Hope from Paris: rebuilding trust

It has begun again: the age-old cycle of hate and counter-hate, self-justification and counter-justification, the grim joy of righteousness and revenge. In the U.S., conservative politicians play on it as demagogues always have, projecting strength and patriotism by refusing to take refugees from the lands terrorized by ISIS; my own governor, Chris Christie, tries to outdo his competition by arguing that even five-year-old orphans from Syria should be stopped and sent back, as if they are tainted by being from the same part of the world as the murderers. In France, anti-Muslim sentiment is said to be rising. Everywhere people want to shut down, to cling to people like themselves whom they can trust, to build walls against people unlike themselves.

We know some things about these cycles. We know with the  scientific confidence of good evidence and good theory, that they breed ever-deepening spirals of violence and hatred. ISIS draws its strength from the suspicion and mistrust of Muslims in the West, like a malignant antihero drawing energy from its enemy. It will only grow as our hostility spreads to millions of innocent people tarred with the broad brush of prejudice.

But ISIS is no hero to Muslims. The overwhelming majority among them, by all indications, abhor the attacks in Paris and the brutality of the movement. That is why millions are fleeing to our shores. ISIS can be defeated with ease, but only -- only -- if Muslims as a whole feel the West is a friend, feel we support their efforts to build better lives for their families.

Amid the heartbreak and terror, amid the recriminations and bombast, there is some reason for hope.

There has been a substantial outpouring of support for Muslims in Paris, on social media and in the streets - expressions of empathy, concern that they not be demonized. Messages of support have gone viral in social media. A New Yorker named Alex Malloy wrote on Facebook of getting a Muslim cab driver the day after the attacks who wept, from despair and fear that he would be labeled as one of “them”. Malloy’s response drew wide support:

“Please stop saying ‘Muslims’ are the problem because they are not and they are feeling more victimized and scared to the day. These are our brothers and sisters as humankind, we are all humans underneath this skin. And they deserve nothing more than our respect and attention. They need our protection. Please stop viewing these beautiful human beings as enemies because they are not.”

And a young Parisian wrote,

“This is not really about ISIS. ... This is about ignorance, insecurity, emotion. It’s about not understanding who other people are, what they want or how they feel.”

This reaction of empathy and understanding is extraordinary. In the past, only small pockets of cosmopolitan elites have been willing to reach out in this way to the “other”, beyond the tribe. But now the desire for understanding of others has spread widely, especially of the young who have grown up with the rich exchanges of the internet. It has, for perhaps the first time in history, extended far enough to become a credible counterweight to the ancient, and still strong, tendency to close ranks against an enemy.

ISIS itself will not enter into a dialogue of understanding, and it would be a delusion to act as if it were; there is a need for fighting. But we do need to understand and engage the vast Muslim population who hate ISIS but also feel disenfranchised in the West. For that, we need to avoid succumbing to the sweet temptations of tribal loyalty, the marching bands and self-congratulatory speeches. As great leaders like Abraham Lincoln well knew, fighting may be necessary but there can be no joy in it: we should empathize with our enemy even as we enter combat, so that when the opportunity for peace comes we know how to seize and build on it.

Meanwhile, we must from the instinct of self-preservation, as well as from the generosity of our best selves, reach out to Muslims wherever we can, welcome them, celebrate their desire for peace and good lives. Together we can clear the poisonous swamps where hatred breeds. We don’t want to get dragged into them ourselves.

Changing culture: the moral blunderbuss

My old high school has been in the news, and not in a good way. A young man was tried for the charge of raping a freshman girl, age 15, shortly before he was to graduate, on his way to Harvard. It seems he had asked this girl out as part of a school "tradition" called the "senior salute", which involves bedding as many underclass women as possible before graduation. It's not clear exactly what happened, but things clearly went over the line: they went into a utility closet, the girl  -- at a minimum -- felt violated.

The tradition is despicable. But is the boy despicable? He was just doing what was expected, indeed admired, by those around him. For that matter, the girl herself was caught in this powerful social web: she was flattered to be asked out, and in her own account didn't want to "rock the boat " or seem like a "drama queen" by reacting too strongly to his advances. Though I know little about the details, there is no reason to think that this is an evil boy, someone who enjoys hurting others. He appears to be, on the contrary, one who plays the game and wants to win - whether that game is getting into Harvard or sleeping with a virgin. Most of the time we applaud those who play to win.

This is a classic situation in which the rules are changing. The rules need to change, of course; but we also need to ask: what's the best way to change them?

The approach here was to pull out a moral blunderbuss: to treat act the act as a criminal violation, which carries the full weight of moral condemnation of the community. It would destroy the young man and serve as a dire warning to others who might be tempted in such a direction.

But doing it this way may only slow down the process of change. Instead of fostering learning, this approach fosters fear. Young men I know now, even the best of them, are confused and frightened and even angry; they feel that if they cross some line that they can't even see, they may be destroyed. They are not gaining respect for women; they are feeling like lab rats threatened by some mad scientist's random shocks.

The moral blunderbuss is a poor weapon. It doesn't destroy the bad beliefs it aims at. The true believers are infuriated, like a bear shot with an old rifle, and may turn viciously on the accusers. Many others - those who have gone along, just trying to find their way - grow defensive, cynical, and tend to withdraw from the fray. That describes a lot of our political scene today.

As it happens, the jury was unwilling to pull the trigger. They acquitted the accused of the most serious charge of rape, but convicted him on a lesser charge of enticing a minor on the internet. It seems they wanted to signal that something was seriously wrong here, but they didn't feel the kind of unmixed moral condemnation that would justify the most severe sentence. They found it a difficult case.

Perhaps this opens the path to something better. Everyone is talking about the problem now. On the school campus , the headmaster promises a combination and deepening of discussions about the issues. "When we first learned of these disturbing events", he writes, " ... we pledged that we would use this case and the issues raised by it to learn more about ourselves and to make our School better." 

Now it's a question of what kind of discussion there will be. If it is one-way hectoring and lecturing,  we know how kids -- and people of all ages -- react: they will shut down and withdraw. But if they have a chance to express and explore their confusions, to ask their questions in an atmosphere of thoughtful dialogue, such conversations may be able to tip the moral balance - so that the cool kids will have a code different from the "senior salute". And we may be able to minimize the collateral damage, the destruction of lives and communities, that accompanies unrestrained righteousness.

Water wars

There's a severe drought in Vancouver. All the grass lies brown and dead, except the golf courses. The dark pine forests crackle underfoot. The arboretum explains apologetically that its water is recirculated. Reservoirs are down to record lows.

This was startling to me, as an Easterner; I thought it rained all the time there - I packed my rain coat and pants first thing. And talking to a few people, it seems they're not ready for this. They're used to long showers and lush lawns. They don't know quite what to do.

You'd like to think that everyone would pull together and share what they can, decide together on the priorities, work out some way of dealing with the problem. But judging from other areas that have gone through this, the prospects aren't good. The first stage, which Vancouver may be starting now, is denial. The NY Times reported last Fall on Porterville, California, which has largely run out of water. A mother recounts that when her neighbors' wells began to run dry, she told her children to take shorter showers. “They kept saying, ‘No, no, Mama, you’re just too negative’”. Now they have no showers at all.

“You don’t think of water as privilege until you don’t have it anymore,” said Ms. Serrato, whose husband works in the nearby fields. “We were very proud of making a life here for ourselves, for raising children here. We never ever expected to live this way.”

I heard some of the same in Vancouver, about how some people were refusing to cut down on their showers and watering. It seems people don't want to face this problem till it hits them. Their lifestyle includes water, and they - like the Serratos - are proud of their lifestyles. Giving up their lawns is like an admission of failure.

It can get worse after that. Once the crisis hits, people often start to fight over what's left. We hear about wealthy Californians who fight against or ignore the water restrictions. Farmers who can afford it dig their wells deeper, drawing water away from their neighbors, as well as destabilizing the ground far beyond their own properties.

A typical Western water rights conversation

On the other hand: California does suggest some reason for hope.  While some responses have been short-sighted and unsustainable, others have involved significant changes in behaviors which may make a real long-term difference. Farmers, with government help, have been shifting to drip irrigation which has doubled the yields for given water volumes. This Spring the water district for Southern California beefed up a program to encourage the general public to cut back on their lawns and use drought-resistant plants. The astonishing thing is that people are embracing it in droves; the planted landscape is already being transformed. In an era where government incentives and regulations too often are ignored or manipulated or resisted -- think of Obamacare, or cash for clunkers -- these are unusual successes.

It’s hard to say why these things work when others don’t, but I would suggest two reasons. First, the shift in California has been building for decades. The irrigation programs have been gaining ground, as it were,  for many years, and have proved themselves economically; so farmers have grown generally more open to the idea of changing their practices around environmental issues.

The second reason is that the current crisis has “changed the conversation” -- a currently popular phrase. Changing the conversation means that people are talking about it.  In places that failed to deal with the problem, like Porterville, there was for a long time no conversation: the mother whose kids told her, “You’re just being too negative” were not aware that others in the community were already running out of water. No one talked about it, everyone thought it was just their own issue. But now, with the breadth and depth of this crisis, everyone in California is talking about it, everyone knows that the problem is real. And for changing behaviors, there is nothing more powerful than the sense that everyone else is doing it.

Perhaps those two factors are both needed: slow long-term adaptations, and a sudden crisis. A crisis by itself often just drives people to defensive postures, fighting against their neighbors. But when the conversation gets a chance to build, and everyone knows that everyone else is feeling the same things they are, there is a chance for cooperation. So getting the conversation going may be one of the most important activities.

Understanding the Klan

Daryl Davis, a Black musician. has taken it into his head to meet and argue with leading figures of the Ku Klux Klan. His book, Klan-destine Relationships, is a fairly amazing read. He meets with Roger Kelly, the Grand Dragon of one of the largest Klan factions, without revealing beforehand that he is Black. Kelly, though startled, invites him into his home, but there’s an armed man standing guard. They argue. Kelly explains his segregationist views; Davis attacks his assumptions. Though there is no epiphany, for some reason they agree to meet again, and then again. Eventually they form a sort of bond, still without any essential change in views. Davis talks Kelly into coming with him to apologize to a Black woman who has had a cross burned on her lawn. By the end of the book, the two are “close friends”, and Davis is godfather to Kelly’s child. But Kelly is still a Klan leader -- indeed has progressed to the title of  Imperial Wizard of the Invincible Empire Knights of the KKK. And Davis has befriended a dozen or so other Klansmen -- some in jail, some retired; none are fundamentally transformed.

What do we make of this? Many are horrified. A reviewer for Kirkus on Amazon writes:

“What never occurs to Davis is that he may be being used by these people.... Davis seems oblivious to Kelly's smooth way of talking out of both sides of his mouth.... Nowhere during these scenes does the author consider that his book might be the perfect vehicle by which Kelly can gain new members.

“The dual dangers of this book are that some readers will find tacit support for their beliefs that blacks are easily led and others will view the Klan as ‘not all that bad’ and perhaps join where they otherwise might not have.”

This reviewer believes you shouldn’t deal with bad people, those outside your moral circle -- you need to maintain a clear line between good and bad. This belief has animated most of human history. Its result is endless warfare. Since it fears and shuts off dialogue, its only practical conclusion is that the others must be destroyed, the stain of their evil wiped from the earth. But since that is rarely possible, and since they probably have the same attitude towards you, it produces cycles of merciless conflict.

Davis started from a more “enlightened” view, thinking he could use universal rationality to convince the other of the truth. But that didn’t work, either. Again and again -- and the book reports many conversations in detail -- he showed Klansmen that their views were logically inconsistent, incompatible with evidence, and generally failed all tests of rationality. They remained unmoved.

Yet both sides -- both Davis and the Klansmen -- apparently found it worthwhile to keep meeting, to keep talking, to deepen their relationship, despite the differences. Why?

Here’s Davis’ perspective, as expressed in a radio interview:

““The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself.”

This was a shift from where he started. He wasn’t trying to convince them any more. He was simply trying to understand, and to be understood. There is value in that. There is value, first, in that they don’t kill each other; some of the Klansmen, at least, did move towards less violent stances in their organizations, softened the rhetoric. They wanted to protect Davis, to keep him from being hurt as he attended Klan rallies and meetings. There is value, too, in that they do consider more deeply the views of their opponents -- not changing their deep philosophy, but much less willing to demonize and dehumanize. There is value in that they can sometimes walk together, as in the apology for the cross-burning.

And there’s some reciprocity: though Davis does not grow any less fierce in his defense of doctrines and people the Klan hates, he does tend to demonize the KKK members less, to see some good aspects. He agrees with them on some limited points such as a common opposition to drugs.

This infuriates the Kirkus reviewer: Davis, he rages, “endlessly makes excuses for Klan members who are no longer violent, as if this somehow mitigates their continued membership in such a terrorist organization.” He feels that any break in the wall is a threat.

But what’s the alternative? To kill Kelly? (He does have an armed guard, it should be noted.) Is it really likely that anyone is going to decide to join the Klan because Davis doesn’t ceaselessly attack them? Can one really imagine the Klan leader parading this book around as a recruiting tool? It would be much more likely that his members would attack him for befriending this Black guy, and that some might feel their simple black-and-white paradigm cracking a bit.

Davis suggests:

“...if you have an adversary with an opposing point of view, give that person a platform. Allow them to air that point of view, regardless of how extreme it may be. And believe me, I've heard things so extreme at these rallies they'll cut you to the bone.

“Give them a platform. ... And when you do things that way chances are they will reciprocate and give you a platform.”

People seem to want to be understood; they will put a lot of time and energy into it. At some level they find it valuable. It’s something to work from.

Christians and multiculturalists

Tim Tebow is a football player who openly expresses his Christian beliefs, and has thus become a polarizing figure -- beloved by Christians, often attacked by progressives, quite apart from his achievements on the field.

**************

Many people who identify themselves as Christians feel under siege. This poster is an expression of their sense that multicultural “political correctness” has become a cudgel to beat them into silence. Justice Alito, in the recent Supreme Court case on gay marriage, expresses the same basic fear that “Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” will be “vilified”,  driven to “whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes.”

I do not agree with the opponents of the Court's decision, but I think they have a point. On one hand, the public recognition of gay unions is, from the perspective of community and trust, a great step forward. It opens a new realm of relations, and makes it possible for more people to develop their full capacities as contributing members of society. This is part of broadening relations, essential in an increasingly complex society.

But many “progressives” in the cosmopolitan centers -- and I am one of them -- are not consistent in our embrace of multiculturalism: we don't include those with whom we disagree. We too easily associate Christianity with ignorance and  intolerance; we denigrate it, laugh at it. We celebrate the Supreme Court decision as a victory -- not just an advance, but a triumph over opponents who are (we think) stupid and out-of-date. stereotyping, Within our own circle, we unthinkingly lump all Tebow-supporters as a caricatural  bunch of intolerant boors. We engage in smirking exchanges with our own tribe - “See how foolish they are? See how wise we are?”

In that sense we do indeed preach a “new orthodoxy.” And to the extent that multiculturalism becomes orthodoxy, it perpetuates what it is trying to overcome.

The Court's decision is not a victory over regressive opponents, a win for our side: it is a chance to expand the dialogue and the range of human expression. When we treat it as a triumph in a battle, we diminish the whole process.

We should state clearly how a consistent multiculturalist point of view applies here:

1. Tebow, and those who support him, should not be expected to keep their beliefs to themselves, or to “whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes.”

2. If I see their beliefs as intolerant, we should talk about it.

3. If they see my beliefs as a new orthodoxy, we should talk about that.

4. We all need to accept both sides of the problem implied in the poster. If Jenner supporters should try to understand Tebow, then Tebow supporters should try to understand Jenner. Christians and multiculturalists, in their own circles, can be challenged to listen.

It’s not that this approach will lead magically to agreement. Some people believe at a very deep level in marriage as a union of male and female; a smaller number believe deeply that homosexuality is inherently sinful. They do not see themselves as bad, and they will fight with fury -- as would any of us -- against those who laugh at them or tell them they are morally wrong. They will not change their essential point of view, which is embedded in a complex web of philosophical, creedal, and historical perspectives.

We can, however, expect that consistent respect, true conversation, may enable us to better live together despite the divide, to work together, to walk together; to have some sympathy with each other even though we disagree; to have some care for each other despite the differences. That would help a great deal in healing our fractured society.

Forgiving racists

A strong line of argument in the Black community calls for more anger at the shootings in Charleston, and less forgiveness. (For example, Stacy Patton in the Washington Post, Roxane Gay in the New York Times).

Why refuse to forgive? What that does is to sharpen lines between communities, and thus increases the ability to fight. By refusing to forgive, you mobilize your own anger and that of your band. You assert your moral goodness along with the badness of your enemies. You feel good about yourself, and ready to act. If you’re going into battle, you certainly don’t want to forgive.

But this seems a particularly inopportune moment for such a position. This is a moment when an extraordinary number of Whites who have been hostile or ambivalent -- holding onto the Confederate flag as a symbol of their heritage -- are suddenly understanding what the blacks have been saying, and are ready to take some action. There is the widest opening of the door to communication that we have seen in many decades. Something might actually get done.

The willingness of many blacks, especially those in the Emanuel Church, to offer forgiveness has been an important factor in this shift. Whites have been astonished at this reaction, and ashamed. It has led them to try to understand more deeply the feelings and experiences of the black community, to empathize in a way they have not before. That is the kind of alchemy called out, at certain moments of crisis, by great leaders like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. As Abraham Lincoln (may have) said, “Do I not defeat my enemy by making him my friend?”

If you refuse to forgive, you may strengthen your own resolve, but you also strengthen the resolve of your opponents. When you draw the lines more sharply, you make it clearer to yourself why you are good and they are not; but you also reinforce their own sense of right. There are times when that is necessary. This isn’t one of them.

"I identify as black"

To trust others, you want to know where they fit in the scheme of things. You are used to treating women one way in particular situations, men another, and you expect them to respond appropriately. There are some things you can say to whites that you can’t say to blacks, and vice-versa; there are codes for the "right" way to behave for children, for police officers, for your wife or your husband, for other people's wives and husbands. You expect others to play these familiar roles and to know the codes as well as you. If they violate them in some way, even trivial, you wonder about them, and you can't really trust them in other ways.

Now we get Rachel Donezal, who has said for years that she is black and has held high positions in the NAACP, but who, it seems, is actually purely white. It rattles us. If it was the reverse - black passing for white - it would be much less upsetting; one might condemn it, but it would be easy to imagine why she would do that and what game she was playing. But we can't figure out what game she is playing here. It disturbs our expectations of how people act. Some people try to cram her into a familiar box: she must be doing it out of self interest, to gain advantages from affirmative action! But there is no evidence that she tried to do that; on the contrary, she almost certainly made life harder for herself.

Yet Donezal is only a particularly obvious case of something happening more and more widely: people are choosing, even constructing, their ethnic and sexual identities rather than accepting those given to them by tradition and birth. Many who might be called black do indeed choose to identify as white. President Obama had a choice, and he chose black. Why is that different from Donezal? He had one black parent, to be sure, but he still had to make a choice, and he was welcomed by the black community. Then there is the sudden attention to transgender people: even more sharply than race, gender has been the fundamental marker of human identity and the definer of relations - yet now Bruce Jenner can become Caitlyn.

It's understandable that many people want to say, "Stop this madness!" If anyone can be anything, how do we know who anybody is? How do we know what to expect? Can people choose to act any way they want? Isn't this a course towards chaos?

Shakespeare expressed this feeling at a time of challenges to the settled order of “degree”:

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And, hark, what discord follows!

What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!

What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!

Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors...

But despite the discomfort and the fears, it's not going to stop. Jenner and Donezal represent just another step in a progression that had gone on for many centuries since Shakespeare's time, which has opened the opportunity for the shopkeeper's son to be a lawyer, and then for his daughter to be a senator, and for the grandson of a slave to be his boss. At each step of this long progression the same cry had been raised: it breaks the rules, it's immoral, it threatens our way of life! Each step has indeed been difficult and confusing, but our society is much larger and better for it. Now: if a woman can be president, why can't she be a man? And if she is born white, why can't she be black?

There's only one way to avoid chaos in a world where people really get to choose who they are: to try to understand them. If we can understand why Caitlin Jenner made her choice, we can start to make sense of her motives and, ultimately, to trust her. She has gotten to tell her story, in Vanity Fair, so millions have begun to stretch their understanding of how people might feel and act. But for Rachel Donezal, there has been less opportunity: she has been driven largely into silence.

We should stop and listen to her. We should listen to what she has to say about how she sees herself and the world. We should try to see her perspective. Then, if necessary, we can judge.