Insanity is....

Someone once said that a sign of insanity is the tendency to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. So, since I do not want to be considered insane, I have stopped listening to George W. Bush. I have stopped watching him when he holds State of the Union addresses. I don’t watch his special messages to the nation. I don’t watch the press conferences. I stopped listening and watching because I discovered that I expect him to be presidential. I expect something intelligent to come out of his mouth. I expect that he will do the right thing. I have been watching him for 6 years and I have repeatedly seen and heard breathtaking ignorance, deceit, self-service and immorality.  I have decided that to expect anything else but these would surely indicate a sign of my own insanity. I have decided to get my news from sources which don’t require that I  look at his arrogant swagger or petulant face.

 

But George, as it turns out, is a fairly accurate moral compass. I say this in the tradition of George Costanza, who one day decided that since his first impulse always ended in disaster he would do the exact opposite of what he thought he should do in a situation. I say this in the tradition of the Christian mystic’s via negativa, in which life is found in death; light is discovered in the darkness and all is revealed in the nothingness. If you want to be on the “right” side of an issue, then just stand in opposition to that of George Bush and the chances are excellent that you’ll be standing on higher moral ground. George Bush lacks all the qualities that I most seek and admire in a human being; compassion and magnanimity, humility and grace, generosity of spirit, the seeking after social justice and the alleviation of suffering.

 

In my Ethics course, we briefly discuss the “classical” epistemology of ethics; how do we come to know what is right or wrong, good and evil, what ought to be and what ought not to be? Some of the classically affirmed ways of knowing include experience, reason, and revelation. Added to this list now is the narrative; the understanding that we come to know what is right through storytelling, for it is in the narrative that we are able to empathize with another’s suffering or situation and be moved to compassion and perhaps, to action. That this is indeed the case is no “new” insight to the greatest teachers and religious traditions of history. The myths that direct our particular worldview are constituted by story and narrative. The Buddha, Confucius, Jesus of Nazareth all told stories to illustrate and to inspire. As a teacher myself, I know that there is no better way to illustrate a theory or a concept than by telling a story. And if it is a good story, it can lead to true “education;” to the expansion of perspective, to questions, to growth and to change.

 

This blog entry has been motivated by one person’s story, the story of a person I do not know.

 

This past Saturday I spent the day with my best friend who lives 80 miles away. As we recounted to each other all that has been happening in our lives she told me that last week she had attended a collective, expanded group of local book clubs of which hers was a part. So there were people there she had never met before. In the course of discussion the war with Iraq came up. There was a woman there whose son had served two tours of duty in Iraq. She told a small group within the group that he would write letters home asking that they send food, because he was always so hungry. He wrote a letter home in which he asked that his family send him a pair of boots because the soles of his were threadbare and worn out. And now that he is home and requires psychiatric care he has been told that the local VA that services this need can only accommodate one therapy session a month. As an aside here, I would ask the question that relates to sanity/insanity. Why would humanity think that sending people to war would not have profound effects on them? Why do we continue to do this same thing over and over again and expect different results? Have not the veterans of WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf taught us that war is NOT a “natural” human activity? If it were natural, would we not retain psychological health in the midst of it? Have we not come to understand that if we send people to war they come back (if they come back at all) irreparably damaged psychically if not physically? Why did this story affect me so? Because I have a son. I have a daughter. And it is through the story of this woman that I understood the evil. Even more so than before. Jimmy Carter, in his Nobel Peace Prize address said the following, “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

 

Do I hold George W. Bush responsible for that young man’s hunger? For that young man’s inadequate shoes? Yes, I do. The leader of a nation that sends its young men and women to battle has a moral obligation to assure that they are tended to, that they are cared for, that they have everything they need to survive and to be well. He has a moral duty to ask every day, “How do they fare?” The first questions on his lips when he rises and the last before bed should be, “How are they? Do they have everything they need? Are we doing all we can to bring them home? And once they are home, are we taking care? Are we taking care? Are we taking care?”

 

Do I think that George Bush asks these questions? Do I think that he is tortured by his unthinkable decisions? Do I think that he is plagued by concern for the young lives he risks everyday? Do I think he asks, “Do our soldiers have shoes?”

 

No, I do not. Because I am not insane so I do not expect him to be other than the person he has consistently proven himself to be.