The Baltimore Riots, 2015

My first reaction to the Baltimore riots was a personal one, in a narrow sense.  On the evening of the riots, my wife was about to come home from work, south of the city; she usually travels through it to get home.  Did she know about the disturbances?  Would she be safe?  I called and warned her to take an alternate route, which she did, and arrived safely.

My second reaction was also a personal one, but in a broader sense.  I felt and emphasized with the sense of frustration, despair and hopelessness that is present in large sections of my city; I was also very much disappointed by the violence.

When my wife got home, we turned on the TV, which we very rarely do.  Just at that moment, the mayor of Baltimore City, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake gave a press conference about the riots.  She looked tired and stressed.  This is what she said: "Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs who, in a very senseless way, are trying to tear down what so many have fought for," 

I had an immediate visceral reaction to her usage of the term, "thugs."  It made me feel even sadder.  No, I thought to myself, it's not right to call those young men thugs.  They are guilty of thuggish behavior, that is true; but I know it is morally wrong to sum up a fellow human being as a thug, despite obvious immoral acts. (In this case, immoral acts committed on a single day.) No, I said to myself, everyone of these young men are redeemable.  Everyone of these so-called thugs, have an inner core of decency, what I often refer to as a "Zen diamond," within them that is priceless and has just as much carats as the one inside you and me and everyone else.  Granted some inner diamonds are buried under a lot more outer mud than is the case of others, but everyone has one, everyone.  Whether that diamond will be ever accessed in some is another question.  Yes, the conviction of equality makes me an idealist, but I am also a realist.  Yes, I believe that we must love our neighbor as ourselves--no exceptions;  I also believe that no one can follow this commandment without taking responsibility for his or her own actions.  I also believe that we not make moral progress on a national level if we fail to create conditions that make one's taking personal responsibility more likely. This is especially true for our fellow citizens who live in poor, black communities.  We're not doing a horrible job of it--and I include myself in that "we".

I am neither a journalist or a pundit; I'm not going to descant about the riot, I will leave that to community members and to professional commentators.  I want make a few points of what I know, however, namely, that we must judge the behavior of others as well as our own, but it is always very wrong to judge the person. I will explain, after a few words about myself.

I came to Baltimore in 1980, having accepted a position as the Director of School Health for the Baltimore City Health Department.  During the next few years, I visited just about every school in Baltimore City.  I taught male health issues in some of them, including Walbrook High School, which is no more but was located in an area where riots took place.  Around 1985, I became medical director of a Baltimore City health center, located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and North Avenue, around which much of the violence did indeed take place. I left the Health Department in 1988, and was soon employed by a Johns Hopkins--associated clinic, where I served as a pediatrician for many years.  Now, in my seventieth year, I am just about retired from medicine and spend a good deal of my time writing, reading and playing music. Enough about me.

The dominant emotional reaction I had to the riots was one of overwhelming sadness.  When I heard about the destruction and the looting of many stores, I thought of people in my own age group who are not in as good shape as I.  If an elderly person needs, say, blood pressure medication and has no transportation, where will she go once the neighborhood pharmacy has been destroyed?  I'm sure many of the good people in the community will come to the aid of people in this predicament, but the chances are greatly increased that some will not have the medicine they need, at least for a while.  (This is just one example of the effects of the riots, which will fester long after CNN has changed its attention to other disasters.)

Yes, I was sad.  Then I was shocked; then I was mad.  I read a few reports from conservative pundits that assert that the cause of the riots was the failure of liberal policies!  One said that the mayor of Baltimore is black and the city council is composed largely of black members--so you can't blame it on racism.  He went on to say that the city has been governed by Democrats for decades--so you can blame failed liberal policies.  The ideology behind this is the belief that the poor have become too dependent on government programs, "have it easy" --I can't even write that without putting it in quotes--and, thus, the toxic combination of government programs and individual irresponsibility has caused this mess.  One even said they get free food, free housing, free education--what more do they want?  (After that was said, I imagined a travel poster depicting a burning ghetto with the message: Free Food!  Free Housing!  Free Education! Come Spend the Time of Your Life in Baltimore!" The poster, of course, would not include the fact that the time of your life will most likely be considerably shorter if you live in a poor, black neighborhood.)

The message of of these radical pundits--and they represent, unfortunately, a large segment of the population is this: it's their fault, not ours.  We are not like them.  All we need to do is to pull the cushy rug the government provides for them, on which the loll about like vagabonds;  yes, all we need to do is to pull that rug from under them--Once we do that, they will dance and sing to "God Bless America" instead of to that awful, barbaric rap music.  Once we do that, they will, just like we did, Fox-trot off to prosperity." 

Such attitudes are beneath comment.  If you agree with them, nothing I write is going to change your mind.  I will state only this very important fact: The United States ranks low among OECD countries regarding benefits and services to the working-age population.  (Denmark spends 30,1% of its GDP on social policies, which is broken down as follows: cash benefits for those of working age: 7.9% GDP; cash benefits to the elderly and survivors, 6.2 % GDP; services to the working-age population 7% GDP; services to the elderly 8% GDP.  In contrast, the U.S. spends only 18.3% of its budget on social policy, and, corresponding to the categories of spending in Denmark: 2.4%, 6.7%, 1.4% and 8%.  Medicare takes a big bite out of our GDP, while services for the working-age population takes barely a nibble.  And, as you probably know, there are no ghettos in Denmark.)

As I said in the outset, I want to discuss something about which I think I know more than a thing or two.  Let's zoom out of Baltimore and view a central problem of the entire planet.  That is, the problem of freedom vs. determinism.  Is a person ever completely responsible for a crime?  Can a person ever be declared innocent of a crime due to insanity, or to a particularly toxic combination of bad environment and bad genes?

There are two schools in this regard.  I will illustrate them with examples from two contrasting religious stances.  Once, when I was driving to South Carolina, I saw a church with a large sign in front of it, stating that this church was a "Free-Will Baptist Church."  We're completely responsible for our behavior; that's one way of looking at it.  Another comes from a form of Hinduism called advaita, or non-duality.  The individual self is an illusion; the concept of free will is simply and illusion of an illusion.  This view was at the center of the teaching of perhaps the greatest Hindu sage of the past century, Sri Ramana Maharshi, (1879-1950.)  He taught this view very eloquently.  He believed that all mental suffering stems from the mistaken belief that "I  am the doer."   It is the I behind the I, the very source of consciousness, that is doing everything.  One of his most striking illustrations of this view has to do with train travel.  In India, porters usually carry luggage on their heads.  Sri Ramana said that it is foolish to keep luggage on your head once the train is in motion.  In other words, once you realize that the train is doing the traveling, you can put the luggage down and rest. 

The first view I reject outright.  No one knows himself well enough to know whether he is completely responsible for his actions, not to mention the fact that one can't even get inside another person's head.  I have practical problems with the second view, however.  From a cosmic perspective, there may well be no such thing as free will; but for life in the world acceptance of personal responsibility is a necessity.  The individual self may well be an illusion, but it is an extremely potent illusion rooted in Darwinian evolution.  One has to plan for next Tuesday; one can't expect to live in this world--and nearly all of us live in this world--by putting down our luggage, putting one's feet up, and relaxing while life whizzes by with the scenery.

My strong belief that the solution of the free will/determinism dichotomy is that they are both correct.  Matters that are most important to human beings are never facts, they are paradoxes. Does God exist?  Well, in a way.  Does individuality exist?  Well, in a way. Does free will exist, etc.

The free will/determinism dichotomy is so mysterious that I state the obvious: we can't figure out our own behavior, much less anyone else's.  As responsible citizens, we must judge behavior and remove those from society--never with the use of the death penalty-- who are a very real danger to others.  But we must never judge the person.

This is hardly an original idea.  I will give three famous formulations of this view: "Do not judge anyone unless you have walked a mile in his moccasins;"  "Judge not lest ye be judged," and "There but for the grace of God go I."

That's all I have to say at present.  It is enough.

In summary:  First of all, I am still sad because I doubt that America at present has the political will to solve our problems. Second of all, all those who see the problem with an us against them mentality probably wouldn't deign to put on the moccasins of a poor black male and walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, and are thus woefully lacking in empathy.   Third, I believe the correct response to the problems in Baltimore as well as to all the problems of the world is to say to those guilty of thuggish behavior:  "You and I are both human, which is a great privilege.  Unfortunately, you have gone astray.  Unfortunately, I have gone astray as well.  From now on, let's walk to the promised land together."

Ten Questions for No One

l.  Can you tell us some things No One thinks everyone should know?

What is most important is difficult to put into words.  The establishment of facts, even quite abstract facts, is much easier.  For instance, the Higgs boson was recently discovered at CERN because particles into which it disintegrated became manifest at the energy level predicted.  Scientists review the data, and if they all come to the same conclusion, one asserts that it has been proven--albeit indirectly--that the boson  exists, and that's that.  (Even in cases where science is almost certain that, say, X is a fact, if new data are found that indicate otherwise, X can be replaced by Y.  The scientific method is simple, and it works exceptionally well for facts about nature.)

2. Not so well regarding human nature, I presume?

Niels Bohr, a seminal figure in the development of quantum physics, thought that the new branch of science he helped develop was, albeit extremely complex, quite simple in comparison to consciousness.  He was convinced that consciousness will never be completely understood.  Many scientists today agree with him.  From the mysteries of consciousness paradoxes arise. Are we merely matter?  After all, all the elements in the human body are present in nature, albeit in very different concentrations.  Yet we are convinced that we are more than matter.  Only a madman could believe that his daughter is merely a piece of meat.

3. Perhaps that conviction stems from a Darwinian compulsion to pass on one's genes?

That is undoubtedly very important.  But does it explain everything?  Who really knows?  One must live with the possibility that two opposing views can each be  true.  In Newtonian science, which describes our everyday world, such paradoxes do not occur; they do however occur in quantum physics.  No One knows that a photon sometimes behaves like a particle and sometimes like a wave.  No One thinks it is fascinating that reality on the simplest level--quantum physics--and reality at the most complex level we know, human consciousness, cannot be pinned down. Between them lies a world which is much easier to understand.

4.  Can you give further examples of ambiguity?

Everything that human beings create, and everything that describes the way we think about ourselves are open to interpretation, sometimes radically different interpretations.  Once again, this is not true of science once a hypothesis has been confirmed by data.  But paradox and ambiguity are very much applicable to our inner lives.  For instance, a history of colonial America would have been quite different if a Native American was the author instead of a Puritan.  When No One was a boy, Columbus was celebrated as one of the first great heroes of the New World; today his legacy is contested.  Other examples: does free will exist?  Some philosophers assert that it does.  Are human actions completely determined by the interaction of genetics and environment?  Some philosophers assert this.  Do free will and determinism somehow coexist?  Some philosophers assert that this is so. Who really knows? No One.

5.  What about the things we create?

Thank you for the opportunity to elaborate!  In the arts, tastes change, and nothing can be proven.  I will give you some examples.  In Bach's day, Telemann was much more critically acclaimed than Bach, who is now widely considered to be the best composer who ever lived.   When Michael Jackson died, No One heard a critic assert that he was the best musician since Mozart,  No One, who much admires Jackson, thought this assertion was ridiculous, but can No One prove it?

6. Are you ready for the question?  What about God?

No One does not consider that the question at all.


7. What then is the ultimate question for us?

There are several, and they all have to do with consciousness and its (ambiguous) perceptions of the world.  Since Kant we know all knowledge arises from sense perceptions.  We can thus never have ultimate knowledge of anything; it is highly likely that beings exist in the cosmos that have evolved with a different neurological constitution and thus see things differently.  Even science does not provide absolute knowledge--who can assert with certainly that the facts of science transcend the human mind?

8. Isn't that the age-old question of whether a sound exits when a tree falls and no one is around to hear it?

You confused me when you said  "no one"--I thought you were referring to me!  Actually that is a meaningless question.  One may assert that vibrations in the air occur when a tree falls when nobody is there, but there is no sound.  Sound is how a brain perceives vibrations of certain frequencies; without a brain there is no sound. The same is true for other perceptions. Music sometimes results in a feeling of awe in those who are sensitive  to it--and No One counts himself among them--but even the queen of the arts is not independent of mind.  A galaxy might resonate at a frequency that is a harmonic of B flat--way below middle C, of course--but it doesn't have any pitch if there is no ear to hear it.  Colors do not exist beyond brains that perceive them; many animals "know" only black and white, and some don't even perceive that.

9. We're almost at the end of the interview, so let me cut to the chase. I repeat, what is the ultimate question?

It's basically this: what is our nature and how should we live our lives?  Although No One assumes--without proof, of course--the unity of human nature, for analysis it is best described in two ways.  First, the Darwinian aspect--self-assertion and the will to survive.  Second, the transcendent aspects, love and wisdom.  (Remember, when No One refers to transcendence, No One is indicating an inner experience, not something that comes from the outside.)

10. I must return to what many believe to be the most important question of all.  What about God?

When we look inside, sometimes we seem to hear an inner voice; sometimes it all seems very impersonal.  No One is therefore supportive of those who use the term God for one's conscience at the highest level; No One is also supportive of those who use impersonal terms, such as Nirvana.  No One vigorously asserts, however, that just like music and colors, God exists within; it is highly doubtful  that there will ever be evidence of God or of gods existing beyond consciousness.  Before the age of science, it was possible to believe in God both as a symbol and as a fact.  It is no longer possible, however, for an educated twenty-first century mind to believe that dogmas--pick any one you choose--are as factual as two and two equal four. Self and God exist together; once self is completely transcended--this is theoretically possible, but whether this has ever been achieved is open to interpretation--things would look very different: both  God and  the self would no longer exist, as it were.  Another way of saying this is that everything becomes God, but that's just another figure of speech for something ineffable.

11.  Another way of describing that state is that everyone becomes No One?

We agreed to ten questions.  For the time being, No One has had enough.