazoo. I imagine there would be tremendous differences in their rhetoric a few decades later!
Two further examples: First, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who is now on trial for the horrendous crime of murdering fellow American soldiers, states that he cannot vow allegiance to the Constitution since it is, unlike the Koran, man-made. Even more absurd is his assertion that the man-made laws of the United States are necessarily deficient, since they, unlike Sharia law, do not come directly from God--Yes, he actually stated that there can be no justice in a system that forbids divinely-sanctioned amputation of limbs as a punishment for theft!
Second, the devout Christian, Pat Robinson, has pointed out the supposed errors of Islam--except for that religion's opposition to homosexuality!. He even stated that Aids was created by an angry God to punish homosexuals!
Let's continue the thought experiment. Let's put the fetal Nidal Malik Hasan into the womb of a waitress in Texas. There he is, thirty years later, demanding that a law be passed in his home state forbidding the introduction of Sharia law--even though that law would be as practical as banning jet-skiing on the moon. Oh, and Pat Robinson--let's move him into the womb of an accountant in Albany and jiggle the prenatal hormones around a little. There he is, some thirty years later, ogling at a poster of the Hunk of the Month over his emerald bed.
2.
It is obvious--even to fundamentalists if they think about it--that environment strongly influences religious beliefs. But what about behavior, what about character? It seems to me that the belief that character is innate--and it is indeed partially innate--is as widespread as it is false. Many consider themselves to be self-made men and self-made women. Such people, if successful, tend to believe they were born to be successful, no matter what the environmental influences had been. They might give a few Horatio-Alger-type anecdotes, and, in contrast, site others who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth only to turn into lead-heads. This attitude recalls one of the themes of the 2012 Republican Convention. President Obama, in his desire to assure a minimum amount of fairness in our capitalistic system, stressed that all workers are important--nobody would be successful if they hadn't had teachers, parents who supported them, etc. How efficient would an executive be without a secretary? Where would we be without butchers, bakers, candle-stick makers, garbage collectors and clerks? President Obama wisely informed the successful that they didn't get there alone. The Republicans turned this around into "You didn't do it yourself" and mocked the president during their convention for supposedly believing that hard work was not the key to success. This was, of course, self-righteous blather.
We are as dependent on ourselves as we are dependent on others. Everything is connected! But we must go farther than that: character is the result of that connection, it is by no means the exclusive creation of individual will. Thus our character is the world (genes and environment) and not a fiat of desire.
Let's continue our examples: Let's go back in time and put the horrible murderer Charles Manson into the womb of a loving mother, married to a loving man. Let's jiggle around his brain structure and change his genes a little. Charles Manson, who neither chose these genes and this environment, nor the genes and environment he actually grew up with, is now headed to find the cure for diabetes! Do the opposite to a fetal Einstein and she becomes a fetal Palin--You get the idea.
No, I'm not downplaying personal effort; I am upplaying humility. I am advocating the replacement of "that man is a monster and should be shot," with "There but for the grace of God go I." I am calling for, among other things in this spirit, for a total revolution in the criminal justice system, which emphasizes protecting society and the rehabilitation of offenders, while deemphasizing warehousing, punishment and vengeance.
2.
It is obvious--even to fundamentalists if they think about it--that environment strongly influences religious beliefs. But what about behavior, what about character? It seems to me that the belief that character is innate--and it is indeed partially innate--is as widespread as it is false. Many consider themselves to be self-made men and self-made women. Such people, if successful, tend to believe they were born to be successful, no matter what the environmental influences had been. They might give a few Horatio-Alger-type anecdotes, and, in contrast, site others who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth only to turn into lead-heads. This attitude recalls one of the themes of the 2012 Republican Convention. President Obama, in his desire to assure a minimum amount of fairness in our capitalistic system, stressed that all workers are important--nobody would be successful if they hadn't had teachers, parents who supported them, etc. How efficient would an executive be without a secretary? Where would we be without butchers, bakers, candle-stick makers, garbage collectors and clerks? President Obama wisely informed the successful that they didn't get there alone. The Republicans turned this around into "You didn't do it yourself" and mocked the president during their convention for supposedly believing that hard work was not the key to success. This was, of course, self-righteous blather.
We are as dependent on ourselves as we are dependent on others. Everything is connected! But we must go farther than that: character is the result of that connection, it is by no means the exclusive creation of individual will. Thus our character is the world (genes and environment) and not a fiat of desire.
Let's continue our examples: Let's go back in time and put the horrible murderer Charles Manson into the womb of a loving mother, married to a loving man. Let's jiggle around his brain structure and change his genes a little. Charles Manson, who neither chose these genes and this environment, nor the genes and environment he actually grew up with, is now headed to find the cure for diabetes! Do the opposite to a fetal Einstein and she becomes a fetal Palin--You get the idea.
No, I'm not downplaying personal effort; I am upplaying humility. I am advocating the replacement of "that man is a monster and should be shot," with "There but for the grace of God go I." I am calling for, among other things in this spirit, for a total revolution in the criminal justice system, which emphasizes protecting society and the rehabilitation of offenders, while deemphasizing warehousing, punishment and vengeance.
Recently, while flipping channels, I landed with a thud on Fox News. There I encountered a group of people really furious over the cover of the August 1, 2013 edition of Rolling Stone. The cover featured a glamorous photo of the nineteen year old Dzhokhar "Jahar" Tsarnaev who carried out, along with his elder brother, Tamurlan, the despicable Boston Bombings on April 15, 2013--a horrific crime in anyone's book. On the cover, he looked a bit like the successful rock stars frequently pictured in this magazine. The pundits railed against the "liberal media"--Rolling Stone being a prominent example-- accusing them of glamorizing terrorists. Such people are monsters, they informed the cable audience, and should be completely vilified, and not be treated as if they were, well, human beings.
Problem is--and it is a humbling, disturbing problem-- Tsarnaev, and others like him, is a human being. The subtitle, however, says it all: How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster. The article, which I've read, doesn't glorify terrorism at all. It advocates, as I do, that he should be jailed for life for his heinous crime. But I refuse to counter hate with hate. The article did give a convincing impression that if certain stresses and bad influences had been absent in his life, Tsarnaev could have turned out to be an American of whom we could all be proud. My message, therefore, to those ranting self-righteous Fox pundits--and by extension to all of us--is: Be humble. That could be your son. That could be you. (Indeed, by the way the pundits were behaving, they seemed to have begun the path to monsterhood already.)
Reality is so profound it unites apparent opposites: although created by genes and environment, we are, paradoxically, responsible not only for ourselves but for everyone else. Let's stop yelling at each other and work hard together to simultaneously prevent your fall and the fall of neighbors--especially vulnerable neighbors! As Frederick Douglas wisely taught, it is far easier to prevent a man from being broken than it is to make a broken man whole.
3.
I will illustrate the theme of this article with a superb poem by an old friend, the great poet Samuel Menashe:
Those flapping flags
Which the wind cracks
Over the roof
Like an attack
Could have been potato sacks
If dipped in another vat.
--Samuel Menasche
Whatever you're at is because of the vat! Thou art That!
Addendum
As an addendum I am posting a poem I translated from the German some years back. It is appropriate for inclusion here, since the theme of the poem, the interconnectedness of all things, is also the theme of the essay.
The Actual Apple
for his literality,
searched for something found at home
to delineate from A to Z:
an apple, for instance, an organic bit,
and all that goes along with it.
He described the core, the pulp, the skin,
the stem, the leaves, the branch, the tree,
the roots, the ground the roots grew in,
and Newton's Law of Gravity--
But that wasn't the actual apple at all;
he must include spring, summer, winter, and fall,
the sun and the moon and the stars--
He filled enough paper to paper a wall,
yet the ending seemed farther than quasars:
for actually he belonged there too,
this man of prose who hated verse,
and Adam and Eve and I and you
and God and the whole universe--
Finally he became fully aware
that apples are just indescribably there;
neither he nor another shall ever define
something so common, something so sublime--
He lifts his apple to the light;
smiling now, he takes a bite.
Michael Ende
--translated from the German by
Thomas Dorsett
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