Brave New Kitty

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. — Elizabeth Warren, candidate for U.S. Senate, Massachusetts (see source here)

Here I go getting political again, sort of. The quote above has been shared and linked to on Facebook numerous times over the past several days as “one of the most important quotes ever” and “a quote all Americans should read.” It is being shared mostly by people from the political left, who believe it’s important, I think, because it’s a succinct summary of their belief that we should all be willing to “do our part,” particularly if we’re rich.

But what does “do our part” really mean? Most people, liberals and conservatives alike, believe that Ms. Warren means “pay your fair share of taxes.” Since I don’t know anything about her, and since I generally try to ignore bipartisan squabbling for the pointless waste of time that it is, I have no way of knowing for sure. Even so, I have a few thoughts about it.

First of all, the quote clearly comes from a person with a systems-thinker mentality. That is, from someone who sees the world primarily as a system, a community in which nobody is an island and we are all dependent on each other to survive and thrive. From this viewpoint, it is certainly correct to say that “nobody got rich on his own.” People get rich (at least in a market economy) by providing goods or services that other people are willing to pay for. And yes, they need employees, and infrastructure, and a stable government and economy in order to bring their goods and services to market. And yes, the employees, infrastructure, government, economy, and customers are all part of a system that makes it possible for people with good ideas to create wealth, for themselves, for their employees, and for the economy at large. There is no doubt that nobody gets rich without a large community to create and support such wealth.

There is nothing wrong with a systemic view of the world. It’s certainly a more developed point of view than “me first” or even “me and my people first.” People who see the world as one big organism of which we are all a part, whether that organism be political, economical, cultural, environmental, spiritual, or something else, tend to be peace-loving, tolerant, earnest souls who are idealistically committed to making the world a better place. Carl Sagan’s quote that “before you can make an apple pie, you must first invent the Universe” is a good example of systems thinking. So is John Muir’s quote that “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” Sagan is talking about the mind-boggling chain of causality which brings us all to the present moment (and which, if one is properly pondering it, should create a sense of awe at the wondrous nature of consciousness). Muir is talking about understanding that all of our actions have consequences, in an effort to promote conscientious stewardship of the planet. Both are eloquent, sophisticated examples of systems thinking.

In American politics, however, you will find the vast majority of system-thinkers to be, in general, very un-sophisticated. Most politicians, rightists and leftists alike, believe in social obligation, in people giving back to their community. (In fact, this is usually the reason people get into politics in the first place, or at least their stated reason.) They may differ on priorities and agendas, but both sides believe (with a few notable exceptions, e.g. Ron Paul) that the correct method to achieve this is through taxation.

Nothing could be more wrong, or antithetical to its stated cause, than confusing taxation with “giving back,” “paying it forward,” or creating a sense of community. Despite decades of political rhetoric meant to convince us otherwise, this is not how a person’s sense of “social contract” comes about. Such thinking is not only unsophisticated, it’s flat-out wrong.

If Ms. Warren is talking, in this quote, about a voluntary social contract, in which those more fortunate help those less fortunate because they know it is the right thing to do, then it is a belief I happen to agree with and wholeheartedly endorse. Wealth creates jobs and opportunities and prosperity, not to mention whatever goods and services that have added value to people’s lives. In this way, people who create wealth give back to their community far more than people in less fortunate positions could ever do. As if this weren’t enough, most wealthy people also set up foundations. They give away scholarships. They create opportunities for those less fortunate. And they have been doing so for centuries, on a completely voluntary basis. In this sense, many wealthy people seem to have a rather highly developed sense of gratitude for their position, and a clear understanding of its relationship to their community.

But I don’t think this is what Ms. Warren is talking about. I think that most people’s interpretation–that she is talking about taxation–is correct. Her statements (and choice of wording) about the roads and the police and public education support this, as these are all entities sustained by taxation. If this is the case, then it makes her just another bipartisan, one-dimensional politician who is using emotional rhetoric to obfuscate rather than clarify the issues she’s addressing, and not much of a systems thinker at all. For example, she conveniently ignores the truth that the factory owner also pays for the roads, and the police, and the public education, that he in fact pays much more than his employees because he has a higher income. And she ignores the truth that most wealthy people do “pay it forward,” voluntarily and in numerous ways, some of which I’ve mentioned above. She also ignores the fact that the person who came up with the idea or invention did do so on his own, despite the causal chain that led up to the spark of genius, and despite the infrastructure required to bring that spark to fruition; the person’s community certainly had a part in his idea, but envy and a sense of entitlement can make other people think their roles were greater than they actually were. She also neglects to mention that taxes pay for countless questionable and even blatantly immoral government projects such as covert and preventative wars, unnecessary military buildup, espionage, illegal surveillance, pork barrel spending, corporate protectionism, private investing, campaign funding, and much more, all of which should be vigorously investigated before any talk of increased taxes (and I cannot emphasize too much my outrage on this particular point).

Most significantly, though, Ms. Warren ignores the unavoidable fact, the pink elephant in the room that so many politicians seem to be conveniently oblivious to, about paying taxes, which is that taxation is coercive–there are legal consequences if you don’t do it. Which means that a person’s sense of social responsibility, which is the exact point she’s trying to make, cannot be achieved through such means.

Like any other positive in life–love, respect, kindness, or tolerance, for example–social responsibility can only come about by a person’s desire for it. If you possess more power than other people do (like the government), you can force others to behave in a certain way, but you can’t change how they feel. You can’t force anyone to love you or respect you; these are things that must be earned. Social responsibility is like that, too. Paying taxes forces us to be “responsible,” but in the same way that children are responsible for doing homework or brushing their teeth: because their parents make them, not because they understand the greater significance of the action. When “responsibility” is coercive, it is beyond the province of choice; thus it is beyond the province of morality. Thus, it has nothing to do with “giving back” or “paying it forward” because that is the right thing to do. It is merely the legal thing to do.

As such, it provides no opportunity whatsoever to feel good about our community membership. People who talk about paying taxes as though it were a noble thing do not understand that helping other people doesn’t count if it isn’t voluntary. Coercion severs such a connection between people, renders it impotent, and it creates less understanding of the significance of community rather than more. This is the true tragedy of thinking like Ms. Warren’s: her seemingly passionate caring about community-building is completely undermined by her methods. Coercion cannot create community; it can only create greed, on the one hand, and resentment, on the other.

Furthermore, people who think it is right and morally correct to coerce people into “doing their fair share” by paying taxes are really saying that the collective trumps the individual, that the individual is less important than the community, and that this justifies the government’s demands for ever greater portions of people’s wealth (because that’s really all such a mentality, at its roots, can say). But the collective is nothing but a whole bunch of individuals; without individuals, there would be no collective. And any systems thinker who fails to recognize the sanctity and rights of all individuals within a system is at a very rudimentary level of systems thinking. Most politicians fall into this category. Not only do they believe there is a moral justification for spending other people’s money, they also believe that they, personally, have the capacity to determine such justification. Whether most of them actually believe this, or whether they simply claim to in order to increase their own status, clout, and wealth is, indeed, the great political question of our time.

Yes, we need to pay taxes. We need to support government infrastructure. And the more wealth a person has, the more taxes I suppose he should pay (within reason). But to see taxation as a noble cause is to miss the point completely, and seems to me just another excuse to steal wealth from those who create it, expanding the scope and power of government and its seedy, subtle, immoral infiltration into our lives.

Being open-minded is a positive personality trait. It keeps us teachable and tolerant. People like to think of themselves as open-minded, but how many of us really are? Especially when it comes to the big things, like religion, politics, and our own self image? In many, if not most, areas of our lives, we’ve got our mind made up about things. We let in what validates our existing beliefs, and ignore or denigrate what doesn’t. We don’t need to feel too bad about this; it’s human nature to protect and defend what we identify with. But even so, this doesn’t always mean that what we identify with warrants protection and defense.

If we truly want to be open-minded and fair, we should make a point of reading, hearing, and pondering opinions we think we disagree with. Sometimes we’re right in how we’re thinking about something, and sometimes we’re wrong, but wouldn’t it be good to know, either way, based on critical analysis rather than on our feelings, opinions, and prior conditioning?

There is a larger principle at work here, too, that I like to call “Wilber’s Law.” Ken Wilber is the author of A Brief History of Everything and numerous other eye-opening philosophy books. In working out the ideas in Brief History, Wilber spent months–maybe years–comparing the world’s great philosophies, religions, and psychological theories. He brought together Eastern and Western spirituality, Freud and Jung, nature and nurture, and numerous other ideas that, on the surface, seem to contradict or have little to do with each other. In the process of trying to put this vast amount of information together into a cohesive theory (indeed, into a brief history of everything), Wilber came up with one unifying principle: no one is 100% right, and no one is 100% wrong. Because of this, everybody has something to bring to the table.

If you read his work (or even if you just think about what “Wilber’s Law” is saying), you can see that this principle is really true, and this is apparent even if you don’t agree with all of his conclusions. Wilber shows how Freud, for example, was a product of his era, his environment, and his personal beliefs, and that, while these things were  by nature limiting (as they are for us all), he also came up with an astonishing new discipline that was based on numerous sound ideas. He also shows that the differences between Western and Eastern religion (which are, essentially, the differences between an externally-envisioned god versus an internally-envisioned one), have as many commonalities as they have differences.

I could go on, but the point is that no one has a corner on truth. Everybody approaches it from a different angle and a unique background, and everybody comes up with their own version of it. As postmodernism explains, nobody has a comprehensive map of reality. We all just have approximations. All truths, from the greatest bastions of human knowledge down to the individual opinions each of us hold near and dear, are approximations. (NOTE: This is not to say there are no absolute truths; I believe that there are. But our knowledge of them is likely far more fragile than any of us would care to admit.)

Ideally, those approximations are close to reality. But without an effort to understand with our rational minds (rather than with our emotions, which is the standard human shortcut to holding “informed opinions”), our approximations are unlikely to be very accurate. And getting them ever more so is a lifetime job, requiring a commitment to truth and a thirst for understanding, which we must undertake consciously, and with the clear motive to gain knowledge rather than to validate opinions.

The NASA scientists who sent a rocket to the moon are a good example of people who had very precise approximations of reality; if they hadn’t, their calculations would not have worked. And science in general, with the proof of its accuracy in its results, is a good model of accurate approximations of reality. But when we get into the areas of soft sciences–psychology, philosophy, politics, and theology, for example–proof is harder to see and much, much harder to determine. Root causes of results can be almost infinite, and highly open to interpretation. There are a few subjective ideals that are as sound as scientific principles–every man’s right to liberty and the importance of pursuing truth, for example–but most are not. And anyone who espouses otherwise should be immediately suspect as having ulterior motives (getting votes, for example).

Sure, we have to believe in something; we have to have opinions about things, too. Beliefs and opinions are not the problem. The problem arises when we are faced with new evidence, with different ways of viewing our existing beliefs and opinions–and hang onto our old ideas, anyway. As soon as we do this, we’ve rejected truth and placed our own personal prejudices above it. Whether out of fear, pride, or intellectual laziness, we have deliberately chosen a less accurate map than we could have. When we do this, reason and truth lose, and ignorance wins. This is not good for anybody, least of all ourselves.

Nobody is completely right, and nobody is completely wrong. Every idea has at least some flaws and some merit. If we can remember this, then open-mindedness should be fairly easy, and exploring and tolerating ideas that lie beyond our comfort zone should be an exciting, enjoyable intellectual challenge.

In a recent post on emotional distance, I said, “When people are unwilling to be vulnerable, it is because they feel threatened,” and that “The key to emotional intimacy is simple: it lies in feeling safe.” If we create emotional distance because we feel threatened, then it follows that one of the first steps in resolving our emotional distance issues would be to figure out what we’re afraid of. Although such fears can vary greatly in detail and intensity, they usually exist because of one primary, underlying issue: a reflected sense of self.

To understand the reflected sense of self, we should probably first understand the sense of self. From Wikipedia comes this definition: “Sense of self (also called self-concept, self-construction or self-perspective) is a multi-dimensional construct that refers to an individual’s perception of “self” in relation to any number of characteristics, such as academics, gender roles and sexuality, racial identity, and many others.” Babylon.com defines it as “an individual’s…relative awareness of their own individual personhood.” Another site simply defines it as “how you see yourself.”

In my own words, a person’s sense of self is the summary of their thoughts and feelings about who they are; it is the summary not so much of their worldview, but of what they perceive to be their worldview. If a person perceives himself to be a talented musician, for example, he will have confidence in his ability, regardless of how good he really is. But if a person perceives himself as lacking talent, he will never believe he’s any good, even if he is. A person’s sense of self is not necessarily accurate, and in fact, without the effort to examine and understand your inner world, is often quite inaccurate. An invalidating childhood will also result in a skewed sense of self; if a child is repeatedly given the message that she is a bother, is no good, or doesn’t matter, she will learn to believe this about herself. This can manifest as low self esteem or as narcissism, which is really just another form of low self esteem, and both of which will result in a reflected sense of self.

People who have a poor sense of self–that is, they don’t have positive beliefs and feelings about who they are and tend to believe the worst about themselves–often seek to feel better about themselves through their relationships. We do this with all relationships, but the romantic relationship usually has the most powerful allure. The relationship serves several purposes. One is that it creates a new focus and thus a distraction from a person’s poor sense of self, providing some relief from the infernal negativity inside a person’s head. Another is that it offers the unconscious an opportunity to re-create the parent/child bond and fix what went wrong the “first” time; our choice of significant other is always dictated by our relationship status with our parents. And yet another is that it fills the void where parental love and support should have been, doing for us what we didn’t learn to do for ourselves: namely, validate our own worthiness.

All of these, in particular the last one, are indicators of a reflected sense of self: a person who finds her value and worth in what others think of her rather than in what she thinks of herself. Because we have no control over other people’s thoughts or feelings, this other-directed sense of self worth creates huge fear and anxiety. We are always gauging other people’s words, moods, and deeds to determine our own; we are always seeking their approval and acceptance in order to feel safe and secure in our own environment.

When we rely on externals to validate who we are–whether these externals be other people’s affections, other people’s opinions (our “status”), material belongings, our outward appearance, our accomplishments (or at least, how those accomplishments make other people perceive us), or anything else that isn’t generated from within, we have created a reflected sense of self, which puts us in an extremely precarious position. Because as soon as any of those externals from which we derive self worth goes away, our self worth goes away,  too.

This is why it is soooo important to develop a strong, internally-derived sense of who you are. Without it, you are like a quivering leaf, a potential victim of any breeze that comes along. But with it, you are like the tree itself, with deep, solid roots and a powerful trunk, capable of losing all of its leaves without losing its character or identity.

Developing internally-derived self worth is easier said than done. Beyond the neediness created by our parents’ narcissism, modern culture rewards status and worships material possessions, removing the focus from the internal self almost completely. In such a culture (to be fair, probably in all cultures), it is natural to want to fit in, and from an early age, this desire is exploited by authority figures who teach us to comply to societal norms and expectations. If we express wishes that go against what these figures want for us, we are scolded, shamed, and ridiculed; we all have long-ago memories of doing this, in all our youthful innocence, and the hot shame that resulted from it. The more narcissistic our parents were, the more painful these experiences will have been, and the more deeply ingrained will be our belief that our internal selves don’t count for much. We are also taught, in this externally-focused culture of ours, that “true love” will complete us, or that having children will complete us (especially if we are women), or that having a great career will complete us (especially if we are men), which is a very skewed and incomplete way to look at personal fulfillment.

Considering all of these factors, it is not surprising that an internal sense of self worth is a hard thing to come by. Those among us who naturally have it are rare. Our entire lives, with very few exceptions, we are distracted from it and conditioned to ignore its calling. We must almost stumble upon it unexpectedly, when our defenses are down, or reach a point of despair and brokenness that forces us to stop looking outward and begin looking inward. If such brokenness is the beginning of internal validation, it can be a wonderful thing.

We must strive for an internal sense of self worth and validation; one that cares about other people’s opinions, but does not depend on them. It is the only way to truly weather the anxiety of interpersonal relationships, to withstand the disapproval and even the rejection of others, to express our thoughts and feelings honestly, and to soothe ourselves and maintain a sense of who we are no matter what happens to be going on in our lives. It may seem paradoxical, but having a strong, internally-derived sense of who we are is the only way to achieve real intimacy with another person because it is the only way we can develop the courage to be our true selves with them, warts, foibles, and all. And, it is the only way we are free to allow them to be themselves with us. This is not to say we won’t have struggles with intimacy, because being human and fallible, we will. But if we feel strong and confident about who we are, these struggles won’t destroy us.

Happiness is an inside job. Self esteem is an inside job. Morals and values are an inside job. Everything that matters in life, the things by which you define yourself, that determine the choices you make and the course of your life, comes from within. The internal can never go away. We have it as long as we are alive. Caring what other people think is normal, but if we define ourselves by it, we lose the one thing that is truly our own, the one thing that makes us who we are: our internal, subjective sense of who we are.

(Note: This is a new revision of a post from February, 2008.)

Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again. — Sheldon Kopp

Forgiving yourself is hard. We tend to hold things against ourselves, forgiving only after much struggle and anguish, if at all. We must feel much guilt and remorse, we think; we must punish ourselves for our wrongdoings. If we don’t, it’s like saying what we did was alright. And how can we learn from our mistakes if we don’t dwell on them for a good long while?

But little about this view is correct. Yes, there is a process, and you will you pass through stages of guilt and remorse before arriving at forgiveness. (If there were no guilt or remorse, forgiveness would not be necessary.) But living with such negative feelings because you think that’s what you deserve is worse than useless. It is a psychological negative, a quagmire that saps energy, inhibits happiness, and stunts emotional and spiritual growth. Forgiving yourself is how you move on. This makes it essential not only to your sense of well being, but to the personal growth process itself.

This point would be hard to overstate. Self-forgiveness is so important, it is at the core of many myths and religious parables. The crucifixion is, I think, one of the most powerful allegories on self-forgiveness. Jesus died for the sins of the world, allowing fallen mankind a way into heaven merely by believing in His sacrifice and His willingness to forgive us. All we have to do is soften our hearts and ask, and we instantly receive forgiveness. God does not keep score. He does not make exceptions, and He does not need to think about whether or not we deserve forgiveness. If we ask, it’s given. God’s forgiveness is immediate and unconditional. It is also, according to the whole of the New Testament, the only way into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Few can argue that the point of the crucifixion is about forgiveness. But if you see it metaphorically, as a mythical story about the human condition, it paints a much more interesting picture. Mythical characters represent different aspects of ourselves, and their struggles represent our own internal struggles, struggles universal to all mankind. The crucifixion myth is about the excruciating journey of self-forgiveness–and its vital importance. It tells us that if we want to recreate ourselves at a higher level (become born again), we must be willing to sacrifice our current selves. This sacrifice and new birth allows us to see ourselves with wiser eyes, and is thus how we forgive ourselves. And from this self-forgiveness comes salvation, or rather, self-forgiveness is salvation. But it isn’t God forgiving and saving us; it is us forgiving and saving ourselves.

In this mythical interpretation, the crucifixion is about the difficulty of forgiving yourself and its utter necessity for personal change. But contrary to the literal interpretation, it is not something we do once that forever changes us. Rather, it is an ongoing process of dying and being reborn, metaphorically speaking, as we gain more awareness and insight about who we are and what our purpose is. The crucial points of the story are that 1) without a softened heart, a heart willing to forgive, this process is not possible; and that 2) no matter what we did, we are all deserving of this forgiveness.

This softening of the heart is the key to all growth and change. This is why the New Testament was a revolutionary change for the better over the Old Testament. The Old Testament provided laws for behavior which were necessary, but not sufficient, for true personal change. A person can obey laws for his entire life without once having a spiritual experience, awareness of higher states, or any understanding of his own internal possibilities. Laws, by their nature, do not address such issues. Then Jesus the Christ came along and provided a way for us to see beyond law to the more advanced spiritual principle of atonement. His story exemplifies spiritual growth, and this makes Him one of the most important figures in all of mythology. Not because he died for our sins, but because he showed us the way out of our own hard-hearted hells.

This way out is not easy. Achieving true self-forgiveness is often the mental and emotional equivalent of a crucifixion, arrived at after years of agonizing self-flagellation and often only after losing the will to continue resisting it. Forgiving yourself is one of the most difficult undertakings imaginable, but also one of the most necessary. As the basis of self-love, it is also the basis for loving and forgiving others.

We all deserve this forgiveness. No matter what we’ve done, no matter who we’ve hurt, no matter how many commandments we’ve broken, forgiving ourselves is the right thing to do. Making mistakes, even big ones, is part of being human. And all human behavior, no matter how far away from this it can sometimes appear, is motivated by a desire for understanding and love. God forgives us because He understands this–which is really to say that we must strive to understand this and thus forgive ourselves. Even if we don’t fully understand our actions, we can at least understand that being hard-hearted to our motivations for them defies God’s desire for us; we can intuit and choose to accept that self-forgiveness is the most proper course.

Feeling remorse is part of the process, yes, and learning from our mistakes is good. But hanging onto remorse past its useful time just keeps us stuck. It is a pointless waste of consciousness, it is the opposite of making amends, the opposite of positive personal change, and it is not good for anybody or anything, including the people we’ve hurt.

Salvation is what happens when you forgive yourself. Forgiveness frees us from the fetters of our old ways and bears us into a higher state of consciousness, which some call Heaven. A literal interpretation has us believing Heaven and Hell are otherworldly places we go after we die, but the metaphorical view shows us that hell is what happens when we don’t soften our hearts and forgive ourselves, and heaven is what happens when we do.

So, about three weeks ago I had to have an emergency appendectomy. As invasive surgeries go, it was a pretty minor one, with not even an overnight hospital stay and a 4-6 week recovery time. It was my first experience with surgery and all that goes with it: anesthesia, catheters, intravenous pain medication, monitoring for post-operative complications, etc., etc. All in all, it wasn’t a terrible experience. I was lucky to have kind, competent doctors and nurses at every stage who did their best to make me feel comfortable and well-cared for.

The appendix is a small, Florida-shaped pocket that juts off the small intestine. It serves no apparent function, so removal has minimal repercussions beyond the surgery itself, and is only necessary in the case of infection. Appendicitis occurs when food and other detritus (I’m not sure what that would be) gets trapped in it, causing the infection to occur. If untreated (i.e., surgically removed), it will burst and release the infection into the entire body, creating a life-threatening toxic condition. Symptoms of appendicitis are nausea, constipation, chills, fever, vomiting, and severe pain in the lower right abdomen (for me, in that order). I had been sick for about eight hours before going into the emergency room. After the diagnosis, I had the surgery within a few hours. The doctor said I was probably less than two hours away from bursting, which shocked me because the whole episode had been less than 24 hours, and I thought I just had a bad flu or food poisoning. Appendicitis is not a serious condition, but it can still kill you if you ignore it.

Anyway, even with the possible repercussions, appendicitis is an easily treatable condition and is probably not on anyone’s list of feared diseases. Many people sympathized with stories of their own appendectomies. I had many nice wishes for a speedy recovery, and some people even brought food over. And that was about it.

I contrasted these kind, mild reactions with those I’ve seen toward people who’ve come down with more serious illnesses like cancer. Reactions are totally different to this dreaded disease. They are much more emotional and much more irrational. People are kind, of course, but there is very often an underlying attitude that a person who gets cancer did something to bring it on herself. And often, the sick person feels this way, as well.

If you have a minor condition, people have no trouble sympathizing. But if you have a major condition, it’s different. Yes, people sympathize, but even so, they often make assumptions that they don’t make with less serious illnesses. They try to attribute the illness to a causative factor that they can associate with the victim (smoking, for example). If they can’t find a presumed causative relationship, then often they will secretly assign moral agency to the sick person, believing that she must have done something in her past to “deserve” the illness. In fact, people often assign moral agency to the victim even if they do find a presumed causative factor; doing so ties up a messy, scary, complex problem into a neat little package that they can assign some meaning to. This makes them feel better by giving themselves a sense of removal from the disease.

Sadly, people sick with diseases like cancer often make these awful assumptions about themselves, as well. They secretly harbor beliefs that if only they’d done things differently, they might have prevented themselves from getting sick. If they’d gotten more rest, ate healthier food, didn’t hold in their feelings, or tried harder to alleviate their stress, they tell themselves, they might not have gotten sick. And if they can’t find anything to blame in the present, then they, too, will search far back in their past for reasons they are being “punished” now.

People do these things because they’re afraid. It is human nature to look for reasons and explanations and causes, to try to make sense of situations, because making sense of situations is how we survive. If we can assign reasons, we can usually find a way to overcome a problem. If we can assign reasons to someone getting cancer, we can distance ourselves from the possibility of getting it ourselves. And if we are the sick person, we can feel as though there is some sense to be made out of a seemingly senseless situation.

But the truth is that life threatening illnesses are senseless. Causative factors are for the most part indeterminable, and there is absolutely, positively, and irrevocably no moral agency to be assigned to a person who happens to have one.

The truth is, nobody really knows why some people get cancer and some people don’t. There are very few definitive, provable causal relationships between substances and cancer; the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are tobacco, asbestos, radiation, and in some cases, genetics. And even where a causal relationship has been established, cancer is still not a certain outcome. Many people can smoke their entire adult lives and not get cancer; people can live in asbestos-laden houses and not get cancer; people can even be exposed to identical levels of radiation, and not all of them will get cancer. Even in people with a genetic predisposition to cancer, it is just that: a predisposition. Many people who have cancer in their families live long, healthy, cancer-free lives.

Why do some people get sick, then? No matter how much we want to believe otherwise, it’s simply a case of bad luck. Poker players have a great term for a long losing streak: they call it running bad. People who get terminal illnesses are running bad. Yes, it’s sort of the ultimate form of running bad, but that’s really all it is. Poker is a good analogy here, though, because people often make the mistake of trying to assign causality–and sometimes even moral agency–to their winning and losing streaks. While the pros know that streaks are just blips that always, in the long run, match the probabilities, novices look for patterns in the cards that fit with their thoughts and feelings about the game. Because they don’t understand the probabilities, they want to believe they have some influence over how the cards fall and that this is their “edge” in the game. Such an edge doesn’t exist, but belief in it can be exploited by good players. Countless times, I’ve seen bad players on a lucky streak lose all their chips because they’re unable to accept that the streak is gone. The human brain is so anxious to find reasons that support our opinions and alleviate our fears, we will often ignore any evidence that doesn’t. This is how–and why–we trick ourselves into thinking serious illness is something more than running bad.

How sad that in our vain search for reasons, we saddle our friends–or worse, ourselves–with moral agency for contracting a life-threatening disease, when such moral agency is non-existent. We don’t do this with colds or appendectomies; we only do it with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, because they are the ones that evoke our fear. This “blame the victim” mentality is a modern sort of human sacrifice, an effort to appease the gods and thus avoid their wrath. And it is every bit as irrational.

Instead, we can learn to recognize our tendency to do this for what it is: an attempt to alleviate our anxiety in the face of our own powerlessness. Sometimes, becoming a more rational person means knowing when the irrational can not be explained, but only accepted, unjust as it often is.

I was visiting some friends the other day who have three kids: a five year old son and two teenagers. Nothing particularly dramatic happened while I was there, but I was fascinated by the family dynamics I observed, probably because they were so vastly different from anything I’m familiar with. The five year old was, for all intents and purposes, the head of the household. Everybody else’s activity was gauged and decided by what he wanted. If he was unhappy, all other activity ground to a halt until he could be appeased. While the parents were trying to spend time with us, the older kids were told to take care of the little one, which meant that they had to do whatever he wanted to do. Prior to entering first grade, he had had no set bedtime, so with the school year fast approaching, they were all focused on getting him to bed early, which of course was a huge problem because the child had no intention of going to bed. After some fruitless cajoling and deal-making attempts, they asked us to leave to reduce the struggle of getting the kid to go to bed.

Now it’s understandable that a child is going to be excited with company over and not want to go to bed; I get that completely. What I don’t get is why a child has enough power to direct how that excitement is handled—and enough power, in general, to reduce his parents’ authority to pleading, bribing, and promising (mostly without effect). I know it’s easy, as someone without children, to look in from the outside and declare how differently I would do it. Even so, there was something terribly off about this whole thing, and while cold reality might not look like it does in my head, I know I would make different mistakes; I know I would not allow a child to run my household. While some people believe this is the way to raise confident and happy children, it seems to me that it’s only going to result in a new generation of narcissists–and that horrifies me to the bone.

My curiosity got piqued enough to do a little Internet research on parenting. I discovered that prevailing psychological theory defines four major parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved. Briefly, authoritarian is the “because I said so” kind of parenting where the parent demands obedience without question or explanation. Authoritative parents also demand respect, but make an effort to explain things and listen to a child’s wants and needs. Permissive parents make few demands, rarely discipline, and avoid confrontation with their children. Uninvolved parents show little attention, one way or the other, to their kids. In addition, Wikipedia lists several dysfunctional parenting styles, including abusive, depriving, perfectionist, micromanagement, and many more.

Of the four primary parenting styles, the one that results in the happiest, most well-adjusted kids is the authoritative style. This makes sense, as it is the only style in which children are encouraged, in positive and supportive ways, to become thoughtful, responsible humans. Authoritarian parenting tends to produce obedient and proficient children, but with low self-esteem and poor social skills. Permissive parenting tends to result in children who rank low in happiness, have poor self-regulation, and are most likely to experience problems with authority. Uninvolved parenting has, as you might guess, the worst results of all, producing children who lack self-control, have low self-esteem, and are less competent than their peers in every area of testing. (See here for an article on this.)

My friends, at first glance, appear to be easily categorized as permissive parents. They indulge their child, they don’t discipline him, and they go to great lengths to avoid confrontation with him. However, the permissiveness does not extend to the older kids. In fact, treatment of the older kids is far closer to authoritarian, with orders barked at them and demands to suspend their plans if their little brother is in need of entertainment. And from what I can tell, the parents themselves actually spend little quality time with the boy, which hints at uninvolvement. Parenting styles, I thought, are not so easily categorized.

Or are they? Because after reading the various parenting web sites, all describing the same four styles and the results of each, it occurred to me that there is really only one successful parenting style, the authoritative one; the one based on firmness but kindness that produces well-adjusted kids. All other styles, I think, belong in the dysfunctional category. I know this goes against accepted wisdom, but I feel strongly that I’m right about this, and I think I can make a good case for my opinion.

The reason the authoritative style is the only successful style is because it is child-focused, while all the others are parent-focused. People who adopt an authoritative parenting style do so consciously, because they’ve invested time and effort into raising their kids well. They understand that raising children to be competent, well-adjusted adults is a serious undertaking. Because they understand this, they are largely able to put aside their own emotional needs in the face of it, to get those needs met elsewhere. Authoritative parenting is based solely on what is best for the kids. It puts the kids’ needs first.

This can’t be said for any of the other styles. All other parenting “styles” are really a lack thereof, happening by default because the parents are uninterested in parenting well or unable, because of their own emotional baggage, to do so. Most authoritarian parents, for example, are probably raising their kids how they were raised because they haven’t put any thought into doing it differently. Or, they are simply unempathetic people, uninterested in their children’s feelings and emotional development. Uninvolved parents are certainly dysfunctional; ignoring your own children seems, to me, as pathological as any other form of abuse. And permissive parents are perhaps the most troubling of all, because they are making some sort of effort, but getting it wrong pretty much on all counts. Because of their own limitations, they have confused love with lack of boundaries, teaching their children next to nothing about limits, consequences, or personal responsibility.

Any parent who does five minutes of Internet research, like I did, would be able to figure this out and at least consider how they were raising their kids. Can you imagine a parent who is genuinely interested in being a good parent finding this information and not making some effort to modify her behavior? I can’t. Thus, it is accurate to say, I think, that any style other than authoritative is borne of, more than anything, lack of interest in competent parenting.

Back to my friends, their parenting style is, more than anything, inconsistent. Their only apparent priority is to avoid any situation that might evoke a temper tantrum in the five year old. This avoidance had a frenetic feel, giving the whole household a chaotic energy that was exhausting to be around. And underlying all this anxious energy was the sense that it had little to do with the kid’s well-being but rather, was done for the parents. Somehow, they had developed this rather crazy method of dealing with their child to manage their own anxiety. No, it wasn’t terribly effective, and it certainly wasn’t in the kid’s best interest, but I have no doubt that this is what was going on.

How do I know? Mostly because it fits. More than anything, what all of the non-authoritative styles have in common is parental narcissism. They are based on what’s convenient and easiest for the parent rather than on what’s best for their children. If a parent barks orders at a kid, it’s because they don’t want to take the time to explain expectations. If a parent indulges a kid, it’s because they don’t want to go to the trouble of setting boundaries (a difficult undertaking!) or are afraid of confrontation. And if a parent is uninvolved with a kid, the parental narcissism pretty much speaks for itself. As the results show, all forms of parental narcissism are going to result in troubled kids because children need positive attention from their parents to develop a good self-image. The greater the parental narcissism, the more invalidated the child is going to feel, and the more problematic her adulthood will be. And interesting to note here is that there doesn’t need to be any overt abuse for a kid to have problems later in life. All that’s required, on the part of the parent, is for their own self-centeredness to outweigh their child’s best interest.

Somewhat ironically, the primary problem such a troubled kid is going to have will also be narcissism. This is because narcissistic parents raise narcissistic children. Really, this makes perfect sense, since narcissism is actually the lack of and compensation for a healthy sense of self. In watching how my friends’ five year old casually manipulated them, I saw that he was already well on his way to becoming an insecure, blaming, compulsive adult. And while that is what most people think of as narcissism, it is just one form. Many children of narcissistic parents grow up to be narcissistically wounded: still very self-absorbed, but taking on blame rather than placing it, and feeling hyper-responsible for other people’s well being. Often, these two types hook up–as they complement each other so well–and when they have babies together, they perpetuate the generational cycle of narcissism.

Sadly, this cycle runs deep, and comprehending it probably explains a lot for many of us. Just as narcissistic parenting results in narcissistic children, such parents also came from narcissistic families. Often these patterns are so deeply ingrained, so much a part of the backdrop of our lives, that it is extremely difficult to see and move past them. Even when we go out of our way to “not be like our parents,” if our behavioral changes are reactive, they don’t separate us from our family system but rather tie us to it, and are thus likely to be another form of narcissism. Overcoming this cycle can take years, and usually can only happen with a great deal of awareness and motivation to do so.

Authoritative parents are those who are able to put their own needs, moods, and whims aside enough to and put their child’s needs first. They can do this because they were either fortunate enough to have been raised by parents with low levels of narcissism (we are all at least somewhat narcissistic), or have done the hard work of moving past their own narcissistic wounds. All other parenting styles are rooted in narcissism, in people’s unwillingness or inability to transcend their own shortcomings. I understand the difficulty of this and I have compassion for it. But even so, I find it terribly, terribly sad–which explains, I suppose, why I felt so empty the other day after leaving my friend’s house. The details weren’t anything like my own childhood family dynamics, but the problem itself? It was identical.

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.–Sam Levenson

That which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality.–Ayn Rand

Happiness is not a birthright, although the pursuit of it should be. There’s a lot of confusion about this idea, and about happiness in general. It’s a big topic, but I’m going to try to say something meaningful about it anyway.

With the presidential elections swinging into full, nauseating force, there is more than the usual political rhetoric inundating us about how much the government can, and is supposed to, do for its citizens. If we were to believe everything the politicians said, then we would believe that the government should provide for the safety, security, economic well-being, physical health, mental health, and, yes, happiness, of its citizens. In fact, this idea has become so deeply ingrained in our culture that few people question it anymore. Problems that arise in society are automatically expected to be solved by the government. There are so many laws, ordinances, prohibitions, and regulations now that it’s impossible for the average person to keep track of them; to know, for sure, whether or not he is adhering to the law or breaking it, or possibly doing both at the same time. Tax laws alone, now more than 20 volumes long and growing relentlessly, are so staggeringly complex that even trained IRS officials and accountants don’t always know if they’re violating rules by following others. And don’t even get me started on the laws meant to protect us from ourselves, the drug laws and gambling laws and tobacco laws, for example, that prohibit us from doing, buying, and ingesting what we want even when nobody else is hurt by our choices. And all in the name of our own good–because no law has ever been passed with the intention to harm citizens, at least not overtly.

In a very real way, the government has taken on the role of moral agent, the arbiter of right and wrong, in the lives of its individual citizens. At the very least, the federal government exercises social controls far beyond its province–gay marriage being the prime current example (and abortion being the classic one). You see? If people didn’t view the government as a moral agent, if this wasn’t the accepted norm, it wouldn’t occur to us to demand governmental action for the behavior we want restrained or reinforced; it wouldn’t occur to us that anyone had the right to such a brash approach to ideals they disagree with, but are unharmed by. Instead, it is so ingrained in our thinking that such action is rarely questioned; debated, yes, but questioned, at its roots, as the audacious violation of personal freedom that it is, no. The government now decides the right and wrong of many, if not most, of our societal, and even personal, dilemmas. With such far-reaching powers, it has become the default agent by which many citizens have come to believe that they can find happiness.

Not only is this morally wrong, it is rationally wrong. It can never work. Nobody is responsible for anybody else’s happiness. Happiness is an inside job, something we can only achieve by our own grit, sweat, and determination. And it is a by-product, as the quote at the beginning says. Of what? Of good moral choices. And if moral “choice” is decided for us by outside entities like the government, then it ceases to be a moral choice, as the other quote establishes. If the right and wrong of things are dictated to us rather than voluntarily chosen, and if we adhere to that right and wrong out of obligation or fear of retribution, then right and wrong have become moot points, and we have become like children waiting for our elders to tell us what to do.

Such a moral code will never produce happiness. It is the very antithesis of the kind of moral code most conducive to happiness.

If we are to find happiness, then, we must do so in spite of this paternal system, not because of it. We must transcend this urge, happily indulged by those who seek power over others (and politicians are only one segment of that population), to relinquish our moral agency. We must instead embrace our own moral agency for all it’s worth. And it is worth everything.

This is a hard thing to do. There is so much pressure to go the other way, to give in to external “assurances” of security and well-being. If we are to be free moral agents, and thus, if we are to have a shot at real happiness, we must go against convention on many, many levels. We must reject not only our government (at least its paternal aspects), but our education, our religion, our families, and our comfort zones. We must question all authority, all beliefs, all established ideas of morality and happiness and what matters in life. We must dissect them, examine them, digest them. And only after we’ve gone through this process, and decided for ourselves what’s important to us, what feeds our spirit and what detracts from it, what holds meaning for us and why, and where our passions lie, can we truly own ourselves: our histories, our spirituality, our families, our lives. And only then, after arriving at our own moral conclusions–for if they are not our own, they are not morality, but simply rules–do we have the opportunity for happiness. Real happiness, that is, the kind that is a default view of life, that stays with us, day in and day out, despite our changing circumstances. The kind we earn, the kind not to be confused with temporary elation or excitement. I might even say that undertaking this process is happiness itself, or at least the basis for it. Yes, it’s hard, but living any other way is far harder, regardless of how it might appear–and also far, far emptier.

Why empty? Because the larger, underlying truth is that our safety, security and well-being are always up for grabs, no matter who holds the reins. It is an illusion that the government (or any other external entity) can, or will, protect us from anything beyond its own moral province, that is to say, from force, fraud, and foreign invasion. And even in these cases, outcomes are uncertain. Ultimately, there is no real safety and no real security in life, and our sense of well-being is best had by coming to terms with those simple truths and learning to take care of ourselves as best we can in the face of them. Nobody can do that for us, no matter how much we want to believe they can.

Happiness is not a birthright in the same way that physical fitness is not a birthright. It is something we must be willing to work for. Once upon a time, Americans understood this, and their pursuit of happiness created the freest, wealthiest, most abundant nation ever imagined, with the highest standard of living and the greatest opportunity for all (flawed even as it was). This is all a government owes its people: an environment in which we are free to be our own moral agents and thus free to pursue our own passions and create our own happiness. This is the only happiness that really matters, the only kind that truly resonates with our human nature. In our deepest selves, we all know this to be true.

We’ve gotten so far away from that. We’ve gone so far down the road of government paternalism that, as I said, few people even recognize it as such anymore; it’s simply the way things are.

I did not mean for this to be a political essay. But politics are a huge part of the choices we make (or don’t make), in a way I’ve only recently realized. People need to be aware of this and to think seriously about it, even in areas of their personal lives that, on the surface, have little to do with politics. I strongly believe that if we continue progressing down this paternalistic path, we are going to end up in a totalitarian world that will squelch all possibility of moral choice, and thus, of true happiness.

It won’t be an iron-fist fascist regime, no. But it will be a totalitarian regime nevertheless, slipped into by fear, indifference, and intellectual laziness. As such, it will be a voluntary one, and thus, I believe, far worse.

And sadly, we will have deserved it.

The basic point of tantra is interest and awareness in every activity we are involved in throughout our life, in every moment.--Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

It may seem ambitious to think I can summarize the point of life in 1,200 words or less. But really, I don’t think it is. The point of life is actually a very simple thing. As I was laying around recovering from surgery, with a mind expanded by new circumstances and made lazy and meandering by percocets, it hit me in full force, something I’d known for a long time but saw with fresh eyes.

The point of life is merely this: to be present, to the best of your ability, in every single moment.

This is a straightforward idea that we tend to complicate with our thoughts, dreams, wishes, emotions, and ideologies to the point that we are no longer able to grasp its eloquent simplicity. The result is that we are so busy trying to live well (however we happen to define that), that we forget what living well truly means.

Rest in the moment. Embrace the moment. Cherish the moment. Glory and be grateful for the moment. But don’t waste a lot of time thinking about embracing, cherishing, and glorying in. Just be present. In this moment, and this moment, and this one. Every single moment. If you are simply present, the embracing and cherishing and glorying will happen on its own.

The problem arises when we think all our moments should be joyous ones. When we want this, we develop the pattern of avoiding unhappy and even mundane moments. We distract ourselves from them in many ways, from daydreaming to addiction. Such distraction is even socially sanctioned, when we seek prescription medication to numb ourselves and dull our senses against the moments we don’t like. The belief that “nobody has to be sad in the age of pharmaceuticals” is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

When we avoid moments we don’t like, we are literally avoiding our own lives, because all we have is moments. From birth to death, moments are what make up our lives. When we make the decision to judge our moments as good or bad, desirable or undesirable, then dismiss the bad and undesirable ones, we are discarding chunks of our lives. And since most of our moments are mundane, with the truly joyous and the truly painful coming along in far smaller quantities, dismissing them means dismissing large chunks of our lives.

We all do this to some degree. Daydreaming while washing dishes or folding laundry or driving is pretty standard human behavior. We can’t always find pleasure in a spotless pan or a crisp fold or a well-executed lane change (or then again, maybe we could). And sometimes the thoughts and daydreams we have while doing these tasks are useful. But if we do too much auto-piloting during our daily routines, we develop an unconscious habit of drifting away from ourselves, often to such a degree that we don’t know we’re doing it, which also means we don’t know how not to do it. It feels normal, which makes being present feel abnormal. Many, if not most, of us are in this predicament every day. We don’t properly value moments, so we have forgotten how to value them, which is to say, we’ve forgotten how to stay present in them–unless they’re exciting, dramatic, or demanding, when being present occurs automatically.

The key is to learn to value every moment, whether joyous or painful, engrossing or mundane, as equally as we are able. Imagine what life would be like if we were as present while washing dishes as we were during an orgasm. Every moment, and not just the “special” ones, would be an adventure, potent with mystery, suspense and possibility. Even the painful ones would hold a certain fullness that no others can offer; when I have been able to be present with my pain, I have found, underlying the presence, an oddly comforting satisfaction. In many ways, our pain holds tremendous opportunities for becoming more whole, if only we are able to stay present with it. All of our moments have such potential, though, in their own ways, and thus, we should learn to value them beyond all other possessions.

This all came to me after my surgery because I was thinking about death, or rather, the process of dying. I thought what it must be like to be old and looking back on your life, and what regrets there might be. And I realized that the biggest regrets are probably going to be the moments I ignored or dismissed that I should have embraced. We take them for granted, these moments, when we’re young, and only when at the point of running out of them do most of us realize how precious each one of them really is. Or was. Staying present to the best of my ability is, I saw, not just important; it’s everything. It’s not about stopping to smell the roses; it’s about being present while stopping to smell the roses–and while doing everything else, as well.

You may recognize these ideas as rooted in Buddhist (or Hindu) philosophy. I suppose they are. But the Buddha was just a guy who recognized the value of moments and encouraged others to do the same. He believed this was so important, in fact, that he developed a rather sophisticated system to teach people how to value their moments and be present in them. In this presence, the Buddha knew, lies total enlightenment. And there is no nobler cause on this planet than helping people along this path.

The point of life is to be present with it in every moment to the best of your ability. It is an astoundingly simple idea, but difficult to put into practice. We can use our thoughts, dreams, wishes, emotions and ideologies to further our ability to be present, or to avoid furthering it; we can use them to develop greater insight and self-awareness, or to avoid doing so. And sometimes, it’s hard to discern the difference, as what we want to believe can be very different from what’s really going on. And all of this on top of the fact that chasing peaks and avoiding valleys is a culturally ingrained mentality that influences our thinking in ways we may be largely oblivious to. Being present is the astoundingly simple point of life, but it can take an astounding amount of time and effort to put it into practice.