The 'Fundamental Virtues'

Flying is one of those interesting contexts when people will usually be happy to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. It can be awkward when you realize that you’re falling into a political discussion with someone whose views are diametrically opposed to yours. I view these situations as an opportunity: a moment in time where it’s genuinely possible to learn something. I was sitting next to an older gentleman on a flight from LA to DC. As we were pulling back from the gate, I noticed the title of the chapter he was reading: “The Battle of Britain” and I immediately saw an opening.

“My granddad flew Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain”, I said. He looked up, a little baffled and I repeated myself by way of introduction. We started to chat. The book he was reading was a catalog of the seven moments in history. Seven separate events that the authors singled out as signature moments when 'Christian Freedom and Democracy' were preserved from the onrushing invasions of malignant invaders. One chapter was about the Persians at Thermopylae, another about the conversion of the Emperor Augustine, another about Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes, and of course, the Battle of Britain. I had reservations and voiced them. Isn’t that ignoring a whole slice of history? Wasn’t that conveniently forgetting the excesses of the Borgias and the Catholic Church in the days just before the reformation? He fielded my questions with some grace but not much engagement and we left it at that, for the time being.

Simplicity is appealing when we’re talking about virtue and goodness. Complex things, grey areas, pragmatic issues of contradictions lead to all sorts of issues and so it’s expedient to simplify matters to the simple dichotomy of ‘Good Guys’ and ‘Bad Guys’, or more sinisterly ‘Them’ and ‘Us’. Complexity leads to hemming and hawing, to moralistic relativity and the apparent slippery slope of compromise. Having said that, a simplistic view of what is right and wrong invariably leads to the sort of intractable argument that our political dialogue is currently, ridiculously, engaged in: a clash of core values that leads nowhere.

I hold the following boldly stated view: there are three fundamental virtues: (A) Compassion, (B) Integrity and (C) Understanding. These are inviolable, sacrosanct, absolute and, for want of a better word, ‘good’. Their inverse: Cruelty, Dishonesty and Ignorance embody what I consider as ‘evil’. The simplicity of this holds me in a strong grasp and interestingly, involves subtle complex pitfalls when applied to other people. Am I being compassionate or understanding towards others if I insist that they adopt my virtues as their own and judge them negatively if they don’t? This is where the complexity and depth lives of any truly moral person: in the consequences of your deeply held views to others.

In my mind, a Christian who preaches the Bible’s lessons of love and forgiveness only to turn around and say that homosexuality is a sin (and by consequence, any gay man or woman is damned) is a shocking contradiction with real, painful consequences to those people. The act of compassion requires you to ‘dethrone yourself from the center of your world and place another there’, leading inexorably to the golden rule: Do unto others as you have them do unto you. I doubt that any living soul would actually ask for someone else to issue a judgment of eternal damnation on them based on something as arbitrary and unconscious as sexual orientation, but I guess there’s a whole doctrine of sin to worry about. No, I say, let’s keep it simple: focus on Compassion, Integrity and Understanding and everything else will be fine.

My newly found friend and I started, inevitably, to chat about politics. He is a fiscal conservative, a bit more centrist on social issues and a frequent viewer of Fox News. He doesn’t like Hannity, Limbaugh or Coulter, but still feels that the Fox perspective is fair and balanced. He doesn’t believe the liberal media’s biases and positively loathes the demagogues of the left. He despises Barney Frank and Al Gore and argues passionately about Obama’s budgetary foolishness, about the importance of deregulation and the various ways in which the wealthy shouldn’t be penalized for their success. He and I talk about Health Care and the various sins of the left (from his perspective) and the right (from mine).

I suddenly realized that something important was happening: that he and I lived through the same events: the town hall meetings in 2009 where so much appalling propaganda was pumped through the airwaves surrounding the Health Care bill (mainly, in my mind, originating from the right wing, but he asserted from the left as well) and we had completely different experiences of those events. We literally were living in different worlds, with different logics and different narratives. There was no possible agreement or consensus between us largely because neither of us was getting the full picture. For whatever reason, whoever is to blame, there was almost no way of making an impartial, well-informed, fact-based evaluation of the issues since everything had been reduced to a polemic ‘them-against-us’ sort of argument. So many of the talking points we see in the public forum are geared to denigrating and dismissing our adversaries; of scoring points and killing off; of ridiculing and disingenuously undermining the others arguments.

Here was a man who had spent his life in business finances and he was sharing his expertise with me. The least I could do is listen and think carefully about what he was telling me about the tax code. I’ve read in the Economist (a publication with some chops in this area) that the latest wave of regulations in this arena are just too cumbersome and yet, as a good little liberal, I’m offered a moralistic justification for this legislation based on how the ‘banks are bad’. How can I, as a responsible citizen in a democracy, hold the reigns of power and hold my government to account if I have no accurate access to well-informed information? It’s impossible.

I dread the next few months as we all dissolve into the sepid, vile dialogue of a particularly negative presidential campaign where the three evils of aggression, bullshit and ignorance will reign supreme. I enjoyed my conversation with my new right-wing friend. I learned some things and I hope that he heard me when I said to him: “Don’t demonize the people involved in the conversation but listen to what they have to say”.

I walked away from the interaction feeling more far strongly that these fundamental virtues are the only things that really matter. On the whole, I could care less and less about a person’s political views. I do care very deeply why they might feel the way they feel. Are they motivated by compassion, honesty and understanding? If not, do they understand why? I will probably become a little strident concerning these virtues during the coming presidential campaign.

Let us elevate the level of debate, treat our adversaries with consideration and tell the truth. If anyone wants to make the claim that the USA is the greatest democracy in the world, they should be prepared for my comeback: “Show Me”.

A Surreal Encounter Over Real Food

This evening, I felt the need to simply get out and wander around Santa Monica for an hour. The streets were crowded and in-amongst the hoards of beautiful, well-heeled, tanned and gorgeous residents were a number of homeless, soliciting money, sitting on benches, throwing out arbitrary, insistent requests for loose change. I hadn’t strolled for two blocks until a man accosted me and launched into a roundabout speech, laced with flattery and desperation in an attempt to ask me for ‘anything I could spare’. I declined, as compassionately as I could and walked on.

Real Food Daily was busy, packed with customers and sitting prominently at one of the corners of the communal dining tables was a large, big shouldered man tucking into a vegetarian burrito of one kind or other. He was obviously homeless, he had a box with his possessions sitting on the chair next to him. His nails were long, unkempt and filthy. He was wearing a gown under his clothes that looked like the sort of robe male muslims wear (except for the tell-tale tiny dotted pattern that gave it away as hospital clothing). He smelled a little too. Naturally, the only seat left in the whole restaurant was directly opposite him.

I ordered my food and loitered, not wanting to go anywhere near this guy. I was so conspicuous that a waitress asked me if I needed anything. I answered, mumbling somewhat, “there aren’t any seats available”, realizing how ridiculous this particular lie was as I said it. So I walked over, asked him for permission to sit near him and took my place.

The other actors in this drama were a man and a woman, not quite a couple but acquaintances with enough knowledge of each other to be overtly nice and flattering towards each other. She was an elegant lady, of possibly Japanese or Korean descent and he was an American, a Southern Californian with charm and gentle self-confidence. She, like me, had been avoiding taking a seat and asked him a little more brusquely if he could ‘give them space’ before sitting down. The homeless guy shuffled his seat, got up, sat down and asked me if I needed his seat.

“It’s fine, you’re OK where you are” I said, as gently as I could. He then resumed his meal and there followed the most surreal little scene. As this shambling wreck of a man shuffled through his burrito and salad, the couple were digging into a mutually empowering conversation: the well-known staple on the west coast about ‘spirituality’. They spoke animatedly about the challenges of life, about how they’re dealing with life’s tribulations; about how things are quite tough and how they’re realizing things about themselves to become a better person. Phrases like ‘victim mentality’ were bandied about. The lady mentioned how when she was a student in New York (before she had ever had a rich boyfriend) she had no idea what it was like to eat in fancy restaurants. And all the time, I hear this, I see the homeless man’s mouth tremble as if he was crying, or muttering to himself with small measure of fierceness mingled with shame and desperation.

I cannot fathom how he was feeling at that moment. Perhaps he was conspicuously aware of how out of place he was, even of how disgusting we all found him. The sheer obliviousness of the couple was simply jarring, even to me. Their conversation about ‘spirituality’ left me feeling angry. Is this really spiritual? This self-centered view of the world that proclaims and declares its own strength with little or no compassion for those who have, quite literally, nothing? I simply stayed where I was and didn’t change my seat, even where other tables became open in the restaurant. I wanted simply to remain still, to stay in the company of this man without making him feel any worse. I could see him sullenly clean the food off his plate, hating his existence and offer some small quiet protests to the only person he had to talk to: himself. As I left, I asked him if he would accept the remaining money I had in my wallet, a paltry $3.

As I left, I was struck by the totality of his situation. Of how we complain and bitch and moan about trivialities all the time and how little time we have to show compassion for genuine suffering. I feel that this man is unlikely to survive for much longer and am struck by my powerlessness when faced with situations like this.

As I walked away from the restaurant, back to my car, waves of sadness crashed over me and tears sprang to my eyes. Another cheerful looking homeless guy on a bench said ‘spare some change buddy?’ and I choked up as I said no. The final twist of irony was the concern in his voice as he followed up with “Hey! Are you OK?”.